Dragonback 03 Dragon and Slave (11 page)

"It would be interesting," Draycos agreed. "I presume, then, that
you no longer wish to make him eat the spilled berries?"

Jack waved a hand. "The bugs have probably gotten to most of them
by now, anyway."

He shivered violently. "I just wish I'd thought to bury that
blanket Maerlynn gave me in the floor here. It would have come in
handy."

"As a matter of fact, I did bury it," Draycos told him. "I thought
it would might be bad for Maerlynn if you were found with it.
Unfortunately, it is no longer here."

"Maerlynn must have dug it up afterward," Jack said with a sigh.
"Too bad."

"The point is that we now have a serious problem," Draycos said.
"I would have no difficulty myself jumping over the hedge. But I could
not carry you over without risking injury to you."

"That just means we'll need another way over, that's all," Jack
said. "Over, or through."

Draycos felt his ears twitch. "You have an idea?"

"I think so," Jack said. "It'll take some fancy timing, but if I
can pull that part of it off it should work."

"May I ask what you have in mind?"

"Sure." In the dim light, he saw Jack smile tightly. "You remember
Greb mentioning a couple of days ago that his and Grib's hatchday was
coming up in three weeks? I thought we might throw them a little
hatchday party."

"In three weeks?" Draycos asked, frowning.

Jack shook his head. "Life is uncertain," he said. "Let's do it
now."

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.