"Oh." Now Vetch felt guilty all over again, and felt he had to defend himself. "Well, I don't hate you, Baken. But you can't blame me for—
"Of course I can't, and I don't," Baken replied, interrupting him. "1 just didn't want the most skilled dragon boy in the compound to be my enemy, that's all. Here. In my country, when men agree to be comrades, they shake hands." He thrust out his hand.
Vetch shook it, gladly—and gladder still that Baken hadn't said "friends." Of all of the people in the entire compound, Baken was the last one he dared to have as a friend, for he was the one most likely to uncover the secret of Avatre's existence. "I don't mind that you're getting all the attention, that Haraket's depending on you, and that—well—you've taken over the new boys," he said, earnestly. "Honest, I don't. The freeborn boys probably do hate you, though."
Once again, that gleaming, toothy grin. "Let them. The boys I've picked are all like you and me—well, maybe without our gods-bestowed gift for understanding animals, but they're just as hardworking and they like their charges. They aren't freeborn boys with plenty of choices ahead of them, and plenty of arrogance to match their choices. They already know that there are many, many worse places to serve, and they're learning that this is one of the best, and they do not want to lose their places. Pretty soon, our kind will outnumber theirs, and I know we'll outlast them. So let them stew in their own juices until they can't even stand themselves. Just so long as you and I have gotten things straight between us. There shouldn't be any animosity between men of our kind."
Men! That was sheerest flattery, and Vetch knew it. Still, it was sweet to hear, even if it was flattery. "You need to meet Ari," Vetch said at last. "He's—different. You'll admire him, you know, he's not like any other Jouster in the compound, maybe not like any other, ever."
"So Lord Haraket says." Baken nodded. "He seems very different, and everything I've heard is good. He might change my mind about—
He stopped abruptly, but now it was Vetch's turn to pounce alertly on an incautious phrase. If Baken had forced him into an uncomfortable place, well, turnabout was fair play. "About Joust-ers, you mean? Just why don't you like the Jousters?"
He whispered that; he didn't want to get Baken in any trouble, just because he wanted to know one of Baken's secrets. Baken frowned, fiercely, but he couldn't conceal his own unease.
Ha! Got you!
"What makes you think that I don't—" Baken began aggressively, but stopped, and gave a self-conscious laugh. "You're pretty observant as well as clever, Vetch."
"Maybe. But I want to know," Vetch replied, not allowing himself to be deflected. "Ari is—I don't want anyone around him who doesn't like Jousters and might do or say something that would give him trouble. Unless you've got an awfully good reason for it."
And it had better be an astonishingly good reason.
"You have a point." Baken studied him for a moment. "And all right; I think I can trust you, so I'll tell you—though it isn't merely that I don't like Jousters, it goes further than that. It isn't because of what they do, it's because of what they are." He paused a moment, and signaled to a server, who plunked down a platter of still-sizzling meat and another of onions between them, with an undisguised look of hero worship for Baken, who answered it with a wink. "You eat, though, while I talk. You look starved enough as it is."
"All right," Vetch agreed—since now that his gut had unknotted, it was growling. He plucked a hot piece of meat from the platter and dropped it quickly on the bread, adding an onion slice; he waited only a few moments for it to cool before biting off a mouthful.
"It isn't that they're the masters either. It's more complicated than that." Baken took an empty beer jar from the table and brooded down at it. "As I said, I've always been treated well; I don't think anyone ever realized how I feel. As I'm sure you've noticed, no one ever pays any attention to the feelings of serfs and slaves."
Vetch waited, patient as a cat at a mouse-hole with only one entrance.
"What do you call a man who calls up his servants, has hunting birds brought out to him, takes one on his fist, unhoods and casts it, and basks in the admiration of his peers when it takes a fat duck?" Baken asked, after a time.
"Um—" Vetch replied, and shook his head. "Um—a noble? A rich man?" he hazarded.
"Ah. Good answer. But not the one that makes me angry." Baken's lip curled. "You see, what he calls himself is 'falconer.' He has not caught the birds nor taken them at great hazard from the nest, scaling the cliffs to find them and bring them down. He has not tended them, he does not feed them, he has not trained them." The bitterness in Baken's voice made Vetch blink in surprise. "If the bird flies away, his wrath is only for the loss of a valuable possession, not because he is losing something he has invested a part of his life and self in. If it is recovered, he is pleased only because his possession is returned to him, not because he has gotten back something that is near as dear as a child. But the man who has done all those things, is all those things, is not called a 'falconer.' He is called slave, servant, and he has not even the right to challenge the master when the master says 'I will have this bird,' and he knows that the bird is not fit to fly that day."
There was a story behind that—perhaps many. Vetch didn't want to know them. There was already enough pain in his own short life; he didn't want to add the burden of Baken's to his own. Already he had three people besides himself in his prayers—his father, Ari, and Avatre. If he added any more, the gods might begin to wonder what was wrong with him, that he assailed their ears with so many pleas.
"Now—at least there is a separate name for the man who takes a dragon who is cared for by someone else, trained by someone else—who mounts into the saddle and flies it off, caring nothing except that it do what it is trained to do and bring him glory," Baken continued, his jaw rigid. "And at least he is named for what he does, and not the good beast that he treats as he would a mere chariot."
Vetch started, hearing his own thoughts echoed so exactly.
"He takes a creature that would, on its own, serve him in— say—hunting, and he turns it into a weapon, a horrible weapon, and exposes it to the spears and arrows of enemies with his only thought being where he would get another if this one fell." Baken's gaze smoldered. "And which of these Jousters truly knows his dragon, or has studied its ways and made it his friend, or has even cared for his own beast for so much as a day?"
"Ari has," Vetch said, stoutly, raising his chin. "Ari raised Kashet, trained him all by himself, and comes to be with him nearly every night. And he would tend Kashet himself, now, if he had the time. And he doesn't trust Kashet's care to just anyone either!"
Baken's rigid expression softened, and he patted Vetch on the head like a small child. Vetch bristled a little, but kept his resentment on a tight leash. To Baken, doubtless, he was a small child. That was the hazard of being so little. "So I have been told, and see no reason to disbelieve it. So your Ari is a single paragon among the Jousters, as the Commander of Dragons is a paragon among the nobles, given that he has taken, cared for, and trained his own birds, dogs, and horses." Now there was plain admiration in Baken's voice, and Vetch guessed that of all of Baken's masters or the men those masters consorted with, the Commander of Dragons had been the only one who had earned Baken's highest regard. "Such men are worth serving, and serving well. Our Haraket is another such. But such men are few, and often given names they do not deserve, when they take the praise that is rightly given to men that they think beneath their notice."