Joust

She was ravenous, and Vetch gritted his teeth when he realized that she was thin—not unhealthy, not yet, but that miserable excuse for a dragon boy Sobek truly hadn't been feeding her nearly enough, just as he'd suspected! Hadn't he seen how much hungrier she was?

Hadn't her Jouster?

Like Jouster, like dragon boy, it seemed; Sobek and Reaten deserved each other, for neither of them had noticed the changes in Coresan. Seftu's rider was evidently nearly as much in the wrong. As Ari had said, none of the trouble of this morning would have happened, if they had only been paying proper attention to their dragons!

Vetch didn't leave the poor thing straining at the end of her tether for any longer than it took him to get up beside the barrow and begin tossing the biggest chunks of meat in it in her direction. She was quick; she saw the first one coming and snatched it right out of the air, snaked her head around to catch the second, and the third-She paused to swallow; he kept the meat coming. Only when the barrow was half empty did she pause, for a breath, then to turn her head to take a good long drink from her trough.

While she was drinking, he moved the barrow nearer her, and perforce, himself; when she looked up, the barrow was well within her reach, and Vetch stood behind it, making sounds that Kashet found soothing, a kind of "pish, pish" noise.

Now the tala that had been dusted over the meat she'd bolted had begun to take effect, taking the edge off her aggressiveness and the anger that must have been born of hunger. Oh, he understood that, all too well! He felt a surge of sympathy for her. He would see to it that she never had another hungry day in her life!

She had eaten as much as she usually did, too, and although she was still hungry, she was no longer ravenous, and her mood had mellowed considerably. She arched her back and her neck, and eyed him with a great deal more favor.

"Come, my beauty," he said to her, in a soft and coaxing voice. "See what I've brought you? There will be plenty of meat for you from now on, if you can be a good girl for me. I understand how you must be feeling! I know how much an empty belly hurts!"

Evidently she could, when she chose, move her head as fast as that whippy tail. She snaked her head at him with a lightning-strike, and snapped a pair of jaws that could have taken off his head—

If his head had been what she was aiming for.

The jaws clashed a good foot above his head. He never moved. She was trying to see if he rattled as easily as Sobek; if he flinched, she'd bully him at every possible opportunity. He'd seen her with Sobek at the grooming compound, where she looked at him out of the corner of her eye and lashed her tail at him, and he would jump and wince and insist that slaves put extra tethers on her. She reminded him of a goat on one of his masters' farms, who'd done the same to her herders until she got one who'd given her a good rap across the nose with his crook the first time she charged him.

"Come along, my beauty," he coaxed. "I'm tough and stringy. There's better fare for you in my barrow, if you're good."

She eyed him again, then abruptly buried her muzzle in the meat, and didn't stop until she'd eaten every morsel and licked the barrow clean. Only then did she raise her head and gaze at him with eyes that blinked with satiation and just a touch of sleepiness. So the tala was beginning to take hold. Good.

"There's a good girl," he told her, and taking the chance that the tala was coursing through her veins, further tranquilizing her, he moved down and loosened her chain from the wall. "Come on," he said, tugging at the chain. "I know you want a good bath, and a proper oiling, don't you? That wretched Sobek can't have given you one in an age."

She was more restive by far than Kashet, and never had Vetch felt the differences more keenly. And she kept snapping at the air above Vetch's head, as if she wanted to express irritation and anger, but not truly at him. She still allowed him to lead her to the grooming court without too much fuss.

Perhaps it was her bulging belly that was leading her… or just perhaps, in the depths of that odd mind, she was making comparisons between him and her former keeper, and deciding that she liked the change.

He fastened her to the nearest ring in the wall, and began buffing and oiling her. Flakes of dead skin fell away from the crevices of her wings as he rubbed, confirming his guess that Sobek hadn't been tending her properly. And she responded to his careful ministrations, slowly, but favorably, finally bending her head to permit him to tend to the delicate skin of her ears, her muzzle, and around her eyes. In fact, he felt her muscles relaxing under his hands, until at last she was allowing him to tend to even the most sensitive and ticklish places with her eyes closed and the breath coming quietly from her flaring nostrils. Now her scales glowed with the color of fine gems as they should have.

When he led her back to her pen, she ambled along quietly beside him, and dove into the sand pit to wallow as soon as they reached it. He chained her up—she was still no Kashet, and he wasn't going to trust to this good behavior until he knew how big a dose of tala he really needed to keep her tractable—but he gave her a much longer chain than ever Sobek had. She could reach every spot of her pen now; she just couldn't get out of it or fly off. She could bury herself in her hot sand, and roll and wallow, without the chain bringing her up short and making her uncomfortable.

Haraket had followed him every step of the way; as he left her to her nap in the warm sand and turned to leave the pen, Haraket gave him an approving slap on his back that staggered him.

"Well done!" the Overseer said gruffly. "You do know your business. You tend your Kashet and this virago; that's enough work for any man or boy. I'll see to it that your other tasks are taken care of."

Vetch ducked his head, and murmured his thanks, then headed back to the butchery to get Kashet's ration and his treat, for if ever a dragon deserved special tending today, it was Kashet. This would not be easy; Coresan was going to test him every single time he entered her pen. She was intelligent and crafty, and she had learned how to disobey. Disobedience was a habit it would be hard to break her of.

But if all went well—she would lay her eggs on his watch, and he would have every possible opportunity to spirit one away, if anyone could.

And then Vetch would have a dragon egg. And after that, well—then it would all depend on the gods of Alta, and whether here, in the heart of Tia, they would be strong enough to aid him. One step at a time; that was all he dared think about. For now— wait for the eggs. Then see.

WITHIN hours, Vetch found himself in an interesting position; no one envied him, but he was no longer the target of scorn either. In fact, some of the other dragon boys began to look at him as if they did not quite believe anyone was mad enough to do what he was doing. Curiously enough, it was the oldest boys who gave him the most respect. Maybe that was because they had the most experience with dragons; they knew what it was he had volunteered to do, and how much work it would be.

Others, however, if they did not scorn him, did not love him for what he had done either. Sobek might not have been universally beloved, and he certainly had brought his downfall upon himself, but those boys that had been his friends took it ill that Vetch should dare to take his place, dare to outdo him, even. A mere serf, lower even than a slave, had not only been accepted as a dragon boy, but had the audacity to claim that he could care for a difficult dragon better than a freeborn Tian? And to have the gall to say, in so many words, that the freeborn Tian had not been caring for the dragon properly in the first place? It was an insult that they took poorly, and never mind any doubts that might be creeping into their minds about Sobek's performance. Now they would never voice those doubts.

He consoled himself with the knowledge that at least none of them were looking at him as if he was some sort of insect anymore. Nor did they ignore him. And if he got black looks of resentment, he also got respect.

And it could have been worse, oh, very much worse than suspicious or worried looks and whispers. No one ventured to suggest that Vetch had somehow engineered all of this—which, had he been an adult instead of a child, could well have happened, and how would he defend himself against a charge that could neither be proved nor disproved?

That very thought was in his mind as he led a now-relaxed Coresan back to her pen, when he saw the odd pair of boys watching him and whispering to each other.

He'd seen just such a thing happen when the first new Tian overlord had taken the farm, back when he was still with his mother, grandmother, and sisters, slaving on what had been their own land. One of the village girls attracted the eye of a Tian officer and rebuffed him. She had taken care to avoid him when he showed that he was disinclined to take "no" as an answer. She was no landowner, and the idea that a young maiden could "attack" a Tian officer was absurd, so he had taken his revenge in some other way. Before long, there were accusations of spells and curses, and within weeks of the refusal, she was taken up as an "Altan witch."

The officer started it, with a lurid story of how he had rebuffed her—blatant lie that it was—and how after that, she had come to him every night, sitting on his chest, and sucking out his breath (and, it was hinted, other things). Oh, that certainly did happen, and it might even have happened to the officer—but it couldn't have been poor little Artena who'd been the sorceress! And it was certainly convenient that none of these attacks were of the sort that would leave any visible marks!

That opened the floodgates, though. Soldier after soldier claimed that she had come to him in the night and "stolen his vitality," or brought him nightmares, or led evil wandering spirits in to attack him while he slept. No matter what anyone said, it came down to the fact that it was the word of Altans against Tians, and there was an end to it, especially once it was strongly implied that anyone who spoke up for her was liable to be charged with witchcraft as well. She was finally brought up before a Tian magistrate and sentenced—then she vanished from the village altogether in the custody of her accusers, and nothing whatsoever was ever said of her again.

The adults all went quiet if he or any of the other children asked what had happened to Artena, and he never did find out. Now, well, he knew it couldn't have been good, and he hoped it had been quick and not too horrible. At that time, though, it had been driven forcefully home to him that such unprovable charges could be just as potent as any real crime.

So it would not have been out of the question—had he been a little older—for someone to claim Vetch had managed to make the disaster of Coresan and Seftu happen. Never mind that if such a thing could have been done, it would have to have been by means of powerful magic. And why would so powerful a magician be wasting his time to supplant a dragon boy? For that matter, why would he remain a serf, when he could use such magic to escape to Alta rather than working like a dog in the Jousters' Compound?

The adults at least, and the older boys, dismissed such a notion out-of-hand.

But there were other possibilities, of course, and even if no one considered it possible that he had caused the accident, there was still Coresan's behavior with Sobek to consider, for she had not had the reputation of being difficult before this. Within hours, there were dark looks from the younger ones, and suggestions of curses, though they swiftly learned not to say anything of the sort where Haraket could hear them. Only once that day, as he was bringing Coresan her evening meal, had someone come to Haraket with tales of magic, and the boy who had ventured such speculations had found himself sitting on the ground with one ear ringing from the impact of Haraket's fist. Haraket was decidedly unamused by such arrant nonsense, and said as much.

And fortunately, none of the boys knew about his father's shrine, or certainly there would have been dark rumors of magic.

By nightfall, after experiencing an entire day of this new change in attitude on the part of the other dragon boys, Vetch decided that he did not particularly care what they thought, so long as nothing bad came of it. He was, in fact, too busy to care—and the rumors and veiled accusations of curses had an effect that those who made them did not anticipate.

"That's ridiculous," said Haraket. And, "Too stupid to be funny, little brats, frightening themselves with bogeymen," said the older boys, contemptuously. But—

But.

Maybe Vetch hadn't done anything, but he was Altan, and the enemy, and the Altans had magic, too, just as the Tians did. A new set of stories and speculations began to drift among the boys. Maybe the magic that Altan sea witches were working against the enemies of their land had elected to operate on Vetch's behalf…

It was well known that magic did not always work as it was supposed to. Curses went awry, and so did blessings, sometimes alighting on targets that were related to the intended one, for the magic had to go somewhere. Perhaps Vetch was attracting Altan blessings, or providing a medium through which Altan curses could operate.

Maybe it wasn't Vetch who was creating the curses—or blessings. Maybe it was the sea witches, and Tian magic was so effective at deflecting curses, blessings, or both, that the best outlet the magic could find was to improve the life of a single serf turned dragon boy.

And then, by nightfall, yet another variant emerged. There was a more dangerous possibility than the magic of mere mortals as the cause of Sobek's downfall, the injury of one Tian Jouster and the disgrace of both. Maybe the Altan gods were striking back through him, or had taken an interest in his welfare. Sobek had been one of the boys who had been the most vocally contemptuous of Vetch, and his Jouster one of the Jousters most opposed to a serf as a dragon boy, and now—Sobek was dismissed in disgrace, Reaten lying in his bed with a cracked skull.

No one wanted to annoy a boy who might have attracted divine intervention. So even though the gossip was meant to hurt, in a way, it helped him.

As for Coresan, by nightfall, she was back to being a bit more even-tempered. She'd had two big meals, she'd been buffed, her chain lengthened, and when he was done with Kashet, Vetch perched cautiously nearby on the very edge of her wallow, and talked to her soothingly until dark. At first, she had been suspicious, but after a time, she accepted his presence, listening to him warily.

Given the rumors flying, he was pleased, rather than otherwise, that she didn't warm to him immediately. That she had lost that dangerous edge was enough, for now. He really did not want to add fuel to the rumors by taming Coresan down into a Kashet in the course of half a day.

She wouldn't settle down and go to sleep while he was there, however, so when his own stomach growled, he decided that he had given her enough attention for the first day, and he would leave her alone until morning.

When he arrived at the kitchen court, he paused for a moment in the entryway. And although conversation didn't stop, it paused for a moment, and everyone—literally, everyone—stopped to take a look at him.

Then they went back to their food. But in that brief moment, he had a sense of what had been going on while he had been shuttling between two dragons. The reaction his presence caused could not have been more remarkable. In those looks had been caution, respect, just a touch of fear, here and there. From the slaves and few fellow serfs, he saw pride, admiration. No contempt.

And when he sat down at his usual table, the two serfs and two slaves who shared it with him gave him quick, congratulatory smiles. No more than that, but those smiles, and the approving pat on his back from his favorite serving woman, created a surge of warmth inside him that took him by surprise. The serfs and slaves then turned the discussion—among themselves—to the rumors that they had been hearing. None of them mentioned Vetch, Sobek, or Coresan by name, nor did any of the conversationalists speak to Vetch directly, but it was clear that they were using this method to let him know just what was being said about him.

But best of all, truly the top to his day, was when a still-weary, but not-so-haggard-looking Ari arrived at Kashet's pen after sunset. And for once, Kashet could not be roused, not even by his beloved Jouster.

"We flew the equivalent of three combats today," Ari said, after calling the dragon's name and getting no response. "And to tell you the truth, he's not in fighting condition after the rains. So I'm not surprised he won't awaken." Ari stretched, and winced. "I'm not in fighting condition either, to be honest."

"You should get another massage," Vetch said severely, knowing by now that such boldness wouldn't even earn a rebuke from Ari. "It doesn't do me any good to take care of Kashet if my Jouster won't take care of himself."

Ari chuckled. "Truth to tell, I just wanted to come and tell you that you have done a very fine thing with Coresan today. It was brave of you to take her and stand firm and let her test you, and braver still to work with her afterward. You gave her nearly a full day of the best possible care, and I do think that she will respond to that."

Vetch felt himself flushing, with embarrassment, and pleasure. "Ah—" he stammered, " —I just didn't want to see her made into a mar dragon after you'd gone to all that difficulty in catching her.

And after all you've told me, I thought I could probably read her aright."

"If what I've told you is helping you to get her properly tamed, then I am well-rewarded," Ari said, with warmth. "You've done well, Vetch. It may be presumptuous of me to say this, but I'm quite proud of you."

"Oh…" Vetch was quite taken aback, both by the praise and by his own reaction to it. "Ah, thank you." He tried to think of something else to say, and couldn't.

Ari didn't seem to mind. "It's been a cursed long day for all three of us," he said, into the awkward silence. "And I'm going to follow Kashet's example and your advice. You should probably do the same. Good night, Vetch."

He limped off, but Vetch did get the last word after all, for he called after the Jouster, "Get another massage!"

Ari's chuckle floated back in the darkness, making him feel warm inside.

Everyone seemed to take it as a given that Coresan would lay eggs, even though she'd only mated the once. Vetch could only shrug his shoulders at that; the only things with wings that he had any experience with were geese, ducks, and chickens. He would have thought, if dragons were a species that required multiple matings, that she would be mad to get at a male as soon as she'd slept off her enormous meals—and he was perfectly prepared for that, when morning came. He'd even shorten her chains if he had to, though he hoped it wouldn't come to that.

The next day, though, when the dragons flew overhead on their way to morning practice and the first patrols of the season, she yearned after them a little, but that could have been the eagerness to fly rather than to mate again. The moment that her meat appeared, she was much more interested in it than in the dragon shadows passing over her head.

Haraket could not tell Vetch if—or how many—of her eggs were likely to be fertile after just one mating. Ari, who might have known if one mating was enough for the eggs to be good, was, well, not really available. Vetch found out that morning that Ari was now flying two patrols, his own and Reaten's, just as he had expected would happen. Vetch vowed to manage on his own, with the information he already had, and not trouble his Jouster further. He knew from experience that Ari might well start to continue to talk on his favorite subject, then stay awake far too late to do so, in the hope that what he told Vetch would help him with Coresan.

And he didn't want to ask Ari for another reason, besides sparing him; Ari was sharp-witted, and might very well guess just what Vetch was planning from the tenor of Vetch's questions.

He wanted no one, not even Ari, to guess what his real goal had been in taking on Coresan's care. But how could anyone, having been exposed to Kashet, not fall under the spell of dragons, and want one like him?

He did not know how Ari would feel about that; if he'd been freeborn, there was no doubt that the Jouster would have encouraged him, but a serf? And a serf born free, born Altan? However Ari felt about the war, personally, he still fought Altans; how could he countenance putting another dragon in the hands of someone who could only be described as an enemy?

Even if the enemy himself didn't yet know what he would make of such a situation…

But that was counting one's chickens—or in this case, dragons—long before they were laid, much less hatched. There were a great many obstacles to overcome before Vetch could find himself a-dragonback. And many more pitfalls, and a thousand ways in which the plan could go horribly wrong.

He also couldn't find anyone who could tell him how long after mating it would take a dragon to lay her eggs, which was a good thing, because it meant that no one would be expecting eggs on a given day. That was totally in his favor, for it meant that he had a measure of time in which he could act before he had to admit that there were eggs and allow the slaves to take them away to discard them.

The one thing that everyone agreed on was that Coresan would take her time about becoming a mother. Absolutely no one expected an egg the next day, or the one after that; eggs took time to form, after all, even in chickens. Especially something as big as a dragon egg.

Vetch had wondered, despite what Ari said, if he would have to compete with other Tians for the eggs, perhaps would-be Jousters who had not yet gotten a dragon, or even other boys who decided that they wanted to emulate Ari. It seemed logical, after all; maybe no one wanted to dare stealing eggs from wild clutches, but here was Coresan, about to go to nest, and the eggs were practically begging to be taken.

Surely there would be one boy (other than himself) here in the compound who would want to become a Jouster by getting himself a dragon.

But Ari had been right; no one rushed forward to claim an egg in order to repeat Ari's experiment.

Vetch couldn't understand it. Especially given what Kashet and Ari had done in saving Reaten. It should have been obvious to a blind man that Ari's way was the superior one. When you hatched and raised your own dragon, you got a beast that was so much easier to handle, and so much more cooperative! Why would anyone even think of taming a dragon any other way?

But no. And when he asked, cautiously, he got the same answer that Ari had given him. The Jousters much preferred the old ways—hunting the nests of dragonets about to fledge, trapping them, and confining them while they were tamed.

And it was clear, the more questions he asked, that they saw nothing obviously inferior in the way their dragons were trained, either. Dosing them with tola, training them until they were broken to the saddle and accepted a rider, and schooling them with increasingly heavy weights on their backs until they were grown enough to carry an adult Jouster, might be harder in the long run than Ari's way, but it meant that the Jousters themselves didn't have to do a thing until they were presented with a dragon already trained.

But this was hardly the way to tame a wild thing and turn its heart toward you. Even Vetch knew that.

What was more, besides knowing little or nothing about the taming, the Jousters weren't even involved in the primary training of their mounts. The poor things would pass through several hands before they came to a Jouster—one group of hunters to trap the fledglings, then a coterie of trainers to make them tractable, then a dragon boy to see to their needs. By the time they finished their training, it was yet another stranger who rode them and commanded them, Jousters who never saw them except when it was time to ride. Small wonder none of them loved their Jousters. Only Ari and Kashet had that bond of trust between them that made for more than a grudging service.

And not even a lowly dragon boy, much less a Jouster, seemed to understand how a bond like that enriched every moment of both of their lives.

But then again, Vetch had seen how the other Jousters lived, in quarters that were certainly better than Khefti-the-Fat's, with almost anything they could have wanted at their command. And in return for this, they rode patrols twice a day, fought Altan Jousters now and again, occasionally joined the Great King's armies in battle, and trained and drilled. Very light duty compared to, say, that of a spearman or a bowman. Extremely light work compared with almost any craftsman, or a laborer.

But to follow Ari's path, once the dragonet hatched, a Jouster would have to do the very considerable work of both a dragon boy and a trainer, work that would be demanding and might be considered beneath him.

Perhaps that was the real reason why none of them were interested.

But why wouldn't some other dragon boy seek to duplicate the feat?

Perhaps because, in the end, they were lazy. What had happened with Vetch and Coresan was very different in nature from taking on a dragonet. Coresan was a "productive" dragon, trained and ready for another Jouster once the eggs were laid. A dragonet would not be ready for patrol and combat for two to four years. Haraket would hardly allow any of the dragon boys to slack on their regular duties to take on the care and feeding of a second dragonet. At least, Vetch didn't think so. From Haraket's point of view, a dragon boy's duty came first, and a dragonet would be—a hobby. Something he could do if his duties permitted it, but not the sort of experiment that would permit him to shirk things like the leatherwork, the tala preservation, or the cleaning.

Even if, contrary to Vetch's expectations, Haraket did permit such a boy to devote himself only to his dragon and his dragonet, even with the other chores taken off his hands, that was still a lot of work. And as the dragonet grew, the burden would become greater, not smaller, for to those tasks would be added that of trainer. A dragon boy would have to be willing to do the work of three, which would leave him exactly no time for himself.

Yes, that might well be the answer; the others valued their own ease over the possibility of becoming another Ari, with another treasure such as Kashet.

Well, let them be shortsighted. That just made it easier to do what he wanted to do.

On that first day, as he had buffed and oiled his new charge, his mind had been entirely on what he might do and how to do it. Once it was obvious that the only thing he needed to guard against was discovery, not rivalry, nothing else particularly mattered.

The day after the rescue proved to be very interesting. With Ari off in the morning flying Reaten's patrol instead of training, Vetch devoted the time to Coresan, getting her used to being handled properly. That consisted of taking her around and around her pen on a lead, and teaching her that it was more pleasant to follow him than to fight him. He did not flinch when she snapped, he did not scream at her or prod her with an ox goad when she balked. He simply let her fight the collar, then learn that when she stopped fighting, all was well again. He took the lessons in short sessions, so as not to aggravate her, and he always ended them when she had done a complete circuit of the pen without misbehaving.

When Ari and Kashet returned, Vetch had already fed Coresan her midday meal. After Coresan had buried herself in her hot sand to drowse away her second meal of the day, Vetch fed and groomed Kashet to within an inch of his life. And before the grooming, Kashet got something he well deserved; Vetch had not forgotten his promise to Ari to reward Kashet with the treat of ox hearts. He'd gotten half a basket yesterday, and the butchers had promised Vetch more today.

With Coresan sleeping, Vetch and his empty barrow made the trek to the butchers, who practically fell all over themselves to cull out the delicacy for the dragon hero of the hour. By this time, everyone in the entire compound, from the old man who swept the corridors to the Commander of Dragons, had heard what Ari and Kashet had done; it made Vetch wonder just how much peace Ari was going to get, after all. Kashet got a full basket of his favorite treats, and he savored them; once fed, Vetch made sure that every inch of him gleamed with buffing and oil, telling him the whole time what a fine and brave, and above all, clever fellow he was.

If Kashet had been a cat, he would have purred, and not just because of Vetch's ministrations. People kept coming to the door of the grooming pens to admire him, and Vetch was sure that it wasn't his imagination that made him think there was a certain posing look about the great dragon whenever another admirer appeared. Nor did he think he was deluding himself that Kashet took care to display himself to best advantage on the side where people were.

And with every word of praise, he arched his neck a little more, and flashed his eyes at Vetch, and became even more relaxed and happy. There was no doubt that he enjoyed hearing the tone of Vetch's voice, but of late Vetch had to wonder just how much of the words he also understood. The more time he spent with Kashet, the more certain he became that the dragons were far more intelligent than any Jouster—except, perhaps, Ari—really guessed. In the happier days on the family farm, he'd seen their little donkey work the harder for praise, and admiration had doubled the number of mice laid out for inspection by the granary cat. Kashet was easily as intelligent as either beast.

Still, beast he was, for he showed no signs of the thinking ability of a man. Nor did any other dragon; well, if they had been that clever, they'd have all slipped their chains and flown far out of reach a long, long time ago.

But he could hardly begrudge Kashet his preening; he'd earned the right to preen. It had been an amazing thing that he and Ari had accomplished, and even the fact that it had been attempted at all was astonishing.

"I won't neglect you for Coresan, handsome one," he told the dragon, as they paced back to Kashet's pen, side by side. Kashet curved his sapphire neck, bringing his head down to Vetch's level as they walked. Vetch reached up and smoothed the skin of Kashet's golden nose and forehead, and the dragon breathed into his hair. "And I won't neglect you for—" He didn't say it—my egg, my dragonet—he didn't dare think that far. " —for anything else either," he promised. "As long as I'm here, I won't neglect you, I'll see you get the treatment you deserve."

As long as he was here. He could not promise more than that.

For though he tried not to think of it, because he did not want to give himself too much hope, too many dreams, to hatch and raise a dragon meant more than just echoing Ari's achievement. Ari was Tian; by raising Kashet, he had won an automatic place within the ranks of the Jousters. If you had a dragon, you were a Jouster, it was a simple equation. Tian custom, so resistant to change, had worked for Ari in that instance.

But Vetch was Altan, a serf, and not born into captivity; he had no loyalty to any Tian, and no reason to fight for the Tians. In fact, he had many, many compelling reasons to fight against them. So no matter what happened, if anyone discovered he had a dragonet, it would be taken from him; no sane Tian would leave such a dangerous weapon in the hands of an enemy.

That was the first, and most all-encompassing difficulty he would have to face, every moment of every day from the first instant of claiming an egg for his own. But if he could raise a dragonet to fledging—and teach it to carry him, so that, like Ari, his dragon's first flight was with him on its back—

—he could escape. And no one would be able to stop him. Not even another Jouster, if he could contrive for the flight to take place when they were all out on patrol.

He tried not to think of that. One step at a time, and be primed for disappointment. After all, if he failed, he would be no worse off than he was now. And there were so many ways in which the plan could fail, so few that would lead to success.

The first step: get an egg. And not just any egg; a fertile egg.

He went to sleep at night with his mind full of prayers for success.

For the next three days, he gave Coresan double rations, which (more than the tola, he suspected) greatly improved her temper. She swiftly put on weight until she was sleek again, and her scales shone with health and good care. On the second day, she stopped looking up when the other dragons flew overhead; she began to dig in her sand, as if she was looking for some perfect spot to nest. She had plenty of opportunity to do as she pleased, since she only left the pen with Vetch to be groomed. The rest of the time she was on a long leash and left to her own devices when he wasn't feeding her or trying to gentle her. He still had Kashet to tend, after all, and that left her plenty of time on her own.

She began taking him for granted, as a part of her landscape. It was tolerance rather than acceptance, but it was enough. She suffered him to clean her pen while she was in it, which was a mercy; the scheme would swiftly have fallen apart if he'd had to ask Haraket to get someone to clean the pen while he took her out of it. No matter what happened, he couldn't actually take an egg until after nightfall, which meant that it would have to stay in the pen from the time that she laid it until sundown. If someone else had been required to help him, then farewell secrecy!

After living the good life for several days, Coresan still snapped at strangers, and that agile tail of hers was guaranteed to deliver painful blows to the unwary. But she seemed to have decided that making life difficult for him was not going to change what she was being asked to do, and would only delay the rewards of food and grooming that she wanted. In fact, there were only two or three more attempts to intimidate Him rather than strangers, and even then, the attempts were halfhearted, as if she didn't care if he didn't react. He had to wonder, then, what that fool of a Sobek had done with her, that she had gotten so ill-tempered.

Perhaps all it had taken was simple neglect, after all. Though why Sobek had neglected his charge, when Coresan had not been known for being a particularly difficult dragon, baffled Vetch. Maybe it had been fear; maybe he'd been afraid of her all along, and as a consequence, kept chaining and tying her closer and closer, so that the only time she was truly free to move was when she was under saddle. Maybe that was why she'd learned the trick of snapping her tail at everyone. Sobek hadn't ever acted as if he feared her until the last, but then, he was a blustering sort of boy, and maybe he couldn't have admitted his fear even to himself.

Well, in her position, as he'd thought and said before, he'd have acted the same way Coresan had. If Sobek Had been chaining her short, she had certainly been partly cold all the time, since there was no way she could properly wallow on a short chain. He already knew that she'd been hungry, and that she hadn't been properly cleaned in an age. So, cold, hungry, and itchy—it was a wonder she hadn't tried to take off Sobek's head, fulfilling the fears that made him ill-treat her!

Or maybe it had just been laziness on Sobek's part, rather than fear. Certainly Haraket seemed to think so. It was a lot easier to bring a barrow full of whatever the butcher happened to put there and leaving it for the dragon to clean out, rather than carefully observing the dragon to see if it was still hungry after the first barrow. And it was easier to skimp on grooming if the dragon was fractious.

Or, just possibly, Sobek had stupidly thought that by keeping Coresan hungry, he would teach her not to fight him. Now, that was a technique that could work, but only if you made up for the short rations in reward morsels, tidbitting the dragon whenever she did something right, and making sure she got her full feed over the course of the day.

If the Overseer had thought that Sobek's fear of his dragon (rather than laziness) was the real reason for what had happened, he still wouldn't have hesitated to dismiss him, but it wouldn't have been in such complete disgrace.

Haraket, so Vetch had heard, had made it known that Sobek was a shirker, a slacker, totally incompetent and the kind of boy who would find any excuse to evade doing his duty. Now the officers of the army wouldn't have him, even in the lowliest of positions. That didn't leave much for him but manual labor, or perhaps the scribes or artists, and Sobek had not enough patience for the former, or talent for the latter.

Just deserts, in Vetch's mind. No dragon, no beast, could ever be successfully starved into submission.

Whether it was due to a full belly and a building layer of fat, due to the tola, due to kind treatment, or all three, Coresan confined her displays of temper to the most minor of outbursts with Vetch, snorts, hisses and head-tossing, spending most of her time lounging in the heat. Even those displays of pique were halfhearted, as if she was saying, Yes, you see, I am a princess, and you are beneath me, and will render me my due or feel my wrath. See? I can punish you with my display. Now, you will fetch me some of those lambs or I will make you rue it by hissing at you again. She was, in fact, turning into a creature that reminded him more of a spoiled, wealthy girl chit than a carnivorous monster.

Yes, tending her was a great deal of work, work he could not have done without a slave assigned to take over his other chores. Actually, his chores had been divided, with a slave cleaning Ari's quarters, and the chores in leather workshop and armory being taken up by the other dragon boys. It was more work than Kashet caused; Coresan was difficult to move about the compound, and required extra effort when he fed her and especially when he groomed her.

Nevertheless, she did not cause him as much work as Sobek had been put to, and Vetch was convinced it had all been because of how he had handled her. It was easier to pause at the doorway and throw the impatient dragon chunks of meat until the edge was off her hunger than try and fight past her to put the barrow next to her. It was easier to chain her in the grooming pen and wait out her head-tossing and fidgeting than to fight to chain her even shorter. It was easier in general to work around her than to fight her, and when she didn't get a fight, she lost interest in fighting. All perfectly logical, really.

Every morning Haraket asked if there were eggs yet. Every morning, Vetch answered in the negative, truthfully. Then, slightly more than a week after the mating, the first egg appeared; Coresan had laid it some time in the night.

He hadn't yet given up hope, but he'd begun to wonder if, perhaps, "everyone" was wrong, and a dragon wouldn't lay unless she'd mated more than once. But it had become habit to scan the sands of the wallow for any sign of an egg, paying close attention to parts of the pit that Coresan had been digging in the night before.

The egg, that precious egg, was indeed in a corner of the sand pit she had been paying special attention to last night, and if he had not been looking for it, he might not have seen it, for only the barest top curve showed above the sand. He didn't go near it, much as he wanted to; he fed her first, wanting to get some tala into her before he made any attempt to investigate it.

When she was sated, she returned to her wallow. He walked around the pit cautiously, and with one eye always on her, in case she decided to take exception to his interest. But Coresan didn't seem to notice him, or that he was interested in her egg; she was buried in sand, dozing, when he finally crouched down next to the object of his desire, and brushed the sand away from the top.

The egg was exactly the same color as the sand, and the shell even had a similar texture to sandstone; it was very hard, like an enormously thick bird's egg, rather than leathery like a snake egg. He could get his arms around it easily enough, he thought; the question was, how much did it weigh? He uncovered it further, and slid his hand underneath it. He hefted it experimentally, with one hand steadying it and one under the shell, though he didn't try to lift it completely out of the sand that cradled it. It was as warm as the sand, and weighed about the same as a five-year-old child. Coresan didn't seem to mind that he handled it, perhaps because she wasn't yet brooding.

Or perhaps it was only because this was her very first egg. With barnyard fowl, first-time mothers weren't always very motherly.

He covered it back up again, quickly; he didn't want to chance it getting cold. And now the reality of it came home to him in a rush.

An egg! Coresan had laid his egg! His hands shook, and his insides felt as if he'd eaten live fish. He could hardly contain his excitement. An egg! Here it was, what he'd been waiting for—

He forced himself to calm down; he tried to look normal, although he felt anything but normal. The first person he had to get past was Haraket, when he arrived to get Coresan's morning feed. Sure enough, the Overseer was there, making sure the tala got properly measured out, that boys were getting enough meat for their charges. Haraket asked him about eggs when he dipped the scoop into the powdered tala to shake it over Coresan's rations, and he just shook his head, trying to keep from looking the Overseer in the eye. Haraket took that as "there is no egg yet" and didn't ask anything further, much to his relief. He didn't want to lie to Haraket, not if he could help it. The gods didn't like false-hood, and he needed the gods on his side in this. He also wasn't entirely sure that he could lie to Haraket. He wasn't good at lying, and the Overseer was uncannily good at knowing when someone was lying to him.

But the egg was on his mind all day as he divided his time between his two charges. He had a choice of several courses of action now, but he would have to decide what he was going to do soon. He had to get his egg before someone else decided to check Coresan's pen on the theory that Vetch wouldn't necessarily know what he was looking for, or that Coresan would have buried the eggs and not allowed Vetch to see them.

When it all came down to it, he was just a dragon boy and not even Haraket knew how much Ari had taught him about the great beasts. It was a logical supposition to presume that he wouldn't know what to look for; until last dry season, he'd never even seen a dragon that wasn't high in the sky. It wasn't likely that Ari would have told anyone how much the Jouster had been teaching Vetch about dragons. Why should he? It would make no difference to anyone, and was no one else's business.

They probably figured that the reason that he'd gotten Coresan to behave had more to do with being a farmer's son and knowing in general how to handle beasts than it had to do with his newly-won knowledge of the great creatures.

He knew from his experience with geese and Ari's stories about wild dragons that they didn't dare let Coresan go broody over her clutch.

So the very moment that eggs appeared, Haraket would, understandably, feel they had to take them as they appeared. For if she did go broody, they'd be in for nothing but trouble from her.

She might not even let them get near the eggs once she went broody. Someone might get hurt or even die trying to take the eggs, if her motherly instincts finally awoke. Hens were bad enough; all hens did was to peck the hand that tried to take their eggs from underneath them, and they frequently bruised or even drew blood. He did not even want to think about taking eggs from a broody dragon if their behavior was at all similar. Maybe you could do it at night, but given that he'd already seen Kashet awaken to accept attention from Ari long after he thought that the great beast was torpid, he wouldn't bet on a female dragon being unaware of what went on at night when she had eggs that she needed to tend.

Even if she didn't become protective of her clutch, if they waited to get her eggs away until after she went broody, they would probably have to give her infertile eggs, or dummy eggs to brood, or she would start looking for another mate with twice the energy she had used before. That was what happened in many birds, and if Coresan had been difficult before this—well, with the drive to mate in her at double strength, Vetch didn't think even he would be able to handle her.

So he could understand why Haraket would want to get each egg from her as she laid it, or shortly thereafter. He understood it, but that meant he would have to decide within a day or two what he was going to do.

Should he take this egg, for instance?

He could take the chance that the first egg would be fertile, and carry it off. He already knew when he could make his theft—at night, when the Jousters were in their quarters, the dragonboys at their recreations, and darkness would cover his actions. Coresan would be torpid, and would not notice him. More importantly, if she missed the egg in the morning, she would not know who had taken it.

And he knew where he would take it when he had it—one of the empty pens on either side of Kashet's. There were three times the number of pens than there were dragons, plenty of empty pens where an egg could incubate in the hot sands undisturbed. No one ever went into the empty pens, unless they happened to be storing something there. No one put two adult dragons next to one another, even if they appeared to get along, because of the chance that they would decide one day to fight one another. Or worse, chose one another as mates. Dragons were creatures that flocked together—sort of. They did spend a lot of time in a juvenile flock when they were young and not ready to mate, because clumsy juveniles working together were able to bring down prey that one alone couldn't manage. And when they weren't raising young, they also kept to a flock, but that could have been because natural hot places—natural sand wallows, sheltered places where the sun heated the sand, hot springs, and the like—were relatively few compared to the number of dragons. It could have been necessity that had them roosting together at night. But when they were fertile, they were like spotted hunting cats—sharing a territory just long enough to raise the dragonets to fledging, then parting again, and they would fight the dragon that had been a mate if there was a conflict over food, flock rank, or perches. So while there were plenty of extra pens, there was no need to take the risk of conflict by housing the beasts too closely together.

He would put the egg where it was easy to get to, and when it hatched (if it hatched), Kashet would probably ignore the dragonet as completely as he ignored other adult dragons. Just as he was alone among the other dragons in his affection for humans, he was alone in his indifference to his fellow dragons.

Now, instead of taking the first egg, he could wait, hope that no one noticed the growing clutch in the corner, and have his choice of eggs. Coresan could lay as many as four; he was giving her plenty of extra bone for the shells, which she would sorely need, to keep her hale and healthy. But the more eggs that appeared, the more likely it was that someone would get impatient and take a look for himself to see what Coresan was up to, and the more likely that she would go broody.

Take the first, or wait? He wavered between the two actions all day, the egg looming large in his mind the entire time. When Kashet and Ari came in, clearly tired from taking double patrols, he still had not decided. While the rest of the Jousters were still on the lighter duty of practice and patrol, they were on a full schedule; it was a good thing that Kashet was so strong and so willing.

"If I didn't know he was flying twice as far as the others every day, 1 wouldn't guess it," Vetch said, as Ari handed him a lance and dismounted, as usual, with a pat on the shoulder for Kashet. "He's tired, but not as exhausted as he could be. I think you're more tired than he is."

"Well, perhaps it's because he was first-laid," Ari said with a proud, if tired, smile. "They hatch in order of being laid, about two days apart. First-born is supposed to be strongest and the smartest, but when the young ones are taken by dragonet hunters out in the wild, firstborn has usually fledged and gone, so they get whatever is left."

Then Ari strode off without looking back, which was just as well, for Vetch was still standing there with his mouth open for a long moment after he was gone.

There it was, the deciding factor. Firstborn is the strongest. If Vetch was going to succeed, his dragon would have to be very big, very strong, and mature very quickly.

If that had not been enough, all of the conditions that night were perfect for him to move his egg. Most of the other dragon boys all went out that night, for it was a full moon, and the father of one of them, a fisherman, had promised to take them out for night fishing in the moonlight. The Jousters' quarters were full of music and voices; one of the others was holding festival with many of the Great King's nobles in attendance, and even Ari, as weary as he was, had consented to attend; the boys who were not out fishing had been pressed into service for the feast. The corridors outside the pens were flooded with light from the moon, and utterly deserted—and Coresan slept like a stone, probably exhausted from laying this, the first of her eggs.

Vetch dug the egg out of the hot sand with his bare hands. It was very warm, the texture very like that of a common pot, and unwieldy. He lifted it very carefully, transferred it to a sand-lined barrow, and trundled it to its new home without sight or sound of anyone or anything except a few bats flitting about the corridors in search of insects attracted by the torches. The spirits of the dead were supposed to take the form of bats. Was one of them his father, flitting like a silent guardian over his son? For a moment he paused, looking for a sign—

He sighed, as the bats went on with their hunting, paying no attention at all to him. They were probably just bats. If his father returned from the Summer Country, how could he possibly know that his Altan son was here, in the compound of the Tian Jousters? No, he would surely be flitting about the farm that had been stolen from him. Hopefully, if he had chosen to return, he was sending the worst possible dreams into the heads of those who had taken it.

Vetch reburied the egg in the corner of the empty pen least visible from the entrance. The sands were bake-oven hot, but he had gotten used to them by now. He knew, from Ari's stories of how he had raised Kashet, what he would have to do from this point. He would have to turn the egg at least twice a day to keep the growing dragonet from sticking to the inside of the shell. He would have to make certain that no one spotted him going into the pen. But that was the easy part.

For if the egg was fertile, if it hatched, he would have to get food to it several times a day, also without being seen—and keep the dragonet amused once it got old enough that it didn't sleep all the time when it wasn't eating. Then he would have to somehow train it as Ari had trained Kashet, to carry a burden of a saddle and a rider. He would have to keep anyone from seeing the dragonet—or at least, arrange things such that no one guessed that it wasn't one newly brought in from the wilds. If he could manage all of that—

If, if, if. There were a lot of "ifs" standing between him and a fragile hope of success…

One thing at a time. One day at a time. There was no point in thinking past the next obstacle, which was how to slip away to turn the egg in the morning…

One small step at a time, on the path to what was nothing more than a hope at this point. That was all he dared to do for now.

There were sixty mornings, sixty evenings, one hundred and twenty egg turnings to get through before he had to worry about a nestling. If there was a nestling. If the egg was fertile, if the sand was hot enough but not too hot, if no one discovered it…

There were a very great many "ifs" between him and a dragonet, and most of them he had no control over.

But he had the will. And as Ari said, "Enough will, is will enough." He had to hope that in this, as in so many other things, Ari was right.

WITH his precious egg tucked cozily in the hot sand in the empty pen, Vetch went back to his pallet in Kashet's pen. There was nothing more he could do for the egg at this point. It was hidden, it was warm, and if Ari was right, dragons themselves didn't take too much care about keeping their eggs perfectly warm until they actually started brooding them. Still, after he curled up on his pallet, listening to Kashet breathe, the egg lay heavily in his thoughts. He had to keep reminding himself that there really was not anything he could do right now. Nevertheless, he kept trying to think of some way he could hide the egg better, how he could manage to get extra meat to feed the dragonet, how he could keep the youngster quiet—

And training. I need to know how to train it. I need to get a saddle, guiding straps, harness—

Perhaps it was just as well that Kashet and Coresan together kept him running, because eventually the need to sleep caught up with him, and he dozed off in mid-thought.

Vetch woke just as dawn was coloring the sky to the east. A desert thrush was singing somewhere overhead, and the breeze from the direction of the Great Mother River smelled of wet mud and algae, with a hint offish. The Flood was definitely over now, and the river was pulling in the hem of her robe. And he was just in time to slip over to the next pen and turn the egg before anyone else was awake.

He flung off his blanket and sprang up out of his pallet, not bothering to twist on a kilt. In the dim light, everything seemed painted in shades of blue, and the damp air was clammy and cool on his skin. He scuttled over to the next pen, feeling fairly secure that no one else would be awake at this hour.

He waded out into the hot sand, which felt exceptionally good on his chilled skin, and carefully dug around one side of the egg until he had uncovered enough to enable him to give it a half turn. Then he covered it back up again, except for a very small area at the very top, the merest curve of shell.

Then he sprinted back to Kashet's pen, and his pallet. Kashet had not moved a muscle, and until Kashet woke, there was no reason for him to get up either.

In fact, he managed to doze a little, before the rustling sound of sand moving against dragon scales warned him that he had better start his working day.

He was actually feeding Coresan four times daily now, giving her a final meal just before she went to sleep for the night. This meant that she would sleep longer in the morning than Kashet, and he could feed his primary charge first, get him saddled and ready for Ari by the time most of the other dragon boys were still queuing up for meat. This meant that when he came around with a barrow for Coresan, most of them were gone already.

When he reached her pen, she was scratching in an absent-minded way at the sand in the corner where her egg had been, but the moment that he appeared with her breakfast, she lost interest in that corner in favor of food. He went about the usual routine as though she had never laid an egg, and after another cursory search for it when she'd eaten, Coresan soon settled. She didn't so much give up, as lose interest in looking for it. A good sign, Vetch thought.

In fact, at noon she wolfed down meat until Vetch thought she was going to pop, then stretched herself out in the sun for a long doze, quite as if the egg had never existed.

Kashet came in that afternoon looking marginally better, and so did Ari, who took a look around the pen as Vetch divested the dragon of his saddle and harness. "I was afraid, doing double duty as you are, that all the work was going to be too much for you, Vetch," the Jouster said, with just the faintest overtones of surprise. "But I swear, if anything Kashet's pen is cleaner and neater than it was before. Are there two of you? Have you spawned a twin brother you haven't told me about?"

Vetch smiled to himself. "I'm used to doing more than my share," he said boldly. "It gets put on me, often as not. And don't think it's your fault, because it isn't! But so are you and Kashet, used to doing more than your share. And you don't have anyone to take the boring part of your work off your hands; at least I got that much advantage."

"Huh. You've certainly hit that target in the heart ring," Ari replied, with a raised eyebrow. "I suppose, though, it's always been true that those of us who are outsiders have to work twice as hard just to prove ourselves the equals of those on the inside. How's Coresan?"

"Fat and lazy, and getting fatter," he replied truthfully. "I figure, the fatter I get her, the less trouble she'll be, because she'll be too lazy to make trouble."

"The fat part is probably the eggs she's about to lay," Ari corrected. "And the lazy part because she's preoccupied with nesting and saving her energy for the eggs she'll lay. Has she been digging in her wallow?"

"All the time," Vetch said instantly, glad that now he needn't conceal anything in Coresan's pen. "One corner in particular, the one that gets sun all day."

Ari nodded. "Then she's about to lay. Good! Otherwise, is she behaving for you?"

"Better every day, by a little," Vetch said, feeling very proud of himself. "And I've been saving back the best meat from her meals to tidbit her with when she behaves herself."

"Then, once she's finished laying, I don't think it would be out of the question to reinforce that by making her meals of the shanks and inferior meat, and save the things she likes for tidbits only," Ari replied, squinting thoughtfully. "You don't want to starve her, but if you make it clear that she gets the finer things only when she's on good behavior, she'll come completely around. She was trained properly originally—well, as 'properly' as you can, when you're starting out to break a dragon, rather than really tame it."

"She'll never be a Kashet," Vetch stated, as he removed the last of the dragon's harness, and the great beast gave himself a shake and stepped down into his wallow.

Ari laughed. "No. You're right there. I'm afraid there will never be another Kashet."

And with that, the Jouster gave Vetch a wink, and left.

Vetch hid his smile. There would never be another Kashet? Well, that remained to be seen.

Perhaps for once Ari will be wrong, so long as the gods are with me.

And two days later, Coresan's second egg appeared in the same corner as the first, though this time Vetch found it in the afternoon rather than the morning. Actually, the appearance of the egg surprised him; he would have thought that it would be more of an effort for her to lay such enormous objects.

With great relief, Vetch went straight to Haraket and reported it. Finally he was not going to have to worry about evading Haraket's questions. Nor would he have to worry that the Overseer might begin to wonder why there weren't any eggs. Mind, Haraket hadn't shown any evidence of suspicion, but—well, Haraket wouldn't necessarily show anything. The Overseer was very good at keeping his ideas to himself when he chose. Vetch would never want to play the stone game against him, for there would be no reading anything in Haraket's face.

It took Vetch some time to actually track Haraket down; he wasn't with the butchers, inspecting occupied pens, discussing the work of the boys with the harness maker, or any other place where Vetch expected to find him. Finally, after asking everyone he met, Vetch discovered the Overseer in a little room just off the kitchen. He was sequestered with the Steward of the Household, who was in charge of supplying all of the food and clothing needs for the Jousters and the considerable staff it took to support them. Te-Velethat, apparently, was not in charge of this most vital of duties. Te-Velethat, from a remark that Vetch overheard before he made his presence known, considered the procurement of supplies to be entirely beneath him as an Overseer, and left it all up to Haraket. Haraket, who was already handling the procurement of everything associated with the dragons, got saddled with this job as well.

And as a consequence, it seemed, Te-Velethat had a great deal less power and influence within the compound than he thought he had… which was a bit of information that Vetch filed away, just in case he needed it at some time in the future.

"An egg! Finally!" the Overseer grunted, once Vetch had apprised him of the situation. "I was beginning to worry that she might be egg-bound."

"What would you like me to do, sir?" Vetch asked diffidently.

"Don't do anything; I'll handle this," Haraket said firmly. "Now, go back to her, and don't act any differently. Don't pay any attention to that egg, because we don't want her to have a go at you. She might, she might not, there's no telling at the moment. You'll have to leave her be, and if she acts possessive, leave her alone with it, just lengthen her chain and take a barrow of meat in to her and don't bother any further with her. As a first-time breeder, chances are she won't know what to do with it, but don't take any chances if she shows the least little sign of getting protective."

Vetch ducked his head. "Yes, sir," he said obediently. "I'll do that, but she didn't even act as if she cared about it at all. The way she acted, it could just as well have been one of her droppings."

"That could be a ruse, the way a plover plays broken-wing to lure you away," Haraket warned, "But as long as she doesn't think you know about it, she won't do anything to draw attention to it. You're too valuable for us to risk you getting injured by a broody she-dragon. I don't want you hurt."

"Yes, sir," Vetch repeated, knowing already that Coresan wasn't going to do anything about the second egg, since she hadn't been at all possessive about the first. He was safe enough with her, and given her indifference, perhaps it was just as well that they weren't going to give her the chance to be a mother.

Perhaps, though, he was doing her a disservice. Chickens didn't pay any attention to their eggs until after the full clutch had been laid. There was no telling but what, once her instincts awoke, she wouldn't have been a good mother after all.

And for a moment, he felt horribly guilty; here they were, taking her eggs from her, never giving her a chance to raise them. It didn't seem at all fair.

If the gods had meant her to breed, he told himself, she'd have gotten away from Ari and Kashet and gone off into the hills. And she'd have found herself a handsome male and set herself right up, no doubt. What healthy dragon could have resisted such a scarlet beauty? And he went back to his split duties, leaving Haraket and the Steward poring over tallies of wheat and barley.

He fed Coresan, then made sure that Coresan's pen was as spotless and tidy as Kashet's. If Haraket was going to arrive with a picked crew to purloin the egg, he wanted the pen to show just how diligent a worker he was. By the time he finished Coresan's pen, it was time for Kashet and Ari to come back from their second patrol, so it was on to the next round, feeding Kashet, buffing and oiling him, then giving Coresan the same treatment, and that fourth little meal that would hold her overnight until late morning. In all that time, there was no sign of Haraket, and the egg was still in the corner of Coresan's pen.

Then, just before going to bed himself, he slipped into the empty pen to turn his egg, as he had been doing for the past two mornings and nights.

When he went to feed Coresan the next morning, the egg was gone, so he guessed that Haraket had duplicated what he himself had done—taken the egg in the night, when Coresan was least likely to see and react to the theft of her potential progeny.

Ari lingered while Vetch unharnessed Kashet after the morning patrol, as if he was uncertain about something. Finally, though he made up his mind. "I thought you might like to know, Seftu's rider, Horeb, is back on his patrols."

"Ah?" Vetch said noncommittally. "So what came of his side of the mess, then?"

"First, a good long dressing-down from Haraket that practically pinned his ears back," Ari said, with a grim little smile. "I suspect that didn't impress him too much past the moment, but then he had an intense session with the Captain of Jousters, which of a certainty did. The Captain ordered an official inquiry and when that was over, he had an interview—" (Ari's tone and expression put a certain decided emphasis on the word) "—with the Commander of Dragons. I saw him leave, actually; he looked like a whipped cur."

"Is the Commander so fearsome?" Vetch asked wonderingly. This was the first time that he had heard of the Commander actually doing anything with the Jousters other than issuing orders.

"Oh, he's worse, I do pledge you," Ari said, "He does not hear excuses; we are weapons in his hand, and woe betide the weapon that fails. As a Commander of Hundreds expects each man to tend to his equipment and see that it is in top condition, the Commander of Dragons expects that we are to do the same with our beasts. It's bad enough to face him when he's giving you a commendation; it's got to be a thousand times worse when he's about to take you apart. But the inquiry proved that Horeb was not as much to blame for the incident as Reaten was. Apparently Coresan had been proddy for the last week; Seftu only got interested when she went up in the air and he saw her start to display instead of obeying her rider."

"Huh." Sobek, of course, was just as guilty, but he'd already been punished to the extent that the arm of the Jousters reached, Vetch had to suppose. "So what's to do with Reaten, then?"

Ari cleared his throat, and it sounded embarrassed. "Well, here, you see, I have a dilemma. What happened to Horeb is very much public knowledge. Plenty of underlings knew about the interviews, and plenty more saw him going into and out of all three of them. The result of the inquiry is also public knowledge. However, the same cannot be said of what's to happen with Reaten. If I tell you, it's gossip that the—ah—

"Serfs, slaves, and servants aren't supposed to know," Vetch supplied, the words leaving a bitter taste behind as he spoke them.

But this was Ari—and Ari was not like anyone else. "True. This is not the sort of thing that should be gossiped about—

He winked. It was a very sly wink. "Well, as you know, I could just be talking to myself, or to my dragon. In fact, I believe I will talk to my dragon," was Ari's response, and he looked up at Kashet, who craned his neck around to stare into his Jouster's eyes, looking for all the world as if he wanted to hear this gossip himself. "Now, as for Reaten, when he recovers, it's rumored—just rumored, mind—that his interview will be at the hands of the Royal Commander himself. Isn't that fascinating, Kashet?"

The dragon snorted, as if he was skeptical of how much good a mere dressing-down would change Reaten's ways.

"Really? On the whole, I would tend to agree with you, Kashet, given what 1 know about Reaten." Oh, now Ari did look sly. "You see, Kashet, Reaten is noble, himself, and he seems to be under the impression that anyone of noble blood need not concern himself with orders and instructions. Fortunately I have it on more substantial authority that Reaten is going to be demoted back down to merest apprentice, no longer permitted to fly or fight until the end of the Floods. And that if the Great King didn't need Jousters so badly, he'd be sent packing after his dragon boy. And furthermore, since the Royal Commander is of sufficient rank to cow anyone other than the Great King, he has decided that Reaten's father is going to sit in on the dressing-down, just to give a bit of familial emphasis to it all."

While Ari didn't sound gleeful, there was no mistaking the satisfaction in his voice. "If you were to ask me, Kashet, I would say that the punishment is certainly fitting."

And serve him right, too, was Vetch's conclusion. Anyone who hadn't noticed that his dragon was looking to mate didn't deserve to be a Jouster, and if he'd been depending on his dragon boy to tell him what Coresan's condition was, he'd been completely a fool. He should have seen she was too thin, he should have immediately seen how restless she was and checked her over himself. Noble or not, when he undertook to become a Jouster, he took the same oaths to obey his superiors as any warrior or officer, and that meant every order, every rule, not just the ones that suited him. If he felt taking proper care of his dragon was beneath him, well, he should have just resigned and gone off to serve as an officer or something in the regular army.

And through his foolishness and Horeb's—the latter not having the good sense to notice when his he-dragon had begun a courtship flight!—Tia had nearly lost two Jousters and two dragons. That they hadn't, had been a miracle, due in no small part to Ari—who had been "rewarded" for his wisdom and skill by taking on the duties of Reaten and himself combined.

Well, that wasn't entirely true, as he learned that very afternoon.

"Well," Haraket said very quietly as Vetch obtained Coresan's dinner, "Your Jouster's done it again."

"Done what again?" Vetch asked, his eyebrows puckering in confusion. Surely Haraket didn't know how much about Horeb and Reaten that Ari had told him…

"He didn't tell you? Huh. Well, I'm not surprised." Haraket sighed. "He's been given quite a bit of recognition, in a ceremony last night. He's attracted the attention and the notice of the greatest and most powerful in the land, Vetch, and not for the first time. Ari was awarded the Gold of Honor at the hands of the Great King himself, two armlets and a full broad collar."

Vetch blinked. "He got a ceremony? By himself?" was all he could think of to say. If the Great King had held the Gold of Honor ceremony just for Ari—well, it was certain that Ari wouldn't be a mere Jouster much longer.

And then what would happen to Vetch and his plans?

"Well, no," Haraket admitted. "There were something like forty others. But still! Two armlets and a collar! Everyone else, or nearly, got just bees or armlets, and only one other person got more than Ari did, and he was a Commander of Hundreds. And do you know what he did with them?"

Vetch shook his head, but he already knew he was going to find out. He could tell from the vehemence that Haraket was showing that the Overseer was only using Vetch's presence as an excuse to vent his own exasperation. Though why he should be exasperated about Ari getting a great honor, Vetch could not imagine.

"I'll tell you what he did! He dropped all three of them in his clothes' chest, like—like an old kilt! The slave that cleans his rooms found them there, and I had to come and take them away to lock up for him! And what's more," Haraket continued in disbelief, "He did the same with the other awards he's won. They were all in there, packed up as if they were unsuitable presents from an inconvenient relative! Anybody would think he didn't care!"

It was perfectly clear to Vetch at this point that Haraket was both partly pleased because Ari was not puffed up by the awards, and exasperated that he seemed to count them of so little worth.

Vetch made sympathetic noises, but he didn't understand Ari's attitude either—

Yet somehow, it felt right. If Ari had been the type to search after the attention of the mighty, well—

—he wouldn't have been Ari.

The next day, Vetch thought he heard music at sunrise—the distant blare of trumpets and the pounding of drums, the shaking of sistrums. And for a moment, he couldn't imagine why…

Then he closed his eyes and tried to reckon up days, and realized what it must be.

It was the beginning of the Planting Ceremony. The flood was officially over, and the Great King was standing in the stead of the god Siris, with the Chief Lady in the place of Iris, blessing the fields nearest the Palace to prepare them for sowing. All over Tia the priests of Siris and Iris were doing the same, and in Khefti's village, there would be a great festival with bread and beer distributed at the Temple to all comers. He had lost count of the days, working as hard as he was—

But then, Planting had never been more to him than the faint hope that he might be able to slip away from Khefti long enough to collect some of that bread and beer for himself. Altans celebrated four seasons, not the five of the Tians. By the time the Great Mother River got to Altan lands, she had spread out so wide in the swamps and delta that Flood was little more than a rise in the waters of an inch or two, and there was no real dry season, just one without rain. But now he remembered how quiet the compound had been last night—and it would be just as quiet tonight, for the Court of the Great King would be holding festival, and all of the Jousters would be invited.

Haraket appeared as Vetch tended to Kashet shortly after sunrise. He, at least, did not look the worse for wear, so either he had not attended last night's feast, or else he had been moderate in his appetites.

"How was Coresan before we took the egg from her?" he asked Vetch, without preamble.

"Fine, sir," Vetch said honestly. "No different than usual. If I hadn't known the egg was there, I wouldn't have guessed; she even went out for her buffing without any more trouble than usual. And I looked in on her this morning, and she's still fine. I don't think she's missing it, to tell the truth."

"Ah, good—" Haraket began, but looked up at a footstep just outside in the corridor.

Ari appeared in the doorway, also looking no worse for wear than Haraket. But Haraket soon proved who had been attending what last night with his next comment.

"You were missed at the feast last night," he said. "I was asked about you."

Ari shrugged. "And did you explain that double patrols do not leave a man with much desire to drink date wine, eat until he's sluggish, pursue pretty little dancers, and stay up far too late?" he replied.

"It is generally considered an honor to be asked to banquet with the Great King—" Haraket began.

—along with a few hundred of his closest friends, indeed." Ari snorted. "If I was missed, it was only by the Vizier of the feast, who found himself with an empty place to conceal."

"I don't understand you at all," Haraket growled, as Ari checked Kashet's harness. "Last night you were invited to the Great King's own feast, three times you've been awarded the Gold of Honor, and no one would even guess it."

Ari shrugged. "I'm a practical man. All very well to be heaped with tokens of the Great King's esteem, but you can't sell Honor Gold, nor trade it; you can only wear it to show your valor and rank."

"And the fact that the Great King favors you, fool!" Haraket retorted with exasperation.

"And the Great King's favor gains me—what, precisely?" Ari replied mildly, with no more than a raised eyebrow. "I don't care to mingle with the nobles of the court, I'm not looking for a promotion, and I value nothing that is as ephemeral as fame."

Vetch kept his head down, hoping neither of them noticed him. This was a very interesting conversation, and he didn't want to be sent away in the middle of it.

"The Great King's favor can make you," Haraket said flatly.

"And break me." Now Ari's voice went as stone-hard as Haraket's. "Suppose I were to put myself forward. Then I must guard my tongue waking and sleeping, lest someone who wishes to be more favored takes some word of mine and twists it, and whispers it in the Great King's ear! I could not choose my own friends, my own pastimes, nothing, for fear that someone who does not love to see me raised on high may find a weapon to bring me down! I would be more of a prisoner than a serf, who at least may command his own thoughts. I think not; that sort of life is not for me. Now, if such honors would grant me the freedom to study dragons, rather than use them as weapons, then, they would be of value to me. As it is, they are worth less than sand in the dry season."

And with that, he nudged Kashet, who was already impatient to be gone, and they thundered into the sky. Haraket sheltered his eyes with his hand, and peered after him, shaking his head. Vetch didn't know what to think, but he stowed the words away in his memory to ponder later.

Coresan laid a total of three more eggs, one every three days, which were duly taken away from her before she had a chance to go broody. She didn't seem to miss them at all, any more than she'd missed the one that Vetch had taken. Vetch didn't know what had been done with those eggs, and tried not to think about them. After all, he had more than enough on his hands at the moment, tending to her, Kashet, and his own precious egg which—if he wasn't mistaken—was showing every sign of being fertile. When all the eggs had been laid, Coresan began to show signs of restlessness.

Dutifully, Vetch reported that to Haraket as well. The Overseer pulled on his lower lip and thought for a moment. "Reaten is going to be sent down, back to the ranks of the unflighted, until he learns better dragon husbandry," he said, in an absentminded tone that made Vetch assume he was thinking out loud. "But there's a likely lad coming up who might do well with Coresan, if she'll take him…"

Haraket's voice trailed away, and Vetch wondered what he meant. Could a Jouster be taken from his dragon?

Maybe not Ari, for Vetch was certain Kashet would never, ever fly for anyone else… but would it make any difference to Coresan who flew her?

Probably not. And that was confirmed a moment later, when Haraket nodded briskly. "I'll do it," he said aloud, with satisfaction in his voice. "I'll switch their dragons. Hah! If he can get into trouble with that beast, I'll eat his saddle raw, without salt!"

That very evening, as Vetch was about to take away a half-barrowload of meat that Coresan suddenly didn't want—for all on her own, now that she had delivered herself of her clutch, she was cutting back on her food—Haraket appeared at the door to Coresan's pen with a strange young man in tow. This one could not have been out of his teens, but there was a no-nonsense look about him that made him seem very confident. And when he looked Coresan up and down, he was not at all afraid of her.

"And this is Coresan. Stand your ground with her," Haraket was saying. "Remember what I told you."

The young man nodded, and approached the dragon, who was peering down at him with great interest. But she didn't snap; her snappishness all seemed to have been due to her wanting to mate, and being about to go to nest. Now she was back to her old self, agreeable, but with mischief and rebellion in her. Her tail twitched, Vetch noticed, as if she was contemplating a sly and seemingly absentminded thwack across the newcomer's shins with it.

"Coresan!" the man shouted, before she had made up her mind about it. "Down!"

Vetch gritted his teeth on his own resentment as the young man reaped the benefits of Vetch's work with Coresan; perhaps she hadn't been flying, but he was the one who calculated that her bad humor was due in part to hunger, he was the one who'd been working with her basic commands, if only to make his own job easier, and he had been teaching her that both obedience and disobedience had consequences. She had been obeying only when she felt like it; now, after all his drilling, she did so automatically.

She knelt, and the newcomer gestured imperiously at Vetch. He wanted her saddle, of course; Vetch throttled his impulse to follow Coresan's unruly example before all that drilling and become selectively deaf and blind. Instead, he brought up the saddle and harness.

At least this fellow was competent enough to do his own saddling. Feeling very much as if he was the expert here, and the Jouster the interloper, Vetch watched the harnessing with a critical eye, and could find nothing to complain about.

But he felt better when, as the young man finished, he gave Coresan a rewarding slap on the shoulder. At least he didn't look on the dragon as a sort of flying chariot, insensate and insensible.

"Up, Coresan," the Jouster ordered, and then looked back over his shoulder at Haraket as she obeyed without complaint.

The Overseer nodded, and the new Jouster put one foot on Coresan's foreleg, and vaulted lightly into her saddle. He signaled to Vetch, who released the chain from around her neck, the chain that had kept her earthbound until this moment.

Coresan's training held, though she had not been ridden in nearly a moon; she stayed on the ground rather than going for the sky, although a few weeks ago, she'd have been up like a shot arrow once the chain was off. Instead, she was rock-steady until the new man gave her the nudge to send her up. She responded to his signal eagerly, throwing herself into the air, as Vetch and Haraket shielded their eyes from the storm of sand and wind driven up by the fierce beats of her wings.

When the buffeting had ceased, Vetch looked up; Coresan was a tiny figure against the hot blue sky, still climbing, and still under control, back to her old self, but with a superior level of obedience as far as Vetch could tell. He glanced over at Haraket, who smiled with satisfaction.

"I think he'll do," the Overseer said aloud, and there was no mistaking the pleasure in it. "We'll see how Reaten does with Beskela."

Vetch's mouth dropped open at that. Beskela! The male was the oldest dragon in the compound, so old that the blue of his main color had deepened to near-black! If there was a lazier dragon here, Vetch had yet to hear about it. He had gotten rotated back to the new lot of Jousters because his old Jouster had been killed by a lucky arrow from an archer on the ground, and Beskela had elected to return to the compound rather than fly off to freedom as nearly any other dragon would have.

And that was a measure of how lazy he was. Beskela had learned the most key of lessons, which was where the food came from. He knew that—unlike the case of a dragon in the wild, who, when he failed make a kill, didn't eat—in the compound, meals arrived on time and in full supply whether a dragon exerted himself to the fullest or not. Beskela liked captivity, so long as no one made him work too hard. And it was rather difficult to force a creature the size of a dragon to do much of anything it didn't want to.

Vetch hid his smirk behind his hand. If there was ever a Jouster who deserved being assigned to Beskela, it was Reaten. Patrols would take twice as long to compete as Beskela lounged his way through the sky, and Reaten could pretty much forget about the Gold of Honor, for at the first sight of a fight in the offing, Beskela would do his best to keep as far away as possible from the combat. Failing that, he would hold back, and shy off every time his Jouster tried to close in. That was assuming he didn't flee altogether, refusing to answer the guide reins.

Oh, yes, this was certainly a case of the right chickens coming home to roost.

On the other hand, if a Jouster couldn't master a dragon like Coresan, at least with Beskela he could get patrolling done and wouldn't get anyone else in trouble.

Vetch went back to work, his jealousy fading. Coresan had a good Jouster, it seemed, one of whom Haraket approved. For that, he was grateful. Coresan was no Kashet, but he had been getting rather fond of her.

Still, it rankled, to be treated as if he was nothing more than a mobile saddle rack, and otherwise ignored.

When Coresan came back in, it was very clear that her new Jouster was going to continue ignoring Vetch, and it was only because he had gotten to like Coresan that Vetch didn't go straight to Haraket and demand to be put back on his old duties, serving Ari only. This was like the treatment he had gotten from the other dragon boys, only worse. Why, he didn't even learn the Jouster's name for three days, and then only discovered it when he overheard another Jouster asking, "Well, Neftat, and how do you like our prime virago, Coresan? Or do you wish you had Beskela back?"

Neftat asked him nothing about Coresan—though he did examine every inch of her every time he took her out. He continued to act as if Vetch was a mere convenience, of no import except that he kept the dragon fed, watered, clean, and comfortable.

Still, he treated Coresan well, and paid as much heed to her moods as an attentive lover would have. She was out of shape, and he was putting her back in shape on a reasonable schedule, being neither too demanding nor too lax. He was a good rider for her.

But.

Finally, he couldn't stand it. He went to Haraket.

But once he got the Overseer's attention, he hesitated. How could he, a mere serf, complain about a Jouster?

He decided that it wouldn't be a complaint, exactly.

"Overseer," he said, choosing his words with the greatest of care, "What is my—my relationship to be to Coresan's Jouster?"

"Relationship?" Haraket asked, with a lifted brow. "None, and I told him as much. You aren't Coresan's boy—you're Kashet's. I don't want him giving you orders that may conflict with something Ari's asked you to do, so I told him to leave you alone while I find Coresan a good boy."

Suddenly, Vetch was very glad that he hadn't voiced an actual complaint, for he would have looked very stupid. "Thank you, Overseer," he said, with utmost politeness. "I—ah—wasn't sure what I should be doing, with regard to Jouster Neftat." And he bowed properly, and got out of Haraket's way as quickly as he could, thanking the gods that he had learned to think before he blurted something out. How much less trouble he would have been in, if only he had kept his mouth shut over the years! He took care to smile at Neftat from then on, even if the latter didn't appear to take any notice.

At least with both Coresan and Seftu back on patrol, Ari could stop doing double-duty. Vetch had the idea that he was sleeping a good deal. Certainly Kashet was!

Haraket was as good as his word, too. By the time the planting season was over, in fact, within a moon, Haraket found another dragon boy for Coresan, another serf from a stolen farm like Vetch.

Presumably, having found that Vetch was such a good worker, Haraket was willing to try another of the same type.

Haraket brought the replacement in one afternoon, without any fanfare, though he had taken the time to get the new boy cleaned up, kilted, and all before he brought him to the pen. With any dragon, that was a good idea; they were used to Jousters and dragon boys in their uniform kilts and kit, and dragons were creatures of habit. Even the few servants like Haraket and the slaves wore pretty much the same uniforms, which varied only in quality of materials. Presumably a dragon couldn't tell the difference between coarse linen and fine, and the similarity of costume told the dragons who "belonged" here, and who didn't.

However, just the previous day Coresan had reacted poorly to the presence of a pretty woman friend of Coresan's Jouster, Neftat. The bright fluttering gauze of her gown, the high voice, the jangling jewelry—whatever it was had made Coresan rear up and hiss angrily, her tail giving one of those vicious lashes that Vetch had not quite managed to train her out of.

Neftat had in his turn reacted as Vetch would have wanted, shooing his lady friend outside. This was one of the only times when Neftat actually spoke to Vetch.

"Keep her company for a moment," he'd ordered (rather than requested). The tone made Vetch grind his teeth, but he obeyed, though he had no idea how to amuse a lady. He listened to Neftat soothing his dragon with one ear, while he directed the lady's attention to the carvings on the walls, the construction of the pens, even the dragons peering over the pens with interest at them— babbling foolishly whatever came into his head in an effort to distract her.

Fortunately, Neftat finally came out and apologized to the lady. Vetch hadn't even waited to hear what he said.

But now—it looked as if his patience wasn't going to be on trial for much longer.

"Vetch, this is Fisk," Haraket said shortly. "He's a serf; I want him for Coresan's boy. If you can train him to take Coresan, do it." And he left, with the two boys staring awkwardly at one another.

It was Fisk who made the first move, though. "Ah," he said, ducking his head in unconscious submission. "Could be you'd give me your name?"

Vetch had to smile, then; he knew in part how Fisk must be feeling, but poor Fisk knew nothing about his would-be mentor, perhaps not even that Vetch was a serf! The hair should tell him, but Fisk might not know that only Altan serfs wore their hair long as a sign of their indentured nature. "Vetch," he replied. "And I'm a serf, too." He looked the other boy up and down; could it be that Fisk had been a farmer's boy, too? "Well, if I'm to teach you about Coresan, what do you know about animals in general?"

"Ah. Mostly I've tended goats," Fisk ventured, and looked up at Coresan, who looked curiously down at him. "That be a mighty big goat…"

For a heart-stopping moment, Vetch thought the other boy was feeble-minded, but then he saw the slow grin, and realized with relief that Fisk was joking.

And it soon was apparent that Haraket had chosen well, so far as Coresan was concerned, for Fisk was not afraid of her, and had more experience with intractable creatures than Vetch ever had. For one thing, he was two years older than Vetch—and what was more, Fisk had actually been a goatherd in charge of a large number of animals, and goats could be the most stubborn and evil-minded domestic creatures ever created; he might not be very bright, but he was eminently practical, and he had a good rapport with beasts. Unlike Vetch, he hadn't had a family to lose, as he was already an orphan when the Tians came, tending the herd of goats for a surly uncle. As a consequence, life in the Jouster's compound was more than an improvement, it was an improvement without any previous loss attached. He had never really known what it was like to be free or to have a close-knit family, for his father was dead and his mother had been her brother-in-law's servant. While she loved her son, she had been able to give him nothing but her love while her brother-in-law worked her to death and bid fair to repeat his treatment with her son.

Now, with only a single, nonwandering creature to be in charge of, good treatment, and much better food, Fisk was convinced he'd fallen into a honey pot. He'd understood exactly what Vetch meant when he described Coresan's quirks and personality, and he didn't let her bully him.

More to the point, to both Vetch's and Haraket's delight, Fisk and Coresan took to each other with a great deal of mutual respect and even affection. It was nothing like the bond Vetch had with Kashet, but it was as close to that as any other dragon boy's, and closer than most.

That released Vetch from his duties to Coresan, which was a great relief. Coresan needed someone who understood her and cared about her, and Vetch's heart was given to the creature growing inside his egg and to Kashet. Haraket was overjoyed, and within the week, Vetch overheard him speaking with Ari about finding more goatherd serfs in the future to use as dragon boys.

As for Vetch—Fisk might not be anyone he could have a deep and meaningful conversation with, but he was friendly, and he was another serf, so at least now he had someone who would share a meal and a joke with him. The cold shoulders of the other dragon boys weren't so hard to take when there were two to face them instead of one alone.

Gratefully, he went back to his old chores, which, after all the work of tending Coresan, Kashet and a dragon-in-egg, seemed infinitely lighter. The growing season was well underway, and the increasing heat would surely be the trigger to hatch his egg, and soon he would need all the extra time he could get.

He certainly completed his round of ordinary chores faster than he had before he'd been doing double-duty with Coresan. Or perhaps it was just that he was putting on muscle and strength himself. He practically flew through his cleaning chores, and as for the others, the old leather worker and the Weapons Overseer had taken to giving him an allotment of work, so that the others wouldn't shirk theirs, knowing they could load it onto him when he finished the sooner.

All this came just in time.

The egg was starting to move.

THE egg was starting to move because the developing dragon inside was shifting restlessly. It was definitely fertile, and was going to hatch if nothing went wrong with the dragonet, there was no doubt whatsoever about that. Though how long it would be before the egg really hatched now that it was starting to move, well, he didn't know, and he wasn't sure that even Ari did. It could be days; it might be weeks. The only thing he could be absolutely sure of was that it would be within the moon.

The timetable seemed about right as well, given what he'd learned from Ari, though it did not seem possible that so much time had passed so quickly. By his reckoning, it should barely have been time for the Planting Festival.

But there it was; caught up in the peculiar schedule of the Jousters' compound and as busy as he was, time was all distorted. Among the Jousters, there were only two real "seasons"—the season of the rains (which included part, but not all, of flood season) when the Jousters and dragons could rest a little, and the season of no-rain, which meant full patrols and everyone working flat-out. The Temple-regulated festivals of the seasons, so important when he'd been working for Khefti-the-Fat, had slipped by him without noticing. Now growing season was well under way, the plants were all sprouting in the fields, and he hadn't even noticed. If Ari was right, eggs hatched well inside Growing season, giving the richest time of the year, so far as game was concerned, for the critical first weeks of a dragonet's life. Then, when the little one was old enough not to need feeding so often, came Dry season—and in the heat of Dry, the dragonet could grow and develop without needing to be kept warm by a parent.

Soon. The egg must surely hatch soon.

He slipped away every night as soon as it was quiet to turn it and speak softly to the dragonet within the shell, and woke before dawn to turn it again. So far, no one had caught him at his tending—but then, there wasn't anyone about that early or that late. Not even the most diligent of Jousters rose any earlier than he had to—and who could blame them when they were flying long patrols to prevent Altans from sabotaging the crops in the fields? Burning crops was an easy way to strike back at the hated enemy; you left no traces behind if you were clever, and every field burned was more grain that the enemy would have to purchase with precious gold—which in turn, could not be used to hire and equip soldiers. Altan serfs, and those Altans who still retained possession of their own farms through some miracle, would not burn their own crops—they'd starve if they did, for they would get cold charity from the Tian masters. But that wouldn't stop Altan insurgents from firing the fields, regardless of who owned them. About the only relief there was from that threat was that Altans, like the Tians, could not be persuaded to go out into the fields at night, when homeless, hungry ghosts were a-prowl. Not even the rebels would take that risk, a very real one, and not the sort of thing that even Haraket dared. Unhomed spirits were very real, and it never seemed to occur to the Tians that their rigor in denying slaughtered Altans the proper rites and funerary shrines only made more angry ghosts to plague their nights. It was dangerous enough to walk the streets of a village, where the protection of the Temples held sway, and the lights and lamps drove the ghosts out. Only a priest or a witch would dare venture into open fields by night, and what priest or witch would trouble to fire a field when their time was better served making magic? But every so often, someone too foolhardy or desperate or sure of his protections went out at night, beyond the protections of the streets, and was found dead in the morning. Usually there wasn't a mark on him, but his face was generally contorted with pain or horror.

No, the rebels were bold enough, but not that bold. They did their work between the first hint of dawn and the last light of dusk.

So the Jousters were in the air whenever possible, reminding those below that the Great King had more than just soldiers to enforce his will, scanning the fields at dawn and dusk for creeping forms that should not be there. That meant more time in the sky, tired dragons and Jousters, and the most profound of silences from sunset to sunrise within the walls of the compound. No time for festivities now—oh, no! Once in a very great while, Vetch would hear music coming over the walls, but it was all quiet music, harp and flute, and never went much past the time that a late dinner would be. Probably some of the more aristocratic Jousters were having music with their dinner.

So Vetch's ventures were secure. Not even Ari caught him, even though the Jouster came to the pen nearly every night, for at least a little while. At least now that Neftat was taking up patrols on Coresan, Ari had been able to cut back his territory, which gave him a little time of his own again. He spent most of it with Kashet, and Vetch had to wonder if Ari was as lonely as he was. Certainly he didn't spend much time with his fellow Jousters.

Sometimes Vetch wished that he was just a bit older, more Ari's age. Often, as he listened to Ari talk softly in the darkness, to Kashet and to him, he wondered if he was the closest thing to a friend that Ari had, other than Haraket. Did he ever talk to Haraket like this? Maybe not—there were things he said to Vetch that Vetch didn't think Haraket would ever accept tamely. Ari could criticize his own leaders and his own people freely with Vetch; Haraket might well feel he had to report such "disloyal" talk.

Maybe that was why he spent some time every night here. He had to unburden himself to someone, and Vetch was safe.

And he wished one other thing—a wish that he could never have imagined himself making before he'd come here. He wished, for Ari's sake, that he was Tian. For if he had not been Altan, and a serf, he could have confided his egg theft to Ari, who would have been delighted, and would surely have helped him when the egg hatched. If he had been Tian, he could have a dragonet openly, and become a Jouster, joining the ranks of the rest.

He could become Ari's friend, and not—what he was. Whatever that was, now. Dragon boy, serf, mostly Altan, no longer able to unthinkingly hate his Tian masters—but knowing that nothing would ever induce them to accept him either, with a life that was a strange mixture of the bitter and the sweet, with nothing in between.

And it occurred to him the same night, as he lay thinking about that wish and staring up at the stars, that the one time when his anger stopped gnawing at him altogether was when Ari was around. With everyone else, except maybe Haraket, there was always that edge, the feeling that underneath it all, if a choice had to be made between him and a Tian, well, he'd come out second-best.

And even Ari and Haraket, if the choice had to be made publicly, would probably favor the Tian.

Maybe that wasn't true, but it was something he didn't want to have to put to the test.

It was an unpalatable thought.

He resolutely shoved it away. He would just have to make certain it never came to that.

Besides, he had another worry that he ought to be concentrating on. That egg would hatch within days, and that would bring the next hurdle, a successful hatching. He had to be there. He daren't take any chances. Baby chickens thought that the first thing that they saw was their mother—the same might be true of a dragonet—

And that was when, once again, it seemed as if the Altan gods had heard him and were answering him with subtle aid.

The second half of the growing season was always dry—not the Dry of the dry season, when the air sucked every bit of moisture out of everything, but usually there weren't any kind of heavy rainstorms. Instead, there was just enough rain to keep the crops from dying, and that usually in the early morning or early evening. Storms that were not hard, didn't do much, and were never very long.

In fact, they tended to be rather warm and muggy rains, bringing sticky humidity rather than refreshment to the air. And the one thing that it was possible to count on was that they would not be the violent storms that broke at the end of dry season.

There had been a feeling of a storm coming the day that Vetch was sure the egg was close, very close, to hatching. Vetch was checking it as often as he dared, and as he did, he couldn't help notice that the air felt heavy and wet. So just to be on the safe side, he pulled the canvas over the empty pens on both sides of Kashet's pen, including the one that held his egg. After all, if a storm did break, whoever was nearest would start dashing around pulling awnings, and the last thing he wanted them to do was to stumble into that pen. He even freed up the awning over Kashet's pen to be ready, just in case.

Then, in the middle of afternoon patrol time, he noticed that the sky on the horizon seemed unusually cloudy out to the north. The clouds themselves were thick and tall, or at least they looked like it from inside the walls of the compound. He congratulated himself on taking the precaution of pulling those canvas coverings early. It looked as if there was going to be a good solid rain rather than a mere sprinkle.

He thought no more about it, except to wonder if the rain would be bad enough to bring the Jousters back early, so he reckoned that he had better see to it that Kashet's pen was done as early as possible. Haraket and the other Overseers, even Te-Velethat, trusted him to get his work done in whatever order he happened to do it, and not necessarily on a set schedule anymore. He could always do his quota of leather work later, and if he really needed to clean Ari's rooms, Ari had no problem these days with having Vetch in to see to it whether or not the Jouster himself was in the suite.

So Vetch was in the middle of cleaning out Kashet's pen and he didn't think anything more about rain, until he heard something that sounded like the rumbling of a thousand chariot wheels, and looked up again sharply, into the north.

The clouds were boiling up before his very eyes, and with bottoms as black as the soil the floods laid on the fields. As if the hand of a god was shoving them along, they were speeding toward Mefis in a way that boded no good for anything caught in their path.

What was more, he could see the colorful specks that were the Jousters on their dragons, running along ahead of the storm front. For that storm was powerful enough to send the dragons back on the gust front itself, frantic to get out of the sky before the lightnings and winds caught them, winging ahead of the fury lashing the ground behind them, as fast as their muscles could send them.

He stood there with his mouth wide open for a bit, then it suddenly came home to him that this was going to be no ordinary storm.

He wasn't the only servant to have realized what was happening; a moment later Haraket ran through the compound shouting for the boys to run for the landing court, slaves to cover the pens, and cursing everyone in his path. Dragon boys and every other servant that happened to be free ran for the landing court, for there was no way that most of the dragons were going to be able to land in their pens with that wind behind them. In fact, they'd be lucky to get down without any injuries.

Vetch was right behind Haraket, and the Overseer thrust chained collars into his hands without regard for who he was or which dragon he served. Well enough; Kashet and Ari wouldn't need him, but Seftu and Coresan, and perhaps another half-dozen other dragons he'd gotten to know, and which probably would trust him, certainly would.

The first of the dragons came plunging down into the courtyard just as Haraket, Vetch, and the others got there themselves; already wind, chill as the winds of midwinter, whipped through the open space, sending dragons skewing sideways as they tried to get down to the ground. This wasn't the wind of the Dry, the kamiseen, that always blew in the same direction—no, this was a nasty wind, a demon wind, that twisted and writhed unpredictably. The landings were chaotic; with the exception of Kashet, the dragons were clearly fighting their Jousters. They wanted, more than anything, to get back to safety on the ground before the storm struck, and if they'd had a choice they would have landed anywhere they thought they could find shelter rather than take the chance on speeding for home. There were near collisions in the air above the landing court, actual collisions on the ground, as hard gusts blew dragons aside and into each others' paths. If it hadn't been that their eyes were on the coming storm and not on each other, there might have been fights among the dragons as they competed for the limited landing space; Vetch and two or three of the braver boys dashed in with chains and collars to fasten around their throats. They found themselves scrambling among the fearsome claws, to snap the collars around the first throat that presented itself, then drop the end of the chain in the hands of one of the servants or slaves. Coresan recognized him as he ducked under her nose, and actually pulled back her claws in mid-lash so that they skimmed along his back, barely stinging; he handed off the chain to Fisk, who had been behind him. He helped Seftu's boy get the leads on Seftu, but they didn't need them; Seftu was so grateful to be down that he was actually whimpering, and was crouching so low that his belly dragged the ground. The rest of the boys spread out along the walls and shouted to attract the attention of their Jousters, so that the dragons could get separated and steered over to the proper handler, and taken back to their pens.

The chaos began to sort itself out, so Vetch stayed where he was, knowing Ari and Kashet, knowing that they would come in as they always did, as if the sun god stood high in the sky, untroubled by storms. And sure enough, he saw them, Kashet's powerful wing beats holding course against the wicked winds, coming in last of them all. He saw then that Kashet, secure and nothing near as nervous as the rest, was going to land in his own pen as always. That was when Vetch abandoned the mess in the landing court and headed for his proper place—

He got there just as they landed, and it was clear from Ari's wet hair and the rain streaks on Kashet's flanks that the rain wasn't far behind. At that point, no one cared about duty or protocol (not that Ari ever truly did); Ari helped Vetch to strip Kashet of his saddle and harness and pull the canvas canopy over the sand pit just as the first warning drops of the torrent to come splattered into it. Then Ari raced for his own quarters, as splatters turned to downpour.

The canopies were clever devices, just like the awnings that shaded the human inhabitants of the compound from the rays of the sun, fastened to fat bronze rings which were strung on two ropes of wire, running along two opposite walls of a pen. You grasped two hanging straps and pulled the canopy on its wires across to the other side of the pit, where you fastened the straps to rings at the other end. Then you had a "roof" over the sand pit that protected it from rain. This was the only way to keep the sand pits from turning into hot sand soup during the rainy season—or now.

Kashet burrowed down into the sand as the rain poured down onto the canvas, sheeting down along the sides and into the drains along the edges of his pit.

And Vetch sprinted for the next pen.

He thanked his gods that he had pulled the canvas over the tops of the "unused" pens. No one had barged into his pen to protect it. And his egg was safe from the downpour.

But so close to hatching as it was—he had to see.

It was almost not worth it. In the brief time it took to get from one pen to the other, he was soaked to the skin. He peered through the murk from his vantage point in the doorway—and thought that his egg was rocking, but it was hard to tell. Without getting into the pen, all he could see was that it was all right, that the canopy was keeping it and the sand-pit dry.

Back he ran to Kashet's pen. He peeled off his sodden kilt and changed to a new one in the shelter of his own little awning. The edges of the awnings had become waterfalls, and the sky was so dark it seemed to be dusk, not mid-afternoon. Lightning flickered constantly, seeming to freeze droplets in midair for a moment, and thunder drowned out every other sound.

He was just grateful that the gust front had been the only wind. A good blow could rip the canvas from its moorings, soaking and cooling the sands, and that might have spelled an end to his hopes. If a chicken egg got chilled as it was about to hatch, the chick died before it could be born. Would the same be true of a dragon? He rather thought so—

The storm would have terrified him, if he hadn't been so preoccupied with thoughts of his egg. Fortunately, such fury couldn't last long; before he became too impatient to wait any longer before returning to his egg, the sky lightened, the torrent lessened, the lightning and thunder passed into the distance, leaving behind only a steady, heavy rain, interrupted by brief surges of a real pelting.

But his first concern had to be for his primary charge; Kashet could have gotten injuries that neither he nor Ari saw in their haste to get him unharnessed before the storm burst. Vetch dashed across to the sand pit in Kashet's pen, the edges of which steamed from the rainwater that had escaped the drains to soak into the sand along the perimeter.

Kashet was fine. He was securely wallowed in the middle, buried up to his flanks, his neck stretched along the top of the sand with his eyes closed. Vetch knew that pose. Nothing was going to get Kashet out of his warm wallow; not the sweetest bit of meat, not the coaxing of Ari, not the promise of a grooming and burnishing and oiling. Nothing. And at the moment, every other dragon in the compound was probably taking the same pose as Kashet.

No one would interfere with him or come looking for him. Not until the rain let up, anyway.

Back he ran to his egg.

It was rocking! In fact, it had rocked itself right up out of the sand! It must be hatching!

No one was going anywhere in this mess; the dragons wouldn't stir, and the Jousters and dragon boys were all in their respective quarters at this point. Vetch waded out into the hot sand to the egg, which now was rocking madly. He steadied it with his hands, and murmured to the dragonet inside. It paused for a moment, then he heard the dragonet inside knocking furiously at the shell. He passed his hands over the outside, and after examining it carefully, he spotted a place where it was cracking.

Ari had said that mother dragons had to help their little ones hatch; a shell hard enough to protect something as big as a developing dragonet was too thick and hard for them to break by themselves. Ari had helped Kashet; now it was Vetch's turn to help his baby.

He'd heard the story from Ari a dozen times; he knew what to do, and he didn't stop to think about it, he just did what he'd been planning in his mind for weeks, now.

He took the hilt of his tiny work knife and pounded at the cracking spot from his side of the shell. This seemed to encourage the dragonet, and it redoubled its efforts to crack through.

He pounded, the dragonet pounded, and it was a good thing that the steady growl of thunder drowned out most sounds, or they would surely have been caught by all the noise they made together. To his ears, it sounded like a pair of carpenters or stone-masons at work, and if it hadn't been for the storm, so much banging and tapping would certainly have attracted anyone within earshot.

Finally, just when he thought that the egg was never going to actually break, the dragonet punched through!

Two big flakes of shell fell away. A bronze-gold nostril poked up through the new breathing hole, and the dragonet rested for a while. Vetch let it be, just picking bits of broken shell away from the hole and snapping the jagged edges off to enlarge it. That was harder than it sounded; the shell was like stone and the edges of the bits of shell were sharp. But the more he opened the hole, the more of the dragonet's muzzle protruded out, the nostrils flaring as it pulled in its first breaths of fresh air. The egg-tooth, a hard little knob between the nostrils on top of the nose, like a flattened cone, was clearly visible. The dragonet would slough that within a day of hatching, but it was needed in order to break out.

When the muzzle withdrew from the breathing hole, the rocking and hammering started again from within the egg. Vetch watched to see where the cracks were appearing, and helped again, pounding with the hilt of his knife, and grateful that the thunder and rain didn't look as if they were going to stop any time soon. Despite the cold, damp wind, Vetch was sweating, and he kept up a steady murmur of encouragement to the baby within the shell.

Vetch confined himself to helping cracks along and chipping bits away from the air hole. He wasn't certain how much—beyond that little—he could help the dragonet without hurting it by forcing the hatch; this wasn't one of his mother's chickens, after all, and even she had been careful with hatching eggs. There was a difference between assisting a hatch, and forcing it, a difference which could mean a dead chick or a live one.

He had to run off at one point to feed Kashet—the dragon's appetite wasn't diminished by the rain. The entire time he watched Kashet, he worried; what if the dragonet got into trouble? What if the egg fell over, and the breathing hole was blocked by the sand? What if it hatched, and floundered out of the sand and got chilled?

But this was also an opportunity. He loaded his barrow with more meat than Kashet could eat now that he was out of that growth spurt. The top was the usual big chunks, but on the bottom was a thick layer of the smaller scraps and chopped bits that he got from troughs near where the butchers worked. They called this stuff "porridge." When a dragon needed a heavier dose of tala than you could get into it just by dusting the big pieces with the powder, the other dragon boys would mix it with the chopped pieces and blood—

Well, that wasn't what he needed the "porridge" for, and the butchers weren't curious enough to notice what he loaded his barrow with. They were too busy listening to the rain and thunder outside, and talking about it in nervous voices. Under any other circumstances, he'd have stayed to listen.

But not today.

He fed Kashet to satiation, while the rain drummed on the canvas awning; it didn't take long, the dragon wanted to go back into his wallow and didn't dawdle over his food. Kashet yawned and dug himself back into his hot sand when he was done, and was asleep in moments. Vetch quickly checked the corridor for the presence of anyone else before he whisked the barrow out of Kas-het's pen through the cold rain, and into the one next door.

And found himself looking at a limp and exhausted scarlet dragonet, sprawled on the sand, limbs and damp wings going in all directions in an awkward mirror of Kashet's pose. The damp wings were half under the poor thing, and at his entrance, the dragonet looked up at him and meeped pathetically. It could barely raise its rounded, big-eyed head on its long neck; the bronzy-gold and scarlet head wavered back and forth like a heavy flower on a slender stalk, the huge old-bronze eyes barely open, as if the lids were too heavy to lift. To either side, the halves of the egg lay, red-veined on the inside, with a membrane still clinging to them.

Vetch parked the barrow under the awning and floundered out into the sand to the dragonet's side. It was bigger than he was, and heavier—twice his size and weighing about as much as a young child, he thought, though it was hard to tell for certain. It was going to get a lot bigger before it was finished growing, though. He dug a trench in the hot sand and helped it to slide in, tucking the clumsy, weak limbs into comfortable positions, and spreading the wings out to dry on the surface.

It sighed, as it lowered its head down onto its foreclaws; already the anxiety it had shown when it realized that it was alone was ebbing. It was going to be a crimson red, like both its parents, but unlike Coresan, the extremities were going to be some shade of gold or bronze; until it got a little older, its delicate skin was going to tear and bruise easily if he wasn't careful with it. Right now, the skin was as delicate as his own—more so, in places—and soft as the thinnest lambskin. He petted the dragonet's head and neck for a moment, marveling at the softness of the skin. Then he left the dragonet to bask in the heat and rest from the effort of hatching, heaped a bucket with the chopped meat, and returned to its side.

It opened its eyes when he returned to it, and its nostrils twitched as it caught the scent of the meat. Its head wavered up; the poor thing looked so weak! But the mouth opened, and the thin hiss that emerged was anything but weak, and had a great deal of demand in it. The mouth gaped wide. It had a formidable set of teeth already, no surprise in such a carnivore. Open-mouthed, it hissed again, and whined at him, red tongue flicking out in entreaty.

He laughed. "All right, baby—don't be impatient!" he whispered, and dropped a piece the size of his palm in the open mouth.

He'd worried about whether the dragonet would be difficult to feed—in the next several minutes, he knew that this, at least, was not going to be a problem. The little one snapped its jaws shut on the meat and swallowed; he watched the lump going down its throat with remarkable speed. Then the jaws opened up again.

They quickly fell into a rhythm. The baby gaped, he dropped meat and bone in, the jaws snapped shut and the throat worked, and the mouth gaped. It was so easy to feed the little one that literally anyone could have done it. In fact, before it was sated, it had eaten nearly its own weight in meat! It ate until its belly was round, the skin tight, and Vetch could not imagine how it could cram another morsel in.

That was when it stopped; it closed its mouth and looked at him, really looked at him for the first time since it had hatched. The big, dark eyes seemed all pupil—he could see that they weren't, though, that the ins was simply so dark a color that it was nearly black, but the huge, dark eyes seemed to draw him in and hold him. He couldn't look away, and didn't want to, for those eyes seemed to him to be the most wonderful things he had ever gazed into. And then it sighed, laid its head in his lap with complete and utter trust, and closed its eyes and went immediately to sleep, without a care or a worry in the world.

He was here, and he was now the center of the dragonet's world. So long as he was here, there could be nothing wrong.

He thought his heart was going to melt. A pent-up flood of emotion threatened to overwhelm him; he squeezed his eyes shut to keep from crying, and just whispered tender nonsense into the ruby and bronze shells that were the dragonet's ears, while he stroked the soft skin of the head and neck with a hand that shook.

But he couldn't hold the tears back for very long; finally they started, and he wept silently, anger and grief that he had held in for so very long, mingling together with joy and relief in those tears, and nothing left to hold them back.

How long he cried, he couldn't have told. He cried until his eyes were sore, his nose clogged, his belly sore from sobbing. He cried until his throat was raw and scratchy, crying for all he'd lost, and all he could lose now, crying that his mother and father weren't here to see him, in his first moment of triumph since the Tians came.

It couldn't have been long, or he'd have heard Kashet hissing for his supper. Certainly it wasn't as long as it felt.

But finally, even he ran out of tears. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, careful not to get sand in them, and sniffed.

He felt odd. Felt as if he had cried something out of himself, and now there was just a hollow where it had been.

"Can you see me, father?" he whispered into the rain, into the vast space between himself and the Summer Country. "Can you see what I've done? Isn't this baby a beauty, the most wonderful thing you've ever seen?"

The dragonet stirred a little in sleep, and hissed softly.

Carefully, so as not to wake it, he began to stroke the head and ears, and as he petted the delicate skin of the brows, he knew that his dragonet was a female, for it did not have the bumps beneath the skin that would eventually form into a pair of skin-covered "horns" that marked the males.

"What shall I call you, baby?" he murmured to it. This wasn't a question he took lightly. Words had power, and names were the most powerful of all words. Words where what the gods used to shape the world, and whatever he named this little dragonet would shape her.

Then it came to him; from her colors, shading from yellow on her belly, through the scarlet of her body, to a deep plum along her spine and at the end of her tail while her ears and muzzle went to that brazen-gold. Like the colors of a sunrise—

"Avatre," he murmured. "Fire of the dawn. I name you for that."

She stirred in her sleep and pushed her forehead against his stomach, as though in approval. Avatre it was.

"Avatre," he sighed with content, and with rain drumming on the canvas above them, caressed the head that rested so trustingly in his lap.

Now for the next hurdles. Keeping her presence secret—and keeping her…

But for now—now it was enough to cradle her, and listen to her breathing, softly, in the rain.

He had to feed Kashet again, eventually, of course. But the rain was still coming down, and he knew that not even Ari would come out of his quarters in this out-of-season downpour. So tonight, well, tonight he would not be sleeping in Kashet's pen.

He eased the baby's head off his lap and she woke and looked at him, then yawned, her tongue waggling comically before she shut her mouth. She stared at him for a moment, then made a small noise that he had no difficulty in interpreting as a demand.

He had to chuckle at that. Fortunately, there was enough left in his barrow to line her belly, if not fill it; enough to hold her while he went to fetch more food for her and for Kashet. Then it was the same routine again, except that already she was getting the idea that biting down on the hand that was feeding her was not going to get the meat pieces to arrive any sooner, and in fact caused a delay in delivery as the owner of the hand made funny sounds and waggled the hand in the air. This was entertaining, perhaps, but did nothing for a hungry belly. So she quickly learned to be gentle, and learned that when she sucked at the hand instead of clamping down on it, sometimes it would bring a cargo of delicious wet stuff that lubricated the throat and tongue and tasted sublime.

The "wet stuff," of course, consisted of bits of the livers, hearts, and lungs; prime treats for every dragon because of their rich blood-content, but difficult to maneuver once they were cut up unless the dragonet was cooperating. Avatre was a fast learner, even fresh out of the egg as she was, and when he was done he hardly needed to wash his hands, for she had wrapped her tongue around them and sucked on them until every bit of blood and juice she could get had gone down that voracious little throat.

She fell asleep again immediately, and now that her wings were dry, he tucked them in against her body and heaped sand around her to keep her warm and supported. Then he took his barrow back to the butchery.

But just as he was leaving the butchery, he overheard something that made him pause for a moment.

—witchery!" one of the butchers was saying, darkly. "Altan witchery! The Haras priest Urkat-re told me himself; he and the other Haras priests had all they could do to hold the storm back enough that the dragons could land without killing themselves and their Jousters!"

"I don't much like the sound of that," one of the others murmured uneasily. "The sea witches have never been able to reach so far before…"

"Because they never tried to do so on the wings of a storm before."

Vetch jumped; that was Haraket's voice!

"Overseer, have you heard anything more than that?" asked the first butcher humbly.

"No. You seem to have gotten all the tidings there are to hear, Thoteret. But I don't doubt you, nor do 1 think what you've said is mere idle speculation. I have never seen a storm like that in growing season, and since the Altan sea witches' powers are of the wind and water, it stands to reason that they called it up, all out of season." Haraket seemed very sure of himself, and Vetch saw no reason to doubt him. "It makes every sense, too, when you think what their strategy must be. They have fewer dragons and less-experienced Jousters than we; they can no longer meet us man-to-man. So they must get us out of the sky and thin our numbers somehow. What better way than to smash our dragons to earth with an unnatural storm?"

Vetch nodded to himself; it made perfect sense. Doubtless the sea witches who had conjured the tempest were even now lying spent within the walls of their temples, and would not be able to move from their couches for days or weeks—but the damage had been done.

"And the damage has been done," Haraket said, in an uncanny echo of Vetch's own thoughts. "No one was killed, thanks only to the grace of Haras and the skill of our priests, but there are torn wing webs and sprained muscles in dragons all over the compound. A dozen will not fly without days of rest, and by then, the witches will be ready to send another storm against us."

"They will?" gasped a butcher.

"Of course they will! It is by far the most effective weapon they have now!" Haraket said, with scorn for the man's obtuse-ness. "They will hardly abandon it! And I fear we will now have to cease our scouting forays over their land; if a dragon is driven to earth over their territory—

He did not need to elaborate. Even Vetch knew what would become of a Tian Jouster caught by Altan foot soldiers on the ground.

He moved off silently, using the door to the barrow storage room to make his exit. At the moment, he had rather that Haraket did not know what he had overheard.

He couldn't but help feel some elation; among other things, if Haraket was right, Ari stood at far less risk of being hurt or killed now in the course of his duties. Kashet was bigger and stronger than any other dragon in the compound, now, and he had always been a better and more skilled flyer; it would take more than a witch-conjured storm to hurt him. And if the Altans were going to use storms against dragons, they must have pulled their own Jousters back so as to avoid harming them accidentally. Which meant that Ari would not be facing anyone in a Joust until the Dry came, and not even the most powerful of witches could conjure up a storm.

He trotted back to his pens with the rain drumming on his wet hair; he checked on Avatre, but saw she was sleeping as soundly as a dragon could—which was very soundly indeed. So just in case Ari turned up, he curled up on his pallet in the unseasonable gloom.

He would have a lot of chores to catch up on tomorrow. But he didn't think anyone would complain or take him to task for them. He'd been all over that courtyard, and he could always claim he'd sprained something, helping bring the dragons in, and had taken to Kashet's sands to bake the aches out…

Huh. Maybe he'd better lend verisimilitude to that claim by moving his pallet there now.

It didn't take a moment, even in the twilight gloom and the rain, he was so used to doing so after the rainy season. And he was glad that he had, when not long after, he heard Ari's step outside the pen.

"Vetch?" the Jouster called into the dimness of the pen.

"Here!" he called back. Kashet didn't even stir. "I sprained my shoulder getting chains onto some of those dragons."

"I thought you might have—one of them marked you, too. Do you need something for the scratches?" Ari made a dash across the open, rain-filled space and got in under the shelter of Kashet's awning.

"It was Coresan, and she pulled her blow when she saw it was me," he replied, feeling oddly touched that Ari had noticed in the midst of all the chaos. "I've gotten worse from thorns, or the stuff Khefti made me sleep on."

Ari sighed, and sat down on the edge of the wallow. "Just bake out the sprain, then. You won't be the only one tending injury. There are sprains and even a dislocated shoulder or two all over the compound, and that's just among the Jousters; I expect anyone in the landing court is probably nursing some sort of hurt, and the dragons themselves may have gotten sprains when they landed. We won't field but half the dragons tomorrow, nor the day after. It appears that your countrymen have found an effective weapon to ground us."

His heart leaped at that. So it was definitely true, then! Haraket had been right! But he didn't say anything, and Ari didn't seem to expect a comment.

"Well, I won't complain," Ari continued. "There won't be any double patrols to fly, when we daren't take any dragons over Altan lands. Just the simple runs over our own land, until the Great King decides to break the truce and send the armies out again."

Vetch's heart dropped as fast as it had risen. Ari had said "when," not "if"-

"But since the King has not chosen to favor me with his plans for conquest," Ari continued, still sounding oddly cheerful, "I am not going to concern myself over that until the day dawns. Nor should you. Instead, I am for my honest bed; there is no point in doing anything but follow Kashet's example and catch up on rest. Good night, Vetch."

"Good night, Jouster," he called off after the retreating form that sprinted out through the door, in the rain.

And he waited just long enough to be certain that Ari was not going to return, before gathering up a blanket and abandoning Kashet to sleep alone.

For tonight—and for every night that he could manage it—he would be sleeping beside his dragon.

She stirred ever so slightly as he laid his blanket down on the sand beside her, and fitted his body around hers. And she nestled her head in next to his outstretched arm with a movement that brought a smile to his lips and a lump to his throat.

Help me, he whispered to the Altan gods—who, it seemed, could reach into this Tian stronghold, after all. Help me, keep her secret, keep her safe…

And the prayer murmured on into his dreams, a prayer that surely, surely, they must answer.

VETCH was helplessly, hopelessly, in love. He had never felt like this before, and yet the emotion was one he recognized immediately. There was nothing he would not have done, would not have sacrificed for his beloved. His heart was lost to him, and he didn't care.

Of course, if all of the love songs he'd heard wafting out of the Jousters' quarters during feasts and festivals were true, that was pretty much how he should feel.

From the moment that Avatre curled her body to fit the curve of his, he was in love. And it didn't matter, at all, that at the moment probably all he was to her was to be the bringer-of-food and the one who made sure her itches were soothed and her messes cleaned away. He loved her with a passion the like of which he had never felt before, a passion that shook him to his bones. It frightened him, if he stopped to think about it. He had never had so much to lose before. If he lost Avatre—

He wouldn't think about that, couldn't waste the time that would be lost if he thought about it and froze in an agony of fear and indecision. He had to concentrate on how to keep her, not on what would happen if he lost her.

He'd had some small inkling of how deeply he had fallen that night, when he went to sleep curled protectively around her, with his last thoughts before slumber being a prayer for her safety. It really came home to him when he woke in the first light of dawning, still curved around her, and looked at the oddly endearing creature that had been entrusted by the gods to his care, and his first thought was a prayer for her safety. Her hot little body was the exact temperature of the sand under both of them, and as she breathed in and out, he felt himself changing the pattern of his breathing to match hers.

Then, when she woke, just a little, and blinked at him trustingly before going back to sleep again, he knew that he was forever lost to her.

Was this how Ari had felt, when he first looked into Kashet's eyes?

Rain still pattered lightly on the canvas overhead; it was very peaceful and comfortable, and he wanted to go back to sleep—but he didn't dare. He would have so much work today, it didn't bear thinking about, except that he would have to think about it very hard indeed, and right now, in order to plan things properly. Every moment, between dawn and dusk, would have to be planned and accounted for, if he was to get his work done and give her the kind of attention she required.

Both Avatre and Kashet would need feeding as soon as it got light enough for them to wake properly, so he would have to manage to crowd both activities into the same amount of time he normally took for Kashet. Now, even if she was awake, he couldn't feed Avatre now; no one would be at the butchery yet, and neither Kashet nor Avatre would want their breakfast until they were thoroughly awake and their appetites were roused. But there were other things he could do now in order to get them out of the way. For instance, he could slip over to the leather room, light a lamp, and get his quota for yesterday and today done early. Then he could get the food for both dragon and dragonet, feed Avatre first, then Kashet—and if the rain cleared enough that Ari showed up for a morning patrol, Vetch would be where he belonged, in Kashet's pen. Then he'd have to clean Kashet's pen in half the time he usually took, possibly feed Avatre again and certainly clean her messes up, and be ready for when Kashet and Ari came back…oh, and at some point during all that, he should get himself bathed and fed, somehow. He should—but he knew very well that if anyone went short, it wouldn't be his charges.

I can bathe in the water from Kashet's trough. I can eat something on the run.

He eased himself away from Avatre, heaped some hot sand up where he had been in order to support her, and went off to get a clean kilt and get to work. He was glad enough of the lamps in their sheltered niches along the corridors; someone must have come along and substituted the rainy-season lamps for the torches that had been placed there after the rains were supposedly over. Though the sky overhead was getting lighter, it was dark down between the walls. It was strange to be the only one in the leather room; it was quite peaceful, actually, and he found that when he wasn't distracted by the gossip of the other boys, he actually got things done a little faster. By the time he put the last of his pieces in the "finished" piles, though it was still raining and overcast, he could tell that it was late enough that he would be able to get meat for his charges. He wasn't the first at the butchery, but he was certainly among the earliest, and as he stood in line in the gloom of that overcast morning, listening to the rain fall in the corridor outside, he paid close attention while the butchers and the other boys talked. Now, more than ever, he needed to know what was going on and being said in the rest of the compound. What were the Jousters going to do in this out-of-season rain? And if there was talk of Altan witchery, would anyone connect it with him?

Their conversations, punctuated by the chack of the cleavers on the chopping blocks, revealed just how much damage had been done to dragons and riders in that frantic dash for home yesterday afternoon. That no one had been killed or even seriously hurt was deemed a miracle, but there were sprains, pulled muscles, and strains a-plenty, and as Ari had told him, even a couple of dislocated shoulders among the Jousters. He got his meat without any comment from anyone about what he was taking—they were all too busy recounting the near-misses and providential escapes, and speculating on what might come next. It was at that point that Vetch decided he ought to leave. He felt the long hair that marked him as an Altan serf brushing against his back with a shiver…

He quickly took his burden out, shoving it along in front of himself as fast as he could manage without spilling it. In fact, some of that damage to the dragons was proving out rather audibly, as the dragons of the compound awoke for the day. As he wheeled his barrow back to Avatre's pen, he could hear the injured dragons as they hissed and whined in pain when they tried to move. From what the other boys said, there were plenty of riders who were just as damaged, including several who would probably choose to see a Healing-Priest. In the course of that mad dash, dragons had been tossed around in the air like so many dead leaves, and some Jousters had held to their seats only at the cost of injury. And here he was divided in his emotions; he was immensely pleased that finally Alta had struck a blow against Tia, but these dragons were not to blame for what was going on, and he knew many of them personally. He hated to see them hurt.

At least their injuries were only temporary. And Ari and Kashet had come home fine. He soothed his conscience by telling himself that if Alta had sent a storm with more lightning, or could have directed it, there would be a lot worse than sprains and strains.

He fed Avatre quickly; she was more than pleased to cooperate in that regard, swallowing as fast as he popped pieces into her mouth, until the skin was tight enough over her belly to drum on. Then she gave an enormous yawn, blinked, and plopped herself down into the sand to sleep.

By then, the rain had faded to nothing, but he left the canopy over the pen anyway. It wouldn't hurt anything, no one would particularly care, and it would keep anyone flying over the compound from seeing her.

Kashet was not only no worse for wear, he was happy to see Vetch, feeling playful—and in good temper and appetite. He buried his muzzle in the barrow, and Vetch went to get his harness. Sure enough, Ari did appear, just as Kashet was finishing, his flying helmet dangling from one hand.

"No more than half of the Jousters are going out on morning patrol," Ari said. And at Vetch's worried look, he added, with a little nod, "Don't be too concerned. It's going to be a short one. We're just checking to see that no troops moved in or sabotage was done under cover of the storm."

By then, Vetch had finished the harnessing, but rather than have Vetch pull the canopy back so they could take off from the pen, Ari motioned to him to leave it alone, and led Kashet out to the landing court.

Is he thinking there is going to be more rain? He might well be, actually. But if the patrol is going to be short—

Then he'd better get busy if he was going to clean up after Kashet and Avatre, feed the dragonet again, and take care of his other chores.

He ran for breakfast, bolted it down, ran back to the pens, glad for all the good feeding he'd been getting, for he was much stronger now, even if he wasn't much taller. He cleaned the pens, filled the barrow, ran with it to the place where the droppings were left. He checked on Avatre, and he woke her to stuff her again, though her belly clearly wasn't empty. Still, his mother always said that a baby could always eat, and she was no exception to that truism. Then he cleaned her pen and ran the barrow out again, hiding the much smaller droppings among the rest, adding them to the running tally so that no one would wonder why there were more than had been accounted for. Then he was back in Kashet's pen, and just in time, for even as he checked to make certain that he hadn't forgotten anything, he heard the dragons coming back in, wings flapping heavily in the still air.

They were very early, it was a good thing he'd gone everywhere at the run…

When Ari brought Kashet in, the latter was almost as fresh as when he'd gone out. "Leave the canopies on," Ari said, as the dragon ducked his head to come in under the canvas. "We're in for a rather wet season of growing, I'm afraid—not that I think it's going to harm anything."

"It won't," Vetch replied, out of his own experience. "It'll just save farmers needing to open the irrigation ditches as often. At least, it won't as long as it's just rain."

"Let's hope, then, that the sea witches can't conjure hail out of the clouds, then," Ari said soberly. "You should be ready for us to come back early this afternoon, too. Until we're ordered otherwise by the Commander of Dragons, the senior Jousters have decided that no patrol is going to go outside of the borders established by the last truce."

Yes, and wasn't that the point of the last truce, that you weren't to fly outside the boundaries? Vetch asked in his mind, and some of that anger he'd managed to keep bottled up stirred restlessly again. Maybe if you'd stayed inside them, this wouldn't have happened? Maybe if you didn't keep pushing past those boundaries, taking what isn't yours?

He shoved the anger back down, and just nodded. It wasn't Ari's fault, and Ari was troubled, more than troubled, by the greedy land grabs among those who wanted the borders pushed back still further. "So, short patrols, then?" he asked instead, lifting the saddle onto its rack.

"Just over our own lands, looking for trouble," Ari replied, with a twitch to the corner of his mouth. Vetch cast a sharp glance at him, and it occurred to him that Ari didn't seem to be at all displeased about that.

But of course, he wouldn't say so, not where he could be overheard.

And he had to always remember, always, that no matter what, no matter how kind Ari was to him or what the Jouster confided to him, he was still an Altan serf, and Ari was a Tian Jouster. And if he wanted to keep Avatre, he must never forget that.

As Vetch labored mightily to get all of his work done and keep Avatre's belly full that day, the compound itself was full of activity, a great deal of it rather disorganized and smacking of controlled panic.

He was getting a hasty bath just before lunch when he heard chanting approaching the bathing room, and just as he started to leave, he had to duck back inside to avoid colliding with a procession of what must have been fully half the priests of the Great Temple of Haras on Temple Road. Chanting and setting spells of protection, accompanied by little priestesses with sistrums and boys with drums, it appeared that they were determined to cover every corridor of the compound, and in the process, get in everyone's way. Every priest wore a striped headcloth with the mask of Haras gleaming from the front, and a falcon pectoral in gold with a matching belt across his snowy white robe. The priestesses all were in filmy gowns of mist linen with wide collars of gold, carnelian, and lapis beads and gold cords around their waists, their wigs done in hundreds of tiny braids, each one ending in a bead, and a latas flower centered just over each one's brow with the stem trailing down her back. Behind them came six slaves bearing feather fans on long poles, though what they were supposed to do in the chill, and the damp, Vetch had no idea.

They weren't the only ones either. Racing from cleaning Ari's rooms, Vetch ran into a procession of the priests of Siris and Iris, who, not to be outdone, arrived to replicate the first effort! The same sort of procession, with music and magical chanting, only the costumes differed. The priestesses of Iris wore the horns of the moon on their brows, and their gowns were tight sheaths of red linen that ended just below their breasts, with wide bands of embroidered and beaded material that served as straps running over their breasts and shoulders, while the priests wore helmets much like the Great King's war crown and intricately wrapped kilts with heavy, beaded belts.

And not an hour later, they were followed by the priests of Nuthis and Thet and Hamun, each in their own variations on priestly dress, who all trooped past Kashet's pen while he was feeding Kashet and Avatre—

"A man can't turn to fart without blowing stink into a meddling priest's face today," growled one of the butchers to another while Vetch was collecting Avatre-sized bits for another feeding. Vetch smothered a laugh and quickly; it was funny, but not to the butcher. By now it was clear that virtually everyone else in the compound but Vetch was worried sick about the way that Altan sea witches had managed to wreak havoc on the Tian Jousters so far within the borders of Tia itself, and he didn't want to draw attention to himself while people were so unsettled. And unfortunately, nothing that the priests were doing was giving anyone any real confidence that the compound had any more protection on it than it had before all the chanting and the processions. Everyone knew that the real, truly powerful magic went on in the holy sanctuaries, without witnesses, and this was just something to make people feel better. Whether that was true or not, Vetch had no idea.

Part of him was fiendishly glad that the witches had done their work so well—part of him wanted to see more damage and fear-just retribution, by his way of thinking. It would be a fine thing for these Tians to get a taste of fear for a change!

But of course, once they started to get over their fear, it would mean trouble for every Altan serf inside the borders of Tia.

Not that all that much real damage had been done, when you came to think about it. It was only because no one had predicted what was coming, or guessed the fury of the storm ahead of time that anyone had gotten hurt at all! No one was likely to be even slightly injured the next time the sea witches sent a storm, because now everyone would fly for home the moment that thunderheads appeared on the horizon. And as he'd pointed out to Ari, rain was not going to cause any harm to the crops.

No point in trying to tell that to anyone here, though. They weren't likely to listen; nerves were on edge, and people were all too ready to imagine that the sea witches could do all manner of dreadful things.

What if they call lightning to strike the compound—or the Great King's Palace! What if they shower us with hailstones the size of pomegranates! What if they make the Great Mother River to run backward!

What if, what if, what if—

What if they make pigs to fly and shit on your heads from above? he thought at last, in irritation, overhearing yet another frightened and wild speculation over a hastily-snatched dinner. That's just as likely, if not more so.

For it didn't seem to occur to anyone that the sea witches had not had much luck at controlling the storm that they had created; they had simply set it in motion and shoved it across the border. Vetch was a farmer's child, and he knew, better than most, just how much worse it could have been if the Altans had any amount of control over that storm. It was, after all, the season of growing, and Altan saboteurs had already made it perfectly clear that the ruin of Tian crops was high on their list of priorities. If the sea witches had had real control over that storm, it would have been hail, not rain, that pounded down on Tian fields. The crops would spring back from the heavy rain and wind. Hail would have ruined them. Why attack the Great King's Palace with lightning, when you could make his whole land starve? For that matter—he didn't much want to think what a hailstorm would have done to dragons and Jousters in the air. There would have been deaths.

Still, all the fuss was of benefit to him. No one paid any attention to what he was doing, how many barrows of meat he took, how many barrows of droppings he left, or where he was when he wasn't where he was supposed to be.

Avatre ate and slept and woke and ate and slept again, like virtually any other baby. By day's end, she was demonstrably bigger and heavier—in a way, it was gratifying to see that all of the work he'd done hauling all that meat had a visible effect!—and Vetch purloined some soft cloths and a jar of oil from the buffing pens to keep her skin soft and supple while she grew. Dragons didn't shed their whole skins at once as they got bigger; instead, they shed their skins a little bit all the time, old skin flaking and falling off, exposing new skin underneath; tiny scales grew larger, and new scales formed along the edges of old ones. Vetch didn't know how a mother dragon kept a dragonet from itching as it grew and shed, but he would have to keep Avatre oiled and buffed, or she'd be driven mad with itching.

Her pen was a still pool in the middle of all the chaos, and he went to it as to a refuge. She murmured sleepily as he took an oil-soaked rag and waded into the hot sand with her, to stretch out her wings and coat them with oil that soaked into them the way the first rain after the Dry soaked into the earth. The scales of her body were tiny, hardly bigger than the grains of sand around her, but they would grow, as she grew. He buffed them gently and rubbed the rag over her, and she lifted her head and gave him another of those wavering, limpid gazes, before settling back down to sleep again. He could hardly bear to leave her, but he had work to do, and it was risk enough taking this much time during the daylight hours with her.

By nightfall, when all the priests had finally finished their bespelling and prayers, less hysterical personalities managed to prevail within the compound. Haraket kept his head the whole time, of course, and Ari and the more senior Jousters seemed to have kept the panic all around from infecting them. Interestingly, just after supper, some of the older priests of various gods turned up to help soothe some of the hysteria, and that helped. One of the most helpful was the High Priest of Hamun, who actually turned up at both the kitchen court and the Jousters' quarters, and pointed out many of the same things that Vetch himself had been thinking all this time. He arrived in his full regalia, leopard-skin cloak with the snarling head over his right shoulder, freshly-shaved head, two standard bearers standing behind him, and bedecked with so much gold jewelry it made Vetch's back ache in sympathy just to look at it. Supposedly he was the Great King's uncle; he certainly had the kingly manner, and that alone seemed to set peoples' minds moving into calmer channels. So at least, by the time that the sun set, a measure of quiet had returned to the Jousters' compound, if not peace.

Things were still edgy and chaotic the next day, and the next, which was all to the good so far as Vetch was concerned. The more people were focusing their attention on what was going on—or presumed to be going on—outside the compound, the less they would notice what was going on inside.

Even Ari was so preoccupied that if Vetch hadn't made a point during his cleaning of snatching away the dirty garments as soon as Ari shed them and making sure the linen chest was full of clean ones, he probably would have worn the same kilt three days running. He wasn't in his quarters or out on Kashet much, and Vetch could only assume that he and the other senior Jousters were engaged in some sort of council with important leaders of the army and the government.

Vetch himself was certainly doing enough running. He ran everywhere he went; it was the only way to make everything fit into the day. He worked with one ear cocked nervously for a sound in Avatre's pen, he worried that Kashet might betray what was going on with his mild interest in what was on the other side of the wall…

Kashet surely scented something, or heard it. He tried several times to peer over the wall to see what was there, but the canvas awning on the other side foiled his attempt to look into the wallow, and much to Vetch's relief, he finally gave it up.

And Avatre ate, and slept, and grew, definitely bigger every day… and the compound held its collective breath, and waited to see if the sea witches were going to be able to repeat their attack.

Sure enough, on the fourth day, another of those monster storms roared up out of the North, sending the dragons flying for home before it.

This time, though, there were no injuries. As Vetch had figured, the first sight of a thunderhead building up was enough to send the dragons all back well in advance of the gust front.

This storm was a little different, too; with a great deal of wind and lightning, but the initial downpour was much shorter, and the light rain and overcast persisted longer, forcing the dragons to stay in their pens all that day and the next, except for brief patrols over Tian lands and even briefer practice sessions. The exercise was just enough to take the edge off their restlessness.

There was nothing to take the edge off the restlessness of their Jousters. This was not the season of rains, they were not working on the ragged remains of their strength and happy to have the time to rest; quite to the contrary, they were fit and itching for action, and to be held confined to the compound by a pack of witches—

Well, it rankled. They badly needed something to do. Vetch sensed it in the sour looks, sour tempers, and growing tension. He heard wild parties at night in the Jousters' quarters, and heard rumors of scandalous escapades among the dancing girls, and of broken furniture. He started taking the most out-of-the-way corridors when he had to go anywhere, and so did the rest of the serfs. He'd seen this mood before, and when tempers flared, well—

If it is a choice between Tian and an Alton serf—no matter who is in the wrong, it is always the Alton who pays.

He redoubled his efforts at stealth. He bit his nails to the quick in worry over Avatre. The tension could not last. Something would break, and soon. But he knew that. And he kept telling himself that all he could do was to stay out of the way, and hope that it did not break over him—

* * *

Vetch was eating his noon meal in the farthest corner of the kitchen court, when the noise from the corridor made him whirl and look at the blank wall behind him in alarm. A shiver of fear gripped him as he wondered if the all of the stress he'd sensed had finally found an outlet, for it sounded like a mob in full cry—

And he wondered who or what was the target for all that pent-up tension—

—or if they could be coming for him—

But then, one of the slaves dashed into the court, his eyes wide with excitement and not fear. "A dragonet!" he shouted. "Two of the Jousters have brought in a wild dragonet! Come and see!"

He dashed out again, followed by a stream of quicker-witted folks or more curious dragon boys and servants, as a new fear held Vetch paralyzed in his seat for a moment.

Have they found Avatre?

He broke the paralysis in the next instant—he had to know! With the others who were more slow to react, he shoved his way to the door, just as the procession of two of the younger Jousters and a small army of slaves came triumphantly by. They were, indeed, hauling a squalling, protesting, blue dragonet, encased in a net and bundled onto a palanquin carried on the shoulders of a team of eight or ten slaves. This was a much, much older dragonet than Avatre; it was easily the size of one of the huge, sacrificial bulls of Hamun. Its claws had been encased in padding and bags, its legs tied together, its mouth trussed shut. It looked absolutely furious, and Vetch did not want to be the person who cut it loose.

"Where are they going?" he blurted, not thinking, not really expecting an answer.

"Oh, they'll put the beast in one of the open pens and one of the trainers will come care for it until it's tame," came the answer from above and behind him. "Tame enough for a dragon boy to look after, anyway. Haraket won't be pleased! He'll be the fellow who will have to find a boy, and all out-of-season."

Vetch looked quickly around behind him, and saw that the speaker was one of the slaves, one that had been reasonably civil to him from the time he arrived. "Why?" he asked, feeling bewildered. "1 mean, I don't mean why are they doing that, I mean why did the Jousters go out after a dragonet, and why go after one that isn't even fledged yet?"

The slave grinned down at him and winked. "You've been keeping yourself to yourself these few days, or you'd have heard. The Great King sent down a decree to the Jousters. If Alta is going to try to ground our Jousters, then the Great King wants more of them—too many to keep on the ground, no matter how many storms the sea witches raise! So." He nodded after the mob, which had turned a corner, leaving only the noise behind. "Now the most restless of the Jousters are going to help the trackers and trappers out, as they used to when there were fewer of them."

Vetch blinked. "More dragons?" he asked.

"More dragonets, more Jousters in training, both," the slave corrected. "And the King's Vizier made the little suggestion that since the Jousters are grounded, perhaps they ought to be the ones hunting the new dragonets."

"But—" Vetch thought about the fury in that young thing's eyes, and pictured to himself the fury of the mother if she happened to return while her babies were being abducted. "Isn't that dangerous?"

"Entirely," the slave replied callously. "And so long as no one tells me to go along on one of these hunts, I care not. Whatever it takes to get the young hotheads' minds off making trouble around here is perfectly fine. You would not believe what they've been getting up to in their quarters. The wrestling matches that end in broken furniture are bad enough, and the drunken parties, and the wild adventures with all of the dancing girls, but there are four very angry nobles who had to drag their daughters out of rooms in the compound that they should never have been in, and several more who've been asking pointed questions about where their wives have been, and with whom." The slave snickered.

"Which is probably why the King's 'suggestion' was phrased so near to an order."

Vetch could certainly agree with that, but he had to know more, and he decided to go in search of Haraket.

Haraket, it seemed, was already in search of him. He spotted Vetch coming around a corner, and shouted his name. Vetch hurried toward him.

"I've three—gods save us, three!—spitting and yowling dragonets, and more to come, and I need you and Fisk to help train new serf boys," he growled, as soon as Vetch came within earshot. He was accompanied by a tall, aristocratic man in a fine kilt, striped headdress, and a simple, but very rich, neckpiece and armlets. "Gods help us! If we don't have some of them killed before this is over—" He shook his head. "Well, it'll be the stupid ones, or the ones with more bravado than sense, so, small loss, I suppose."

"No loss," said the stranger, who had the deep-set eyes, the beaky nose, and the stern look of one of the statues of the Great King. He looked down at Vetch. "So, this is your little serf boy, Haraket? The one who makes dragons love him?"

"The very one," Haraket replied, with a hint of a smile.

Vetch, meanwhile, felt himself held in the man's powerful gaze. Whoever this was, Vetch felt like a mouse between the paws of a cat. He knew he should avert his gaze and stare at the ground in respect, but he couldn't look away! He was fascinated and terrified at the same time by this man—a powerful man, an important man—

A man who could order my death and be obeyed on the spot—

How he knew that, he didn't know, but he knew instantly that it was nothing less than the truth.

It felt as if his mind was being rummaged through. Desperately, he kept his thoughts on Kashet, on Coresan, on all of the dragons he had been making friends with, a little at a time…

"So, boy," the man said, speaking directly to Vetch, as no Tian noble had ever done before, "How do you make dragons love you? Is it some witchery?"

Vetch gulped. Witchery! Oh, gods, that was the last thing he wanted anyone to think! "I'm—good to them—lord," he whispered. "Patient. Careful. I—give them treats—show them the pleasures of being obedient—let them become my friend—I coax them to be good—" He fumbled for the words to describe what he was doing, and failed. "I—like them," he said desperately.

To his shock, the man tossed back his head in a bellow of laughter, freeing him from that paralyzing gaze. The stranger slapped Haraket's back; Haraket actually staggered.

"A good answer! A true answer!" the man said, still laughing. "So speaks any good tamer of animals! Well enough, Haraket, find me more such as this boy, and I authorize you to take as many boys, be they free, slave or serf, as you need for the new Jouster Hundred. You undertake that—I will find you Jousters who are neither too bold nor too foolish, even if I have to take them from the fields and the quarries to find sensible men of courage to fill those saddles. And if our nobles are offended by this, and feel I have demeaned their feckless sons by allowing peasants and laborers to serve alongside them—well, they can come and quarrel with me."

With that, the man strode away through the mist and rain, paying so little heed to the weather that it might as well have been bone dry.

"That, young Vetch," Haraket said with satisfaction, "is the Commander of Dragons, who just happens to also be the Great King's seventh son by one of his Lesser Wives. And if our young hotheads can actually manage to steal so many dragonets from the nest—and I am forbidding them to take more than one from any one nest—then we are about to double our strength to a full Hundred, and perhaps more. Though—where I'm to find so many dragon boys—boys who have experience—boys who are not intimidated or afraid of dragons—

"Shouldn't they just love animals and understand them?" Vetch said, without thinking.

"What?" Haraket said, startled.

"Someone like Fisk—" Once again, he knew what he wanted to say, but didn't have the words for it. "He loved his goats—he knew how to see what they were going to do by the way they acted—" He floundered, but Haraket's eyes lit up. "It's not like dragonets are as big as grown dragons. Even one the size of an ox is still just a baby, after all! And he said you could take serfs or slaves—and serfs and slaves are always doing the dirty work around animals."

"You could be right, boy," Haraket mused aloud. "Perhaps— dog boys, the ones that tend the hunting packs. They live, sleep, even eat with their packs. Dog boys will know how to care for a young thing, even a dragon. By the gods, I see what you mean. They're out there, invisible, because none of us ever look at them!" Haraket exclaimed. "The boys that tend camels, the ones that care for the sacred animals in the Temples, or the Great King's menagerie! Good gods, all those slaves and serfs we never even look at, living under our very noses! The boys that tend the Khephis bulls are surely no strangers to big, dangerous beasts, and Hamun can spare us a few of them, 1 should think!" He nodded with satisfaction. "Good! I'll find the boys. You get back to your duties, and when I've gotten a clutch, you and Fisk can pick out the ones that are any good."

Vetch went back to his duties with most of his questions answered, and as he went to get meat for Kashet and Avatre, he encountered a harried-looking adult in the doorway of the butchery. The man was pushing a barrow filled with small chunks, none bigger than his hand, and Vetch realized that this must be one of the dragon trainers, men he had not yet actually seen, the ones who were to tend to the dragonets until Haraket could find boys to take over the job. He did not look happy. Vetch could well imagine why. This was, more-or-less, his season of leisure and it had been seriously curtailed.

At least this was more confusion to hide what he was doing.

Provided, of course, that someone didn't try to put a dragonet in the pen that Avatre was already in, and find her, and start to ask questions. So—subtract one worry, add another—

By nightfall, there were five dragonets in pens in the compound, none of them nearly as young as Avatre, but not near fledging yet either. Vetch didn't have to time to look at any of them, though he heard that they were all about the size of the first one, as wild as lion cubs and as ready to take off limbs before their first taste of tala calmed them.

Coresan must have mated late in the season, if these were the size of the dragonets out in the wild. By nightfall too, Haraket had found a round dozen new dragon boys, and to Vetch's great relief, he and Fisk were not going to have to train all of them. Half, in fact, were freeborn, and Haraket deemed it more appropriate that they be trained by their peers instead. The ones that Fisk and Vetch met with the next day were all from the Great King's Palace, and the households of one or two of his nobles, and all were dog boys but one, who tended the Great King's falcons.

This was a much, much older boy, not even a boy, really, for he must have been at least seventeen or eighteen. And he proved to be a great surprise to all concerned.

Haraket brought them all to the pen containing a young dragonet of a rich golden-brown color, again roughly the size of a fully-grown bull, that had been chained in place and was ignoring the barrow full of meat within his reach. His eyes were furious, and even Vetch was taken aback by the intelligent rage that was in them.

But the older boy wasn't in the least fearful.

"So, this's a dragonet?" he asked, looking at the young beast measuringly. "My lord Haraket, I asked to come here. I had some thoughts, you see, and I wanted to see if I was right. If you would let me?"

Much to everyone's shock, including Haraket's, he had come prepared with a novel approach to taming a young dragonet, and he was fully prepared to test it. When Haraket nodded, speechlessly, he looked immensely satisfied.

"Thank you, my lord," he said. Then he simply walked into the pen with the young dragonet with great steadiness and aplomb, fixing it with a challenging gaze. This clearly took the young thing aback; as it fanned its wings wide in confusion, and backed away from him, the boy took three swift steps and a lunge, and popped a bag with a hole in it over the surprised creature's head. While it went rigid in surprise, he worked the hole around to where the dragonet's muzzle was, got the golden-brown muzzle poking out of the bag so the dragonet could breathe, and tied the bag's mouth around the dragonet's neck to keep it in place.

It went suddenly still, and Vetch and the others could see its muscles relaxing.

"Good," the boy said with satisfaction. "They are like falcons, then. My lord, falcons rely on sight, and I guess these beasts do, too. If they can't see, they don't fight you." And he picked up a piece of tala-dusted meat and slid it along the dragonet's mouth, teasing the corner of the mouth until the jaws opened a little, then popped the juicy chunk inside.

There was a sound of surprise, then the mouth snapped shut and the throat worked.

By now, even the trainer was watching in shock. "He hasn't eaten all day!" the man exclaimed.

The boy just shrugged. "No more do some falcons, taken from the nest too old to decide that a man's just a funny sort of mother. This works with them, though we use a leather thing that we call a hood instead of a bag; 'tween the bag and tala, they'll tame in a week, I guess, and maybe sooner."

The trainer shook his head, though in amazement rather than disbelief. "Let me get the others," he said, and when he returned, it was with at least ten trainers. By that time, the rest of the boys had gathered around this older one, who was slowly feeding the dragon bits of meat, talking all the while in a calm voice.

"The falcons haven't the mind of these fellows," he said, "They just go straight into a trance when the hood's on their heads. Look! He's figured out already that I've got food, and now that he can't see me, he isn't afraid anymore, and his gut's telling him how hungry he is."

Sure enough, the dragonet no longer had his jaws clamped shut; as soon as he swallowed the last bit, he gaped again for the next one to come.

"He's not in a trance, but as long as he can't see me, it's not so bad for him," the young man continued. "He's hungry enough that he'll put up with my voice so long as he keeps getting fed. Now, if I were the one in charge, that's what I'd say to do; treat them like young eyases, keep them hooded for the next couple of days, only feed them when they're in the hood, and after a couple of feedings, start to handle them all over between each bite so they get used to hands as well as voices."

"And then?" Haraket's voice boomed from behind Vetch.

"Then I'd make him skip a meal so he's good and hungry, then take the hood off, and make it pretty clear that if he doesn't take the food from me, he won't get any." The young man seemed pretty sure of his course of action, and Vetch was quite impressed. "Never had tala to use on falcons, but if it works like you say, lord, he may tame down in a day or two, not a week."

"Try it, Baken," Haraket ordered instantly. "And if he tames as well as you say, you will be in charge of training these others. What's more, at the end of the year, if the training of dragonets and boys works out properly, I'll free you and you'll begin serving here at a freedman's pay."

The young man's eyes gleamed in a way that Vetch understood perfectly well, and a wave of raw envy came over him that nearly made him sick. Freed! Haraket was going to free this boy! How much would Vetch do if only he could have freedom at the end of it—

But of course, he never would, never could.

"You won't get any Kashets out of this," Baken warned. "I've heard about that Kashet. At best, these dragons will be proper-tamed, like the best of the ones you've got."

"That will do," the Overseer replied. "That will certainly do.

Now, explain to the boys and the trainers how you handle the young falcons, and how you think it should apply to the dragonets. Vetch, Fisk, you can go back to your duties."

Vetch was not sorry to go back, for he was already worried about Avatre again—but mingled with relief was such bitter envy at Baken's good fortune that it tasted like bile in his throat. That wasn't fair to Baken. He didn't know the young man, and Baken was clearly kind to the falcons in his charge, competent, and eager to tame the dragonets in the most humane way possible. But it was so cruel, to see freedom offered to someone so nearly in his own circumstances, and know it would never be offered to him!

But he won't have Avatre, he reminded himself, as he took a quick peek into her pen and assured himself that she was still asleep. He doesn't have her. And I have to make sure he never shall.

OVER the next half moon, as the sea witches sent storms about every four or five days, Avatre grew at a rate that would have been alarming if Vetch hadn't expected it. Dragons flew for the first time at the end of the dry season, for they absolutely required heat, and the nests that lay in the full sunlight during the dry season would be fully exposed to the rains and cold winds of the winter wet. They were by no means able to hunt and kill for themselves; indeed, their mothers and fathers fed them for the next two years, but they had to be mobile by that time. A young dragon had to be up and out of his nest before the rain and wind came, so that he could follow his mother down into the warm volcanic caves for the winter.

Then he would spend the next two years reaching his adult size—or at least, that was how long it took in the pens. In the wild it often took even longer than that, for his growth depended on how well he ate. Here in the compound, of course, a dragonet never lacked for food, so he would achieve his full size in the minimum possible time.

And as a consequence of all that good food, Avatre doubled her weight nearly every day. Vetch oiled and buffed her morning and evening now, not only to keep her from itching too much, but to keep her skin supple and prevent it from tearing as she grew. There was never enough time, yet somehow he managed to squeeze everything in, by running everywhere, doing everything at full speed. Ari had always been easy to clean up after, now he was so seldom in his quarters that there was almost nothing to do. Vetch did his leather work by lantern light, and only needed to turn up on time for the inspection of the weapons, but the Jousters were going out so seldom, and then never seeing combat, that the inspection hardly took any time at all. It wasn't easy, but at least, it wasn't impossible.

There were twenty new dragonets in the compound now, and he was learning an enormous amount by eavesdropping on the trainers. Sometimes he even eavesdropped on the former falcon keeper, Baken, but although what the young man had to say was interesting, it didn't really apply to Avatre, since everything he knew pertained to wild or half-wild beasts, not one being hand-raised like Avatre.

He breathed a little easier with every new dragonet that came into the compound, especially when another of the new ones was also a red—and he felt more at ease with every new doubling of Avatre's weight, for she looked more and more like the other new ones.

Another factor was working in his favor. It was getting impossible for anyone but Haraket to know which new dragonet belonged with which new dragon boy, or in which pen, and Haraket was so busy that unless something actually went wrong, he left the new boys and dragonets to Baken and the trainers.

He was not doing triple duty, after all, which would have been impossible. It was Baken, not Vetch and Fisk, who weeded out the unsuitable boys from the ones that would take proper care of their dragonets. It was Baken who taught them what to do, and was turning into Haraket's right-hand assistant. Suddenly, the soon-to-be-former slave's star was very high indeed, and Vetch's was quite eclipsed. Not that he went back to being the outcast. There were far too many new people thronging the compound now for the freeborn boys to single him out—far, far too many serfs and slaves being made into dragon boys for them to say or do much about his status anymore. But there was no doubt that the admiring glances followed Baken now, and it seemed that every other sentence he overheard these days started with "Baken says…"

And Vetch couldn't hate him, though it would have been easy to. Baken was genuinely good with beasts; he tried to understand how they thought and why they did the things that they did. Before he'd been assigned to the falcons, he'd handled both dogs and horses, and once had been given a sick lion cub to nurse. He was both firm and gentle with the creatures under his care. He tried to puzzle out what he called their "language"—what was important to them, what made them what they were, what poses and calls they used to communicate with each other—and he used that "language" to win their trust and cooperation. If he'd wanted to, Vetch had no doubt whatsoever that he could raise another Kashet and become a Jouster as good as Ari.

If he'd wanted to. But if Vetch was any judge, that was absolutely the last thing that Baken wanted. To be free, certainly! To become the Overseer of the entire compound, possibly. To become a Jouster—never. There was a look in his eyes whenever a Jouster was about, a bland look that spoke more of scorn than respect…

Well, that was none of Vetch's business. Nor was it any of Vetch's concern. He had enough to worry about without concerning himself with Baken and his plans, when he had plans of his own. Maybe that was the reason why he couldn't hate Baken; he didn't have time or energy to spare to hate anyone.

First and foremost of his concerns was Avatre, and she was his last thought at night, the first every morning. It was true enough that the older she got, the more she blended in with the growing number of dragonets. But growing older and bigger meant becoming more and more active as well. By the end of that half moon, she was no longer just eating and sleeping. Whenever he cleaned her pen, she watched him alertly, bobbing her head in a way that made him laugh. When he buffed her, she stretched and crooned and bumped her head against his hand, begging for further caresses. She was moving a little around the sand—not much, but it was a portent of things to come as she took tentative, wobbling steps. With every day, she showed more personality, and with every day, he loved her more.

He thanked the gods whenever he had a moment to spare, for surely they were protecting her. Between the storms and the influx of dragonets, there was too much going on in the compound for anyone to be paying any attention to Vetch's activities as long as he went out of his way to draw no attention to himself, in any way, for any reason. Perhaps, given his reputation of being able to handle most dragons, people assumed he was spending his free time making friends with the new dragonets and those boys that were serfs, like him. Actually, he wished that he could.

But he didn't dare; for one thing, Avatre needed every spare moment, and for another, if he made friends, he increased the possibility that a new friend would come looking for him and discover him with her, and he was Kashet's boy, not the keeper of a dragonet. It was something of a torment, actually. He'd been so lonely up until now, with the others shutting him out. If this had happened before he'd hatched Avatre—

I could have had friends. I probably would never even consider trying to run.

Well, that was how the gods had decided things. And he could put up with a great deal of loneliness if it meant having her.

Everything conspired to help him, it seemed. The butchers kept plenty of small-chopped meat on hand now, and no one seemed to notice that Vetch was taking some at each feeding, even though Kashet was long past needing anything that small.

And, luckily, no one was keeping track of the sheer amount of meat he was taking. Even Haraket was too busy to supervise the dispensing of dragon meat; he left it to the butchers to make sure that the boys were leaving with completely filled barrows. Nobody ever asked about overfilled ones.

Ari wasn't paying a lot of attention to what he was doing either. The Jouster was working so hard of late that when he turned up at night to spend time with Kashet, he seldom spoke, just sat there, wearily, caressing the dragon's head in the silence. He had been recruited by Haraket to help train the new Jousters that the Commander of Dragons was bringing in, and when that duty was added to his own training and patrols, Vetch reckoned that Ari was stretched nearly as thin as his dragon boy was. That was all to the good; it kept him from noticing that Vetch was in and out of the pen next to Kashet's all the time.

Excitement kept him from feeling too exhausted. And if his day was crowded from dawn to dusk, well, it was crowded with good things rather than miseries.

The only bad thing was that now, instead of enjoying his meals, he had to bolt two of the three as fast as he could in order to keep on his frantic schedule. Since he'd taken to delaying his evening meal until after he'd given Avatre her last feeding for the day, that was the only one where he could actually sit down and taste what he ate. It wasn't too difficult to arrange for that either. With so many new dragon boys and additional servants and slaves to support them in the compound, it wasn't possible to feed them all at once, and there was more competition for getting your meals first than last.

The influx of servants and boys and trainers—and, eventually, it must be presumed, Jousters and yet more servants—had yet another effect on the compound. New slaves and servants meant more slaves and servants that needed training, monitoring, housing, feeding. Te-Velethat was absolutely frantic, for his charge was the domestic side of the compound, and although the Great King's Vizier had made ample provision for wages and slave purchases, the new staff still had to be acquired, fitted in, and trained. And provisions needed to be gotten for them, which meant more work in the stores and record keeping. He couldn't put all of that on Haraket anymore, not when the Vizier was looking over his shoulder to be sure his accounts were honest.

Vetch almost felt sorry for the man. But he was getting his own "come-uppance," as Vetch's mother used to say. If he hadn't been so concerned with his own status and lording it over all of his underlings, he would have had plenty of cooperation from people who were already trained and knew their business. Look at Haraket, for instance! Though the Overseer had a wicked temper, and never hesitated to use his tongue, fist, and very rarely, his whip where it was warranted, he was fair, honest, and never lorded it over anyone. And once you'd proved yourself to Haraket, he was perfectly ready to make allowances for your honest mistakes, or when you were just having a bad day. As a consequence, Haraket's people were falling over themselves to take on extra duties and train the new people.

On a clear night, six hands of days after that first horrible storm, Vetch put Avatre to bed with a full belly, and stayed with her until her eyes had closed and she was breathing deeply. The last of the sun god's radiance was gone from the sky; to the west, it was a lovely azure, to the east, the color of fine lapis, and overhead, stars were beginning to come out. A clear night meant that the sea witches would probably conjure a storm tomorrow, or next day at the latest; which meant that the Jousters would go out after more dragonets and there would be yet another influx of youngsters. Vetch headed for the kitchen court, feeling slightly melancholy.

The slaves and serfs who served the latecomers, when things were slower and mistakes easier to rectify, were all new to Vetch, and they didn't know him from any of the new serf boys. He probably would have missed his friendly serving woman more than he did, but by the time he sat down to dinner, he was usually so tired he could hardly think.