The Dragon Keeper, Page 48

  He was still sawing away with his knife. She could tell it was dulling on the thick elk hide. He glanced up at her for a moment; there was no anger in his face, only interest. “Would he? Or would he share it with Jerd? Open your eyes. You have a choice here. You could like me. I could help you, a lot more than Tats could, because ultimately you and I are far more alike than you and he could ever be. I could be your friend. I could be more than your friend. ” He lifted his eyes to meet hers. His voice went deeper and softer on the last words.

  Thymara hated how she reacted, how her belly clenched and a shiver went up her back. A handsome, older man had just as much as said that he wanted her. A man, not a boy. A powerful man, one who was assuming a leadership role among the keepers. “Tats is my friend,” she managed to assert. She turned, refusing to see if he would listen to her. “And that is my meat. Stay away from it. ” She refused to think about his words, about any of his words. Jerd? Was there something Greft knew about Tats and Jerd that she did not? Push that thought away. Gripping her hunting weapons in one hand, she settled the loop of rope over her shoulder and trudged away from him. He let her go with no further words. She could not move swiftly; she had to push her way through low-growing bushes and dangling branches. She tried to move from hummock to hummock, avoiding the swampiest ground. It wasn’t easy.

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  After a short time, the rope began to chafe on her shoulder. The meat she dragged seemed to snag on every stump or root tangle she passed, and she had to give a strong jerk to break it free. By the time she saw the lighter foliage that indicated she was nearly at the river, she was sweaty, scratched, and bitten by insects. She emerged into the swale of tall, coarse river grass and pushed on toward where she had left Skymaw sleeping. She’d give her dragon the meat first, and then go find Tats to help her bring the rest back. She smiled to herself, imagining Skymaw’s surprise at a second hearty meal in one day.

  But when she spotted her dragon, she wasn’t alone. Skymaw was awake, though she still sprawled comfortably on the deep grass. Seated near her head on a wooden box was the Bingtown woman, dressed in loose trousers and a sensible cotton blouse. Next to her Sedric perched uncomfortably on a wooden crate labeled salt fish. His lap desk was on his knees. Paper and ink bottle were before him; his pen was moving swiftly over the paper. His trimly fitting jacket was the color of a bluefly. The white shirt he wore was open at his neck. He’d folded the cuffs of it back over his jacket cuffs, leaving his lean wrists and capable hands free to work. A single line marred his smooth brow. His mouth was pursed slightly, his brows knit in concentration. Alise was apparently dictating the next phrase. Thymara heard “. . . crushing or severing the spine to kill it quickly. ”

  As she scented the meat, Skymaw’s head turned and she lunged to her feet. That motion caused both Sedric and Alise to turn toward Thymara. Skymaw gave her no greeting but simply took three strides and then fell onto the meat and began feeding. Alise’s mouth went into an “O” of surprise and then she laughed merrily, as if watching a favorite child indulge in a sweet. “She’s hungry again!” she called to Thymara, as if expecting the girl to share her pleasure.

  “She’s always hungry,” Thymara replied, trying not to sound sour. She felt an echo of assent from the feeding dragon. Sedric, at least, looked happy to see her. His eyes lit, and his pursed lips became a welcoming smile.

  “I’m so glad you’re finally here. I looked everywhere for you earlier. This process will go a lot faster if you translate. ”

  She hated to disappoint him. “I can’t. I mean, I only brought part of the meat back with me. I have to find Tats and have him help me with the rest before scavengers take it. ” She tried not to imagine that a two-legged scavenger was already hacking off parts of her kill. He wouldn’t dare, she told herself. They were too small a company for anyone to steal openly from another. No one would tolerate it.

  Would they?

  Sedric had said something else. He was looking at her expectantly, waiting for a reply. The twist of anxiety in her belly made her suddenly dismiss him and his concerns. “I have to find Tats and go back for the rest of the meat,” she said hastily, and she refused even to wonder if that answered his question at all. She left them and headed toward the shore and the other dragons.

  Behind her, Alise called out to her, “Rapskal is looking for you!”

  Thymara nodded and kept on going.

  Tats was not with Fente. The small green dragon was still dozing, and when Thymara tried to rouse her to ask if she knew where Tats was, the creature made a sincere snap in her direction. Thymara jumped back uninjured and left her quickly. She wondered uneasily if the dragon would have eaten her if she’d drawn blood. She knew from Skymaw that the green queen had a reputation for being vicious when provoked. It was something she should talk to Tats about. If she could find him.

  She found him and Sylve with the little silver dragon. Guilt tinged with annoyance suffused Thymara. She’d said she would care for the silver and Sylve had said she’d help. She’d only spoken out because Tats and Jerd had said they’d team up on the copper one. But she’d done little more than to check him for parasites around his eyes and nostrils each night. She hadn’t even thought to offer him some of the meat she’d brought back. Sylve was fussing over his tail. Nearby, a little fire smoldered reluctantly on a tussock of grass. A pot of foul-smelling soup had been set on it.

  “How is he?” she asked uncomfortably as she approached.

  “It’s as we feared,” Sylve said. “It looks like he let his tail dip below the surface of the river water, and more than once by the look of it. The cut is inflamed. ” She opened the cloth she’d been trying to wrap around the injury, and Thymara winced. She wondered if her earlier ministrations hadn’t done him more harm than good. It must have been painful when the raw flesh met the acid river. She frowned: she couldn’t recall hearing him cry out. On a positive note, the dragon was sleeping heavily; from the scraps of gut under his front claws, he had evidently got at least a share of the fish run.

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  “I wish there were a way to seal the bandaging around his tail to keep the water out,” she said hopelessly.

  Tats grinned at her. “Maybe there is. I asked Captain Leftrin for some tar or pitch, and he gave me a little pot of it. It’s heating now. He gave us canvas, too. ” His grin grew wider. “I think Captain Leftrin likes that Bingtown woman. When I was asking for the stuff, I thought he was going to tell me to shove off. But that woman, that Alise, got all fluttery about the ‘poor little dragon’ and the captain came up with a solution pretty fast. ”

  “Oh,” she said. Sylve was nodding approvingly at what Tats said.

  “The captain said we should wrap it well, and then tar over the canvas and over his scales to either side. We’re hoping that it will stick to his scales well enough to make a watertight bond. ”

  The sheer strangeness of such a patch drove, for a moment, all other concerns out of her head. She stared at Tats. “Do you think it will work?”

  He shrugged and grinned. “Nothing to lose by trying. I think the tar is warm enough. I don’t want to burn him. In fact, I hope to do this without waking him up. ”

  “How did you get involved in this?”

  Sylve answered. “I asked him. ” Despite the scaling on her face, a blush rosed her cheeks. “I had to,” she added defensively. “I couldn’t find you, and I didn’t know what to do for him. ” She looked down at the dragon’s injured tail. “So I went to find Tats. ”

  As plainly as if she had spoken the words aloud, Thymara saw that the girl was infatuated with the tattooed boy. It almost made her laugh, except that it was so disturbing. Sylve could not have been more than twelve, even if her pink-scaled scalp and copper eyes made her seem older. Didn’t she know how hopeless it was for a girl like her to have a crush on someone like Tats? She could never have him; she could never have anyon
e, any more than Thymara could. What was she thinking?

  But Thymara knew the answer to that, too. She wasn’t thinking at all. Only yearning after a handsome young man who’d shown her kindness and made nothing of her differences. Thymara couldn’t fault her. Hadn’t she felt the same, sometimes?

  Didn’t she now?

  She must have been looking at him strangely, because Tats suddenly flushed and said, “I wanted to help. There wasn’t much I could do for the little copper one anyway. So I decided to put my time here. ”

  “What’s wrong with the copper?”

  The grin had faded from Tats’s face. “The same things that have been wrong with him since he hatched. He’s dull-witted. And his body doesn’t work very well. I cleared a load of parasites from around his eyes and nose and, uh, other places. He didn’t even stir. I think he’s just exhausted from trying to keep up with the others today. I can’t even find out if he’s hungry. He’s that dead tired. ”

  The words echoed through her like a prophecy. “I killed an elk,” she blurted out.

  In the shocked silence that followed her words, she quickly added, “I need help to bring the meat back. There would be some for each of our dragons, and some for us keepers, too. But we’d have to leave soon if we want to get back to camp before dark. It’s going to take us several trips back and forth to get it here. ”

  Tats looked at the tar pot and then at Sylve’s face. “We’ve got to finish this first,” he decided. “Then maybe Sylve and some of the others would help us go for the meat. That way we’d only have to make one trip. ”

  “The more people, the less meat for each dragon,” she pointed out bluntly.

  Tats looked surprised that she’d think of it that way. She was surprised that he’d think of it any other way. For a long moment, the silence held. Then Sylve said quietly, “I can do the silver’s tail alone. You can go get your meat. ”

  Thymara relented. “Let’s just get it done and then we’ll all go. ”

  Sylve kept her eyes down and her child’s voice thickened as she said, “Thank you. Mercor made a kill today and he didn’t complain of hunger, but I don’t think it really satisfied him. I tried to fish, but the boys had the best places all staked out. When Captain Leftrin said that there would be a serving of meat portioned out to each dragon tomorrow morning, I hoped it would be enough for him. ”

  “Well, let’s get this dragon patched up and then we’ll go fetch meat for the others,” Thymara surrendered.

  The heat had loosened the tar. Sylve and Thymara held the bandage firm around the silver dragon’s tail while Tats daubed the tar on with a stick. He worked carefully, and to Thymara it seemed that it took an age before the entire bandage was well covered with tar and sealed to the dragon’s thick tail. The silver, thank Sa, hadn’t even fluttered an eyelid. That thought gave her a moment’s concern. The two least-capable dragons seemed more exhausted every day. How long could they keep up this pace? What would happen to them when they could not? She had no answer to that. She forced her mind back to today’s problem.

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  Tats could almost keep up with her as she led them through the forest, moving through the trees rather than on the ground. Sylve trailed him, but not by much. It was easy to find the way back; she just watched for the trail she had made dragging the meat back to Skymaw. She judged they were about halfway there when she heard voices below her. She moved down the tree trunk, her heart sinking. Her worst fears were realized. Greft was below her. He was dragging a hindquarter of her elk. Behind him came Boxter and Kase. Boxter had the other front leg of the elk, and Kase had taken part of a hind leg but not the full quarter. They were chattering about something to one another, their voices full of triumph when she dropped out of her tree and into the path before them. Greft stopped short in front of her.

  She didn’t mince words. “What do you think you’re doing with my kill?”

  She heard Tats coming quickly down the tree. So did Greft. He looked up to watch Tats’s descent, his face deceptively mild. “I’m taking it back to the dragons. Isn’t that what you intended?” He managed to put a mild rebuke into his voice.

  “I intended to take it back to my dragon. Not yours. ”

  He didn’t reply right away. He gave time for Tats to reach the ground and take a stance behind Thymara. There was a shower of twigs, a brief shriek, and then a thud as Sylve half fell and half slid the rest of the way down. Once she was there, Greft glanced up at the tree, as if to assure himself that this was the whole of their party. Behind him, Boxter and Kase had halted. Boxter looked confused, Kase defiant.

  Greft’s eyes roved over them. He seemed to be making a mental tally of who they were and how each could best be played, as if he were studying a game board. When he spoke, his voice was calm, his words reasonable. “You took a quarter of the kill for your dragon and left the rest here. You told me you were going to go get Tats. But I knew from looking at it that there was more than you and Tats could haul back in a single trip. Even recruiting Sylve doesn’t change that! So I went back, got Boxter and Kase, and started in on the work. I don’t understand why you seem to be upset, Thymara. Isn’t this what Tats advocated, quite some time back? Surely that is what you told me, that you’d give a share to those who helped bring the meat back. It seemed fair to me. ”

  She stood her ground. “That isn’t what I said. I said I intended to get Tats, and that he and I would haul my kill back to our dragons. I intended to keep back some of the meat for the other keepers to eat tonight. But I didn’t offer to share my kill with you, or with your friends. ”

  Greft looked surprised, almost hurt. “But surely we’re all friends here, Thymara! We are too small a company not to be. You told me yourself, at the campfire one evening, that you’d never before had friends such as you had now! I thought you meant it. ”

  Tats was silent behind her. She didn’t want to look back at him; he’d think she was seeking his guidance. Nor did she want to see Sylve’s face right now. Surely they could see how Greft was twisting everything? Wanting to take care of her friends first was not selfishness. Speak plainly and all would be right. She took a breath. “I killed that elk by myself, Greft. And I decide who I’ll share the meat with. I chose Tats. And Sylve, because she helped me. I didn’t choose you, or Boxter, or Kase. And you can’t have the meat. ”

  Greft made a show of looking at the sky. He couldn’t see it through the canopy, but all of them knew that evening would soon plunge them into darkness. “You’d rather let the meat rot or be eaten by scavengers than let us have some of it? There’s still more than half an elk there, Thymara, more than you three can haul back in one trip, I’ll wager. And you haven’t time to make another trip. Be sensible, not selfish. It hurts you nothing to share this. Boxter’s dragon didn’t make a kill today, and Kase’s got a fish, but not a big one. They’re hungry. ”

  She knew she should choose her words carefully, but she was so angry at how he was making it seem. “Then they should go hunting for meat for their dragons, just as I did! Not wait and take mine! I’ve a dragon to feed, too, you know. In fact, I’ve two dragons to feed. ”

  “And both of them were sleeping with bulging bellies when last I saw them,” Greft replied smoothly.

  “Mine isn’t!” Sylve blurted out suddenly. “Mercor has fed, but not well, even though he is too brave and noble to complain. And Tats’s little copper fellow probably got nothing at all. He needs meat, not this argument! Please, can’t we just take the meat back to the camp and settle it there?”

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  “That seems wisest to me,” Greft abruptly agreed. He glanced back at Kase and Boxter. “Do you both agree?”

  Boxter nodded. Kase, his copper eyes gleaming in the gathering gloom, hunched his shoulders. Greft turned back to Thymara. “Then it’s all settled. We’ll see you when you get back to the river. ”

  “It’s not all sett
led!” Thymara snarled, but Tats put a warm hand on her shoulder. She felt the weight of it, but she wondered if he was reassuring her that he was with her or holding her back from what he regarded as foolishness. He spoke past her to Greft.

  “It will be all settled when we get back to the river. We all know night is coming on and we can’t waste time in arguing right now. But it’s not all settled, Greft. I agree that meat should be shared, but not the way you’re doing it. ”

  Greft’s narrow lips moved. It might have been a smile or a sneer. “Of course, Tats. Of course. We’ll see you back at the river. ” He suddenly leaned into the load he was pulling, and Thymara found herself stepping aside, back into the pressing brush behind her, to allow him to pass. Boxter and Kase came behind him, and both of them were plainly grinning. Kase spoke in a low voice as he passed her. “Only fair to get a share of meat if you’ve done work for it,” he observed.

  “No one asked you to do any work!” she growled after him. He kept walking. “It’s like paying a thief because he worked hard to rob your house!” She raised her voice to hurl the words after him.

  “No! It’s like giving your workers a share of the harvest!” he shouted back. She drew breath to point out that merely taking the harvest was not working for it when Tats spoke again. She realized then that he’d never let go of her shoulder, for he tightened his grip on her as he said, “Not now, Thymara. Focus on the most important thing. We need to get that meat back to the river before nightfall. And before the insects get any worse. ”

  “Parasites!” she snarled after them, and then turned away. “The meat is this way. Or what’s left of it!” She strode angrily through the forest.

  Tats was right. The stinging little pests had already begun to swarm around them. Biting insects were never absent in the Rain Wilds, but the evening always brought them out in droves. Well, at least the thieves had broken a better trail for them to follow. She wanted to rant and rave as she thudded along but saved her breath.

  When they reached the carcass, she heard the small sounds of several little scavengers scampering away. The smallest ones, the ants and beetles, had already flocked to the feast and were undeterred by the arrival of the humans. They swarmed over the elk’s body, congregating in black, shimmering masses wherever the raw flesh was exposed.