barrier was thin enough. From his angle, Draycos might not be able to see Maerlynn where she was right now, but she should come into view as soon as she headed back to the slave buildings.
Assuming she did go back to the slave buildings. He still wasn't convinced this wasn't some trick of Gazen's to get him talking. 'Are you a slave?' he asked.
'Everyone on this side of the thorn hedge is a slave,' Maerlynn said, an odd sadness in her voice. 'You, too, it would seem. Here—take this.'
Something poked at Jack's feet through the crack under the door. He reached down a hand, being careful not to pull his back away from the wall. He didn't know what would happen to Draycos if he moved while the dragon was looped over the wall that way, but it wasn't something he wanted to find out the hard way.
His fingers touched an edge of rough cloth. 'What is it?'
'A blanket,' Maerlynn said. 'It's going to get pretty cold in there tonight.'
Colder than this? Jack wondered, suppressing a shiver. 'So how come Gazen called it a hotbox?'
There was a slight pause, just long enough for Jack to wonder if he'd said something wrong. 'You'll find out about mid-morning,' Maerlynn said. 'How long are you in for? Do you know?'
'He didn't say,' Jack told her. 'He just said I needed a lesson about what it meant to cross the Chookoock family.'
'I see,' Maerlynn said. 'Do you need anything else right now? Food? Water?'
'No, I'm all right,' Jack said.
'Get some sleep if you can,' Maerlynn said. 'I'll try to come talk to you again later.'
'Okay,' Jack said. 'Thanks.'
'You're welcome.' There was another slight pause. 'By the way... if any of the Brummgas ask, I'd rather you not tell them I came and talked to you. We're not supposed to go near people in the hotboxes.'
'I won't,' Jack promised. Though how she expected him to explain the blanket he wasn't sure. 'Thanks again.'
'Sure,' Maerlynn said. 'Good-bye.'
The shadow vanished, and there was the sound of fading footsteps. The feel of the dragon shifted again, and his head rose from Jack's shoulder. 'Well?'
Jack asked.
'She is medium height and of a somewhat round build,' Draycos reported. 'Her skin looks rough, somewhat like the outer coating of a pineapple. Her head was covered with tendrils of a white substance. Similar to human hair, but it did not look precisely the same.'
'They're called featherines,' Jack said. 'Yeah, that's an Ysanhar, all right.
What were her clothes and shoes like?'
'Her clothing was well-worn and patched in several places,' Draycos said.
'Her shoes were in similar shape.'
'And she headed back to the slave quarters?'
'Yes.'
'One of the slaves, all right,' Jack concluded.
'Was there doubt?'
'There's always doubt when you deal with people like Gazen.' Jack shook his head. 'She isn't going to have a very pleasant night.'
'I do not understand.'
'She's probably wondering if I'm some kind of plant,' Jack explained. 'I shouldn't have mentioned that I'd talked to Gazen. Most of the slaves in here have probably never even heard the name, let along talked to the guy.' He shivered, a violent shake that ran through his whole body. 'Geez, it's cold.'
Draycos cocked his head. 'Put the blanket behind you,' he suggested. 'Drape it between you and the wall.'
Jack did as instructed, folding the blanket in half first to provide the thickest insulation possible. Now his chest was exposed to the air, but at least he wasn't leaning up against the cold metal wall anymore. 'Good,' Draycos said.
'Now hold still.'
And with a surge against Jack's shirt, the dragon leaped off his skin.
Twisting around in midair, he managed to avoid whacking his head on the low ceiling and landed on Jack's chest and hips.
'Oof!' Jack grunted. Draycos had come down with his paws straddling Jack's chest and legs, but even with most of his weight supported that way there was enough left over for Jack to feel it. 'What did you have for breakfast? Cement omelets?'
'I am sorry,' Draycos murmured, his breath warm on Jack's cheek. 'I was hoping I
could help you keep warm.'
'I appreciate it,' Jack said. Having the dragon three-dimensional certainly made the packing crate more cramped.
But on the plus side, the K'da was radiating a fair amount of heat. Already he could feel the chill starting to leave his skin. 'Matter of fact, I appreciate it a lot,' he added. 'Thanks.'
'You are welcome,' Draycos said. 'I agree with Maerlynn, that you should sleep if you can. It will help pass the time, and the temperature may become much colder later.'
'Good point,' Jack said, swiveling his shoulders and hips into the most comfortable positions he could. 'See you in the morning.'
CHAPTER 6
Between all the preparation, the long walk from the spaceport, and the burglary itself, it had been a long, hard day. Despite the uncomfortable position the hotbox forced on him, Jack soon fell into a deep sleep.
Sometime in the middle of the night he woke up again, shivering, to find that his gold-scaled K'da blanket had vanished. Draycos had reached the end of his six-hour limit and had returned to two-dimensional form against Jack's skin.
Wrapping himself in his blanket, thinking unkind thoughts about K'da endurance, he huddled in the cold and tried to get back to sleep.
He awoke again to find a bright edge of sunlight streaming in under the hotbox door. The chill of night was gone, and the temperature in his prison had become quite comfortable.
But that relief turned out to be as short-lived as Uncle Virgil's temper in a card game. Within minutes, or so it seemed, the hotbox went from cozy to warm to uncomfortably warm.
And it got worse. Soon the thin metal behind his back grew hot enough to burn skin that lingered against it for too long. Once again he pressed Maerlynn's blanket into service, folding it between his back and the wall.
Sometime around noon he drifted off into a restless sleep, full of strange and feverish dreams. Old memories mixed with images from past and present. He saw Uncle Virgil, tall and arrogant, wrestling with Draycos as he shouted out safecracking lessons to Gazen and a group of Brummgas.
The dream faded away and was replaced by another, this one featuring some of the mercenaries he'd met in the Whinyard's Edge. Under Sergeant Grisko's shouted direction, Jommy Randolph and Alison Kayna recited one of Draycos's poems, getting half the words wrong.
At one point he was back aboard the Star of Wonder, only it also seemed to be the Essenay's dayroom. Seated across the table from him, Cornelius Braxton and his wife were arguing about Orion Arm history, the future of Braxton Universis, and the price of mangoes in Sumatra. On the table between them was a huge pitcher of water, an inch out of Jack's reach.
Once, he thought he woke to hear voices calling to him from outside the box.
But by then his brain was so blurred that he couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't.
It was all so foggy, in fact, that when the hotbox door finally swung open and a
Brummga ordered him out he assumed it was just another dream. He had slogged across the sand, and was stumbling through a patch of clover-grass before it finally dawned on him that he really was out.
