Dragon's Heart (11 page)

"Hey, I'm still me," she whispered to it, holding out her hand. The hatchling sniffed at the proffered hand finger by finger before deciding that she smelled all right. But it took a minute more before it was willing to settle into the crook of her arm.

Carrying bag and hatchling, she went to say good-bye to Kkarina in the kitchen. The smells of hard soap and pots soaking in hot water filled the place.

Errikkin was sitting at the kitchen table having a late breakfast or an early lunch. He dimpled at her. She didn't take it personally. He dimpled at everyone.

"Going somewhere, stranger?" he asked.

The hatchling hissed at him.
It must be his tone,
Akki thought.
I want to hiss at him, too.

"She's off to The Rokk to do some studying," Kkarina said. Her hands were in the water, scrubbing the pots. "To be a doctor." She banged the clean pot down on the wooden rack. "And a vet."

Surely Errikkin should be cleaning the pots. Of course, he always used charm to get out of work.

"She'll be home again soon," Kkarina said, lifting a third pot up and shaking the water out. "And her hair will be all grown out again." It was all she said about Akki's shearing.

"I will indeed." Akki smiled and shifted the hatchling from her left arm to her right.

Errikkin had a funny look on his face. "Does Jakkin know?" It almost seemed that he hoped it would come as a surprise. Though whether he wondered if Jakkin knew she was leaving or that she had cut off all her hair, Akki couldn't tell.

"Of course he knows," said Akki, which was only partially a lie. "He was the first." And that ambiguity was what she left Errikkin with, walking out the door to the truck, holding the bag in one hand, the hatchling in the other and not looking back.

THE RIDE to The Rokk was less comfortable than the one she'd had on her last trip, over a year ago. The truck bounced along the road as if the cab were sitting directly on the axle with nothing to cushion it.

Akki didn't complain. After all, the black-haired driver had a face that didn't invite complaints. Especially, she guessed, from girls. She feared that he would just put her out on the road, with her satchel of clothes in one hand and the hatchling curled up in the other. And while she could last through the night if she had to, it would just make things even more difficult to explain should he ever go back to the nursery and talk to Kkarina. Or Likkarn.

Besides, now that I'm actually on the road, I want to get to the city as soon as possible. And as anonymously as possible.

The hatchling stirred, and she gentled it with a finger-tickle under the chin.

"Never did like those things," the man said, his face patchy with moles. His eyes were a cloudy color, neither gray nor blue nor green. And his nose looked as if he'd been in one too many fights.

"Things?"

"Dragons. Don't trust them lizards." There was a short, deep scar on his face—
possibly a blood score
—that moved when he spoke, and not in a pleasant way. When he grinned, she saw that one of his front teeth was predictably black.

"They're not exactly lizards," she said.

"Close enough."

"Same family, though."

He wiped a gloved finger under his nose. "You some kind of scientist?"

"Close enough."

"Boomer," he said.

"What..." She turned toward him, making sure that the hatchling was kept slightly behind her.

"My name."

"No double ks?" She wondered if his parents had been masters. Or wardens. Or had bought themselves out of bond. And if so, why was he driving a truck? Why wasn't he a senator or a store director or owner of a large farm?

He laughed. It was a low rumble, not actually unpleasant, but more animal than human. "After the dumb-bumbling senators set us all free from bond, who wants to be a double
k
anymore?" He put his hand out to shake hers.

She got a stubborn look on her face, which Jakkin would have recognized in an instant, and refused to put out her own hand. "Akkinata," she lied. Her true given name was Akkhina. She pronounced all the syllables for the maximum effect, almost spitting out the
k
s.

"Ah well, you're only a girl. No need for you to change now, is there? You'll change soon enough when you get paired. Pretty girl like you, got to have a man."

Furious, she considered telling him how much she'd already changed. Not only the dragon sight and dragon speech, but how, just before getting into his truck, she'd cut off her hair.

He laughed at her silence and said, "Is there one?"

This time she thought about snarling. About screaming. Thought about how she'd even prefer walking to keeping quiet in the cab of Boomer's bumpy truck. But she needed the ride more than he needed to give it to her. She couldn't carry her bag and the hatchling and get to The Rokk with any ease. So she bit her lip, swallowed her anger, and shook his gloved hand, imagining—by the spongy feel of it—what it was disguising: the swollen, hairy knuckles, filthy nails bitten down to the quick. One shake was all she could manage before turning to look out the window, which was way better than staring at his ugly face. The hatchling thrummed in the crook of her right arm.

***

IT FELT LIKE half a day, but only an hour by the sun, when Boomer suddenly pulled onto the grassy verge and stopped the truck.

Akki was instantly on guard. Her sudden nervousness communicated to the hatchling, who in turn scratched her on her little finger, a long, thin red line.

"Ow!"

Repentant, the little dragon licked the blood with its forked tongue, which felt cool on her skin.

"
Danger?
" The hatchling sent a huge red arrow coursing toward her.

Akki sent back a cooling spray of blue-white rain that enveloped the red arrow, turning it pink, then erasing it altogether. "
No danger
." She was delighted that the hatchling was sending to her. And such a strong image. The trog-bred dragons tended to be muted, their sendings beaten to grays. Clearly she and Jakkin had gotten the little hatchling out in time.

"I told you them lizards aren't to be trusted,
Akkinata.
" He spoke her made-up name with the same staccato accent. "Want me to dump it?"

"NO!" she said, louder than she meant to, though not as loud as she might have wanted.

"
Danger?
" The hatchling's baby hackles rose just a bit.

Her finger throbbing in response, Akki soothed the hatchling with a stroking motion. "
No, silly. None. Just silly humans playing silly human games.
"

"
Silly 'uman,
" came the dragonling's sending, and she began thrumming again.

"S'alright," Boomer said. "I know how you girls get attached to those things."

Akki suddenly understood. He believed the hatchling was a Beauty, a miniaturized dragon taken as an early cull and purposely stunted. City girls loved such things. Akki thought them an abomination. The Beauties, not the girls.

"Yes," she said carefully. "Very attached."

"Okay. As for me—gotta go. Use the ... well, find a bush ... well, a tree, anyway." Obviously talking about bodily functions to a girl was enough to make him babble incoherently. He opened the door and leaped down from the cab of the truck. Then he walked briskly out past some small bushes, more gracefully than she would have thought, his black hair under the bandana swinging from side to side.

Akki looked away toward a straggly copse of trees on her side of the road. The last thing she wanted to watch was Boomer peeing.

She considered driving away in the truck on her own. After all, she knew how to drive. Her father had taught her on the nursery roads years ago. She wouldn't have to worry about Boomer getting caught out in Dark-After. They weren't that far from Krakkow, after all, and there were always the small roadside houses dotted around the landscape for any bonders left outside at night. He'd be fine.
Furious, of course, but fine.

However, when she leaned over for the keys, they were not in the ignition. Suddenly,
she
was the furious one.
He doesn't trust me!
He'd taken the keys with him.

Just as well.
She laughed at herself. She needed to stay focused on getting to The Rokk, not stealing a truck and running from the wardens once she got there. Her work—finding a substitute for the blood in a dragon's egg chamber—was more important than taking a thug's truck. In fact, it was the most important thing in the whole of Austar right now, though only she and Jakkin knew it.

Jakkin!
She bit her lip. She'd tried,
really
tried, to communicate with him about Kkarina and the truck and driver. And after, in the incubarn, she'd tried again. She sent and sent and never heard back.
He's probably off sulking somewhere.
And then she thought,
Boys!

Shifting the hatchling to her left arm for a bit while Boomer was out of the cab, Akki sighed with relief. She shook her right arm, trying to get back some of the feeling. It might have been a mistake bringing the hatchling along. She could see—could feel, actually—how much the dragonling was growing daily. Pretty soon, unlike any of the Beauty dragons, the hatchling would be too heavy to haul around. And how was she going to take care of the little dragon in a city house?
But really, what choice did I have. I couldn't let the poor thing mourn itself to death.

As for Jakkin—she was angry with him for not answering her sending. And sad, too. The last things they'd said to one another had been so hurtful. She'd only wanted to shake him out of his notion that being back at the nursery meant that everything was fine again.

"Stupid ... fewmetty ... worm drizzle," she said aloud, just as Boomer climbed back up in the cab.

"I hope you're not aiming that mouth at me, girl," he said, his tone light but the pit on his face now a deep red color, as if it alone were blushing.

"No," she said, "I'm just mad at myself for something I said to ... to my boyfriend before we left."

"Should have known a pretty girl like you would treat the boys badly," he said, and began to laugh, pounding one meaty hand on the wheel. Then, putting the key in the lock, he started up the truck and steered it back out onto the road.

Smiling prettily at him, or at least she hoped so, Akki then turned away again, to stare straight ahead at the long road. Often wild east winds swept across the road, burying parts of it in sand. But there'd been winds from the north recently, and so the raised paving was clear. She hoped that was a good omen for the rest of the trip.

THEY RODE for quite some time in silence and Akki was glad of it. Glancing out her window, she glimpsed the Narrakka River, dark and swift and threatening. Toward the north were the brooding mountains. She shivered just looking at them.

Half an hour later they passed the convict city of Krakkow, on the one rim road around it. Soon they'd be heading through the heart of the desert toward The Rokk. Her excitement communicated to the little dragon curled against her, and it thrummed loudly.

"What's that noise?" demanded Boomer.

"Nothing worrying," she replied. "Just the hatchling."

"I don't trust them lizards," he repeated, his lips pushed out, which made his face strangely alien.

Neither spoke much for the rest of the trip, which was just fine with her.

The road between Krakkow and The Rokk had a numbing sameness to it. On both sides, the desert was a light-colored sandscape, hardly relieved by any greenery. It could have been soporific, but Akki was too keyed up to nap along the way. Besides, she didn't trust Boomer. He might stop at one of the roadside houses, pleading tiredness, then make her get inside. He might try to take the hatchling away. Or hurt it somehow. He might ... she couldn't begin to imagine all of the things Boomer might be capable of doing if she didn't stay awake.

Boomer. What a stupid, troglike name.
She shifted uneasily on the seat, resettling the hatchling next to her, curling her arm around its back, enjoying its dozy thrum. She sent it a gold-colored chuckle that looked a great deal like reeds waving in a soft wind.

"Comfy, girl?" Boomer asked, scratching up under his bandana.

"Mmmm."

"You can nod off if you want."

"No thanks." Her answer didn't encourage any more questions, and for a long time he didn't ask any.

All the way, in fact, to The Rokk.

***

WHEN THEY CAME at last to the outskirts of the city, Akki sat up straight. As always, the sight of the great walls struck her with awe. In her heart. Or her stomach. She wasn't sure which.

Stone towers, like dragon wings, stretched out on either side of the main structure. Her usual response to spotting The Rokk had been to laugh. This time she just sighed.

"Quite a thing," Boomer ventured. "Never seen it afore, I bet."

She turned and said sharply, "Oh, I've seen it often enough. Even worked here for a while."

He nodded, as if understanding. "Bag girl!"

"
Not.
" Her voice held contempt that she hadn't meant. After all, her own mother had been a bag girl. Had died in a baggerie. And Kkarina, too, had started in a baggerie before turning to cooking. Being a bag girl was an honest profession. She rephrased and softened her answer. "Not a bag girl. A student doctor."

Boomer laughed. "Of course." He obviously didn't believe it. "And that's a waste."

Now that they were in sight of the city, Akki suddenly felt a need to set him straight. If he threw her out here, she could walk—even carrying both the satchel and the hatchling—and be there inside of an hour.

"
Of course,
you pig. Nothing wasted about me. I was an apprentice doctor and working with one of the finest research doctors on the planet. Her name is Dr. Henkky. Maybe you've heard of her?"

He shrugged noncommittally.

Akki continued. "I'm not one of your pretty girls, Boomer whatever-your-real-name-is. And my father, Master Sarkkhan, owned the nursery where you picked me up."