'Great Haras!' Ari exploded, looking astonished and delighted at the same time. 'No wonder she follows you like a puppy! Is that why you volunteered to take Coresan in the first place? And she's been in the pen next to Kashet all this time?'
He nodded, and smiled. At least he had managed to deceive Ari in that much! That was no mean feat.
'By Sheshet's belly! I can scarcely believe it! And you tended and hatched the egg and tended Kashet and Coresan? When did you sleep?' the Jouster asked incredulously, then waved off the answer, while Avatre gave a huge sigh and flopped down beside Vetch. 'What do you call her?'
'Avatre,' he said proudly, and she raised her head at the sound of her name.
'Fire of the dawn—' Ari smiled at the dragonet. 'Well… to continue, we were coming in to land after our patrol; Haraket waved us off, after another couple of Jousters, and pretty soon it was clear enough why we were in pursuit. I recognized you, of course, and the little scarlet, and at first I thought this was some sort of accident, that you'd been exercising her for Baken and she'd broken the tether or something. But by the time we were halfway across the desert, it was clear enough to me that it was no accident, and that you were trying to escape with her.' He took a deep breath, and shook his head. 'What was going to happen when you were caught—well, it was pretty obvious, too. So when the second rider dropped out of the chase, I kept it up; I'd already decided to help you, but I wasn't sure yet what I was going to do. I figured I'd force you two to ground and work that out once I got you down. I didn't expect you to do what you did.'
He leveled an accusatory look at Vetch. Vetch matched him with defiance. 'I would rather die than lose her,' he said, quietly. 'She's all that I have.'
'You made that abundantly clear,' Ari said dryly. 'And you nearly turned my hair white when you rolled over her shoulder like that. I wasn't sure we could catch you.'
Vetch remained silent. Ari examined him closely; Vetch put his arm over Avatre's shoulder, and wondered what, if anything, Ari saw in his expression.
'Well, no one is going to find us down here,' Ari said at last. 'You can overfly this place as much as you like and you'll never spot it. I only found it by accident because I was following a dragonet one day and I couldn't work out why he had dived into a crack in the hill. So, we have time enough to work out what we're going to do.'
'We?' Vetch repeated, incredulously.
'Yes,' Ari replied, settling back against the rock. 'We. Let's start with where you think you're going to go from here.'
WITH those words, Vetch wondered wildly if Ari was going to come with him, and a strange, wild hope rose within him. It was not just that it would be so much easier to make his way northward with Ari—no, it was that he would not lose his friend—
But Ari's next question dashed that thought, and that hope, to the ground and broke them.
'First of all, where are you going?' Ari asked. 'To the—ah— 'Great Devil, Alta,' I presume?'
Ah. Of course. He can't go with us to Alta; he wouldn't be welcomed, he'd be killed. So unless Ari had a different destination in mind for both of them, though what that could be, Vetch had no clue, Ari would not be making an escape along with Vetch.
And Vetch felt horribly trapped by the question. Once Ari knew that Alta was his final destination, surely now Ari would stop him—
But Ari only shrugged, and answered his own question, as if it had been entirely rhetorical. 'Of course you are; what else is there for you? They'll welcome you, certainly—an escaped serf with a dragonet bonded to him—I can guarantee that they'll welcome you. Now, you'll probably have to prove that Avatre won't fly for anyone else, because they'll assume she's like every other dragonet and try to take her from you, but I don't believe you'll have any trouble convincing them that the two of you come only as a pairing.'
Vetch shrugged, helplessly, but underneath it, he was dismayed, because he hadn't considered that possibility!
