A few weeks later, after working late with my wretched new horse and my vile riding master, I wandered down to Firebreather’s box. I liked to be in the stables at night. Only a single lamp was left hanging, and only the soft noises of the horses disturbed the quiet. You could almost forget you were in Zhev’Na. I looked carefully about to make sure the Leiran boy wasn’t lurking in the shadows anywhere.
“Here, Firebreather. I’ve got oats for you. Come here, and I’ll tell you about the hills of Comigor, if I can remember. You’d like it there.” I sat on the gate, fed him oats from my hand, and told him of the grassy heath where I had ridden when I was little and weak.
“I thought you’d show up here some time.”
“Curse all Drudges, do you follow me?”
He was peeking down through the beams of the loft and caused a considerable avalanche of hay when he jumped down to the stable floor. I dropped off the gate and turned to leave. “I warned you,” I said.
“You thought they’d kill him like they did the Zhid horsemaster, didn’t you?”
“Why would I think that?” I wrenched the gate latch.
“They kill everyone who gets close to you.”
I didn’t want to hear it. Not out loud. “That’s ridiculous. You’re an ignorant Drudge. What do you know about anything?”
“I know a lot of things. I see a lot of things. Maybe I see and know more than you do.”
“It’s better to be ignorant.”
“Maybe that’s true. I wouldn’t trade places with you. You’re no better off than me, except maybe you get more to eat.”
I pulled open the gate, but I didn’t go through it. “Did they really kill Fengara?”
“She came in every morning to train horses new in from the farms. She was mean, but she could magic ‘em until she had ’em doing what she wanted. That morning there was somebody watching her. She was working a big bay. Doing fine until the watcher raised up his hand. Then the horse turned on her, and she couldn’t move to get out of his way. He trampled her flat. The watcher laughed when he walked away.”
“What did he look like?”
“Fellow looked like a desert rat, hard and bony. Black hair cut real short, black beard, dressed fine with rubies on his belt.”
Darzid. I kept one part of my mind fixed tight on the stable and the desert, so he wouldn’t hear what I was thinking.
“Why do you do the things they want?”
“I have no choice. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand you quit riding Firebreather so they wouldn’t kill him. And you warned me off. At first I thought you’d come to be just like them, that they’d made you evil, too, but they haven’t done it yet. Not if you gave up Firebreather to save his life. You don’t have to be what they want.”
I hit him then, so hard it knocked him to the straw and made his mouth bleed. “You are stupid, ignorant, and insolent, and if you don’t watch yourself, I’ll cut out your tongue.” I grabbed his filthy shirt and shook him. “You don’t know anything at all. I have been evil since the day I was born. If my father had known what I was, he would have slit my throat, and if my mother had known it, she would have had me burned alive and drunk wine while they did it. I’ve killed people, and I’ve lashed them until they cried for mercy, and I’ve left men in the desert until they turned black and begged for water. I’ve had a slave killed just to heal my bruises. I am a friend of the Lords of Zhev’Na, and I’m going to become one of them, because that’s what I was born to be. And nothing an ignorant servant says can make any difference at all.”
I felt the Lords stirring… curious… but I kept them shut out. “Leave me alone!” I walked a long way before going back to my house.
It was many weeks until I saw the Leiran boy again-or, rather, I saw him almost every day, but in public places where I could pretend he didn’t exist. I didn’t want to think about him or about Firebreather. Keeping things private from the Lords wasn’t easy. And mostly I wanted what the Lords taught me.
I worked harder every day at my training. I told Darzid I wanted a new master of hand combat, that I had learned all that the current one could teach me, and that only because he outweighed me by three times could he get any advantage at all. The new master taught me how to fight with knives and axes and other small weapons. I got better sparring partners and damaged several of them, so that I guessed they would die. But I learned that if they were good enough, the Zhid would send a surgeon to bandage them up. The better ones were very valuable. I would be a warrior, the best there ever was. Then we would see how the world might be ordered.
One afternoon as I walked into the stables, I saw a Zhid warrior taking a whip to one of the stable hands. “Perhaps a few lashes will improve your hearing,” he was saying. “At least they might improve my disposition.” He laid on another stroke and another. The groom was curled up in the corner of a stall with his hands over his face, but I recognized the ragged breeches and dirty bare feet. He was cut and bleeding all over.
“What’s he done?”
“Young Lord!” The warrior bowed. “This insolent fool ignored my command to wipe the muck off of my boots. He acted as if he didn’t understand what boots were.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t. He’s probably never worn any, and I’ve noticed he’s a particularly ignorant boy,” I said. “Can’t put two sensible words together.”
“I’ve a mind to string him up and lay the flesh off of him to strengthen my arm. He’s no good for anything else.”
“I think he could serve a better purpose, more suited to his calling,” I said. “That horse Zigget is a vicious beast. Look at the walls of his stall and you’ll see; I’m worried he’ll damage his legs kicking holes in them. Maybe he needs something softer to kick. String up this boy in Zigget’s stall for a night. It will either bring some sense into his head, or remove his head where we don’t have to worry about it any more.”
The warrior took the Leiran boy to Firebreather’s box and tied him to the wall as I watched. The Leiran boy was woozy from his beating and bleeding from the lashes. Firebreather snorted and tossed his head.
“I’ll come scrape what’s left off the walls in the morning, young Lord.”
“Perhaps I’ll come to watch. Make sure my horse doesn’t have indigestion.”
The warrior closed the gate behind us, and we walked away laughing.
You find an interesting way to amuse yourself, my young Lord, whispered Ziddari in my head.
“The warriors enjoy such things. I don’t like it myself.” I had to say that. The Lords could read me so easily that it was hard to lie to them.
Shall we amuse ourselves in other ways tonight? asked Notole, as I went to collect my horse.
“No. No lessons tonight. I’ll be riding late, and then I’m going to bed. You’ve had all you’re going to get out of me today.”
As you wish. Tomorrow, then.
For two hours I practiced tight maneuvers, a tedious and boring exercise. At sunset I told the horsemaster that I was going to ride into the desert for a while to cool off. I did so, forcing myself to be patient and not return before all the grooms were asleep. He’d be all right. If he woke up, he could calm Firebreather easily. If he woke up…
When I got back to the stable, I heard a terrible racket from Firebreather’s stall. I shoved my horse into a vacant box, grabbed the lamp from its hook, and threw open the gate. Firebreather had done a thorough job of destroying the walls of the horse box. Though his head was drooping and his eyes swollen half shut, the Leiran boy was murmuring, “Once more. Another lick, and he’ll bring you oats when he comes. Oats for Firebreather. Another nice wallop. Good. It’ll make you strong. Don’t let him down.” The hooves never touched the boy.
“Are you having fun?”
His head lifted a bit. “A barrel of it.”
He drained half the contents of my waterskin. Then I untied the ropes that held him to the rear wall and helped him down to the straw, taking a quick inventory of the bloody stripes on his arms and legs. “I’m not going to clean you up. None of this looks too serious.”