Maybe Kiron had even sacrificed himself for the good of his family, or thought he had. Vetch really didn't know (other than the insults) everything that had been said to his father on that fateful day. Maybe the Captain had threatened awful things to Vetch's mother and sisters. Maybe the insults had just hit Kiron on a raw nerve. Vetch would never know.
But the next afternoon when he returned from cleaning the Jouster's quarters, he found that Ari had brought something back from the market that wasn't for himself or for Kashet, and had left it under the awning where Vetch kept his few belongings.
It was a funerary shrine, a tiny thing no bigger than the box that held a scribe's tools and also served as a desk. With it was a small sebti-figure painted like a prosperous Altan farmer.
It wasn't a Tian shrine either; it was Altan. Such things were not outlawed, after all, for it would be futile to try and prevent even a conquered people from worshiping the gods they'd known all their lives. Futile and stupid, for doing so would guarantee that the worship would go on underground, and probably would result in riots eventually. Besides, the Altan and Tian gods were hardly incompatible; in some cases they differed only in name, and that slightly.
But the Tians believed that a dead man's body must be preserved in order for him to enjoy his life across the Star River, and that grave goods here meant possessions there. For the Altans, even if the body was not preserved, nor given a proper funeral, all could still be well if one of the family or friends saw to it that there was a shrine, a sebti figure properly named, representations of offerings, and the proper prayers. All of which, of course, had been denied to Kiron.
Until now, that is.
Vetch stared at the beautifully made object with his mouth dropping open. Step by step, he ventured to his corner and squatted beside the little shrine. It was basically a box, with a hinged lid, and a series of compartments inside. One held a sarcophagus to put the sebti in, another a set of farming implements in miniature, then came a pair of oxen, an entire herd of goats, a flock of geese, another of chickens, tiny beer jars, minuscule bread loaves, cheeses, bunches of onions, sacks of grain, even a pair of blank-faced nameless shapti-figures to serve as servants. It was perfectly appointed in every way for a farmer's life in the Summer Country; in fact, it must have cost more than a cow in milk or a herd of goats to purchase such fine workmanship. On the top of the shrine when it was closed, there was a niche for the sebti, a bowl for offerings, and best of all, since Vetch didn't know most of the prayers for the dead, the prayers were graven into every surface of the shrine itself.
With hands that shook, Vetch picked up the figurine, and named it; placed it in the niche, and began reciting as much of the proper prayers as he could remember. It wasn't as if he hadn't done all of this before—but the mud figures he made would crumble, or melt in the rains, and worst of all, he simply didn't know the vast majority of the all-important prayers. He couldn't have been older than five or six when his father died; how could he have memorized the prayers?
But it didn't matter now if he recalled them imperfectly or not at all, for the prayers were there, carved into the shrine, perfect and magical, and anything that Vetch did would only reinforce what had already been set in motion once the figure was in its niche, or tucked away in the sarcophagus inside. In his mind's eye, he could see the bridge across the Star River being formed of the magical words, see the Silver Road stretching out from Kiron's feet to the bridge and over it, see his father wake as from a nightmare of wandering, look down and see his way to that paradise in the stars made clear…
And if he wept as he tried to chant, and found the mist mingling with tears that choked his voice, well, there was no one to see him or mock him for his womanish behavior.
Ari said absolutely nothing about the shrine, nor did Haraket; in fact, they paid no more attention to the shrine and to the offerings that Vetch laid fresh in the bowl every morning, than they did to the pallet. But with the shrine and the sebti, even without the proper funeral and tomb, Vetch's father would no longer be a hungry, homeless ghost, wandering the world, unnamed, impotent, alone.
It was impossible to hate Ari after that. Absolutely impossible.
Vetch's hatred of all things Tian began to shrink and chill. Not that it went away, far from it. It was still there, but it was no longer quite so all-encompassing and all-consuming. He no longer began and ended his days in hate; he woke thinking of other things—some special duty, or some possible amusement—and he went to sleep with the prayers for the dead on his lips, instead of curses. And with those prayers, there was generally one for Ari.
Keep him safe, he would plead with the Altan gods. Defeat him, but don't hurt him, don't hurt Kashet. Make them dizzy, make them ill, but don't hurt them.
He included Kashet in his prayers because he knew that if anything were to happen to Kashet, Ari would be shattered. For that matter, so would Vetch himself.
There was no doubt that there was a real bond now between Kashet and his dragon boy, a mutual bond. Kashet would often solicit attention from him, and even became playful around him, engaging in a tug-of-war with a spare leather strap he liked to toy with, or throwing it into the air with a toss of his head for Vetch to catch. These days of relative peace, with more leisure time, meant that he and Kashet spent more time together—and he had more time and opportunity to learn about his charge from Ari. The more he learned about dragons, the more he found himself wanting to learn—and it was certainly a subject that Ari never got tired of talking about.
But the rains couldn't last forever, much as he would have liked them to. Two days after Ari left the shrine for him, the compound was a-buzz with the word that the waters of the Great Mother River were rising at last. The Flood had begun, that would cover all of the arable land—if the gods were kind—with the silt that made Tian land so fertile. The same Floods would proceed downriver toward Alta, isolating it, and making it impossible for any fighting to take place until the waters receded.
"Patrols will begin very soon," Ari said absently, when Vetch gave him the news that morning.
Vetch didn't want to think about that, so he changed the subject.
"Haraket said before the rains that he thought Kashet was putting on a growth spurt, but he's fully grown now," Vetch said, as Ari scratched just under Kashet's chin. "How can it be that he's growing, if he's already adult?"
"They never do actually stop growing," Ari replied. "In fact, I'm pleased to hear that; Kashet's a bit leaner than some of the others, and I've been concerned about that. Is he eating more?"
"A lot more," Vetch said ruefully—since he was the one who had to haul the extra, twice daily. "And I've had to let out his chest straps."
"Good; he's putting on the muscle I think he needs, then." There was clear satisfaction in Ari's voice.
What Ari didn't know about dragons wasn't worth knowing, and Vetch wanted to know it all, too. It wasn't enough for him, as it seemed to be for the other dragon boys, just to feed and groom Kashet. And today, with the resumption of Ari's duties looming ahead, he threw caution to the wind and piled question atop question, for when patrols began, who knew when Ari would be available to answer those questions again?