The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(43)

They have a long way to go.

When Jeryon returns to the cabin, the poth is steeping and Gray is sitting on the roof. He can’t decide if he loves her tea because of the steeping or in spite of it. It’s a whole operation, putting leaves in hot water and staring at them, as complex as refitting a galley. First the water has to be boiling, not a bit below or it’s ruined. Then you have to pour the water in slowly. Too fast, and it’s ruined. Then you have to wait a precise number of seconds. Too few or too many, ruined. Pouring the tea out is a whole other operation. That precision appeals to him tremendously. It’s not the type of attitude he’d have expected of her. Trouble is, he wants the tea now.

He whistles twice and Gray glides down to sit beside the crate. He grabs a crab between its back legs, extends his arm twice slowly, her eyes following the crab, then he flings it, spinning, high in the air. He whistles three times.

The wyrm leaps into the air after it. The crab tips off her snout and falls to the ground. Before it can get away, Gray picks it up with her mouth. And before she can chomp it, Jeryon whistles twice. She brings it to him for another throw. The crab is completely uninterested in flight. The next time, Gray relieves it of all interests.

He doesn’t know what it is about her, but the poth makes him puckish sometimes. It’s probably the tea.

Everlyn hears the wyrm whoosh and bang into the cabin. After a particularly solid strike, she leaves her tea, but not her count of how long it’s been steeping, to find out what they’re doing.

Jeryon makes the catches increasingly difficult by tossing the crabs near branches and close to the cabin. After one throw he watches the poth through a window. Her lips count off every tenth second. She gathers her hair and twists it behind her neck. I’ll make her a comb, he thinks. Three tines. He’ll inlay each with a piece of polished shell.

Gray sits beside him. He throws a crab near the cabin. Her angle to it causes her to clip a corner column. She squeals and flexes her wing. While she retrieves the missed crab, the poth appears in the doorway.

“What are you doing?” she says.

“Crab Skeet. Watch this.”

He flings the crab toward the porch rail, and maybe because he’s trying to impress her he gets his whole arm into it. The crab flies high and long. Gray gets a good jump, but has to slow to avoid hitting the rail. The wyrm doesn’t want to miss in front of the poth, so she rears her head to snap it forward to make up the last bit of distance. She drops her jaw to give her the best chance of catching the crab. And as the crab falls nearly into the poth’s hands the wyrm reaches out with her very breath to snatch it, blasting the crab, the poth, and the cabin with a long gout of flame.

The cabin goes up like a brushfire. Culms explode from the steam trapped inside, spraying the porch with shrapnel. The poth screams, falls inside through a wall of smoke, and disappears.

Jeryon rushes to the cabin, but the heat drives him back, air feeding the fire from all sides, turning the cabin into a chimney. His eyebrows singe and the ends of his hair evaporate. Air is sucked from his lungs. He shouts for the poth, but can’t hear himself, all sound blown from his ears.

Gray darts for the doorway, which is filled with flame. Jeryon grabs her tail to keep her from destroying herself. Gray can breathe fire. That doesn’t mean she can withstand it. Gray snaps her tail, flinging off Jeryon’s hand, and slithers inside.

Jeryon runs behind the cabin. The poth is at his window. It’s too thin and high for her to crawl out, so she’s chopping at the sill with his axe, the same idea he had. Her smock smokes where she’s beaten fire off it. Her skin is blistering. Her hair is full of wisps. Her eyes are crazed. Smoke pours out of the window, and she starts coughing too hard to swing the axe.

“Give it to me,” he yells. She tumbles it out the window. He hacks at the bottom of the wall. When he strikes horizontally, the bamboo splinters instead of slicing neatly. When he strikes vertically, the axe breaks through the supports, but leaves the slats in place. He has to stop when he sees her fingers pulling at the slats from the other side, her mouth wide open, wanting air, while wind drafts under the deck to pour up through the floor.

“Jeryon,” she cries, “I can’t get out!”

“I will get you out,” he says. He’s crying too, but doesn’t realize it.

He hears Gray inside. He hits the bottom of the wall with the axe and whistles three times. The wyrm attacks it savagely. An opening appears. Jeryon pulls the slats out, but they’re woven so tightly he can only remove one at a time. He gashes his hand on the bamboo splinters, and his blood soothes his own burns. The roof has caught. It’s about to collapse. The fire is in the columns too, and the whole cabin lists toward him.

The poth sticks her foot through the hole, but that’s all she can get out. He says, “Your arms! Maybe I can pull you out!” She sticks one hand through and her head. They’re face-to-face. He pulls. She pushes at the floor of the cabin with her feet. They wedge her shoulder through.

Gray chews at the slats trapping her other shoulder. That’s all they need, but they have so far to go. The bamboo frays. It will not break. Gray retreats. Jeryon whistles three times, but she doesn’t return. The cabin lists farther.

“Go,” the poth says, terribly calm. She folds her body tightly against the wall.

He keeps pulling. The cabin rocks toward him. A corner of the porch collapses sending a wave of fire around his legs.