Dragon and Slave

CHAPTER 9

There were two breaks that morning, each one a big fat five minutes long.

Most of the slaves took the opportunity to sit down and stretch tired muscles.

Jack, in contrast, worked straight through both.

A longer, twenty-minute break came at noon, accompanied by a cup of what Maerlynn called nutrient broth. To Jack, it seemed more like flavored water with delusions of souphood. But it tasted all right, and he had to admit he felt better after drinking it.

He worked through most of that break, too, holding his soup cup with one hand and sipping from it as he picked.

It was midafternoon, and Fleck had just called another five-minute break, when he first heard the music.

He paused and looked around. It was a delicate sound, clear and precise and clean. Ethereal, even, if he was remembering that word right. The kind of music that would fit perfectly with a movie scene of a tropical paradise. Which made its presence in the middle of a slave colony like a sweetly smiling kick in the teeth.

"Where is that music coming from?" Draycos murmured.

"I don't know," Jack said, straightening up and looking around.

And then, an old man came into view from around a curve in the bushes. He walked slowly, as if his knees were tired or stiff or both, and on his head he wore an amazingly wide-brimmed hat.

And in his hands he carried a musical instrument like nothing Jack had ever seen before.

Jack blinked, wiping the sweat off his forehead. The instrument was mostly metal; that much he could tell from the glints of sunlight off its surface.

Sections of it looked familiar, too, as if the old man had put it together from pieces of a half dozen other instruments. The part he was blowing into seemed to have come from a flute, but there were also valves from a trumpet and possibly a

tuba. Other parts Jack didn't recognize at all.

He glanced around. The only other slave nearby was Lisssa, leaning half into her bush as she strained to reach some berry deep inside the tangle of branches.

"Hey, Lisssa," Jack said, stepping over to her. "What's with the musician?"

She made a sound like a horse snorting. "It's the Klezmer."

"What's a Klezmer?"

"I look like an encyclopedia to you?" she retorted. "That's just what he calls himself."

"Okay, okay," Jack said soothingly. "I was just asking."

"And I'm just telling," Lisssa said sourly. "Probably means 'leach' in some human language."

Jack frowned. "Leach?"

Lisssa snorted again. "Take another look."

Jack turned back. The Klezmer was walking slowly along the line of berry pickers now. Each of the working slaves turned toward him as he passed.

And to Jack's surprise, each dropped some berries into the container looped around the Klezmer's neck.

"Okay, I give up," Jack said. "What are they doing?"

"Like I said, he's a leach," Lisssa growled. "Story goes his eyes have gone too bad for him to pick berries. My eyes so cry over him."

"But don't the Brummgas have some kind of...?" Jack floundered.

"What, retirement plan?" Lisssa asked scornfully. "Don't be ridiculous. We don't work, we don't eat. Period."

She shrugged in the Klezmer's direction, the thick scales of her shoulder scratching against the branches with the movement. "So he's got this scam going.

He plays music and pretends he's not begging. And everyone else gives him berries and pretends it's not charity."

Jack studied her right ear, about all of her face he could see through the branches and leaves. There had been an odd emphasis on the last word. "You don't believe in charity?"

Reluctantly, he thought, she pulled back from the bush and turned those dark eyes on him. "Are you that naive?" she asked bitterly. "Or are you just stupid?

We're slaves. Slaves. The bottom of the bottom of the stack. Charity is for people who have something extra to give. Not us. Here, no one looks out for you but yourself."

"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."