Free Dragonkeeper 2: Garden of the Purple Dragon by Carole Wilkinson Page B

all.
    Her own feelings were unimportant now. Kai was her first priority. He was thin and his scales were dull. He lay in the straw making soft, low sounds that only made her feel worse. She would have preferred it if he’d bitten her.
    Sometime later, a guard came in and without a word pushed a bowl of gruel through the bars of her cage. Kai tried to eat the gruel but it just made him sick. He wasn’t able to digest meat yet. Ping ate a mouthful of the gruel, but she couldn’t bring herself to eat much with the hungry dragon watching her.
    Ping had been imprisoned before. She had been cornered by strong enemies armed with weapons. She had always been able to think of a way to escape. But Danzi was with her then. Now she was on her own. Shedidn’t even have Hua to help her. There seemed no way she could escape.
    She lay down in the straw and curled around the little dragon to comfort him.
    Eventually he went to sleep, but Ping lay awake. She could only think of one way to feed Kai. She remembered the day he had hatched from the dragon stone. He had needed milk then and there was none. Danzi had cut his chest and fed the baby with his own blood. She would have to do the same. She lay awake the whole night thinking of how she could get her hands on something sharp enough to cut her flesh.

• chapter ten •
T HE L ONGEVITY C OUNCIL
    Ping could just make out a dim figure
inside. It was a woman. Her head was
bent low. She was sobbing softly.
    Early morning light filtered through the bamboo walls. Ping had hoped that she would dream of Danzi and he would tell her what to do. But she hadn’t slept at all. She remembered the old dragon’s soft voice, the way his mouth sometimes looked like he was smiling, how he would point out things of interest with one of his talons.
    “Hungry, hungry, hungry,” said a miserable dragon voice in her mind.
    Ping stroked the little dragon, ashamed that hissecond word only proved how much she had failed in her role as Dragonkeeper.
    She felt around for something sharp. She broke off a long splinter from one of the bamboo canes and dug it into her arm, but it only scratched her. What she needed was a blade or a piece of broken pottery or a thorn from a rose bush. She wished the guards hadn’t taken her bag and her knife.
    Then Ping realised she had the thing she needed at hand. The very same tool that Danzi had used to cut his flesh—a dragon’s talon. She sat Kai on her lap and held his left forepaw in her hand. Unlike cats, dragons didn’t tuck their claws away when they weren’t using them. They were always out, as Ping knew only too well. Kai’s talons were small, but very sharp. They had often made her bleed.
    Ping examined the inside of her arm. Just beneath her skin, she could see the blue lines of the vessels that transported blood around her body. She chose the largest one, in the crook of her elbow, and placed the talon against the tender skin. She dug the talon deep into her arm, clamping her teeth together so that she didn’t cry out. Blood ran from the wound and she caught it in her cupped hand.
    “Here, Kai,” she said. “Drink this.”
    The little dragon blinked at her uncertainly.
    “It’s okay, it doesn’t hurt,” she lied. “It will make you strong.”
    He lapped at the pool of blood, cautiously at first, but then faster. He drank until the wound started to congeal.
    There was nothing Ping could use to bandage the cut. She felt dizzy. She lay down in the straw and slept.
    Ping woke when the outer door was thrown open. It was full daylight. She just had time to hide Kai under her gown before an imperial guard came and stood in front of her cage. Her eyes focused on misshapen toes bulging through holes in a pair of shabby slippers.
    “Ah ha!” said a cheerful voice.
    She looked up. It wasn’t a guard at all, but a fat man wearing the gown and ribbons of an imperial minister. He was out of breath.
    “So!” he said. “This is the terrifying sorceress I’ve