He had dug a hole in the path in the moonlight and put the figure in it. That way he could tread on it with every bucket hauled to and from the well, reciting the curses in his head. Maybe if he did that enough, one of them would fly home and strike true. Knowing he would put his foot on his master each time he traveled the path kept him going, even in this heat.
The dust that flew up in a puff from under his bare foot as he planted it on the burial spot was nearly the same no-color as his foot itself, coated with dried clay and dust as it was. All the better; cursing was earth-magic, and maybe this time the links would be strong enough to make the curse stick. Vetch had tried, and more than once, to get something of his master's person to put into the figures he made. But Khefti was a coward, always afraid of magic and curses, and was so careful of such things that he never pared his nails without counting all the bits before burning them, and even made his barber burn the hair he'd scraped off the master's misshapen head before Khefti would leave the shop. Well, Khefti was not well-beloved among his neighbors, so perhaps he was right to be so concerned.
Vetch reluctantly took his heel from the spot where the figure lay buried, and heaved the bucket forward another step. His arms ached so much, and his legs were so wobbly from exhaustion that it was all he could do to keep from dropping to his knees in the dust, but he dared not set the bucket down for an actual rest. At any moment, Khefti might awaken from his nap and look out to see if Vetch was working.
Every morning and every afternoon, as long as the kamiseen blew, he filled the drip-cistern that fed the fragile pottery pipes that in turn watered his Tian master's tala plants. The only source of water for the cistern was the Great Mother River or the master's well, and neither was easier than the other to get water from.
If he fetched water from the well, it meant pulling up the water one bucket at a time, bringing up the rope, hand over hand, with the bucket feeling as though it was getting heavier all the time. And the well was (of course) nearly as far from the cistern as the river, though in the opposite direction. The river was marginally farther away, though he would not have to drag the weighty bucket up its rope. But the clear water from the well wouldn't clog the pottery pipes the way that muddy water from the river would, unless Vetch was very careful when he filled the bucket. Being 'very careful' meant wading out into the river, up to his knees—which put him in the way of the crocodiles, who would not turn down prey that came so obligingly within their reach.
Vetch hated this bucket, too heavy, too big, too awkward, and if he'd dared, he'd have put a hole in the bottom of it. But if he did, Khefti would probably find something worse for him to use— bigger and heavier, or so small as to be nearly useless.
Tala could only be grown during the dry season, after the Great Mother River had shrunk to a shadow of her wet-season greatness. It only set its berries after the sun-baked fields of wheat and barley were harvested and reduced to bleached stubble and the earth beneath the stubble was riddled with cracks as wide as a man's hand. But tala fruits were worth their weight in electrum, for tala fruits gave the Jousters their ability to control their great dragons.
Dragons… dragons and tala were inseparable. The only reason to grow the tala was because of the dragons, the creatures that were the greatest weapons that the Tians had. Vetch had only ever seen the dragons at a far distance, overhead, flying out from the city of Mefis a little up the river, gold and scarlet, blue and green against the hard, bright blue of the sky. They would have been beautiful, if they were not so terrible.
Dragons—well, in part, they were responsible for his being a serf. The war would not have gone so badly for Alta if the Tians hadn't had so many more dragons and Jousters. He supposed, dully, that he should be cursing them, too—but he could only focus his hate on one target at a time, and at the moment, that target was Khefti.
Vetch stumbled over a clod and trod down hard on a stone, saving the bucket from going over at the last moment. 'Night-demons take you!' he cursed the clod and stone alike, and thought, resentfully, that if Khefti were to allow him the clothing that were allotted to a slave, he would have straw sandals, and he would be saved stone bruises, saved the burning heat that came up through his hardened soles. Khefti's paths were like Khefti's heart; hard and uncaring. What could it possibly cost to permit his one serf a simple pair of sandals?
That was the moment when a revelation, and a sickening one, came to him. And he realized that one of his errors in cursing Khefti might have been in the phrasing of the first part of the curse. He had specifically said my sandal to grind his head into the dust. But Vetch wasn't wearing sandals, didn't own sandals (not even the cheapest, woven-straw kind every slave got) and likely never would own sandals. Granted, that was the way that the magician Vetch had spied on had phrased his curse for his customer, but the customer had worn sandals.
Vetch ground his teeth in frustration, and jerked at the rope handle of the bucket. Well, he would continue the cursing for the entire three days, but how could he have overlooked something so simple?
Better he should have cursed the tala fields—
But that would be a dangerous thing to do as well as an audacious one, potentially more dangerous than cursing his master.
Granted, the mud-brick wall held little shrines to every god that could be invoked, and plenty of talismans for growth and plenty, which should have prevented any harm whatsoever from coming to the fields, but if Khefti even thought that Vetch was cursing the fields, his stick would be out and drumming a beat on Vetch's back for days.
Besides, Vetch wanted to hurt Khefti directly, not indirectly. And anyway, as the son of a farmer, someone who loved and served the land, something within Vetch shrank from wishing harm even on a tiny plot of tala plants.
Vetch's master was not a farmer; he was a potter and the master of a brick yard. Nevertheless, he made a great deal of money from his little tala field; his workshops were for his daily bread, but his tala bought him luxuries
