Dragon's Heart (7 page)

But there was another side of the Federation. Jakkin remembered a book of Golden's that he'd worked hard at reading. It said that the Feders—having outlawed violence in their home worlds—encouraged blood sports on non-Feder worlds so that those who still needed a shot of blood-spilling came to Protectorates like Austar IV.

All of a sudden he knew what to say. "Think of the Federation as a super-big dragon. Dangerous and unpredictable. And didn't Master Sarkkhan always tell us, 'A man should learn from his dragon, just as a dragon should learn from the man.'"

"Not a dragon," Kkitakk put in. "Saying Feders are like dragons maligns dragons."

"Well, I have a different question. With all of us free, whose going to deal with the fewmets!" Slakk asked.

Kkitakk and Balakk laughed and Kkitakk said, "That's easy. You boys will do it!"

"What about us girls?" asked the redhead. "I'm as strong as all of you boys. Stronger than some." Pointedly, she named no names.

And then the arguments really began, quickly jumping over to the other tables. Soon the dining room was aboil in loud talk.

It was suddenly all too much. Weary of the intensity of the talk, battered by the noise, Jakkin stood.

"Where are
you
going?" Slakk asked. "Start an argument and then duck out? You think you're Errikkin?"

"I need sleep." In fact, Jakkin's face was gray and he was swaying.

Slakk and L'Erikk nodded together. "Exhausted."

Suddenly, it was true. Jakkin needed to lie down, to be alone, and after, to talk with Akki, mind-to-mind.

Slakk stood, too, slapping Jakkin enthusiastically on the back and nearly knocking him over. "You're bunking in the old room, with me and Errikkin and—"

"And me!" said Arakk. He seemed genuinely pleased at the idea.

"So all being masters now doesn't even give us our own rooms?" He'd had one before. That rankled a bit.

"The older men get the singles now. Seemed fair. We voted on it," Kkitakk said, not adding what everyone knew: that there were more older men than boys voting. "And Kkarina has one, too."

"What about Sarkkhan's house?"

Kkitakk appeared peeved. "What about it?" He sounded oddly defensive.

"Who lives there now?"

"We've turned it into a guesthouse for visitors who want to spend a few days at a dragon farm."

Maybe I should declare myself a visitor so I can stay in that quiet house. Not that anyone would let me get away with that.
Suddenly light-headed, he still made it to the door with his head held high. Behind him the babble of voices continued, like the
pick-buzz
in a field full of insects. He paid them no more notice.

On his way to the bunkroom, Jakkin forgot about the argument over Federation status and thought instead about the way Errikkin had angrily fled the dining hall. It was puzzling. A year ago he and Errikkin had been close.
Best friends.
He'd bought Errikkin's bond with the money he made when Heart's Blood became a champion. Even offered to free Errikkin—had forgiven him.

But now Errikkin seemed changed.

In truth, everything was changed: Jakkin's friends, the nursery, the world. Some for the better, some for the worse. And he and Akki—especially—had changed. More than anyone at the nursery could imagine.

Shivering suddenly, as if the earth beneath his feet trembled, Jakkin sighed.
We're going to be more alone here, surrounded by everyone and everything we know, than we were out in the mountains.
There was no comfort in that thought.

NIGHT.

Dark.

Jakkin woke and stared at the ceiling of his shared room for a long while before deciding to get up. The mattress felt uncomfortably soft beneath him and he was no longer sleepy. And even if he were, the snores of the boys around him guaranteed that falling back to sleep would be impossible.

Careful not to make any noise, he got dressed in his bonder pants and shirt. Though he supposed they weren't called bonder pants anymore.
Maybe freedom pants?

Carrying his old sandals, he tiptoed along the corridor until he got to the front door of the bondhouse. He eased it open, careful not to let it squeal, and stepped out into the black night.

Once outside, he put on his sandals, then stared up at the twin moons. Soon it would be Dark-After and its death-bringing cold. "Dark-After, nothing after," bonders said. Everyone knew that only crazy people, no-hopers, or weeders went out once the bone-chill settled in. And if they went out, they died.

Of course, he was neither crazy nor suicidal, and once away from the bondhouse, walking quietly along the path, Jakkin would be safe. No one else could follow him into the night—except Akki, of course. Most of the windows would be shuttered against the cold and everyone was asleep. No one would see him. He felt an iciness on his cheeks, on his hands, but it was more of a tingle than a searing cold.

Above him, in their red phase, the twin moons sailed across the sky, leaving a trail of crimson. The path was outlined in their red light. He shivered. Not with cold, but with a chill of premonition. He felt the moons were scribbling a warning. A warning written in blood.

The blood of the egg chamber?

He shivered again. Maybe it was a premonition of spilled blood. The blood of all the dragons on the planet, slaughtered so humans could have the gift of mind-sendings, the ability to withstand the cold of Dark-After. This time when he shivered, he couldn't stop.

Reaching the round incubarn, Jakkin hauled on the door. As before, it squalled in protest. He heaved again and at last got it open. Inside, the heat was so intense, he felt as if he were walking into a stone wall. The barn was kept at a constant thirty-four degrees centigrade, partly by electrics and partly by dragon body heat.

In the cozy stalls where hen dragons bedded down with their dragonlings, something squawked. He figured it was one of the little dragons, for they often peeped and piped their distress at being awakened before they were ready. In separate quarters, half-grown dragons huddling together for company and warmth houghed as Jakkin went past. Only the full-grown males were separated in the stud barn.

Jakkin kept his thoughts mute. No need to disturb the dragons any more than he had already with the noisy door. He didn't want the hens standing and stomping their huge feet, challenging him, and perhaps inadvertently stepping on some of their broods. Or the half-year hatchlings might get into squabbles brought on by lack of sleep, injuring one another or themselves. There were hundreds of ways dragons in nurseries could be hurt, mostly by the carelessness of their human caretakers. He didn't want to harm any dragon, by intention or inattention, and certainly not on his first day back.

Jakkin let a bit of the dragons' thoughts leak into his mind. They were puzzled but not alarmed. Their sendings were pale blues and greens, not the sharp reds and blacks of fear.

As he kept on down the hall, the barn behind him finally quieted. The hens and their broods settled back into sleep so quickly, his mind was soon filled with their low, hazy dreams. As he neared Auricle's back stall, he hoped he would find her asleep with her great jointed wings folded up against her sides.

Lifting her head, Auricle sent him a tentative rainbow in shades of gray. He picked up her sending, shot soft color through it, and sent it back. "
Thou art fine, little mother
."

He and Akki had let everyone think Auricle was a wild dragon. That wasn't strictly true. She'd been
rescued,
from the trogs, the same cave dwellers who'd made Akki and Jakkin slaves—another secret to be kept. Until he and Akki had returned to the nursery, Jakkin hadn't realized how many secrets they'd been burdened with in a single year.

"Thou art fine, little mother," he repeated, this time aloud. Though she wasn't fine. Not yet. She was gravid—pregnant—but with all she'd been through, there was a good chance her eggs wouldn't hatch. They might have already broken apart inside the egg chamber. Though she'd had no viscous bleeding, which at least was a good sign. Or the eggs could emerge cracked, the dragonlings dead inside. But Akki had assured him that if the worst happened, Auricle would still be able to breed again, have eggs again, raise a brood.

The hatchling nestled, wide-eyed, between Auricle's front legs. Some of Jakkin's thoughts must have leaked to her, or maybe his voice had awakened her. She looked up, pipped for a moment, sent him a picture that looked remarkably like Akki, then settled down again. She fell asleep almost instantly, her mind fuzzy, the colors softened by sleep.

Jakkin smiled and—only when he was sure the hatchling was deeply asleep—opened the stall door. It was well oiled, not like the front door, and swung open without a sound. He went in.

Kneeling by Auricle's side, he scratched behind her ears. She thrummed her pleasure, the throbbing pulse going through her and right up his arm and into his body. The hatchling neither noticed, nor stirred.

"
I will stay with thee awhile
," he sent her, keeping his own colors muted. Then he sat down, his back against the dragon's broad shoulder, and began recalling in strong colors how the copter had rescued them from the mountains and the silent, murderous trogs.

"
Thou art safe here
," he finished, "
in my home
."

If he'd meant to calm her he was wrong, because she started to stir uneasily as soon as he mentioned the trogs.

Fewmets! I've gone about it the wrong way.

Auricle stretched out one pale wing, then snapped it shut again, as if closing a door. At the sound, the hatchling opened its eyes and began a frantic pipping. To soothe the little dragon, Auricle lapped its head with her rough tongue. Finally the dragonling calmed down and fell back to sleep.

Worm waste!
Jakkin cursed himself.
She doesn't need any reminders of where she's come from.
Closing his eyes determinedly, he put all thoughts of the rescue out of his mind. But his determination itself communicated to Auricle, and she suddenly moved behind him, sending back a stuttering bit of color.

"
Danger?
" she asked in a shower of gray and red. Little shivers, like tremors on a hillside, ran down her back.

"
No danger
," Jakkin assured her, his sending a cooling, watery blue. "
No danger
." Because at the moment there was none. His sending must have convinced her at last, for Auricle drifted back to sleep.

But Jakkin couldn't fall asleep as easily. Instead, he forced himself to sit quietly for a bit longer, an hour or more, hardly daring to breathe.

Everything is changed,
Jakkin thought as he had earlier in the evening. He wondered what Golden might be thinking, whether he agreed Austar would be better off fixing its own problems than relying on the Federation. Wondered whether Golden would now have to run against KKers for the senate. Wondered if he could win.

Maybe,
Jakkin told himself,
maybe the embargo's meant to be.
Since he and Akki needed to solve the problem of the dragon's blood without help from anyone else, why shouldn't the planet do the same with
its
problems? Some of those problems were already solved, anyway. With the bond system dismantled, no one could rebel against it, could they? His mind was racing now; he felt like a child spinning around and around, getting dizzy by its own exertions.

Why can't I just lie down here with Auricle, shut down my mind, and go back to sleep like the dragonling?

He sighed deeply, and some of the sigh went out as a sending. In reaction, the soft skin of Auricle's underleg trembled, like ripples skimming over the surface of a pond. Luckily, she didn't wake.

Jakkin wondered if Akki was sleeping soundly, or if she wanted to talk. "Akki," he whispered, sending out a tentative pale pink tentacle, but her mind seemed firmly shut against him, as it often was when she slept.

"Fewmets!" He hated being so cut off. Which was odd, seeing that they'd only had the ability to send for a year. But that year had made all the difference.

He wondered if he should go back into the bunkhouse and wake her. Or just stay put. He'd never been this indecisive in the wild, on the mountain. Only here at home, where he'd been a boy and a bonder. And now he wondered if that was why—his own history being held against him.

Time to sleep,
he insisted to himself.
At the very least it will stop the questions.

But he wasn't in the least bit sleepy. So, standing, he glanced around the stall, checking everything one last time. Auricle's water tub was half full, her straw bedding clean. There were burnweed and wort in the feed stanchions. He couldn't put off the inevitable any longer. It was past time to go back to the bondhouse. Perhaps there he would go to sleep.

Walking quickly down the central aisle, Jakkin passed about a dozen empty stalls till he came to the ones where dragonlings lay sleeping by their dozing mothers. He stopped, checked the stalls, saw one dragon awake, and whispered the opening of the lullaby he used to croon to Heart's Blood when she was small.

Little flame mouths
Cool your tongues,
Dreaming starts soon
Furnace lungs...

At least none of the babies woke, used as they were to their human caretakers. Only that one hen opened an eye, quickly shuttering it again when he sent her a calming blue pond with hardly a riffle disturbing the surface.

He was relieved that things had been so easy. In. Out.

Pushing against the heavy, squalling incubarn door, he stumbled out into the cold. In the morning, he'd get some grease from the kitchen and oil the hinges.

It was fully Dark-After now and Jakkin could just about feel the icy stream of night spilling down his body. Moving his shoulders a bit to loosen them up, he ran his fingers through his hair.

He glanced up at the sky. Whatever warnings the twin moons had written earlier had long since been erased by night. The sky was dark, clouds hiding the stars. Behind him, though he didn't see it, something darker than the clouds sailed across the sky. It flew north to south, silently passing a spikka tree well past its blooming, and then the dark flier was gone.