Dragon and Slave

CHAPTER 12

The Brummgas let him out of the hotbox an hour or so after sunrise, just about the time the place was starting to warm up to a decent temperature. The rest of the slave colony was quiet, with everyone no doubt taking advantage of their day off to catch up on some sleep.

All except Fleck. The ugly man was waiting with the Brummgas, a bowl in his hand. Without a word he held it out toward Jack and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Sighing to himself, Jack looped the strap around his neck and trudged off. It was, he knew, going to be a long, lonely, tiring day.

He reached the rainbow berry bushes to find he'd been wrong on all three counts.

He wasn't going to be alone. Maerlynn was already there, along with Greb and Grib and Noy and a half dozen others.

All of them already with small piles of berries on the ground beside them.

"What's this?" Jack asked, blinking in surprise as he looked around. "I thought this was Tenthday."

"Good morning, Jack," Maerlynn said cheerfully. "Yes, it is. Better get these piles picked up right away, before someone steps on one of them."

"I'll help," Noy offered. Stepping carefully over his own pile he trotted over to Jack and put in the few he still had in his hands. "Grib's pile is the biggest—we'll get those first."

"But—" Jack said, still bewildered as he let Noy lead him over toward the twin Jantris. "Isn't this your day off?"

"Sure," Noy said. He turned his head away from Jack and coughed. "But it's your day off, too. We wanted to help you."

"We saw what happened," Maerlynn explained as Noy carefully scooped up Grib's pile of berries and laid them gently in the bowl. "It isn't fair to punish you for a rule you didn't know."

Jack stared down at Noy as the boy moved to Greb's pile and started gathering the berries into his hands. Selfishness between thieves and con men was something he knew very well. Help between soldiers he could sort of understand—after all, their lives might depend on each other.

But none of the slaves working here had a single thing to gain by helping him out. In fact, it could well be exactly the opposite. "Won't you get in trouble?" he asked. "I mean, that Brummga wanted me to sweat all day."

"Maybe that's what he wanted," Maerlynn said. "What he said was that you had to bring in a full bowl of berries if you wanted to eat. He never said you had to fill the bowl yourself."

"But that's what he meant," Jack argued. "Don't get me wrong—I appreciate the help. But I don't want to get you into trouble."

Maerlynn smiled, an oddly sad look on her face. "We're already slaves, Jack," she said gently. "How much worse trouble could we be in?"

Lots worse, the obvious answer flashed through Jack's mind. But for once in his life, he had the sense to keep his mouth shut. These people all knew the risk they were taking for him. They were taking it anyway. "Thank you," he murmured instead.

"We have to stick together," Maerlynn said quietly. "If we don't look out for each other, who else will?"

"No one, I guess," Jack said, thinking about what Lisssa had said once about charity and looking out for yourself.

Lisssa herself, naturally, was nowhere to be seen.

"So let's get a move on," Maerlynn said firmly. "It's our day off. Let's get this finished and go relax."

With all those hands, and with only one bowl to fill, they were done in less than half an hour. "And that's that," Maerlynn said as Jack dropped in the final handful. Right to the line, he confirmed with a sort of guilty satisfaction, and not a single berry over.

"Now we'll put them inside the hut, under your bed, until the Brummgas come to pick them up," Maerlynn said as they all trooped back to the colony. The place was starting to come alive, Jack noted, with several of the slaves moving about.

"And then we'll be done for the day."

"So what does everyone do on Tenthday?" Jack asked. "Aside from laundry, I mean," he added as he spotted a pair of Compfrin females carrying grimy-looking bundles.

"In the morning we mostly just rest," Noy said, pausing to cough. That cough had been getting worse all morning, Jack had noted uneasily. It was starting to sound wet, too, as if fluid was gathering in his lungs. "In the afternoon we usually play games," the boy went on. "Some of the grownups like to carve or make things out of wood."

"There are often repairs that need to be attended to," Maerlynn said. "Beds sometimes fall apart, or some of the cooking or serving equipment breaks. The Brummgas aren't very good about maintaining this end of their land."

"You like chopball?" Greb asked. "We're going to play some later."

"Haven't ever played," Jack said. "But I had an idea for something else we might do. You said you and your brother had your hatchday coming up, right?"

"Right," Grib said. "We'll be sixteen. Almost adults."

"We're already molting," Greb added proudly, running a finger across his chest.

"We should have all our adult feathers before we're seventeen."

"A lot of Jantris don't even start getting their feathers until they're seventeen," Grib said. "That's what Maerlynn said. She reads a lot."

"She said that meant we were percocious," Greb said.

"That's 'precocious,' " Maerlynn corrected him. "That means you're growing up faster than the average Jantri."

Or else it just meant the Brum-a-dum year was a little longer than the Jantri standard. But Jack wasn't about to bring that up. It would only kick off a new topic of conversation, and he might not get in another word all morning.

Getting a Jantri to shut up was like trying to sweep back the tide with a paintbrush.

"I'm sure you are," he said instead. "So what do you say we have a party."

Both Jantris blinked in unison. "A party?"

"I'm not sure we can do that, Jack," Maerlynn put in warningly. Clearly, she didn't want to get the twins' hopes up and then squash them like an overripe berry. "There isn't any extra food we could use. Or anything we could make special treats from."

"That's okay," Jack said. "A party doesn't need treats. All it needs is fun and entertainment."

"Like what?" Noy asked eagerly.

"Well, you already mentioned games," Jack said. "We might be able to get the Klezmer to come over and play a few tunes."

"Oh," Grib said, sounding a little disappointed. "We get to hear the Klezmer all the time."

"Or," Jack added smoothly, "I could put on a magic show."

Both twins straightened like they'd been poked with sharp sticks. "A magic show?" Grib repeated excitedly.

"A magic show?" Noy echoed, his face glowing. "Can I come, too?"

"Absolutely," Jack told him. "It's for anyone who wants to come and watch."

"Can we do it now?" Greb asked, grabbing Jack's arm. "Can we?"

"Hang on, hang on," Jack said. "I've got a few things I have to do first. My laundry, for one thing—this shirt reeks."

"No, no, no," Grib insisted. "Now, now, now."

"I also have to put together some props," Jack said firmly. He couldn't afford to start the show too early, after all. "How about we do it right after lunch?"

"Okay," Grib said. "Can we tell the others?"

"You can tell everyone," Jack assured him. The bigger and more noticeable the audience, the better. "I've got to go now. See you at lunch."

He had expected there to be a mad crunch at the tiny laundry facility, what with everyone trying to clean their clothes on the same day. But to his surprise, the slaves had the whole operation down to a science. There was a posted list that assigned time at the machines by bed groups, and those in each group seemed to show up exactly on that schedule. Jack's group was next, and with a little coaching by one of the other slaves he got his laundry going.

He should have guessed they would have it organized, of course. These people had been here for years, after all. Some of them, like Greb and Grib, had been here their whole lives.

It took a little more work and ingenuity to assemble the props he needed for his show. He was able to borrow a set of drinking cups and some small vegetables from the kitchen, but the cards and coins he needed for some of his best tricks turned out to be a challenge.

Eventually, he wound up sending Greb and Grib scrounging all around the colony.

They returned triumphantly an hour later with five coins and a genuine if slightly ragged deck of cards. The fact that the scroungers were Jantris also meant that the news about the show got out more quickly and effectively than if Jack had sent out engraved invitations.

Which meant that by the time he stood up in front of the berry collection table, practically the whole colony had turned out to watch.

"Good afternoon, everyone," Jack said, picking up three potato-like vegetables he'd borrowed from the kitchen pantry. "Welcome to the first annual Greb and Grib hatchday celebration. I'd like to start the show with a little bit of juggling."

He tossed one of the potatoes into the air and caught it. "There we go," he said. "Like it?"

"You call that juggling?" someone called scornfully.

"Yeah, we want to see you juggle all of them," Noy added. "Oh?" Jack asked, acting surprised. "Well... sure."

He threw one potato in the air and caught it. Then, shifting it to his other hand, he threw the second into the air and caught it. "Is this what you mean?" he asked as he did the same with the third potato.

"No!" screamed all the children. "All together!"

"Oh," Jack said again. He tossed all three potatoes upward, making sure one of them went higher than the others. "Like this?"

"No!" they screamed again.

"Well, gee, then." Jack caught the two lowest potatoes as they came down, one in each hand, and sent them back into the air. "In that case—" he caught the third, tossed it up through the center of the pattern "—I don't know—" the two potatoes came down again, and he sent them back up "—what else to do."

He waited until the smattering of applause had faded, then switched to a more standard three-ball rotation. "My uncle taught me that one," he said, shifting this time to a circle pattern. "I had another uncle who was cross-eyed. Let me show you how he juggled."

He went through his juggling routine, then switched to some sleight-of-hand tricks. The last time he'd done this, back when he and Draycos had stumbled into a Wistawki bonding ceremony on the Vagran Colony, he'd had the dragon there to help with the performance.

Now, of course, Draycos had to stay out of sight across his back. And much as it hurt to admit it, the act wasn't nearly as good without him.

But the audience didn't care. So starved for entertainment were these people that practically anything he did would have been greeted with the same excitement. He could have spent a whole hour doing cross-eyed juggler jokes, and gotten just as much applause. Even Fleck was watching from the back of the crowd, an odd look on his face.

He went through the card tricks, and the coin tricks, and the pea-under-the-cups tricks that Uncle Virge had taught him all those years ago. The slaves were loving it; but to Jack's increasingly worried annoyance, the audience he'd really hoped for was nowhere in sight. If they didn't show soon, all this would have been for nothing.

Mostly for nothing, anyway. Greb and Grib, at least, would probably never forget it.

He kept the show going for over an hour before privately giving up, and was on his last few lines of patter when he felt the warning touch of dragon claws on the back of his arm. Turning casually back to the table, he spotted what Draycos's sharp K'da ears had already picked up: an approaching car.

And in it were Crampatch and his spoiled daughter. Here to pick up a new toy.

"But as my cousin Fred on my Aunt Louise's side would say, when you need a cross-eyed juggler, there's never one around," he said, revving back up to full speed again. Scooping up the potatoes, he launched into an extra-complex juggling routine he'd saved just for this moment. After that came two more card tricks, one more rope trick, and finally another short juggling routine. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the two Brummgas watching, as fascinated as everyone else.

Finally, he judged it was time to end the show. If Crampatch and his daughter weren't hooked by now, they never would be. "And that, ladies and gentlemen and honored Jantri guests, completes the afternoon's entertainment," he said, bowing deeply three times. "I hope you enjoyed the show; and I really hope someone knows where my laundry is. Thank you again."

The audience exploded into a wild racket of applause, cries, hoots, grunts, whistles, and squawks. Jack bowed again and again, all the time keeping an eye on the two Brummgas. The daughter seemed very insistent about something...

Eventually, he stopped bowing, and the audience broke up. Sort of broke up, anyway. While most of the slaves headed back to their other activities, several of them came up to thank Jack personally for the show.

Naturally, Greb, Grib, and Noy were right there in front. The Jantri twins were in the middle of their third round of thank-yous when Fleck bulled his way through the crowd. "Come on," he said, wiggling a finger at Jack. "Crampatch wants you."

"What about?" Jack asked, squeezing Greb and Grib's shoulders one last time as he stepped to Fleck's side.

"Interesting show," the big man said as he led Jack through the milling slaves toward Crampatch and his daughter. "You're not like anyone else we've ever had here. What else can you do?"

"You'd be surprised," Jack assured him. "What does Crampatch want?"

Fleck snorted under his breath. "His daughter wants a new toy," he said sourly.

"You're it."

"I'm honored," Jack said.

"Don't be," Fleck warned. "You think they treat us badly here, just wait until they get you to the house."

Jack rubbed his face where the Brummga's slapstick had hit him. "I can hardly wait," he murmured.

"Yeah," Fleck grunted. "Just watch yourself."