Help me, he whispered to the Altan gods—who, it seemed, could reach into this Tian stronghold, after all. Help me, keep her secret, keep her safe…
And the prayer murmured on into his dreams, a prayer that surely, surely, they must answer.
VETCH was helplessly, hopelessly, in love. He had never felt like this before, and yet the emotion was one he recognized immediately. There was nothing he would not have done, would not have sacrificed for his beloved. His heart was lost to him, and he didn't care.
Of course, if all of the love songs he'd heard wafting out of the Jousters' quarters during feasts and festivals were true, that was pretty much how he should feel.
From the moment that Avatre curled her body to fit the curve of his, he was in love. And it didn't matter, at all, that at the moment probably all he was to her was to be the bringer-of-food and the one who made sure her itches were soothed and her messes cleaned away. He loved her with a passion the like of which he had never felt before, a passion that shook him to his bones. It frightened him, if he stopped to think about it. He had never had so much to lose before. If he lost Avatre—
He wouldn't think about that, couldn't waste the time that would be lost if he thought about it and froze in an agony of fear and indecision. He had to concentrate on how to keep her, not on what would happen if he lost her.
He'd had some small inkling of how deeply he had fallen that night, when he went to sleep curled protectively around her, with his last thoughts before slumber being a prayer for her safety. It really came home to him when he woke in the first light of dawning, still curved around her, and looked at the oddly endearing creature that had been entrusted by the gods to his care, and his first thought was a prayer for her safety. Her hot little body was the exact temperature of the sand under both of them, and as she breathed in and out, he felt himself changing the pattern of his breathing to match hers.
Then, when she woke, just a little, and blinked at him trustingly before going back to sleep again, he knew that he was forever lost to her.
Was this how Ari had felt, when he first looked into Kashet's eyes?
Rain still pattered lightly on the canvas overhead; it was very peaceful and comfortable, and he wanted to go back to sleep—but he didn't dare. He would have so much work today, it didn't bear thinking about, except that he would have to think about it very hard indeed, and right now, in order to plan things properly. Every moment, between dawn and dusk, would have to be planned and accounted for, if he was to get his work done and give her the kind of attention she required.
Both Avatre and Kashet would need feeding as soon as it got light enough for them to wake properly, so he would have to manage to crowd both activities into the same amount of time he normally took for Kashet. Now, even if she was awake, he couldn't feed Avatre now; no one would be at the butchery yet, and neither Kashet nor Avatre would want their breakfast until they were thoroughly awake and their appetites were roused. But there were other things he could do now in order to get them out of the way. For instance, he could slip over to the leather room, light a lamp, and get his quota for yesterday and today done early. Then he could get the food for both dragon and dragonet, feed Avatre first, then Kashet—and if the rain cleared enough that Ari showed up for a morning patrol, Vetch would be where he belonged, in Kashet's pen. Then he'd have to clean Kashet's pen in half the time he usually took, possibly feed Avatre again and certainly clean her messes up, and be ready for when Kashet and Ari came back…oh, and at some point during all that, he should get himself bathed and fed, somehow. He should—but he knew very well that if anyone went short, it wouldn't be his charges.
I can bathe in the water from Kashet's trough. I can eat something on the run.
He eased himself away from Avatre, heaped some hot sand up where he had been in order to support her, and went off to get a clean kilt and get to work. He was glad enough of the lamps in their sheltered niches along the corridors; someone must have come along and substituted the rainy-season lamps for the torches that had been placed there after the rains were supposedly over. Though the sky overhead was getting lighter, it was dark down between the walls. It was strange to be the only one in the leather room; it was quite peaceful, actually, and he found that when he wasn't distracted by the gossip of the other boys, he actually got things done a little faster. By the time he put the last of his pieces in the 'finished' piles, though it was still raining and overcast, he could tell that it was late enough that he would be able to get meat for his charges. He wasn't the first at the butchery, but he was certainly among the earliest, and as he stood in line in the gloom of that overcast morning, listening to the rain fall in the corridor outside, he paid close attention while the butchers and the other boys talked. Now, more than ever, he needed to know what was going on and being said in the rest of the compound. What were the Jousters going to do in this out-of-season rain? And if there was talk of Altan witchery, would anyone connect it with him?
