Timothy Zahn - Dragon and Slave

"He may be at dinner tonight."

"In which case, we're probably in trouble," Jack said, giving up and pulling the back of the tunic free again. "Let's hope the Chookoock family doesn't let non-Brummgas eat with them. If we can get through this one meal, we should be in."

"You plan to hit the computers tonight?"

"I'm sure going to give it a try," Jack said. No special shoes had come with the outfit; slipping on his own, he secured them and looked himself up and down.

"At least I'm not going out in public in this thing," he said with a sigh. "Let's go entertain Her Thumbleness."

"Yes," Draycos said. "Is 'break a leg' the proper response?"

"That's the one," Jack confirmed.

"Thank you," Draycos said. "Break a leg."

From the information Uncle Virge had pulled up, Jack had known the Chookoocks were a big family, spanning at least six generations and including over a hundred Brummgas.

What he hadn't expected was to find the whole ugly crowd of them dropping in for dinner on this same night.

Maybe they weren't all there, gathered around the long tables beneath the hanging flags in the huge banquet hall. Jack never had a chance to actually count them. But if they were missing any of them, they weren't missing very many.

The scene rather reminded Jack of one of those old Medieval costume dramas, the kind Uncle Virgil had always loved. The sort of drama where Robin Hood or someone charged in just before dessert and dropped a deer on the table in front of the king.

Here, of course, the tables were made of long slabs of dark green stone instead of rough-cut wood, and the light came from modern glow domes instead of flaming torches. And given the number of armed guards stationed at the various doors, no one was likely to be showing up with a deer unless it was properly cooked.

But aside from that, the effect was much the same.

One of the serving slaves led Jack over to a table off to one side, where a couple dozen Brummgan children were already seated. Their table, unlike the others, was covered with a brightly colored patchwork tablecloth that hung all the way to the floor. Some of the children were coloring or drawing on it, while others were busy carving slits into it with their table knives.

It wasn't until Jack came closer that a familiar section of the cloth caught his eye: one of the battle flags of the Whinyard's Edge mercenaries.

And then he understood. The tablecloth was composed of mercenary banners and military flags, all sewn together and given to the children to amuse themselves.

And of course, what the children wanted to do most was scribble on or otherwise insult them. Typical Brummgan behavior.

Crampatch's daughter was seated in the hostess's position at the middle of the table. She was wearing a large curly-edged hat, and was beating cheerfully on the kid next to her with a long serving spoon. Stepping in front of her, Jack bowed low. "Your Thumbleness," he said.

She stopped hitting her neighbor and pointed at him with her spoon.

"Brolach-ah mischt heeh," she said.

Jack felt his heart catch in his throat. "I'm sorry, Your Thumbleness?" he asked carefully.

"Brolach-ah mischt heeh," she repeated, more insistently this time.

"Brolach-ah mischt heeh simt."

Jack could feel sweat gathering beneath his collar. He'd spent the journey to Brum-a-dum studying the Brummgan script, but he hadn't counted on having to know their spoken language, too. "I'm sorry, Your Thumbleness—"

The apology didn't make it any further. Without warning someone grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. He had just enough time to see that he was looking into a large Brummgan face when a hand closed around his throat and lifted him straight up off the ground.

"Do you deaf, human?" the Brummga snarled. His voice was thickly accented and barely understandable. His hot breath, blasting into Jack's face, smelled like barbecued pork mixed with dead seaweed. In his free hand he held a large cup half full of a thick, greasy-looking liquid. Drunk, right up to his eyelids.

"Do you deaf?" he repeated. "Or do you stupid?"

Jack clutched at the hand wrapped around his neck, gasping for breath. He tried to say something—to plead, to apologize, to say anything. But he couldn't get any words out past that grip. Maybe the Brummga was too drunk to know what he was doing.

He looked around frantically, as least as far around as he could with his head held this way. If someone else was paying attention to what was happening here—if he could just signal that the drunken Brummga was in danger of killing a

a

.

They were watching. They were watching, and laughing, and cheering their drunken friend on.

And with that the message finally got through. The message that the berry-picking and the slave colony and even the hotbox hadn't been able to teach him.

No one cared about him here. No one cared if he was happy or hungry, or whether he lived or died. He was a slave. He was property. He was a child's toy.

And if he got broken, well, Her Thumbleness would just go back out through the thorn hedge to the toy store and pick out something else. White spots were beginning to dance in front of Jack's eyes—

And then, suddenly, his vision cleared. The awful pressure on his throat was gone, and he could breathe again.

He blinked with confusion. The pressure was gone, but he was still dangling by his neck in the Brummga's grip, with the Brummga still shouting thickly at him.

No pressure... but he was still hanging?

And then he felt a subtle change at his throat; and all at once he understood.

He could breathe because the Brummga was no longer holding his neck, at least not directly. Draycos had moved part of himself underneath the alien's hand and risen up from Jack's skin. Not much, but enough to take the pressure of that hand onto himself.

"She tell you perform," the Brummga shouted into his face. "Do you perform now."

With a contemptuous shove, he tossed Jack backward. Jack hit the floor, flailing a little for balance as he landed. As he did so he felt Draycos pull away from his neck, retreating back beneath the harlequin tunic. Hopefully, no one had spotted the dragon's gold scales before he'd gotten out of sight.

"Perform, right," he said, turning back to the children's table and scooping up three of the items from the vegetable bowl. They looked like the potato-things he'd juggled for Greb and Grib, only bigger. A higher-quality food than they gave the slaves, no doubt. He tossed one of the potatoes into the air—

A heavy hand slapped against the side of his head, knocking him flat onto the floor. He caught a glimpse of the potato he'd tossed rolling under the table as he dropped the other two beside him. "Do you deaf, human?" the drunken Brummga screamed. "She tell you perform. Not eat. Perform."

"I was performing," Jack protested, rolling over onto his back and pushing himself up onto his arms into an almost-sitting position. "I needed—"

He saw the foot coming, but there was no time to do anything but get ready for the impact. The kick slammed a glancing blow onto his left shoulder, and he rolled with it, spinning around nearly onto his stomach in the process.

"I was performing," he repeated, scrambling back around onto his back again.

His leg swiveled around as he did so, his left foot catching the bottom of the tablecloth and sliding underneath it. And as it did so, he felt a sudden ripping of the tights at his ankle. There was a surge of weight there—

And Draycos was gone.

Jack looked up at the Brummga standing over him, a tangle of conflicting emotions swirling through him. He'd been wrong: there was indeed one person in the room who cared whether he lived or died. Draycos, poet-warrior of the K'da, was loose and ready to protect him from this murderous slab of meat.