'Better say, we have been called up,' Ari corrected. 'Vetch is the object of disputation. It seems your former master is not letting go of you without a fight.'
Vetch felt his heart plummet right down to the ground, and he went cold all over. Khefti? Oh, gods—
I knew it. I just knew it. This was too good to last—
And Khefti would never, ever, give up anything that he thought was his by right.
'Hah. Neither are we, and the law's on our side,' Haraket said, with a certain grim glee. 'The magistrate's come here with the fat slug in tow, rather than summoning us to his own Court; the magistrate knows who has the rights here. So come along. And don't look like a gazelle in the jaws of a lion, boy!'
But he couldn't help feeling like a gazelle in the jaws of a lion! His stomach had gone into knots and was hurting, and not all of his shivers were due to the cold as he followed Haraket and Ari.
They led him right out of the corridors he knew, into a part of the compound where he had never been before, right past all of the Jousters' Courts.
And all the while, Vetch was in agony. They didn't know Khefti—they didn't know how grasping-clever he could be! If he was here, it was because he had found a law that would give him possession of Vetch again. Khefti would never attempt anything that he thought would fail. If he'd come for Vetch, it was because he already knew that he would win.
Haraket herded him down a dead-end corridor that terminated in an enormous sandstone building, the largest that Vetch had ever seen, which would have been a pale gold in the sunshine, but was a rich brown with the rain soaking into its face. It was easily four stories tall, and must surely be the tallest structure in the compound. The Haras-falcon of the Jousters, painted in red and blue and green, spread his wings above the bronze door, and two seated statues of the Great King Hamunshet, he who had driven the Heyksin out of Tia, and who had, so Ari said, been a Jouster himself, flanked the doorway. They stared off majestically into space, ignoring the mere mortals who passed between them.
Inside, the building was even more splendid than the outside, with wonderful, brilliantly-colored wall paintings of Jousters on their dragons flying above chariots, being led by the Great King Hamunshet, wearing the blue war crown, and mounted on his own malachite-green dragon, driving against the barbarians that had thought to hold Tia.
These were not paintings designed to make Vetch feel like anything other than the foreigner he was. At least it wasn't pictures of some other Great King leading his armies against the Altans.
An avenue of brightly painted and carved stone pillars, formed to look like bundles of latas flowers, led to the dais at the other end of the building. Immense torches in sconces shaped like tala branches mounted onto the pillars provided plenty of light. On the dais was an old man in an immaculate white pleated-linen robe belted with a plain scarlet sash, and a wig of many shoulder-length plaits each ending in a small golden bead. He wore a pectoral necklace of the truth goddess Mhat in gold enameled in scarlet and blue around his neck. Although his garments were anything but ostentatious, he held a little gold whip against his chest, showing that he was the Great King's representative. This, then, was the magistrate.
Below him was Khefti-the-Fat, who looked a bit less fat than he had when Vetch had last seen him. He also looked a bit more tired, and very haggard. But he was dressed as Khefti always dressed when he was trying to impress someone, in a pleated linen kilt and overrobe of wool (which barely confined his belly), and a collar of faience beads, and his best short horsehair wig. 'That's him!' his voice shrilled out as soon as Vetch came into view. 'That's the boy! And that's the Jouster who took him!'
'Are you certain?' the magistrate asked mildly, as if he was totally uninterested in the answer. 'You will swear to this, by the good goddess Mhat?'
'Absolutely,' Khefti replied instantly.
'That's a fascinating observation, since until this moment, this gentleman hasn't heard my voice today, and I was wearing my Jousting helmet at the time I took possession of the boy,' Ari said, his tone one of reason tempered by just a touch of scorn. 'If this man is so prescient as to be able to see my face within that helmet, then perhaps he should be examined by the Thet priests. Tia could use one whose eyes are not deceived by outward appearances and can see through metal and leather.'
Khefti set his jaw, and did not answer. The magistrate's face remained as a mask; Vetch could not tell if he was affected by Khefti's falsehood or not.
'Haraket, Overseer of the Dragon Courts, this man tells me that your Jouster carried off this boy that was in his custody, the serf called Vetch, who is linked to a house and garden in the north.' The magistrate's voice was completely without inflection. Nothing whatsoever was to be read in it, and Vetch felt his heart shrinking within him.
'That is entirely true, my lord,' Haraket said, not at all dismayed. 'It is also true that all serfs are the Great King's, and that a Jouster may requisition anything belonging to the Great King within reason.'
'Within reason! But this was not within reason!' Khefti shrilled, his voice awakening unpleasant echoes in the hall. 'I have no other serf of that bloodline, nor can I obtain one! The assessor has said that I may no longer hold that house and land as a result, a house and land which I got lawfully, and which I have much improved! I have
