Dragon's Blood (3 page)

As if hearing his name, Brother jerked his head up. Deep inside the black eyes there was an iridescent flicker, the sign of a fighter. Involuntarily Slakk stepped back. Errikkin stood his ground. Only Jakkin went forward, holding out a hand.

"Hush, hush, beauty," he crooned, letting Brother sniff his hand. "It's the baths for you."

Jakkin kept up the soothing babble until the head of the beast started to weave back and forth and the boys could feel the thrumm of content humming along the floor. Errikkin unlatched the stall gate and Jakkin reached up, hooked his finger around the dragon's ear, and backed him out of the stall.

As Jakkin led the dragon down the hall, Slakk ran ahead to the bellpull that signaled throughout the other halls that a dragon was unstalled. No one wanted to be in the way of those great back feet or foreshortened front feet with claws as hard and yellow as old bone. On hearing the bell, anyone in the barn would press into the evenly spaced hallway niches until the dragon had gone by. Only the trainer, leading the dragon by ear or halter and pacing by its side, could be reasonably assured of safety, but even a good trainer could be accidentally clawed. Old Likkarn had a dozen scars punctuating the long, stringy sentences of veins that ran down his legs. And the rumor was that Sarkkhan himself looked like the map of Austar, pocked and pitted from his years with dragons. But that Jakkin knew only from gossip. He had never been up close to Master Sarkkhan. For all Jakkin knew, the man's body might be as smooth as a baggery girl's, though that was highly unlikely. Anyone who worked around dragons for long wore blood wounds.

Jakkin clucked with his tongue to let the dragon know he was still there. "Just be a
good fellow," Jakkin sang to Brother as they went along the hall. It was early, and no one was in the niches; there was nothing to distract them as they went down to the baths. Jakkin knew that Slakk and Errikkin would use this time to clean the stall, raking out the old fewmets, patting down the dust, settling new straw for bedding. They would crush fresh wort and weed in the feed box and maybe, with extra time, polish Brother's nameplate. Sarkkhan was rich enough to afford metal ones.

Each dragon had a bath once every other week, but the stalls had to be cleaned every other day. Dust and fewmets, fewmets and dust. That was usually a stallboy's life. So Jakkin welcomed the chance to be more than a human pit cleaner, and he loved to take the dragons to their baths.

Blood Brother, smelling the mud, threw his head up; Jakkin lost his hold on the dragon's ear.

"Worm bag," Jakkin muttered under his breath as the dragon reared up slightly, fanning the close air with his front feet. There was not enough room for Brother to complete
a hindleg stand, but Jakkin could feel the air currents change as the dragon lashed his tail from side to side. The thump-thumping as the tail hit the solid wooden walls was echoed in Jakkin's chest. He would have to get Brother quickly into the baths and quieted down before the dragon did damage to the building or to himself. Either way and old Likkarn would have Jakkin back spreading fewmets on the weed and wort patches for a month. It wasn't bad work, but he preferred dragons.

Jakkin plunged between Brother's front feet and lunged for the bath door. It was a dangerous move, but unpredictable enough to shock the dragon into backing up a pace. Jakkin lifted the latch and rode the doorstep platform in and over the sunken bath room.

Blood Brother crowded in behind and plunged into the deep mudhole. It cooled his temper at once and he began to splash and snuffle in the bath like a hatchling.

From his perch on the swinging platform Jakkin smiled. All of the dragon's ferocity seemed to slip away, and what was left was a rather silly, oversized lizard, burbling and rolling about in a pool of muck.

"And what was I scared of?" Jakkin said to Brother, but the dragon ignored him completely.

Jakkin took a large wire brush from its hook on the door and sat down on the step, his legs hanging over the side. His perch swayed back and forth. He knew that in a little while the dragon would have had enough of plunging around in the mud and would want his scales scrubbed. Dragons in the wild groomed one another with teeth and claws and tongues as rough as bristles. But domesticated dragons, though paired in stalls, were not let loose in the baths together. Their play was too rough for even the strongest wood-and-stone building. Besides, most dragons got so they preferred the wire brush, which could reach the most incredibly delightful places when wielded by a sensitive human groom.

Blood Brother sank down to the bottom of the mud bath. Only his eyes, now shuttered with their membranous second lid, showed above the brown sludge. His ears twitched constantly. After a minute, even the ears stopped moving, and Blood Brother slept.

"Pleasant dreams," mumbled Jakkin. He
knew that the dragon—and not the human—would choose the time of grooming. Then, though he tried not to, he dozed off as well.

Jakkin had no idea how long they slept. One moment he was dreaming of the oasis, clean and bright and shimmering in the desert sun, and the next he was awakened by a playful, muddy nudge from Blood Brother's nose. It was forceful enough to have knocked him from his perch if the platform hadn't swung toward the far wall.

Jakkin grabbed the metal chain attached to the wall and leapt onto the catwalk. He pushed the door back with one foot and watched it lock shut with a satisfying click. His heart was racing. Falling asleep on the door was a stupid thing to have done, especially with Blood Brother in the bath. If he had fallen into that deep mud with the dragon, there would have been little chance of his escaping. Recently, one bonder in a nursery on the far side of Krakkow had died that way. It could not have been a pleasant death.

"Come on, worm," he said aloud, amazed that his voice was not shaking. He held the brush behind him as he walked along the catwalk toward the shower room. The dragon followed, heaving himself out of the mud and
onto
the ramp with a loud sucking sound.

In the shower room, Jakkin stripped off his tunic and sandals but left his shorts on. And his bag. No bonder was allowed to remove the bag until it was full. Jakkin reached up and pulled the cord that started the shower. Brother was so becalmed from the mud bath, Jakkin no longer feared him.

The water began raining down on them and Jakkin moved around the great beast, heedless now of its claws. He scratched and polished the muddy scales. First the mud came off, then the patina of stall dust. Beneath were orange-red scales that shimmered in the flickering light of the shower room.

"Pretty, pretty," Jakkin crooned.

Blood Brother was not a deep wine red, which was the best color for a fighting dragon (for somehow color and ferocity were gene linked). But his color was strong, and his scales, when clean, had the sheen and polish of hundreds of small rainbow mirrors.
They
were not spotty or off-color as some dragon scales were.

As he worked, Jakkin smiled and even whistled through his teeth. He was enjoying the cleaning as much as the dragon.

Blood Brother languorously stretched out his wings. Unfurled, they nearly touched the opposite walls. His wingspread was the widest in the nursery, and it seemed to Jakkin that Brother enjoyed showing it off. When not confined in his stall, the dragon took every opportunity to stretch his magnificent wings.

Jakkin took a soft cloth from a hook and rubbed the silky-tough membranes that stretched between the rock-hard wing ribs. He was especially careful of the skin next to the right secondary, where a series of four puckered scars bore witness to Brother's time in the pits.

Brother began to flinch as the cloth came close to the scars, and Jakkin held on firmly to the wing. "I'll be careful, fellow. You can't tell me that still hurts after all this time. But I'll be careful." He thought to himself that he'd have to be a fool
not
to be careful. Brother had knocked one of the older bonders senseless a year ago, smashing him up against the shower wall, just for bearing down too hard on that wing.

Hanging the cloth back on the hook, Jakkin took up the brush again. He stood on tiptoe and leaned against the dragon, clicking to it with his tongue. Jakkin tried, as always, to reach Brother's mind with his. Trainers were often able to have a tenuous kind of mental bond with their worms. All Jakkin could ever sense with Brother was a dark, sluggish brooding, the color of bloody mud.

Jakkin clicked again and pushed Brother with his shoulder. Slowly the dragon turned its head to look at him and Jakkin tapped as far up Brother's back as he could reach with the brush. With a sigh, the worm lay down, first folding his short, powerful forelegs, then squatting down on the hind. Jakkin scratched the upper scales with a gentle persistence. He worked his way down the slope of the neck, leaving the head for last.

Jakkin sat down in front of Brother and cradled the dragon's head in his lap. He began to croon a silly little song that had been sung in the bondhouse that month, a kind of dragon lullaby:

 

Little flame mouths,
Cool your tongues.

Dreaming starts soon,
Furnace lungs.

 

Rest your wings now,
Little flappers.
Cave mouth calls
To dragon nappers.

 

Night is coming;
Bank your fire.
Time for dragons
To retire.

 

Hiss. Hush. Sleep.

 

As he sang, Jakkin brushed Brother's ears and around his horns, over the nose and under the chin. The beast began thrumming again in the same rhythm as the song. Then, as if to thank Jakkin for the grooming, Brother tried to groom in return, holding the boy down with one foreclaw and giving him long tongue swipes along the leg. The treatment was so rough and painful, Jakkin stopped singing and began to shout.

"Cut it out, you worm pile!" He banged Brother on the nose several times with the wire brush.

With a loud, rumbled hough, the dragon let him up.

Jakkin turned off the shower, grabbed up his clothes, and put them on hastily. Then he took Brother's ear and jerked him up. Forgetting the warning bellpull because of the pain in his leg, and limping, Jakkin led Blood Brother back around to his newly cleaned stall. Luckily no one was in the hall.

Slakk and Errikkin were sitting by the stallside. Slakk was fingering his bag and talking. Errikkin was smiling and nodding his head. They jumped up when they saw the dragon coming.

"Fewmets!" Slakk yelled. "Why didn't you warn us? That big lump could have stepped on us, and then where would we have been?"

Jakkin didn't reply but shoved the dragon into the stall. Smelling the fresh food, Brother went in willingly. Jakkin latched the door and turned back to his friends.

It was Errikkin who noticed his leg. "That's awful red. You look like you've lost some skin. Does it hurt?" he asked, pointing, his bland handsome face creased with worry.

Before Jakkin could answer, Slakk said, "I
told
you he was dangerous. They ought to
send him to the stews before he kills someone."

Jakkin answered angrily. "He was just being playful. And grateful. And—worm waste!"

"What is it?" asked Errikkin, parading his concern.

"I left the bagged brush in the shower."

"I'll get it!" cried Slakk, jumping up. Before Jakkin could stop him, Slakk was running down the hall, his bag bouncing crazily against his tunic. But once around the turning, he slowed down. He would walk from here. If he took enough time, the others would start on the next stall and bath without him.

AT THE SHOWER-ROOM
door, Slakk hesitated, bent down, and removed his sandals. Wet feet would dry faster than wet shoes. He heard a noise and looked up. Likkarn was standing over him, glowering, the bath brush in his hand.

"I—it—wasn't me—" Slakk began under the man's hooded gaze.

"It
will
be when I get through with you, you empty-bagged piece of waste. Tossing Master Sarkkhan's property around and dodging work. I know you—bonder." Likkarn spoke it all with a quiet that exaggerated his fury, and his weed-reddened eyes seemed to grow bloodier with each word. He grabbed up Slakk's tunic and slowly raised the boy off
the floor so that only his toes touched it. Then he gave Slakk three hard shakes and dropped him. Slakk fell heavily, twisting his leg and giving a sharp cry of pain.

"Now, if it isn't you, who is it?" Likkarn asked. He knew that fear and pain could control the bond boys and he used his knowledge with precision. In his blister fury, Likkarn was—like all weeders—practically unrestrainable. But during the day he did not allow himself to smoke. "Who—is—it?" he asked again, coldly, spacing the words without obvious passion—that he saved for the dragons he helped train and for his nights of blisterweed.

Again Slakk sobbed out, "It wasn't me." And then, under his breath, as if whispering might excuse his betrayal, he added, "It was Jakkin. Not me. Jakkin."

Likkarn stepped over him and went down the hallway, heedless of Slakk's sobbing. He strode eagerly, not bothering to mask his elation. Jakkin was the one boy who irritated him beyond measure: Jakkin, with his sure touch with dragons, his aloofness, his ability to read. Jakkin had already caught Sarkkhan's eye.
The nursery owner had asked about Jakkin once or twice already. Such a boy, a hard worker who kept himself apart from the other bonders in their games, could not be easily manipulated. "It will be a pleasure breaking Jakkin over
this,
" Likkarn told himself, knowing it would keep the other bonders in line, knowing that to empty the boy's bag over such a slight infraction would be personally sweeter than waiting for an important mistake. He allowed himself a small smile.

Errikkin was already in Bloody Flag's stall, calming the dragon in preparation for the bath. Flag was a phlegmatic beast, hard to rouse even for mating. That calmness was what Sarkkhan hoped to breed into future dragons, without Flag's habitual torpor. Breeding was an inexact science, but Sarkkhan's work had always had a high percentage of correct guesses.