Free Forged by Fire by Janine Cross Page A

hand against my belly. Savga slid to my side.
“Will he hurt you?” No doubt she was thinking of the welts and bruises so fresh on her mother’s face. She was far too young to be bearing such concerns.
“No,” I said, and I smiled. The tension went out of her body, for she could see my smile wasn’t forced. And it wasn’t; my heart was soaring at the thought that Gen had succeeded, that I would taste venom and hear dragonsong soon. I ruffled Savga’s hair, knuckled her crown gently. “Not at all, Little Ant. He won’t hurt me.”
I smiled at Fwipi to reassure her, too. She looked non plussed by my blithe grin.
Clenching my hand about the pebble the dragonmaster had forced into my palm—no congle nuts out on the sa vanna—I wove my way quickly through chatting people, toward the mating shack. I ascended the rickety wooden stairs, carefully and painfully stretched up to the lintel, and placed the pebble within the clay bowl that sat there, so the One Dragon might bless my womb with my claimer’s fertile seed.
It was dark and stifling inside the mating shack, and stank of unaired dust. A narrow corridor ran down the middle of the shack, so narrow both my shoulders touched the woven-reed partition walls on either side of me. An other couple was inside; their heavy breaths permeated the air like salty musk, and the shack was rocking slightly from their movements.
The shack was small. It contained only four mating cu bicles, plus the necessary men’s party room at the back. I knew which cubicle the dragonmaster was sat within by the impatient tap-tap-tap of a foot upon the floor. I waited a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark; then, moving sideways because of the narrowness of the corridor, I shuf fled to the cubicle where the dragonmaster was waiting.
I stepped inside and slid the paper-thin partition door shut. The dragonmaster sat on the far end of a pallet, hunched slightly.
“You’ve heard from Gen,” I gleefully whispered.
“What?”
I started to repeat myself, but the dragonmaster impa tiently waved me silent. “Forget Gen. We won’t hear from him for weeks—”
“Weeks!”
He scowled at the volume of my reply. “The mother of that get who follows you like a puling kitten, what’s her name? Who’s her claimer?”
My discouragement turned into malice, and I savored the fact that I knew something the dragonmaster didn’t. I waited long moments before responding. “Her name is Tansan. Her claimer is Keau. Why?”
“Those three young bulls that sat at her feet the night we arrived . . . who are they?”
“I can find out. I expect the information isn’t secret.”
He rolled his shoulders and suddenly stood. “I’ve over heard them talking, those four. They’ve no love for bayen, or the Emperor. There’ll be more like them. I want to know them all.”
“Why?” The word Savga had used, myazedo , echoed in my mind.
He flapped his hands before my face. “Why, why, why! Have I taught you nothing?”
For an instant I was gripped with the urge to smack his flapping hands aside. Instead I snapped, “You can’t put these people in danger.”
His eyes bulged. “These are my people. Don’t think you can tell me what I can and can’t do, aosogi get.”
Staring into his blood-marbled eyes was like staring into the eyes of some wild creature that lived in a supernatural hinterland. I met his gaze for several long moments before dropping it and muttering, “I know I’m not Djimbi. But they’ve taken me into their clan. And this is my Clutch. I won’t see them come to any harm.”
“Idiot whelp,” the dragonmaster said, but astonishment robbed the vitriol from his words. “What I do, I do to free us from the tyrant’s hold.”
I remained silent and continued to stare at his horny feet.
“Fine,” he spat at last, and I tried not to flinch. “I’ll learn what they whisper amongst themselves yet. You live with the illusion that these people are happy and satisfied. Fine. You live with that