That night, as he lay along Avatre's side, waiting for sleep, he thought he heard Ari's footsteps outside in the corridor—and a few moments later, he definitely heard the Jouster's voice murmuring on the other side of the wall, though he couldn't make out the words. He sighed, and felt some tension move out of him. That was it; either Ari was embarrassed at having betrayed his feelings to a mere serf and dragon boy, or he was still so ashamed of what had been done to that Altan village that he found it difficult to face Vetch, another Altan. Or probably it was even more complicated than that, but whatever was wrong, it had been Vetch's presence that was keeping the Jouster from his nightly visits to the dragon.
Vetch certainly found it hard to face Ari. No matter what Ari had said, the fact remained that he might well be in the next party ordered to 'pacify' an Altan village in the same way. It was possible that, despite his anguished outburst, Ari would countenance such an atrocity if only by passive silence. Vetch didn't think he would—
But he couldn't be sure.
How much was Ari bound to his duty? How far did loyalty to orders go? What would really happen when he was caught between obedience and conscience?
And Vetch was caught on the horns of a dilemma, because if that happened, on one hand he didn't want to know what Ari's ultimate decision about obeying such an order would be, but on the other—
Knowing the truth about someone was important.
But having your illusions smashed was painful.
He couldn't pretend that nothing had happened if Ari did simply go along with more horrors.
But losing what you thought was a friendship—even if it was only an odd sort of friendship—was more painful still.
But did he want to maintain it when it was based on false perceptions? He didn't know what decisions Ari had come to, all by himself, over the past two days. Ari was clearly not going to tell him either. Except that he was going out on his usual patrol—
—a patrol intended to keep innocent Tian farmers and their crops safe—
—but at what cost?
He had to concentrate on what he could affect, or he would go mad.
And maybe that's how Ari feels.
At least now Kashet wasn't being deprived of Ari's attentions. That was something, anyway. It wasn't enough for Kashet to 'just' get general petting and attention—a certain amount of that petting and attention had to come from his person, the one he had bonded to from the moment of hatching. And if the only way that Kashet could get that attention was for Vetch to absent himself into the next pen—well, that was all right. Curious, though, that Ari had known about Avatre, even identified her by her color. He wouldn't have thought that Ari'd had time to notice.
I wonder if Ari guesses about Avatre— he thought, suddenly, alarm making him sit straight up in the darkness. Avatre murmured her objections to his movement, and he lay back down again, mind racing, as he went over every question or comment that Ari had made in the last few days, trying to divine whether there was a clue in what he'd said, some hint that Ari was probing, trying to discover if Vetch had followed in the Jouster's footsteps and hatched his own dragonet. Ah, don't be stupid, he thought at last, after he'd been over every detail that he could remember at least twice. As busy as the Jouster had been, how could Ari possibly guess? He just saw Avatre over the wall when he came in at some point. He hasn't said a word about her, and he hasn't caught me here with her. How could he guess that she's my hatchling?
Still, it would be a good idea to take extra care from here on in. Ari saw more than most, and was disconcertingly good at putting facts together into a whole. Vetch filed that in the back of his mind, for caution was now certainly the order of the day.
But as time went on, the Dry progressed, and the days got hotter and hotter, Ari said nothing. Vetch elected not to return to sleeping in Kashet's pen, and Ari said nothing about that either. The fact was, Ari wasn't talking about much of anything, not to him, not to Haraket—but he was doing something. What, Vetch couldn't guess, but he was spending every waking moment when he was not in the air or with Kashet off somewhere.
That was all to the good. It was keeping the one person who was likeliest to guess just what the 'little scarlet in the next pen' was far away from the scene.
He was increasingly afraid of leaving Avatre alone, lest she make that first flight in his absence. He rushed through the chores that took him away from the pens. Heart in mouth, he listened all the time for some sign she had been discovered to be something other than one of the 'official' dragonets, or worse, that she had made her flight without him.
And yet, though that would be 'worse' for him, it was not necessarily so for her. At least she would be free, even if he were not.
