Joust (23 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

“Those laws didn’t protect my father,” Vetch replied bitterly. “And it doesn’t sound as if they are protecting anyone else either.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until now, that is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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