And not an hour later, they were followed by the priests of Nuthis and Thet and Hamun, each in their own variations on priestly dress, who all trooped past Kashet's pen while he was feeding Kashet and Avatre—
"A man can't turn to fart without blowing stink into a meddling priest's face today," growled one of the butchers to another while Vetch was collecting Avatre-sized bits for another feeding. Vetch smothered a laugh and quickly; it was funny, but not to the butcher. By now it was clear that virtually everyone else in the compound but Vetch was worried sick about the way that Altan sea witches had managed to wreak havoc on the Tian Jousters so far within the borders of Tia itself, and he didn't want to draw attention to himself while people were so unsettled. And unfortunately, nothing that the priests were doing was giving anyone any real confidence that the compound had any more protection on it than it had before all the chanting and the processions. Everyone knew that the real, truly powerful magic went on in the holy sanctuaries, without witnesses, and this was just something to make people feel better. Whether that was true or not, Vetch had no idea.
Part of him was fiendishly glad that the witches had done their work so well—part of him wanted to see more damage and fear-just retribution, by his way of thinking. It would be a fine thing for these Tians to get a taste of fear for a change!
But of course, once they started to get over their fear, it would mean trouble for every Altan serf inside the borders of Tia.
Not that all that much real damage had been done, when you came to think about it. It was only because no one had predicted what was coming, or guessed the fury of the storm ahead of time that anyone had gotten hurt at all! No one was likely to be even slightly injured the next time the sea witches sent a storm, because now everyone would fly for home the moment that thunderheads appeared on the horizon. And as he'd pointed out to Ari, rain was not going to cause any harm to the crops.
No point in trying to tell that to anyone here, though. They weren't likely to listen; nerves were on edge, and people were all too ready to imagine that the sea witches could do all manner of dreadful things.
What if they call lightning to strike the compound—or the Great King's Palace! What if they shower us with hailstones the size of pomegranates! What if they make the Great Mother River to run backward!
What if, what if, what if—
What if they make pigs to fly and shit on your heads from above? he thought at last, in irritation, overhearing yet another frightened and wild speculation over a hastily-snatched dinner. That's just as likely, if not more so.
For it didn't seem to occur to anyone that the sea witches had not had much luck at controlling the storm that they had created; they had simply set it in motion and shoved it across the border. Vetch was a farmer's child, and he knew, better than most, just how much worse it could have been if the Altans had any amount of control over that storm. It was, after all, the season of growing, and Altan saboteurs had already made it perfectly clear that the ruin of Tian crops was high on their list of priorities. If the sea witches had had real control over that storm, it would have been hail, not rain, that pounded down on Tian fields. The crops would spring back from the heavy rain and wind. Hail would have ruined them. Why attack the Great King's Palace with lightning, when you could make his whole land starve? For that matter—he didn't much want to think what a hailstorm would have done to dragons and Jousters in the air. There would have been deaths.
Still, all the fuss was of benefit to him. No one paid any attention to what he was doing, how many barrows of meat he took, how many barrows of droppings he left, or where he was when he wasn't where he was supposed to be.
Avatre ate and slept and woke and ate and slept again, like virtually any other baby. By day's end, she was demonstrably bigger and heavier—in a way, it was gratifying to see that all of the work he'd done hauling all that meat had a visible effect!—and Vetch purloined some soft cloths and a jar of oil from the buffing pens to keep her skin soft and supple while she grew. Dragons didn't shed their whole skins at once as they got bigger; instead, they shed their skins a little bit all the time, old skin flaking and falling off, exposing new skin underneath; tiny scales grew larger, and new scales formed along the edges of old ones. Vetch didn't know how a mother dragon kept a dragonet from itching as it grew and shed, but he would have to keep Avatre oiled and buffed, or she'd be driven mad with itching.
Her pen was a still pool in the middle of all the chaos, and he went to it as to a refuge. She murmured sleepily as he took an oil-soaked rag and waded into the hot sand with her, to stretch out her wings and coat them with oil that soaked into them the way the first rain after the Dry soaked into the earth. The scales of her body were tiny, hardly bigger than the grains of sand around her, but they would grow, as she grew. He buffed them gently and rubbed the rag over her, and she lifted her head and gave him another of those wavering, limpid gazes, before settling back down to sleep again. He could hardly bear to leave her, but he had work to do, and it was risk enough taking this much time during the daylight hours with her.
By nightfall, when all the priests had finally finished their bespelling and prayers, less hysterical personalities managed to prevail within the compound. Haraket kept his head the whole time, of course, and Ari and the more senior Jousters seemed to have kept the panic all around from infecting them. Interestingly, just after supper, some of the older priests of various gods turned up to help soothe some of the hysteria, and that helped. One of the most helpful was the High Priest of Hamun, who actually turned up at both the kitchen court and the Jousters' quarters, and pointed out many of the same things that Vetch himself had been thinking all this time. He arrived in his full regalia, leopard-skin cloak with the snarling head over his right shoulder, freshly-shaved head, two standard bearers standing behind him, and bedecked with so much gold jewelry it made Vetch's back ache in sympathy just to look at it. Supposedly he was the Great King's uncle; he certainly had the kingly manner, and that alone seemed to set peoples' minds moving into calmer channels. So at least, by the time that the sun set, a measure of quiet had returned to the Jousters' compound, if not peace.
Things were still edgy and chaotic the next day, and the next, which was all to the good so far as Vetch was concerned. The more people were focusing their attention on what was going on—or presumed to be going on—outside the compound, the less they would notice what was going on inside.
Even Ari was so preoccupied that if Vetch hadn't made a point during his cleaning of snatching away the dirty garments as soon as Ari shed them and making sure the linen chest was full of clean ones, he probably would have worn the same kilt three days running. He wasn't in his quarters or out on Kashet much, and Vetch could only assume that he and the other senior Jousters were engaged in some sort of council with important leaders of the army and the government.