Dragon's Blood (13 page)

The dragon shot away from him, and Jakkin planted both feet wide to steady himself. He held the knife overhead.

The drakk, torn between the dragon smells and the true and false dragon forms, broke its dive for an instant, as if to veer off. In that instant, Jakkin thrust the blade under and into the drakk's neck where it joined the body.

Hot, foul-smelling drakk blood poured out over Jakkin's sleeve, coating it with a greasy, purplish color. The odor made Jakkin gag, then gasp, then collapse. He never saw the drakk fall, but it landed heavily next to him, its talons opening and closing in its death throes. One talon caught on Jakkin's outer shirt and ripped it open from neck to hem.

Cautiously, the dragon trotted over to the drakk. It shook its head as if to rid its nose slits of the terrible smell, then, carefully, from behind, it shoved the drakk body with one foot as far from the shelter as it could. Then it went back to Jakkin and nudged him with
its nose. When there was no response, the dragon lay down next to Jakkin and began, purposefully, to lick his bloody wrist and arm with its rough tongue. One swipe, two, three, and the wound was clean, though blood continued to seep. The dragon curled its body around the boy, but it did not sleep. Every now and then its tongue touched the edges of the wound as if, by licking, it could close them.

Jakkin came to, once, to a great sunburst of color in his head, then passed out again, his face half-buried in the sand.

***

J
AKKIN WOKE IN
pain. There was a vise on one wrist and a burning ache along his other arm. And there was a horrible smell all around him that, combined with the constant pain, made him want to throw up. With an effort, he controlled his stomach. He moaned, almost experimentally, and there was a sudden cool hand on his forehead.

"Shhh. Hush. It's all right," a voice whispered in his ear. Recognizing the voice, he opened his eyes, expecting to see the white
walls of the hospice and to find that he had been dreaming. He saw instead the dark, shadowy outline of the shelter nearby. He turned his head toward the voice and stared.

"You." He couldn't think for a moment. The awful smell confused him. "You..."

Akki smiled down at him, her dark hair falling over one eye. She brushed it back with her hand. "This is getting to be a habit," she said.

Suddenly it all fit together. The one person he had not suspected of spying on him.

"You have awfully large feet for a girl," he said, and pushed himself up to a sitting position, despite the pain. "Almost as big as mine."

She laughed. "That's funny, I think. What does it mean?"

"It means I found one of your footprints by the weed patch. One you neglected to broom away. Only I thought it was Likkarn's," Jakkin said, still surprised.

"I didn't think I missed any," she answered.

"Sloppy," he said, and laughed.

"I learned my bad habits from you," Akki said. "How do you think I found you in the first place?"

"That night you pulled me in out of the cold?"

"Yes. I got up extra early and broomed away your steps."

"And tracked them back at the same time," he said. There was admiration in his voice.

"Yes." She smiled again, acknowledging his admiration.

"I guess I have a lot to be grateful to you for," he said slowly, looking around casually. He hoped that in all her snooping she had never actually
seen
the dragon. Maybe she just thought he had built himself a retreat here, an oasis for his days of Bond-Off.

"It's outside," she said.

He shifted the weight off his aching arm and looked at his wrist, which was expertly bandaged. "The drakk?"

"What's left of the drakk. You nearly took the neck off its body," she said. "And with a blunt kitchen knife that's impressive."

This time Jakkin smiled. "Left-handed,
too," he said, glad to be able to boast about something to her.

"And your dragon is still standing guard over the drakk's body. Kicking sand in its face every now and then. The sand seems to help keep the smell down." She wrinkled her nose. "It's still pretty awful, but the dragon keeps kicking. What a wonder worm."

"Oh." All his fears were contained in the one word. Akki heard it and looked at him slowly.

"I won't tell," she said. "I'll
never
tell." v Jakkin kept staring at the bandage on his wrist rather than looking again at Akki. The bandage material was unusual. He looked up and for the first time realized that Akki was wearing his old shirt, the one he had given the dragon. It had no buttons left and was tied up in front in a big knot. Her bond bag showed. And a lot of her skin. He looked away. Then he looked back shyly.

She seemed to guess his thoughts and gestured toward herself. "This shirt was too dirty to put around your wrist, so I tore my own up. Then I used this. It was split up the front, from the hem to the neck. The drakk got it,
I guess. So I had to tie it like this. It smells, though. And so do you." She hesitated a moment and added, "And so do I." She actually blushed under his stare.

His wrist suddenly throbbed, and he winced.

"The wound was clean," Akki went on, speaking in the same amused voice she had used in the hospice. "The dragon was licking it and it had already started to heal over. There are lots of old stories about that, though I had never seen it in real life. That dragon tongues can heal, I mean. Your other arm was burned a bit from the drakk's blood, but the shirt helped. And the dragon had kicked sand on it, too. That seemed to help as well."

Jakkin grunted and got to his knees. He was dizzy and started to tumble back. Akki was at his side and helped him up. He wasn't sure he wanted to have to lean on her, but he had no choice: It was either lean or fall. He would rather have died than fall in front of her, so he leaned. She was both soft and hard and they both blushed. This time she looked away first.

"I fed your dragon," she said.

"What?"

"Juice from the wort patch. Wouldn't you know, I burned myself on one of the stalks." She held up her hand but it was already too dark to see the burn clearly.

"We'd better get back to the bondhouse. The moons have both risen." She helped him stand and put her arm around his waist and under his arm. She came no higher than his shoulder.

"You must have
very
big feet for such a small girl," he said.

She laughed again. "I do."

They stopped a moment, and he called out loud to the dragon, "Take care, my mighty healer." He was unprepared for the great rising bursts of color that came into his head, reds and oranges and shining golds. He stumbled and put his hand to his temples.

"What's wrong?"

"The dragon ... my head..." He was confused for a moment. Then he realized that the colors filled him up—made him stronger—but did not threaten to overflow his mind.
Bank thy fires a bit,
he thought at the
dragon. The colors ebbed slightly. "That's better," he said out loud.

"You must be weak from blood loss," Akki said.

The dragon came over and nuzzled against his thigh, turning its black eyes on Akki for a moment. Then it walked over to her and licked her free hand.

"It likes you," said Jakkin, surprised at how jealous that made him feel.

"Only because I have been helping you," she said. But she tickled the dragon behind its ears, and the dragon began a gentle thrumming under her hands.

Thou fickle worm
, Jakkin thought at the dragon, but aloud he said, "Look, Akkhan has started down. We had better get back."

"Not without the drakk," Akki said.

"The drakk!"

"Listen: You stink, I stink. And it's not a smell that usually accompanies a boy and girl out at night together. If we bring the drakk back, they'll just think we were out pair-bonding and got set upon by that ... that horror. Oh, I'll tell them quite a tale about how you saved me and..."

Jakkin interrupted. "But they'll know. Drakks don't attack humans."

Akki thought a minute, running her free hand through her hair. "But hadn't you been out with the hatchlings this afternoon?"

"Well, yes, but how did you know?"

"I know ... a lot," she said. "We'll tell them we think the drakk smelled the hatchlings on you."

"And knew that I had had a hand in killing his mate and chicks," Jakkin finished.

"I don't know if drakk think that way," said Akki.

"Or think at all," added Jakkin. "But who can say? That baggy piece of waste attacked us and I fought it off. And you, being a nurse, nursed me." He was really enjoying the story.

"And we'll bring the stinking carcass home and be heroes." She smiled.

"Until someone asks where I got the knife."

Akki frowned. "Oh, that."

Jakkin nodded his head. "That."

"This will take a bit more thinking," said Akki.

Jakkin stood apart from her, feeling stronger. "We'd better think as we go."

"You take the drakk. If you can. I don't \yant to touch it. And the knife. I'll do the brooming," Akki said.

He went over to the sand-covered drakk, circling from the back and kicking it several times to be sure it was really dead. He looked at Akki in case she was laughing, but drakk were no laughing matter. The drakk did not move. He picked it up by its talons with his left hand and slung it over his shoulder. It must have weighed over five kilos and it still smelled. He hated the feel of it against his back. He wondered if he would ever get the stench out of his skin.

Akki followed behind, brooming their path. She used a long broomer with a collapsible handle. "See," she said brightly, "no bending."

"I never thought of that," Jakkin said ruefully. She seemed to think of a lot of things he had never considered. He wondered how many other things she knew about: brooms and hospices, dragons—and men. There had been talk about her at the nursery, about her
and Sarkkhan. Guesses, really. Nursery gossip. No one knew much about her for sure, though Slakk often supplied tidbits he swore were true. She had arrived at the nursery about three years earlier, Jakkin seemed to remember. Someone said Sarkkhan had found her at a baggery. Someone else had once suggested she was the doctor's girl. She seemed to go where she wanted and when she wanted, almost as if she were free. But she was a bonder; her bag said as much. Jakkin suddenly remembered her standing by his bed at the hospice and scripting something. If she could script, she could read. And if she could read, she was either free, or very close to someone free. The doctor. Or Master Sarkkhan. Yet the way she had been acting this evening didn't sound as if she were Sarkkhan's girl. She talked about a boy and girl out together. She had followed Jakkin's tracks. She had rescued
him.
She had promised not to tell. If she were a free man's mate, pair-bonding with someone, surely she wouldn't act that way. Or would she? It was a riddle, a puzzle that Jakkin could not answer.

They walked most of the way in silence.

Jakkin even stopped thinking after a while, because walking and carrying the heavy drakk took most of his remaining strength.

Near the nursery road, Akki spoke at last. "I still haven't thought of any way to explain the knife," she said.

"Nor have I."

But in the end, no one asked. There was a great fuss when they set the dead drakk on the bondhouse steps and the smell woke the other bonders and set the hen dragons roaring. Jakkin and Errikkin, accompanied by a complaining Slakk and a sleepy Trikko, were sent to bury the drakk beyond the compound. They finished just before Dark-After and hurried back for showers.

Jakkin was allowed to sleep the morning away. He did not see Akki again until that night.

D
INNER WAS A
special occasion, the first party since the twenty-fifth anniversary of the nursery's founding. In honor of the drakk killers, Kkarina had made an elaborate cake covered with a deep red frosting and a candied figure of a dead eggsucker, complete with caramelized eyes and a bone-handled kitchen knife rising out of its stomach.

Even Master Sarkkhan ate with the bonders. Just back from a successful trip to a minor pit, the nursery owner sat with the older bonders and regaled them with stories of his early fights. Only Likkarn was absent. Rumor had it that he had cursed Sarkkhan to his face, calling him "gold master" and "drakk dodger." Jakkin wondered if the old man had
been smoking weed again or if he were really jealous of Jakkin's success.

Let him sulk in his room,
Jakkin thought to himself. But he suddenly felt sorry for the old man who had led them all so fearlessly against the drakk colony. Now that he no longer thought that Likkarn was spying on him, threatening his hatchling, Jakkin could afford to feel sympathy.

At the dinner's end, Jakkin was summoned to Sarkkhan's table, where the master, still in the red-and-gold suit he had worn to the pit, presented him with a handful of gold. Jakkin had never been face-to-face with the nursery owner before. The man was big, massive, with broad shoulders and large hands that were covered with red-gold hair. He had an expansive smile.

"Here," Sarkkhan said, his bushy red beard waggling as he spoke. "Your bag is not yet full. Fill it with the thanks of the nursery. One dead drakk means many live dragons."

Jakkin took the gold and opened his bag with two fingers, never taking his eyes off Sarkkhan. He slid the coins into the pouch and heard them clink, one after another: one, two,
three, four, five. Then he murmured his embarrassed thanks.

"The thanks are entirely on our side, young Jakkin," said Sarkkhan. "I've had my eye on you for some time."

Jakkin wondered briefly what Sarkkhan meant by that. Then he managed to smile back and add, boldly, "Some thanks and coin belong to Akki as well," he said, appending the ritual words: "Her bag is not yet full."

Sarkkhan houghed through his nose like a disgruntled stud dragon. From die boys' table there came a giggle. Jakkin recognized Slakk's laugh.

Sarkkhan's eyes narrowed and his mouth grew thin, though it still smiled.

"She
was
there with me. She helped," Jakkin said.