The Jouster turned his gaze from Khefti to Vetch. "I need a boy," he said casually, as if it were no great importance to him. "And if you're getting any amount of work from one that starved, he must be remarkable. I'll have him."
Khefti's jaw dropped. "But!" he protested. "But—but—"
"As you know, a Jouster can requisition any of the Great King's property within reason, if it is to serve him and his dragon." The Jouster shrugged. "One small boy—three-quarters starved—is certainly within reason. You will speak to the King's assessor when he comes to see if the King will permit you to continue holding the land to which the boy was tied. Or, of course, you could see if there is some other member of his family available—but if there is, I suggest that you treat the new acquisition better than this one. The assessor's eye will certainly be on you now."
He let go of Khefti's wrist, and Khefti dropped to the ground, to lie there like a quivering, misshapen, unbaked loaf. "But—" Khefti burbled. "B-b-b-but—"
The Jouster ignored him. Instead, he looked up at his dragon again, which uncoiled itself and stepped carefully down into the yard. The roof of the drying shed creaked as the dragon removed its weight from the structure. The dragon stretched a wing lazily out to its fullest extent, then pulled it in, and yawned. It moved up beside the Jouster just as a faithful dog would come to heel, then bent its forequarters so that its shoulders were even with the Jouster's chest. The Jouster grabbed the back of Vetch's loincloth as if he was a parcel, and heaved him up over the dragon's shoulder.
The band of his loincloth cut painfully into his stomach, though Vetch more than half expected it to give way and tear. Vetch landed stomach-down on the dragon's neck, but the Jouster had not thrown him hard, and his breath was not driven out of him. He'd landed on a sort of carry pad of stuffed leather in front of the Jouster's saddle, and he clung to it like a lizard on a ceiling as the Jouster leaped into the saddle itself.
Then the dragon tensed himself all over, stretched his wings wide, and with a leap and a tremendous beat of those wings, took to the sky with a frightening lurch. The sudden upward movement pressed Vetch into the carry pad, and he felt the Jouster seize the band of his loincloth again, and for the second time in his life, fear replaced every other sensation; the fear that he was falling, falling!
But he fought back the fear, and clung to the pad. A second wing beat drove them higher—through a storm of dust kicked up by the wind of those wings, Vetch watched Khefti's striped canvas awnings over the woodpile, the kitchen court, and the summer pavilion on the roof go ripping loose and flying off.
Below them, Khefti lifted his arms to the sky and began to howl like a jackal.
A third wing beat, a third tremendous gust, and half the thatch of the drying shed tore loose as well, and the furnishings from the rooftop tumbled over the edge into the street. Fashionable light wickerwork chairs and tables, palm-frond mats and pillows stuffed with duck- and goosedown came off the roof like a shower of gifts from a generous noble; passersby scrambled after the bounty and carried off everything they could seize. Khefti was not well-beloved… he could count on never seeing so much as a stray feather again. His howls were mingled with curses and entreaties to the gods—who, with luck, were deaf to his pleas.
And the last of Vetch's fear evaporated in half-mad glee at the sight.
A fourth wing beat, and Vetch could no longer see the house of his former master, only hear his thin wailing from below as he lamented his losses and called upon the gods to witness his ruin.
The ground whirled away as the dragon wheeled, the fear returned, redoubled, and Vetch closed his eyes and hung on with all his might.
He had no illusion that this was rescue; he had merely traded one master for another. But this one, at least, had chided Khefti for starving and mistreating him. So perhaps this master would be better than Khefti.
At least he would be different.
At least, life would be different.
And to that thought, he clung, as he clung to the saddle-pad, and with much of the same desperation.
Chapter Two
GLEE could not hold back the terror for long. In all of his life, Vetch had never been higher off the ground than the top of a wall; now he was so far above the earth that the tiniest glimpse of it getting farther and farther away made him feel sick and dizzy.
And this, evidently was only the beginning.
When he'd seen dragons passing overhead, it had never occurred to him how high they were. Now he knew—oh, how he knew!—and the knowledge was enough to scare him witless.
The dragon continued to rise, surging upward and upward, so high that Vetch squeezed his eyes closed again, for he could not bear the sight of villagers reduced to the size of ants, and the mud-brick houses of the nameless hamlet on the outskirts of Mefis to the size of the pebbles that the ants swarmed around. This was bad enough, would have been bad enough had the flight been as smooth as those his spirit took in dreams.
But no. With every wing beat, the dragon lurched skyward, then dropped back a little, convincing Vetch's stomach that they were all about to plummet to the ground. If he'd had anything in his stomach, he would have lost it within the first few moments. As it was, his gorge rose, and there was a musty, sour taste in the back of his throat to accompany the nausea. Vetch kept his eyes squeezed shut.
Finally, they stopped lurching and bounding, and Vetch cracked his right eye open a trifle to see that the dragon was gliding out in level flight. This was only relatively level; it still rose and fell again with each wing beat, except when it was gliding. When the dragon glided, his stomach was a hard, cold knot of agony, certain that they were about to fall out of the sky. When it beat its wings, his stomach turned over again.
In the first moments of the flight, he vowed that if he ever set foot upon the ground again, he would never leave it… and once they reached the height that the Jouster wanted, he vowed that if he lived through this experience, he would dig a hole in the ground and live in it for the rest of his life. Eyes shut, or eyes open? Both states left him in a state of panic.
When his mind unfroze enough for him to notice anything but fear, the first thing that struck him was the extraordinary heat of the dragon's body, hot as the hottest sand at midday during the dry season, hotter than the furnace wind of the kamiseen, heat that came up through the pad he clung to. Which was just as well, as he was shivering in a cold sweat. The other was the feeling of the Jouster's hard, strong hand in the small of his back, once again holding to the belt of his loincloth. Never once did that grip weaken; Khefti-the-Fat might have been strong beneath the blubber, but this man was ten times stronger. And after a few moments of "level flight," Vetch began to believe that at least the Jouster wasn't going to let him fall.
Not that he was enjoying the experience. Given his face-down position, he couldn't open his eyes without staring down—a very, very long way down—at the ground that was now so horribly far beneath them. And he couldn't close his eyes without being horribly aware of every little lurch and lean of the dragon that carried him. His heart was pounding so hard with fear that he thought it might burst through his chest; the wind of the dragon's wing beats drowned out every other sound, and now the pain of those two stripes burned all across the stretched skin of his back, adding to the ache of his fingers, arms, and legs as he clung to the pad.
Of the two options, he finally decided that not looking was the lesser of the two evils. So he squeezed his eyes tight anyway and prayed; there wasn't much else he could do. He prayed to Altan and Tian gods both, though the prayers were anything but articulate, and certainly not even close to the proper forms, consisting of all the gods' names jumbled up together with get me down!
But the gods were with him, it seemed; the flight wasn't a long one. Just about the time when Vetch's muscles were starting to cramp and hurt from the strain of holding on, he felt the dragon dropping, and this time, the falling sensation didn't end in an upward lurch. He cracked open one eye, to s
ee the ground rushing up at them, and squeezed both of them as tightly shut again as he could. If anything, seeing that they were hurtling back toward the ground was worse than seeing it so far below them. His heart seemed to stop as the fall went on, and on, and suddenly he couldn't breathe.
Now the great wings thundered all around him, fiercely beating the air, and Vetch redoubled his grip on the pad. He braced for the impact of hitting the ground-But it never came—
Only sudden stillness, and the snap of wings folding, like canvas or leather snapping in a high wind.
And no movement, no movement at all.
Was it over?
Vetch's eyes flew open involuntarily.
Face-down on the pad as he was, the first thing he saw was the dragon's shoulder, the folded wing, and then, the ground, a proper distance away, with a beetle crawling across it that was a real beetle, not an ox reduced to the size of a beetle by distance.
The ground! Never had he been so happy to see a stretch of earth!
The Jouster's hand loosened on Vetch's belt, and without being prompted, Vetch let go of the pad and slid down the dragon's hot, smooth shoulder to the earth. His feet hit the ground together, his legs buckled under him, and he landed on his rump, but he scrambled to his feet quickly, his eyes never leaving his new master, much though he wanted to just lie on the ground and embrace it. The Jouster tossed his leg over the saddle and the dragon's neck, and jumped lightly down, giving his dragon a hearty slap on the shoulder. The dragon snorted, and tossed his head a little.
"Now what've you brought back, Ari?" asked a gruff voice from behind Vetch's back. "This can't be a prisoner of your arm, and I doubt it's a spy either."
Vetch didn't turn, though he started a little, and pain arced across his back, marking the path of those stripes; the Jouster had claimed him, the Jouster was his master, and a serf never turned his back on his master (except to be whipped), a lesson that Khefti had driven home with a heavy hand. However, the voice sounded mildly irritated, and the underlying tone conveyed that it was someone in authority.
The Jouster pulled off his helmet, revealing a handsome, if melancholy face, square-jawed, with a great beak of a nose and high cheekbones, brown of eye, and black of hair, as all Tians. He spoke to whoever was behind Vetch; at least Vetch now knew his master's name. Ari. "This is my new dragon boy, Haraket. Serf. I claimed him from his master already, so you'll have to send to the Palace to handle the accounting; the boy can probably tell you who the fat blob was. Seems a likely child; he was working like a little ant, when I saw him, filling a cistern with a bucket too big for him. He wasn't afraid of Kashet, anyway, and that's a head start, so far as I'm concerned."
"Not some street trash?" the voice replied dubiously. "He's got fresh stripes—
"I'm not blind, Haraket, I was there when he got them, for 'letting' me take his bucket and quench my thirst," Ari replied, putting the helmet down, then turning to unbuckle the throat-strap of the saddle. He sounded a trifle irritated, then unexpectedly, the Jouster laughed. "No, he's a serf, not a thief, not a gutter brat. Now the fat slug that was beating him is going to have to find another in his bloodline if the lazy lout wants to hold the land the boy was tied to."
Vetch blinked, to hear his own speculation borne out. So that was, indeed, why Khefti had taken him!
Somehow, that only made him feel angrier.
The Jouster's voice took on an interesting tone, very faintly— malicious?—as he continued unbuckling the dragon's saddle straps. "You know, if whoever sold the land divided up it up too much, the other landholders might not have spare serfs in his line to give up to anyone else. He might lose that land when the assessor comes to see about it."
With a fierce surge of longing, Vetch wished he could be there when the assessor came. He wanted, oh, how he wanted to see Khefti squirm, prevaricate, and sweat! He had sunk all of his savings into that house—or at least, he'd told Vetch that often enough. So if he lost it only because he did not have Vetch anymore, what a supreme bit of revenge that would be!
"But a serf—why not a free boy?" the voice complained. "There must be dozens of free boys you could have from their parents for the asking!"
"Because I'm tired of replacing free boys when they get haughty airs and decide they ought to be something better than 'just' a dragon boy!" Ari snapped, and unbuckled the last strap. He pulled the saddle and the pad that Vetch had clung to off the dragon's back. He turned with it in his hands, and looped all of the straps around it into a compact bundle with a swift and practiced motion.
He dropped the whole thing in Vetch's arms; Vetch had been expecting this from the moment he'd heard what he was to become. A serf, after all, was for the bearing of burdens. He caught it as it dropped, though one of the strap ends hit the ground and his stripes burned again. He was used to working, and working hard, with more whip cuts on his back than two.
The saddle was heavy, at least for him, and he staggered for a moment beneath its weight. It had an additional scent besides that of leather—a hot, metallic scent, with an overtone of spice. The scent of the dragon?
"There, boy—" the Jouster said, in a tone of dismissal, as he bent to pick up his helmet and tuck it under his arm. "You go with Haraket; he'll teach you your business. You'll be living here now."
Jouster Ari stalked off without a backward look, and Vetch turned, the saddle in his arms, to face the person he had not yet seen.
Haraket. Who must be an Overseer.
The man wore a simple white linen kilt, augmented by one striped, multicolored sash around his waist and a second that ran from his right shoulder, across a chest as muscular as any warrior, to the opposite hip. His square head was shaven, though he did not wear a wig, his skin as browned and weathered as that of any farmer, and he wore a hawk-eye amulet of glazed pottery around his neck. He gazed down on Vetch with resignation from beneath a pair of heavy, black eyebrows. But at least he didn't look angry. And he wasn't wearing a whip at his waist either.
"Come on, you," he said, with a sigh. "Since I'm to teach you your business, the best time to start is now." Vetch ducked his head obediently, silently telling himself not to look sullen, and followed as the man strode off across the beaten earth of the courtyard. But he stopped dead at the sound of something large and heavy following him.
He turned. The dragon stared down at him, cocking its head quizzically; it had been right on his heels.
"Come on, serf boy!" the man snarled, when he turned to discover that Vetch was not behind him anymore. "Kashet will come along without being led, much less leashed or chained. He follows me and Ari like a dog, and in time, he'll follow you. Kashet isn't like other dragons, and that's something you'd better keep in mind from this moment on. Ari doesn't need tala to control him. You're damned lucky to be Ari's boy; Kashet is a neferek to handle compared with the others."
He turned abruptly and strode off again, and Vetch hurried to catch up with him, the dragon following along like a hound. For the moment, the ever-present anger that burned in his belly had retreated before his feeling of complete dislocation and bewilderment.
The dragon had landed in a huge courtyard with enormously high limestone walls around it, "paved" with pale beige earth pounded hard and as flat as a smooth mud brick. There were four entrances or gates to this courtyard, square arches each surmounted by a sculpted and painted symbol of a god, each one right in the middle of each wall. All were tall enough to allow a dragon to pass through them, and broad enough for three. The man marched straight through the one nearest them, which had a hawk eye painted in blue, red, and black carved into the top; Vetch followed, and the dragon followed him.
The colors were bright enough to dazzle the eye; there was nothing like these painted walls in Khefti's village. The painted images leaped out at Vetch, dazzling him. Even Khefti's apprentices never worked with such wonderful colors!
On the other side of the wall were—more limestone-faced walls, equally dazzling in their whiteness. They fo
rmed a sort of alley or corridor stretching in either direction; the area was also open to the sky. These walls were not as tall as the ones around the courtyard, and dragon heads peeked over the tops at intervals, peering at them with some unreadable emotion. They weren't all the green and gold of Kashet; there were blue ones in all shades from dark to light, red ones, a purple color, and a pale gold and silver. The colors were dazzling, gorgeous, and they filled his eyes the way that a fine meal filled the appetite. Already, Vetch could tell there was a profound difference between these dragons and Kashet. Ari's dragon had some friendly interest in his eyes when he looked at Vetch—these dragons had the eyes of a feral cat, wary and wild.
He expected noise out of them, based on the way the oxen and donkeys of his father's farm behaved when a stranger came into their yard; to his surprise, there was very little. The dragons hissed and snorted, but there was no bellowing, no growling.
Perhaps they didn't make any louder sound; perhaps they couldn't.
They came to an intersection, and the bald man turned the corner to lead him down another corridor, then another—and just as Vetch thought he was totally lost, turned a final corner that brought them inside another courtyard. He stumbled forward on momentum and blundered into a huge pit that formed the center of the courtyard, a pit that was knee-deep in soft, hot sand. He floundered in the stuff, helplessly, and the man reached out a long arm and hauled him back onto the hard verge. Again, the whip cuts on his back reminded him they were there.
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