"Home. Home. Jakkin is home." Their voices twined in his head, their phosphorescent sendings welcoming him. The triplets' high-pitched twitterings were still mostly incomprehensible, but Sssasha made up for them with her clarity and warmth.
Gazing around the oasis, at the five dragons, at the bubbling spring, the tall reeds, the bowl of blue sky, Jakkin flung out his arms. They were right, of course. The nursery wasn't home. The oasis was.
9
AKKI HAD FIRST checked the hens in the incubarn and especially the one Likkarn felt was ready to lay. The dragon was calm—no hackles, no shuttered eyes, her tail lying flat against the stall floor. In fact, she was a lot calmer than Likkarn.
"It's Heart O'Mine and she's never had a successful clutch," he told Akki. His eyes were reddened, and the bad eye's lid was drooping. Clearly he'd had little sleep. "She's just about at the end of her laying days. Another few years and her nursery time will be over."
"Do you want me to check her again?" Akki asked, wondering if she should forget about her ride to The Rokk.
"Please," he said.
Akki wasn't sure she'd ever heard him say that word before, and she wondered if Likkarn, too, wasn't nearing the end of his time in the nursery.
"She was the first hen your father gave me and I thought she'd make my fortune," he explained as she knelt down to examine Heart O'Mine's protruding belly.
The dragon's belly was tight as it should be, and when she put her ear down, she could hear a kind of gurgle, very light and yet constant. "Burble means babies," she recited. It was one of the earliest things she'd ever learned about gravid females.
Likkarn laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, she burbles all right. She goes into heat, freshens, accepts the male, then eggs form and they burble away. She lays them just fine. But the eggs never open up on hatchlings. I don't know why." He turned to the dragon. "Nor do thou, my lovely, my darling."
"She's three or four days away, I'd say."
"Two."
"We'll see."
He stood. "Will we?" he asked. "The truck's coming to take you to The Rokk."
She was stunned. Her mouth opened, closed.
"The master of a nursery has to know what's going on at all times," Likkarn said. "Your father taught me that. And if you think you can get Kkarina to do anything without telling me, well, think again."
"Well, perhaps when I think again, I'll change my mind and not go." She stood, too. "That's what my father taught me."
"We need a good doctor and a better vet, especially with the embargo. A lot of the old vets and doctors were here on rotation from other Feder worlds and have gone back home. So, if you're set on finishing your apprenticeship, we want you off to The Rokk as soon as possible." His sharp face took on a crafty look. "Your father would have wanted that, too. Now go and check those two ferals."
He meant Auricle and the hatchling. It was his hand that had written the visit with them on the chore list, all the while knowing it might be her last day with them for a while. The master of the nursery. Yes, I suppose he's that. Now. For the first time in almost a year, she thought of her father with real regret. He'd been a difficult father, but a great master.
As she left the stall and headed to the rear of the barn, she considered how well Auricle had settled in. Not so the hatchling. The poor thing has so imprinted on me, she's pining for me as if for a mother. Akki sighed. But what can I do?
Henkky's house in The Rokk was no place for a growing dragon, but Akki feared the hatchling would die before she was able to get back for a visit. For all their size and power, dragons could go down fast for any number of reasons, and imprinting on the wrong mother was one of them. In only another month, the hatchling would be ready to fledge. What if it doesn't last that long without me? Either I wait a month before going or... That way she could see Likkarn's dragon through this laying, fledge the hatchling, get Jakkin used to the idea of their being apart. But there was always going to be one crisis after another. That's how nurseries worked. As her father always said, "We lurch from bad to worse." If she stayed this time, it would be even easier to stay through the next crisis. And all that time given was time lost. The planet's dragons might all be consigned to death because of her. She felt time weighing heavily on her. The sooner she began working on the problem facing all the dragons, the better. Taking the hatchling along seemed to be her only option.
I have to go to The Rokk now. I have to set up a laboratory now, learn all I can now. Likkarn already knows some of the secret. The trogs know the rest. And if the trogs came boiling out of their caves, it would be a real disaster: the secret out, people killed, and more dragons—maybe all the dragons—killed.
But I can't go without telling Jakkin! She sent a tentative gray sending, trying to find him. But then she realized she was too close to Likkarn and stopped herself. Jakkin was no doubt still in the stud barn, working with the big male dragons. She'd just go and tell him.
Stilling her traitor mind, she went on to Auricle's stall, patted her and sang to her, and settled her down. Then, collecting the hatchling, who'd all but attached herself to Akki's side, she left the barn. There was a truck waiting by the kitchen door.
"Oh, fewmets!" she said aloud. There was no time to see Jakkin and say good-bye. She'd have to send. Something short, definitive. As soon as she was ready to go.
But first she needed to pack. Not that she had anything to pack. At least, nothing for the city. She decided to start with the nursery store.
***
THE STORE was unattended. It didn't matter. She picked out a change of leathers, a second pair of sandals, and a soft carry bag, then left a note that she'd borrowed them.
Back in her room, with the hatchling perched on her bed, she packed the bag with the new clothes and several of her old hair ties that Kkarina had been keeping. A hairbrush, comb, toothbrush, and that was all she needed.
No, she thought, not quite all. There was a pair of shears on top of the chest of drawers. It gave her an idea. Just in case there were any rebels still roaming The Rokk, she'd make herself unrecognizable. Picking up the shears, she cut off her long hair in three large, dark clumps, and shoved the clumps into the burn sack in the hall.
Back in the bedroom, she took a quick look in the mirror. With that short cap of hair, she barely knew herself. That made her smile. "Good-bye, Akki," she whispered to her reflection.
She picked up the carry bag, but when she tried to gather up the hatchling, it hissed at her.
"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.
10
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 ks.
"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 o
n 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.
11
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.