Part four

N’jol woke, coughing.

“Faranth, make it stop,” B’frea moaned.

N’jol wished he’d stop. The other weyrling’s complaining made his head hurt. And his head already hurt. Along with the entire rest of his body.

Half the weyrlings were miserably abed. The sickest couldn’t even get up to feed their dragons. The least unwell weyrlings were cutting and feeding for the worst, while suffering grimly through their shivers and sweats and sneezes, and worst of all, the dreadful cough that left the sufferers gasping for air.

N’jol was among the most ill. He shifted in his sweat-drenched sheets, feeling wretched. Every inch of his body ached, and his head, throat, and chest felt like one huge mass of mucus. Kistrith moved her nose an inch closer to his hand. She was distraught that N’jol could no long bear to sleep with her cuddled up against him, owing to his body’s rapid lurches from too hot to too cold and back again. He felt even worse that she was upset. That distressed her even more.

Hal came over from the front of the barracks. “How’re you doing, Jolly?”

N’jol didn’t even have the strength to shrug. “Pretty…bad,” he croaked through a throat that felt like he’d swallowed gravel. It made him cough again, and then he had to suck in a harsh, noisy breath afterwards. He sank back down, panting.

“Why don’t you sit up?” said Hal. “Have some water?”

N’jol needed both hands to grip the mug Hal pressed into his hands. “Thanks.” He gulped water. It cooled his throat, but it still hurt going down. “How’re…you?”

“I’m all right,” Hal said. “Didn’t get the lurgy as bad as you. Just a headache and a bit snotty.”

“S’good,” said N’jol.

“You know, the Dragon Healer came in to see the dragonets who were sneezing,” said Hal. “And there’s nothing wrong with them. He said the illness doesn’t affect dragons, so they must be doing it out of sympathy for their riders! Funny, right?”

N’jol wasn’t finding anything very funny. “Right.”

“Kistrith’s lunch is all cut up and ready to go,” said Hal. “I chopped it good and small, so she doesn’t barf on it like she did yesterday. I told you she barfed yesterday, didn’t I, Jolly?”

“Yeah,” said N’jol.

I like it better when you make my food, Kistrith said mournfully.

“Vammers has settled on his name at last,” Hal went on. “He wanted to be V’sion, but that’s too close to his dad’s name, and D’hor said V’mersion would be too long. So he’s going to be V’mersin.”

“Uh huh,” said N’jol.

The conversation lapsed. He forced himself to find something to say. “Did you pick…” He coughed. “Your name?”

“Yeah,” Hal said, with a forced sort of cheer. “F’hal, because Valth doesn’t like Fr’hal.”

“Easier t’say than Fr- Fr-” Even trying to get it out made him cough, the deep, hacking cough that pained his chest without ever actually bringing up any of the phlegm clogging his lungs.

Hal waited patiently for the fit to end. “Yeah, I guess when the alternative nearly makes your best mate choke…!”

“Did you see,” N’jol began, and had to take a breath to finish the sentence. “My dad?”

“No-oo,” said Hal, looking away. “I said, didn’t I, the watchmen don’t patrol this close to the barracks.”

“Does he know. I’m sick?”

“I don’t know,” Hal said, with a helpless shrug.

“Not seen him,” N’jol said. “Since Hatchin.”

“I know.” Hal put a gentle hand on N’jol’s shoulder. “You said already.”

“I reckon he must be. Mad. At me.”

“Ah, I’m sure he’s not,” said Hal, unconvincingly.

I don’t like him, said Kistrith.

You never met him, N’jol told her. At least talking to Kistrith didn’t require breath.

I still don’t like him.

“I could –” Hal began.

“F’hal,” the Weyrlingmaster barked, from the doorway of the barracks.

“Uh-oh,” Hal said. He got up from the edge of N’jol’s bed. “He looks grim. Better go find out what I’ve done this time.”

“Thanks,” N’jol said. “Fr’everythin.”

“Sure, Jolly,” said Hal. “Any time.”

N’jol lay down again. Neither side of his pillow was cool, just warm and damp with fever sweat. He followed Hal with his eyes as his friend reported to D’hor.

And witnessed Hal’s expression transform from dutiful to disbelieving to devastated before he ran from the barracks with tears rolling down his cheeks.

Why is Valth’s rider crying? Kistrith asked.

Don’t know, said N’jol. Ask Valth?

Kistrith shrank into herself – she was a little scared of the bigger dragonets, and Valth was one of the biggest – but then, very bravely, she reported, He says his rider’s sibling went between.

Between? That was confusing. Hal didn’t have any rider family. Then N’jol suddenly grasped his dragonet’s meaning. D’you mean – died?

I think so. Valth is sad for his rider.

Later, N’jol discovered that Lirenzy, Hal’s little sister, had been the first child to die of the coughing sickness afflicting the youngsters of Madellon Weyr.

She was far from the last.

In time, N’jol’s condition improved.

The Weyr Healer’s staff brought him a concoction that, for all its foul taste, seemed to help. His headache eased. His muscle pain went away. His chest cleared, although he was still occasionally racked with noisy coughing fits that bent him double and left him with tears in his eyes. As soon as he could stand unaided, he started tending Kistrith again, though he was easily tired and much slower than the other weyrlings. He’d missed a lot of lessons.

Kistrith had grown. He hadn’t really noticed while she was curled up beside him in the barracks, but she’d put on almost a foot in length and several inches in height. N’jol walked with her daily – a routine all the weyrlings followed to strengthen their dragonet’s muscles – but it was as much about his own rehabilitation as Kistrith’s development.

“I got to sit down,” B’frea exclaimed, flinging himself onto the sand, halfway round the path that lapped Madellon’s lake.

It was the farthest N’jol had been from the barracks since he’d gone down with the sickness. He wanted to keep going, keep pushing himself to stay with the other weyrlings, but Evie sat wearily down, and so he did, too. B’frea and Evie had been almost as sick as N’jol, so Kistrith and the other two greens, Amillioth and Grissenth, were used to being left behind when their riders tired. The dragonets sat in a little circle, grooming themselves and each other.

“Look at her,” Evie said, nodding towards a fully grown green dragon on the other side of the lake. “That’s Othanth. Suzallie’s green. With everything that’s happened at Madellon recently, she still wants to flirt and fly.”

“Shards, who can blame her,” said B’frea. “If Grissenth could fly, I think I’d strap in and have her just keep flying, as far away from here as possible, just me and her. Hunting wherries, sleeping under the stars…”

“Well, rather you than me,” said Evie. She looked back at the cavorting Othanth. “There she goes.”

They all watched as Othanth threw herself aloft, beating her wings powerfully, and hurtled over the Rim, with half a dozen browns and blues in pursuit.

“Where’d they go?” asked N’jol.

“Up,” said Evie, shrugging. “Away. Does it matter?”

“Wonder if Su’s going to have to leave,” said B’frea. “Once ours are old enough, anyway. She’s got three brothers with dragons now.”

“Why’s it matter?” asked N’jol.

“I suppose it doesn’t, if they remember they can’t chase Su’s green,” said Evie. “But dragons aren’t always good at remembering things, especially with greens that look similar.” She smiled at Amillioth, who was busily licking Kistrith’s headknob. “Milli and your Kistrith could almost be twins, they’re so alike.”

“I don’t think they look the same,” said N’jol.

“Not to you and me,” said Evie. “But to a brown who just wants to catch a tail?”

“His rider’d have a bit of a shock if he was expecting you and got Jolly,” B’frea said, laughing.

“Oh, Faranth, yes!” Evie said, covering her eyes with her hand. “What a rude awakening that would be!”

N’jol laughed along with them, though he wasn’t quite sure what they found so funny. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was missing something important.

The rest of the weyrlings had almost lapped them by the time the three of them got up to continue. N’jol thought about falling in beside Hal, but his friend was walking alone with his brown, his chin on his chest and his hands shoved deep in his pockets in the universal sign language for leave me be.

Instead, N’jol walked diffidently up beside Vammers. “Hey, Vam –” he began, and corrected himself, “V’mersin.”

“You can still call me Vammers, Jolly,” the older weyrling said. “If I can still call you Jolly.”

“Yeah,” said N’jol. “Sure.”

They walked along together for a bit. Kistrith hop-skipped good-naturedly side-by-side with Vammers’ Unoth. Kistrith was much happier in the company of other greens than she was with the male dragonets, N’jol had noticed.

“Something on your mind, Jolly?” Vammers asked.

“When folks go on ’bout green dragons,” N’jol began.

“Yeah?”

“An how they’s for girls and not boys.”

Vammers smiled. “Unoth and Kistrith had other ideas, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, they did.”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” said Vammers. “At least, it doesn’t have to.”

“What d’you mean, ’xactly?”

Vammers gestured with his head. “You saw that green go up a minute ago, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“You were thinking, that’s going to be you and Kistrith.”

N’jol hadn’t been thinking that, but he nodded anyway. “Yeah.”

“And you and – whichever dragon’s rider.”

“Yeah,” said N’jol, and then, “No. What d’you mean?”

Vammers stopped. So did N’jol. Kistrith nearly walked into the back of his legs. Ow! she exclaimed, rubbing her snout. He leaned down to rub it for her.

“You know what happens when dragons rise, don’t you?” Vammers asked.

“Yeah, course I does,” N’jol insisted. “They – they do it.” He could feel his face getting warm.

“Right,” said Vammers, “but you know that their riders…”

He left it hanging.

“Their riders what?” asked N’jol.

“Their riders do, too,” Vammers explained carefully.

“They does…what?”

“Have sex with each other,” said Vammers. “The green’s rider, and the rider of the blue or brown or maybe bronze who catches her.”

N’jol just looked at Vammers. “But they’s all…boys,” he said, feeling stupid.

You’re not stupid, said Kistrith.

“Yup,” said Vammers.

“But…but how –”

“But – but – but,” D’valen mocked him, as he and B’stroc passed with their dragonets. “Exactly! Right up the fork!”

“Oh, shut up, you little brat,” S’fen told his brother, clipping him around the ear.

“Ow!”

“I didn’t realise you didn’t know,” Vammers said, smiling ruefully. “I suppose we’re all just so used to it, and with no boys coming in on Search, D’hor didn’t bother to go over it.”

“Boys what like it like girls,” N’jol said, repeating, with awful, belated understanding, the scathing remark his father had made about green dragons.

“That’s stupid holder whershit,” said Vammers. “Look, Jolly. It doesn’t mean anything. You have to put up with it when your green rises. But that’s way off. And the rest of the time you don’t have to be with another boy if you don’t want to.”

“What about you?” N’jol asked, bewildered. “Does you like…it…with a boy?”

“I mean, I have,” Vammers said, shrugging. “It’s all right. I like girls better. But I like Unoth best, and I wouldn’t swap her for any blue, brown, or bronze, just so I wouldn’t have to sleep with a boy in a flight.” He paused. “Would you?”

N’jol looked down at Kistrith. Kistrith put his muzzle on his thigh and gazed back up at him.

“I wouldn’t swap her for nothin,” he said.

“There you go,” said Vammers. Then he laughed. “Anyway, Z’fell rides a green. And Faranth knows, he has more girlfriends than just about anyone else in the Weyr!”

N’jol spent a lot of time thinking about everything Vammers had told him over the next few days.

So many things that Tirrol had said made sense now. His distaste for green riders. His stern admonition that he not look at a green. A green dragonrider ain’t even a man.

Was that why green riders were so maligned in the Weyr? Because their riders weren’t proper men? N’jol shook his head. Half the greens had girls for riders. And then he suddenly realised something that had been right in front of his eyes. Basalgette – B’get – and Zaffo. They’d always had their heads together, been quick to put their arms around each other, loved wrestling with each other, more than any of the other boys. Was that because they were…? But B’get had a brown. And no one ever said a brown rider wasn’t a proper man.

N’jol tried to think of himself kissing another boy. Yuck, he thought, recoiling at the faintly disgusting idea. But then so was the thought of kissing a girl. Or – was it? Was it disgusting, or was it just…uncomfortable? Vammers said he’d done it with boys and girls. N’jol hadn’t ever even held a girl’s hand, nor kissed one, let alone…it. He hadn’t come across many girls, in the watchhouse. But now he was thinking about it, he did want to.

Want to what? Kistrith asked sleepily from her couch.

Never mind, Kisi, he told her.

Kistrith got the thought from his mind anyway. I’m a girl, she informed him. You can kiss me!

I was thinkin about an actual girl, N’jol said. A girl person, not a girl dragon.

But I like when you kiss me, Kistrith objected.

N’jol sat up to his dragonet’s muzzle in his face. He took it between his hands and planted a big kiss on the end of Kistrith’s broad nose. She wiggled happily and licked him all the way up his cheek. I love you, N’jol.

I love you too, Kisi, he told her.

Did that make him less of a man? That his dragon was a green, a female; that she liked him to kiss her, and he didn’t mind? No. He’d seen almost all his classmates hugging and kissing their dragonets, even G’fien, and he was nineteen and had a brown. He didn’t think he’d understood himself, before Kistrith, just how much he’d love his dragon; how much he could love anything. Tirrol didn’t understand, either. How could he, when he’d never Impressed a dragon, never even been closer than thirty feet to one?

Maybe he just needed to meet Kistrith. Then he’d understand. And N’jol could explain that he wasn’t a boy-lover like he thought, not that there was anything wrong with that, but he wasn’t, if that was what Tirrol thought, just because he’s Impressed a green.

But the weyrling barracks were strictly off-limits to anyone who didn’t have good reason to be there. And the weyrlings weren’t supposed to go farther than a few lengths from wherever their dragons were, except with prior permission from the Weyrlingmaster, in case the dragonets panicked without them.

“No,” said D’hor, when N’jol brought the request to him. “Your father’s made it plain enough that he’s not interested in seeing you. He didn’t congratulate you after the Hatching, did he?”

“Nosir, but he might’ve been on patrol,” said N’jol.

“He could have come to me after he completed his duties and requested to see you,” said the Weyrlingmaster. “He did not.”

“P’raps he didn’t know he could’ve,” N’jol insisted.

“He didn’t come to see you when you were abed with the affliction,” D’hor pointed out.

“Maybe he’d not heard –”

“He’d heard, weyrling,” the Weyrlingmaster said crisply. “I took the news to himself myself when you first came down, and again at the peak of your fever, when you didn’t wake for a full day.”

N’jol hesitated. He hadn’t dared ask anyone if Tirrol had visited when he was at his sickest. He’d been afraid to know the answer. “Maybe…maybe he were afeared he’d sicken too.”

“N’jol,” D’hor said, and while the Weyrlingmaster’s tone was sharp, there was something in his eyes that almost looked like sympathy. “Chief Tirrol’s words – his precise words – were, ‘If the boy dies the boy dies. He ain’t my problem no more.’”

N’jol couldn’t hold D’hor’s uncharacteristically compassionate gaze. He looked away, feeling his cheeks go hot with emotion. “He just – he just…”

“Living and working at the Weyr doesn’t make a man of the Weyr,” D’hor told him. “Your father’s not of the Weyr. But for better or worse, you now are. And while I may not agree with the Chief’s indifference to your well-being – in fact, I find it callous beyond belief, given the tragedies other parents have endured – he is right, in a sense. You aren’t his problem any longer. You’re mine.” The Weyrlingmaster’s face, and tone, hardened. “Permission to visit your father in the watchhouse is denied, weyrling N’jol. Focus on your dragonet. Focus on your classmates and your training, and let that sleeping watch-wher lie. The sooner you put your origins as a watchman behind you, the better. You’re a dragonrider now, and dragonriders shouldn’t trouble themselves with the petty concerns of lesser men.”

N’jol came away from that encounter even more confused and miserable than before. He wrestled with Tirrol’s apparent hardheartedness, trying to come up with a justification for it. The best he could manage was that his father had never held many dragonriders in high regard, and so being petitioned by a bent-backed old man like D’hor was hardly likely to be the exception to that rule. Sh’ror would have met with more respect…but N’jol hadn’t seen him since his Impression of Kistrith. And even had he been inclined to disobey the Weyrlingmaster’s directive about not bothering senior riders, everyone knew that the Flightleader was one of the parents D’hor had alluded to, in deep mourning for the daughter he’d lost to the sickness. The worries of a mere green weyrling would be the very last thing on Sh’ror’s mind.

But could N’jol really give up on his father completely?

Tirrol might not have been the most loving parent. Perhaps he’d brought Narjol up as successor more than son. Perhaps he’d had tunnel vision when it came to what he might be capable of achieving. But he’d done his best after Narjol’s mother’s death. He’d taught him, trained him, for the trusted and respectable role of a watchman. He’d brought him to Madellon Weyr in the first place, and without that change in the direction of Narjol’s life, he’d never have Impressed Kistrith at all. The way N’jol saw it, he owed Tirrol everything. He couldn’t turn his back on him without at least trying to change his mind.

But D’hor had forbidden him from going out of bounds, and N’jol wasn’t in the habit of disobeying orders.

And yet….

Permission to visit your father in the watchhouse is denied, D’hor had said.

He’d never said N’jol couldn’t see Tirrol somewhere else.

N’jol knew every patrol route that the watchmen took in the Weyr. He’d walked them all himself dozens of times, alone and with the other watchmen. None of them came close to the weyrling barracks – not close enough that he could intercept a patrol without flouting the rules, anyway.

But if he could give the patrolling Chief a reason to divert from his route….

“You’ll get it bad from D’hor if he catches you,” Hal said, when N’jol told him his plan.

“That’s why I needs you t’help,” N’jol said. “I got no way to get over to the watchhouse and check the rota. No point riskin it if Tirrol ain’t even on night patrol.”

Hal nodded slowly. “I guess I could walk that way when I come back from seeing Liggary.”

“Is she all right?” N’jol asked, feeling bad for asking his friend to use his visits with his bereaved mother to help him.

“Not really,” said Hal, grimly. “Not like she’s the only mum mourning though, is she?” He sighed. “I told her I’d changed my name again. Don’t think she really understood why. But it feels right, this time. Valth thinks so, too.” He straightened. “I get it, though. Family. Yeah. I’ll help.”

“Thanks, Hal,” said N’jol. “I mean, F’halig.”

The windows in the weyrling barracks were placed high in the walls. Even N’jol wasn’t tall enough to see out of them. But if he stood on his bed, balancing his weight cautiously on the wooden frame, and got right up on his very tiptoes, he could peer through the small clear patch he’d carefully cleaned and scan the narrow slice of the Weyr that the vantage point afforded.

It was after middle watch. The watchpair had changed up on the Rim. Tirrol should be on patrol by now, according to the roster Hal had seen. But N’jol had already climbed up and peered out three times, to no avail. The Weyr was quiet, still, asleep.

So was Kistrith on her couch beside him. She’d been interested in the scheme until she’d learned that it involved N’jol’s father, whom she had firmly decided she did not like. She’d then forgotten all about it. Hal said that was normal for dragons, especially greens. As far as N’jol was concerned, he was glad. He didn’t want D’hor’s Defronth getting wind of his plan from his green, even accidentally.

He got up again, stepping barefoot onto his bed, and stretched up to look out of the window. Still nothing.

All around, boys and dragons snored and muttered and farted in their sleep. The dragonets had grown immensely. D’hor had measured Kistrith at just under eight feet in length the morning after the Hatching; now, she was over ten feet long, although her tail accounted for half of that, and she was quickly becoming too heavy for N’jol to lift. He still found it hard to imagine her being big enough to carry him, but the Weyrlingmaster didn’t seem concerned.

He was halfway out of his blankets, intending to get up and look out again, when one of the boys near the front of the barracks rolled out of bed and shuffled sleepily towards the bathing room at the rear. N’jol froze. He was fully dressed under the covers. The last thing he needed was for one of his classmates to dob him in.

The other boy disappeared into the bathing room. N’jol got up, climbed onto his bed, and peeked out.

In the darkness, the green blob of a glowbasket’s light bobbed steadily along the night patrol route beyond the weyrling barracks. N’jol watched just long enough to decide that, yes, the steady, measured stride of its bearer matched Tirrol’s. His father was out there.

N’jol clambered down and stuffed his feet into the pair of work boots sitting by his clothes trunk. He snatched up the glowbasket he’d hidden underneath his bed. Then, tiptoeing to keep the heavy boots from thudding against the swept tile floor, he hurried to the front of the barracks. He and Hal had greased the hinges of the sally port to the side of the big double doors with the oil they used on their dragons. The door swung open with barely a whisper, and N’jol slipped outside.

Weyrlings weren’t meant to leave the barracks after lights-out, but that was because they were assumed to be sneaking out to meet girls. The notion baffled N’jol, given his new understanding of the relationships between riders who were both male, because surely there was nothing to stop them getting up to things they weren’t meant to right there in the barracks. He wondered if the Weyrlingmaster was glad Zaffo hadn’t been allowed to stand. He put the thought out of his mind.

The perimeter of the barracks, beyond which was out of bounds, was marked with white rocks. N’jol went right up to the boundary, making sure not to put a single toe over it, and carefully turned his glowbasket to the position that would create the tightest, brightest beam. Then he held the light at arm’s length and swung it back and forth, sweeping it across the dark Weyr.

Across the Bowl, the motion of Tirrol’s light slowed, stopped.

And then approached.

N’jol steeled himself. His mind whirled with all the things he wanted to tell his father.

“Who goes there?”

The Chief’s rough growl made N’jol flinch, but he stood his ground. “It’s me, Chief,” he said, low but steady. “It’s N’jol. Narjol.”

“The…shaffin…?”

Tirrol thrust his glowbasket high, and N’jol did take an instinctive step back then, shielding his eyes as the bright light blinded him.

And then looked down at the pike blade resting on his chest.

“Chief?” he asked stupidly.

Tirrol held the pike there for a moment longer, then returned it to the vertical. He lifted his chin. His eyes were shadowy pits in the green-washed mask of his face. “Stupid shaffin boy playing stupid shaffin games in the dark. Yer lucky I didn’t spit you.”

“I had to see you, Chief,” N’jol explained. “Weyrlinmaster wouldn’t let me come to the watchhouse –”

“And what business did y’think you ’ad there?” Tirrol asked. “You ain’t no watchman no more. And if I’d known what you was, I’d never’ve ’ad you there.”

N’jol felt himself crumpling in on himself, as he always had when his father bawled him out, and then he caught himself. He put his shoulders back. “I’m a dragonman of Madellon Weyr,” he said defiantly. “And I ain’t ashamed t’be.”

“Dragonman?” Tirrol hacked a laugh. “That dragon what chose you puts the lie t’that. It showed up yer true colours!”

“She ain’t an it,” N’jol insisted, feeling himself flushing. “She’s a she.”

“It’s a female,” Tirrol spat. “An when she gets in heat, you’ll be female too!”

“Vammers said it don’t say nothin about a man, that he does what he’s gotta for his dragon –”

“And you knows what that is, does you?” Tirrol’s face contorted with revulsion. “I warned you. I told you. And you turned yer back on every word o’wisdom I ’ad fer you. My own son.” Tirrol raised his head. “Well, not no more you ain’t. I don’t got no son no more. No boy o’mine would set ’isself up to be a catamite.”

N’jol didn’t recognise the word. He did recognise the vicious, ugly look in Tirrol’s eyes. “I know you’re mad wit’ me,” he tried, desperate. “But Kistrith chose me. She loves me. I love her. And I’ll do anythin, anythin in the world, to keep her safe. Whatever it takes.”

Tirrol spat at him, a full mouthful of saliva that splattered, hot and hateful on N’jol’s face. “T’would be better neither mewlin one o’you were ever born,” he said, into N’jol’s frozen shock. “Give me a big enough barrel and I’d drown the filthy blighted creature meself!”

Fury and outrage and hot crimson hatred erupted in N’jol’s body in a way he’d never experienced before, like monstrous living things. He could have lived with his father disowning him to his face. He could have endured the spittle dripping warm and sticky down his cheek. But Tirrol had threatened his dragon, and that – that, N’jol would not allow.

Kistrith came awake all at once, a sudden urgent presence in his mind. N’jol?

He ignored her. He bunched his muscles, planted his feet, and put his fist into Tirrol’s sneering, twisted face.

N’jol!

Tirrol’s head snapped back on his neck, but he didn’t go down. “You filthy little shit!” he roared. “You’d put yer ’ands on me? On me?”

“You take it back!” N’jol howled. “Take it back!”

But Tirrol’s pike was moving. The Chief’s face was hard and cold and terribly, perversely, pleased. Satisfied. Vindicated. And nine inches of cold steel blade, polished and sharpened a hundred times, was coming for N’jol’s belly.

“Better you was dead,” Tirrol rasped.

N’jol stepped into the jab, knocking the polearm aside, and the blade only glanced across his arm, leaving it numb.

N’jol, N’jol, N’jol! Kistrith screamed.

He didn’t care. Tirrol’s weapon was out of position now. N’jol stepped inside its range, reaching for his father’s neck. “You ain’t never gonna hurt her,” he told him, suddenly as brutal and vicious as his sire. “I’ll kill you first an piss on your grave!”

“Come on, then, boy,” Tirrol snarled. “Come an do me, quick, afore I do you!”

And his hand was suddenly on his knife.

“Or is you too craven?” Tirrol asked. His eyes had a frenzied shine to them in the light of their two glowbaskets. He caressed the knife hilt. “You afeared o’this?” He held up his empty hands. “Now come get yer old man, ’less you’re too yella t’try!”

The instant slowed to an eternity. N’jol’s hand was so close to Tirrol’s throat. Another inch and he could end his father’s monstrous threat to Kistrith.

This young man’s father is the quickest out with a blade I’ve ever seen, Sh’ror had said.

Even he had never bested Tirrol with a knife.

Injured pride won’t kill you, the Flightleader had said. But a knife in your gut will.

And Kistrith pleaded, I love you, N’jol. Please don’t leave me!

Tirrol went for his knife, and N’jol flung himself backwards. His father’s blade glanced across the top of his chest, slicing through the fabric of his shirt, leaving a thin line of fire in its wake.

“Coward!” Tirrol spat.

N’jol scrambled away on his backside. He could feel blood pouring down his chest and tears pouring down his cheeks.

There were people running towards him in the dark, shouting. He could hardly identify them through his blurry eyes. Then he realised they were his classmates. Hal. Vammers. S’fen. B’stroc and D’valen. Pettra and Schanna. F’tra and B’frea. Every face was hard and angry, shocked, outraged. For him. For N’jol, Kistrith’s rider, their classmate, their fellow weyrling of Madellon.

“Dragon woman!” Tirrol bawled. “Craven! Catamite! You ain’t my son!”

“You get back!” Hal roared, suddenly as frightening as his forceful dragonet, even in his pyjamas. He put himself between N’jol and his father. S’fen and Vammers came up either side of him: three big young men, angry and indignant. “You get away from N’jol!”

S’fen demanded, “How dare you attack a dragonrider!”

“The Weyrlingmaster’s coming,” Vammers added. “Shards, the Weyrleader will be!”

Tirrol had his pike back in both hands. He swung it wildly at the wall of angry weyrlings standing between him and his son. “Out of my way, you dirty little bum-boys!”

The three weyrlings jumped back from Tirrol’s violent swings, but they didn’t break their defensive formation. “You are in such deep shit!” Vammers exclaimed.

The other weyrlings of Monsoon class surrounded N’jol. Arms went around his shoulders; hands patted at his bleeding chest. Someone pulled off their pyjama top and shoved it against his wound.

“It’s all right, N’jol, it’s all right,” a female voice said gently. It was Evie. “It’s just a scratch. You’re going to be fine.”

“We’ve got you,” said Pettra. “We’re not going to let him hurt you!”

“Crazy old bastard!” F’tra yelled, balling his fists at Tirrol

“How shaffing dare he try to hurt you?” G’mar exclaimed. “You’re a dragonrider!”

With a shuddering impact, Defronth, the Weyrlingmaster’s skinny old brown, landed hard between the weyrlings and the ranting, screaming Chief of Watch. With one swipe of Defronth’s forepaw, Tirrol’s pike went flying. With a second, the Chief was flat on his back, with Defronth’s paw pinning him to the ground.

And then the dragonets broke out of the barracks, pouring out like a herd of stampeding runnerbeasts, tails and wings in disarray, eyes red and yellow in the darkness, squealing with distress and excitement. All around in the night, adult dragons were waking, calling to each other in confusion at the events by the weyrling barracks.

“Dragons in the dark” by Chrisi S Baily

Grateful as he was, N’jol pushed away his classmates, and they scattered, each to intercept his or her own dragonet. But N’jol only had eyes for the forest-green dragonet running fearlessly at the head of the pack with her fragile wings outstretched and her eyes fiercely amber. He climbed to his feet, spreading his arms to stop her.

N’jol, N’jol! she cried, putting her forepaws up on his shoulders, almost knocking him over. Don’t be hurt! Please don’t be hurt!

She’d got so big. N’jol sat down heavily, suddenly too exhausted to bear his own weight, much less his dragonet’s. I’m not, Kistrith. It’s just a scratch. It’s nothing.

That’s what you always say, Kistrith told him crossly, but she licked his face. I told you I didn’t like him, didn’t I? I told you!

Hal came over with Valth in tow. He sat down next to N’jol, putting an arm around his shoulders. “Shaffing Void, N’jol. D’hor’s going to lay an egg when he gets down here. I mean, when he does. I bet he’s still in his slippers and nightcap!”

The two of them sat there in the darkness as the other weyrlings and dragonets milled excitedly around Defronth and his suddenly silent prisoner. Tirrol had been struggling weakly, but the Weyrlingmaster’s crotchety brown put an end to that with an irritated snarl.

“I wonder what they’ll do about your dad,” Hal said. “They’ll probably –”

“He wanted t’hurt Kistrith,” N’jol said. He heard the words come out. “T’kill her. He woulda killed me. For bein a green rider.”

“Shaff,” Hal said. “I’m sorry, Jolly. That’s…that’s… Faranth, your own dad!”

“He said I weren’t his son no more,” N’jol went on. The words seemed to be coming from someone else’s mouth. He was too shocked, too numb, to stop them. “That means he ain’t my father no more, neither. I got Kistrith now. I don’t need no family.”

“Shaff, Jolly,” said Hal, as N’jol buried his face in Kistrith’s neck. “Maybe you don’t, but…I just lost both my siblings. I’ve still got Mum, but…I sure as shells could do with a brother to watch my back.”

N’jol lifted his head from Kistrith’s soft hide.

Hal’s hand squeezed hard on his shoulder. “Can we be brothers, Jolly?”

You’re leaking again, Kistrith said, licking N’jol’s bloodied chest. Why are you always leaking?

N’jol put his left hand on his dragonet’s head. With the right he grasped Hal’s wrist. Hal’s fingers gripped hard on his. “I reckon I’d like that, Hal. Yeah. Reckon I’d like that a lot.”

Epilogue

Vanzanth followed Nathronth out of between over Crookpass Hold.

This is it? L’stev asked as his brown spiralled down towards the unfinished fire-heights, the tallest of the ramshackle buildings surrounding an incompletely paved courtyard.

It’s not very pretty, Vanzanth agreed.

Mineholds generally aren’t, L’stev told him. Don’t land on the heights.

I wasn’t planning to.

Vanzanth descended towards the paved portion of the courtyard, and then swerved at the last moment, jerking L’stev around in the harness. Sorry.

“What the –” L’stev exclaimed, an instant before he saw the dark stain on the rough paving slabs. His gorge rose, and he tore his eyes away. “Never mind.”

I have warned Nathronth.

The two dragons landed in the other half of the courtyard. Vanzanth’s feet sank into the mire as he folded his wings. This is very unpleasant.

Tell me about it, said L’stev. He released his safety strap and jumped down into the mud. The ground was a rutted bog, churned by the passage of heavy-wheeled wagons and many hobnailed boots. Dirt had splashed up the walls of every building. The summer sunshine overhead did nothing to brighten the grim little settlement. The faces at every window, peering out at the two dragons, looked more angry than awed. “Don’t turn your ankle, P’keo,” he called as the Weyrleader climbed down from Nathronth’s ridges.

“Holder Kratin, is it?” P’keo said, stepping carefully across the peaks and troughs of mud towards the dust-grimed, pinch-faced man who’d emerged from one of the buildings.

The dirty man shook his head shortly. “Kerant. Kratin’s my brother. He ain’t takin visitors. Had to bury his boy this morning.”

“A duty with which we are both also too painfully familiar,” said P’keo, making a brief, respectful bow.

Ferant eyed him suspiciously. “You blame us.”

It was both statement and accusation, and P’keo seemed unsure how to answer. L’stev stepped forwards. “It may be that the sickness started here. That doesn’t make it your fault –”

“Shaffin right it don’t,” said Kerant. “We never had no trouble here before. Never asked for that dragonman to come and get himself kilt. Now it’s dragons every other day and Void knows what calamity comes down on us next. Fer all we know, Hannaa’s little one got what kilt her at the Weyr. We never asked for no dragonmen here, nor no plague to kill our bairns –”

“That’s enough, Holder Ferant,” L’stev said, raising his voice slightly. The mineholder shut his mouth, though his glare lost none of its force. “We’ve come for the dragonrider who died here. That’s all.”

“Best you’ve a strong stomach,” said Kerant.

The floor of the burial cave bore mute testimony to Crookpass Hold’s recent losses. The sight of the row of small graves, freshly dug and freshly occupied, made L’stev’s chest contract. He leaned against the wall, fighting back the tears that burned in his eyes from the all-too-raw memory of laying first little Lirenzy and then tiny Eravan to rest in Madellon’s own burial cavern. L’stev, Vanzanth said, and pressed up against him in his mind, completely present, sharing in his grief. Don’t hold me apart. Let me share this with you.

L’stev straightened. He looked at P’keo, whose eyes were moist and distant with the tragedy of his own daughter’s death. Then he set his jaw, his shoulders, and with Vanzanth shoring him up, his resolve. “Where –”

Kerant pointed towards the back of the cavern. “There.”

The grave was larger, adult sized. L’stev took the spade leaning against the wall, its blade smeared with fresh earth, and began to dig.

“We’d no way to keep the rot from him,” Kerant said, as L’stev shovelled away the top layer of soil. “Hot as it was. An no shardin dragon came for a sevenday. He were ripe long before that. Stank to the high skies. Even the watch-wher turned its nose up. Nothing to do but put him in the ground.”

“I suppose there was no hope, when you found him,” P’keo said. “His injuries –”

“No one coulda fell from that tower and lived,” said Kerant. “We had to scrape him off the slabs.”

The first whiff of decomposing flesh hit L’stev like a fist. “Faranth’s tits,” he muttered, gagging. Pulling his flying scarf up over his face barely helped block the appalling stench. He kept digging, trying to breathe only through his mouth.

He’d excavated perhaps two feet when the spade struck something soft. L’stev cleared the remaining dirt away from the coarse burial shroud, stained with earth and blood and worse. The shape within was both long and broad. Tellingly. Expectedly. He looked up at P’keo, who was standing with Kerant, both hands cupped over his nose and mouth, his eyes sick with revulsion. “Should I…open…?”

P’keo swallowed, hard. “We have to be certain,” he mumbled from behind his hands. “For his weyrmate’s sake.”

“Shaffing Void,” Kerant swore, and ducked abruptly out of the burial cavern, retching.

Grimly, L’stev slit the rough burlap of the shroud with his belt knife.

A few moments later, he and P’keo squatted on their haunches outside the cavern, gasping for air. “Faranth,” P’keo said weakly. “Faranth, L’stev.”

L’stev was still trying to get the dreadful stink out of his nostrils. He fumbled out his hip flask, took a sharp swig, then handed it to the Weyrleader. P’keo took a grateful gulp and gave it back

“There’s not any doubt at all, is there?” he asked miserably.

L’stev gave a short shake of his head, not trusting himself to speak, lest opening his mouth invited the contents of his stomach to make a violent exit. The sight of the maggots seething in the putrefying corpse’s still recognisably red-blond curly hair was branded upon his mind’s eye, clear and vivid and awful. He swallowed hard. “He didn’t –” he began, and then stopped. He couldn’t say the word. “Do this to himself?”

No, Vanzanth said immediately. No dragon would allow that. No matter what.

“Throw himself off that deathtrap of a fire-height, you mean?” P’keo asked, at the same moment. He shook his head. “Not with his dragon, and his youngest son safe and healthy, and his weyrmate, still to live for. He didn’t kill himself, L’stev. That was never his intention.”

“That night in your office,” L’stev said. “His face… He was out of his mind with grief, P’keo. I’ve never seen a man that broken. He made me feel like I hadn’t mourned mine half enough.”

“He had a way of making us all seem somehow inadequate,” P’keo agreed.

“He was like that even before he Impressed,” said L’stev. “Not for making us feel bad. Just for being so shaffing good.”

“That’s right,” said P’keo. “You knew him before the Weyr.”

“He was a fosterling at Jessaf,” said L’stev. “Briefly. He put my half-brother on his ass before he’d been there a sevenday, for being an entitled little shit.” The memory made his mouth quirk. “I’d never seen anyone with the balls to stand up to Win before, much less at his own heirship Gather. We by-blows and younger ones never forgot, even after he got packed off to Madellon to salve Win’s pride.”

“I should dearly have loved to see that,” said P’keo. “He was the best of us, wasn’t he, L’stev? The very best of us.” He covered his face with both his hands, suddenly stricken. “Nathronth wouldn’t have been the same loss. Fianine was right about Argunth’s line being blighted. I should never have let Nathronth fly Cherganth. It should have been us who came here. It should be me buried in that awful hole, not…not….”

L’stev had no comfort to offer the despairing Weyrleader. He looked up to the clifftop above, where Vanzanth and Nathronth waited like a pair of silent gargoyles. What use are you? he asked, turning his anger on his own dragon. We could have done something. You wouldn’t even let me try.

Would you have liked us to die for trying like they did? asked Vanzanth, mercilessly. What has happened will not be undone. Time protects itself. I protected you.

“He’s giving you the speech, isn’t he?” P’keo asked. He’d clawed back his self-control. “The one about shielding you from time’s obduracy.”

“It’s all just so shaffing pointless,” said L’stev. “Going back in time to do – what? What we’d already done? What none of us ever chose to do, only we had to because our future selves already had? I’ll never understand it.”

“Maybe we’re not meant to,” said P’keo.

“Understand it?”

“Go back in time.”

“But what if we hadn’t?” L’stev asked.

P’keo raised his shoulders. “Maybe weyrlings would have died. Maybe Master Firland wouldn’t have made the cure. Maybe the children who are improving now would be in the ground, too. Maybe that one little green wouldn’t have her rider.”

“Maybe no one would have come here and set the whole blighted horror in motion,” L’stev said. “Maybe my kids wouldn’t be dead. Or yours. Or his.”

“And maybe it’s not for us to know.” P’keo rose from his crouch. “Let’s get this done, L’stev. Qualth’s been alone between without his rider far too long. It’s time we brought Sh’ror home.”