So that was three things he hadn't done in… forever. He had smiled, sung, and laughed, all in the same morning, before breakfast. He felt a little dizzy with amazement. Yesterday, he had nothing to look forward to but misery. Today—
How beautiful art Thou, radiant with banners!
Kashet ate faster than he had at the two previous meals, probably because he was so hungry. He tossed the meat chunks down his throat as fast as he could without choking, and the barrow was already half empty.
Watching how much Kashet was eating, Vetch made a decision; he dumped what was left in the barrow on the ledge beside the sand wallow, and went back for another half a load. Haraket was still there, and gave him a surprised look and a raised eyebrow when he saw Vetch again. 'Kashet's really hungry,' Vetch said diffidently to the Overseer. 'I thought—should I bring him extra?'
'Not just before a flight—but feed him extra when he comes back in, as much as he'll take,' Haraket decreed, with a thoughtful nod. Then he muttered, as if to himself, 'Huh. He may be putting on a growth spurt; they never actually stop growing, after all.'
Vetch waited; he had the feeling that Haraket was making up his mind about something.
'Hmm,' Haraket mused, then did make up his mind. 'Wait a moment, boy—Notan!'
The Overseer waved at one of the butchers. 'Bring me a basket of hearts for this boy!'
The butcher nodded, and brought over what had been requested, dumping the organs into Vetch's barrow.
'Now, you go give those to Kashet,' Haraket ordered. 'If he's really putting on a growth spurt—that's not impossible, even though he's mature—even though he's going to be flying shortly, we need to do something about it. So whenever he starts eating like a pig, but he's going to be going straight out, you ask for a basket of hearts. That's dense meat; it'll give him strength without weighing him down. Now, off with you—and Vetch?'
Vetch was already halfway to the door, but he turned obediently at that. 'Sir?' he asked.
Haraket was actually smiling, broadly. It quite transformed his face. 'Good lad. You're thinking. Keep it up. Ask me first, before you do anything with Kashet, but keep thinking.'
'Yes, sir,' he said, feeling a flush of pride warming his cheeks and ears. He all but ran back to the pen, pushing the much-lighter barrow before him.
Kashet dove on the hearts as if he hadn't just eaten a full barrow load of meat. Clearly, they were a great treat for the dragon. Vetch had to laugh, though, at the playful way he would pick one out of the barrow, toss it into the air, and catch it before it hit the ground; Kashet seemed to enjoy the sound of his laughter, too, for he curved his neck and regarded his dragon boy with a sparkling eye that seemed, at least to Vetch, to have a great deal of good-natured humor in it.
Kashet ate every scrap of meat that Vetch had brought, but the last few hearts he ate daintily, taking time to enjoy them. Vetch saddled the now-sated dragon, and the Jouster arrived just as he finished tightening the last of the straps. Kashet cooperated beautifully, dropping and rising on Vetch's commands as if he had been doing so for years. Once again, Vetch could overhear what was going on in the nearer pens, and it seemed that the other dragons were finally being less obstinate, but only just. Presumably the tala made them more obedient. But the other dragon boys had to shout their orders over and over before the dragons obeyed, so Vetch was quite finished long before they got their dragons all buckled and cinched down.
Ari didn't say anything, but he did give Vetch an abstracted nod when he arrived; after a brief and approving inspection of the harness, Ari patted Vetch on the back in an absentminded way and climbed into his saddle, and a moment later, he and Kashet were hardly more than a little dot in the sky.
By now, the sun was well up and it was beginning to get warm; not all the heat was coming from the sand in Kashet's wallow. The kamseen whined around the tops of the walls, bringing with it the scent of the desert, and overhead, a vulture circled. And Vetch was beginning to get hungry, despite the packet of bread and meat and honey cake he'd been given last night.
Well, the sooner he got the pen clean, the sooner he could get something to eat.
He got to work, not only cleaning out the droppings, but giving everything a good stir about with a rake that he found. Yesterday at this time, he'd been hauling water and clay and river mud for Khefti's pottery and the brick yard, with nothing more than a loaf end in his stomach. He'd have done ten times the work he'd done this morning, with more in front of him, and the promise of no reward at all.
This—well, he got to judge the size of his loads, the tools were the right size for someone as little as he, and the raking was no work at all compared with anything Khefti set him to do.
At last, with the sun now well above the walls of the compound, and casting long slants of golden light on the sand of the pen, he put the rake away. The light had not yet made its way down into the corridors between the pens, but certainly he had done enough by now to justify getting his breakfast.
