Dragon's Heart (5 page)

Jakkin wasn't surprised Jo-Janekk knew he was off to the shower. The nursery was always a hive of gossip, innuendo, guesswork, and talk. But he was stunned at such generosity—bonders usually had to pay for everything.

"I will," he whispered to Jo-Janekk, wondering if home had changed so much in just a year.

***

THE SHOWER he took was long and hot. He'd all but forgotten what they were like, then remembered with a fierce attention to every part of his body. Having recently swum through an underground river, he thought that he could hardly be all that dirty. But it was as though this one long hot shower was able to wash away a full year of dirt. He luxuriated in the heat, the force of the water pounding on his shoulders, his head, his back. He let more than just the dirt wash away. He let go of suspicion, terror, longing, doubt.

Wrapped in a towel, he made his way to the bondhouse store, where fresh clothing was piled on marked shelves, sandals hung by their straps, sturdy gloves, knives, anything a bonder might want and be willing to pay for.

Jo-Janekk saw him and said, "Size?"

"I was 14s," Jakkin said.

Jo-Janekk whipped around to the 14s shelf and took down a shirt. He held it out to Jakkin. "Not any longer." Another grin.

Jakkin took the shirt and held it up against himself. In the year he'd been gone, he'd grown several hands more, put on muscle.

Head cocked to one side, Jo-Janekk sized up Jakkin. He took a shirt and leather vest and pants from the 18s shelf. "This should be right."

Jakkin went behind the changing wall, stripped off the towel, and got dressed. The 18s were a perfect fit.

"As I said, no charge. Not that you have any coins yet," Jo-Janekk told him. "Sandals—well, that's a different matter. When you're ready for new ones, come with a pocketful of coins and we'll see." He brushed a bit of graying hair back from his face.

"What do I do with my old clothes?" Jakkin asked.

"Put 'em in the burn barrel," Jo-Janekk said, then laughed.

Jakkin laughed as well.
Maybe that's where my past should go, too—into the burn barrel.
He sent out a loud crackling red-hot picture, as if everything in the past year was afire.
Everything except for Akki, and the dragons.
He sent out the fire picture again, but Akki didn't respond. She may have ignored him by choice, or been asleep, or out of range. And of course no one in the nursery responded, either.

AKKI CONSIDERED taking a quick nap. She even allowed Kkarina to walk her down the hall to the room at the end of the corridor, a room she was to share with two other girls, both newcomers to the nursery. Vonikka was a redhead with a crooked grin. The other, a mousy blond whose looks were at odds with her rather outsized personality, was called Larkki. Kkarina had arranged it all while Akki had been showering.

"But my old room..." Akki began. The idea of sharing with two girls who were more than likely to be chatterers suddenly made her feel slightly sick.
All that talking...

"Everyone's been resettled in different rooms," Kkarina told her. "Voted on it. Consequences of being free, so they tell me. Though I'm too old to change, and I told them so. 'If you want me up and cooking every day, I need my own place.' And they gave it to me. As for the rest ... well, rooms assigned by age and by pair-bonding. Even Likkarn shares. Though I suppose, just for now, you could bunk in with me. It would be like old times, when you were a little girl and had nightmares and would run into my room for a snuggle and to fall asleep in Kay-Ma's arms."

Kkarina will ask more questions than a do^en strangers,
Akki thought. "I'm too old for nightmares," she said, sweetening it a bit by adding, "though if I have any, I'll know where to go."

"Here we are," Kkarina said, pointing to a large sunny room with two double bunk beds, standing against opposite walls. She added, without actually needing to, "You've the choice of two beds."

They were both lower bunks, and she chose the one on the north wall. There were sheets, pillows, pillowcases, and blankets folded on top of the mattresses.

A mattress!
It had been a year since she'd slept on a real mattress. Even an old, lumpy nursery mattress seemed like her idea of heaven.

"I'll help you make the bed," Kkarina began, but Akki pushed her out of the room.

"Just send someone for me when it's time to eat." She closed the door.

"I could bring you ..." Kkarina's voice came through the door.

But Akki didn't answer, having already gone back to the bed and flopped down on the unmade lower bunk. Curling around the stack of bedclothes, she snagged the pillow and stuffed it under her head. Without giving any more thought to what she was doing, she fell fast asleep.

Akki dreamed of caves and beatings and holding her breath beneath a pool of blood-red water. She woke sweating, still holding her breath.

"
Jakkin!
" She sent him a reprise of her dream. But wherever he was, he was too far away to hear her. Or else—and here she made a brilliant guess—he was in the shower. Water blocked sendings, as they'd discovered in the cave pool.

She got up with no idea of how long she'd slept. It hadn't been an easy or comforting sleep, anyway, so she had no regrets about leaving the bed. In fact, she felt even more exhausted than she had before lying down.

There was a small mirror tacked to the wall over a shared dresser. She stared at herself for a moment. No wonder Kkarina had been pressing food on her. Though she'd always been slim, now she was thinner than was healthy.
I could cut someone with these cheekbones.
She wondered why Jakkin had never said anything.

"
Jakkin!
" She tried again, though they'd talked about not sending to one another, at least not when they were close. Surely they were far apart now. But she stopped herself from calling again.

Something teased into her brain. Not a sending, but ... an odor. It was sharp and sweet at the same time. She could smell cooking. Her stomach began to growl. Looking at herself once again in the mirror, she shook her finger at her image. "Time to eat, skinny girl."

She patted her hair down. It was still damp. So, she hadn't slept all that much after all.

Leaving the room, she turned right and headed down the hall. She made her way quickly to the dining room. A low, quick chatter from the diners came through the closed door.

Standing outside, she knew she couldn't go in alone. Of all the things she'd overcome in the last year, facing all the nursery workers—her old friends—in the dining hall now suddenly seemed the most overwhelming of all.

***

BY THE TIME Jakkin got to the dining hall, the place was packed with nursery folk. He was surprised to find Akki waiting outside the door.

"Forget how to open it?" he asked.

"I couldn't face them without you." She sent him a tremulous small waterfall. "Just dealing with Kkarina was hard enough. I'd forgotten how much she likes to talk."

He nodded in understanding, then peeked in through the door at the diners. Most of them he recognized, but he was surprised by the number of new faces. Normally, nursery workers didn't move about a whole lot, even in a year. He was about to send Akki an answering waterfall to show how he was nervous, too, when a tap on his shoulder made him turn.

Slakk—less a friend than a hatchmate—grabbed his hand to shake it, and in his curiously flat voice, peppered Jakkin with questions. "I heard you were here. I heard! Are you okay? You've lost weight. Are you glad to be home?"

Then, without waiting for any answers, Slakk pulled them both into the dining hall, where Jakkin's hand was shaken not once, but many times, by his old companions. Akki was enveloped in broad hugs. It was as if by touching him, by hugging Akki, the nursery folk could be sure that the two of them were really alive after all and not just a rumor.

"Awfully solid for ghosts," Akki whispered to Jakkin, before she was whirled away from his side by more hugs.

And the questions came at them like a rattle of rocks against a wall. "Were you hurt? Seen any feral dragons? What did you eat? How did you sleep? Did you learn to make fire? What about..."

It was overwhelming and they both ended up silenced by the onslaught.

Once they managed to sit down at a table, seated across from each other at the long dinner table, Jakkin realized that Akki was in new clothes, too. Bonder pants, a leather vest laced up the front, her hair still wet from the shower and tied back with a leather string. She sat upright, as if ready to flee, her mouth stretched thin, taut.

Jakkin sent her a compliment, flowers in a green field. Her answer was a nod and a tentative smile, but she said nothing. She sent nothing back, either.

His closest nursery bondmates—Slakk and Errikkin—sat on either side of him, and soon Akki was enclosed by two new girls.
But,
Jakkin thought,
Akki is right.
He'd forgotten how much people in the nursery liked to talk.
Aloud!
In the mountains he and Akki had spoken mostly with pictures. Sometimes they went days without speaking aloud. And the trogs didn't speak aloud at all. This cascade of spoken words was beginning to be a problem.

Attending to the food seemed the easiest thing to do, so Jakkin dug in and for long minutes paid no attention to the conversation which flowed around him.

The only one besides Jakkin and Akki who remained silent was Errikkin. He seemed a bit in awe of Jakkin, or possibly still embarrassed about his role in Jakkin's neararrest a year earlier. He held back, eyeing Jakkin with more curiosity than relief.

But Slakk was irrepressible. Once he'd gotten through several slabs of lizard meat and a cup of takk, he started up a conversation. Perhaps
conversation
was not the right description, as he simply started peppering Jakkin with questions again.

"Where were you?" he asked. "How come you didn't die? Why did you stay away so long? What did you find for food? Did you sleep on the ground? Did you know that we thought you were dead? Did you think about us? Did you try to get back home? Did you care?" All this rushed out like a river in full flood.

Jakkin continued to eat slowly, gesturing to his full mouth, which worked at first.

But the questions were taken up by the rest of the table.

"Were you frightened?" This from one of the girls near Akki, a redhead with cropped hair.

"Did you find an old barn or house to stay in?" asked Trikko, with that sly, knowing smile still plastered on his face.

While they asked, Jakkin ate four boiled lizard eggs, using it as an excuse to offer nothing in return.

Akki was equally silent, though she actually ate very little, mostly just pushing the food around her plate.

Slakk went on. "Were you really in the mountains or did you get to Krakkow or The Rokk? Did you hide on purpose or by chance?" There was an inquisitive line running down between his eyes.

Still Jakkin continued to stuff food in his mouth, holding up a finger as if to forestall any more questions. If he answered all their questions truthfully, the secret of the dragon's blood could come out. He had to sort through which questions to answer, which to sidestep.

"
Danger...
" Akki sent. Red and black and orange. Doom colors.

Jakkin concentrated on not squinting. "
We agreed no sendings when we're this close.
"

"
Don't be a pile of fewmets!
" Her sending was bright red, steaming.

Jakkin looked at Slakk, then at the others, choosing his words with care. "We lived in caves. Boulders pushed against cave openings seal in the heat. Especially with a dragon or two inside to add to the warmth." That was both true and not true. True that there'd been caves with boulders for doors, but not true that they had found those caves right away. Or the dragons.

"What dragons?" asked Trikko. "Not ferals?"

"No, of course not ferals. We'd never have been able to coax ferals into a cave. Never could have trusted them."

Everyone at the table nodded.

"Your father..." Slakk said, his voice trailing off.

It wasn't a secret. Jakkin's father had been killed by a feral dragon. He'd been trying to train it. But ferals were dangerous. Unpredictable. None of the bonders would ever have believed that he and Akki had been befriended by ferals. Besides, it wasn't true. Jakkin took a careful sip of water.

One of the girls leaned toward Akki. "What did you say?"

Whatever it had been, Akki had spoken too quietly for even those next to her to hear. So she repeated it. "Heart's Blood's hatchlings."

Jakkin suddenly realized that the girl who had asked was Terakkina, who only a year ago had been a small bubbly blond child, the pet of the nursery. Now she was quite grown up.

"Heart's Blood's hatchlings," Akki said dramatically. "They found us. They saved us."

Terakkina said, "Really?" She clapped her hands. "How wonderful!"

Not so grown up, then.
Jakkin added, out loud, "Heart's Blood's five. A male, a singleton female, and a triplet of three females." He spoke with a kind of tamped-down passion, but he didn't have to make it up. It was a safe comment, and all true.

"Triplets? That's amazing," Trikko said. "I've only ever seen twins from one egg."

"Always lucky," Slakk put in, in that jealous way he had.

A year hasn't changed anything for him,
Jakkin thought. Slakk acted as if living apart for a year in constant fear and danger was somehow luckier than living in the familiar safety and comfort of the nursery.

"Luck, if you count it so," Jakkin said, and then had to define his terms and explain some more about caves and boulders and dragons and boil, and all the while being careful not to say too much. Or too little. Not to seem to be hiding anything, yet not telling the whole truth. It was truly exhausting.

At last, Akki stood. "Kkarina needs help," she said. "In the kitchen."

Bounding to her feet, Terakkina said, "I'll help, too."

Jakkin glared at Akki, willed her to stay, begged in a sending, but she left, anyway, Terakkina at her heels. He was angered by Akki's preferring Kkarina, who she'd already admitted was overwhelmingly talkative, to helping him here at the table, bombarded with questions.