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anger he’d felt at having his bucket stolen by yet another Tian overcome with sheer astonishment at seeing one of the Jousters here. He had never seen a Jouster so close before, not even an Altan Jouster.
    Where there was a Jouster, could his dragon be far away? Vetch looked wildly about, then a snort made him look up, to the roof of the pottery-drying shed inside Khefti’s walls, and there was the great dragon itself, looking down at him with an aloof gaze remarkably like that of one of the pampered cats that swarmed the Temple of Pashet.
    Vetch gaped; the dragon was a thing of multicolored, jeweled beauty, slim and supple, and quite as large as the shed it perched upon. A narrow, golden, large-eyed head oddly reminiscent of a well-bred horse’s, with the same slim muzzle, dished nose, and broad forehead, was surmounted by a bony crest that shaded from deep gold into a pale electrum, as pale and translucent as the finest alabaster. That elegant golden head rose on a long, flexible neck that shaded from emerald to blue. The wings, of blue shading into purple, rising from muscular shoulders twice the bulk of the hindquarters, were spread to catch the sun. The long, whiplike tail, which reversed the shading of the neck, going from green into gold, was curled around the cruel golden talons of the forefeet, as the dragon lounged comfortably on the flat roof of the shed. The eyes, though, were was what caught you and held you—slit-pupiled and the deep crimson of the finest rubies—
    Not that Vetch had ever seen the finest rubies, or indeed, any rubies. But that was what people said, and certainly the colors sported by this beast had to be every bit as gorgeous as the magnificent wall paintings in even the poorest Tian temples depicting the jewels worn by gods and kings.
    Such beauty—it was hard to look at the dragon and remember that he should hate it.
    The Jouster finished his drink and dumped the rest of the bucket of water over his head without even bothering to take off his helmet, and the anger awoke again, at the wanton wastage of what had taken Vetch so long to haul. Vetch made an involuntary whimper of suppressed rage in the back of his throat as the man tossed the bucket aside, as if it was something of no account, to be discarded.
    Which meant, of course, that if Khefti came out at this moment and saw him without the bucket in his hands—
    Now anger turned to panic. Vetch scrambled after the bucket just as his master, the last creature he wanted to see at this moment, appeared in the door of his courtyard. Khefti was huge and terrifying; his size alone was intimidating, for he must have weighed twice as much as this Jouster. His gut bulged over his dingy, grease-stained linen kilt, his fat hands were quick with a blow, and his doughy face wore a perpetual scowl beneath his striped headdress.
    He could not have chosen a worse moment to wake up from his nap and come a-prowling—exactly as Vetch had feared.
    Khefti-the-Fat was the worst master Vetch had ever had, for though most of them had regarded their serfs as of less importance than a donkey, none had been cruel. Vetch was the only one of his family left with Khefti; the Tian who had originally taken control of their land along with that of their neighbors, had sold it in turn to another prosperous Tian, who in his turn broke it up into smaller portions and sold them. Each time it was sold, Vetch’s family got a new set of masters, but at least they had been allowed to remain together, working the earth still—for the owners had all agreed that it would be in their best interest to farm it communally, using the combined labor of Vetch and his family, which after all, cost nothing. This went on for several years, until at last, came the purchasers that included Khefti. Khefti had specifically bought the house itself, and the family vegetable garden. And Khefti was not inclined to farm the land communally with the others, as every other owner had been; in