Joust by Mercedes Lackey

paid attention to court ladies. Oh, he likes his women, well enough—he’s never even looked at a pretty boy—but the court ladies haven’t a chance with him. Paid night blossoms, yes; Ari is like any other man with them.”
    One who had been silent until then rolled his eyes. “Like any other man? Like a Bull of Hamun, you mean! Lesoth says that Ari’s got a mighty reputation in Seles-teri’s wine shop! The dancing girls there all know him well!”
    The others laughed knowingly, and Vetch gathered from that comment that “Seles-teri’s wine shop” was one of those where the dancing girls performed horizontally as well as vertically.
    “But ladies,” the boy continued, shaking his head. “Ladies might as well throw their silver down a well as waste it on paying us to take love poems to Ari. Married or not, it doesn’t matter. He won’t so much as look at them, no matter how they fling themselves at him.”
    “So they might as well give their silver to us as not,” a third put in, impudently. “It doesn’t hurt Ari, and a foolish woman can’t hold onto money anyway. I’ll carry love poems for them, aye, and even put them in his bed!”
    A fourth snorted. “No more chance of that with the new boy around. It’s him who’ll get the silver now.”
    But the second shook his head. “Na, na, the silver will stay in their purses, worse luck. You know they won’t trouble to bribe a serf, they’ll just order him to do what they want. Not that it’ll make any difference. Four years I’ve served Jouster Kelandek, and he says that Ari’s the smartest of the whole pack of Jousters. That Ari prefers paid women, because he can send them off when his pleasures are over, and no jealousies and weeping, after, and that if he had any sense, he’d follow Ari’s example, instead of getting entangled with spoiled cats.”
    They seemed to have forgotten Vetch’s presence entirely—or else, because he was a serf, they paid no more heed to him than if he’d been a piece of furniture. Which was fine by Vetch. The more he could overhear about his new master, the better.
    And the boys continued on in that vein, each one with another tidbit or two, about the ladies who had tried to attract Ari’s attentions, about the dancing girls and pleasure women (the higher-class ones, called “night blossoms”) that Ari had brought back to his rooms after an evening spent outside the compound or when a troupe was sent in by the Great King or the Vizier to entertain the Jousters as a reward. It was very soon apparent to Vetch, though, that despite all the innuendoes and sly hints, the other dragon boys knew little more about what happened in Ari’s quarters then than did the ladies who sought in vain for the Jouster’s favors. There was much speculation and very little substance in what they said.
    It was also quite clear that this—the carrying of messages from ladies who sought the company of a Jouster—was the easiest source of some, if not all, of the dragon boys’ ready money. The messages were clandestine, of course. Those ladies that were married needed to take care that their lords and husbands didn’t find out that they fancied a Jouster. Those that were concubines needed to be nearly as careful, for though they might not have the position of wife, their lords would take it very much amiss to discover they were offering those favors to another which should have been reserved to their lord and master. Only the unmarried and unmated ladies could distribute their favors freely, and even then, care had to be taken that a jealous suitor or wrathful father did not get wind of a romance. The Jousters were a class apart, but that didn’t mean that parents of rank wanted a love affair going on with one. Jousters had no real wealth of their own unless it came to them from their fathers, no land, no property, nothing of substance to offer a wife and her family in the way of an alliance. Everything they enjoyed was provided by