Dragonback 03 Dragon and Slave (9 page)

"What about Maerlynn?" Jack asked. "Seems to me she's trying to
look out for us."

"Oh, right," Lisssa countered. "Maerlynn. She helped Noy's
parents, too. They both ended up dead. She helped Greb and Grib's
uncle. He wound up dead, too."

Her eyes flicked over Jack's shoulder. "And let's see what good
all her good intentions do for anyone now."

Jack turned around. Coming up behind the Klezmer was another of
the open-topped cars like the one they'd used to bring him to the slave
colony. Inside, he could see two Brummgas: one an adult male, the other
much smaller and younger. The car coasted to a stop and both of them
got out.

"Quick—look busy," Lisssa warned, sticking her face back into the
bushes.

Jack took a long step to the next bush over and got back to work,
watching the two Brummgas out of the corner of his eye. They began
walking slowly along the line of working slaves, the younger one
jabbering to the older.

And suddenly the air seemed full of tension.

"What is it?" Jack murmured toward Lisssa. The Klezmer, he noted,
had stopped playing and was standing off to the side, stiff and silent.
"An inspection?"

"Worse," Lisssa hissed from inside her bush. "Crampatch's spoiled
brat of a daughter is back for a new toy."

Jack frowned.
A toy
?

The two Brummgas kept walking, the younger one pointing here and
there and making questioning noises, the older one answering her back.
Lisssa was right, Jack realized: it was exactly like she was a kid in a
toy shop. A kid trying to talk her father into buying her one of
everything.

And then, the daughter stopped suddenly, her jabbing finger
becoming insistent. Her father answered; she pointed all the more
violently. He shrugged and said something.

And from the line of bushes stepped one of Lisssa's fellow Doloms.
The older Brummga gestured, and taking his daughter's arm he turned
back toward the car. Setting his collection bowl carefully onto the
ground, the Dolom followed.

Behind him, Lisssa hissed something vicious sounding. "May her
body swell up and burst," she muttered.

"What's she going to do with him?" Jack asked.

"Probably paint him," Lisssa said, biting out each word like it
was a piece of bad-tasting gristle. "That's what she usually does when
she takes Doloms. She thinks our scales look like a paint-by-number
mosaic, just waiting for her to decorate. May she and her family be
cursed forever."

She made a deep rumbling noise that seemed to echo in her chest
and throat. "Or maybe she'll decide to try carving designs in him
again. She did that once."

Jack winced. "Sounds painful."

"It is if you get too deep," Lisssa said. "She did. After she got
bored and sent him back, like she always does, he got sick from
infections in the cuts. It took him six days to die."

"Nice kid," Jack murmured, hunching his shoulders. Draycos was
sliding restlessly along his skin, and he could practically feel the
dragon's anger.

He didn't blame him. If things like this were why the K'da hated
slavery so much, he was ready to join the club himself. "What about
this one?" he asked Lisssa. "Do you know him?"

It was a stupid question, he realized too late. Of course she
would know all the other Doloms among the slaves.

But her answer surprised him. "Not really," she said. "I think his
name's Plasssit or Plusssit. Something like that."

Jack frowned at her, but the thick tile-pattern of her face as she
stared at the Brummgas was unreadable. "You don't know?" he asked. "I
mean . . . he's one of your people."

Her eyes shifted back to Jack. "What was your name again?" she
asked pointedly. Just as pointedly, she turned her wide back to him and
went back to her work.

"Right," Jack murmured. The message was clear. Lisssa didn't want
to know any of them. They were slaves, and she was a slave, and the
only place to hide from that reality was inside herself.

And so that was where she would stay.

The Brummgas and the Dolom drove away, and for a moment there was
silence. Then, the Klezmer resumed his music, and the slaves returned
to their picking.

Later, when the Klezmer came by, Jack put a handful of berries
into his bowl. The old man murmured some thanks; and on a sudden
impulse, Jack put in a second handful.

For a long time afterwards he wondered why he'd done that. It had
probably surprised him more than it had the Klezmer, especially
considering that his own dinner or lack of it was on the line. Perhaps
it was his reaction to Lisssa's selfish attitude that had sparked such
unusual generosity.

Or maybe it was just knowing that Draycos was watching. Draycos,
and his blasted pain-in-the-neck K'da warrior ethic.

He did notice that when the Klezmer went past Lisssa, she ignored
him completely.

As it turned out, his generosity didn't end up costing him
anything after all. By the time the Brummgas set up at their tables, he
had filled his bowl to the line. In fact, he'd continued past the line
and loaded berries all the way to the very top. He turned in his bowl,
collected his meal ticket, and joined the line of slaves heading to
dinner.

The meal hall looked about the way Jack had expected: long tables
with plain wooden benches on both sides. The meal itself was actually
better than he'd expected. It consisted of another of the cabbage rolls
he'd had the night before, plus a bowl of the nutrient soup they'd been
given at noon, plus a piece of multigrain bread of some kind, plus a
small slab of real meat.

The cabbage roll didn't taste quite as good as it had when he'd
been starving. But it tasted good enough. He drank the soup, too,
wiping the bowl with his bread to make sure he got every drop.

The meat went quietly into a pocket to give to Draycos later.

When the meal was over, each slave cleaned his utensils at a long
tub of water and returned them to the cooking slaves. After that,
Jack's plan had been to take a quiet walk off by himself, where he and
Draycos could talk without being overheard.

But during the meal he'd found his muscles tightening up from the
strain of the day's work. Some of them were muscles he hadn't even
known he had. By the time he hobbled out of the meal hall on stiff
legs, the thought of doing anything but going straight to bed was long
gone.

He changed into his sackshirt, laying out his other clothing
neatly over the end of his cot. Maerlynn came by once to see how he was
doing, and left again after he assured her he was fine.

She didn't offer to wash his clothes this time. That was probably
something he would have to do on his own from now on. Tomorrow, when he
wasn't so tired, he would ask someone how he went about doing that.

He forced himself to stay awake for a few minutes after the lights
went out, hoping that everyone else in the hut would get to sleep
quickly. "Draycos?" he whispered when he judged he'd waited long enough.

"They are all asleep," the dragon confirmed softly. "Are you all
right?"

"I'm pretty tired," Jack admitted, sliding the meat out from under
his pillow where he'd hidden it. "Otherwise, I'm okay. Got some food
for you here. Sorry it's not more."

"It is quite adequate," Draycos assured him. His head rose up from
Jack's chest, his crest pushing up the thin blanket. "I am not very
hungry."

"Yeah," Jack said, watching as the dragon wolfed down the meat in
a single bite. "Right."

"Truly," Draycos insisted. "You should sleep now."

"No argument there," Jack agreed. "You going back to the thorn
hedge?"

"Yes," Draycos said. His head flattened again onto Jack's chest,
and Jack felt him slithering along onto his right arm. He picked up the
cue and turned onto his left side, draping the arm over the cot toward
the floor.

The dragon slid off his wrist, landing on the wooden floor without
a sound. "See you later," Jack whispered. "Don't get caught."

"I will be careful," Draycos said.

"Good." Jack snorted gently. "I was just thinking. Remember back
at the Whinyard's Edge recruiting center, when Jommy Randolph made that
snide comment about the training being like summer camp?"

"I remember," Draycos said. "And?"

Jack made a face in the dark. "Compared to this," he said, "it
was."

Draycos brushed Jack's arm with his forepaw. "Good night, Jack,"
he said. "I will return soon."

The next few days settled into a simple if unpleasant routine.
Jack got up at daybreak with the other slaves and trudged out to the
rainbow berry bushes. He worked, drank his noonday soup, worked some
more, turned in his bowl, ate dinner, and trudged back to his bed.

At first his muscles ached all the time. After a couple of days,
as he got used to the work, they mostly ached at bedtime. A few days
after that, they almost stopped aching at all. Almost.

Every other day the Klezmer came by. Each time he did so, Jack
made sure to give him a good handful of his berries.

At first he tried to tell himself that he was just trying to blend
in. Almost all the other slaves except Lisssa, he'd noted, seemed to
give the old man something from their own bowls. Even Fleck, who didn't
have to do any picking at all, usually had a handful ready to slip into
the Klezmer's bowl.

Jack also tried to convince himself he was just doing it to show
up Lisssa's defiant selfishness, or that he just liked the music. But
after the third time he finally had to admit the truth. Very simply, he
enjoyed helping out the old man.

It was a new experience for him, and it gave him a lot to think
about in his long hours under the hot sun. Uncle Virgil had
occasionally made back-scratching deals with other criminals or corrupt
police, deals where he'd done a job in exchange for something else. But
he would have fallen on the floor laughing if anyone had ever suggested
he give away anything for free.

His computerized alter ego, Uncle Virge, was of course incapable
of falling on the floor. But Jack knew that if he ever heard about this
he would certainly deliver a stern lecture on why Jack should be
looking out strictly for himself.

Which made Jack wonder just where the whole idea had come from in
the first place.

Was Draycos's warrior ethic starting to rub off on him? That was
certainly possible. After two months of hearing about high-minded K'da
ideals, anyone would start believing in them. Or was this coming from
Maerlynn and the way she was always scurrying around helping her
adopted children?

That was it, he finally decided. Maerlynn. He wasn't really giving
the Klezmer anything for free. All he was doing was passing on the good
deeds he'd already gotten from Maerlynn. It was a back-scratch deal
after all, except that he wasn't paying back Maerlynn directly.

It made him feel better to think of it that way. Better, and a lot
safer. He wasn't going off the deep end of the pool like some junior
K'da warrior. All he was doing was paying back a debt.

He probably would have felt even better if he'd really believed
that.

On the fifth day at work, he found himself so unbelievably grubby
that he finally couldn't stand it anymore. There were a couple of cold
showers in the washroom at the end of his sleeping hut, and that
evening he postponed his bedtime long enough to give himself a quick
rinse. It helped some, but with his clothes still dirty the feeling of
being clean didn't last very long. When he asked Maerlynn about
laundry, she told him the slaves usually waited until Tenthday, when
they were given a day off of work.

Tenthday, to his annoyance, turned out to be another two days
away. Still, he'd lasted this long. He could certainly hold out until
then.

It was Ninthday when the routine fell apart.

He was heading for the line at the tables with his bowlful of
berries when a sudden shadow fell across his face. He looked up to find
Fleck glowering down at him. "Hello, Fleck," he said, making a smooth
sidestep around the big man. "How's tricks?"

Fleck's own sidestep wasn't nearly as smooth as Jack's. But it did
the job just fine, planting him squarely in front of Jack again. "You
got too many," he said.

"I've got too many what?" Jack asked. He was tired and hungry, and
not in a mood for games.

"What do you think?" Fleck growled, jabbing a finger at Jack's
chest. "Berries. You got too many berries."

Jack looked down into his bowl with astonishment. "What in the
world are you talking about?"

"You're only supposed to fill to the line," Fleck said. "Not all
the way to the top. What, you think the Brummgas are going to give you
a bonus?"

"What, you don't like a kid my age doing better than the rest of
you?" Jack shot back. Without waiting for an answer, he started to walk
away.

Fleck's rough hand on his arm made it clear the conversation
wasn't over. "I'll tell you what I don't like, kiddy-face," he said. "I
don't like you poking your stick into the bug hill. If you keep showing
the Brummgas you can pick more berries in a day, they'll make
everyone
pick that many."

It was, Jack realized later, a perfectly reasonable argument. He
certainly wasn't interested in giving the Brummgas ideas for working
their slaves any harder than they already were. And if Fleck had just
given him a minute to think it through, everything would have been fine.

Unfortunately, Fleck didn't. "So you stop now," he insisted.

And reaching into Jack's bowl, he scooped out a handful of berries.

"Hey!" Jack snapped. He grabbed the other's wrist and shoved it
away, then jumped back, trying to get out of reach.

Once again, the big man showed he was faster than he looked. He
took a long step forward, slapped Jack's hand aside, and grabbed the
strap that held the bowl around his neck. With a tug that seemed to
snap Jack's head back against his shoulders, he yanked the boy toward
him. "You don't do that," he said, very quietly, from three inches
away. His breath smelled like stale nutrient broth. "Not to me. Not
ever."