either.
Which was just about the time when she blundered right down onto the ground, stumbling in a tangle of legs and wings, and he went somersaulting over her shoulder again, this time entirely by accident, and this time hitting the ground instead of Kashet's neck.
Hard.
Very hard.
So it was true that when you hit your head, you saw stars…
Fortunately for the shredded remains of his dignity, if any of the Bedu were laughing, they were doing so silently, behind their veils. He didn't actually break anything, although he did indeed see stars for a moment. By the time he picked himself up off the ground and dusted himself off, one of the Bedu had approached Ari, apparently to act as spokesperson for the group. Male or female, there was no telling; they all dressed alike in those robes, and all wore headcloths and veils that showed only their eyes.
'I see you, Jouster of Tia,' said a voice from behind the veil— either a high male voice, or a low female; Vetch couldn't tell which.
'I see you, Mouth of the People,' Ari replied respectfully, briefly touching first his chest, then lips, then forehead with his first two fingers. 'I come in peace.'
'I greet you in peace,' the Bedu answered, returning his salutation. 'Do you seek aught here, from us, besides peace?'
'Water, and a bargain, in service, not goods.' Ari sketched another little bow, this time in Vetch's direction. Awkwardly, Vetch copied his salute of respect. 'My apprentice is of Alta.'
There were murmurs from behind the veils of the other Bedu gathering around them, but no one spoke aloud but the one designated as the 'Mouth.'
'Of Alta.' The Mouth feigned no surprise. 'He has the look of it. Well, Jouster of Tia, Apprentice of Alta, what is it that you bargain for?'
Ari took a deep breath; Vetch held his. Ari looked squarely into the eyes behind the veil.
'My apprentice would go home.'
Vetch had the feeling that no matter what Ari had told the Mouth of the Bedu, that personage would have at least appeared as if it was all perfectly expected and ordinary. Then again, perhaps it was. There were Seers enough in the Temples, so perhaps this person was a Seer as well as spokesperson. Perhaps he—or she— had known for some time that they were coming, and what they would ask.
Whether a Seer or not, the Mouth, however, was a shrewd bargainer, and proceeded to make it very plain that the services of the Bedu were not to be had cheaply.
Ari, for his part, made it equally clear that he expected a great deal out of the Bedu for their payment, and that he was no green goose fresh from the farmyard to be plucked.
He drank from his own waterskin, though the well was in plain sight, and stood under the broiling sun as if it were the coolest of days in the winter rains. 'Passage-right, for this mere child and his beast, two debeks,' Ari began.
The Mouth chuckled richly. 'You take us for unsophisticated rustics, perhaps. A fugitive, with a dragon, going to your enemies? Twenty.'
'Five,' Ari countered. 'It is no dragon, but a dragonet, and not even one that was on the roster.'
'Eighteen. He will need hiding. How does one hide a dragon?'
So the bargaining went; first passage-right, then hunting-right, shelter-right, water-right, then something called lead-on, forage-and-feed, cover-right… every one of these things was considered, bargained over, hotly contested, then agreed to. And Vetch had no idea whatsoever what these things meant, how much they were going to cost, or—most importantly, how they were going to be paid for. There surely wasn't enough in that little pouch of jewelry and coin to cover even one of these 'rights'! Was he expected to go into another kind of servitude to pay for his passage? But how could anything he knew be reckoned of enough worth to pay it in any reasonable length of time?
He, at least, could use Avatre as a shade, and followed Ari's example in drinking from one of the three waterskins he'd filled. He offered some to Avatre, but she wasn't interested, so he scooped up handfuls of sand and gave her a buffing as they waited and listened. The rest of the Bedu remained encircling them, watching and listening just as avidly.
Finally, after an endless amount of bargaining, while the barge of the sun god crept toward the west, Ari and
