Dragonchoice 3: Weyrleader of Pern

Faye Upton

Time

He's waiting in the wings

He speaks of senseless things

His script is you and me, boy

— David Bowie, Time

Dedication

For the real Carmine.

Gentleman, dude, superstar.

The World of Pern © Anne McCaffrey, all rights reserved, and used by permission of the author.

All characters and events © Faye Upton.

All artwork © its respective artist and used with permission.

For the illustrated Dragonchoice, go to

www.dragonchoice.com

Acknowledgements

I wouldn't have got through this monster without the wonderful Laurie Hicks, whose advice, feedback, and inhuman patience have been completely indispensable from start to finish.

Katherine Inskip and Jennifer Quail have provided invaluable beta-reading services. And also astrophysics, obviously.

Melanie (Micah) Johnson continues to both awe and inspire me with her artistic talent, which you'll find through Dragonchoice 3.

Amy Brennan for short-notice beta-reading, commentary, and art.

Multi-Facets for artwork of Valonna.

Emily Holland for many gorgeous paintings.

Ssthisto for illustrating all three Dragonchoice novels.

Prologue: Out Of Time

Our imprisonment began that day, though it would be a long time before anyone else knew it.

Time. We invoke its name so casually. We make time. Spend time. Find it, borrow it, lose it. We speak as if we can control it, as if time were a servant and we its master. We even imagine we can break it into pieces for our convenience: days and months; hours and minutes; moments, instants, heartbeats.

It is the grossest of conceits. Time will not be broken. Time is all of one piece.

Time protects itself.

81ST TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL (NINETEEN TURNS BEFORE PRESENT DAY)

NEAR SIZER HOLD, PENINSULA TERRITORY

They’d almost finished their sweep, chasing the setting sun as far as the Madellon border, when they heard the scream.

Krodith spooked, checking her vector, and S’rebren swore breathlessly as her fore-ridge caught him right in the sternum. Sorry! she apologised, levelling off, and turning her head to peer at him with an eye limned ruby with sunset.

“S’all right, Kro,” S’rebren told her, rubbing his chest. “What on Pern was that?”

Dragon, said Krodith, unhelpfully.

“Where?” S’rebren asked. “And who? I didn’t think anyone else was sweeping this far west.”

I don’t know who it is, but he’s scared, and he’s alone, and he’s hurt.

They were too far from the Weyr to raise the alarm. A green couldn’t reach over that sort of distance. “Tell Beregoth at Redyen Hold what’s happened,” S’rebren told her instead. He wiped grime off his goggles, looking around to get his bearings, and spied the rock spires of Sixer Hold thrusting black on the horizon. “Tell him we’re east of Sixer. And then let’s get some height, and see if we can find whoever that was.”

Krodith banked to catch a thermal as he spoke, using the warm air rising off the arid plains below to gain altitude. It was a bad place for a ground sweep. The Redyen Badlands were all scrubby trees and tangled brush, rocky outcrops and blind gullies. Tricky terrain to search at the best of times – and they were losing the light. The sinking sun washed everything in scarlet, and every stone and bush and grain of sand threw its own elongated shadow, deceiving the eye.

“There…!” S’rebren cried, leaning hard right over Krodith’s neck, and then sat back as his eyes resolved only a boulder, rearing from the ground, matted vegetation drooping, wing-like, from its sides.

Then, No, Krodith said, there!

She wheeled hard left, putting on a spurt of speed, her slender muzzle pointing the way. S’rebren thought for an instant that even his dragon was mistaken, but then a heap of rocks stirred and moved and raised its head: dark, with eyes glowing eerie white.

“Hey, down there!” S’rebren shouted as Krodith circled in to land. “You all right?”

The dragon below curved his head threateningly towards Krodith with a hiss. She twitched back, startled. Be calm! We’re here to help!

S’rebren released the buckle on his safety-strap and slid the short distance from Krodith’s neck to the ground. This sharding light, Kro. I can’t even see what colour he is!

My rider will help your rider, Krodith told the strange dragon. What’s wrong?

The stranger subsided, dipping his head back down into the protective mantle of his wings. He wasn’t much bigger than Krodith, S’rebren thought, and slowed his approach. Must be a weyrling. Be careful, Kro. Plenty of dragons would lash out in defence of an injured rider, and weyrlings were the most unpredictable of all. “All right, there,” he said. “You’re all right. Where’s your rider?”

He says they’re hurt, Krodith reported. He says they were caught and they hurt and where is Epherineth.

“Epherineth?” said S’rebren. The name wasn’t familiar to him. “We don’t know an Epherineth. You’re not from the Peninsula, are you?” Ask him his name and where he comes from.

He says he came from between, said Krodith. She sounded as baffled as S’rebren felt.

A blast of cold wind overhead and the beat of enormous wings interrupted them. S’rebren glanced up to see the underside of a much bigger dragon, and then he recognised the grey-muzzled bronze as Beregoth. “Hey, J’deyn!” he shouted.

“What have you got?” the bronze rider called down hoarsely from his dragon’s neck.

“Don’t know!” S’rebren yelled back. “Lost weyrling, maybe?”

The young dragon hunched smaller, whistling in distress, as Beregoth made his ponderous descent. He says his rider won’t wake up, Krodith told S’rebren.

“Beregoth will hold him,” said J’deyn, coming stiffly over from his dragon. The elderly  bronze rider pulled down his goggles. “There now, young fellow. Let’s see what’s the matter with your rider.”

The resistance went out of the dragonet’s bearing. He lowered his wings, and a fire-lizard came boiling out from the shelter of them, screaming, before disappearing between.

“Faranth!” S’rebren exclaimed.

The young dragon’s rider hung limply against the side of his mount’s neck, secured by a single safety tether. The other lines of his harness dangled from his belt, severed. S’rebren took the rider’s weight on his shoulder while J’deyn cut the remaining strap, and together they lifted the stricken dragonrider down.

The strange dragon turned his head down to his rider as they laid him between his forepaws. An overpowering stench of firestone hit S’rebren full in the face, and he coughed, grateful for his goggles, though his eyes still watered as the stink got up his nose. “What have you two been up to?” he asked, as he crouched down to the unconscious rider.

He was young beneath his goggles, perhaps twenty Turns old; clean-shaven, and errant bits of dark hair escaped his flying helmet. He wore neither shoulder-knots nor insignia on his wherhides, and like his dragon, he reeked of firestone. S’rebren pulled off a glove to feel for the pulse at the boy’s throat and was rewarded with a strong, if elevated, throb. Gritty dust came away on his fingers, and he wiped them on his trousers. “Well, he’s alive.”

“Course he is,” said J’deyn. “What’s up with his leg, there?”

There was a wound across the young man’s left thigh, hard to see in the fading light and beneath a coating of more black dust. S’rebren touched the limb gently and the rider flinched, mumbling. This time his fingers came away sticky. “We need to get him to a Healer.”

Krodith had drawn closer to the stranger, touching his neck with her nose. S’rebren.

It was easier to make out the young dragon’s colour with the contrast between his hide and Krodith’s. He was brown, but so small that he had to be a weyrling. S’rebren stood up, wiping his hands again. “What is it, Kro?”

The green dragon’s eyes had been whirling faster than usual with the excitement of the search, but as she stared at the brown dragon’s neck, where the riding straps hung torn and broken, red glints started to appear among the blue. His neck.

S’rebren put his hand near the torn riding harness and felt the brown dragon shudder away. A long, sticky stripe, hardly visible against the dark hide, left yet more gritty particles on his fingers, mixed with the dark green of fresh ichor. “Faranth’s toenails…”

“What is it?” J’deyn asked, squinting near-sightedly at the brown.

S’rebren went to his knees beside the brown rider. He was stirring weakly. “Brown rider. Brown rider!” He eased the goggles off the rider’s sweaty face. “Where have you come from?”

The rider’s eyes fluttered open. He was even younger than S’rebren had thought. His face was grey with ash and with pain, and his gaze wouldn’t focus. “T’kamen?”

“My name’s S’rebren,” he told him. “I’m a green rider of Peninsula Weyr. What happened to you?”

“The formation broke,” the brown rider said. “There was too much. We were…had to protect…Spalinoth…oh Faranth…Fraza…”

“What’s your name?” S’rebren pressed. He was beginning to feel panicky. “Where did you come from?”

The young rider’s lips moved as he repeated S’rebren’s words silently. Then he said. “What…Turn?”

“No, where’ve you come from? How did you get…hurt?” S’rebren couldn’t bring himself to say a word that he couldn’t believe he needed to use.

“What Turn is it?” the wounded rider asked again.

“It’s 81,” S’rebren said, and then added, incredulously, “Interval 81.”

“Interval.” The brown rider closed his eyes, and for a moment S’rebren thought he’d passed out again. Then he said, anguished, “It’s too soon. I’m not ready!” He raised a hand to the dragon’s muzzle, and the brown instantly put his head down to him. His firestone breath was noxious, but the young rider didn’t seem to notice. “Oh, Faranth, I wasn’t ready!”

And then he did faint again. The brown whined, and Krodith pressed her head against his neck in support. It’s all right. It’s all right.

“Help’s on the way, S’rebren,” J’deyn said. There was an odd quality to his voice. “Beregoth’s alerted Haeith. Willeth, too.”

S’rebren looked dazedly at the old watchrider. J’deyn’s creased face was set in grim lines. “Both of them?”

“The Weyrleaders need to know about this,” J’deyn said. He lifted a hand to the frightened brown’s neck, grimacing as the young dragon flinched away.

“You’ve seen…this…before?”

“Not a fresh one,” said J’deyn. “I’m not that old. But a mark like that, covered with this?” He flicked grainy black dust off his fingers. “You know your Ballads, same as I do.”

Crackdust, blackdust. The sing-song rhyme capered in S’rebren’s head. He suddenly couldn’t wipe his hands clean enough. “Then it’s really a…”

“Oh, yes,” J’deyn said. His voice was bleak. “That’s a Threadscore.”

ACT ONE

Chapter one: T’kamen

By the midpoint of any Interval, when no Thread has fallen in living memory, and no one yet born will live long enough to see it fall again, the Dragonweyrs of Pern have nowhere to vent their frustrations but upon themselves.

– Masterharper Gaffry, Chronicle of the Seventh Interval

100.02.10 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

It was hot that night, as hot as between was cold, and the last of T’kamen’s ice was long gone. They’d put it in cups of an appalling red wine from Welford Hold that H’ned had initially pronounced undrinkable but, once dilution and chilling had masked the loutish tannins, turned out to be a remarkably tolerable accompaniment to a late-night poker game.

A poker game that T’kamen had just comprehensively lost.

Chuckling dirtily, L’stev scraped his accumulated winnings into his belt pouch: quarters and eighths, mostly, but with a few half-marks, and even a Beastcraft two-bull that Sh’zon had thrown into the pot in a futile attempt to stay in the final hand. “I’m much obliged to you gentlemen,” he said, pulling the drawstring of his purse carefully closed. “Letting a poor old Weyrlingmaster join your game. It’s nothing short of charity.”

“Charity?”

“Poor?”

H’ned and Sh’zon roared at the same moment: equally incredulous, equally annoyed. Well, T’kamen thought, maybe not equally annoyed. Sh’zon had kicked his chair over in frustration when he’d gone out of the final hand with every last mark on the table. H’ned, more familiar with L’stev’s canny mind, had bowed out before he was cleaned out.

L’stev just cackled. “Blame the Weyrleader,” he said, stabbing a thick finger in T’kamen’s direction. “He invited me.”

“All right for him,” said Sh’zon. “He gets low on marks, he can dip into Madellon’s purse to make himself good.” He looked around, wide-eyed and innocent, as H’ned exclaimed at the accusation, and L’stev shook his head. “What? A man can’t make a joke?”

“That’s a little near the knuckle even for you,” H’ned told him.

Nearer than any of them realised, T’kamen thought, but he didn’t say that. “I’d forgotten I was only supposed to invite bad poker players to my games.”

“That would explain these two,” said L’stev.

Amidst their howls of indignation, and L’stev’s gleeful laughter, T’kamen started to clear the table of cards and chips and wine cups. L’stev’s, he noticed, was still almost full, and he put it back in front of the Weyrlingmaster.

He was putting the poker chips away when the Weyrwoman appeared in the passageway that connected their two weyrs. “Valonna,” he said, surprised. “I’m sorry. Have we been keeping you awake?”

“Oh, no, T’kamen, not at all,” Valonna assured him, with characteristic earnestness. “I was only just about to go to bed myself.”

“Weyrwoman,” H’ned said from across the room, standing up, and Sh’zon leapt up beside him.

“No, please, that isn’t necessary,” Valonna said.

As far as T’kamen was concerned, it was. “You can sit down,” he told the two bronze riders. “Is there something I can do for you, Weyrwoman?”

“It’s only that there’ve been responses from two more artists,” Valonna said. “I know you’d decided on the journeyman from Kellad, but I thought you’d want to see these too.”

“Two more?” T’kamen asked. “How many is that now? Ten?”

“Twelve, I think.”

T’kamen shook his head. “Faranth.”

Valonna offered him two little scrolls. “Talladon’s from Peranvo Hold, and he’s very well regarded there.”

“Expensive, too,” said T’kamen. “Nothing from Peranvo is ever cheap.”

“And Gellera painted the new picture of Lord Meturvian that he had commissioned for his Turnday,” Valonna went on. “Meturvian’s very pleased with it. It’s a very, er, sympathetic portrait of him.”

“Sympathetic,” said T’kamen, wryly. “That sounds like what I need from an artist. Sympathy.”

Valonna looked stricken. “I didn’t mean to imply…”

“It’s all right, Valonna,” he said. “I know you didn’t.” He looked from one scroll to the other. He’d been putting off having his official Weyrleader’s portrait painted for months. The idea of having to sit for a painting filled him with dread – and Madellon could ill afford the marks. But he’d been Weyrleader for more than a Turn now, and the empty space on the wall of Madellon’s Council chamber had begun to strike him as faintly accusatory, so he’d asked Valonna to put the commission out. He just hadn’t expected so many responses. “I’m sure all these artists are equally capable of painting me with the appropriate number of eyes and my nose in the right place. I’m more concerned that they can do dragons. Epherineth’s the handsome one out of the pair of us.” He handed the scrolls back to her. “Just choose someone who’ll do him justice, and let’s get this thing done.”

“I…will, Weyrleader.”

She looked so uncomfortable at having the decision placed in her hands that T’kamen nearly relented, but he resisted the urge to let her off. Valonna might have been thrust into seniority at Madellon too young, too soon, and painfully under-trained, but she was still the Weyrwoman, and T’kamen would treat her accordingly. L’dro, her first Weyrleader had allowed her – encouraged her, even – to doubt herself, and in weakening her position strengthened his own, to the whole Weyr’s detriment. But Valonna had been showing flashes of the Weyrwoman Shimpath must have sensed she could be, and T’kamen wouldn’t undo the progress she’d made by undermining her or patronising her or lying to her. He wasn’t sure he was best equipped to nurture a shy young woman to her full potential, but he was her Weyrleader, and he would try. “Thank you, Valonna. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good night, T’kamen.”

“…and of course those dragonets had never seen a fish bigger than the minnows in our lake,” L’stev was saying as T’kamen returned to his guests, “so when Epherineth sucked up a drink from Jessaf’s fishing pond and found a silverfin the length of your arm dangling from his mouth along with it, what’s a young dragon to do?”

“Faranth,” H’ned said, half in delight, half horror, “he ate it?”

“Ate it, liked it, went back for seconds,” said L’stev. “And thirds. And the rest. That’s not a big pond, and it was teeming.” He paused for effect. “Was being the key word there.”

“That was a very long time ago, L’stev,” T’kamen protested.

“Not in Winstone’s mind. He brings it up every time we take weyrlings to Jessaf. You should just be grateful that he doesn’t recall it was your dragon who ate nearly his entire stock of sport-fish and then – for good measure – puked up the evidence on his doorstep.”

“Loooovely,” said Sh’zon, drawing the word out.

“Speaking of dragonets and their appetites –” T’kamen began.

“That’s right, change the subject,” said L’stev, with relish.

“– it’ll be nice when you get the weyrlings going between so they’re not eating us bare every time they come back from an excursion.”

“It’ll be soon,” said L’stev. “I’m not going to rush them, but they’re not far off. A sevenday, two at the outside.”

“Suppose you’ll be wanting to borrow some Wingseconds to help with them, won’t you?” asked H’ned.

L’stev nodded. “Three-stripers, please. Some of those junior-grade Wingseconds are barely older than my kids.”

“I’d be happy to lend a hand myself,” Sh’zon offered.

“Good try, Sh’zon,” said L’stev. “You know the rules. No interfering with my weyrlings. It confuses them.”

Sh’zon held his hands up, as if to surrender. “Don’t have to bite my head off.”

“Well, I’m turning in,” said H’ned. “I want to get my Wing drill over early tomorrow, before it gets too hot. Thank you for the game, T’kamen, and the sharding dreadful wine. And no thanks to you, L’stev, for making me a pauper.”

“Aye, best I take my penniless self home, too,” said Sh’zon. “Pleasure as always, Weyrleader. Weyrlingmaster.”

T’kamen seated himself opposite L’stev as the two bronze riders made their way out of his weyr. He heard Sh’zon wish Epherineth a boisterous good-night, and then the sounds of retreating footsteps as he and H’ned went their separate ways home.

Then he looked at L’stev. “Well?”

L’stev was studying the wine cup he’d ignored during the game, as if to decide if its contents were toxic or not. “Well what?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’d be a better poker player if you didn’t lose confidence in the strength of your hand,” L’stev said, “but I suppose that’s not what you meant.”

“It wasn’t,” said T’kamen, “though I appreciate the pointer.”

L’stev swirled wine contemplatively around the cup. “They’re your short-list.”

“I don’t have all that much choice,” T’kamen said. “Once you rule out the ones who are too young or too old, the ones who can’t spell their own names, and the ones who still like to mutter about how they had it better when L’dro was Weyrleader…”

L’stev snorted. “The fact that that’s true just shows you’re doing something right.”

T’kamen accepted the rough compliment with a nod. “You were Wingsecond to H’ned. You know him better than I do.”

L’stev contorted his mouth into the downturned grimace that meant he was thinking. “He was very raw then, just made up. Competent enough, though. He almost never spelled his name wrong. But he didn’t exactly make a stand against L’dro.”

“I’d have even fewer options if I made that a requirement,” T’kamen said. “But that’s why I like Sh’zon. He has no axe to grind.”

“That’s true,” said L’stev. “Dangerous move, though, advancing a foreigner over a Madellon native. And there was a reason H’pold wanted rid of him from the Peninsula. Kawanth knows how to catch a queen.”

“I don’t think that’s going to matter,” said T’kamen. “By the time Shimpath rises again, Sh’zon won’t be here.”

“Because of Berzunth,” L’stev surmised. “Suppose you’re right. Though he and Tarshe are only cousins, not siblings.” His mobile face went even more graphic with distaste. “Odder things have happened.”

“Even if he weren’t averse to the idea, I wouldn’t allow it,” said T’kamen. “I’ll have to trade him on to one of the northern Weyrs if the Peninsula won’t have him back by then.”

“Well, you can burn that Thread when you come to it,” said L’stev. “Berzunth’s at least a Turn and a half off maturity. A lot can happen in a Turn and a half.”

“A lot has happened in a Turn and a half,” T’kamen said.

He meant it reflectively, but it came out sombre. L’stev narrowed his eyes at him. “Don’t say that like it’s all been bad. You flew your queen. Kicked L’dro out on his arse. You even have twenty-five weyrlings that might not all turn out to be completely shaffing useless.”

And I let a maniac run riot in my Weyr and stab my oldest friend to death, T’kamen thought. “I know,” he said. He made an effort to divert his thoughts off that grim and well-worn path. “But I can’t do this alone.”

“Of course you can’t. No Weyrleader flies Fall all by himself,” said L’stev. “And no one’s asking you to take the weight of the whole world on your scrawny shoulders.”

“Thank Faranth,” T’kamen agreed. “Madellon’s heavy enough for me. I have too much to do, and not enough time to do it. I need a deputy I can depend on to take some of it off me, but I’m not sure I trust H’ned that much, and Sh’zon’s a Peninsularite.”

“So deputise them both. You’ll have twice the manpower, and they’ll be so busy competing with each other they won’t have time to undermine you.”

“That means I’ll have to pay them both,” T’kamen pointed out.

“If Madellon’s so far gone that twenty marks here or there is going to leave it destitute, you have bigger problems than I can solve,” said L’stev. “Either of them would do, but if I were you, I’d promote them both.”

“Thank you for the advice,” T’kamen said.

“Advice is free,” said L’stev. He grinned. “Asking me to a poker game, less so.” He pushed the wine cup, still full, across the table. “Best I get back to my weyrlings. There’s not been a squeak from Jenavally, so either they’ve been good, or they’ve got her tied and gagged in the harness room.” He shrugged. “One or the other.”

T’kamen walked with him out onto Epherineth’s ledge and then stayed there beside his bronze to watch as the Weyrlingmaster disappeared across the dark Bowl.

“Both of them, then,” he said aloud. “I’ll have to find the marks.”

Bottom drawer on the left, in the strongbox.

“Very funny.”

Epherineth’s eyes turned fractionally faster with his amusement. He was relaxed but alert, despite the late hour. It had been warm at dawn and scorching by noon, and it wasn’t very much cooler now even hours after the sun had slipped below the horizon. Dragons didn’t mind the heat of the day. They thrived on it, soaking up the rays when even the most sun-loving humans had long since fled for shade. The greens had been launching themselves off the Rim at a rate of a dozen a day as the soaring temperatures and cloudless skies woke their more primal instincts, and the queens were so radiantly gold that a rider less familiar with Shimpath’s schedule or Berzunth’s youth might have thought they were close to rising, too. But the muggy nights that followed in the wake of the sweltering days were intolerable even for dragons, and the black inner walls of the Weyr were punctuated by many pairs of wakeful eyes, shining in the darkness.

Up by the Star Stones, nightfall had robbed the watchdragon of her colour, but it was middle watch, so she would be green. The fact that the late watches were always assigned to greens had been a point of contention for some time, and T’kamen had been meaning to overhaul the duty roster for months, but he just hadn’t got round to it He’d give it to H’ned, he decided, and the thought cheered him. After fifteen months as Weyrleader, he’d learned to separate the critical from the merely urgent, but he looked forward to being able to delegate some of the lesser but still important tasks to his deputies. The business of the Weyr often kept him from Wing duties, and while his senior Wingsecond, F’halig, was a more than capable stand-in, T’kamen missed drilling. He and Epherineth did go out together at least once a day, but too often those flights were squeezed in between T’kamen’s other commitments. He’d promised his dragon he’d do better, and if that meant appointing two bronze riders he didn’t entirely trust as deputies to take up some of the slack, then that was a compromise he was prepared to make. L’stev’s guarded approval of his choices gave him some comfort. The shrewd old brown rider had been a source of wisdom and counsel to T’kamen for many Turns, and if he hadn’t been so irreplaceable as Weyrlingmaster, T’kamen would have deputised him. The thought of how horrified L’stev would have been by that made him smile.

He’d promote the two Wingleaders in the morning. The sooner he could put them to work on the day-to-day business of running the Weyr, the happier he’d be. He could start drilling with his Wing again; spend more time working with the Weyrwoman; take a closer interest in the weyrlings as they progressed through their training. Maybe he’d even have a little time to spend on himself: improving his poker game, or playing the gitar that he’d barely picked up since he’d become Weyrleader.

Or maybe you could find someone, said Epherineth.

It was more reflection than proposal: the echo of something T’kamen had left unthought. Epherineth always knew what was going on in his head – sometimes better than T’kamen did himself. They had occupied each other’s thoughts to such an immersive degree for so long that T’kamen would have been more surprised if Epherineth hadn’t picked up on the unformed desire. “We both know it’s not that simple.”

Nothing worthwhile ever is.

It would have been politick – and convenient – if he had been attracted to the Weyrwoman, but he wasn’t. He felt protective towards Valonna, respectful of her position and her queen, even fond of the young woman herself, but he didn’t desire her. She was too shy, too diffident, too nervous of him. Still too fragile. And young. A decade of age difference didn’t have to be an insurmountable gap, but Valonna was young for her Turns, and T’kamen knew he was old for his. R’hren, his first Weyrleader, had once said that each Turn he’d spent as leader had aged him by five. T’kamen wondered if that ratio wasn’t even a little on the optimistic side.

Valonna wasn’t the only female rider in the Weyr, of course, but T’kamen had never formed a strong attachment to a green rider even before he’d become Weyrleader. He’d had girlfriends and lovers, and Epherineth had pursued his own fancies among the greens, but they had always been tenuous connections, and Epherineth’s days of flying green dragons were over for now. No bronze who was the mate of a queen would risk her wrath by chasing tail. That didn’t preclude T’kamen from seeing a green rider on his own terms, and – ironically, he thought – he’d had more approaches in the last six months than he had in Turns, but he couldn’t build up the enthusiasm to respond to any of them.

That left Madellon’s non-rider population, and the inequality that such an association implied. A rider was already one half of a partnership, and not many women could truly accept coming second to a dragon. Nor should they. Dragonriders didn’t often make good partners – even to other dragonriders. That was why weyrmated pairs were unusual, and most riders just enjoyed the freedom to love or bed or fly whomever they pleased without ever formalising the interest. But even if T’kamen’s position, and his wish not to offend Valonna, hadn’t stopped him from seeking casual encounters, his heart would have. A willing body wasn’t enough, and if he couldn’t have more than that, the reward wasn’t worth the complication.

Shimpath was Pierdeth’s before she was mine, said Epherineth. I took her from him.

T’kamen realised he’d been squinting through the darkness in the direction of the Beastcraft cothold, its windows dimly outlined by the soft illumination of the glow-baskets inside. He looked away, irate with himself. “Sometimes the ways of dragons and people are just too far removed from each other, Epherineth.”

If Epherineth had been a more vocal dragon, he would have snorted. Go to bed, T’kamen, he said instead, in a tone that made it plain he expected him to do nothing of the sort.

It was too hot to sleep inside, and certainly too hot to sleep beside a bronze dragon who radiated heat just by existing. Some riders had banished their dragons up to the Rim and spread their own blankets out on their ledges to sleep, but T’kamen wouldn’t have sent Epherineth away. It was usually cooler in his office, which had become his excuse for working late on these last few sticky nights of late summer. He touched Epherineth’s shoulder, and went inside.

The Weyrleader’s desk was skybroom, a massive piece of furniture that squatted belligerently at one end of the room, as if daring anyone to defy the rider who sat behind it. T’kamen had dared a few times. But now that the desk was his he found it oddly reassuring to know he was sitting where every previous Weyrleader of Madellon had once sat, struggling with the same problems that had faced each of his predecessors. He wasn’t the first and he wouldn’t be the last. And by this time tomorrow, he wouldn’t be alone.

But tomorrow was tomorrow. Tonight, there was a slate hanging precariously over the edge of the desk. The slightest nudge would knock it onto the floor and probably shatter it. T’kamen scooped it up, shoving several documents that had rested atop it back onto the desk. He didn’t mean to look at it, but he couldn’t help himself. It was a Wing transfer request, nothing more complicated than that. T’gat had asked for a green rider from V’stan’s Wing to move to his own. Both Wingleaders had marked their approval, and the transfer only needed T’kamen’s consent to proceed.

The Winglist was chalked up on the black-painted wall behind the desk: four Flights, twelve Wings, more than two hundred dragonpairs. The transfer would leave V’stan short a green, but T’gat had been down two since Janina had passed away last month. She’d been one of the longest-serving riders at Madellon, and elderly enough that her death was more shock than surprise. She’d been talking about retiring to South Cove, where many of Madellon’s oldest riders chose to live out their final Turns in peace, but no one had expected her to die so suddenly. It was the other space in T’gat’s Wing roster that drew and held T’kamen’s eyes, the space where another green rider’s name should have been: still as ugly as the dark gap of a missing tooth, still a jab to the gut every time he looked at it.

He signed the slate and reached over to put it in the Wings pile. He’d need to start new piles for Sh’zon and H’ned, he thought, looking at the stacks that held the line – just – between order and chaos on his desk. On his left, new items mostly went into the Attention heap, and on a good day he might move half the stack into the piles on the right: Wings and Weyrlings and Tithe, Crafters and Headwoman and Weyrwoman. It hadn’t been a good day. Attention was overflowing. T’kamen sighed, threw a glance over his shoulder towards the door, and then sat down to do some work.

He signed off three conveyance requests and threw them into Wings; the Wingleader of whichever Wing was on the roster for transports tomorrow would assign riders to each job. Buckmore Minehold’s quarterly firestone shipment was ready for collection: that went into Tithes. He read enough of a request for a Mediation to be sure it was nothing serious – it wasn’t, just a matter of two former weyrmates squabbling over who got to keep their weyr – and put it on Valonna’s pile. A request from the Weyr Tanner for more harness-grade leather went  onto the Weyrwoman’s stack, too. Valonna had been spending a lot of time in the storage caverns recently, doing an inventory of Madellon’s stores; she might know if there were any spare hides lying around. He scanned the sweeprider reports, noted resignedly that the current weather didn’t look likely to break for at least another day or two, and then wiped those slates clean and put them on the reuse pile. He looked at the sicklist, underlined two names that had come up on it too regularly, and wrote himself a reminder to ask their Wingleaders about it in the morning.

A handsome missive bearing the seal of Long Bay Hold stood out among the scratched slates and tatty scraped hides that comprised most of the Attention pile. T’kamen held it by the edges, loath to ruin the best-quality vellum with his dirty fingers. It was a Gather notice, inviting the riders of Madellon Weyr to attend the celebrations of Lady Coffleby’s fortieth Turn of rule, and requesting T’kamen and Valonna’s company at a luncheon in the Lady Holder’s honour. Long Bay must be doing all right to afford vellum and calligraphy of such quality, T’kamen thought, let alone the expense of playing host to foreign Weyrleaders. The Seahold was in Peninsula territory, so H’pold and Rallai would be there, and since Coffleby had invited Madellon’s Weyrleaders, she’d probably asked P’raima and Margone of Southern, too. The thought of having to break bread with the other Weyrleaders of the south didn’t exactly fill T’kamen with elation. H’pold didn’t like him, and P’raima didn’t like anyone – which was probably what came of being Weyrleader for thirty Turns. T’kamen wondered if he’d even turn up at Long Bay. Southern’s Weyrleader had made it clear that he’d attended Madellon’s last Hatching only grudgingly.

Much though T’kamen hated having to make polite conversation in stuffy company, he would never have dishonoured Madellon by refusing Lady Coffleby’s invitation. He dropped the notice onto Valonna’s pile. Her handwriting was much more elegant than his. Besides, it was the kind of diplomacy that was explicitly the Weyrwoman’s business. The invitation should have gone to Valonna in the first place. So should the Mediation request, and the Weyr Tanner’s, but the people of Madellon – riders and otherwise – were still too accustomed to bringing everything to the Weyrleader. T’kamen pushed as much of it on to Valonna as he dared, and the average size of her stack on his desk had grown noticeably since he’d first become her Weyrleader, but the public attitude would be much slower to change.

Valonna had made one very significant decision since T’kamen had become her Weyrleader – though, perversely, she’d received almost none of the credit for it. Her appointment of Crauva as Headwoman had caused a massive shift in Madellon’s domestic affairs. Adrissa had been Headwoman for nearly twenty Turns, and her ways of doing things had become deeply entrenched in Madellon’s culture. Crauva, with brutal efficiency, had overhauled everything, from kitchens to cleaning, quarters to maintenance. There’d been an initial outcry, but the improvement in the Weyr’s domestic condition was already startling. Madellon looked cleaner and tidier, the kitchens were making better meals, and the inventory Crauva and Valonna had begun between them had already turned up all manner of lost, forgotten, and occasionally hidden, treasures.

It had also exposed just how close they were to calamity.

T’kamen had known that Madellon was under-resourced from day one, but he’d made promises to the riders who’d supported him, and he’d done his best to deliver on them. D’feng, who’d managed Madellon’s finances under L’dro, hadn’t liked it, but he hadn’t refused T’kamen’s demands, either. Then D’feng and his bronze Sejanth had been injured, badly, in Wing drill. Responsibility for fiscal affairs had dropped back into T’kamen’s lap. And the full magnitude of the Weyr’s dwindling funds had come crashing down upon him. Madellon had been running a deficit for the last three Turns, consuming more resources than it received in tithe, and making up the difference from its reserve fund.

Any Weyr took a certain amount of currency as part of its tithe, mostly from the Crafthalls of the territory. It paid for stipends – rider, crafter, Weyrfolk – and for incidental purchases that the goods tithe didn’t cover. Madellon’s reserve fund, held with the Woodcraft at Kellad Hold, had been built up over the Turns by the surplus of that monetary tithe. The Woodcrafthall’s records showed a steady increase in the size of Madellon’s deposit over the first fifty or so Turns of the Interval, followed by slower but still healthy growth – and then, six Turns ago, a plateau, followed by a sharp reversal in the trend. It corresponded too neatly with L’dro’s accession to the Weyrleadership to be a coincidence. He’d never added so much as a thirty-second to the fund, but he’d withdrawn substantial sums – hundreds of marks at a time – on thirteen separate occasions. D’feng had made some effort to account for the expenditure in Madellon’s records, but it was clear where the marks had gone. L’dro had spent them on wine and clothes for himself, bribes to keep his senior riders loyal, and – once – the engagement of a certain crafter in an attempt to distract a rival from Shimpath’s upcoming mating flight.

T’kamen wasn’t interested in wine or clothes or bribes, but all the promises he’d made in good faith cost money. He’d promised the green and blue riders of Madellon fairer treatment, starting with equalising their stipends. There’d seemed no good reason in T’kamen’s mind for a green rider to get fewer marks per quarter than a brown rider of equal rank. He’d soon realised how expensive equality could be. But even after he’d reduced the pay rise he’d pledged for wingriders, the stipend bill had gone up by nearly five hundred marks per Turn.

Crafters cost a lot, too. Each Crafthall did its duty to the Weyr in a mixture of goods, marks, and people, but Madellon still had to pay its crafters their stipend, and any Craft personnel employed over and above tithe agreements incurred a fee to the Hall. T’kamen had contracted new staff to the Tanners, Beastcrafters, and Healers when he’d become Weyrleader, but he was regretting it now, because almost every single craft represented at Madellon was costing a fortune in excess staff. It wasn’t that Madellon didn’t need all its crafters – the Tanners were always swamped with work; the Masons were Turns behind with Madellon’s weyr-building programme; and any drop in the Brewers’ production would cause riots – it just couldn’t afford them.

And then there was flaming drill which – D’feng’s accident aside – had made the biggest positive difference to Weyr morale of any measure T’kamen had implemented. Madellon’s riders liked stoking their dragons with firestone. It made them feel like dragonriders – real dragonriders – in a way that nothing else could. Under L’dro, and even before him, flaming drill had been a rare privilege. T’kamen had reinstated it as a regular part of Wing operations. But it was hard on dragons, in minor injuries and overall fitness; hard on harness, which had to be replaced more often when it was put under the stress of real fighting manoeuvres; and very hard on Madellon’s firestone supply. And firestone was expensive. Madellon territory – like most of the southern continent – wasn’t rich in firestone ore, and the mines that did produce it had long since exhausted the surface deposits. Production relied on the Minercraft sinking deeper and deeper shafts to follow the veins, and that kind of industry was costly in materials and labour and lives.

But it was the availability of food beasts that worried T’kamen the most. Madellon’s population of more than two hundred adult dragons and twenty-five half-grown dragonets had to be fed. The Holds met their quotas each sevenday, but the animals that were driven up through the northern passes were sorry specimens. The last two summers had been hot and dry, and the domestic herds of Madellon territory were showing it in their lack of condition. The herdsmen insisted they were doing their best, and Madellon’s Beastcrafters did what they could to nurture the wretched animals along, but it wasn’t enough. T’kamen had already been forced to broker one deal with Jessaf to supplement Madellon’s herds with extra animals. He knew he’d need to do it again soon, and the marks he kept in the locked strongbox in his desk drawer wouldn’t be enough to cover it. He hated that Madellon’s Woodcrafthall reserve fund would be depleted still further on his watch. He hated that history would record him as having spent, not increased, the Weyr’s wealth. In the short term he saw no alternative. Madellon’s dragons had to eat.

Longer term was another matter. Once every five Turns, Madellon calculated its primary tithe requirements from the Holds and Halls of its protectorate. An annual renegotiation adjusted for unforeseen circumstances on both sides – a bad harvest or a good one, more or fewer new weyrlings than expected, the addition of a new Hold to Madellon’s territory – but the Charter that governed Holds, Halls, and Weyr alike forbade adjustments of more than ten percent in either direction. Major changes had to wait for the next primary Turn.

This Turn, the hundredth of the Seventh Interval, was a primary. T’kamen would need to present a detailed forecast of Madellon’s requirements for the next five Turns to the Lords Holder of the territory – present it, and fight for it. He’d learned from the previous Turn’s adjustment that he wouldn’t get everything he asked for, so he’d need to build in enough excess for them to refuse without leaving Madellon short. Even then, the Weyr would be asking for much more from its Holds and Halls than it had five Turns ago. It was going to be a grim, bitter battle, and T’kamen dreaded it.

He dreaded some of the hard decisions he was going to have to make at Madellon nearly as much. Reducing the stipends again – across the board – would be desperately unpopular. He’d already started to cut back on Madellon’s crafter population, asking several Weyr Masters to let crafters go once their contracted terms were up, but he knew he’d need to take even stronger measures before long. And he feared the backlash that would inevitably result from any curtailment of firestone drill. It was so potentially inflammatory an issue that he’d made his notes and calculations on the matter entirely in code, just in case the document went astray.

Crauva’s new regime would help, eventually, when her measures began to save Madellon more in efficiency than they cost in implementation. T’kamen was hoping that the Headwoman’s staff would be able to gather more in forage, too, which Adrissa’s never consistently had – though they were restricted to what grew in the unclaimed portions of the continent, as all the fertile land surrounding the mountain range on which Madellon itself perched belonged to Kellad Hold. Madellon dragons could still hunt their allotted share from the feral herds that roamed the unpopulated south, but that take was limited by agreement with Southern and the Peninsula, and while they could eat as many wherries as they liked, catching a wild wherry on the wing was a very different proposition to picking off a herdbeast in a pen.

T’kamen sat back in his seat for a moment, ruffling his fingers through his hair where sweat had stuck it down, wishing for a breeze, and feeling much older than his not-quite thirty-three Turns.

Then he made himself concentrate on simpler matters. Another Blue Shale holder was claiming that a Madellon rider had got his daughter pregnant and demanding money to support the child. It was the third such accusation in as many sevendays. T’kamen shook his head over it. Either one of his riders had been very busy, or the holders of Blue Shale thought they’d come up with a good way to make some marks. He penned the brief reply that had become his standard response. Madellon would take the child and his mother, but that was all. The Weyr didn’t pay compensation for dragonspawn. Real or fabricated, T’kamen could have added, but he didn’t. Some of the Holdbred children who ended up dumped on the Weyr probably were the offspring of careless dragonriders – they often ended up as dragonriders themselves – but even if they weren’t, they were still welcome. A community as geographically isolated as a Weyr always needed new blood. And people were much cheaper to feed than dragons.

He had to look in the top drawer of his desk for a new stick of sealing wax. As he hunted through the detritus of broken pens and scraps of hide, his fingers snagged on the weave of a shoulder-knot. T’kamen knew what it was even before he pulled it out. He held the braid in both hands, and felt himself smile at the sight of it. It was the plain double-twist of a Madellon wingrider, indigo and bronze, but the two strands were loose and sloppy where a third cord had been unthreaded from the braid. He’d removed the silver cord himself from his Wingleader’s knot when L’dro had demoted him, six Turns ago, rather than making a new one to reflect his diminished status. It had been an act of defiance to imply that the confiscation of his rank was a temporary thing. His Weyrleader’s shoulder-knots were far more elaborate, tailed and tasselled to leave no doubt about his seniority, but he hadn’t thrown away the old one he’d worn for so long. He supposed he never would.

He put the ragged braid back in the drawer and rummaged until he found a fresh stick of wax in Madellon’s dark indigo. Then he sealed his response to the Blue Shale holder with the impression of the heavy gold signet ring of Madellon’s Weyrleader, and put it on the pile marked Everything Else.

The next document he pulled towards him had a seal of its own: the arrowheads of Speardike Hold. It opened cleanly with the wax intact and he scanned the message inside. It was something to do with a medicinal herb, so he refolded it and began to put it on the Crafters pile for the Weyr Healer’s attention. Then something about the motif stamped into the wax caught his eye, and he pulled it back to look at it.

Offset trio formation, said Epherineth. Nearly.

But staggered, T’kamen said. He turned the letter over and drew the Speardike insignia as a Wing formation on the blank side. You could get more coverage this way, if you put a brown in the anchor position in every other trio.

Lay it out, Epherineth told him.

T’kamen cleared a space on his desk and replicated the pattern using mark pieces from the strongbox for dragons: half-marks for bronzes, quarters for browns, sixteenths for blues and thirty-seconds for greens. The front of the desk was always east; the back, his side, west. He leaned back, narrowing his eyes, visualising the scene. Angle the flanking trios forward, Epherineth suggested, and T’kamen nodded, redeploying his markers. It was a pattern that would allow a rider in the centre to take a turn out of Fall without leaving more of a gap than the dragons either side could manage. T’kamen moved the northmost set of marks to the southern end and shifted the rest up; a constant rotation of the micro-formations would give every dragonpair the opportunity to duck out for a breather while leaving the other two dragons in the trio covering their airspace. He set out more mark pieces, defining an entire Flight. That leaves too many gaps, said Epherineth. Reverse the stack of the middle Wing.

T’kamen did that. It was a good formation, especially for heavy weather conditions when dragons would get tired easily. And then the familiar sense of gloom set in. He could draw a diagram, he could move marks representing dragons around on a table, he could even roust North Flight out tomorrow to try out the formation in a drill, but he’d never have the chance to pit it against a real Threadfall.

They were as far away from Thread as they ever could be, at the very midpoint of the Interval. If T’kamen lived to be seventy he’d still be dead six decades before the Pass began. For every fifty Turns when dragons fought Thread in the skies of Pern, there were two hundred when they could only play at it with ropes and paint and their imaginations. It was no wonder the Holds and Halls were so grudging in their support. Madellon wouldn’t rise in their defence for another century. Everything the Weyr consumed – food, goods, firestone – was an expensive waste.

And if we weren’t here now, who would be the sires of the sires of the dragons of the future? asked Epherineth. If we didn’t learn how to fight imaginary Thread, who would pass on the knowledge to the dragons who will fight real Thread?

They’d had this conversation before, more than once. T’kamen didn’t disagree with his dragon, but the knowledge that anything they did halfway through an Interval would be long forgotten by the Pass still left him feeling pointless and apathetic.

He resisted the topple into self-pity. He was a Weyrleader of Pern. Epherineth had sired a queen. They had more power, more influence, more immortality, than all but the tiniest handful of dragonpairs. The good they did now would resonate down the Turns to the Pass. Did it really matter if they were remembered for doing it?

Go to bed, T’kamen, Epherineth told him, before either of them could answer that question truthfully.

He meant it this time. T’kamen submitted to his dragon’s better judgement.

His bed had been turned down, and a glow-basket opened a crack to provide a dim radiance. T’kamen lay down on top of the covers and tweaked the basket shut. It wasn’t quite as stifling as it had been earlier, but it was still a close and sticky night. Between that and his restless thoughts, he didn’t expect to go to sleep any time soon.

He was wrong about that.

The sound of the world falling in on him jolted him awake, and he flailed in the darkness, disoriented and deafened. It was a moment before he grasped that the world had not, in fact, fallen in on him; that was just the closest explanation his brain had been able to make for the titanic splitting sound that still shuddered through his bones. “What the shaff…”

…was that? Epherineth finished for him. He sounded as shaken as T’kamen felt, startled into wakefulness just as abruptly.

T’kamen knocked the glow-basket open and flinched away from the sudden brightness. Watchdragon, Epherineth! Has somewhere caved in?

Zemmath doesn’t think so.

But she heard that?

The whole Weyr heard it.

T’kamen pulled on the shirt and trousers he’d discarded earlier. Get the Wingleaders to roll call their dragons. I want to know if anyone’s missing. He picked up the glow-basket and hastened out of his bedchamber and through the passageway that led to Valonna’s weyr.

“Weyrwoman,” he called, holding up the glows to light his way.

Valonna was coming out of the archway from her own chamber. She’d put on a robe over her night-clothes. “What’s happening, T’kamen?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Shimpath’s all right?”

“Yes, but she’s very upset.” Valonna looked even younger and smaller than usual in her night-dress, with her long hair unpinned from its braids. “Was it an earthquake?”

The ground sometimes shook at Madellon as the somnolent forces far below the old caldera shifted, but those tremors had always been minor rumbles. This had been more like a thunderclap, sudden and violent. “I don’t think so,” T’kamen said. “A lightning strike, maybe?”

The watchdragon says not, said Epherineth. Wingleaders are reporting in. No one missing, no casualties.

“We’ve accounted for all the riders,” T’kamen told Valonna.

“What about everyone else?” she asked. “We should check with the Headwoman…”

Izath’s rider and Valth’s are coming to my ledge, said Epherineth. Others, too.

“I’ll go and find Crauva and make sure no one’s hurt in the caverns,” T’kamen said. “We have riders incoming. Can you field them?”

“Yes, of course. What should I tell them?”

“Just reassure them,” said T’kamen. “No one seems to be hurt. The mountain hasn’t collapsed. Ask Shimpath to tell everyone to stay in their weyrs and keep calm. There’s no call for panic.” Yet.

Still barefoot, T’kamen descended the back stairs from his weyr two at a time. The stairwell opened onto one of the passageways of the lower caverns complex, not far from the dining hall. He headed that way. Even if the Headwoman wasn’t awake, someone would be.

“…don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“…swear…like the ceiling was coming down on me…”

“…ceiling’s fine…”

“…not imagining things…”

The dining cavern was always well-lit, by glows, and by the steady glow from the banked hearths where riders could find klah and hot food at any hour of the day, but the handful of people whose argument he could hear had clustered as far away from the fireplaces as possible. “Is everything all right down here?” he asked, raising his voice.

The speakers – two kitchen helpers and a blue rider from A’keret’s Wing – jumped up almost as one at his approach. “Weyrleader,” the rider greeted him apprehensively.

“You’re up late, A’wor,” T’kamen said.

“My weyrmate’s on watch, sir. I’m waiting up for him.”

T’kamen nodded. “Have you checked in with your Wingleader?”

“Yes, sir,” A’wor replied, relaxing a fraction. “Sir, what just happened?”

“We don’t know yet,” T’kamen replied. He looked at the two kitchen girls. “Would one of you go and find the Headwoman?”

“Weyrleader, sir,” asked the older of the girls, as the younger hastened away to do his bidding, “excuse me for asking, but what’s upset the dragons?”

“We’re trying to find out,” he said, “though being woken by a sound like that would upset me, too.”

“I told you I heard something!” A’wor exclaimed.

“You didn’t hear it?” T’kamen asked the woman.

She shook her head. “No, sir. Gerra neither. We thought Worry – wingrider A’wor, that is – was hearing things.”

“Weyrleader.” It was Crauva. Like Valonna, she had thrown a robe on over her night-clothes, but she didn’t look any less capable for having been woken in the middle of the night. “I was just on my way to find you. The dragons…”

“Is anything amiss down here?” T’kamen asked. “Are your people all right?”

“I’ve seen nothing to the contrary on my way here,” said Crauva, “though the dragons crying out woke a lot of people.” She cocked her head. “I didn’t think it sounded like a keen.”

“It wasn’t,” said T’kamen. “No one’s died. Everyone’s fine.” He frowned at her. “Then you didn’t hear a…noise? Like a rockfall, or a clap of thunder?”

“It was more like a crack,” said A’wor. “Like…” He picked up his plate in both hands. “Like something breaking in half. Not shattering, just breaking.” He tightened his grip on the edges of the plate. “Snap.”

Crauva shook her head. “I’m afraid I didn’t hear anything like that.”

It wasn’t a sound, T’kamen said to Epherineth. Or if it was, then it was something only dragons could hear.

And dragonriders, Epherineth observed.

“You’re sure there’s nothing wrong?” T’kamen asked it aloud, for Crauva and Epherineth both.

All dragons have reported in.

“I can ring the emergency bell,” Crauva offered. “Take a full headcount.”

“No,” T’kamen said, after a moment. “There’s no point in waking everyone up.”

“You’re certain?”

“I’m certain,” he said. “I’m sure everything’s fine. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Valonna was waiting in his weyr when he climbed back up the stairs. She’d dressed and put up her hair. “Is everything all right in the caverns?”

“It seems to be,” said T’kamen. “You handled H’ned and F’halig?”

“Shimpath told their dragons to go back to bed,” Valonna told him. “They didn’t get as far as landing.”

“Good. You should go back to bed, too.”

“But what was that noise?” she asked. “Shimpath doesn’t know what to make of it.”

T’kamen thought about telling her what he’d discovered in the dining hall: that only Madellon’s dragons and dragonriders had heard it. No. He wouldn’t burden her with that tonight. It would only keep her from sleep, trying to puzzle out what it meant. “I don’t know,” he said.

He paused, and then, in repeating what he’d said to Crauva, he broke his own rule, and lied to his Weyrwoman. “But I’m sure everything’s fine. I’m sure it was…nothing.”

Chapter two: Sarenya

There’s no such thing as ghosts.

– Harper wisdom

100.02.11 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

The eggs were cracking.

As the first hatchlings fought their way free of the shell, screaming, Sarenya nudged the youngster beside her forward. “Go on. Carefully.”

Ollen looked over his shoulder at her, still reluctant, and then back at the clutch as the first wet hatchling wriggled from its egg casing. “I didn’t know they’d be so ugly.”

“You probably weren’t very pretty at their age, either,” said Sarenya.

Ollen extended a cautious hand, then snatched it back as the squealing hatchling lashed out at him. “Faranth!”

“I told you to be careful,” said Sarenya. “Those claws aren’t for show.”

“The vicious little…!”

Two more eggs yielded their occupants in a heap, and the first hatchling immediately turned on its siblings, shrieking. Sarenya relented. “Grab that one,” she told Ollen, pointing at one of the later pair. “Like this.” She seized the first hatchling at the base of the neck with one hand and around the hind legs, just above the cruelly sharp claws, with the other. The infant wherry screeched and struggled, flailing hopelessly with its short front limbs and making wild, futile lunges with its beak, but Sarenya had it under control. “That’s it,” she said, as Ollen grabbed his hatchling. “Now into that box and get the lid on before it jumps out.”

Ollen looked revolted as he transferred his hatchling, at arm’s length, from the clutch pit to one of the brood-boxes. “Ouch!” he cried as the furious little creature made a last defiant stab with its beak.

Sarenya flipped her hatchling into another box and pushed the lid in place. “Did he get you?” She transferred the next hatchling, fending off the slashes of two more. “Show me.”

Ollen extended his hand to her, bleeding from a shallow graze. Sarenya looked it over. “It’s only a scratch. We’ll get the rest of these put away and then I’ll clean it up for you.”

“They’re sharding disgusting,” Ollen complained, wrangling another one. “Eurgh, this one just crapped on me!”

“There’s a reason why no one likes Hatchery duty,” Sarenya replied. She shook a hatchling free of her wrist and into its box. “Now that they can’t kill each other, we need to sex them.”

“Sex them?”

“Check which are male and which are female.”

“Oh.” Ollen didn’t look much less dismayed. “How do we do that?”

Sarenya showed him how to feel along each hatchling’s stubby tail to feel for the subtle bumps of the proto-quills that would eventually sprout into a cock-wherry’s flamboyant plumage. Ollen was dubious at first, but by the time they’d checked each of the sixteen wherry hatchlings, she thought he was getting the hang of it. Sarenya had him sweep up the discarded shells and dump them in the midden while she wrote the time and date of the hatching on the board.

Ollen’s hand had stopped bleeding by the time they’d finished with the clutch, but Sarenya cleaned and dressed it anyway. Beastcrafters got their hands too dirty too often to leave even a scratch uncovered. “Journeyman Tebis is expecting you in the stables,” she reminded him as they left the hatchery.

He groaned. “Shovelling more sh…”

“Ollen!”

“Sorry, journeyman,” he mumbled, and hastened away in the direction of the stables.

Sarenya shook her head as Ollen retreated. He was the third Weyr lad who’d been sent down to the Madellon Beastcraft that month, but she didn’t see him working out any more than the first two had.

The watchdragons were changing up by the Star Stones, signifying the end of the shift that had started in the muggy darkness before dawn, but Sarenya’s working day wasn’t over yet. She stopped at the Beastcrafters’ cot to discard her sweaty clothes, paused to check the spit canine with the broken leg who was sleeping in the common room, then headed out across the Weyr to start her second shift of the day.

She paused in front of the high archway that led into the dragon infirmary. “You’re not really here,” she said, to the indistinct figures that stood to the right of the entrance.

They didn’t answer. They never did. Sarenya took a deep breath and carried on inside.

“Good afternoon, Saren,” Vhion greeted her merrily as she entered the infirmary. “You just missed the Weyrwoman.”

“Did she leave a message, Master?” Sarenya asked, pausing in the act of taking down a clean smock from the row of pegs on the wall.

“Yes, yes she did; she asked if you could meet her at noon tomorrow, rather than this evening.”

Sarenya pulled the smock over her head and went to the wash stones. “Thank you.” She frowned as she pumped water to wash her hands. “Valonna came down herself?”

“She did,” Vhion agreed, with a shake of his head that made his collection of extra chins fly. “Though Sejanth is the only dragon here, so she could scarcely have sent a message another way.”

Sarenya dried her hands. “Atath’s gone?”

“Oh, I released her back to L’stev this morning. The swelling had gone down completely and she didn’t report any pain when I had her extend. No point keeping her in any longer.”

Atath, a green dragonet, had been sent to the infirmary in disgrace with severe strain to her upstroke muscle, the sign of a dragon who’d been pushing herself past safe tolerances in flight. “Did you get to the bottom of what they were up to?”

“Showing off, I should imagine,” Vhion replied. “M’touf almost admitted it. It seems his pals have brown and bronze dragons, so it’s not much of a stretch to see that he’d want to prove himself to them. I shall rather miss the little green. A very dainty young lady, even if she did nearly yell the Weyr down last night.”

“She wasn’t the only one who did that,” Sarenya said wryly. “Have you heard any theories on what that ruckus was all about?”

“None I’d credit enough to repeat,” said Vhion. “Sejanth didn’t seem to react to whatever it was that set all the others off, thank Faranth. Bad enough to have one green going off in an enclosed space like this without him adding his contribution. I can’t imagine what it would have been like with three or four more in here.”

They’d had about half the dragonets in the infirmary for minor complaints at some point – strains and sprains, digestive problems, and five of them together with a sinus infection that had manifested more or less like the common cold, except with dragon-sized sneezes and gallons more snot. Vhion checked each weyrling every sevenday, and Sarenya helped if she was on shift at the time. Her secondment to the Dragon Healer, made necessary when some broken ribs had precluded her from performing the full physical duties of a Beastcrafter, had technically ended months ago, but when Vhion’s journeyman Rymon had been reassigned to the Peninsula Weyr, and the Dragon Healer had asked Sarenya’s Master if she could continue to help out.

That was fine with Sarenya. Everyone knew that the Weyrleader was cutting back on the number of crafters at Madellon. Besides Rymon, and the two apprentices that the Beastcraft had lost, the Tailors were a journeyman down, the Smiths had let three apprentices go, and rumour had it that when the Weyr Weaver completed his current contract he wouldn’t be asked to stay on. Sarenya knew there was more to that situation than met the eye – and she wouldn’t mourn Master Laniyan’s departure one bit – but Madellon’s crafter population had plenty of reason to feel edgy. Some contracts were being renewed as they reached their expiry dates, but no one liked feeling so vulnerable to reassignment.

Sarenya should have felt even more exposed than most. Her contract had expired months ago, and it hadn’t been renewed – at least, not for the same Turn-long term of her original assignment to the Weyr. Instead, it had been extended, more than once, by a month each time. That was as much as Master Arrense could promise her. Sarenya’s work in the dragon infirmary was the ostensible justification for her continued retention, but it was just a cover. Sarenya wouldn’t boast of it, and nor would either of her Masters, but she was too well-connected to truly fear for her position.

She still had to keep up appearances, though. “What do you have for me after I’ve done Sejanth?”

Vhion spread his hands. “We’re quiet today. M’touf tidied up Atath’s wallow before they left this morning, and unless someone comes in later…”

“Any more apprentice notes for me?”

Vhion furrowed his brow at her. “No. You’ve had the lot. I’m not sure the Master Dragon Healer at Fort would approve if I started you on journeyman studies. Or your Master, for that matter. You haven’t sat the examinations, and – well, the Beastcrafthall might have something to say about it if you did.”

“Arrense doesn’t mind,” Sarenya pressed.

“Be that as it may,” Vhion said, “you are a journeyman of the Beastcraft. Certainly it befits you to know more than the basics of caring for dragons, and I’m glad to have you here, but you must look to your own Craft. You have your Mastery to consider.”

“I’m Turns away from Mastery,” she insisted. “I haven’t done nearly enough with runners, and that’s a third of the requirement before I can begin Mastery studies. I’d qualify on food beasts, and I might scrape by with small animals, but I see more dragons than runners. You know that.”

“And you know that you should be discussing this with Master Arrense, Sarenya,” Vhion said. He humphed out a great breath. “I know it’s frustrating for you. You have a real touch with the dragons. Faranth, if you weren’t already obligated to the Beastcrafthall I’d sponsor you to my Craft.” When Sarenya recoiled slightly at the idea, he waved his hands. “No, no, journeyman, that wasn’t an ultimatum. I know you’d never give up your Beastcraft career for one with the Dragon Healers.”

“I wouldn’t. I just don’t see why I can’t do both, at least while I’m still a journeyman.”

“Let me speak to your uncle,” Vhion said soothingly. “Perhaps we can work something out.” He shook his head. “With all the hours you work, it’s a wonder you even have time to think about it.”

“That’s the idea,” Sarenya said.

Vhion shot her a penetrating look at odds with his jolly demeanour. “Go on and see to Sejanth, journeyman.”

The permanent resident of the dragon infirmary lay in a curtained-off bay at the rear of the cavern. The Weyr Mason was working on a better solution, enlarging a hollow in the caldera wall just above the infirmary that could be used to provide more appropriate accommodation, but until the new weyr was complete Sejanth remained in Vhion’s care. Sarenya took a broom and pitchfork from the rack and stacked them on a barrow before wheeling through the drape that partitioned off Sejanth’s wallow, announcing herself as she went. “Hello, big fella. How are you today?”

The overpowering stench of sick dragon washed over her as she entered Sejanth’s bay. Sarenya was used to it, but she wondered idly how Ollen’s delicate nose, offended as it had been by the healthy stink of the Hatchery, would have reacted to the reek of Sejanth’s illness.

The bronze dragon turned his head slowly in her direction. He lay as he always did: on his side, the remains of his right wing splayed stiffly open, his head drawn into his chest. His eyes were open. They seldom brightened beyond a dull blue, but the sluggish whirling of the facets did increase in speed as Sarenya approached.

She put down the barrow and stepped up close to him. “It’s good to see you too, Sejanth.” She scratched behind his near headknob and rubbed his eye-ridge. His hide felt lax and dry, but that was normal for him. “Let’s see how you’re doing, shall we?”

She’d done Sejanth’s observations so many times now that she hardly had to think about them. She tucked her hand into his armpit to find the deep thump of his two hearts, and then felt just above the belly-whorl for the abdominal pulses. She did the same for his respiration, counting his slow breaths with her hand on his ribcage. She felt down the long, rather thickened length of his tail, then pinched up a fold of hide on his neck with both hands to check if it sprang back. It did, but only reluctantly.

The drinking trough was half full, but the water in it had gone cloudy. She tipped it out into the channel that ran past the front of the wallow, then refilled it bucket by bucket from the cistern. Sejanth actually raised his head to watch, but it wasn’t long before he laid his muzzle disinterestedly back down between his forepaws.

“What did you think of that weyrling green, eh?” Sarenya asked him as she pushed the wheelbarrow closer and picked up the pitchfork. “Daft thing, wasn’t she? Pretty, though. I bet you’ll miss her.” She forked dung and wet reeds into the barrow, keeping up her monologue all the time. “You should see the young queen. She’s really going to be a looker.” She pitched fresh reeds down around Sejanth. Getting him to move out entirely was always a painful process, so she refreshed the entire wallow only once a sevenday, when she coaxed him, step by painful step, out of the infirmary for a wash in the lake. “Maybe the Weyrlingmaster will let her come in for a visit. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Vhion had concocted a special salve for Sejanth’s scars. His burns had eventually healed, but they’d left heavy keloid scar tissue that restricted the extension of the bronze dragon’s muscles. “Let’s have your wing, Sejanth,” Sarenya said, as if he would hold it out to her. He didn’t, of course, but he let her spread the thick, greasy ointment along the edges of his bare wingbones, and work it carefully into the joints where the fingers fanned out to form the structure of the limb. There wasn’t much actual wing left. More than half of the sail was gone, either incinerated in the initial injury or cut away to prevent further mortification much later when the blood poisoning had set in. “That’s better. Are you going to let me do your sore places now?”

Lying immobile for extended periods had caused terrible pressure sores on Sejanth’s left-hand side. Sarenya used a different salve on them when he consented to turn over and let her, which wasn’t often. Today was no exception to that rule. He didn’t react to her prompting at all, either to comply or to object. “Sejanth,” she said, and put her hand on his neck. “Come on, fella. You know it’ll make you feel better.”

But Sejanth ignored her, and Sarenya had to settle for wiping the parts of him she could reach with cloths soaked in redwort. She was painfully aware as she did of how the muscle was wasting from his bones, slackening under his dull hide. Vhion had speculated that the atrophy was behind Sejanth’s increasing reluctance to move. Saren thought, privately, that it was a matter of will, not strength.

There’d been a point during Sejanth’s illness when, half mad with firestone poisoning, he’d refused to allow anyone near him. Shimpath had intervened, subduing his violent outbursts so that Vhion could treat him, but even now, months later, he became agitated when the Dragon Healer got too close. Sejanth did tolerate Sarenya, and so she had assumed responsibility for his treatment. But she wondered if the queen’s influence had suppressed Sejanth’s desire to live as well as his desire to fight. Bit by bit, she could see him slipping away.

D’feng’s carers brought him down every day, but it didn’t help dragon or rider. D’feng – himself crippled, and confined to a chair – quickly became distraught when left with his bronze for any length of time. His distress upset Sejanth; Sejanth’s distress made D’feng’s worse; and so it went, a cycle of suffering that could only be interrupted by keeping the visits brief.

There’d been talk around the Weyr that they should just let Sejanth take himself and his rider between; that it wasn’t fair to keep them both going when they’d been so hideously wounded. Sometimes Sarenya wondered herself if what they were doing was right. But occasionally, very occasionally, Sejanth would speak to her. Itchy there, or Dry eyes. Once, preciously, Thank you.

Sarenya had spent her childhood trying to coax sick animals back to health. Arthritic hounds, abandoned lambs, hoof-sore runners. Once she’d even patched up a mangled tunnel-snake, though that particular patient hadn’t been overly grateful and neither had Lanen Hold’s stablemaster. She hadn’t always succeeded, but she’d always tried. Her Beastcraft apprenticeship had trained her to be more pragmatic, taught her to know when a life shouldn’t be artificially preserved, when a swift and humane death was the compassionate alternative. But Sejanth could communicate if he wanted to, and until such time as he expressed a wish to go between, Sarenya would keep trying to get him better. She might not succeed, but she would try. Sejanth was her patient, her responsibility.

And she would never forget the part he had played in saving her life.

When she had done as much for him as he would allow, she loaded her tools back onto the barrow. Then she placed both her hands on his muzzle, leaning against him. Even as sick as he was, her weight was a negligible force. You’re going to get well again, Sejanth. You’re going to get better.

He didn’t reply. She didn’t expect him to. She wasn’t even certain he’d heard her. He’d never responded to a direct address. She took her hands off him, and lifted the handles of the wheelbarrow.

Once she’d dumped the soiled reeds on the midden heap, she racked her tools and put her head around the corner into Vhion’s office. “Sejanth’s all done, Master. Is there anything else you need me to do?”

He looked up from a record hide. “No, Saren; tomorrow will be soon enough. Take the rest of the afternoon off, hm?”

Sarenya didn’t want to take the rest of the afternoon off, but she couldn’t argue with Vhion. “Yes, Master.”

Emerging into the sunny Bowl after the glow-lit gloom of the infirmary nearly blinded her. She welcomed it. It made the half-there figures outside that much harder to see. She shaded her eyes with her hand until they adjusted, and then Sleek burst chattering out of between directly in front of her face, making her jump. “Shards, haven’t I told you not to do that?” Sarenya asked, fending him off. “Come here. What has you so excited?”

Sleek flapped and fluttered around before landing on Sarenya’s shoulder, grabbing a handful of her hair with one forepaw for balance. She had to concentrate to make sense of the scattered images he was sending. Fire-lizard wings spread against the blazing sun, dark tails lashing, eyes glowing red, and a single golden shape challenging any male who might think himself worthy to follow. “Oh,” Sarenya said, and then, realising, “Oh.”

There was only one queen fire-lizard at Madellon, so unless they had a visitor, Agusta was rising.

“Too much for you, little fella?” Sarenya tweaked her blue’s tail. He squalled in protest, snatching it out of her grasp, then settled. From his patchy visuals, he’d followed the queen and her pursuers for a short way before the intensity of the race had compelled him to break off. Male fire-lizards of all colours would go after a queen, but the field would have to be pretty poor for a blue to have a chance of winning.

Tarnish would have been in the thick of it. The thought came unbidden, and the twinge of sadness with it. Sarenya’s bronze fire-lizard had been giddily in love with M’ric’s queen. He’d gone between in agony on Hatching night, seconds after taking a slice from Katel’s knife, and she hadn’t seen him since. He might have been the smallest participant that night, but he’d played his own role in Sarenya’s rescue, and she still missed him.

She put the memory firmly aside. “Let’s go and find M’ric.”

He was easy to find. Trebruth had taken a bullock in one of the killing paddocks, and his distinctive size and colour stood out on the killing grounds. M’ric was leaning on the fence, watching as his dragon dismembered the herdbeast he’d felled.

He didn’t see Sarenya approach, which was strange for a man who usually noticed everything. M’ric was tall and lean, long-legged and broad-shouldered, tanned and handsome. His shaggy hair was the same dark brown as his dragon, his keen eyes a shade or so lighter. He was a Wingsecond, and sometimes a Wingleader, and though he only wore insignia when he had to, it showed. Some dragonriders carried their rank in their bearing, not on their shoulders. M’ric was one of them.

“I don’t know how you can watch him do that,” Sarenya said, stepping up to the fence beside him.

M’ric gave the smallest start, and then his smile flashed white in his tanned face. “You’ve dissected your share of cows in your time, Sarenya.” He put his arm over her shoulders. “Sorry, Sleek,” he added, as the motion almost dislodged the blue.

Sarenya put her hand on his back, leaning just slightly into the contact. “I don’t do it for fun, though.”

“He does like to play with his food,” M’ric admitted. “Though he complains it’s hardly worth the effort.”

“None of them are at the moment,” Sarenya said, looking at what was left of the carcass. “He went for a Shorthorn? Tell him to try a Keroon Red next time. The ones we drove up this morning had more flesh on them.”

“I’ll pass that on.” He kissed her temple, and Sarenya noticed that his hair was damp. “Are you still on duty?”

“Vhion let me go early,” said Sarenya. She glanced up at him, wondering what had him so distracted. “Was that Agusta rising that had Sleek so excited?”

“I thought you might notice,” M’ric said. “Trebruth was chasing a green, and it set her off.”

“Oh,” Saren said. She schooled her voice to neutrality, and resisted the small, mean urge to flinch away from him. “Of course that would. Who caught her?”

M’ric hesitated for the barest breath of a moment. “A bronze I didn’t recognise.”

It wasn’t a good lie. There were so few fire-lizards at Madellon that everyone who had one knew every member of the Weyr’s fair. If M’ric had seen a bronze catch Agusta he would have known whose it was. The fact that he didn’t confirmed that he’d been otherwise occupied.

Which explains why his hair is wet, a traitorous little voice in Saren’s head noticed.

She ignored it. “Speaking of setting off,” she said, to change the subject, “what upset all the dragons last night?”

“That woke you up?”

“It woke everyone up,” Saren said, deciding not to mention that she’d been awake anyway. “What happened? Sleek went off, too, but I can never get much sense out of him. I thought we’d lost another dragon, but I haven’t heard anything about a death”

M’ric looked at his dragon, who was gulping down the last ragged forequarter of beef whole. “It wasn’t one.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Trebruth couldn’t say.”

“Sam couldn’t get an answer out of his weyrmate, either,” said Sarenya.

Trebruth sat back on his haunches, licking his chops: the only evidence of his meal the bloody patch on the sun-scorched grass and a few gory scraps of hide. “I don’t think any of us know what it was,” said M’ric. Then he raised his voice. “Lake, Trebruth.”

M’ric always spoke aloud to his dragon when Sarenya was there. It was a small courtesy, but one she valued. Some riders could be downright rude, holding extensive silent conversations with their dragons that completely excluded their non-rider companions. Trebruth sprang aloft with neat economy and the downbeat of his wings as he overflew them stirred up a welcome breeze.

Madellon’s lake, fed by underground watercourses that flowed from the higher peaks of the mountain range in which the Weyr was located, had shrunk from its usual size, exposing mud flats that had dried and cracked in the hot weather. Riders had flown in dragonloads of sand from the coast to top up the natural beaches and give dragons and people alike a clean surface from which to access the water, and on the shore nearest the barracks, the weyrlings were bathing their dragonets. The diminutive term hardly seemed appropriate any more. “I can’t believe how much they’ve grown,” Sarenya said, watching as one of the bronzes waddled out of the water, his wet wings extended awkwardly above him.

M’ric followed her gaze. “They’ll have most of their adult length by the time they’re a Turn old.”

“That bronze of R’von’s is almost the size of Trebruth already,” Sarenya said.

“Which would actually be impressive if Trebruth weren’t such a runt,” said M’ric. “But they do grow up fast. There’s a bronze at the Peninsula, Solstorth, who flew a queen when he was fourteen months old.”

“Not the senior?” Sarenya asked, appalled.

“No,” M’ric laughed. “That would have gone down very badly. As it was, his rider was in ten kinds of trouble for the next Turn. But he got the same queen again the next time she flew. Produced a gold egg, too. That dragonet was a real monster. Nearly as big as a Southern bronze.” He glanced around at the dragons visible on the Rim and on their ledges. “Madellon’s bronzes are a better size.”

“Isn’t bigger better?” Sarenya teased him.

“Not as far as I’m concerned.”

Sarenya wondered what nerve she’d hit. M’ric was normally the first to make fun of his own dragon’s size. “I think T’rello’s bronze is the biggest,” she said, to cover the uncomfortable moment. “Santinoth. He came into the infirmary the other day with a nasty gash…” She hesitated as she realised that she’d swerved away from one source of awkwardness and back into the clutches of another. Santinoth had received his wound in a green flight. “Well, anyway, I’m sure he’s the biggest dragon at Madellon, apart from Shimpath.”

M’ric didn’t reply, and Sarenya stole a sideways glance at him. He was looking at the dragonets with a kind of tightness around his eyes. Then he seemed to shake himself, returning his gaze to his own dragon, who was washing himself vigorously in the lake. “Aren’t you seeing C’mine today?”

“Tomorrow,” Sarenya said. “Valonna changed the time. Why do you ask?”

“It’s just that I was talking to one of his Wingseconds this morning,” M’ric said. “We were comparing notes on our riders. C’mine’s name came up.”

The way he said it made Saren feel uneasy. “Came up?”

“He’s been missing some drills and turning up late to others,” M’ric said. “F’halig’s worried about him. Said he’s never been unreliable before. I wouldn’t even mention it to you, but I know how close you and he are.”

“He’s been doing better,” she said. “I mean, he’s not been the same since –” None of us are the same. “But I thought he’d come out the other side.” She thought about it. “He missed our last meeting with Valonna. I assumed he had other duties that day. Maybe he didn’t.”

“You know he turned down a place in Ops,” said M’ric.

“I didn’t know you’d offered him one.”

“He distinguished himself in that wildfire at Kellad last Turn’s End. That’s the kind of proven experience I want.” He shrugged. “He said no.”

“He wouldn’t want the fuss,” said Sarenya. “The riders you’ve tapped are getting a lot of attention for being singled out for your Wing.”

“Tell any rider he’s special, and he’ll fall over himself to believe it,” said M’ric.

“Not C’mine. C’los was the glory-hound out of those two.”

“I thought you’d want to know,” said M’ric. “Maybe you could talk to him. Or talk to the Weyrleader about him.”

Sarenya turned to him in frank surprise. “You want me to talk to T’kamen? About Mine?”

“You’re his friend.”

“T’kamen’s his Wingleader. If there’s something going on with C’mine, he’ll already know.”

“Maybe not. I got the impression that F’halig is reluctant to complain about C’mine when he and the Weyrleader have so much history. I know I would be.”

“I’m just a Beastcrafter. I can’t stick my nose into Wing business.”

“You’re not just anything, Saren,” M’ric told her. “But it was only a thought.”

Sleek rescued Sarenya from having to find another excuse. He chirped suddenly in her ear, and then took off, stroking her across the face with his wings, and spiralled upwards to join a scattering of other fire-lizards that were wheeling expectantly. Sarenya tracked them aloft. “Agusta’s back.”

“So it would seem,” M’ric agreed, looking up. “There she is. Looks like that bronze of Caddall’s caught her.”

“I miss having a bronze,” Sarenya said, and then realised she’d spoken it aloud. M’ric looked at her, and she went on hastily, “Not just because of Agusta. I miss having a fire-lizard I can rely on.”

“There are some well-trained blues here,” said M’ric.

“I know, and Sleek isn’t one of them.” Sarenya sighed. “I wasn’t supposed to Impress him, you know. I already had Tarnish, and once you have a bronze there’s not much point having anything smaller. But his egg was going spare, and if I’d let him revert to the wild without a fair, he probably wouldn’t have survived. My Master always said it was sentimental of me to keep him.”

“There’s nothing wrong with sentimentality,” said M’ric. “When I Impressed Trebruth, no one thought we’d ever amount to anything.”

“He’s a dragon, though,” said Sarenya. “And a brown.”

“Exactly,” M’ric said.

“And you’ve proved them wrong,” Sarenya continued. She frowned. “What do you mean, ‘exactly’?”

M’ric shook his head. “If you did the drive this morning, you must be on a late start tomorrow. Why don’t you come up to our weyr tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Sarenya hedged. “We’re still short-handed. I’ll probably have to be up before morning watch.”

“Trebruth doesn’t mind waking up early,” M’ric said. “You know he’ll always give you a lift back down to the Bowl. Or I can come down to the cot tonight, if that’s easier?”

“With the apprentices listening at the door to every sound we make?” Saren asked, laughing.

“Let them listen,” said M’ric. “It’ll be educational for them.”

“You’re appalling,” Sarenya told him.

“I do my best.”

“It’s been sweltering the last few nights. It’s not very comfortable.”

“I can live with sweltering,” said M’ric. Then he looked over towards the lake. “All right, Trebruth, I’m coming.” He shrugged apologetically. “He has an itch.”

“What if I come up to your weyr after dinner?” Sarenya asked. “I’ll probably come back down before bedtime, but that gives us a few hours.”

“That sounds like a plan,” said M’ric.

Sarenya reached over to hug him, relieved. “I’d better get on with my chores. I’ll see you later.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be with M’ric. The opposite, in fact. He was good company, alone or in a crowd. He was romantic, stealing her away for a few hours or an afternoon whenever  he could, to a Gather or a beach or just to share a pretty view he and Trebruth had found. He was a tender and sensitive lover and, green flights aside, more faithful to her than she had any right to expect from a dragonrider. She knew she was the object of envy from both riders and non-riders for having snagged such a handsome and respected Wingsecond. He was clever and observant and kind.

And that was the problem.

The events of Hatching day would have shaken anybody. That was what they’d all said – M’ric; Sarenya’s Master; the Weyr Healer. She’d found C’los in a spreading pool of blood. She’d been abducted at knifepoint by his killer, whom she’d known and worked with and liked. She’d been forced blind and half strangled across treacherous terrain on runner-back in the dark. She’d felt her fire-lizard’s mortal scream as he went between in death. Any one of the horrors Sarenya had faced on that awful night would have been bad enough, they’d said, but as components of a whole they were worse still. She couldn’t be expected to shrug off such an experience lightly. They’d given her the time and space and comfort that they’d thought she needed to come to terms with her ordeal. She’d let them believe she had, because there was a limit to how long sympathy could endure without hardening into impatience or mutating into pity, and she couldn’t bear either.

The ghosts were easier to endure.

Perhaps that was because they were always there. Sarenya saw them, and refused to see them, every time she went into the dragon infirmary. Their constancy was almost a comfort. They never did anything. They were just there – or not-there – and Sarenya could recognise them and ignore them and refuse to give them any power over her.

But the dreams were back, and she couldn’t ignore those.

In the first few sevendays, M’ric had been her comfort. She’d barely spent a night apart from him, relying on him to be there when she woke sweating and shaking from the nightmarish re-enactment of Hatching night. He’d always been there and never complained, but comfort alone wasn’t enough.

Master Isnan had told her it was normal to relive a traumatic experience in night terrors, and he’d given her a tea to drink before she slept, to quiet her mind. She’d taken it gladly, making it a ritual every night. The dreams had gone away, and she’d reasserted her independence, returning to her own quarters in the Beastcraft cothold most nights. But Sarenya knew too much botanical medicine to be comfortable dosing herself with a sedative for long, and she’d stopped after a month or so, when she thought the sharp edges of the memories had grown dull enough to handle. For a while it had seemed that they were. But then the dreams had crept back, bit by bit. Subtly at first, in the glimpse of a face or a hand or a knife in another dream, and then with more clarity, as though the scattered pieces of her nightmare were drawing themselves together again. Sometimes she’d relive the sequence in perfect detail. Sometimes the details would change, and the corpse she found was M’ric’s, or C’mine’s, or her own. Sometimes she seemed to see the night overlaid with the intersecting images and flickering emotions of a fire-lizard. Those ones always ended with the dance of light on a knife blade, and a slash, and a scream. None of them ever ended with rescue, as the ordeal truly had, but perhaps that was because Sarenya always came violently awake before the full events played out,  sweating and shaking with the memory of horrors freshly revisited.

And that was why she was reluctant to sleep beside M’ric these days. She’d told him the nightmares had stopped. She’d told him she was better. They hadn’t, and she wasn’t, but some things were worse than ghosts or nightmares, and it would be a warm day between before she’d let a man she thought she almost loved know how broken she still was.

She was hanging her clothes to dry – the last of her chores – when the shadow of a big dragon, flying low, passed over her. It was hardly an unusual occurrence: the cothold was on the edge of the Weyr’s paddocks, and a hundred dragons overflew every day on their way to eat. But some vestige of the sensitivity that had once made Sarenya a candidate for a queen still remained to her. It caused her to look up, narrow her eyes against the sinking sun, and recognise Epherineth.

He still made her heart catch a little in her breast. If there’d been a breed standard for dragons, Epherineth would have embodied it. He was so very beautiful, from the gold-green lustre of his hide to the noble set of his head to the perfect elegance of his conformation. He was neither puny nor over-muscled, neither the largest bronze in the Weyr nor the smallest. His limbs were clean and straight, his chest deep, his wings like translucent glass. Sarenya could see some of those characteristics in his offspring, the dragonets of Shimpath’s clutch, and perhaps at full growth one or more of those weyrling dragons would match or even surpass their father’s conformation. She hoped so. The supreme test of any breeding male – stallion, bull, or bronze – was his ability to pass his best qualities to his progeny. Only then could the contribution of an outstanding individual bestow improvement on the breed as a whole.

It was, she told herself, merely for the pleasure of observing an exceptional example of dragonkind that she strolled over to the paddock to watch Epherineth make his kill. There were already two green riders there, talking quietly as their dragons feasted on a pair of wherries apiece. Sarenya nodded to them as she leaned her arms on the top rail of the fence, but didn’t interrupt. And when Epherineth’s rider came around the corner of the cothold, Sarenya managed to refrain from expressing either delight or dismay, which was just as well, because she couldn’t have said which was the most genuine reaction.

“Good evening, Weyrleader,” she heard one of the riders say.

“Green riders,” T’kamen replied, and then, as he came to stand on Sarenya’s right-hand side, crossing his forearms on the railing, he added, “Sarenya.”

She didn’t look at him. She didn’t need to. He wasn’t the extraordinary specimen that his dragon represented, but as familiar as Sarenya was with Epherineth, she knew T’kamen even more intimately. He was not quite a hand taller than her, with a build that could politely be described as spare and more accurately as gaunt. His dark hair had always stuck up stubbornly, and even the flattening effect of a flying helmet could be undone entirely with one careless rake of a hand. His face was all lines and angles: nose, cheekbones, jaw unsoftened by any excess flesh, mouth untouched by any lasting evidence that it ever smiled. His eyes, deep-set and velvety brown, would be tired, and the lines around them, and on his brow, and above the bridge of his nose, would describe with their depth how the weight of the Weyr pressed down upon him. He would be wearing black and white, because he always wore black and white, with the sleeves of his shirt rolled back to above his elbows; a long knife would ride on his hip and a spare one, these days, in his boot; and the only touch of colour about him would be the bronze and indigo and silver braids of the shoulder-knots, tailed and tasselled, that declared him Weyrleader of Madellon.

Sarenya pitched her voice low enough to go unheard by the two green riders. “Hello, T’kamen.”

They might have left it there – a cordial greeting and no more. They didn’t have to talk. Sometimes it was almost as if they weren’t two people with shared history, mutual heartache, and divergent paths. But even without looking at him, even with but three words exchanged, Sarenya knew that this wasn’t one of those times. The only question was which of them would crack first.

“He’s still the most handsome dragon in the Weyr, you know,” she heard herself say. Then she added, quickly, “Tell him to go for one of the Keroon Reds.”

From the corner of her eye she saw T’kamen cock his head, and over the paddock Epherineth changed course. “Thank you. He appreciates that.”

There’d been a time when Epherineth might have thanked Sarenya himself, but that privilege was no longer hers to enjoy. “The wherries are probably better,” she said. “The home-breds, at least. They’ll eat anything and turn it into flesh. Until we get some rain to bring the grass back, there’s not much more we can do with the bullocks.”

“Last night,” T’kamen said abruptly. “When the dragons called out. Did you hear what woke them up?”

Sarenya glanced sideways. “No. Should I have?”

“Probably not,” he admitted. “I thought you might have heard it through your lizard.”

Any attentive listener would have discerned T’kamen’s dislike of fire-lizards from the flat way he said the word. He had better reason than most. The marks where Sleek had once taken an angry swipe at him were still faintly visible on his cheekbone. “M’ric said even the dragons couldn’t explain it.”

T’kamen didn’t go tense, or set his jaw, or show any sign whatsoever of his personal dislike of the brown rider, but Epherineth picked that moment to descend with more than necessary force on his chosen herdbeast.

“I just have this feeling,” T’kamen said. He sounded frustrated, as though the notion had been dogging him all day. “Something’s coming.”

She met his troubled gaze this time. “What sort of something?”

“I don’t know. Nothing good.”

“You just love a worst-case scenario.”

“If I’d bet on every situation since I became Weyrleader turning out badly, I’d be a rich man by now.”

“Then surely by law of averages alone, you’re due some good luck.” There were more strands of silver at his temples than Sarenya remembered seeing before. Minor as it was, the fact she hadn’t noticed the change before bothered her nearly as much as the stress it reflected. Without thinking, without any conscious intention at all, she lifted her fingers to his worried brow, as if stroking back the grey hairs could deny their existence. “Thread can’t fall all the time.”

T’kamen flinched at the touch, and Sarenya almost had time to reconsider the wisdom of it, but not before he’d reached out to lay his hand against her cheek in wordless, helpless reciprocation.

Several things happened at once. Sarenya froze with her fingertips brushing his temple. A sentence from the apprentice Dragon Healer notes she’d been studying floated incongruously into her head. A previously mated pair with residual mutual affection may continue to exhibit bonding behaviours including neck-twining, social grooming, and physical mirroring. And Epherineth looked up from his meal, licking gore from his chops, and made a small, curious sound deep in his chest.

“…get her harness clean for inspection tomorrow morning… Good night, Weyrleader…”

Sarenya snatched her hand away even as T’kamen did the same, and half turned to stare intently out at the paddock as the two green riders walked past, not daring to look to see if they’d noticed anything.

T’kamen’s voice was lower and rougher than it had been a moment before as he stiffly bade the two riders farewell. “Good night, V’nor. Garlan.”

They stood side by side for a moment, united in uneasy silence.

“I didn’t mean…” Sarenya began.

“I don’t know why we…” T’kamen said at the same moment.

They both stopped.

“Of course you didn’t,” said T’kamen. He almost bit off the words. “Faranth. I’m sorry.”

“Kamen, I –”

“Don’t,” he said harshly. “Don’t call me that.” He cut himself off. The look he shot her was angry, reproachful, and accusatory in equal parts. “Faranth, Sarenya. It’s not as if I can send him after a green.”

Sarenya took a deep breath, feeling wretched. “I’m sorry. T’kamen. I wasn’t thinking.”

He gripped the fence rail with both hands, fixing his gaze on his dragon, deliberately turning his shoulder to her. “This was a bad idea.”

The most prudent course would probably have been to beat a retreat then, but Saren had never been very prudent when it came to Epherineth’s rider. “What’s going on with Mine, T’kamen?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve heard he’s been having a bad couple of sevendays.” T’kamen didn’t answer, and Sarenya pushed, recklessly, “Turning up late to briefings. Not turning up at all –”

A muscle in T’kamen’s jaw jumped. “Are you trying to tell me what’s going on in my own Wing?”

“Is it true?” Sarenya asked. “Because if it is…”

“Don’t interfere,” T’kamen told her, curtly.

“I’m not interfering. But if he’s backsliding, he needs help. You can’t ignore him.”

“I’m not ignoring him, Sarenya,” T’kamen said. “I can’t. I’m his Wingleader.”

“He doesn’t need you to be his Wingleader. He needs you to be his friend.”

T’kamen half turned to her, as if he were about to say something harsh, and then whatever it was seemed to go out of him. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention.”

“You’re the Weyrleader,” she told him. “You have a lot on your mind.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” he said. “I’ll talk to him.”

Sarenya felt the tension dissipate from her like smoke. “I just want to be sure that he’s all right.”

“And you?” T’kamen asked. “You’re all right?”

For one frozen instant, Sarenya felt everything that she’d been holding back bearing down on her control like a raging river against a failing dam. She wanted to tell him about the ghosts and the nightmares. She wanted to unburden her guilt and shame and frustration onto him. She wanted him to tell her that she wasn’t crazy, that it hadn’t been her fault, that everything was going to be all right.

“I’m fine,” she said.

T’kamen looked relieved. “Good. I’m glad.”

Sarenya hesitated, then put a hand on his shoulder. She felt him tense, then relax. “T’kamen, whatever’s coming, you and Epherineth will handle it. You always do. You’ll make it right.”

“I’m not sure what I’ve done to justify that kind of confidence.”

“I wouldn’t be here, if it wasn’t for you.”

The statement was true in more than one way. T’kamen looked at her, lines forming between his brows as he tried to discern which she meant. Then his gaze slipped sideways, back to Epherineth. “That night,” he said, and stopped.

They had never spoken of it to each other. Sarenya swallowed down a sudden surge of acid in her throat. “What you did…”

“What I did,” T’kamen said. His face had gone impassive, but not his eyes. His eyes were savage. Abruptly, he said, “I don’t want to talk about what I did, Sarenya.”

The muscles of his back had gone rigid beneath her hand. Sarenya jerked her fingers away, as if from a hot stove. “I’m grateful all the same.”

“Saren,” he said. It could have been anything, but he made it a farewell. Stiffly, he inclined his head. “Have a good evening.”

As he walked away, Sarenya looked over at Epherineth. He was poised over his half-eaten herdbeast, watching T’kamen with blue eyes. Then he swivelled his head to return Sarenya’s gaze so deliberately that she almost took a step back.

He didn’t say anything. He made no sound. But Sarenya thought to him, silently, Take care of him, Epherineth.

She turned to go back to the cothold, and she was almost home when the deep, resonant voice intruded softly on her mind. Always, Sarenya.

Chapter three: C’mine

A bereaved dragonrider is the sorriest creature on the face of Pern.

Riders speak of a man who has lost his dragon. ‘Lost’, as if carelessly mislaid, as if it were his fault. As if any dragonrider would do anything to put his dragon needlessly in harm’s way. And no rider likes to be around the dragonless. To them, it is a sight as gruesome as a man with no arms or a woman with her eyes put out. It is a mutilation no dragonrider wishes to imagine upon himself.

But the dragonrider whose weyrmate has died engenders even less sympathy from his fellows, for another rider will say, “but at least he still has his dragon,” without considering how profoundly a man’s grief for the death of a loved one can sour his bond with a dragon who will soon forget that his rider’s beloved ever existed.

– Weyr Healer Daurer, Maladies of the Dragonrider’s Mind

100.02.12 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

The sun had been up for some time when he finally came awake, though no morning light could penetrate the depths of the cavern, nor breach the tangle of sheets and pillows in which he lay. It took the first touch of the sun rays cresting the Rim to wake Darshanth, and then the blue dragon’s own persistent urging to goad him out of the comforting void of unconsciousness.

Wake up.

If he ignored him, he thought foggily, he’d give up.

Darshanth pushed harder at him. Wake up.

He pushed back. Go away.

Wake up, C’mine.

The shove that accompanied the command was too firm for him to ignore, and reluctantly, unhappily, C’mine let it propel him into wakefulness.

You’re late, Darshanth told him.

There’d been a time when such a warning would have snapped him into high alert. Punctuality is the soul of civility. If he’d cared to try, he could probably have summoned up the ascetic face of the Harper journeyman whose adage that had been from the depths of a memory twenty Turns old.

He didn’t care.

As he dragged a hand across his face, feeling the scruff of three-day stubble, his elbow came into contact with something – something that yielded and shifted and complained drowsily – and he was still just sleepy enough, just groggy enough, just stupefied enough that for a tiny shining fragment of a second he could believe that the last nine months had been nothing more than a hideous dream, and when he sat up and looked over…

Mine, said Darshanth; sorrowful, regretful.

The fantasy evaporated, bursting like a bubble under Darshanth’s touch. For one repellent moment C’mine hated him for it with all the passion in the world. And then the guilt broke over him in a sickening rush, and he reached out helplessly to his dragon in self-loathing shame.

Darshanth wrapped his thoughts close, a grip closer even than the tight clasp he’d maintained for more than half a Turn now, accepting the remorse, smothering it, dismissing it.

I didn’t mean it, Darshanth. I love you. I love you.

I know. I know. I know.

C’mine clung to his steadfastness until the nausea passed. I don’t deserve you.

Darshanth bore it patiently for a long moment, and then, softly, nudged him away. You’re late, he reminded him.

C’mine gathered himself. Another phrase flashed into his mind. Face the day. Master Isnan’s advice. Rising may be the hardest part, but you must face the day. It was ragged around the edges, dog-eared and torn from the number of times C’mine had rejected it in despair. But this morning, this time, he would let it guide him.

The weyr was unfamiliar; the fact that it was, less so. He’d stopped – or perhaps never started – counting the number of strange places in which he’d woken recently: first amongst friends, then amidst wineskins, and now…now, with whichever rider had been luckless enough to share a flight with him. In that, Darshanth had been more than obliging, and if C’mine suspected that his dragon chased as often and as ardently as he did for his rider’s sake, not his own, he was too selfishly grateful to dissuade him. He liked to think that he’d retained enough self-awareness to know that his acquaintance with the whiskey jar and the ale jug couldn’t go on indefinitely, but in his most candid moments he knew he couldn’t have given up flights. A dragonrider enjoyed many privileges over other men: the surrender of self to a dragon’s passion was one of them.

Even that wasn’t all of the truth. Darshanth didn’t always win. Sometimes he was tired, sometimes there was a faster dragon, sometimes the green wanted a different mate. Sometimes, C’mine was sure, Darshanth just wasn’t sincere in his desire. It did a blue no harm to lose, but where there were other losers, there were other riders, and where there were other riders, C’mine didn’t have to cope with the frustration alone. It was a poor substitute for the real thing. But poor substitutes were all he had now. They were all he would ever have.

Face the day.

Darshanth had won yesterday’s flight, a sundowner, late in the light summer evening, flown westward into the setting sun. He’d outsmarted two bronzes – C’mine recalled that much – and the rest was a blur, so indistinct from a dozen other flights like it that he couldn’t even remember if the green’s rider had been a man or a woman.

Woman, Darshanth said, negating the need for C’mine to look too closely. You’re late for the Wing briefing. Valth’s rider wants to know where you are.

Wing briefing. C’mine felt the familiar apathy creep over him at the prospect. Tell him we had a flight.

Valth says you’re to come to the briefing room immediately.

C’mine threw off the sheet that had been covering him and swung his legs off the edge of the mattress. From the other side of the bed, his partner of the previous night mumbled sleepily. He ignored her, and picked up his clothes from the floor. The trousers were grubby and wrinkled, and the shirt not much better. Good enough. He dressed in the dimness of the strange weyr and, inattentively buttoning his shirt, walked out towards the light.

It was a high one, far up on the northern face of the Bowl, inaccessible by anything but dragonback. The brilliant rays of the mid-morning sun, above and behind, bathed the opposite wall of the Madellon crater in golden light, and deepened the shadows of the north and east quadrants.

Darshanth awaited him on the ledge, silver-blue and beautiful even in shadow. He was still half-twined with his latest mate, but as C’mine emerged he disentangled himself from the dozing green dragon with practised ease. He dropped onto his forehand, arching his back in a languorous stretch, then tilted his elbow to C’mine. Come.

No harness, C’mine noted, stepping onto the blue’s forearm.

No shoes, Darshanth countered.

C’mine glanced down at his bare feet as he swung up onto Darshanth’s neck. Epherineth’s weyr.

T’kamen’s bronze was the only other dragon on the ledge when Darshanth glided down to land. He turned his head to regard them impassively. He didn’t make a sound. Epherineth had never been a vocal dragon. But once C’mine had dismounted, and before Darshanth took off again, bronze and blue gravely touched muzzles.

F’halig was waiting outside the door of the ready-room, adjacent to T’kamen’s office. C’mine dipped his head, but there was no avoiding the Wingsecond. F’halig extended his arm across the doorway, blocking the way, before he could go through. “We started ten minutes ago.”

“We had a flight,” C’mine murmured.

“Last night. That doesn’t give you an excuse this morning.”

C’mine kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Look at me, blue rider.”

Slowly, C’mine raised his eyes to F’halig’s.

F’halig condemned him with a glance. “Late. Dirty gear. Unshaven.” He ticked each infringement off on his fingers. “And where are your shoes?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“You’re a sharding disgrace, C’mine.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This can’t go on.”

“No, sir.”

F’halig stared at him. It wasn’t the first time they’d had this confrontation, or a variation of it, in the last two sevendays. “Every time you do this you let the Weyrleader down. Do you understand that?”

C’mine just looked at him.

F’halig gave up. He withdrew his arm from the doorway. “Get in there."

It was a mark of how the riders of the Weyrleader’s Wing had come to expect C’mine’s tardiness that none of them looked askance as he preceded F’halig into the ready-room. B’ward, the other Wingsecond, didn’t pause as he wrote daily orders on the blackboard. V’mersin and Z’fell said nothing as C’mine took the empty seat between them. And T’kamen, his fist propped against his temple where he sat at the head of the room, only glanced up once to register C’mine’s belated arrival before he returned his attention to the slate in front of him.

“Now we’re all here,” F’halig began, with a censorious glare in C’mine’s general direction.

C’mine didn’t pay much attention to the briefing. The Wing drilled, in full or in part, only every other day; this was an off-day. T’kamen’s attendance was itself the most noteworthy thing. Preoccupied as he clearly was, T’kamen may as well have been absent in fact as well as in mind, and if that was the example he intended to set, C’mine had no issue with following it.

He and Darshanth had served under three different Wingleaders before T’kamen, mostly through the restructuring that came with a change in Weyrleader. F’drov had been their first, a titan of his era and still spoken of as the finest bronze rider never to become Weyrleader of Madellon. Then they’d been traded off to R’yeno on account of Darshanth’s Search sensitivity, missing by a matter of sevendays T’kamen’s first promotion to Wingleader. In the chaotic days of L’dro’s misguided premiership they’d been transferred yet again to fly under the erratic authority of L’pay, a brown rider elevated far beyond his competence. It had taken T’kamen’s overdue ascension to the Weyrleadership to secure them a place under his direct command, and even that had been delayed by their brush with death in the wildfire at Kellad Hold last Turn’s End. It was the assignment they’d wanted – that T’kamen had promised them – ever since that day more than fourteen Turns past when three young men had bedded down in the weyrling barracks for the very first time, their newly-Hatched dragonets beside them, and made the grandest of plans for the future.

Now one of the three was gone, and with him every hope and every dream C’mine had ever had.

“C’mine.” V’mersin’s elbow in his ribs interrupted his bitter introspection.

He lifted his eyes from the featureless back of the rider on the bench in front of him. F’halig and B’ward were both looking at him: B’ward expectant, F’halig severe. From the front bench, Edrann averted her gaze with a wince, and Suzallie shook her head. “Sir?”

“I said, you have the afternoon watch tomorrow,” said B’ward. “Is that going to be a problem?”

T’kamen’s junior Wingsecond didn’t yet disapprove as openly as F’halig, but C’mine supposed it was only a matter of time. “No, sir. It’s not a problem.”

“See that it isn’t,” B’ward said. “Does anyone have any other business?”

No one did. F’halig turned to T’kamen, still absorbed in his record slate at the table up front. “Wingleader?”

“Nothing from me,” T’kamen replied, not looking up.

F’halig nodded and sketched a salute. “See you all at tomorrow’s briefing, an hour into forenoon. Wing dismissed.”

“C’mine,” T’kamen said, amidst the scraping of bench legs and burst of chatter that always accompanied the Wing’s release. “Stay a minute.”

C’mine had already started to rise from his place. He stopped halfway between sitting and standing, then sank back onto the seat.

Now you’ll catch it, said Darshanth.

T’kamen continued to study his slate as the rest of the Wing filed out around them. Only when the last rider had gone, closing the door behind her, did he finally push it away. He looked at the chalkboard, then at a bench that someone had left crooked, and finally he looked directly at C’mine. “What am I going to do about you?”

T’kamen’s expression combined disappointment and sadness in a whole that shamed C’mine more deeply than any amount of F’halig’s contempt ever would. He would have liked to look away, but T’kamen’s stare wouldn’t be broken. “I don’t know, Kamen.”

“Faranth, C’mine,” T’kamen said shortly. “Don’t Kamen me.” He shoved his chair abruptly back, and added, “Not you too.”

C’mine just watched mutely as he paced the length of the ready-room in quick, loping, agitated strides.

When he turned back towards him, T’kamen wore a grim mask. “If you were anyone else,” he said, “anyone else at all, I’d send you to Jessaf to sit on a fire-height for a season, and see how you sharding well liked that.”

“If you think that’s best,” C’mine said dully. “Weyrleader.”

“So you do remember that part, do you?” T’kamen asked. “The part where I’m your Weyrleader?” He hammered his fist on his thigh, and C’mine flinched. “Well, do you?”

“Yes,” he replied. He swallowed. “Of course I do.”

“And you remember what we went through to get me here? Do you remember that? You and me and him?”

C’mine could feel the colour mounting in his face and the choking lump rising in his throat. “Yes.”

“Then why the shaff are you doing this to me?”

The room reverberated with the force of T’kamen’s ire. C’mine shrank from it. His cheeks burned with stifled reaction. “It’s not about you.”

“No?” T’kamen stepped forwards, his shoulders squared like an angry dragon mantling his wings. “Then who is it about? Because if he were here to see you like this he’d be tearing off a strip bigger and bloodier than I could ever dream of.”

C’mine heard himself groan – at the name left unspoken, at the fact that even T’kamen feared to speak it to his face – and somewhere nearby Darshanth, helplessly immersed in his misery, uttered a soft cry of despair.

T’kamen tilted his head to the sound. “The way you involve him in this,” he said critically. Disgustedly. “The way you drag him down into your void. How can you do that to your dragon, C’mine? Do you think you’re the only man who ever lost his weyrmate? I miss him too!”

“Not the way I do,” C’mine said. He ground the words out. “You didn’t love him the way I did. No one did.”

T’kamen took a breath, and then the rage went out of him all at once. “I know. Faranth, C’mine, I know.” He stared at him from across the room, his mouth twisted in a grimace of his own grief. “But this attitude you’ve been pulling, the last couple of sevendays. Missing Wing briefings; chasing tail indiscriminately; wandering around the Weyr half-dressed and unshaven and looking like shit. If he were here now he wouldn’t even have you in his weyr. He’d kick your ass all the way down one side of the Bowl and up the other until you got a hold of yourself.”

C’mine looked pleadingly at the man who was now his oldest friend. “But he’s not here now. So what’s the point?”

“The point, C’mine? How about being a good rider to your dragon? Doing your duty to your Weyr? What about the responsibility you have to Carleah? To the Weyrwoman? To me?”

“I don’t think I’m strong enough for all that any more.”

“Whershit,” said T’kamen. “I have to be the Weyrleader, and a Wingleader, and Epherineth’s rider, and your friend; and I’ve never been as good a man as you.”

“Don’t say that,” C’mine begged.

“I will say it. As your friend, I’ll say it as many times as it takes to get it through your skull.” T’kamen folded his arms. “And as your Weyrleader and your Wingleader, I’ll say this. I don’t want to punish you, C’mine. Faranth knows you’ve been through enough. But you have to help me out here. F’halig’s been complaining about you for sevendays, and I can’t keep turning a blind eye to your conduct. It’s bad for you, it’s bad for morale, and it makes me look weak. That’s how he’d have called it, and he was a better judge than you and me put together.” He paused, perhaps expecting some sort of encouraging response, and when C’mine didn’t offer one, shook his head. “Do you need more time? Do you want a change of scenery? Faranth, do you want to go and watchride at Jessaf for a couple of sevendays, just to get you out of the Weyr?”

C’mine didn’t answer for a long minute. He looked past T’kamen, wondering vaguely if he would recognise a second source of guilt in his eyes. If you knew what I’d considered. “I don’t know,” he said at last, softly. “I don’t think anything would change how I feel.”

“It’s not about changing how you feel,” T’kamen said. “Just distracting yourself from it enough to function.” He laughed, cynical and incongruous. “I should take my own advice.”

Engrossed in his own sorrow though he was, C’mine’s empathy hadn’t deserted him entirely. “What happened?”

T’kamen’s eyes went taut and his mouth hard, the familiar signs of an old wound newly aggravated. “I ran into Saren by the paddocks.”

“‘Ran into’?”

T’kamen’s jaw set even more tightly. The fact that he didn’t reply was answer enough.

“Have Epherineth chase a green,” C’mine suggested bitterly. “Darshanth can spare one.”

“That’s unworthy of you, C’mine. I’m not going find what I’m looking for in some random woman’s bed. Nor are you.”

“I know,” C’mine said. He didn’t speak aloud the thought that accompanied it: But that won’t stop me trying.

“What’s prompted this, C’mine?” T’kamen asked. “I’d thought you were doing all right. What’s happened?”

C’mine couldn’t lie to T’kamen, but he could give him half a truth. “Janina.”

“Janina?” T’kamen’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t know you were close to her.”

“I wasn’t. But when Amynth went between…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. “It brought it all back,” T’kamen realised. “I hadn’t thought… I suppose they were the first we’ve lost, since…”

“I couldn’t bear it,” said C’mine. “The keen.”

“I don’t know what to suggest, Mine,” T’kamen said. “Dragons are going to die from time to time. I can’t shield you from that. And I don’t really want to send you out of the Weyr. I’d rather have you where I can keep an eye on you.” He shook his head. “Not that I’ve been doing a very good job of that.”

“You’re the Weyrleader. You have bigger things to worry about –”

“I was your friend long before I was Weyrleader,” T’kamen told him. He raked his fingers frustratedly through his hair, staring at C’mine, as if trying to solve a puzzle. “Look,” he said finally. “I’ve got to go. I’m supposed to be at Blue Shale. But do one thing for me.”

“If I can,” C’mine said slowly.

“Valonna said you’re meeting with her later. Have a bath, have a shave, put on some clean clothes. Make yourself decent. Go to stores and find something new if you have to; you can tell the Headwoman I sent you if she gives you any trouble.” T’kamen was all business again, concern replaced by command. “But if I hear that you’ve gone to see the Weyrwoman looking like a holdless vagrant, I’ll put you on double watches and short rations myself. Valonna still thinks the world of you, and I won’t have you being a cause for alarm rather than a source of comfort.”

C’mine sat in the ready-room thinking about what he had said long after the bronze rider had gone. Of all the reproachful things T’kamen had thrown at him, the last was the most bruising. C’mine had never been a proud man, and less so now than ever, but the fact that T’kamen saw a need to warn him against causing Madellon’s fragile young Weyrwoman distress left him feeling deeply ashamed. In that, if in no other way, C’mine resolved not to fail himself.

Darshanth returned him to their weyr. The bathing room, once one of the nicest in Madellon, showed evidence of C’mine’s disinterest. The thick stench of damp permeated the place. The walls were patchy with mould, the sweetsand had gone bad, and a long-abandoned towel had acquired a black crop of mildew. The Headwoman would have been appalled, but C’mine hadn’t let anyone into his weyr in sevendays. It was still more than he had the will to tackle himself. He took his straight razor – the one toilet item he hadn’t neglected – and went to the communal bathing rooms.

By the time the afternoon watchdragon had flown up to the Rim to relieve the forenoon pair, C’mine had complied fully with T’kamen’s orders. He’d bathed and dressed, razored back into definition his slim beard and moustache, and even run a brush over the receding black fuzz of his hair. There was nothing he could do about the smooth burn scars on both cheeks, still paler than the unmarred skin, or the rougher healed claw marks on his chest and back, but then they were the marks of past valour, not present opprobrium.

C’mine presented himself at the Weyrwoman’s weyr looking better than he supposed he had in days, and if inside he didn’t feel much improved…well, he could keep that between himself and his dragon.

Face the day.

He wasn’t late to the meeting, but he was last. Shimpath, coiled on her ledge, regarded him with one emerald eye, and a moment later Valonna called out from inside, inviting him in. C’mine crossed the voluminous cavern that housed the senior queen’s couch and stepped through the archway that led to Valonna’s own living space.

“Blue rider,” Valonna said, rising from her seat and smoothing the skirts of her gown as she did.

In the next armchair, Sarenya greeted him by raising her klah mug. “Mine.”

He approached the young Weyrwoman and kissed her on both cheeks. “Thank you for inviting me, Valonna.”

“Thank you for coming,” she replied. “I know that you’ve been having a difficult time lately.”

So Valonna was aware of his recent dissipation. That stung. “It’s been a…rough patch,” he said. As a euphemism for his recent behaviour that was conveniently imprecise. He didn’t want to admit to anything more specific. Valonna didn’t need to know the whole truth.

“And are you feeling better now?” Valonna asked, looking anxiously up into his face.

He managed to smile. “A little, thank you.”

Valonna gestured for him to take the third armchair, between hers and Sarenya’s. “Can I pour you a cup of wine?”

C’mine flicked his eyes to the dusty bottle resting unopened on the table. “Just klah, if I could,” he said. He found he was able to keep his voice steady. He sat down, averting his gaze from the bottle.

As Valonna poured from a covered pitcher, Sarenya reached over from her chair to brush his knee with one hand. “Everything all right, Mine?”

C’mine contained his reaction to a nod. “I’m fine.”

Valonna handed him a mug of klah, and C’mine took it, grateful for the chance to hide behind it. He could put on a show that would convince her, but Sarenya was another matter entirely. Like T’kamen, Saren knew him too well.

They’d been having these meetings, the three of them, since Sarenya’s return to Madellon last Turn. C’mine had missed a few recently, but to his best knowledge they’d gone on without him. They drank klah or wine and spoke of affairs. Valonna was acquiring an increasingly detailed knowledge of Madellon’s lower caverns, but she lacked a more rounded awareness of the Weyr at large. C’mine’s knowledge of the fighting Wings and Sarenya’s of Madellon’s crafter population completed the circle. In principle, they kept the Weyrwoman informed. In practice, C’mine knew he’d had little insight to offer of late.

“I spoke to Tahlienne again,” said Sarenya. “Master Laniyan’s definitely the father.”

Valonna sat marginally more forward. “He’s acknowledged it?”

“No, but Tahlie’s admitted she was having an affair with him. Laniyan’s always been a dirty old sod. I’d thought Tahlie had more sense, though. It’s the first rule of the Crafts. You don’t sleep with your Master.”

Valonna frowned. “Does she want to keep the baby?”

“I don’t think she knows herself,” Saren said. “She’s terrified that if Laniyan finds out she’s pregnant, he’ll make her either give up her apprenticeship or threaten to get her reassigned somewhere else. Tahlie was born here. She doesn’t want to have to leave. That’s why she wanted me to bring it to you.”

C’mine let their voices blur. There’d been a time when he’d have taken a polite interest, but it was more than he could do today. He sipped his klah, just grateful that they weren’t scrutinising him so closely.

The two women – queen rider and Beastcrafter, Weyrwoman and journeyman – had forged an unlikely friendship. In looks alone they could hardly have been more dissimilar. Valonna was petite and blonde and appealingly unaware of her own delicate beauty; her hair was always intricately dressed, and she favoured elegant gowns in soft colours that complemented her pale complexion and self-effacing nature. Even here, in her own weyr and the informal company of friends, she sat straight-backed and still, her hands folded neatly in her lap.

Sarenya, by contrast, had tucked one slim ankle comfortably under the opposite knee where she sat in her armchair. The thick, dark braid of her hair hung halfway down her back. She had a terrific smile, and remarkable blue eyes, and the piecemeal tan typical of her Craft – sun-browned face and hands and arms, and dramatic contrasts where her clothes protected her from the light. She wore a sleeveless vest and shorts and sandals, making her tan lines more visible than usual. Where Valonna was sweetly pretty, Sarenya was striking. But as unalike as they were physically, that was nothing compared with the dramatic difference in their characters.

Valonna was still very much the shy girl C’mine had first befriended somewhat more than a Turn ago – indeed, still the girl she’d been when, seven Turns before that, L’dro had plucked her from obscurity and put her to a queen egg. Consensus was, in retrospect, that the then-Weyrleader R’hren had been irresponsible in allowing such a young woman to stand for what turned out to be Cherganth’s final clutch. Madellon’s redoubtable Weyrwoman Fianine had been failing, and it was clear that whichever candidate caught the eye of the infant queen would have to assume the mantle of Senior before very long. But every bronze rider in the Weyr offered up a girl or two that day – almost thirty crowded the Hatching sands, more than C’mine had ever seen before or since – and half a dozen of those were convincing enough prospects that no one gave much consideration to the diffident fourteen-Turn-old from Jessaf until the moment when the hatchling Shimpath made her choice and changed the course of the Weyr forever.

Valonna didn’t have an easy transition into the arena of Madellon’s politics. Seven months after Impressing Shimpath she became Senior by default when Fianine, her health in steep decline, stepped down from her position. Scarcely a month later, Valonna was left as Madellon’s only queen rider. She was fifteen Turns old, still a weyrling – and in love with the rider whose Wing had brought her to Madellon in the first place. By the time Shimpath rose in her maiden mating flight, there was small doubt that L’dro would become Weyrleader.

All might not have been lost, had L’dro been a decent man. But his treatment of Valonna degenerated quickly from attentive to thoughtless, from thoughtless to indifferent, and from indifferent to callous. Valonna’s training in the duties of a Weyrwoman, curtailed by Fianine’s death, was never completed. And L’dro, keen to wring every personal advantage from his elevated position, presided unchecked over an administration whose profligacy brought the Weyr to the brink of ruin.

They were dark times for the riders of Madellon’s smaller dragons. Any man or woman who didn’t wear at least a Wingsecond’s knot found their stipend cut, their access to Madellon’s resources greatly reduced, and their complaints left unheard by L’dro’s bronze rider Council. Madellon ran on bribes and backhanders, on favours traded over expensive wines in Weyr and Hold and Hall while blue and green and brown riders found themselves obliged to sell their services to make ends meet. L’dro had sowed the seeds of his own downfall with those same ordinary riders, but not before he’d carved off a slice of Madellon’s assets, and despoiled much of what remained.

Yet, even now, no one blamed Valonna for L’dro’s self-indulgence. She’d been too young and too quiet and too inexperienced to be capable of curbing a forceful Weyrleader’s excesses. And those were the qualities that most riders still ascribed to her. Valonna went about her work as Weyrwoman with more agency now than she ever had before, but while it should have been obvious that any woman who had Impressed a queen must have resources of wit and will far beyond the average, C’mine wondered if anyone else saw the hidden depths that he did.

Sarenya’s depths, on the other hand, had never been hidden. C’mine still remembered vividly the day when he and Darshanth had found her. They’d been on a routine conveyance assignment to the Beastcrafthall with Master Ranoklin, the Weyr’s Beastcrafter of the time, as their passenger. As they flew over Peninsula South, Darshanth went oddly quiet – the telltale sign that someone had tripped his Search-sense. There wasn’t a clutch on the sands, but Darshanth insisted that C’mine seek out the individual who’d caught his attention. Fortunately, Ranoklin’s sojourn at the Hall proved lengthy enough to give them the time. The Beastcraft had hundreds of apprentices scattered across its extensive acreage, and C’mine spent the day trekking from paddock to paddock looking at a handful here, half a dozen there. Lacking any guidance to the contrary, and with nine in every ten of the apprentices male, he assumed he was searching for a boy. Instead, he found Saren.

She was eighteen Turns old and a senior apprentice on the verge of promotion to journeyman. She regarded C’mine’s interest with a mixture of curiosity and scepticism, as though suspecting someone had put him up to approaching her for a prank. She’d never talked to a dragonrider before, or been close to a dragon. But Darshanth insisted that C’mine bring her to meet him, and when he did, the blue’s reaction was rapturous. A dragon could make almost anyone hear him, but some people were harder to reach than others. Darshanth had never found anyone more receptive to his advance, or as easy to hear in return.

C’mine could have Searched her there and then, even before there was a clutch to put her to, but Sarenya wouldn’t hear of it. As much as she liked Darshanth – and she liked him as much as he liked her – she was too close to walking the tables to throw in her apprenticeship and run off to the Weyr. C’mine persuaded her to let him come back if the situation at Madellon changed, and she promised that she wouldn’t turn him down without proper consideration.

Four months later, the situation changed. The gold egg in Cherganth’s clutch prompted a mad scramble amongst Madellon’s bronze riders for likely candidates. Darshanth, as one of only half a dozen Search-sensitive dragons in the Weyr, was pressed into service by more than one Wingleader with an eye on the prize, but C’mine kept his prospect a secret from all but one of them. What he hadn’t anticipated was the impact that introducing Sarenya to T’kamen would have. They were smitten with each other from the moment they met. And for all C’mine’s persuasion, and Darshanth’s insistence, and the not-insignificant allure of a queen, T’kamen proved the pivotal factor in Sarenya’s eventual decision to accept Search to Madellon Weyr.

They still had to petition her Craft for approval, and in that the presence of the queen egg helped. The Beastcrafthall wouldn’t have surrendered Sarenya, writing off the Turns of keep and training it had invested in her apprenticeship, if the most she could have achieved was the Impression of a green dragon. But when at last the Hall did release her, it was into the custody of a Wingleader, not just a blue rider. C’mine wondered if Sarenya’s Master would have been quite so sanguine if he’d known that she would spend most of the next four sevendays in that same Wingleader’s weyr.

In a Madellon teeming with candidates for Cherganth’s long-awaited golden daughter, Sarenya nonetheless stood out – calm, competent, confident. She was a good age, came from a reputable Craft, and she’d been Searched by a dragon of proven sensitivity. Rumour even went that Fianine, scrutinising the candidates from whose ranks her successor would arise, had remarked favourably on Saren’s chances. Marks always changed hands before a Hatching, but the lively betting market on that all-important gold egg would have sent a Bitran into paroxysms of glee – and as the clutch hardened and the critical day approached, Sarenya emerged as the clear favourite.

Even now, with all that had happened in the intervening Turns, C’mine still wondered what had gone wrong. Darshanth had been so sure. But it struck him as a great irony that the history Sarenya and Valonna shared was what should have most alienated them: the dragon who could have been Saren’s, and the Weyrleader who, once, had been. It gave him a vague, undefined sense of satisfaction that they had become friends in spite of the circumstances.

C’mine.

Darshanth’s prompt poked him out of his reflection. What is it?

Pay attention.

He knew he should be abashed by the fact that his dragon – his blue dragon – had cause to tell him to be more focused. Mindful of T’kamen’s warning, he sat up a little straighter, and picked up the thread of Valonna and Sarenya’s conversation.

“…to provide the hides to Kishop’s people,” Sarenya was saying. “But our apprentices aren’t trained to take a skin off in one neat piece. They won’t be very tidy.”

“Perhaps if Master Kishop could supply some of his apprentices to do the skinning,” Valonna suggested.

“It makes no difference to us,” said Sarenya. “So long as we co-ordinate the process to keep the time from field to butchery to a minimum. They still won’t make good leather, though, even with a Tanner doing the skinning. Second or third grade at best. I wouldn’t want anyone’s safety relying on it.”

“We won’t be using it for harness,” said Valonna. “But if we can supplement our stores with even poor quality hide for boots and belts and things, we can save the good hides for when they’re really needed.”

Saren nodded. “I’ll speak to my Master about it.”

“And I’ll see about that paint for your apprentice dorm,” Valonna promised. “I’m sure we’ve something in Stores that will suit.”

The conversation lapsed for a moment, drawing to a natural end, and then Valonna turned to C’mine. “And is there anything I can do for you, C’mine?”

She asked the same question every time they met, and even knowing that to ask a boon would please her, C’mine always gave her the same answer. “Thank you, Valonna. There’s nothing.”

“M’ric tells me that you turned down a place in his Wing, Mine,” Sarenya said suddenly. “He’s quite disappointed. He really wanted you.”

C’mine deliberately didn’t look at her. “I’m sorry he’s disappointed.”

“This is for the special operations Wing?” asked Valonna.

“Don’t you think Darshanth would be perfect for it?” Sarenya asked her. “He’s one of the fastest blues in the Weyr, and –”

“There are other blues,” C’mine said.

“– he has experience from the fire at Kellad, and –”

“There were other riders there that day.”

“– it might be just what –”

“Saren.” C’mine heard his own voice crack hard, cutting Sarenya off. An awkward moment passed. Then he raised his eyes to hers, and spoke more gently. “It’s not for me.”

“All right, Mine,” Sarenya said. She touched his knee again, apologetically this time. “I shouldn’t have pushed.”

Valonna cleared her throat, plainly discomfited. “I should let you both get back to your work,” she said. “Same time next sevenday? Your duties permitting?”

Darshanth had kept his opinion to himself through the exchange, but when C’mine returned, on foot, to their weyr, he raised his head to look at him with mute reproach in his spinning eyes.

C’mine sighed and crouched down by his dragon’s elbow. “I didn’t mean to speak so sharply.”

No. I know.

“What, then?”

Darshanth didn’t respond for a moment. We might like to fly with Trebruth’s Wing.

“No.” C’mine replied immediately. “We wouldn’t.”

The Weyrleader’s mate was right.

“Valonna?”

Sarenya.

“Saren isn’t T’kamen’s mate any more.”

Don’t change the subject.

“I’m not.”

We would be good at it.

C’mine stood up so suddenly his knees cracked. “No, Darshanth. Just no.”

Darshanth exhaled a long breath through his nostrils, then dropped his head morosely back onto his forepaws.

They spent an unsatisfying afternoon doing nothing in particular. C’mine buffed the beginnings of some rust off the buckles of Darshanth’s fighting harness. It wasn’t bad enough to create a weakness, but if F’halig noticed he’d make an issue of it, and for T’kamen’s sake if not his own, C’mine wanted to keep a low profile with the Wingsecond. He ate, bringing bread and meat back from the dining hall, and Darshanth contemplated, then discarded, the idea of eating his mid-sevenday meal a day early. They went out for an afternoon flight, because no dragon maintained the fitness required for Wing drill if he was indolent on his off-days. When they returned Darshanth took himself to the lake for a swim, declining the offer of a bath, and C’mine sat alone on their ledge, watching without interest as the Weyr went about its business.

The weyrlings were still practising take-offs and landings in relays, one leaping aloft for a circuit of the Bowl as another touched down behind him. Down in the kitchen gardens the children of the Weyr picked salad for the evening meal under the sharp-eyed supervision of the Headwoman’s kitchen staff. Farther still, Madellon’s dairy herd was being driven up towards the milking shed by runner-mounted Beastcrafters. A green and a blue glided in over the Rim together, flying in the close overlap of wings that marked a weyrmated pair.

Face the day.

C’mine had had enough of facing this day.

Kistrith is thinking of rising, Darshanth offered.

It took C’mine a moment to locate the green shifting restlessly up on the Rim, and then her rider, pacing outside one of the low-level flight weyrs not far from Darshanth’s ledge. It took less time than that for him to make his decision. Let’s go.

He jostled shoulders with two brown riders as he took the short run of steps up to the flight weyr at a jog: J’red, an older rider from North Flight, and L’kor, one of C’mine’s old classmates. J’red blocked his way with his body, glowering down at him. “This isn’t an open flight, blue rider.”

“Just get up there and let the dragons sort it out, J’red,” L’kor told him. He looked at C’mine and shrugged. “May the best dragon win, huh, C’mine?”

N’jol, Kistrith’s rider, had grown more agitated, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet as he watched his green working herself up on the Rim. He scarcely glanced at the riders who’d come to participate, to wrapped up in his dragon. Another rider joined them a moment later, and the four of them eased closer to N’jol as their dragons’ lust increasingly dominated them.

Then, with a lash of her tail and a shriek of challenge, Kistrith sprang into flight. An instant later her four suitors took off in pursuit. And with a groan of relief, C’mine unburdened himself from the encumbrance of being himself, and slipped gratefully and utterly into Darshanth.

There was nothing else as he beat high and strong eastward from the Weyr: nothing but the hot summer air around him, and the dry wind in his face, and the swift, tantalising blur of wings and tail that was his quarry. No dragon could match that first blistering sprint of a green, but no green could maintain top speed for long. Nor would she want to, with him on her tail: him, Darshanth, quickest and nimblest of Madellon’s blues, the most handsome, the most vigorous, the most worthy! Let her tire herself; let that burst of speed fade, and then the real race would begin. He could feel another dragon behind him, flying in his wake, and another higher, off his shoulder, and he knew there was one more out there somewhere, but they weren’t the competition: Kistrith was, and Kistrith would be his.

She used up her speed quickly, and in moments she had come back to them, but no green ever counted pace as her only tool. Kistrith folded her wings and swooped effortlessly beneath them, teasing them with her closeness. Darshanth had expected such a ploy. He wheeled nearly in place, spilling air from one wing to descend upon the green dragon with talons outstretched. Kistrith rolled playfully out from under his grip and pumped her wings, once, twice, thrice, to regain altitude. Darshanth banked hard to check his descent and beat upwards again. He flashed past the one other blue, leaving him behind, still intent on the flirting green who’d turned her head back to bugle at him with an inviting tone. He closed and closed – she was letting him now, no longer trying to best him – gaining her level, pulling alongside; one more wingstroke and he’d be above her, and then he’d drop his forehand and plunge and –

The brown dragon came from nowhere, plummeting like a stone. His shoulder buffeted Darshanth aside, sending him spinning, and as abruptly as that brown and green were falling, locked together, his bellow and her squeal fading as quickly as Darshanth’s hopes. He circled a moment, exchanging bewildered looks with the other blue and the second brown who still wheeled nearby, equally nonplussed by the sudden conclusion of Kistrith’s flight.

And C’mine found himself unceremoniously dumped back into his own body, sweaty and uncomfortable and unfulfilled. He swayed on his feet, disoriented, and put his hand out to catch himself.

“Whoa, easy there, C’mine,” L’kor said, brushing his hand off his shoulder. He looked as dazed as C’mine felt.

“That ended faster than I thought it would,” said D’ros, the rider of the other blue.

“Should have known Whalth wouldn’t take any chances,” said L’kor. He looked over his shoulder at where N’jol and J’red were noisily emulating their dragons’ passion, and pulled the curtain across the alcove. “Well, so much for that. I guess I have a date with Lady Right.” He wiggled his fingers wryly, then ducked out of the cavern.

C’mine swallowed hard past the dryness in his throat and looked at D’ros. “You don’t want to…?”

D’ros shook his head. “Nah, a jump in the lake will have to do for me; my weyrmate would tan me for fighting straps otherwise. Maybe another time.”

Left alone in the flight weyr with only Kistrith and Whalth’s oblivious riders for company, C’mine grimaced and did some rearranging. Then, gingerly, he too stepped back out into the light.

Darshanth was already back on their ledge by the time C’mine got there. It really had been a short flight. His blue regarded him dolefully as he limped painfully back up the steps. Sorry.

You did your best, C’mine said shortly.

Whalth played us. Kistrith wanted me.

It’s fine. You can’t win every flight.

I did try.

C’mine put his arm around Darshanth’s neck, leaning against him. I know.

Even in late summer, shadow filled the Bowl long before the sky went fully dark. C’mine sat in the gloom far past the point when most other riders had opened the glow-baskets on their ledges, reluctant to admit, even to himself, that he faced another evening alone and undistracted.

Finally he went in. The bathing room was still disgusting, but he couldn’t face another trip to the communal pool. He didn’t even have a clean towel, but it was still warm enough that he drip-dried after a few minutes.

In searching for something moderately clean to wear, he came across half a bottle of Southern whiskey, hidden beneath a heap of unwashed bedfurs. He sat on the edge of his unmade bed, holding the bottle in his hand, turning it over. Cheap, nasty booze, and he didn’t doubt the veracity of the claim that it was made with a pinch of firestone for extra kick.

Don’t drink it, C’mine. Darshanth said imploringly. It makes you go away.

C’mine shook the bottle, hearing its contents glug. Sometimes going away is the only thing that keeps me here.

Please don’t. Darshanth paused. We can do the other thing.

C’mine set the bottle carefully down on the floor. You said you wouldn’t do that again.

Darshanth took a long moment to reply. Promise me you won’t drink the stuff that makes you go away.

I won’t. C’mine stood up. His stomach had contracted into a hard ball of excitement. I promise. I’ll throw it away.

Yes. Do that. Darshanth sounded unhappy, but insistent. C’mine tried not to contemplate what sort of rider would broker such a deal with his own dragon. Then I will take you. If you’re sure.

C’mine poured what remained of the whiskey away down the grate in the bathing room. Then he dressed with nerveless fingers, hardly able to button his shirt or tighten the buckles on his jacket. He pulled on his long, hooded foul-weather cape. He went into the other sleeping alcove of his weyr, checking the chart he could have replicated in his sleep, opening the thick hide-bound journal to the relevant, well-thumbed page, cross-referencing it for the tenth time with the record he’d lifted from the Archives a month ago. Yes. I’m sure.

He harnessed Darshanth, his hands shaking. The newly-scoured metalwork of the buckles gleamed in the faint light of the crescent moons. Darshanth shook himself, then insisted, Tighten it. I don’t want to lose you.

C’mine obeyed. In this he was at the mercy of his dragon. Better?

Strap in well.

He did. He cinched the fighting strap snug and heaved on the safety with all his strength.

Darshanth angled his head up to look at the brown on watch by the Star Stones. What am I to tell the watchdragon?

Tell him the truth. We’re going to Peranvo Hold. To see a friend.

Darshanth pushed himself aloft. At any other time C’mine would have commented on the weariness in his movements, the fatigue of the day’s exertions. Kistrith’s flight had cost Darshanth more than he was willing to admit. But he couldn’t distract him. Not now.

Give me the visual, Darshanth commanded.

C’mine had constructed it lovingly, painstakingly. He offered it up in all its vivid detail and felt Darshanth examine it, testing each facet for authenticity.

Very well. Breathe deeply.

As C’mine filled his lungs, he wrapped one hand tight around the fore-strap, and pressed the other flat against Darshanth’s soft neck.

Darshanth took them between.

C’mine had always been a counter. He counted to his pulse – or what he thought was his pulse. Some riders said they couldn’t even hear that between. Perhaps he was imagining it. But if so, then his imagination had accurately conjured the racing cadence of his heartbeat, almost too fast to tally. Ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five…

They emerged from the ice of between into cool night air, crisp and fresh when C’mine took a great sucking gasp of it, bringing tears to his eyes. He wiped them away with the sleeve of his cape, looking up into the darkness. Belior hung fatly full in the sky, and the great winter constellations of the Vintner and the Little Shipfish twinkled behind the ornate fireheights of Peranvo Hold. Below, glowlight and torches and lanterns marked out the shape of a heaving Gather square.

You did it. C’mine thumped Darshanth’s neck-ridge, ecstatic. You did it!

Yes. Darshanth spiralled downwards to the landing area, deserted so late in the evening. We must not stay long.

I understand. C’mine tore the safety strap free and slid recklessly down from his dragon’s neck.

Darshanth lunged for him, catching his arm in his mouth. The sharp points of his teeth pressed uncomfortably through the sleeve of C’mine’s jacket and cloak, and his brilliant eyes whirled amber with threat. Don’t try to change anything!

C’mine pulled up the hood of his cape with his free hand, tugging it down so it covered his head and shaded his face. I know. I won’t talk to anyone. And I’ll keep my face hidden.

Darshanth relaxed his jaws, and C’mine retrieved his arm, slightly soggy with saliva. Be careful.

The music coming from the Harper platform was the lively sort, even so late on in the Gather. C’mine cocked his head as he stole along the glow-lit corridors between canvas-shrouded booths towards the square, recognising My Weaver Girl And Me. Faranth: he hadn’t heard that since…since this Turn. The realisation gave him a shiver that had nothing to do with the wintry chill. He ignored it, and slipped into the crowds of revellers filling the square.

The lanterns cast a festive light down onto the square, painting features that might have been familiar in a hundred shades of red and yellow and green. From within the concealing shadow of his hood, C’mine struggled to make out faces. He moved slowly through the throng, trying to stay casual and inconspicuous.

Someone bumped into him from behind. He spun, alarmed, and a girl giggled up at him. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” She pouted, her pretty face streaked blue and gold by the lantern light. “Why the hood, sweetheart? We’re all friends here!”

Before C’mine could stop her or slip away, she’d reached familiarly up and tugged his hood down. He could smell the wine on her breath. “There!”

C’mine! Darshanth snapped.

“C’mine!”

He turned.

“You made it! I didn’t think you were coming!”

And as Darshanth moaned with dread, C’los grabbed C’mine in an elated, drunken hug, and kissed him hard on the mouth.

Chapter four: Carleah

By one Turn of age, a dragonet is capable of doing everything he can do as an adult: flying, flaming, going between, mating, fighting, and getting himself killed in a stupid accident.

– Weyrlingmaster D’hor, Weyrling Training Manual, volume VII

100.02.15 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

“This is the time that will make or break you as dragonriders.”

L’stev paused there, glaring out at them. He always glared. Glaring was his normal expression. But the growling menace that accompanied most of his pronouncements was conspicuously absent from this one. This time, L’stev was serious.

“Not Impression,” he went on. “That was the easy part. Not first flight day, either. Never had a dragonet who couldn’t get airborne. And not your graduation from weyrlinghood to the Wings. There’s always some use for a dragonpair, even if sitting on watch all Turn might not suit you. No. This is the most critical sevenday any of you will ever face. This sevenday you’ll be going between.”

None of Carleah’s fellow weyrlings, seated on benches before the Weyrlingmaster, reacted to the news. Not outwardly, anyway. They knew better than to talk during a lecture. But Carleah doubted she was alone in sending a quick, fierce thought to Jagunth, sitting with the other dragonets on the training ground behind Wildfire Class. I knew it!

They had, it was true, been practising visualisation almost from the beginning. It had started with simple games, like sending your dragonet a mental image of the colour red without actually saying the word red and asking her to point out the board painted that colour from a selection, or imagining one of several decorated vases and having her describe it back. Then they’d progressed to passing images from rider to dragon, to another dragon and finally to that dragon’s rider, and comparing the end result to the first rider’s original image. They’d even practised relaying a visual from dragon to dragon starting at one end of the class and finished at the other, twenty-five dragonets in all, and while the Wildfires’ first effort had resulted in a hilariously distorted picture by the time the original visual had gone through all twenty-five of them, later attempts had wrung a grudging admission from L’stev that they weren’t completely hopeless.

L’stev had another favourite exercise to train their observational skills: he’d show the class a large and detailed drawing for a few seconds, then whip it away. The aim was to recall as many different, accurate details from the picture as possible: three-legged pink wherry, lady in pointy hat, rock shaped like an anvil, stuffed toy runnerbeast. Carleah was good at that game. Her tutors had always said she had an eye for things. And since they’d started flying, she’d quickly grasped the difference between how a place looked from the ground and how it appeared from above. The major Holds and Crafthalls were easy – you just imagined the pattern of the fire-pits on their roofs – and every Weyr had a differently-shaped Bowl. Smaller holds were harder, and they’d been visiting many of them in their flying exercises to learn their features by experience using exactly the same technique as the picture game: uneven turret, skinny arched windows, funny boulder, tunnel-snake weathervane.

But in the last few days L’stev had been pushing them harder on the importance of clear visualisations, springing tests on them, demanding snap images of given locations to be passed to their dragonets and then to his Vanzanth for assessment. Carleah might have been brought up at the Kellad Harperhall, but she was the daughter of a Madellon green rider, and that made her as well-informed as any Weyrbred weyrling. Obviously, between training wasn’t far off. And the dozen Wingseconds who’d arrived with L’stev for this class had made it just as clear that today’s lesson would be no ordinary lecture.

Granted, Carleah had been predicting today’s the day every morning for most of a fortnight, but that didn’t make her any less right.

The dragonets still weren’t quite as good at concealing their emotions as their riders. Most of them shifted restlessly, or sat up taller, reacting to the excitement or fear or stress their riders felt. They subsided quickly enough when Vanzanth swung his head in their direction.

“Going between is the most critical talent dragons possess,” L’stev continued. “Interval or Pass, you can be anywhere on Pern in less time than it takes you to put your boots on. Without between you’re limited to the speed of your dragons’ wings – and at the mercy of their stomachs. You all know how hungry they get after a long flight, and the Weyr couldn’t afford to feed them without between.”

Jenavally, L’stev’s assistant, snorted with amusement from her seat behind his lectern, and a round of chuckles rippled from the direction of the bench from which the attending Wingseconds were observing the class.

“It’s also the most dangerous talent dragons have, and that means that this is the most unsafe sevenday you’ll likely ever face. It wouldn’t be if this were the Pass. If Thread were falling, the most risky part would be the first time you and your dragons went out in Fall. But cosy in the Interval as we are, that day’s never coming for you.”

L’stev paced from one side of the class to the other as he spoke. “You have other dangers ahead. We have close formation flying, firestone drill and, Faranth help us, close formation flaming drill to come. Even experienced adult dragons can get hurt when live flame is around.” He didn’t need to mention Sejanth’s name to drive that point home: they all saw the crippled bronze every time they went to the infirmary. “But that’s why you’ll each learn to go between before so much as a pebble of firestone ever touches your dragonet’s lips. If another dragon goes left when you thought he’d go right, or overshoots a mark, or lets his flame go too long, being able to escape between is what will keep you alive. And you can bet your dragon’s going to dodge between just on instinct whether you know how to or not. So we teach you how to go between now, before you really need to, so that when you do need to, it’s already second nature.”

“So.” His voice cracked like a wingbeat. “Each of these Wingseconds has kindly agreed to mentor you. You’ll heed them at least as well as you’d heed me. This isn’t the time for tricks or games or foolhardiness.” His eyes had been roving over the class throughout his lecture, as if seeking out potential problems, but Carleah was certain they rested for longer than an instant on R’von. “You’ll take between seriously, or you’ll die. Your choice.

“We’ve assigned each of you to a Wingsecond. Jenavally has the list. You’ll go off now with your mentors and learn from them and their dragons. When they think you’re ready to attempt between, they’ll let me know. Each morning this sevenday, anyone who’s ready will fly out of the Weyr with Vanzanth and me after breakfast and attempt to jump back between. There’s no rush. No one gets any extra credit for being first. No one loses anything for being last. This is not a contest.” L’stev stopped again, staring out at the weyrlings. Then he turned to his assistant. “Weyrlingmaster.”

Jenavally rose from her seat, pushing a lock of her tumbling orangey hair out of her eyes, and read from a slate. “G’dra, Chenda: report to Wingsecond L’pay. S’terlion and W’lenze, to Wingsecond A’len. H’nar and Carleah, you’re with Wingsecond M’ric. Maris and N’jen…”

H’nar was sitting in the row behind Carleah. She turned around to him. “You and me, bronzie.”

“You and me,” H’nar agreed. He stood up, tugging his tunic down as he did; he’d put on a growth spurt to rival his dragon’s in the last month, and all his clothes were just a fraction too small for him. “Shall we?”

Carleah liked H’nar. She liked him quite a lot. He was tall and athletic and handsome in an unconventional way, with his pale eyes and prematurely greying hair, and he never spoke down to any of the younger weyrlings. On the other hand, he was a bronze rider, and in Carleah’s experience bronze riders were bad news. If her father had taught her anything, it was that bronze riders weren’t ever to be completely trusted. They always had one eye fixed on a promotion or a queen or a Weyr. H’nar hid his ambition well behind the courtesy, but Carleah felt certain it lurked there nonetheless.

“Do you know M’ric?” she asked him, knowing perfectly well that he didn’t.

“Not really,” said H’nar. “Except that he’s been holding try-outs for riders to join that special Wing.”

“It’s called the Ops Wing,” Carleah told him. “M’ric was a search and rescue rider at the Peninsula. Rescuing herders lost in the mountains and boats in trouble at sea; that sort of thing.”

“You always know this stuff, Carleah,” said H’nar.

“I have good sources,” Carleah replied, trying not to preen. Not that she had any secret sources. She just used her eyes and her ears. Chores took her all over the Weyr, and no one paid much attention to a weyrling – especially a green weyrling – so there was plenty to be seen and heard, and she wasn’t afraid to ask what she couldn’t glean from eavesdropping. She could have reeled off facts about any one of Madellon’s Wingseconds just as easily. “Oh, and he’s senior Wingsecond to Deputy Weyrleader Sh’zon.”

“I’ll consider myself fully briefed,” said H’nar solemnly.

M’ric, waiting with the other Wingseconds, nodded to them both as they approached him. “Carleah and H’nar? If you’d ask your dragons to join Trebruth on the beach over there, we’ll get started.”

Trebruth was almost half again Jagunth’s size, but H’nar’s Ellendunth was already taller and bulkier than M’ric’s oddly undersized brown. Carleah thought he looked rather pleased to be bigger than his elder, and rolled her eyes as the young bronze sidled closer to Jagunth. She knew H’nar found it dismaying that his dragon was so smarmy, especially around Berzunth, who pointedly ignored him most of the time. Not that it was unusual for a dragon and rider to have markedly different personalities: Indioth, Carleah’s father’s green, had been sweet-tempered by contrast to her rider’s sharp tongue and sharper intellect.

M’ric seated himself between his dragon’s forepaws. “Take a seat,” he invited them. “Your dragons, too. There’s a lot to take in, so make yourselves comfortable.”

“Yes, sir,” said H’nar, “but don’t they understand it already? I mean, if they’ll do it instinctively to avoid a collision?”

“Yes,” said M’ric, settling himself against Trebruth’s forearm. “And that sort of jump is one you can’t really help them to do anyway. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. L’stev’s lectured you about the two kinds of jump, hasn’t he?”

“Absolute and blink,” Carleah said quickly, before H’nar could beat her to it. “But at the Peninsula you’d have learned them as absolute and relative. Peninsula riders call them rellies.”

“We’ll stick with the Madellon terminology for now,” M’ric told her, smiling slightly. “H’nar, give me an example of an absolute jump.”

“From here to Jessaf Hold,” H’nar offered.

“And Leah, an example of a blink jump?”

“Carleah,” she insisted, sharply. “My name’s Carleah.”

“My apologies,” said M’ric. “Carleah.”

She took a moment to compose herself. No one had called her Leah for months. It was the convention at Kellad to abbreviate names to their final syllable, but she wasn’t at Kellad any more. “You do a blink jump when you need to dodge something. You go between and come out again in the same place.”

“You’re almost right.” M’ric smoothed a patch of sand with one hand. “Imagine you’re flying Thread in fixed formation, at cruising speed, say fifteen wingbeats a minute for your green, twelve per minute for your bronze, H’nar.” He drew a forward-vee formation in the sand. Carleah and H’nar both leaned forward to observe. “There’s a piece of Thread coming down on your station. What kind of jump between do you do to get out of the way?”

“A blink,” said H’nar.

“Right.” M’ric drew a circle around one of the crosses that represented dragons in his diagram. “A jump between takes about a count of ten from the moment you disappear to the moment you reappear. This is true both for you and your dragon and for an outside observer, who would see you vanish, then count to ten and see you reappear. You described a blink jump as when you go between and then come out again in the same place. Can you see now why that isn’t necessarily correct?”

H’nar looked perplexed, but the illustration had made it obvious to Carleah. “Because your Wing’s moved on,” she answered. She reached over and drew an arrow alongside the formation sketch to indicate the direction of movement. “You’ve been between for ten seconds, so if you come back to where you were, you’ll have fallen two and a half wingbeats behind your formation.”

“Good. When performing a blink jump in formation, your destination is always relative to your departure point. Which is, of course,” M’ric added, as an aside, “the reason they’re also known as relative jumps at the Peninsula. Well done, Carleah.”

Carleah beamed at the praise. H’nar was still frowning. “But,” he said uncertainly, “how do you know where your Wing’s going to be in ten seconds? I mean, what if they change speed, or direction? What if there’s more Thread falling in the space you blink back into?”

“Those are good questions, H’nar,” M’ric told him. “And there’s another one neither of you have asked: how do you, as riders, form the visual to jump to where your place in the formation will be in ten seconds’ time? What references do you use?”

Carleah and H’nar looked at each other.

“Your wingmates around you?” H’nar asked doubtfully.

“Not a good idea,” said M’ric. “They might not still be where you left them – they could have changed position or altitude, or even gone between themselves, so straightaway your visual is out. Any other suggestions for references? Carleah?”

She looked down at the diagram, frowning.

Don’t be angry, Jagunth said. Trebruth is very nice.

I don’t like not having an answer!

“It’s really a trick question,” M’ric said. “The answer is that there are no certain references you can take in that situation. It would be almost impossible for us as riders to visualise a destination that’s both so specific and so abstract. When you blink you have to trust in your dragon to do the calculations. And where other dragons are involved, they use each other as reference points in ways that we can’t.” He pointed up to the Star Stones, where a blue and his rider were on watch. “When the Weyr gets a lot of visitors, say for a Hatching, we could have dozens of dragons all arriving between within moments of each other. But there’s never been an incident of a dragon coming out of between into the same space as another one. They instinctively avoid emerging on top of each other, even if the visualisations from their riders are identical. They’ll always compensate for the presence of other dragons.”

He pointed again to the formation diagram he’d scratched in the sand. “It’s the same when a whole Wing goes between in formation. The Wingleader’s dragon will provide the visual for their destination, but if all twenty dragons in the Wing used that precise image as their arrival point, you’d have twenty dragons all appearing on top of each other in the same airspace. They have the ability to orient themselves relative to other dragons, no matter what kind of jump between they do. We rely on that instinct of theirs every time we go between.”

“So you don’t have to give them a visualisation at all to do a blink jump?” Carleah asked.

“No, and it would be dangerous if you tried. In practice, if you need to blink in the first place, it’s probably because you need to dodge something – another dragon, most likely – and you wouldn’t have the time to construct and communicate an accurate visual. Half the time your dragon will make the decision to blink without consulting you anyway – they have a pretty good collision sense – and even if you’ve spotted a threat before him, all you’ll need to do is give him the command to blink. By the time this becomes a necessity for you in drill, your dragons will have been trained to understand that when you ask them to blink or dodge, they need to blink back to their position in the formation, wherever that may be by the time you emerge, and taking the relative position of their wingmates into account.”

H’nar groaned. “Faranth, that makes my head hurt!”

“I told you you’d want to be sitting comfortably,” M’ric replied, smiling.

“How do they do it?” Carleah asked. “It’s so complicated!”

“Ellendunth can’t help me with the sums when we’re doing figuring practice,” H’nar agreed. “It’s hard for me even when I have a slate to write the numbers on. So how can dragons make all those calculations in their heads?”

“Well,” M’ric said. He reached for a small rock partially embedded in the sand. He prised it free and weighed it in his hand a moment. “Catch.” He tossed the stone towards H’nar, who caught it automatically. “There. No slate required.”

H’nar looked baffled. “I don’t think I understand.”

“You had to do all kinds of complex calculations to catch that rock,” M’ric explained. “You had to assess how fast it was moving, in what direction, and you had to move your hand to a specific place at a specific moment to intercept it. And you did it all without even thinking about it. You might find long division tricky, and your bronze probably couldn’t do it at all, but our brains, and theirs, do incredibly sophisticated things unconsciously all the time.”

H’nar grinned, and Carleah found herself smiling too. I’d never thought of it like that, she admitted to Jagunth. It was a clever explanation that she thought her father would have liked. She stored it away for future use.

M’ric nodded. “So, getting back to between, what would you do if you were one end of the Weyr Bowl and you needed to get to the other end?”

“An absolute jump,” Carleah said promptly.

“All right. What would your visual be?”

She opened her mouth to reply, then stopped, and started again. “Well, how the Weyr looked from that angle, rather than how it looked from where I was.” H’nar was already shaking his head. Carleah shot him a quick, annoyed look. “What?”

“H’nar?” M’ric prompted him.

“You won’t have a good enough visual,” he said. “You’d have to have a really precise reference for that angle compared to your normal reference for the Bowl. You’d have to have a visual for every single possible angle…wouldn’t you?”

“You would,” M’ric replied. “So, how would you get from one end of the Bowl to the other?”

“Is this another trick question?” Carleah demanded.

“It might be.”

H’nar thought about it. “We wouldn’t go between at all. We’d fly.”

“Right. You never go between when flying straight will do.” M’ric tapped his fist against his leg to emphasise his point. “There are very few situations outside of Threadfall – which for you means outside fighting drill – when you’d need to blink. Yes – if you absolutely had to be the other end of the Bowl in a hurry, you could let your dragon calculate it. But when it’s a matter of half a mile, and you can cover that on the wing in a minute or two, it’s not worth the risk.”

Carleah was annoyed with herself. She hated being wrong. At least H’nar wouldn’t hold it over her, like some of their classmates might. Then she looked up at M’ric, shielding her eyes against the glare of the sun, just over the eastern rim of the Bowl. “What about timing?”

M’ric regarded her levelly for a long moment. Carleah wondered if he’d deny its existence, but at length, he replied, “What about it?”

“Will we be taught how to do it? I mean, because someone’s bound to try anyway, so it would be safer to teach us…”

“Stop there, Carleah,” M’ric suggested. “Trebruth?”

Oh!

Trebruth drew himself up, rearing over the two dragonets, his eyes suddenly orange. Ellendunth looked like he might protest before the brown offered him a glimpse of his teeth, and he quickly laid his head on his forepaws in submission. Jagunth, meanwhile, quailed at her elder’s displeasure.

“Timing isn’t a subject for today,” said M’ric. He didn’t sound angry, but his tone was very firm. “There’s enough for you to worry about with a straightforward absolute jump, which is the first trip you’ll make between, and which is more than dangerous enough.”

They spent the remainder of the morning discussing reference points, trading visualisations, drawing the shapes of Hold fire-pits in the sand. M’ric let them go for the noon meal, held as always in the barracks dining hall with the other weyrlings, but made them promise to return afterwards. Carleah drew fire-pit layouts on the table with a bit of spilled klah all through the meal, alternating slurps of fish chowder with bites of bread, while some of her friends whinged and moaned that they didn’t get it, and it was so hard, and their mentors were going too fast for them.

“So tell them to slow down,” Tarshe said, after a while of Kessirke and Jardesse’s complaints. She had been quiet, as was her habit, but now she spoke up with a hint of irritation. “It’s not a race, for Faranth’s sake.”

“Good thing too, Tarshe,” said K’ralthe. “You’d win it.”

Tarshe’s brow wrinkled slightly in a pained expression at the remark, and K’dam, seated beside K’ralthe, said loudly, “You are such a suck up, bronze.”

“Shut up, brown.”

K’ralthe was probably right about the race thing – Tarshe excelled at all their physical training, from running to swimming to wrestling – but that didn’t make his remark any less sycophantic. “Bronze riders,” Carleah said sympathetically to Tarshe.

“You’re not wrong,” Tarshe agreed.

“How are you finding it, anyway?” Carleah asked.

“I just want to get on with it, honestly. The sooner we can go between, the sooner I can see my family again.” Tarshe shrugged. “Assuming we’re allowed out of the barracks by then.”

“We will be,” Carleah told her. “Once we pass the second stage of training – that’s going between – we get to start integrating with the rest of the Weyr again, and we can ask permission to visit family outside Madellon.”

“So L’stev tells me. Though I don’t think he likes the idea of letting me and Berzunth out of his sight.”

“He’s mentoring you, isn’t he?” Carleah asked.

Tarshe laughed. “Aren’t I just the special one?”

Well, she was, Carleah thought, though without rancour. Tarshe didn’t get any special privileges because of Berzunth, but she wasn’t just another weyrling, either. She’d be a weyrwoman once they graduated – maybe even Senior Weyrwoman one day – and Berzunth would be able to tell any dragon what to do. Carleah didn’t mind. That was just the way dragons were. The trick, as her father had told her, was to get friendly with a potentially powerful rider while you were both still weyrlings. Then colour didn’t matter so much.

Tarshe wasn’t the easiest person to get to know, though. She wasn’t exactly standoffish, but she did keep to herself. She didn’t have any close friends among the other Wildfires, girls or boys; she never took sides when disagreements blew up within the class; she’d never been given a demerit for behaviour, and she was seldom singled out for praise. But for her dragon’s hide, silver-gold in a sea of green, she’d have been completely invisible.

Some of the other girls still resented Tarshe for getting the queen – or, at least, for the attention she attracted because of it. It wasn’t as if any of them would have traded their greens for Berzunth, although Carleah thought that Chenda might not mind if her Lirpath turned gold spontaneously. For herself, Carleah wouldn’t have changed a thing about Jagunth – not her colour, not her size, and definitely not her sweet nature. Berzunth was very pretty, but she was already almost twice the size of any of the greens and took about four times longer to bathe. Tarshe had to put up with much closer scrutiny than any of the other weyrlings, too – the adult riders weren’t allowed to talk to her, but that didn’t stop their dragons staring, especially the bronzes. Carleah definitely didn’t envy Tarshe all those gnarly old bronze riders perving over her. And there were still mutterings about Tarshe’s background, even though the Weyrleader himself had investigated the Peninsula territory Justice that had resulted in Tarshe’s family’s exile, and made it quite clear that Tarshe herself had been an infant at the time of the incident and completely blameless of the crimes her father and uncle had supposedly committed.

Tarshe just seemed to let it all wash over her, without taking any of it personally, but then it was hard to say if that was an act. Carleah remembered her being a prickly candidate. She would have thought that Impressing a queen would make a person more prickly, not less, but then, she supposed, that depended on the dragon. Berzunth seemed a very relaxed and calm dragonet, not at all the demanding and bossy type Carleah would have expected, and while the boys who rode bronzes had become the natural leaders of their side of the barracks, Tarshe hadn’t done the same in the girls’ quarters. Maris and Soleigh had taken charge there instead. They were almost as alike as twins in personality – sensible, calm and approachable – although Maris was tall and fair and serious, and Soleigh small and dark and cheerful. They were who you went to if you had a problem that you didn’t want to bring to Jenavally or L’stev. They were the ones who’d set Kessirke right when she’d woken the entire barracks one morning thinking she was dying because there was blood on her bedfurs. But they were also so devoted to each other that, even while they obediently kept to their own beds, their dragonets slept curled together in a ball, which was startling for two greens. L’stev had declined to comment the first time he’d seen the two young dragons together, though his eyebrows had sunk even lower than usual, while Jenavally had remarked that things might change when the dragonets started taking an adult interest in the males.

Carleah doubted it. Their dragonets were ten months old now and already aware of each other as males and females. Jenavally had already warned them that some of the greens could start rising by the time they marked their first Turn, although a Turn and a half was a more normal age for first flights. That was still far enough off that Carleah wouldn’t worry about it yet. But she was looking forward to being able to go between, to having the freedom to visit her mother and her old friends at the Harperhall, to moving out of the barracks and into a weyr. She looked forward to being able to mix with the other riders of Madellon too, not just the weyrlings. The dragonets were a tight-knit bunch, as clutchmates always were, but Carleah longed to break free of their small community and the strict rules of the weyrlings barracks.

With that in mind, she resolved to be back on the beach and ready to continue her studies with M’ric in good time. Jagunth had gone to sleep in the sun with some of the other dragonets. Carleah poked her awake. Wake up, you.

Jagunth roused with a terrific yawn, stretching her wings. I’m itchy again.

You’re growing, Carleah told her. I’ll get some oil.

She’d collected an oil bucket from the barracks storeroom, and was swinging it from one hand, when L’stev stepped into the doorway ahead of her. “You.” He levelled a thick finger at her. “Come with me.”

“But I –”

“Now.”

Carleah put her bucket down and followed the Weyrlingmaster meekly up the stairs to his office. Vanzanth was sitting outside, the hunched and grizzled mirror of his rider in dragon form. He watched her pass from beneath his heavy eye ridges.

The Weyrlingmaster’s weyr was directly above the barracks, the ledge situated right over the double doors that led into the weyrlings’ quarters. Carleah had only been up there once before, on Hatching night, and she’d been in no state to take in her surroundings at the time. The sleeping alcove towards the back was hidden behind a heavy curtain, and the faint sound of water circulating suggested a bathing pool somewhere even farther back. The big desk that dominated what would have been the living area of a Wingleader’s weyr was empty of all but several pens and a box full of pieces of scraped hide. Carleah’s eyes went of their own accord to the tall cabinet that stood against the wall behind the desk, locked with a padlock the size of her fist. That was where L’stev kept his records on each weyrling in the class, detailing their strengths and weaknesses, their skills and their inadequacies, their commendations and their transgressions. K’ralthe and K’dam had sneaked up here to try to break into the cabinet one evening when L’stev had gone out for a night flight with his dragon. They’d failed, but left a rude message on the blackboard on the wall. The following day L’stev had put the pair on latrine-cleaning duties for the next fortnight. K’dam swore he’d written with his off hand, to make his writing unrecognisable, and both boys were certain they hadn’t left any other evidence of their foray. It had caused an atmosphere in the barracks for a few nights when they’d accused several of their classmates of snitching. Then L’stev informed the entire class that Vanzanth had smelled the perpetrators in his weyr. Some of the weyrlings scoffed at that, but there seemed to have been a lot more washing going on since the incident. Which, Carleah reflected, might have been L’stev’s desired outcome all along.

L’stev had to be sixty Turns old, but he was thick-shouldered, barrel-chested, short-necked, and ridiculously strong. He could dangle a firestone sack from one finger that even some of the bigger boys might strain to pick up. Carleah had never seen his hair – it was always hidden under a bandanna – but from his expressive thick eyebrows it was dark, mixed with grey. He wore an expression that seemed always on the verge of being a scowl and the only time she’d ever seen him smile was when handing out a choice bit of punishment detail. He shouted and growled and cursed at all of them with a total lack of discrimination, though the cuffs he occasionally dealt to an especially thick-headed individual were reserved for the boys. They all obeyed him to his face, mocked him to his back, and lived in fear of his withering put-downs.

Carleah had never got on the wrong side of L’stev; not really. Jagunth was always well fed, properly oiled, and spotlessly clean, although in that respect it helped that she was naturally fastidious; some of the boys’ dragons would cheerfully have bedded down crusted with muck and blood. They didn’t take risks flying or try vainly to keep up with the bigger dragons in endurance flights like some of the other greens did. She paid attention in lectures, kept her notes up to date and always – almost always – had an answer to a question. L’stev had snarled at her once or twice for pertness, but Carleah considered that a point in her own favour rather than a mark against.

So as L’stev sat down in the cushioned and padded chair behind his desk, and pointed at one of the hard wooden seats in front of it, Carleah’s mind was already racing with explanations and excuses for whatever it was she was supposed to have done. “Weyrlingmaster, I –”

“Be quiet, Carleah,” L’stev cut her off. “I’m not interested in your smart mouth.”

That stung, but Carleah resolved to obey. She folded her hands in her lap, a picture of innocence, and made a show of giving him her full and rapt attention.

L’stev stared at her for a long moment. That made Carleah uneasy. His reprimands were usually all volume and profanity. Finally he asked, “Do you know what my job is, Carleah?”

“To teach us to be good dragonriders, Weyrlingmaster,” she replied.

He shook his head. “If only I could set my sights so high. No, Carleah, it’s more simple than that. My job is to try to keep as many of you alive as possible for as long as possible. I get two Turns to teach you how not to get yourselves killed. How to feed your beasts without feeding them to death, how to fly without crashing into things, how to flame without roasting your wingmates. How to go between safely, and come back. How to be safe. How to be prudent. How to be cautious.” His voice rose and rose as he spoke, as his glower deepened. “And if I don’t do my job well enough, and the riders I train are careless, or stupid, or cocksure, then they die. Maybe not as weyrlings, granted. Maybe not even as young riders when my lessons are still fresh in their ears. But if those lessons didn’t sink in, if they fade with the passing Turns, then one day, one day, Carleah, those riders will do something stupid, something complacent, something arrogant, and it will get them killed.”

He broke off, breathing heavily. Carleah didn’t dare speak, paralysed by his glare. “Now, you’re a bright girl, Carleah,” he went on at last. “You’re a very bright girl.” He leaned forwards, planting his hands flat on the desk. “Do you know why your father died?”

The blunt question shocked Carleah into reaction. “He was killed!” she said, stung. “He was murdered!”

L’stev stared at her. “I didn’t ask you how he died, weyrling. I asked you why.” When Carleah couldn’t find an answer, he knotted his hands into fists. “Your father died because he went looking for trouble. Alone and unarmed, he walked into a confrontation with a man he knew had already killed a rider and two dragons. Your father, Faranth love him, was one of the brightest weyrlings I ever taught, one of the cleverest riders I ever knew, and what did all that brain and insight get him? A knife in the chest, stuck there by some nobody Healer who your father saw as a puzzle to be solved and not the threat he really was, and he and his dragon paid the price. C’los died because he let his need to be clever, his need to be right, override the common sharding sense and caution that every rider owes his dragon. And I’m blighted if I’ll see his daughter follow him down that same path!”

The Weyrlingmaster had become a blurry shape through the tears spilling from Carleah’s eyes. She was distantly aware of Jagunth’s anxious queries. “I d-don’t u-understand,” she sobbed. “I d-didn’t, I haven’t…”

“Timing!” L’stev roared, leaning so far over the desk that she could feel the fine spray of his spittle. “In the most critical, most dangerous, most serious sevenday of your training, you brush off going between like it’s a walk round the lake and ask if we’re going to teach you perhaps the only thing that’s even more dangerous. Faranth save us all, Carleah! Do you think that because you’ve been going between on dragons all your life you know how to do it? Do you know how many weyrlings die trying to go between and getting it wrong? Do you know how many more have died messing around with timing? Look at me!”

Carleah mopped at her eyes with her sleeve, trying to focus on him. “N-no. I j-just thought that s-someone would t-try it. So it w-would be b-better if we l-learned how s-safely…”

“There’s no way to make timing safe. None. Do you understand?” L’stev banged his fists on the table, and Carleah jumped. “Do you understand? I don’t care how smart you are or how exceptional your dragon is. You’re a child of fourteen. Yes, your father was a green rider, and yes, you grew up at the Harperhall, and yes, you’re bright and well-informed and capable. No one is impressed that you know about timing. You ride a dragon of Madellon and your first and only responsibility is to that dragon. Jagunth is young and a green and she’d do anything for you. Ask her to try jumping back in time, she’d try it, and you and she would die. Is that what you want? To kill yourself and your dragonet?”

“N-no,” Carleah sobbed. “I d-don’t even w-want to try –” And then it struck her, as it must have struck L’stev, to make him so angry. If they learned how to go between times, she could go back and see her father again. Warn him. Save him…

“If it were that easy, don’t you think someone older and wiser than you would have tried it already?” L’stev asked, gruffly, but less fiercely than before.

Carleah raised her eyes to the Weyrlingmaster, wondering if Vanzanth had picked the thought from her mind.

He scowled. “You can’t rewrite the past, Carleah. It doesn’t work that way.”

“But if I – if someone – just went back and stopped Da going to the dragon infirmary after the Hatching…”

“Say you did,” said L’stev. “Say you and Jagunth did go back to save him, say you went between times to save your father. C’los would have survived that night, and he’d be here with us now. He’d know that he’d been saved by you, his daughter from the future, and so sooner or later you’d have to time it back to that night to save him. But he’s not here. He wasn’t saved. So you didn’t go back and you can’t save him. You can’t change the past by timing, Carleah. Anything you do while timed back to the past has already happened, already had its effect on your now. Anything you know to have happened will always have happened. Do you understand?” When Carleah shook her head, bewildered, L’stev paused, considering. “Think of it like this. Could you go back in time on Jagunth and prevent yourself Impressing her?”

“No,” Carleah replied, after a moment. “Or else I wouldn’t have Impressed her, and so I wouldn’t have her in the future…”

“…to ride back in time to prevent the Impression,” L’stev completed for her, when she hesitated. “It’s the same with your father. If he was never killed, you’d have no reason to go back and save him from being killed, because he never was. But he was, so you can’t go back and save him because you didn’t.”

Carleah’s head swam from the contradictions. “Then what’s the use of timing?” she burst out.

“Shaffing exactly.”

They sat for a moment, not speaking.

“We don’t ignore timing,” L’stev said, after a bit. “We just don’t do it. Not ever. You’re right. Every dragonrider finds out about it sooner or later. You won’t be the only one asking about it before time, either; I’ll be having this conversation with all of your classmates at some point or other. But not many of them have a reason to try it as strong as yours.”

“It wouldn’t work anyway,” Carleah said dully. “I understand that now.”

L’stev regarded her from beneath his heavy brows. “I need you to make me a promise that you won’t try it, Carleah.”

“I won’t, Weyrlingmaster.”

“I want your promise, on your dragon’s egg.”

“I promise,” Carleah said, “on Jagunth’s egg.”

“Good.” L’stev pushed himself upright from the desk. “You can go,” he added. “Report to Wingsecond M’ric.”

Carleah started to leave, then stopped. “Was he really angry? M’ric?”

L’stev actually looked offended. “You’re more worried about him being angry than me?”

“I like him,” she said forlornly. “He’s clever.”

“Ha!” L’stev sank back down into his chair. “He wanted to be certain you wouldn’t do anything ill-advised. Actually, he said you reminded him of himself as a weyrling.”

“Clever?” Carleah asked, feeling brighter.

“No,” L’stev growled. “Insufferable. Now get out.”

Jagunth was waiting outside below Vanzanth’s ledge. Carleah went straight to the dragonet and wrapped her arms around the soft green neck, burying her face against Jagunth’s warm hide.

Did he scold you? Jagunth asked piteously. Vanzanth scolded and scolded me.

“Yes. But he wants me to be safe. He wants us both to be safe.”

Oh. Jagunth curved her neck around and rested her nose on Carleah’s shoulder. I want us to be safe too.

It occurred to Carleah, with a pang of sadness, that her dragon wouldn’t be able to do that for much longer. Even now, she was really too big. “Do you remember my da?”

Jagunth radiated uncertainty. My da is Epherineth, she offered.

“I know. My da was called C’los. He was a green rider.”

He’s why you’re sad sometimes.

“Yes.” Carleah stroked her dragon’s cheek. Jagunth had no memory of C’los, but she always knew what was upsetting her rider. “He…went away. The Weyrlingmaster doesn’t want us to go away.”

To where your da is?

“Yes…no. We can’t go there, Jagunth. I thought we could now that we’re going to learn how to go between but now I understand that we can’t. We’re to be more careful.”

Jagunth absorbed that gravely. I’m still itchy.

“I’ll fix that for you,” Carleah promised. “I’m sorry Vanzanth told you off. It wasn’t your fault.”

He said I’m to remember that I don’t have to do whatever you tell me to. He tells us all that every day. He says that we should tell him if our riders want to do something new. Jagunth hesitated.  Sometimes I don’t know if something is new or not. Kitlith says she tells Vanzanth when she leaves her dung in a different place in the midden. She tells him every time. She says he says he’s glad she tells him and that it’s always the highlight of his day to hear. He says it delights him to know.

Carleah winced. “I don’t think you need to start doing that, Jagunth. I think Kitlith telling him is probably enough.”

I always leave my dung in the same place anyway.

She closed her eyes, willing herself not to laugh. “That’s probably the best thing to do.”

Leah?

“Yes, Jagunth?”

I don’t want you to go away, either.

Carleah hugged her dragon more fiercely. “I know, Jagunth. And I won’t. I promise.”

Chapter five: Sh’zon

Appreciate your Wingseconds. No one can make you look incompetent faster than a brown rider with a grudge.

– Peninsula Weyr saying

100.02.19 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Sh’zon had woken early, roused by his randy dragon, but the morning watch was almost over by the time he arrived at the Weyrleaders’ table in the dining cavern,  damp from a hasty bath and still fastening the top few buttons of his shirt.

“Sorry I’m late, T’kamen,” he said, and tucked his chin to Valonna. “Apologies, Weyrwoman.”

T’kamen glanced up from the slate he was studying to wave off Sh’zon’s apology with a flick of his hand. “Take a seat and have some breakfast.”

Sh’zon seated himself next to H’ned and beckoned to a nearby kitchen girl. “Bread and bacon and three eggs fried up runny, missy, quick as you like.”

“Dragon problems?” H’ned asked disingenuously as Sh’zon jiggled klah pitchers to find one with some left.

“I’ll say.” He poured the tarry dregs from the likeliest jug into his cup, tried a mouthful, and almost spat it out. “Bring some more klah while you’re about it!” he shouted after the girl. “Kawanth’s had his eye on a green for a few days. She takes off this morning, he gets on after her, I’m staggering out of my bed in my skin trying to find where her rider’s got to.” He looked over his shoulder to see if the klah was on its way. It wasn’t. “So I burst in just as Kawanth’s about to make his move, all ready to grab her and have at it, and this skinny little runt of a blue swings in from out of nowhere, swipes the green and does the deed!”

“Bad luck,” said H’ned, smirking. “We’ve all been done by blues, don’t you agree, T’kamen?”

“Uh huh,” said T’kamen, still reading his slate.

“But that’s not the half of it,” Sh’zon went on. “So there we are, the two of us, all stoked up and nothing to flame. I tell Kawie to go put himself out in the lake while I head on back to the weyr to have myself a w–” He caught himself just in time, throwing a look at Valonna. “Er, to have myself a wash, and I’m just, you know, getting done with washing, and suddenly Kawanth’s telling me there’s another green just taking off and him still hot for a piece of tail, so up he goes after that one, and he’s in such a stew by now I think he’s scared off everything else from chasing, because I never saw no other dragon.” He stopped to catch his breath and take another sip of the thick, gritty, lukewarm klah. “Achh, that’s terrible.”

“Faranth, Sh’zon, have mine,” H’ned said, pushing over his own mug. “That stuff will give you a bellyache.”

“You’re a class act, H’ned.” Sh’zon gulped at H’ned’s half-cup of klah. It was a bit sweet for his taste, but a big improvement over the black sludge in his own mug.

“So you caught the second green?”

“Oh, we caught her. Don’t think she knew what’d hit her, poor thing. Rider turned out to be one of the young chappies from T’gat’s Wing, which wouldn’t’ve been my first choice, but Kawie’s impossible when he’s het up and we’ve a ton to do today. He’ll have his little snooze now and he’ll be right as rain by noon.”

“I’m glad he’s got it out of his system,” said T’kamen, putting his message slate aside at last and picking up the piece of toast he’d been neglecting.

Now, there was a man who could use a few extra pieces of toast of a morning, Sh’zon thought, and maybe a dollop more butter too. T’kamen was one of those riders who burned through more energy in an afternoon than most did in a sevenday, and even in the months Sh’zon had been at Madellon, he’d noticed him losing flesh and gaining lines on his face. Sh’zon had seen Weyrleaders come and go in his time at the Peninsula Weyr, and the role seldom left them untouched. It could go either way. Some got fat sitting on their rumps all day and enjoying the hospitality of Hold and Hall; some worried themselves to bones, unable to balance their own health with the demands of the position. Both types had a habit of taking themselves to early graves. Sh’zon’s own first Weyrleader had died of a heart attack during a mating flight, trying to outfly fitter bronzes to win back his queen, and he hadn’t been old at all.

He didn’t think T’kamen was going anywhere, though. He was a few Turns younger than Sh’zon, and Epherineth was a handsome fellow. Sh’zon was man enough to acknowledge a good bronze when he saw one. It would be at least another two Turns before Valonna’s queen rose again. T’kamen and his bronze would both still be in their prime.

Kawanth could have outflown Epherineth, of course, but Sh’zon doubted there’d ever be the opportunity to prove it. Berzunth would rise sooner than Shimpath, but neither Epherineth nor Kawanth would be chasing her: Epherineth because no bronze with half a brain pursued another female when he was already mated to the senior queen; Kawanth because Sh’zon had known Tarshe from a babe in arms, and he found the idea repugnant. Some bronze riders wouldn’t have scrupled to pursue a queen ridden by a cousin, but Sh’zon wasn’t that desperate. There’d be no queen flights for Kawanth; not at Madellon, anyway.

The kitchen girl returned with Sh’zon’s breakfast, the eggs yellow and wobbly atop a fat rasher of bacon that still sizzled and a thick doorstop of brown bread. “Thanks, missy,” he told the girl, digging in.

“All right,” said T’kamen, wiping toast crumbs off his fingers, “what have we got today. H’ned?”

Izath’s rider tugged a limp, much-scraped piece of hide out of the breast of his shirt. “V’stan’s Wing is exercising over the north-west ranges this morning,” he reported. “Manoeuvres only, no flame. F’yan’s Wing is doing a refresher run over the Kellad-Peninsula border, and East Flight has the south this afternoon, a three-sack flaming drill.”

“How was the quality of the Buckmore firestone shipment?” T’kamen asked.

“Not the worst,” said Sh’zon, through a mouthful of bacon.  He swallowed, and went on, “Thought it was going to be a duff batch when we picked it up. Very oxidised. The colour looked all right when the weyrlings broke up the first couple sacks, though.”

T’kamen nodded. “Let East Flight’s Wingleaders know it’s a new load.”

“I’ll tell A’keret to get his stokers onto it,” said Sh’zon. The Weyr Miner had already graded the stone, but the dragons themselves were the best judges. Most Wings had a few with a knack for assessing flame yield from the taste and texture of the rock they sampled.

“Have him be prepared to report on the stone at the Wingleader meeting this evening,” said T’kamen. “What else?”

“Sweeps went out at dawn, reporting high pressure west-southwest that might just turn into rain, if we’re really lucky,” H’ned continued.

Valonna stirred from her usual quiet place beside T’kamen. “Might you ask the watchdragon to look for it coming in?” she asked. “Kirosahf is airing the old bedfurs we found in the storage caverns, bales and bales of them. It would be a shame for them to get wet on the first rainy day we’ve had for a month.”

“I’ll brief the watchriders,” said H’ned. “I’ll tell them to report directly to you if it starts to look threatening.”

“Thank you, Wingleader.”

She was a curious one, T’kamen’s Weyrwoman: so timid beside her forceful Weyrleader, but when she spoke up it was usually with someone else’s ease or comfort in mind. Valonna was hardly older than Tarshe, and as indoor-pale as Sh’zon’s cousin was outdoor-tanned – more like a Lady Holder than a queen rider, really. But her hands, rough and blistered from recent hard work, told a different story. Valonna had dismissed the Headwoman and appointed a woman of her own choice in her place, and now spent more time than most Weyrwoman would working alongside the women of the lower caverns. Sh’zon supposed someone had to, though he didn’t know that he’d allow a Weyrwoman of his to do it. More the place of a junior weyrwoman, he thought. Then again, Madellon wouldn’t actually have one until Berzunth grew up, and Sh’zon doubted Tarshe would much like skivvying.

“Anything else, H’ned?” T’kamen asked. H’ned shook his head, and the Weyrleader turned to Sh’zon. “What do you have, Wingleader?”

Sh’zon had always thought it a shame that Deputy Weyrleader was too much of a mouthful to be used as a salutation. K’ken, who’d been Deputy at the Peninsula for about the last three Passes, had long since resigned himself to answering to Wingleader despite his seniority. “A hundred green hides to pick up from the Tannerhall,” he said. H’ned had been given oversight of sweeps and watches; Sh’zon’s responsibilities now included coordinating tithe collections, supply runs, and conveyance. “Twelve transports, four of them courtesy lifts. Ice run, Wingleader meeting, my Wing’s on inspection, and I’ve a few odds and sods to drop off with my kin late this evening.”

T’kamen, to his credit, didn’t even blink at that. Some Weyrleaders would have balked at the thought of their riders flying in supplies to holders who had been exiled for massacring the occupants of a neighbouring cothold, but Sh’zon had learned that T’kamen was very decent about such things. As long as he didn’t remove anyone from the desolate place – and Sh’zon had taken an oath not to – T’kamen accepted his wish to help them eke out an existence there.

T’kamen turned to Valonna next. “Weyrwoman?”

Valonna had a slate with her notes on it. “Master Gerlaven has asked for permission to start work with black powder on the south-eastern inner of the Bowl.”

H’ned looked suddenly interested. “Really? He’s got to the bottom of what went wrong in 65?”

“What happened in 65?” asked Sh’zon.

“Blasting accident,” said T’kamen. “The Weyr Mason brought about five hundred tons of rock down on himself.”

“There are still bodies under there,” said H’ned, with macabre relish. When T’kamen frowned at him, he protested, “What? No one in your weyrling class ever told ghost stories about how, if you went to the south-eastern corner of the Bowl after midnight and listened very carefully, you’d hear the shades of Master Imarr and his team, still chipping forlornly away at the stone, chisels blunt with age clutched in their skeletal hands…”

“I’d wager you were the one banging rocks together to get the full effect,” said T’kamen.

“They had it easy,” said H’ned. “They weren’t here when it actually happened. I was only seven or eight. The worst of it was that Imarr and his crafters weren’t crushed to death – they were buried alive. You could hear them shouting through the rubble. The dragons tried to dig them out, but the more they dug, the more rock they dislodged. Eventually the voices stopped.”

“How horrible,” said Valonna, with a little shiver.

H’ned grinned at her reaction. “It properly spooked us kids. No one wanted to sleep inside the caverns. We’d creep out at night and camp in the Bowl instead. It drove all the foster-mothers spare, but even the threat of a hiding wasn’t enough to stop us.”

“What eventually enticed you back in?” asked T’kamen.

H’ned shrugged. “Winter.”

“Well, I’d be hoping the new Master Mason’s a tad bit smarter than this one who brought the Weyr down on his head,” said Sh’zon.

“Gerlaven’s been surveying the site for about the last five Turns,” said T’kamen. “He’s mapped out the fault that caused Imarr’s accident and he’s certain the face is stable.” He turned back to Valonna. “Weyrwoman, how many dragons will need to be relocated from that part of the Bowl?”

“We think it will only be seventeen,” Valonna replied. “There are weyrs they can move to, but we may have to come to an arrangement for the two Wingseconds. There’s nothing available that would compare to their current quarters.”

T’kamen frowned at that, but only slightly; the lines between his brows didn’t go deep. Relocating a couple of Wingseconds was likely the smallest of his worries. “You have Gerlaven’s list of requirements?”

“Extra journeyman from the Masoncraft,” said Valonna. “Labourers from our caverns…and the black powder.”

“That’s not going to come cheap,” said Sh’zon.

“Madellon committed to this work a long time ago,” T’kamen said. He sounded resigned to the necessity. “If you’ll put a copy of the list on my desk, Valonna, I’ll see it’s fulfilled.”

Sh’zon mopped up the last traces of egg yolk from his plate with his bread. The Peninsula faced the issue of expansion, too. Like Madellon, it had been established by a few dozen dragonpairs early in the Interval with the expectation that its population would increase steadily over the two hundred Turns of the Interval. Neither Weyr had yet come close to their intended Pass capacities, and even now the combined dragons of the Peninsula and Madellon would barely fill Madellon alone. But while Madellon had a planned fighting strength of almost six hundred dragons, it could only weyr half that number. The rest of the caves and ledges intended for the use of future dragons were still just hollows in the crater walls. The most accessible had been claimed by enterprising riders willing to spend their spare time chiselling more space from the rock, but the Weyr Mason had oversight of all the rest. Sh’zon knew that the Master at the Peninsula had never had all the crafters or equipment he really needed for his building programme, and he didn’t think Master Gerlaven would have much more luck here.

“I have a few things,” said T’kamen. “First is that L’stev says he expects the first weyrlings to go between the day after tomorrow. Let your riders know.”

He didn’t elaborate; he didn’t have to. “I hope your Weyrlingmaster’s good,” said Sh’zon. “My cousin’s precious to me.”

He intended it as a joke, but T’kamen and H’ned both frowned, and the Valonna looked uneasy. “He’s very good,” said T’kamen, flatly.

“And you’re not the only one with family in that class,” H’ned added.

Sh’zon held up his hands. “Beg pardon.”

T’kamen carried on as though Sh’zon hadn’t interrupted. “Secondly, the Long Bay Hold Gather next month. Some of my wingriders have been asking if they’ll get their stipend early.”

“So they can waste it all before the quarter’s even done?” said Sh’zon.

“Better that than having them all complaining they have no marks to spend,” said H’ned.

“I’ll be raising it in the Wingleaders’ meeting tonight,” said T’kamen. “Give it some thought. Does anyone have anything else?” He glanced around, picking up his slate. “Fine. You all know where I’ll be.”

As T’kamen left the table, the original kitchen girl came hurrying up with a steaming pitcher. “I’m so sorry, sir!”

“So you should be, missy,” Sh’zon told her. “Ah, well. Better late than never, eh?”

The promised rain came mid-morning, a short sharp shower that started as Sh’zon sat down to assign dragonpairs to transport jobs and finished before the last rider came in to be briefed. Outside, a rejuvenated Kawanth amused himself by paddling his forepaws in the shallow puddle that had formed on his ledge, but the water evaporated off the ground almost faster than it steamed off his hide.

Put a word through to the Weyrlingmaster’s dragon, would you, and tell him I want to come down and exchange a word with my cousin, Sh’zon told his bronze, pushing back his chair.

Vanzanth says that’s nice for you, and what did you want him to do about it, Kawanth reported back.

“Faranth save us all from mouthy brown dragons!” Sh’zon strode out of his office and onto the ledge. Kawanth looked back at him peaceably. “Tell him I’m coming down now and he can like it or not for all the difference it makes to me.”

He says he’s very impressed with your impeccable courtesy and that you should consider yourself at liberty to come and teach it to his weyrlings at any time of the night or day. Kawanth paused. I don’t think he was telling the truth.

He swore. “Tell him – no, ask him, nicely, if he could see his way clear to letting me visit my cousin, my uncle’s little girl, my own flesh and blood, so when I see her father later on today I can tell him how his only daughter’s doing, please and thank-you!”

He says in that case you should feel free, and Hinnarioth’s rider will be expecting you.

“Hinnarioth’s rider?”

Vanzanth is not here.

“Not here? You might’ve told me he wasn’t in the Weyr, Kawanth!”

You didn’t ask.

“Pah!”

Truth be told, Sh’zon thought, as he descended the steps from their weyr and set out towards the training grounds, he approved that L’stev was so touchy about adult riders mixing with the weyrlings. If the Weyrlingmaster had his dragon put up that sort of resistance to family visits, there was no chance he’d let an unconnected rider anywhere near the juveniles. Sh’zon had taken it on himself to have words with each of Madellon’s bronze riders on the subject of his young cousin. Most of them had taken it well enough, and the ones who hadn’t…well, he was keeping an eye on them.

The burst of rain might have been brief, but at least it had dampened down the dust. Madellon wasn’t such a bad Weyr, but Sh’zon was tired of the continental weather extremes: blazing in summer, ball-numbing in winter. The Peninsula’s coastal location made it a lot more comfortable Turn-round. Some days, sweltering in fighting leathers under Madellon’s skies, he’d have given Kawanth’s tail for a sea breeze.

I need my tail, Kawanth objected mildly.

Suspect you’d look a mite strange without it, Sh’zon said, but I wouldn’t hold that against you.

You would when I couldn’t fly for you anymore.

Best hold on to your tail, then, and keep practising with those greens.

Kawanth snorted so loudly from their ledge that Sh’zon heard him halfway down the Bowl. I never practise.

The weyrling riders had their dragons out on the grassy part of the training grounds – more dust than grass at present – for grooming and oiling. The assistant Weyrlingmaster, Jenavally, was supervising, leaning casually against her dragon’s side in the shade of the wing the green had extended for her. Sh’zon had always found it strange how much he fancied her. She wasn’t what he’d have called pretty: quite plain, in fact; broad-featured and almost homely. And she must have been ten or twelve Turns older than him, at least. He supposed it was the height and the red hair – reddish, anyway – that did it for him. Squint hard enough in dim enough light and even a green could look like a queen.

Not to me, said Kawanth.

Who asked you?

Still, Kawanth had flown Jenavally’s Hinnarioth a time or two since they’d been at Madellon, and those had been pleasant enough affairs – with seconds, no less. Not a girl to set his world on fire, but better than an empty hearth. “Ho there, green lady!”

“Me or her?” Jenavally asked, jerking her head at her dragon.

“Why, the both of you, of course.”

“Look out,” she said, in an exaggerated aside to her dragon. “He’s turned on the charm. He must want something.”

Sh’zon shrugged, not bothering to deny it. “Happens I’d like a moment or two with my cousin.”

“Thought so,” she said. “Didn’t I say he’d be down sooner or later, Hinns?”

“You’re saying I’m predictable?” Sh’zon protested.

“Well if it’s any comfort, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last,” she said. “Why else do you think L’stev isn’t here? He has a sentimental streak as broad as a bronze dragon’s backside, but that doesn’t mean he wants all of Pern to know about it.”

“They’ve all been getting visitors, then?” Sh’zon asked.

“The Weyrbred ones. H’ned was down straight after breakfast to give his lad a look over. Javerre fostered half the kids in this group at one time or another. Shells, even the Headwoman found an excuse to inspect the barracks supply room this morning.” Jenavally shook her head. “Poor R’von. He’s hardly got a choice but to kick off.”

“Bronze’ll be bronze,” said Sh’zon. “What about your boy?

“Oh, Naij. He’s just like his brother was at that age – brighter, if anything – and G’vor’s done all right. You know, they don’t call brown dragons the mother’s favourite for nothing. From personal experience – sorry, Hinns but it’s true – I’d be scared senseless if my boys rode greens, and you can keep your flashy bronzes. Blues are fine, but a brown – that’s the dragon you want for your son. Brown riders don’t get themselves in trouble.”

“I’ve known a few that’d put the lie to that,” said Sh’zon.

Jenavally laughed. “That says more about the company you keep than it does about brown riders.”

“I’ll wager it does,” he agreed. “My cousin?”

“I’ll take you over. Just a few minutes, though. You’ll put them off if you make too much of a fuss.”

Although Madellon’s weyrlings lived and trained apart from the rest of the Weyr, Berzunth’s presence made them the subject of more attention than would otherwise have been the case. Dragons were always very conscious of their queens, however young. Sh’zon had even caught Kawanth watching her. His attention was innocent enough while Berzunth was still a juvenile, but it wouldn’t stay that way forever. Most Weyrs didn’t allow related queen and bronze riders to stay together – the lure of a queen was too strong, and Sh’zon had heard of a near miss with an aunt-nephew situation somewhere up north; Igen, or maybe Telgar. They had about a Turn and a half before Berzunth’s age made his presence at Madellon a problem. Then either he’d have to go, or she would. Not that the latter was out of the question – Madellon could probably use a queen exchange to diversify its stock – but he didn’t think it would be necessary. He expected to be gone from here long before his cousin’s queen forced him out.

Madellon did breed a good-looking dragon, Sh’zon thought, as Jenavally escorted him along the long line of dragonets. Some of the browns seemed a touch lighter of bone than he’d have liked, but there were two exceptionally nice bronzes and several greens that would have stood up against any of the Peninsula’s. And Berzunth was as striking a queen as he’d ever seen – almost more silver than gold.

Nine months ago, when Tarshe had Impressed, the sun-bleached highlights in her hair had almost matched her dragon’s light hide. The mandatory weyrling haircut and several months of Madellon’s winter had done away with those streaks, and even the recent weather hadn’t yet brought them back. The deeply-burnt tropical tan had faded a little too. But the biggest and best change was in Tarshe’s physique. She – and all the other people on Shevran’s island, adults and children – had always been scrawny; not quite malnourished, but just the wrong side of underfed. Sh’zon’s best efforts on his family’s behalf hadn’t ever quite alleviated their struggle to produce enough food to make life comfortable. Tarshe would never be fat, but the combination of decent, regular meals and the healthy exertion of caring for a growing dragon had put ten pounds of muscle on her frame.

Berzunth noticed him before Tarshe did, but only by a second or so. She turned, obviously tipped off, already smiling that half wary, half defiant smile that had always been her hallmark. “Cuz. I’m filthy with oil.”

“No shame in that, Tarshe.” Sh’zon opened his arms wide, and with a shrug, Tarshe stepped into the embrace.

“Come to see me one last time in case we go between and never come back?” she asked.

“Don’t you even think that, missy,” Sh’zon warned her. “I don’t care what colour your dragon is. You’re not too high and mighty for me to give your arse a smack that’d stop you sitting down for a sevenday.”

“True,” she admitted, absently wiping her hands on her dragonet’s side. “Though if you did that to me I’d be fascinated to see what Berzunth would do to Kawanth.”

“I’d wager he’d enjoy his end of it more than you would yours.” Sh’zon folded his arms, looking down at her appraisingly. “You look well. The both of you.”

“I am.” She put a more proprietorial hand on Berzunth’s elbow. “We are.”

“Weyrlingmaster treating you all right?”

“L’stev?” Tarshe flicked her head back in a short laugh. “Fine, if you ignore the shouting, the sarcasm, and the fact that he’s impossible to please.”

There was no rancour in her voice. That was a good sign. “Sounds like my Weyrlingmaster at the Peninsula,” said Sh’zon.

“And I’ve learned more new swear words from him than I knew when I left the island.”

“You can never know too many shaffing swear words,” Sh’zon told her. He grinned at her; she grinned back. “And what about your classmates?”

Tarshe shrugged. “Where do I even begin?”

“The bronzes?” Sh’zon suggested.

“Faranth, cuz. It’s true what L’stev said about bronze riders, isn’t it?”

“Depends what it is he said.”

“That you’re all obsessed with other bronze riders.”

“Because they’re the only riders worth worrying about,” Sh’zon declared. “Well. Almost.”

Tarshe sighed, mock-exasperated. “The dragonets suck up to Berzunth, and their riders suck up to me.”

“You’d better not be talking literally,” Sh’zon growled.

“Please. K’ralthe’s all smarm, H’nar overcompensates for his dragon being all smarm, and R’von seems to think that I’m impressed when he swears back at L’stev.”

Sh’zon relaxed a bit. “None of them taking your eye, then?”

Tarshe spread her hands to indicate Berzunth. “By comparison to her, I’m not sure anyone ever will.”

“That’s as it should be.” Sh’zon cocked his head. “I’m heading up to the island later on. Anything you wanted to pass on to your da?”

“Just my love,” she replied. “Tell him I should be able to come and see him soon. Tell him he’ll be able to meet Berzunth.”

“Aye, you will at that. He’s so proud of you, Tarshe. His daughter, a queen rider of Pern!”

“Still doesn’t mean I can get him out of there, though, does it?”

Sh’zon sighed. “You know why –”

“I know, I know.” Tarshe scowled. “I understand the rules. Doesn’t mean I have to like them.”

“Sh’zon.” Jenavally had drifted politely away to let them talk; now, she drifted closer again.

“I’ve hardly had two minutes,” he objected.

“It’s all right,” Tarshe told him. “We’ll be fine.” She patted her queen’s elbow. “She’ll look after me.”

“Well, she’d better,” said Sh’zon. He glared at Berzunth, who returned the look with placid blue eyes. “You hear that? You keep her safe! And you, missy…” He stabbed a forefinger at Tarshe. “You keep your visuals clean and do as your Weyrlingmaster says, and when you’re out the other side of this thing we’ll go to the Long Bay Gather and I’ll buy you more pies than you could eat in a season.”

“Still the pies?” Tarshe asked. “Really? You’ve been trying to bribe me with pies since I was about six!”

“Worked then,” said Sh’zon. “And once a weakness, always a weakness.”

“You’d be the authority on that one,” Tarshe pointed out.

“Don’t get pert with me, missy!” He planted a kiss on top of her head. “Be careful.”

“I will,” Tarshe replied.

With his duty to Tarshe done, Sh’zon couldn’t procrastinate any longer. Kawanth needed a bath to get him fit for inspection, especially after his morning dalliance. Most of their wingriders were already at the lake, industriously scrubbing away at their dragons, and it wouldn’t do for Kawanth to look anything less than sparkling. That meant packing up brushes and oil and harness grease and heading out of the Weyr to their favourite alpine lake. As a matter of principle, Sh’zon never did his dragon’s pre-inspection ablutions where his riders could see just how much grot the bronze had accumulated.

When they returned – Kawanth spotless, his rig shining, and Sh’zon himself immaculate – their Wingseconds were waiting with the other thirteen dragonpairs of North Central Wing. Sh’zon had inherited J’tron from his ill-fated predecessor D’feng, and the two-stripe Wingsecond was a classic brown rider: steady, competent, unambitious. M’ric, his own senior-grade Wingsecond of many Turns, was less typical of his colour. Oh, he was steady and competent, but he was also clever, cunning, and very ambitious. If M’ric had been a bronze rider he would have been worth fearing, but his little brown Trebruth meant he wasn’t any sort of threat, and there wasn’t a rider on Pern Sh’zon would rather have had at his right hand.

They’d been a serious force together at the Peninsula before Weyrleader H’pold had uncovered Sh’zon’s family connections and forced him out. Sh’zon might have resisted harder, but the leadership change at Madellon had opened his mind to the possibilities there. Even then, it had been M’ric who’d persuaded him to accept the transfer to Madellon and the demotion that had come with it. But it hadn’t taken either of them long to recover their prior rank, and indeed they’d both exceeded their Peninsula status in their different ways, M’ric with his Ops Wing, and Sh’zon in his new role as Deputy Weyrleader to T’kamen.

Feolth, J’tron’s big rusty-coloured brown, and little Trebruth were both impeccably turned out. Sh’zon made a big show of examining both dragons in close detail. After the hours both Wingseconds must have spent getting the gloss on their very different dragons’ hides, they deserved the credit of passing his closest scrutiny with distinction. Then he signalled to J’tron to proceed with the inspection of the wingriders.

As J’tron walked over to the first green dragon in the line, M’ric stepped up to stand beside Sh’zon. “I’m hoping he won’t find anything wrong with Orsalth,” he said. “She could take off at any moment, and you know how emotional V’ley gets.”

“Good thing she didn’t go off this morning, or he’d have had something to be emotional about,” said Sh’zon. “All well with you?”

“Well enough.”

“Trebruth?”

M’ric nodded at his brown. “As you see.”

“And that girlfriend of yours?”

“Working every hour in the day.” M’ric’s smile was wry. “I hardly see her. A man could take it personally.”

Sh’zon liked M’ric’s woman. Not his type – he didn’t much go in for brunettes – but a nice-looking girl. It had been a few Turns since M’ric had weyred up with anyone, and the female company seemed to be agreeing with him. Sh’zon hadn’t seen him so sharp and focused in a long time. He’d never been a slouch, but they’d been ploughing themselves a comfortable furrow at the Peninsula for Turns before H’pold’s dirt-digging had destabilised Sh’zon’s position. Then M’ric had lost his daughter to a training accident, and that had taken his eye off the bigger picture. Away from the Peninsula and those painful memories, he seemed to have regained his concentration. “Take her to the big Gather,” he recommended. “Buy her something expensive. That’ll make her grateful.”

M’ric’s mouth twitched. “Whatever you say, boss.”

Orsalth passed muster, and J’tron moved on to Gresath. Sh’zon and M’ric walked down to look at the blue from their slight remove as J’tron went through his inspection checks.

“Weyrlings start going between day after tomorrow,” said Sh’zon. “Any concerns with them?”

“Not with my two,” said M’ric. “I haven’t cleared them yet, though. They’re both too keen.”

“H’ned’s boy?”

“Yes, and C’los’ daughter.”

“I sneaked by the Weyrlingmaster and had a word with my cousin,” said Sh’zon. “I can’t see him letting her go in the first lot either, for the same reason. She’s desperate to visit her mum and dad. Would rather she didn’t push herself.”

“Don’t worry about Tarshe,” said M’ric. “She’ll be fine.”

Sh’zon eyed him warily. There was just something in his tone, an eerie conviction that he recognised. “Is something about to happen?”

M’ric’s face revealed nothing, but he hesitated for a long beat before replying. “Perhaps.”

“Because if you’ve had yourself one of your…premonitions…if you’ve been on an excursion…I want to know about it!”

“I’ll let you know when I know,” said M’ric.

“Is it Ipith?” Kawanth, speak to Galdiath at the Peninsula and ask him if anything’s changed with the queen.

“Not Ipith. But something’s coming. The other night…the noise that woke the dragons…”

“That?” Sh’zon blew out his breath. “Probably just the ghost of the Mason who got himself blown up thirty Turns ago and doesn’t want his successor disturbing him with black powder.”

Galdiath says no, Kawanth reported.

“Ghosts, Sh’zon?” M’ric asked.

“No stranger than some of what you’ve come up with over the Turns, Malric.” Sh’zon subsided, relieved. “Well, don’t do that to me. You’ll give Kawanth palpitations.”

“Not everything comes back to Ipith, you know,” M’ric told him.

“Not for you, maybe,” said Sh’zon. “Where I’m concerned it does. I’d be obliged if you’d keep your eyes front. We can’t miss the next chance at Ipith now Tarshe’s on the queen here. If we do it’ll be north or nothing, and let me tell you, you won’t be making a Wingsecond’s stipend as a southern rider in the north, much less what you’ll get once I’m Weyrleader at the Peninsula.”

“You’ll have your queen,” M’ric said calmly.

“Ha. I’d better.”

Because that was the goal. That was the prize. That was what they’d been working towards for the last six Turns, ever since Rallai had become senior at the Peninsula and Kawanth had failed to fly her queen. He would correct the injustice that had cheated them of their rightful place as the Peninsula’s Weyrleaders.

Sh’zon would never have predicted the road as it had unfolded, but M’ric had. M’ric and his premonitions. M’ric and his excursions. M’ric had promised him that, however indirect the route, his path would lead back to the Peninsula Weyr, and to the queen Kawanth had flown, and lost, and wanted back again.

And however M’ric came by his information, he hadn’t been wrong yet.

Chapter six: L’stev

A wise Weyrlingmaster hides his whiskey bottle where even he can’t find it.

– Weyrlingmaster mantra, origin unknown

100.02.21 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Someone’s going to die today, L’stev thought, as he came awake.

After a long pause, his dragon said, patiently, You always say that.

Vanzanth was right, of course. Vanzanth was always right. There never lived a brown dragon who was more right, more often, about more things than Vanzanth.

You don’t have to be sarcastic about it.

“But it’s so much more fun if I am,” L’stev said. He opened his eyes to pre-dawn darkness and reached for the glow-basket. “And that doesn’t mean I’m not right too.”

Vanzanth sighed. Go on, then.

“One out of every five dragonpairs don’t make it out of weyrlinghood,” L’stev recited. “Between claims more lives than all the other causes put together. We have twenty-five weyrlings and seven of them are going to go between today. We’ll probably lose one, and more likely two.”

I’m so glad I chose an optimist for my rider, said Vanzanth.

“You’re hilarious.”

Is it too late for me to change my mind?

“By about forty Turns.”

Forty-one.

“Shut up.”

And a half.

“You can go off a dragon.”

Do you feel better now?

He did. He always braced himself for casualties on the first between day – that way, anything less dire was a pleasant surprise – but in fifteen Turns as Weyrlingmaster he’d only actually lost one dragonpair from those who’d made their attempts on day one. Some Weyrlingmasters waited until the whole class was ready before letting any of them go between. L’stev thought that was stupid. The most confident weyrlings, keen to have the freedom of between, would exert pressure, conscious or not, on their less certain classmates to jump before they were really comfortable with the concept, and that could only end badly. It was better to let the ones who were truly ready prove it, and in doing so encourage the others.

He had thought there would be more than seven on this first between day, but between the ones who didn’t think they were ready and the ones who mistakenly did, the group had cut up. H’nar wasn’t among them, which was a shame. The young bronze rider, such a natural focal point within the class, would have given all the others heart. But M’ric hadn’t passed him. “His dad’s Deputy Weyrleader,” he’d said, when he’d reported to L’stev. “He has too much to prove.”

L’stev had never known H’nar to make any reference to his father, good or bad, but he was willing to accept that M’ric had seen something when mentoring him that he’d missed. He agreed entirely with M’ric’s refusal to pass Carleah, though. C’los’ daughter was very bright, but just like her father, she was prone to the occasional gross error of judgement. L’stev had half expected her to be the first one to ask about timing, but the inevitability of it didn’t make it any less displeasing. He knew she was upset not to be in the first group, and he was glad about that. If she could learn some prudence to go along with her wit, she’d be an asset to any Wingleader.

There were excuses for many of the others. Of the faction that comprised K’ralthe, K’dam, and M’touf, only the latter was really ready, but he’d already disgraced himself by pushing his dragon beyond her abilities to impress his buddies once, and L’stev wouldn’t have him do it again. Soleigh and Maris, who did everything together, had asked for another day’s practice. Most of the other either lacked confidence or suffered from a surfeit of it, but that was normal at this stage, and they would even out over the next couple of days.

As for Tarshe, there’d never been any question of her joining the first group. She was ready, certainly, but L’stev wouldn’t take the risk, and he’d told her as much yesterday evening. Even the best, most thoroughly-prepared dragonpairs sometimes met with disaster going between for the first time – they’d lost the most promising bronze pair in Shimpath’s weyrling class on their first jump, eight Turns ago – and the tiniest possibility that they could lose Berzunth on day one was unacceptable. He’d promised her that she could try tomorrow and Tarshe had agreed. The girl was a gift, L’stev thought. He’d been concerned about her origins – and the fact that she was cousin to Sh’zon – but she’d turned out to be one of the most level-headed and reliable members of the class.

The seven weyrlings who would be attempting to go between today didn’t fit any particular profile. They weren’t the oldest or the youngest. There were five boys and two girls. Three greens, two browns, one blue, one bronze. Weyrbred, Holdbred, Craftbred. All they had in common was that their mentors thought they were ready, and L’stev wouldn’t have passed any of them if he hadn’t agreed

He was still going to prepare for the worst.

L’stev wasn’t a wasteful man; nor, usually, superstitious, but he made an exception to both rules when his weyrlings started going between. He sat down at his desk and pulled a piece of the Weyr’s best vellum towards him. He dipped a fresh pen into ink and then scratched out a heading. Notice of Death.

You’re morbid, Vanzanth told him.

L’stev ignored him. B’joro, rider of blue Lovanth, he wrote, then beneath it the standard phrasing that always began a death notice. My sad duty to report…lost in training…grave loss to the Weyr…deepest sympathies…

Then he paused to contemplate what he would say about B’joro. The lad was Weyrbred, the son of two Caverns folk, so an explanation wouldn’t be necessary. No one who lived in a Weyr was ignorant of the dangers of dragonriding. B’joro had always been quiet but sharp, and he was still both, but Impressing Lovanth had added confidence to his taciturnity. B’joro was a quick study, both attentive and diligent, and faultless in his dedication to his dragon. He and Lovanth enjoyed an especially close bond. Vanzanth had confirmed that very early on, when the weyrlings hadn’t yet learned to keep their conversations private, reporting that he’d found it hard to tell boy and blue apart. They would have made an exceptional addition to any Wing of Madellon. They will be missed.

L’stev put the notice aside and took another piece of hide off the stack. Ivaryo, he wrote, rider of green Saperth. Holdbred, but it was hard to know who would be the recipient of her death notice. Ivaryo’s parents hadn’t even attended the Hatching. A resolute young woman who fell in love with the Weyr and set her heart on becoming a dragonrider. And racked up an impressive number of notches on her bedpost in the process. He didn’t write that down. There’d been an Ivaryo in almost every class L’stev had ever trained: the girl who’d disgraced herself at home and decided she would seek a life where her friendly nature was welcomed, not condemned. Ivaryo was ideally suited to the unique demands of riding a green, and Saperth’s temperament complemented hers perfectly. L’stev had caught Ivaryo sneaking off to tryst with one rider or another more times than he could remember, and for every time he’d stopped her, he was sure there were two when he hadn’t. It exasperated him. Not for Saperth’s sake – even as a juvenile, the green seemed unperturbed by her rider’s adventures – but because it set a bad example for the other girls, most of whom were far less worldly than Ivaryo. Her loss will be felt most keenly by many, many Madellon riders.

Jenafa, rider of green Nedrith. There could hardly have been a green rider a more diametrically opposite to Ivaryo than Jenafa. They were both girls and both Holdbred, and that was where the similarities ended. Jenafa had been brought up alone by her seaholder father, and while that had made her very capable, she lacked much experience of life. A caring girl who took all her responsibilities very seriously. She was incredibly shy, especially around the fifteen and sixteen-Turn-old boys – the ones old enough to be interested in her, but too young to be sensitive to her nervousness. Maris and Soleigh behaved as the big sisters she’d never had, but L’stev did worry about how Jenafa wold handle mating flights when the time came. Her many friends will miss her greatly.

N’jen, rider of brown Danementh. L’stev winced as he wrote the name. N’jen was Jenavally’s youngest son, and that would be bad enough, but he was also one of the most sunny-natured weyrlings L’stev had ever known. If that boyish joy sometimes manifested itself in practical jokes, he didn’t mind being the occasional butt of them – although the time that N’jen had refilled the sweetener bowl in L’stev’s weyr with salt had won him a full sevenday of midden duties. An energetic and well-liked member of the class. N’jen’s good humour was infectious. His pranks were never mean-spirited, though, and he had that rare quality in a fourteen-Turn-old weyrling: the wisdom to know when to stop. Nothing fazed N’jen, and between his ability to take everything weyrlinghood threw at him in his stride, and his gregarious, likeable nature, L’stev could see the lad making Wingsecond in fairly short order once he graduated. The barracks will seem empty without him.

S’terlion, rider of green Nerbeth. L’stev had been quite surprised when L’pay had told him that S’terlion would be ready to go between in the first group. He wasn’t at all convinced that the boy should have Impressed a green. A blue, or even a milder brown, would have been a better fit. But it happened, especially towards the end of a Hatching when the pickings were getting slim, and Nerbeth had been last to Hatch of her clutch. Brave, earnest, and devoted, L’stev wrote. It didn’t help that only two of twelve greens had chosen boys, and M’touf, the other male green weyrling, was too reckless with his dragon’s capabilities to set a good example. A favourite among his colour-mates. The other green riders had adopted the diffident Holdbred S’terlion as one of their own, but that could be emasculating for a young man. L’stev had questioned him closely before passing him for between, to make sure he wasn’t being over-confident as a way of proving his masculinity. An exceptionally fine young man, taken from us far too soon.

G’dra, rider of brown Kinnescath. G’dra had been an apprentice in the Seacraft – not a very promising one, or his Master wouldn’t have let him go – but L’stev liked him well enough as a brown rider. He scrawled a few lines about the dangers of weyrling training and the courage any rider must embody in facing them. He brought all the skills he learned from his Craft to his life as a dragonrider. G’dra kept his space in the barracks as if it were a berth aboard a ship, his harness-work was impeccable, and Kinnescath was always gleaming. That may have been partly thanks to G’dra’s fire-lizards, but L’stev had seen him send the two blues to help his classmates clean their dragons, too. He was always quick to lend a hand to his fellow weyrlings. The class will be the lesser for his loss.

R’von. He wrote the final name slowly, and sat looking at it for a moment before going on. Rider of bronze Oaxuth.

Most of L’stev’s children had Impressed their dragons Turns before he’d become Weyrlingmaster. Rastevon, the youngest by a decade, was the only one he’d trained. L’stev hadn’t had much to do with him, although the lad’s foster-mother Crauva – the Headwoman, now – was a very old and dear friend to him. She’d told him not to be dismayed by his son’s truculence. “Stev’s spent his life getting stick from the other kids for being your son, and he’s not one to let a grudge go lightly,” she’d said, when he’d remarked on R’von’s attitude. Stubborn, defiant, insolent. But not actually disobedient. L’stev could tolerate a certain amount of lip from his weyrlings; he wouldn’t tolerate insubordination. When it came to his dragon, R’von had never put a foot wrong, and L’stev was harder on his bronze riders than on any of the others. He would never have said it to the weyrlings, but Oaxuth was turning out to be the nicest of the Wildfire bronzes, and if R’von could just get over his antipathy towards L’stev he might work out all right. He was my son, L’stev wrote.

He shoved his pen back into the holder with more force than necessary, then swept all seven death notices into a drawer. He’d kindle a nice little fire in the hearth later on and burn all the ones that weren’t needed, cursing as he did the waste of perfectly good vellum.

“All right,” he said. “Vanzanth, wake up the dragonets, and let’s get this day started.”

Madellon was quiet, expectant. The Wings didn’t drill when weyrlings were going between for the first time. Many riders took their dragons away entirely to give themselves some separation in case the worst happened. The watchdragon even put a hold on comings and goings to minimise the distraction of dragons appearing and disappearing overhead.

The unnatural hush just made things worse, L’stev thought, as he walked down the line of half-grown dragonets. Nerbeth and Lovanth were fidgeting, Kinnescath shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot, continually dislodging the fire-lizards trying to perch on his shoulders. Saperth was complaining about the fit of her harness. “Here,” L’stev said, stepping in to point out the strap that had twisted slightly in its keeper.

“Thank you, Weyrlingmaster,” Ivaryo said. She smoothed the strap. “There, Saperth, is that better?”

Jenavally was fussing with N’jen’s flying jacket. “…forget how cold it is between,” L’stev heard her say as he approached, and then she stepped back from her son, as if embarrassed to be singling him out.

L’stev didn’t comment. He moved on down the line. R’von was leaning against his bronze’s shoulder, his arms folded, and one foot cocked back against Oaxuth’s forearm, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He ignored L’stev, and L’stev ignored him right back.

They were ready. Every dragonet had passed muster and every rider had confirmed privately to L’stev that he or she wanted to proceed. Any further delay would do them more harm than good. “All right, Wildfires,” he said. “Mount up and wait for my signal.”

The dragonets were more than two-thirds their adult length, but still very visibly juvenile – all leg and wing and gawky frame without the musculature and bulk of maturity. R’von and N’jen both had to get their dragons to drop their shoulders to mount because they were getting so tall. Later in training, when the dragons had most of their height, L’stev would make them all try to mount without harness. It was a good way to put the bronze and brown riders in their place when they tried to vault up unaided and, inevitably, fell on their asses.

L’stev nodded to Jenavally. “You have the rest of them, Weyrlingmaster.”

Jenavally looked nervous. L’stev knew from experience that he didn’t. Ready? he asked Vanzanth, as he stepped onto his own dragon’s forearm and heaved his leg over his neck.

Yes.

L’stev strapped himself in, leaning back to yank on the safety strap as hard as he could in a habit that went back decades. He was pleased to see all seven weyrlings performing the same check. The last thing they needed was to fall off because they’d forgotten basic safety protocols. He pulled down his goggles and then, having glanced to see that the weyrlings were ready, he gave the signal to take off. Beneath him Vanzanth sprang aloft into the wind with the powerful kick that his forty-odd Turns had in no way diminished.

As the big brown dragon climbed to a travelling altitude several dragonlengths above the Rim, L’stev heard him declare their mission to the blue on forenoon watch. Wildfire Wing striking north in straight flight, returning between. The watchdragon bugled back an acknowledgement. He wishes us good flying and good luck.

The weyrlings had risen behind them. Vanzanth tilted on a wing to face north, then waited for them to follow suit before issuing a set of crisp commands. Loose wedge at cruising speed. Oaxuth, take offside point. Weyrlings, form up behind.

The cold air of altitude made a good counter to the heat of the sun as Vanzanth led the weyrlings north in the training formation, leaving a dragonlength between each pair. They didn’t have to fly for long – only far enough that Madellon was out of visual range and beyond the temptation of trying a blink jump – but the flight was the weyrlings’ last opportunity to concentrate and focus with nothing but themselves and their dragonets for company. It gave L’stev a few minutes to reflect, too. Mostly, he thought about how much he hated first between day.

Bring them into a holding stack, he told Vanzanth, when he thought enough minutes had passed, and his brown pivoted on a wingtip, taking the youngsters into the gentle circuit that would let them hold station.

Our destination is the Weyr, L’stev heard Vanzanth tell the dragonets. Show me your visualisations.

One by one they came through, transferred from weyrling to dragonet to Vanzanth to L’stev. Each was subtly different, but the shape of the Bowl was right, the outline of the lake within it, the Star Stones properly placed. One by one L’stev and Vanzanth approved the visuals that the weyrlings had been practising with their mentors: Oaxuth, Nedrith, Lovanth, Kinnescath, Saperth, Nerbeth, and finally Danementh.

There was nothing more L’stev could do. It was the most impotent feeling a Weyrlingmaster could ever experience. I hate this part, Van.

I know.

He took a long, slow breath. Give them the word.

Weyrlings, said Vanzanth. In your own time, you may go between to Madellon Weyr.

For a moment that seemed to stretch out forever, nothing happened. The seven dragonets remained there in the sky over Madellon’s north ranges, wheeling slowly in their holding pattern.

Then there were only six. L’stev let out the breath he’d been holding. Danementh was gone. As he watched, Nedrith vanished, then Saperth and Kinnescath disappeared almost at the same instant. Tell Hinnarioth they’re on their way, Vanzanth.

Nerbeth, Oaxuth, and Lovanth were still circling. L’stev kept half his attention on them as he tracked the time since the first dragonpair had gone between. He was surprised that Oaxuth hadn’t been first to go. A bronze usually was. But R’von’s dragon was still there, still wheeling.

Something was wrong.

A rivulet of sweat that had formed between L’stev’s shoulder blades under the fierce sun ran suddenly down his back like a ghostly finger. Report, Vanzanth. What’s the problem?

Vanzanth hesitated, listening in. The delay made more sweat break out under L’stev’s wherhides. Oaxuth is telling his rider he can’t do it.

What? Why? There’s nothing wrong with their visual.

Nerbeth says she can’t either. Vanzanth’s voice, usually so composed, had developed an uncharacteristic agitation. Lovanth…doesn’t want to go.

Is Oaxuth putting them off? L’stev demanded. He’d lost his count. Has Hinnarioth confirmed that the others have arrived?

No.

Something was very wrong.

L’stev hesitated only a fraction of a second longer. Then, “Abort jump!” he bellowed across the space between him and the circling weyrlings, making the urgent arm signal for the command as he did. Tell Oaxuth, Nerbeth, and Lovanth to abort and hold. They are not to go between!

To his relief the three weyrlings all made the signals for acknowledged, aborting, straightaway. They understand, Vanzanth reported. They have aborted jump.

We’re returning to the Weyr on the wing. Top speed. Abandon –

And then the keen began.

L’stev felt it through his legs and seat first, Vanzanth’s physical reaction, as the his brown drew in a great shuddering breath. The sound that emerged from his throat was dreadful, and made worse when the voices of the three dragonets clustered behind him rose in tragic harmony with it. L’stev clapped his hand to his head to muffle the terrible song of mourning, even though it resounded in his mind just as painfully as it did in his ears, and then Vanzanth spoke. Nedrith is no more. Saperth is no more. Danementh is no more.

L’stev reeled in his place. The fighting straps bit into his legs but he hardly felt them. All of them? he asked, incredulously, despairingly, clutching the fore-ridge to steady himself.

All, Vanzanth said. As he beat his wings for home, he wrapped his consciousness tight with L’stev’s. Should we jump back?

No. We stay with these three. L’stev almost couldn’t form words. What shaffing happened, Vanzanth? What did they do wrong?

They went between. They did not come out.

But why not? Their visuals were sound! What did we miss?

I don’t know, said Vanzanth. L’stev, I don’t know.

The watchdragon challenged them with a bark as they flew over the Rim, and a hundred other white-eyed dragons looked up from their ledges. Vanzanth ignored them all, instead leading his three surviving charges towards the training grounds and the scene that awaited them there.

Shimpath was standing protectively over a grey-hued dragonet. It took L’stev a moment to realise it was Kinnescath, his hide leached of all healthy colour and his eyes rolling red-flecked white. The senior queen was the only thing keeping the poor dragonet immobile as his limp, unconscious rider was lifted down from his neck.

The other dragonets huddled together in miserable heaps, obviously stunned, their riders clinging to them and to each other, faces white with shock and blotchy with tears. And in another vignette that would remain etched on L’stev’s memory for the rest of his life, Jenavally had collapsed within the protective circle of her green’s forepaws. The young queen, Berzunth had her wings spread gently over Hinnarioth, her head pressed to the green’s back. Her son is dead, L’stev realised, as he released his fighting straps to dismount. N’jen is dead.

S’terlion, R’von, and B’joro were climbing shakily down from their dragonets; so shakily, and with their beasts so distressed, that they were apt to break a leg. “H’nar! M’rany!” L’stev’s voice cracked as he shouted to the two closest weyrlings. “Get them down!” He strode up to Oaxuth’s shoulder as he spoke, and caught R’von as he half-slid, half-fell from the neck-ridges. Even in the full fighting gear of a dragonrider, R’von had never looked so young or so vulnerable, all the cocky attitude knocked out of him. He sagged in L’stev’s grasp, utterly devastated, and it was all L’stev could do not to crush his youngest son to him.

Other dragons were landing all around now, with and without their riders, all ashen with sorrow, humming with sympathy for the traumatised weyrlings. With them, inevitably, came Epherineth. Even mourning dragons moved aside for the senior bronze of Madellon, and so it was that a space opened up before L’stev where he stood between his own hunched and unhappy Vanzanth and R’von’s shivering Oaxuth.

T’kamen vaulted down from Epherineth’s neck. He’d always been a man to take seriously, even as a youth, but L’stev had never been on the receiving end of his displeasure. He straightened as best he could, still supporting R’von, and raised his gaze to meet the Weyrleader’s wrath.

But T’kamen just seized his arm hard enough to raise bruises through the wherhide. “What happened, L’stev?”

L’stev clenched his teeth together, twisting his lips into a grimace, fighting down the wretchedness. I failed them he wanted to say. They were my responsibility, and somehow, some way, I failed them.

But Vanzanth was there, and L’stev’s dragon shook off his own misery to deny him the refuge in guilt. You did not fail them, he said fiercely, dealing him a mental cuff. Report to the Weyrleader, L’stev.

L’stev took a deep breath, trying to organise his thoughts into an account. “We flew out to the north range,” he said. “Held position while Vanzanth took visuals from each of the dragonets, then gave permission for the weyrlings to return between to the Weyr. Standard protocol, same as it was in your day.” He despised himself even as he spoke, as if he were blameless. He must have missed something.

Then R’von spoke. “It was wrong,” he said haltingly. “Oaxuth said it was wrong as soon as Danementh went between. He didn’t want to follow him. He said he couldn’t see where to go. He was calling and calling to Danementh, and then he was gone.”

L’stev and T’kamen exchanged a look. T’kamen looked as lost as L’stev felt. “He said he couldn’t see where to go?” T’kamen asked R’von brusquely. “Your dragon couldn’t go between?”

“No – no.” R’von shook his head as if struggling to explain concepts he didn’t understand himself. “He didn’t want to. He said he had to keep me safe.”

T’kamen looked at L’stev. “And their visuals were sound?”

“All of them,” said L’stev. “Nothing to criticise. Vanzanth would have gone between on any one of them.” With an effort, he mustered his wits. “To lose one between to a bad visual, or a hasty jump, maybe, but not three. Not three, and three more unwilling or unable.”

“And the last one?” asked T’kamen.

L’stev had almost forgotten Kinnescath. “His rider…”

Unconscious, Vanzanth said. They were between too long. Kinnescath says…he couldn’t find a way out.

“Has something gone wrong with between?” L’stev asked incredulously.

T’kamen cocked his head, his eyes momentarily vague. “The watchdragon says that riders have been coming and going between all morning before he put a stop on movements. Do I need to –” Even as he spoke, a pair of greens winked in directly overhead. Epherineth sat up and bugled an enquiry at them. “I guess not. They say they’ve just come from Jessaf and between seems fine.”

L’stev stared out at the training ground. The Weyr Healer’s people were moving among the weyrlings now with cups of a mild sedative specifically formulated to calm and soothe. L’stev always had some on hand in case they lost a weyrling.

A weyrling. Not three.

He’d been prepared to lose someone. He’d been prepared since the moment they’d all Impressed. No matter how closely he watched them, no matter how strong a hand he took, no matter how cautiously he allowed them freedom, some of them always died. They died overflying, they died in collisions, they died flaming, and they died going between. But not like this. Even in L’stev’s darkest moments, in his most sweat-soaked nightmares, in the height of his cynical pessimism, he couldn’t have predicted a tragedy like this. N’jen would never cheek him again. Jenafa would never blush scarlet when they talked about green flights. Ivaryo would never again sneak out for an illicit tryst with a rider who should have known better. Their three – six – young lives were over, snuffed out in an instant. It was beyond his ability to comprehend.

L’stev released his son as H’nar came over with a journeyman and a cup of the sedative for him. R’von drank it all down in three shuddering gulps. Even then, he looked to T’kamen for permission to go before he left. The Weyrleader nodded curtly, and the two young bronze riders walked away, H’nar supporting his friend with an arm around his shoulders.

“Weyrlingmaster?” the Healer asked, offering him a mug. L’stev waved her away. There would be no comforting cups to calm or soothe him. A strong drink later, perhaps, but no solace in dreamless sleep.

“Is it the dragonets?” T’kamen asked softly.

L’stev looked sharply at him. It took him a breath to recognise the quality of fear on T’kamen’s face, the questions left unspoken, but still hanging in the air. Are they wrong? Are the offspring of my dragon defective? Is this my fault? He wished he had a reassuring answer, but all he could offer was honesty. “I don’t know. There’s no precedent for this, not in my time. I’ll look in the records…”

“No,” said T’kamen. “I’ll do it.” He set his jaw. “The last time I had someone else investigate something for me, C’los got killed. No. Your priority is the weyrlings.”

“T’kamen,” L’stev said roughly. “If you need me to resign…”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. T’kamen looked at him as if he’d gone stark raving mad. “Resign?”

L’stev squared his shoulders. “If there’s any chance this is my fault…any chance at all…”

“It’s not,” T’kamen told him. “It can’t be. Faranth, L’stev, you’re not resigning. I absolutely forbid it.”

“Weyrleader,” L’stev said, tucking his chin into his chest,  humbled by T’kamen’s faith in him.

T’kamen had already looked away from him. His gaze had fallen upon Berzunth, who was still comforting the distraught Hinnarioth. “What if it’s the dragonets?” He sounded stricken. “What if Epherineth’s dragonets are wrong?”

“They’re not,” L’stev told him. “They can’t be.”

But inside he felt nauseous. They can’t be, he repeated, for Vanzanth’s hearing only. But if they are…if something’s wrong with the dragonets, then we can never let Berzunth breed.

Chapter seven: T’kamen

Dreams form where the waking and sleeping minds meet: the strandline where the flotsam and jetsam of a day’s preoccupations wash up on the shore of the subconscious. There are those who would poke through that jumble of detritus in search of deeper meaning. A ridiculous pursuit. One may as well expect to find significance in the dregs of one’s morning klah.

– Master Healer Nezzine, Insomnia And Its Cures

100.02.22 - 100.02.23 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Valonna pleaded permission to join him in the Archives, and since Shimpath was still awake, watching over the frightened Kinnescath, T’kamen could find no reason to deny her.

Between them, they retrieved the records of every weyrling class since Madellon’s founding: less than a century’s worth of fading ink on progressively more cracked and brittle vellum. The evidence that the Archives still weren’t fit for purpose irritated T’kamen. It was a good thing that Madellon was so relatively young: anything older than a few decades would have been completely illegible.

They plunged into the pile of records regardless, working backwards from the present day. T’kamen skimmed over L’stev’s clutches, pausing at the class that had followed his own, which had lost three members in a single grim sevenday in 88. Those weyrlings had been experienced, though. Two had collided and the third had misjudged a blink jump, and aside from one other early death, the class as a whole had taken their between training well enough.

L’stev’s predecessor, D’hor, had quit his post as Weyrlingmaster shortly before T’kamen had been Searched to Madellon, and died not long after that. His handwriting was appalling, and T’kamen had to pull a glow-basket close to make out some of the words. “Listen to this,” he said, reading an account from 62. Valonna looked up as he read aloud from the hide. “‘All weyrlings now successful in going between with exception of LENIA (gr KIRGHATH) who persists in her refusal. Defronth has addressed the green, whose initial willingness has quite eroded in the face of her rider’s continued dread and who insists that she must (quote) keep her rider safe.’” T’kamen tapped the page for emphasis. “That’s almost exactly what R’von’s bronze said to him when he refused to go between with the others.”

“What happened to that green?” asked Valonna.

T’kamen leaned back over the record. “‘Jubilation! Kirghath has gone between, and though now much in want of a bath appears satisfied with her achievement.’”

“In want of…” Valonna began quizzically, and then stopped. “Oh.”

T’kamen turned the pages of the record carefully – even hides barely forty Turns old were showing signs of damage. “They…died, a month later, going between on a routine trip to Kellad.” He closed the wherhide-covered folder in a puff of dust. “Just a kid who never got over her fear of going between.”

He pulled the next record towards him, and when that one yielded nothing, the next, and the next, each hide more fragile than the last, and more dusty. By the time he started reading the records from Weyrlingmaster S’gal’s tenure seventy-odd Turns ago, he and Valonna were both sneezing, and neither of them had turned up anything useful.

“Thread blight it!” T’kamen burst out, when he reached the end of another chronicle so badly faded that in places it was totally unreadable. He shoved his chair back from the table and got up to pace around, rubbing his watering, itchy eyes.

“Perhaps we should stop,” Valonna ventured. “Start again in the morning after some sleep.”

“I’m not going to be doing any sleeping tonight, Valonna,” T’kamen said. He planted his hands on the record table and bent his head, staring at the useless, tattered records, feeling the muscles of his shoulders and neck tautening like steel cables. “The one good thing I thought we’d done, siring that clutch, and we’re three dragonets down already and Faranth knows how many more to come!”

He bit off the rest of what he wanted to say, already regretting saying it in front of Valonna. To her credit, she didn’t shrink away from him as she might have done a Turn ago. Instead, she lifted her chin and met his glare with eyes red and runny from dust. “If there’s one thing we’ve found in the records, Weyrleader, it’s that weyrlings die.” Her lip almost wobbled as she spoke, but she kept the tremor from her voice. “There were four in my class. Three in Shimpath’s first clutch. And every weyrling group we’ve read about in here has lost one in five, sometimes one in four dragonpairs.”

“Not like this,” said T’kamen. “Not three at once, all on first between day. Not with three others refusing to even try. There’s never been anything like this.  And how can L’stev ask any of the weyrlings to go between now when three of their classmates are dead?”

Valonna swallowed hard; clearly, she hadn’t thought of that. Still she persevered. “But Madellon’s a young Weyr. It’s never even seen a Pass. It might never have happened here, but…there are eight other Weyrs on Pern.”

T’kamen knew she was right, even as the thought of seeking help from the arrogant Peninsula Weyr, and insular Southern, made him balk. “I didn’t really think we’d find the answer in here.” He lowered himself back into a chair. “At least it’s three fewer dragons to feed.”

It was a horrible thing to say, as much for its blunt truth as for its callousness. Valonna looked down at her hands, biting her lip, but she didn’t look surprised. “It’s really so bad?”

“Worse.”

“The primary tithe…”

“The Holds won’t come up with everything we need. Why should they? What are we doing for them? What are we ever going to do for them?”

“What will we do?” Valonna asked quietly.

T’kamen raised his shoulders. “Eat less meat and fresh fruit, and more oats and barley and roots. Drink less wine and more watered-down klah. Do less drilling with firestone. Do less drilling in general, to save on harness hide. Cut the Weyr Crafters’ staff. Cut the stipend and find more paying work for dragonriders to do. Cut anything we can do without and then cut some things we can’t.”

“That…won’t be popular.”

“Then they can replace me in two or three Turns’ time when Shimpath rises again. That worked well enough the last time Madellon wanted a new Weyrleader.” She flinched at that; again, T’kamen regretted inflicting his bitterness on her. “We’re an Interval Weyr, Valonna. We have no leverage to make the Holds fall in line. A Weyr’s influence ebbs and flows with the Red Star, and right now the tide is so far out we can’t even see it. We’re never going to wield any power on Pern, Valonna, not in our lifetimes. We’re just…caretakers, marking time until the next Pass. If we’re remembered for anything, it’ll be for losing three of our weyrlings in one morning.”

“It wasn’t your fault, T’kamen.”

He shook his head. “I wish I could be so sure.”

For thoroughness’ sake they finished skimming through the weyrling files, right back to Madellon’s very first clutch. It was beginning to get light by the time they replaced the records on their shelf, leaving the table smeared with dust and scattered with fragments of vellum that had flaked off the ageing hides, and T’kamen sent Valonna off to seek her bed.

Tired though he was, he couldn’t imagine being able to sleep. He went to the dining hall for klah, stepping softly to leave the duty kitchen girl undisturbed where she slept with her head down on a table. There was a fresh stain on the floor, and the wreckage of several chairs in the firewood bin by the small hearth, silent evidence of the fight that had kicked off after the evening meal. It wasn’t unusual for riders to get drunk and angry when a dragonpair died, and the two blue riders hadn’t done each other any serious damage, but T’kamen wished they hadn’t broken the furniture. Furniture had to be replaced. Furniture was expensive.

Epherineth appeared to be asleep on his ledge, but T’kamen knew he wasn’t. As he wearily climbed the steps to their weyr, the bronze lifted his head. Then he stretched out his right forearm in mute invitation.

“I don’t think I could sleep, Epherineth.”

Then don’t sleep. Just come and be with me.

“Just for a minute.” He stretched himself out on his dragon’s arm, propping his head on Epherineth’s bicep and extending his legs towards his wrist, as he so often had once, as he so seldom had since becoming Weyrleader. Epherineth carefully laid his head down alongside him. T’kamen watched as the whirling facets of his dragon’s eye, a duller blue than usual, slowed imperceptibly, slowed with his breathing, until the translucent first eyelid slid down and dulled the hue still further, and the rise and fall of his chest, transmitted through his muscles to where T’kamen lay, became deep and measured and rhythmical.

“End of the line,” said C’los.

T’kamen glanced sideways at him. “Speak for yourself.”

“I’m speaking for you.”

“Well, don’t.”

“Suit yourself.”

They jogged on, side by side on the soft moss of the runner traces. There were fire-lizards in the branches above. They peered down with eyes like burning coals, and their tails twined around the trunks of the trees, impossibly long.

T’kamen hurdled a stream that cut across their path. C’los ignored it, splashing through. “Keep up, Los.”

“I’m already way ahead of you,” C’los said, from behind.

T’kamen stopped, turned around, jogging on the spot to let him catch up, but C’los was dropping back through the trees. “It’s all right,” he shouted. “You carry on. It’s a relay, not a sprint.”

There was something crashing through the conifers, parallel to the traces. T’kamen caught a glimpse of it through the closely-packed trees. It seemed to be gold.

“Don’t mind her!” C’los called. “She’ll find her own way. You have to keep running. Pern won’t stop just because you have!”

“I don’t want to leave you behind,” T’kamen insisted. He began to push back through the trees, forcing his way through trunks that had closed in behind him. The bark was smooth and warm against his palms. “Los? C’los?”

The impenetrable trees wouldn’t let him pass. He seized a trunk with both hands to tear it aside.

Katel gurgled up at him, his face slack as T’kamen’s hands squeezed around his throat.

“No!” he shouted, and leapt back.

“Don’t you want to finish the job properly this time?” Katel rasped, blood foaming on his mouth.

There was blood on T’kamen’s hands. “No. No. I didn’t do this.” He wiped his palms frantically, smearing gore. “This isn’t how it –”

T’kamen.

He opened his eyes. Epherineth’s nose was poised lightly over his chest, his head blocking out most of the daylight.

Then T’kamen started fully awake, almost sliding off his dragon’s forearm in his disorientation. “Faranth! What watch is it?”

The forenoon watchdragon has just come on duty.

“Sharding...!” He scrambled to his feet, passing a hand over his face, trying to collect himself. His intended five-minute rest had turned into three hours. “What’s the status of the weyrlings? Has Kinnescath’s rider woken up yet?”

Shimpath says no. The weyrlings aren’t awake yet. It’s still early, T’kamen.

“Not on the rest of Pern it isn’t.” Madellon was the most westerly of all the Weyrs. It would be almost noon at the Peninsula, late afternoon at Southern, and he’d have to look at a table to find out the time difference at the northern Weyrs. A reference chart, too; it had been a very long time since he’d had any reason to go north.

But Madellon’s immediate needs still took priority. He hadn’t cleared down his desk the previous night, and the Attention pile was teetering. He started to go through the heap of slates and hides, then gave up. He wished he could just divide the stack between Sh’zon and H’ned and see how they coped with it, but he couldn’t. Instead, he sat looking at a slate on which he’d written Assistant Weyrlingmaster.

Jenavally’s youngest son was among the dead, and Jenavally herself was distraught, grief-stricken, heartbroken. She was in no state to continue as L’stev’s assistant, but T’kamen didn’t want to leave the weyrlings unsupported. L’stev kept his deep concern for his weyrlings hidden under a thick carapace of grumpiness, and it had always fallen to his assistant to be the approachable one. T’kamen recalled H’ben, the good-natured blue rider who had been assistant Weyrlingmaster to his own class, with great fondness. If he’d still been alive he would have asked him to step in, at least until Jenavally felt ready to come back. But H’ben had passed away Turns ago, and T’kamen was at a loss to know who among Madellon’s current serving riders could step into the role. L’stev was fussy about his assistants, and any suggestion would be his to veto, but T’kamen doubted if the Weyrlingmaster had had time to think about replacing Jenavally yet.

Half an hour later, he finally wrote a single name under the heading. Then he picked up the slate and left for the barracks.

Some of the youngsters were up and about now, washing their dragonets by the lake, wiping them down with oily rags. A blue lay on the grass of the weyrling paddock with a freshly-killed wherry before him. He worried at it in a half-hearted manner until one of his sisters approached hopefully, prompting him to bite the dead bird’s head off with a snap and tug the rest of the carcass possessively between his forearms. The adolescent behaviour almost made T’kamen smile, but the dragonets were still subdued, quieter than young dragons should be, and dull of hide when the bright sunlight should have made them shine.

Shimpath was nowhere to be seen, but Vanzanth, watching the dragonets from where he hunched on his ledge, turned to look at T’kamen as he approached. “He’s in?” he asked.

L’stev’s brown flipped his head towards the entrance to the Weyrlingmaster’s weyr and office. T’kamen took that as a yes, even as he heard L’stev shout, “Come in, Weyrleader,” from within.

“I sent Shimpath to eat something,” he said, without preamble, when T’kamen entered the office. L’stev never looked cheerful – his face didn’t bend that way – but his demeanour was gloomier than usual. He waved at a chair. “She was up all night keeping Kinnescath calm. Berzunth’s taken over, but we can’t rely on her for long. It’s hard on any dragon, and she’s scarcely more than a hatchling herself.”

“And Kinnescath?”

“Calmer than he was, but G’dra…” L’stev sighed. “Isnan’s people say his lips were blue when they got him down. Hy-pox-ia,” he enunciated the word carefully, “they call it, when the body’s short of air.”

“How long were they between?”

L’stev shrugged. “Three minutes, perhaps.”

“Three minutes? What in Faranth’s name were they doing for three minutes?”

“Whatever the others were.” There was a dullness to L’stev’s voice. “Maybe G’dra was just lucky and hung on long enough for Kinnescath to find a way through.”

T’kamen sat down in one of the chairs opposite L’stev’s desk, baffled and disturbed. He’d never been between for half a minute, let alone three. The thought of those weyrlings finding themselves trapped there, in that cold, dark emptiness, unable to breathe, unable to get out, made him shudder. He made himself consider the situation logically. “Then they went between well enough, but couldn’t get out?”

“Seems that way,” L’stev agreed. “But that still leaves the three who wouldn’t jump at all.”

“Wouldn’t or couldn’t?”

L’stev shrugged again. “I don’t know, T’kamen. R’von’s bronze insists it wasn’t safe to jump. The blue and the green might have been taking their lead from him. But I don’t know if Oaxuth knew that the three already between were in trouble, or if he had his own sense that something was wrong.” He spread his hands. “We just don’t know enough about between, not really. All we contribute to our dragons is a good picture of where we want to go. They do the rest, and you try getting anything useful out of Epherineth to explain the how and why of it.”

Epherineth? Can you tell me what happens when you go between?

I jump. We are between. Epherineth sounded troubled. We come out where you want to go.

“He’s telling you that he goes between in one place and appears somewhere else, isn’t he?” L’stev asked. “That’s as much as Vanzanth could manage, too. Useless old wherry. Fact is, even if we did understand, it wouldn’t help. A Healer could tell you how your heart pumps blood around your body. Doesn’t mean he could tell you how to make it start again if it stopped.” He brooded. “Valonna said you went through the weyrling records. Could have told you there was nothing in there.”

“We had to start somewhere,” said T’kamen. “I’m going to call on the other Weyrs, ask to study their records. This must have happened before somewhere.”

“North as well as south?” L’stev asked, and when T’kamen nodded, he shook his head. “Just as well. You’ll get nothing from Southern. Waste of time you even going there. S’gert’s a foul-tempered old tail-fork even for a Southerner.”

“It won’t be my first stop,” T’kamen said. “What about the Weyrlingmaster at the Peninsula?”

“F’dalger,” said L’stev. “He won’t be much use either. A bronze rider never makes a good Weyrlingmaster.”

“I seem to remember you telling me that a couple of Turns ago,” said T’kamen.

“I didn’t turn you down as my assistant because you were a bronze rider,” said L’stev. “I turned you down because you would have been shit. No. F’dalger’s too privileged to care enough about the junior colours. The Peninsula’s all about its bronzes and browns.”

“There has to be another Weyrlingmaster somewhere on Pern who can help me,” said T’kamen.

L’stev thought about it. “Fort would have the oldest records, but K’lay won’t be much help: he’s well past his best Turns. New fellow just started at Benden with their last clutch; don’t know him, but could be young enough to be amenable.” He frowned. “Go to B’reko at High Reaches. And don’t judge him because he’s a green rider or…well, for any of his other unconventionalities. He’s been in the job longer than I have, and he’s seen it all. Take him some orangefruit. It’s still winter in the High Reaches and it’ll put the old bugger in an amenable mood.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said T’kamen. He paused. “The leave-taking for the three we’ve lost…”

L’stev screwed up his face. “I’ll take care of it.” He lifted a stack of flattened hides and pushed them across the desk. “Put your mark on these.”

The white hide was the best quality they had, and even before T’kamen set eyes on the first sentence, he knew what they were. Part of him didn’t want to read them, but he made himself anyway.

…A caring girl who took all her responsibilities very seriously. Her many friends will miss her greatly…

L’stev had already made his mark beneath his name at the bottom of each notice. T’kamen borrowed pen and ink from his desk to sign his own name and Epherineth’s on each of the three. L’stev took them back, blowing carefully on the ink before letting the scrolls roll themselves up. “I’ll ask Valonna to sign these, and then I’ll need a senior bronze rider to deliver them.” He raised a finger. “Not you. Someone they’d think twice about thumping.”

“Thanks,” T’kamen said caustically. His eyes strayed to the hide bearing tidings of N’jen’s death. “Who will that one go to?”

“His father,” said L’stev. “Jenavally fostered him off to Jessaf when he was a babe. Not that it makes this any easier on her.”

“No.”

“Her weyrmate’s looking after her.” L’stev made an odd shape with his mouth. “Could’ve been worse for you. Could’ve been me.”

“The bronze is your son, isn’t he?” T’kamen asked. “R’von.”

“Not as he’d like to admit it. Always been more Crauva’s than mine.”

“He looks like you,” T’kamen said.

“That’s probably why he hates me so much. You don’t have any children, do you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, take a piece of advice from a father of seven. Don’t have sons. You’ll disappoint them, and they’ll resent you.”

L’stev’s black mood put even T’kamen’s to shame. “He blames you?” T’kamen asked.

“Why not?” L’stev asked. “I just got three of his friends killed.”

“You didn’t get anyone killed,” said T’kamen. “It wasn’t –”

“My fault? Huh. If I had a mark for every time someone’s told me that.”

“And you think the riders of this Weyr wouldn’t want you hung out for Thread if they believed differently?” T’kamen asked. “You think I wouldn’t? I’ve talked to the Wingseconds who mentored the ones who died. They’re all blaming themselves, too. But they were certain those kids were ready. They were certain they knew what they were doing. You and Vanzanth weren’t the only ones who checked their visuals, L’stev. The fault isn’t with your training.” He studied L’stev’s face, looking for any twitch of those graphic features that would indicate he’d got through to him. “If you could go back to before yesterday, is there anything you would have done differently?”

“Don’t even suggest that,” said L’stev, with a giant nostril-flare of alarm. “No,” he admitted, after a moment. “I did everything exactly as I always have.”

“Then stop taking it on yourself. I don’t need you dragging around guilt that doesn’t belong to you.”

“You’re right,” said L’stev, after a pause. “But it’s not yours, either.” He stabbed a stubby finger towards T’kamen. “If I’m not at fault, you sure as shards aren’t either.”

T’kamen had to look aside from L’stev’s glare. “I want you to have the Dragon-healer look at the dragonets,” he said. “Full exams. If there’s anything different about them – anything wrong…”

“There’s nothing wrong with those dragonets, T’kamen,” L’stev told him.

“Then why couldn’t they go between?” It burst from him like a tongue of flame. “What’s the matter with them? Half of them wouldn’t even try!” His mouth went dry. The fear he hadn’t spoken aloud to anyone was caught in his throat. He didn’t want to spit it out, but he didn’t know if he could swallow it back.

Say it, said Epherineth.

I’m not going to do that to you, Epherineth.

If what you fear is true, not speaking it won’t make it any less true. Say it, T’kamen. Even if it hurts.

It did hurt. It hurt them both. “If the dragonets are wrong,” he said, “then they’re wrong because of Epherineth.”

L’stev didn’t scoff at him. T’kamen wished he had. The Weyrlingmaster just looked at him, measuring him with his eyes. “All right,” he said. “Walk me through that thinking.”

T’kamen couldn’t bear to be sitting down any longer. He stood up, pacing around L’stev’s office. “The dragons from Shimpath’s first clutch are normal. So the problem hasn’t come from her side. It’s only the sire who’s different.” He found he was clenching his teeth. He made himself stop. “If there’s a flaw, it’s come from their father.”

“Their father, the last time I checked, could go between just fine,” L’stev pointed out. “And Epherineth and Pierdeth were clutchmates. Brothers. As similar to each other as two bronzes could be.”

“You know that isn’t true,” said T’kamen. “You know they were never anything like each other.” He stared at the rolled vellum of the death notices on L’stev’s desk. “He sired a queen, L’stev,” he said, softly. “A queen. If we’ve bred a queen who can’t go between…”

“You don’t know that,” said L’stev. “Berzunth hasn’t even been tried.”

But something in his tone told T’kamen that the Weyrlingmaster had already considered the possibility that Epherineth’s queen daughter was as flawed as her clutchmates. “I don’t have any children. I don’t know that I ever will. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about…” He searched for the right words. “About what I leave behind. About the legacy I leave to Madellon. To Pern. I thought that Berzunth would be our legacy. Our immortality. Epherineth’s, and mine. The lasting difference we’d make.” He felt his mouth twist in a smile that mocked, bitterly, his own grandiosity. “And maybe she still is our legacy. If she can’t go between, and if she passes that on to her offspring…”

“That’s enough of that, T’kamen.” L’stev’s voice sliced through his agonising, and for a moment, T’kamen wasn’t the Weyrleader; he was a weyrling, being told to stop wallowing in self-pity. “You’re seeing burrows before the Thread has even fallen. Let’s deal with what’s in front of us right now before we worry about what might be in the future.”

He was right. T’kamen dragged his mind out of the sucking bog of despair, and cast about for something else to occupy his thoughts. Then he remembered the slate he’d brought from his own office. “Have you given any thought to someone to stand in for Jenavally?”

“Not much,” L’stev admitted. “Not many I like enough to consider. Why, did you have someone in mind?”

T’kamen pushed his slate, with its single name, over to him.

L’stev looked at it. He frowned, deeply at first, and then less intensely. “Really?”

“I was trying to think of a green rider who’d suit,” T’kamen said, “but Jenavally is a difficult act to follow. And I was thinking of H’ben...”

“Faranth, H’ben,” said L’stev. “I miss him still.” He squinted at the slate as if staring harder at the name would give him extra insight. “All being equal, do you think he’s up to it?”

“I think if any job in this Weyr has a chance of restoring the rider he used to be, it’s this one.”

“The rumours about him are true, then?” L’stev asked.

“What have you heard?”

L’stev gave him a knowing look. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“He’s just lost his way,” said T’kamen. “He needs someone to put a boot up his backside, and Faranth knows I don’t have the heart to do it.”

“Boots and backsides,” said L’stev. He almost cracked a grin. “My specialities.” Then he went serious again. “You want to put responsibility for my weyrlings in the hands of a drunk and a letch?”

“He’s not either, L’stev.”

“No,” L’stev conceded. “He’s not.” He rubbed his chin. “Have you asked him?”

“Not yet. I wanted to run it past you first.”

L’stev didn’t look convinced, but at last he nodded. “Ask him. If he’s interested, send him to see me. No promises.”

T’kamen got up to leave. “Will the rest of them be all right?” he asked, inclining his head in the direction of the door.

“The dragonets will forget, same as our fellows will,” said L’stev. “The riders…well, we’ve all lost friends. Part of a dragonrider’s lot.”

“And their between training? How will you go about getting them to try again?”

L’stev smiled. It was a mirthless expression. “On that, T’kamen,” he said, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

Chapter eight: C’mine

All dragonets share a special bond with their clutchmates. It is not always a friendly connection – sibling rivalries often turn out to be the most bitter of all – but every class of weyrlings forms its own semi-exclusive community within the Weyr’s society. As the dragonets mature and begin to interact with older dragons, becoming part of the Weyr’s wider consciousness, their juvenile bonds become less central. But dragons under one Turn of age are still heavily reliant on each other, and very reluctant to allow outsiders into their private club.

– Weyrlingmaster K’dove, On Dragonet Development

100.02.23 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Wing drill was cancelled.

The word came down from Valth, F’halig’s brown, near the end of the morning watch, when most of the riders of the Weyrleader’s Wing – most of the riders of Madellon – were probably still lost to the world, still sleeping the sodden sleep of the grief-stricken, the heartsick, and the intoxicated.

That he was probably the only sober rider in a drunken and mourning Weyr struck C’mine as both ironic and absurd, but – as Darshanth kept reminding him, long beyond the point at which his short dragon memory should have forgotten all about it – a promise was a promise.

He lay in bed, awake, as he had all night, with his face to the wall, and the question his treacherous brain had been turning over and over for hours still plaguing him. What hurt worse: the deaths of three weyrlings, or the keening for another that their loss so painfully echoed?

Madellon didn’t lose dragonriders very often. There’d been no serious sickness in Turns, and the Weyr’s Healers were good at treating the coughs and colds of the changing seasons. The riders who made it to retirement in their seventh and eighth decades didn’t often stay at the Weyr when there were other, more temperate places they could go to see out their last Turns, away from the bitter winters and stifling summers of Madellon territory. The loss of Janina and Amynth, elderly though they’d been, had come out of nowhere, and that aside, yesterday’s triple tragedy had been the first time the dragons of Madellon had keened one of their number between in months.

Since Hatching day.

C’mine knew he should have been more affected by the loss of the weyrlings themselves, but when Darshanth had supplied their names – Danementh, Saperth, Nedrith – he hadn’t recognised any of them. He couldn’t put a face to any of the dead. He hadn’t known them. They’d been born and lived and died without his knowing them. Now he would never know them – and yet the world still turned. The sun had still risen at its allotted hour. C’los and Indioth were still dead.

He didn’t know what time it was – certainly well into forenoon, though the changes of watch had taken place in sombre silence since the accident – when a dragon landed on the ledge outside with a snap of wingsail and the scrape of talons on rock. It even took him several moments to realise that it was a visitor. Darshanth had gone up to the Rim to catch the morning sun, and the dragon who had just touched down on the ledge was much bigger and heavier than a blue.

There was only one dragon at Madellon whose rider would ignore C’mine’s widely-acknowledged desire for privacy in his weyr.

Epherineth, Darshanth confirmed.

Alarm banished C’mine’s dismal torpor as nothing else could have. Shards! He rolled out of bed and onto the floor, snaring himself in a crumpled sheet. Untangling it cost several precious seconds. And he’d only just had time to yank the curtain across the other sleeping alcove, concealing the star charts and maps and notes tacked to the wall and strewn all over the bed, when, without invitation, T’kamen came striding in.

“So you are awake,” he said, and then halted, looking oddly at him. “Faranth; put some clothes on. I nearly sent Valonna over.”

“She would have knocked,” said C’mine, but he found a pair of shorts on the floor and pulled them on.

T’kamen was looking around the weyr, taking in the details C’mine hadn’t wanted anyone to see. “It stinks in here,” he said. “I’ll have Crauva send someone up to clean –”

“No, T’kamen,” C’mine said quickly, “don’t. Please. I don’t want anyone touching anything.”

“Why not? It’s not like you’re preserving it as it was when he was here. Even he wouldn’t have let your weyr get this disgusting.” T’kamen turned over a pile of discarded riding leathers with one foot, uncovering a plate containing a half-eaten, half-rotten meatroll. “This is foul, C’mine. You’re lucky you haven’t got vermin.”

C’mine had twice found tunnel-snakes in his weyr, but he wasn’t about to admit to that. Darshanth, at least, had disposed of the evidence. “I didn’t think there was Wing drill today.”

“There isn’t. Faranth knows I don’t need hungover riders killing themselves in close formation manoeuvres. It’s not why I’m here.” T’kamen pointed at the alcove where, in another lifetime, C’mine’s clothes had hung clean and neat and tidy. “Get dressed. I’ll be in the other room. And don’t take all day about it.”

Sometimes there was no reasoning with T’kamen. C’mine dressed in silence. But when the first few notes, picked experimentally and slightly out of tune, floated through from the living area of the weyr, anger and outrage surged up in a flood that made Darshanth, even at his physical and emotional remove, flinch away from him.

C’mine rushed through, his shirt still half unbuttoned. “Put her down!”

T’kamen looked up from where he’d rested C’los’ gitar on his lap, unmoved. “You’ve let her go out of tune.” He turned two of the tuning heads, strummed a chord, readjusted the high E-string and played the chord again. “Do you know how long it’s been since I picked up a gitar?”

“Put her down,” C’mine repeated. He could feel the blood pulsing through the veins in his temples. “Put her down now.”

T’kamen just looked at him from over the beautiful gitar that had cost C’los more marks to have crafted than most dragonriders made in a Turn. Then, unhurriedly, he rose and placed the instrument back on its stand. As he turned back towards C’mine, he wiped dust from his hands. “Sit down.”

“You have no right –”

“I said sit down.”

C’mine sat.

T’kamen glowered down at him. He wasn’t a tall man, or a big one, but he had a black, black temper when provoked, and braver riders than C’mine had quailed beneath his glare. “I’ve had enough of this whershit from you. Enough of tiptoeing around you, enough of worrying what you’re going to do to yourself, enough of not even saying his name because I’m afraid of what new pit of despair you’ll hurl yourself into if I do. Do you hear me? I’ve had it up to here!” He took a breath, and then he said it. “C’los is dead, C’mine. He’s dead, and I’m sorry, and I wish there was something I could do, but he’s gone and no amount of self-indulgent breast-beating is going to bring him back!”

C’mine recoiled from the truth he’d wanted never to hear from T’kamen. He wasn’t even aware of the words that came from his own mouth until he heard them. “I can’t live without him, T’kamen!”

“Yes you can,” T’kamen said. It was cold, hard. “And if you have an ounce of decency you’ll go grovelling to Darshanth for forgiveness right now that you could even think such a thing. Faranth’s shaffing teeth, C’mine. We lost three weyrlings yesterday. Six lives ended before they’d barely started. I have a fourth kid unconscious and his dragonet terrified that he’s never going to wake up. And you sit there, a dragonrider, Darshanth’s rider, and say you can’t live without your precious sharding weyrmate.” His lip curled with disgust. “If it’s so unbearable, why don’t you just take yourself between and be done with the whole thing?”

The callousness of it shocked C’mine. “Darshanth wouldn’t –”

“You’re shaffing right he wouldn’t. And thank Faranth that one of you still feels some duty of care for the other. Darshanth doesn’t deserve what you’re doing to him. He’s done nothing wrong – except choose you, in the first place. He could have had anyone that day. Any one of us out of thirty, forty kids. He chose you. He wanted you. And this is how you’re repaying him. With neglect and with abuse.”

“I’d never abuse him!” C’mine protested.

“You already are! Do you think he enjoys sharing your despair? Do you think he wants to be pitied by other dragons? Do you think he likes having Valth bite his head off over your conduct? You’re so self-absorbed, so wrapped up in your own misery, that you’ve forgotten that you’re responsible for his happiness as well as your own. It isn’t fair. You can’t ask a dragon to understand that kind of grief. Faranth, C’mine, Darshanth doesn’t even remember him. As far as he’s concerned, C’los is just the name of the vortex that’s been sucking your joy and your energy and your life for as long as he can remember.”

C’mine wanted to deny it. He wanted to deny all of it. But Darshanth had been listening silently, and when he appealed to him for support, he didn’t respond. He simply, sadly, radiated agreement with everything T’kamen had said.

Despairing, C’mine dropped his head on his forearms. A moment later he felt T’kamen’s hand land hard on his shoulder. He looked up at him, seeing the concern and frustration that lay beneath his oldest friend’s anger. “What do you want me to do, Kamen? I can’t just…turn it off. I can’t forget him. I can’t pretend he was never here. And the only thing I can do to make the pain go away is –”

He bit off what he was about to confess. T’kamen’s grip tightened on his shoulder. “Drink yourself into unconsciousness?” he asked. “Send Darshanth after every other green? Is a few hours’ relief worth the price you’re paying for it? You found some peace once, C’mine. You need to find it again. I know it hurts when another dragon dies. I know it’s like losing him all over again. But you’ve let this go on too long. And so have I.” He glared down at C’mine, and the set of his jaw became determined. “As of right now, you’re no longer required at Wing drills or meetings.”

What? Darshanth demanded.

C’mine heard himself echoing his dragon. “What?” He stared at T’kamen, thunderstruck. “You’re throwing us out of the Wing?”

T’kamen folded his arms. “You’ve been a liability to yourself and to the rest of us for sevendays. You’re not turning up on time, you’re not paying attention when you do deign to appear, and the last thing I need is another Sejanth. The responsibilities of a fighting blue rider clearly aren’t enough to make you concentrate, and I won’t have that kind of attitude in my Wing. Any of my Wings.”

C’mine had thought he couldn’t feel any worse than he already did, but the shame of being dismissed from the fighting Wings proved him wrong. “You’re sending us out to watchride for a Hold.”

“That’s one alternative.” T’kamen regarded him with neither sympathy nor mercy. “There’s another possibility.”

“The Ops Wing?” C’mine asked, seizing on the idea. “We could do that. Darshanth wanted to. We could –”

“No.” T’kamen cut him off. “I might not like M’ric, but I’m not about to inflict you on him, either.” He paused. “Do you even know which of the weyrlings died yesterday?”

It was too incongruous a segue for C’mine to follow. “Darshanth told me their names,” he said. “I didn’t know them. They weren’t any of ours.”

“That makes it all right then,” T’kamen said. His voice was sharp with sarcasm. “Well, maybe this will put things into perspective for you. The brown rider, N’jen. He was Jenavally’s son.”

“Oh,” C’mine said. “Oh, Faranth.”

“He was fourteen Turns old,” T’kamen went on relentlessly. “Just a kid. Now he’s a dead kid. Perhaps you’ll have some idea of how Jena’s feeling right about now.”

If Jenavally’s grief for her son was anything like C’mine’s for C’los, then he had a very good idea of the anguish she could expect in the coming sevendays and months and Turns. “Is she all right?”

“No,” said T’kamen. “She’s not all shaffing right.” He let that truth have a moment to sink in, and then went on. “You know she was L’stev’s assistant.”

C’mine remembered that much from before Hatching day. Jenavally had been the Weyr Singer for Turns, but she’d been excited about helping to train the new group of weyrlings. He remembered discussing her appointment with C’los, remembered how they’d lamented that their informal band, already diminished by one with T’kamen too busy to play with them, would probably be reduced to their two gitars and A’len’s drums. “Yes.”

“She’s in no state to continue right now. She probably won’t be for a while. And I can’t leave L’stev unsupported at a time like this.”

T’kamen’s inference registered with C’mine all at once. “You want…me…?”

“It might just be the most idiotic idea I’ve had since I became Weyrleader,” T’kamen said coolly.

“L’stev wouldn’t have me,” C’mine said. He couldn’t let himself consider the prospect seriously. “If he found out what I’ve been…”

“Don’t be naïve,” said T’kamen. “L’stev’s not stupid. He’s well aware of what you’ve been up to.”

C’mine doubted that, but he went on anyway. “He wouldn’t let me anywhere near them. He’s always been protective of his weyrlings.”

T’kamen gave him a hard look. “Stop objecting on his behalf and tell me if you’re interested or not.”

Yes, Darshanth said. There was something that might have been hope in his voice. Maybe even excitement. Yes. We could work with the weyrlings. We could be good at that.

“Darshanth wants to,” C’mine said.

“That doesn’t surprise me. Darshanth’s still a reflection of the rider he chose when he Hatched.” T’kamen’s tone was caustic. “What about you?”

C’mine raised his eyes to T’kamen’s, stricken. “What about Leah?”

“What about her?”

“She’s his daughter.”

“There was a time when she was as good as yours, too,” T’kamen said. “But if she’s a problem, then this conversation ends here, and you’re going to Jessaf.”

“No,” C’mine said quickly. Then he hesitated for a long moment before continuing. “No. She’s not a problem. It’s just…”

“It’s just what?”

“What if something happened to her, too?”

“Wouldn’t you like to be in a position where you can try to make sure it doesn’t?” T’kamen let out his breath, and for the first time C’mine noticed how tired he looked. There were bluish-black shadows under his eyes, and he was holding his shoulders straight only with conscious effort. “We don’t know what went wrong yesterday. The weyrlings who couldn’t go between are traumatised, and the rest of them are terrified out of their wits. L’stev needs an assistant, but more importantly than that, the kids need support.”

“And you think I’d be able to give it to them?” C’mine asked. He couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice.

“I know you’re able. I just don’t know if you’re willing. Or if you’d rather sit on a fireheight and feel sorry for yourself.”

Yes. Darshanth spoke to both of them. Yes. We’re willing. We will try and more than try. We will help the weyrlings.

T’kamen winced, putting a hand to his temple. “Could you ask him not to do that, C’mine? No offence to Darshanth, but it goes through my skull like a toothache when someone else’s dragon talks to me.”

“I’m sorry, Kamen.”

He shook his head. “Is he speaking for you both?”

C’mine realised that he didn’t know. “Maybe it’s time he did.”

T’kamen narrowed his eyes. “You need to make this work, Mine. If L’stev won’t have you, or if he decides you’re not fit to be around the weyrlings, I will have H’ned roster you out to Jessaf. I don’t think it would make you any happier, but I don’t know what else to try. Leaving you alone doesn’t seem to have done you any good.”

“I never wanted to be a burden to you, T’kamen.”

“Then don’t be. L’stev’s expecting you. It’s up to you to convince him you’re the right man for the job. You understand?”

Perhaps it was just Darshanth’s optimism, bleeding through their bond, but for the first time in a long time C’mine felt as if a narrow sliver of sunlight had slipped through a crack in his despair. “I…understand.”

They walked together out onto the ledge. Darshanth had come down from the Rim, and he and Epherineth turned their heads in unison to watch them. The two dragons didn’t look at all alike, but they were clutchmates who had hatched within minutes of each other, brothers who had always been close, and in that instant their expressions were identical. It gave C’mine’s a moment’s pause, and he looked again at T’kamen. He understood Darshanth’s anxiety for him, but Epherineth looked no less concerned about his own rider. “Are you all right, Kamen?”

T’kamen laughed. “Do I look all right?”

“Not really,” C’mine said.

“Imagine that.” T’kamen passed a hand over his face. “I won’t be around much for a couple of days. There’s no precedent in our records for what happened yesterday, so I’m going begging to the other Weyrs. But when I’m back…” He sighed. “When I’m back, we’ll talk. You and me. Like we always used to. You’re not the only one who needs to spend more time with other people.” He turned to mount Epherineth, then addressed C’mine from over his shoulder. “And get this place cleaned up by then so I don’t have to pull rank with Crauva. Her women have enough to do.”

“Yes sir,” C’mine replied meekly.

“Keep the ‘sirs’ for L’stev.” T’kamen stepped onto Epherineth’s forearm, took hold of the fore-strap, and vaulted up to his place on the bronze dragon’s neck. “You’ll need them.”

C’mine stood back, and Darshanth swung his tail out of the way, as Epherineth launched himself off the ledge. He spread his wings, found a thermal to lift him, then banked away at a dramatic angle towards his own weyr.

Darshanth watched him go, then swivelled his head around to look at C’mine. His eyes had gone a blue only a few shades darker than his hide. Vanzanth is waiting.

For an instant, the doubt returned in a rush. “Should we even be –”

Yes. We should. Darshanth pushed C’mine towards his weyr with his nose. Get dressed. Vanzanth is not yet angry with me. I would like to keep it that way.

Shimpath was on the training grounds, surrounded by dragonets. One especially piteous brown lay almost across her forepaws. The others, even the young queen, huddled close, taking comfort from their mother’s presence. And behind them, nearly indistinguishable from the moss-covered outcrop of rock that had been his observation perch for as long as C’mine could remember, Vanzanth watched over queen and dragonets with a morose expression.

The brown dragon didn’t turn his head, but Darshanth reported, He says I may land beside him.

Darshanth’s respect for Vanzanth comprised equal parts loyalty, awe, and fear, and no amount of maturity or seniority was ever likely to change it. He wasn’t alone. Vanzanth had trained every dragon hatched at Madellon for the last fifteen Turns. Even Epherineth still deferred to the grizzled brown who could make queens and bronzes cower with a single censorious look.

L’stev didn’t instil quite the same instinctive submission in Madellon’s riders as Vanzanth did in their dragons. When he had no weyrling class to terrorise, he was genial company. His withering sense of humour was tempered by the deep compassion that ran beneath the brusque and grumpy surface, and by the wisdom gathered over forty Turns as a dragonrider. He and C’los had enjoyed a vitriolic acquaintance, baiting and bickering, deliberately antagonising each other, that C’mine had never completely understood. C’los had been like that. C’mine’s friendship with L’stev had always been more conventional. He liked him, and he trusted him, as a man and as a rider. But he wondered now, as he slid down Darshanth’s shoulder, if L’stev would still like the man or the rider that C’mine had become.

L’stev was leaning against Vanzanth’s elbow, his arms folded. “Thought you’d still be sleeping off a wineskin,” he remarked as C’mine approached. “The rest of the Weyr is.”

“I’ve stopped with that,” C’mine said.

“Really.” It was flatly sceptical.

“I promised Darshanth,”

“Been getting in a bad way, have you?”

L’stev’s question sounded casual, but C’mine knew it wasn’t. He also knew there was no point in lying. “Yes,” he said. “That’s why I’ve stopped.”

“Completely?”

“Yes.”

“This job’s driven me to drink more times than I like to remember,” said L’stev. “But I’ve always been able to stop. If total abstinence is the measure you need to take, then total abstinence is what I’ll expect from you.”

“I understand, Weyrlingmaster.”

“And this chasing of greens. Can you get control of Darshanth’s appetites?”

Darshanth’s appetites weren’t the problem. “If I need to.”

“Oh, you’ll need to, C’mine,” said L’stev. “If I’m going to trust you with my weyrlings, I need to know your mind’s on them, not on every green dragon who twitches her tail at you.”

C’mine hesitated, reluctant to commit to a second type of abstinence.

L’stev snorted. “What, you’re worried it’ll shrivel up and fall off for lack of use?”

I don’t have to fly greens for a bit, Darshanth assured him earnestly. Although they will miss me.

Evidently he’d been speaking to Vanzanth as well as to C’mine, because the brown dragon snorted, and L’stev barked a laugh. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with him, is there?” He regarded C’mine charily. “And what else have you been up to?”

C’mine hoped that his guilt didn’t show in his eyes, hoped that a different admission would satisfy L’stev’s inquisition. “T’kamen says I’ve been distracted in Wing drill.”

“And have you?”

“Yes.”

“Well at least you have the sense to be honest about it. So let me see if I have this right. You’re a drunk, depressed, indiscriminate liability. T’kamen doesn’t know what to do with you. Your dragon doesn’t know what to do with you. You don’t know what to do with you. And the solution to all those problems is setting you on my weyrlings.” L’stev rolled his eyes. “What could possibly go wrong there?”

C’mine looked away, feeling his face burning. “I shouldn’t have come. I’ve wasted your time.”

“Oh, don’t be so shaffing sensitive, C’mine.”

“But you’re right,” C’mine said. “I’m not fit to be responsible for anyone.”

“Whershit,” said L’stev. “Whershit. Faranth, T’kamen was right. He has been too soft on you.” He poked C’mine in the chest with a thick finger. “Are you a dragonrider or not? Well? Are you?”

C’mine recoiled, taken aback. “Yes, but –”

L’stev prodded him again, hard. It actually hurt. “Are you a Madellon dragonrider?”

“Of course I am, but –”

“Then for the love of every dragonet that ever lived, start shaffing well acting like one!” L’stev made a fist and drew his hand back. As he let the punch fly, C’mine instinctively swayed away from it. “Ha! You do still have some self-preservation left.”

“I couldn’t stand it if I let the weyrlings down –”

“Then it’s very simple,” L’stev said. “Don’t.” He stuck out a warning finger, and C’mine flinched back in anticipation of another jab. “This isn’t about you, C’mine. T’kamen might have delusions of fixing you by making you my assistant – I’m not interested in making you better – but he was right about one thing. What I need is the C’mine Vanzanth and I trained. The C’mine who kept a hand on T’kamen’s arm before he had the brains to know when to hold back. The C’mine who took the Weyrwoman and made her realise she had value beyond her dragon’s hide.

“My weyrlings are in pieces. Pieces. They’ve lost their friends, they’ve lost Jena, and they’ve lost their nerve. If there’s only a tenth part of the old C’mine left, those kids need him. They need his compassion, they need his perception, they need whatever sixth sense he had for a soul in crisis.” L’stev glared at him from beneath fiercely-knit eyebrows. The corners of his mouth, always downturned, had fixed into an even more twisted rictus than usual. “Maybe there’s a hole in your chest where your heart used to be, C’mine, but I defy you to look at Carleah and not feel the love for her that her father did. And if that love can’t bring your world back into focus, if it can’t make you devote your every breath to protecting her, if it can’t shock you out of this pathetic half-life you’ve made for yourself, then you might as well take an enormous shit on every memory you have of C’los, because as vain and as reckless and as downright shaffing idiotic as he was, he would never have wilfully abandoned everyone who cared about him or everyone who needed him.”

C’mine looked out at the juvenile dragons. The spots on his chest where L’stev had poked him throbbed slowly, but his pain went beyond that small physical discomfort. He felt mauled. Even T’kamen’s angry words hadn’t been so stiletto-sharp, or so precisely aimed at his tenderest places. He heard himself say, “I don’t even know which dragonet is hers.”

L’stev pointed. “Jagunth. The pale green between Moth, the small blue, and R’von’s bronze Oaxuth.”

C’mine only had a few scattered memories of Hatching day, all of them bad. What recollection he had of watching the Impression ceremony had been lost along with the rest in the herbal fog that had filled the first couple of sevendays that had followed. “I don’t even know all their names.”

“Lucky for you that you’ll only have twenty-two to learn, then, not twenty-five.”

C’mine winced. L’stev’s sense of humour always had tended to the darker side of black. “What happened?”

“Still don’t know,” said L’stev. “Not really in a position to investigate until a few more days have passed and the dragonets have forgotten the worst of their fright. By which time they’ll also have forgotten anything that might be useful.”

“Is it between?” C’mine asked.

“Not as far as Vanzanth and I can tell. We’ve made a dozen jumps since it happened, absolutes and blinks, and nothing seems amiss.” L’stev stared dourly at the youngsters. “There are some things we can try. We have to, don’t we? It’s not as if we can just not teach them to go between. What good are dragons who can’t go between? About as much use as tits on a watch-wher. No.” He said it with finality. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. We have to. But first we have to get those kids through the next few days. The leave-taking for the ones we lost is tonight, and that’s going to be hard on them. It’s going to make it real. Some of them are going to cry. Some of them are going to rage. I can deal with those. It’s the quiet ones who worry me. The ones who keep it inside. Vanzanth can’t be standing over all of them all the time. And that’s where you, for all your myriad issues, come in. You and that blue of yours. I could bring in a bronze to make them talk, but brute force won’t help the vulnerable ones. I need a dragon who can draw them out. A dragon they’ll accept into their society. A dragon who’ll listen.”

“A Search dragon,” said C’mine.

“Exactly,” said L’stev.

And now it came clear. A good Search dragon needed more than just the ability to detect potential. That was why almost all the best ones were blue. Subtlety was as important as sensitivity where nascent candidates were concerned – a dragon who barged into an unprepared mind could do more harm there than good – and blues were the mildest of all the dragon colours. Darshanth had an exceptionally light touch as well as a keen sense for finding prospects. And it was that very delicacy, the non-threatening gentleness that he possessed, that might enable him to inveigle himself into the weyrlings’ collective consciousness.

“Darshanth isn’t the only Search dragon at Madellon,” C’mine said.

“True,” L’stev agreed. “And if I thought there was a better prospect than you, I’d be looking at them right now. But what are my options?” He started ticking them off on his fingers. “T’reno’s older than me. S’rius is older than dirt. I don’t trust H’restin with young girls. Garlan’s still half a weyrling herself, J’kel’s not had a candidate Impress in the last three Hatchings, and I’d resign before I endorsed W’har as being good for anything. No. He,” and L’stev pointed at Darshanth, “he’s the one to do it, C’mine. You know why? He Searched Tarshe. Berzunth owes him for finding her rider. And Berzunth’s the key to their society. Can he do it?”

I can do it, said Darshanth.

“He says he can,” C’mine replied softly.

“So what about you?” L’stev asked. “Can you do this? Can you pull your finger out of your arse and commit to looking after my kids? Because if you can’t, I’d rather you didn’t let them get attached to you. And if you don’t fly by my rules, I’ll run you out of my barracks so fast your head’ll spin. Everything you do will be an example to them. Everything. If you’re late, they’ll think that being late is acceptable. If you get on your dragon without a safety line, you can bet one of them will copy you and fall off and kill himself. They’re going to be watching you all the time, C’mine, and if you ever fall short of the standards I’m trying to beat into their heads, they’ll pay the price for it. You’ll never be off duty. You’ll never get a rest-day. Night and day, you’ll be there to hold their hands and dry their tears and wipe their backsides if that’s what they need. You’ll get them up in the mornings and you’ll tuck them in at night, and if you have the energy to do anything but fall into your own bed in between, you’ll know you’re not trying hard enough. It’s the worst job in the Weyr, C’mine, and the best, and it’ll chew you up and spit you out if you’re not equal to it.”

Listening to the rise and fall of L’stev’s voice as he held forth transported C’mine irresistibly back to a time when Darshanth had been no bigger than any of the blues on the training grounds now – and Indioth, always beside him, smaller still. L’stev had loved making speeches then, too. “I don’t know if you’re trying to persuade me or deter me, L’stev.”

“Both. Neither. It’s your decision, blue rider.” L’stev fixed him with a final searching look. “Well?”

Can I do this? C’mine asked the question of himself privately. Darshanth, already convinced, could hardly answer without bias. He turned away from L’stev, looking unseeingly out at the Weyr.

He thought about the tailspin that had comprised the last few sevendays of his life, ever since Amynth’s suicide had shattered the fragile equilibrium he’d found in the months after C’los’ murder. He’d known all along that it was selfish and stupid and wrong. He didn’t need F’halig’s contempt or T’kamen’s disappointment or L’stev’s censure to tell him that. The one truth he hadn’t faced about his self-destructive behaviour was the most absurd. It hadn’t helped. The drinking and the sex didn’t make him feel any better. They just distracted him briefly from the contemplation of his misery and hopelessness. When he sobered up from a drunk, or came to from a flight, the all-consuming cancer of despair was waiting for him, as black and malignant as ever.

Darshanth hated what the drink did to him. He didn’t mind going after greens; that, at least, was a retreat from the world that they could seek together. But C’mine couldn’t put a name to what his dragon felt when they used their third means of escape from reality: eager dread? acceptant reluctance? frightened certainty? All he knew was how he, himself, longed for it in a way he never longed for a drink or a flight, because when they timed it into the past, C’los was still alive.

C’mine didn’t take timing lightly. He was always careful. He checked and re-checked his research, he never stayed long, and, after the first time, he’d abided by Darshanth’s fierce admonition that he wouldn’t try to change anything. The past will not be changed, Darshanth had told him, on that first occasion when they’d slid back through the Turns, unseen and undetected, to steal a glimpse of a very young C’los, and C’mine had almost called out to him. Time protects itself.

And that incontrovertible truth justified every trip into the past they’d taken since. If the past couldn’t be changed, then each time C’mine and Darshanth slipped back two Turns or five or ten, they weren’t changing it. They were accomplishing it. They had to time it, because by the mere fact that they had done so successfully, they already had.

Their trip back ten Turns to Peranvo Hold, in the winter of 89, was a perfect example. C’mine remembered that Gather because he hadn’t been there. He’d been on watch that night and C’los had gone to enjoy Peranvo’s ever-spectacular midwinter celebrations without him. But there it was, in C’los’ concise handwriting, the entry he’d written in his journal for that night. Mine made it for one drink. He professed ignorance this morning – probably because if R’hren ever finds he slipped out on his watch he’ll rip him a new one – so I’ll take the hint, and We Shall Never Speak Of This Again.

C’mine hadn’t slipped out on his watch, not for a moment. He’d never abandoned a post in all his Turns as a dragonrider. But C’los’ journal made it clear. Mine made it for one dance. And the prospect of one drink, one precious drink, with C’los had been too great for C’mine to resist. That impossibly young, carefree C’los hadn’t noticed the hair C’mine had lost or the scars he’d gained. At night, beneath the shifting light of the colourful Gather lanterns, and deep into Peranvo’s potent mulled wine, C’los had only seen what he’d expected to see. By timing it back to that winter’s night, C’mine had made sense of something that would otherwise have been nonsensical.

And the Peranvo Gather wasn’t the only anomaly. There were other inconsistencies in C’los’ diaries, references to things C’mine knew he’d never said, accounts of things he knew he hadn’t done in places he’d never been. Some of them might have been mistakes or misunderstandings, or even things he misremembered himself. But when he came across one, he marked it, and when it coincided with a reason why C’los might not have detected anything strange about C’mine – distance, or drink, or distraction – he saw an opportunity.

C’mine had found a dozen narrow windows to slip through, each a chance to snatch a few moments with C’los and then melt away. Three times, now, Darshanth had taken him between into the past, using references C’mine had pieced painstakingly together from sky charts and records and C’los’ own detailed journals. It was never easy. It was much simpler to fall into a bottle or find another green to chase, but seeing C’los, hearing his voice, even touching him, however fleetingly, eased the pain in C’mine’s soul in a way that nothing else could.

But he knew in his heart that he couldn’t keep doing it. Even if he wasn’t caught and Disciplined for timing in direct violation of Madellon’s laws, and even if he didn’t make a mistake and get lost between, sooner or later he’d run out of place-times to go. The brief solace he felt after visiting C’los in the past would be lost to him for good. He had to hoard the opportunities, to store them up. He had to make them last.

And in between them, he needed something else to live for.

Vanzanth grumbled deep in his throat, jolting C’mine out of his thoughts, and on the training grounds the dragonets raised their heads almost as one. The weyrlings were filtering out of the barracks, a sad and silent throng. Master Isnan, the long-jawed Weyr Healer, and two of his staff followed close behind. “That took less time than I expected,” said L’stev. “Suppose there’s not much more to be said about losing three than losing one.”

C’mine recognised the two journeymen. Benner and Nial specialised in treating sicknesses of the mind and heart. He’d been their patient in the sevendays following Hatching day. Even seeing them brought those desperate days unhappily back. “There’s nothing that can be said.”

“There’s plenty,” said L’stev. “Whether or not it helps is another matter.”

The weyrlings fanned out to their dragonets. C’mine found he hardly even recognised the ones Darshanth had Searched. The girl who went to the silvery-gold queen bore little resemblance to the sun-tanned, sun-bleached teenager they’d brought back from a remote tropical island what seemed like Turns ago. But as the youngsters dispersed, there was one he did recognise. One he’d always recognise. And as she walked towards the pretty, light green dragon L’stev had pointed out as Jagunth, C’mine found his chest suddenly constricted, and his throat suddenly tight, and his eyes suddenly pricked with moisture.

She wore her riding leathers like her father always had, the lapels of the summer-weight jacket buttoned back to show off the bright green lining. Her tumble of glossy dark curls had mostly grown back from the traditional weyrling haircut. And even from a distance, even in her share of the dejection that hung over the weyrlings, her bright black eyes snapped and sparkled. Leah wasn’t just her father’s daughter. She was his image.

Darshanth made a curious little sound in his chest, and Leah turned to look in his direction. Her stride towards Jagunth faltered and stopped. She took one step, and C’mine saw her speak. “Mine?”

And then she was running towards him, and C’mine found himself scrambling down the side of Vanzanth’s bluff, careless of the steep gradient. She ran to him: the child C’los had fathered in that last desperate summer before they’d left the turmoil of Kellad Hold for Madellon Weyr; the daughter they’d indulged and cherished all her fourteen Turns; the girl he hadn’t seen, hadn’t wanted to see, since the day she’d become a dragonrider. She hurled herself into his arms, weeping, repeating his name over and over.

“Oh, girl,” C’mine told her helplessly through his own tears, clasping her crushingly tight to him. “Oh my Leah. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“But you came,” she sobbed. “You came, you came.”

Darshanth voiced a single cry that matched perfectly the bitter-sweet joy and sorrow in C’mine’s heart, and Jagunth warbled uncertainly in response, and then Vanzanth’s deep warning rumble cut through both their voices.

“All right, Carleah, put him down,” L’stev growled from atop the crag.

He scowled down at them as C’mine gently, reluctantly released C’los’ daughter. Leah looked up at him, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m s-sorry, Weyrlingmaster,” she said. “I know he’s not supposed –”

“He gets a pass this time, Carleah,” L’stev said. “Under the circumstances.” His glower was completely unconvincing. “Blue rider?”

“It’s all right, Leah,” C’mine told her. He hadn’t yet regained control of his own breathing. He drew a deep breath into his lungs, trying to level his voice. “The Weyrleader sent me.”

Leah looked searchingly at him, then at Darshanth, then up at L’stev, and either one of the dragons tipped her off, or she was just as good at making connections than her father had been. “Is this…because of Jenavally? Because of N’jen? You’re going to be our Weyrlingmaster? You and Darshanth?” She clutched C’mine’s arm. “Tell me you are, C’mine! Tell me you are!”

Something else to live for.

“Of course we are,” he said.

Chapter nine: Sarenya

The introduction of leaping take-offs to a dragonet’s routine in the second half of the first Turn leads to many common complaints, including muscle strains, dislocation of the unfused minor wing joints, and abdominal hernias. Herniation typically occurs around the belly whorl, a somewhat weak point in the young dragon’s abdomen, which corresponds both to the mammalian umbilicus – being the point at which the unborn dragonet is connected to its yolk sac while in the egg – and to the human fingerprint, as the loops and spirals of each dragon’s belly whorl are unique to that individual alone.

– Excerpt from Ailments of the Juvenile Dragon, Apprentice Edition

100.02.24 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

“Come on, Sejanth,” Sarenya said, wiggling the wherry carcass invitingly under the bronze’s nose, “try a bite. Just a wing. I chose it especially for you. Look. Young and tender.”

She said that last part with her fingers crossed, hoping that Sejanth wouldn’t pick up on the lie. Judging by the amount the wherry had kicked and struggled on the end of the rope when she’d lassoed it to break its neck, it wasn’t likely to be anything less than chewy. But she was willing to try anything to get some sustenance into Sejanth. His appetite was poor at the best of times, but in the days since the weyrling disaster, he’d lost all interest in food.

Sarenya hadn’t been in the infirmary, or even the Weyr, when the weyrlings had died. She’d been down the passes on runnerback, on her way to do the headcount for the next drive. Sleek had let out a terrible moan, and Sarenya – knowing that the first weyrlings were due to go between that morning – had suspected that one of them must have failed in the attempt, but it had been hours before they’d returned to the Weyr and discovered what had happened.

Sejanth had taken it badly. “I’ve never heard such a dreadful sound, and I’ve heard my share,” Vhion had told Sarenya. “I think it’s because they were dragonets. It’s not done his condition any good. I’m afraid he’s taken a turn for the worse.”

It was a sobering assessment from a man who was usually so relentlessly upbeat, and there wasn’t much room for argument. Sejanth had been deteriorating for a long time, but Sarenya feared that the shock of losing the weyrlings would be the incident that triggered his final decline.

Still, she was surprised at how quickly the majority of Madellon’s adult dragons had regained their colour. A Weyr in mourning was a gloomy place, and she’d steeled herself for another day of subdued dragons and silent watch-changes, but by the time the sun had broken over the Rim that morning, the dragons seemed to be back to their usual vocal selves.

“It’s not in their nature to dwell on things,” M’ric had said, when she’d asked him. He’d brought Trebruth down to take his pick of the herdbeasts from the latest drive, although this herd wasn’t any better than the last. “They feel the here and now harder than we do, but once the moment’s passed, they move on.”

Sarenya envied them that. “It’s a pity people can’t do the same.”

“In an ideal world, we would. In an ideal world those two riders who pushed in each other’s noses the other night would have patched it up by now.” M’ric had shrugged. “But dragons are dragons, and people, even riders, are still people.”

Vhion came bustling out of his office, light on his feet as ever despite his size. “Still no luck getting him to eat?”

“He’s just not interested.” Sarenya put her hand on the bronze dragon’s drooping muzzle. “Come on, Sejanth. D’feng’s going to be upset when he hears you’ve been turning down wherries. You have to stay strong for him, like he’s staying strong for you.”

But Sejanth just turned his head away, his eyes dull and almost immobile. Sarenya let the cooling wherry carcass flop to the floor. “I’m going to leave it here for you,” she said. “You can eat it when you’re ready.”

She saw Vhion pull a face – somewhere between compassion and frustration – and braced herself for an argument. Bad as Sejanth was, she wouldn’t give up on him. But Vhion shook his head, as if to dispel her fears. “If you’ve finished with him for the moment, would you be so kind as to nip over to the barracks and collect samples from the dragonets who didn’t produce yesterday?”

While the adult dragons had overcome – or forgotten – their grief at the loss of the weyrlings, the remaining dragonets were still very subdued. Word had come from L’stev that the Weyrleader wanted all of them checked over, and Sarenya had spent her last couple of shifts helping Vhion to complete twenty-two physical exams.

The nose-to-tail was a comprehensive inspection of the ground-bound dragon, and after months of treating Sejanth, Sarenya found it refreshing to be working with healthy patients for a change. Examining a dragonet was like examining a very large runnerbeast, except that a dragon could follow instructions and answer questions. They tested each dragonet’s sight and hearing, examined their teeth and tongue, smelled their breath. They checked hide for tone, elasticity, and harness lesions – although they found none of the latter; L’stev would never have allowed any chafing from fighting straps to develop into full-blown sores. They observed walking gait and the extension of all six limbs, looked and felt for any deviation in the correctness of the neck, spine, and tail. They listened to the sounds made by the hearts and lungs and the major ichor vessels of the body. They checked the tail for healthy digestive sounds, and the lower abdomen for any early signs of herniation. A brief survey of the genital region completed the exam, although there wasn’t much to see, as dragons kept their bits and pieces stowed away when they weren’t in use, and in juvenile males the generative organs didn’t descend fully until eleven or twelve months of age anyway.

Sarenya found the whole procedure fascinating, especially because the dragonets were such endearing characters. One of the blues she examined was extremely ticklish and twitched furiously every time she felt for his pulses. A little green seemed unaccountably shy, and kept trying to hide her head behind her rider. And one bronze subject found his examination so blissfully relaxing that he’d fallen over onto his side when she was feeling his belly hide for dry patches and stretchmarks.

There were several conditions that could be detected through the study of a dragon’s excreta and bodily fluids. Sarenya could take ichor samples, drawn from one of the big veins on the forearm, but the bloodwork was a journeyman-level discipline among the Dragon Healers. There was nothing stopping her from examining the dragonets’ dung, though. Young dragons could be fussy with their food, and any aversion to eating the hard-but-nutritious parts – bones, beaks, and horns – could be picked up through an inspection of their stool.

But not even the most helpful dragonet could always produce dung on command. “How many are we missing?”

“Just four.” Vhion handed her a slate. “These are the ones we need.”

Gawath, Atath, Djeth, Moth. “This shouldn’t take long, Master.” Sarenya took off her bloody and salve-smeared smock and threw it into the laundry bin. There were sample jars in Vhion’s office; she hooked her fingers into the necks of four of them. She was halfway outside when she realised she’d forgotten to take a grease pencil. Muttering to herself, she went back for one. As she left the infirmary for the second time, the pencil in her pocket, the slate tucked under one arm and two jars swinging from each hand, she overheard Vhion talking quietly to Sejanth.

“…would make Sarenya really happy if some of that wherry was gone when she gets back…”

All the bad parts of being a dragonrider and none of the good, she thought, then reproached herself for the sourness. I’m sorry, Sejanth, if you’re listening. That wasn’t kind.

On the training grounds, Darshanth turned his head at her approach. He was sitting with one wing spread over Kinnescath, and two green dragonets lay curled against his other side. The sight made Sarenya pause, unexpected emotion making her throat prickle. She smothered the reaction before Darshanth could pick up on it. “Hello, Darshanth. Would you tell your rider I’m here?”

I will, Sarenya.

Darshanth was the one dragon in the Weyr Sarenya could reliably expect to answer when she spoke to him. Most dragons weren’t interested in talking to anyone but their own riders, and many riders didn’t like people addressing their dragons directly, except in greeting or thanks. Protocol in the dragon infirmary was that a Dragon Healer should always make requests of a dragon through his rider, at least until told otherwise. Sarenya sometimes found that frustrating. The ability to calm a runner or steer or hound with touch and tone of voice was vital in the Beastcraft. It took a conscious effort for Sarenya to overcome the habit, but an unhappy rider made an unhappy dragon, and thirty-plus feet of unhappy dragon made for a difficult patient, so Sarenya had learned to respect a dragonpair’s boundaries.

The other dragonets were sitting or lying on the training grounds, some asleep, others looking towards the bunker where their riders were at work. Sarenya stopped beside Darshanth, unwilling to get too close. The weyrlings were sorting firestone, and even unburned, the stuff smelled terrible. She wondered how dragons could bear to eat it.

It doesn’t taste so bad.

Darshanth’s remark gave Sarenya a start. She looked sharply at him, and he returned her look innocently. “I didn’t know you were listening.”

One of the greens by his side lifted her head to look at Sarenya, rustling her wings nervously. She wondered if the dragonet remembered her from her examination the previous day. Many of the young dragons had been apprehensive about being handled by anyone but their own riders, and a nose-to-tail could be an intrusive experience for them.

The weyrlings at the bunker wore gloves, goggles, facemasks, and a coating of fine grey powder. Some of them were wielding sledgehammers to break the raw stone – each chunk about the size of a man’s head – into usable pieces. As Sarenya recalled from her own spell as a candidate, firestone was a brittle rock, and the real skill was to avoid smashing it too fine. Other weyrlings shovelled the pieces into barrows, then dumped them down chutes that fed onto long tables with gently slanted surfaces. The rest of the weyrlings worked along those tables, grading chunks into the carts behind them, occasionally using a hammer to split an overlarge piece in half. From time to time, one of them would carefully sweep the smallest pieces of rubble off the table into a separate bin.

C’mine was talking to a couple of weyrlings at the end of one table. He was almost indistinguishable from them in his grimy protective gear, but he seemed to be explaining some subtle difference in the weight or quality of the pieces of firestone he had in each hand. At last, he set down his two pieces of stone and came over to where Sarenya was waiting with Darshanth. “Saren,” he greeted her, taking off a glove and pulling the mask and goggles off his face.

He was sweaty and pale – the former not surprising given the heat of the day and his layer of protective clothing, the latter quite a feat for a naturally dark-complexioned man. “You look exhausted,” she said. “L’stev can’t have run you ragged on your first day.”

“Not L’stev.” C’mine managed a very wan smile. “Although now I know why he’s so bad-tempered all the time.”

“You’ll soon get into the rhythm of it, C’mine.”

“It’s only temporary, anyway,” he said. “Just for a few sevendays until Jenavally gets back on her feet.”

Sarenya winced. She’d got to know Jenavally quite well in the months she’d been working with the weyrlings. “Do you think she will?”

C’mine gave her a haunted look. It made Sarenya guiltily aware of how little she’d seen of him recently; how little she knew of how he’d been dealing with his own grief. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ll do what I can for as long as I’m needed.”

“I think it’s the best thing you’ve done in months,” Sarenya told him, and meant it. “I know we haven’t seen much of each other outside Valonna’s meetings, but I have been worried about you. I’ve just been so busy.”

“You’re still looking after Sejanth?”

“Yes. I’m not sure how much good I’m doing, though. He’s not a well dragon. Not at all.”

“He was the one who brought you back to Madellon, you know,” he said. “D’feng, that is. You were meant to distract T’kamen from Shimpath.”

Sarenya felt herself tense. “T’kamen doesn’t distract that easily.”

C’mine looked at her. “You know he still –”

“I know.” Sarenya cut him off. “I know.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

“I still had two Turns on my contract at Blue Shale,” Sarenya said, to move the conversation on from T’kamen. “Two more Turns there, and then the plan was I’d go back to the Hall, pick my specialisation, and begin studying for my Mastery.”

“Your specialisation,” said C’mine. “You wanted to concentrate on race-runners, didn’t you?”

He said it slowly, as if unearthing the knowledge from the dusty recesses of his memory. Sarenya nodded. “I wanted to. But I’ve fallen so behind on my runner knowledge since I’ve been at Madellon, I don’t think any of the runner Masters would sponsor me. My best chance would be if I focused on fire-lizards instead.”

“Is that why you’re still working with Master Vhion?”

“Well, I mean…” Sarenya glanced sideways at Darshanth, and teased, “…dragons are just overgrown fire-lizards, aren’t they?”

Darshanth snorted in outrage.

C’mine touched his dragon’s neck. “Will you go back to the Hall when your contract here is up?”

“My contract is up,” Sarenya said. She let C’mine look at her with consternation for a moment. “Arrense keeps extending it. It’s a bad time to be a crafter at Madellon, but I don’t think he’ll terminate me.”

“Valonna wouldn’t want you leaving,” said C’mine. He looked like he was about to add, And nor would T’kamen, but he didn’t.

“She has enough on her plate without needing to worry about me,” said Sarenya. “Which brings me to the weyrlings.” She pointed with one of her sample jars at the bin of dust and rubble. “Those bits don’t even look big enough for fire-lizards.”

C’mine followed her gaze. “Were you planning on stoking Sleek for flame?”

Sarenya laughed. “Sleek’s enough of a danger to himself already. No, I was just curious about what happens to the rubble.”

C’mine took off his other glove and tucked it and the first one into his belt. “L’stev has them throw out anything smaller than about half the size of your fist. It’s too easy for small pieces to go into the wrong stomach. The little bits get turned into cake.”

“Cake?”

“Training cake. It’s ground to powder, mixed with water, and left to dry out. It’s even softer than raw stone, so it’s useful for teaching young dragons to chew, and we can control the grade by mixing in other types of rock, so they can’t over-stoke.”

“You sound like a Weyrlingmaster already,” Sarenya told him. “You’ll make L’stev anxious.”

“Not for the reason you’re suggesting, Saren,” said C’mine. “Did Master Vhion send you?”

She brandished her specimen jars. “We still need dung samples from the dragonets who didn’t produce any yesterday. The names are on the slate.”

C’mine took the slate from under her arm and looked at the names on it. “I’ll get these weyrlings for you. Darshanth –” He turned to his dragon for a moment. “This won’t take a minute.”

“He seems to be settling into his new role well,” Sarenya observed, nodding at the blue.

“He likes the attention,” said C’mine. “The main thing these dragonets need for now is comfort and routine, especially Kinnescath.”

The brown dragonet tucked under Darshanth’s wing did look pitiful. Sarenya knew Vhion was very worried about him. “And a nice relaxing job for the weyrlings, sorting firestone?”

“L’stev wants to keep their hands busy and their minds clear to think. He’s hoping they might be able to piece together what actually went wrong.”

“Is anyone any closer to having an explanation?”

C’mine shook his head slowly. “No explanation. Only theories.”

“There’ve been a few of those flying around the Beastcraft cot,” Sarenya said. “My Master came down on the apprentices like a dragonweight of bricks for speculating last night.”

“I doubt they’ve come up with anything we haven’t,” said C’mine. “What have they been saying?”

“I don’t even like to repeat it,” Sarenya said, but she did anyway. “There was a lot of loose talk about it being a defect because Madellon’s breeding population isn’t diverse enough.”

“Your apprentices aren’t the only ones who’ve suggested that,” said C’mine.

“It’s not their place to be guessing,” said Sarenya. She looked at C’mine apologetically. “But they do sort of have a point. Aren’t Epherineth and Shimpath half-siblings?”

“Full siblings, from different clutches,” said C’mine. “And their parents were full siblings, too.”

Sarenya made a face. “Faranth, that is bad,” she said, then added quickly, “Sorry, C’mine. You know I don’t mean that as a criticism of Darshanth.”

C’mine put his hand up to Darshanth’s muzzle, leaving a dusty smudge on the silvery-blue hide. “I know.”

Sarenya turned it over in her mind. “It doesn’t follow that it’s an inbreeding problem, anyway. I mean, there are certain breeds of hound that have been line-bred far too much for my liking. You might get a few defective pups in a litter, but I’ve never heard of the same fault appearing spontaneously in every member of a litter without any hint of it in earlier generations of the family.”

“Dragons aren’t hounds,” C’mine pointed out.

“No, but they’re not so far from fire-lizards, and fire-lizard populations can lock in defects when there’s not enough potential to out-cross. Have you ever heard of the Bay fire-lizard?” When C’mine shook his head, Sarenya continued. “It was a Peninsula subspecies, native to the region around Long Bay Hold. Quite a bit different to the other strains of fire-lizard. Smaller, and it only had three toes on the hind feet, and a kind of pincer arrangement instead of forepaws on the front.” She pinched together her thumb and first two fingers to demonstrate.

“I’ve never seen a fire-lizard with pincers,” said C’mine.

“You wouldn’t have. The Bay subspecies went extinct in the wild about sixty-five Turns ago. They weren’t as intelligent as the Settler or Northern types, so they weren’t as good as hiding their clutches. When Long Bay was first settled the holders took too many eggs, and the Bay population couldn’t sustain itself.

“The Beastcraft tried to resurrect it with a handful of Impressed Bay lizards that they managed to turn feral – two queens and half a dozen bronzes. But domestic lizards don’t ever clutch that productively, even when they’ve reverted to the wild, and I don’t think they managed to eke out the experiment for more than a few Turns. Fire-lizards are a lot more vulnerable than you’d think, and it wouldn’t have taken a very major birth defect in such a limited breeding pool to disadvantage them enough to finish them off. So maybe –”

She broke off as two weyrlings came trotting up, their facemasks pulled down, buckets and shovels in hand. “Thank you, Cebria and…J’kovu,” said C’mine, hesitating only momentarily over the lad’s name.

The dung in Cebria’s bucket was still steaming. “Nice and fresh,” said Sarenya, handing each weyrling a sample jar.

The two weyrlings scooped dragon dung into the glass bottles. It was foetid, reeking stuff, rank as only carnivore scat could be. Sarenya was used to it from mucking out Sejanth every day, but it did make her grateful that most of the manure she shovelled as a Beastcrafter came from grass-eaters.

“What are you going to do with it?” J’kovu asked, handing his jar back and watching as Sarenya screwed the lid onto it.

“We’ll just be testing it for a few things,” Sarenya told him, writing Moth on the outside of the jar with the grease pencil. “We can tell a lot about your dragon’s health from his droppings.”

J’kovu stared at the bottle of dung. “Will it tell you if he’ll be able to go between?”

“I don’t think there’s a test for that, J’kovu,” C’mine told him.

J’kovu wiped his face with the back of his hand. “K’dam said we’ll all be shovelling sh – shovelling dung forever if our dragons can’t go between to…go between.”

“Dragons don’t really do that,” C’mine said. There was no trace of mirth in his voice. “K’dam was teasing you. Once you’re old enough to fly out of the Weyr on your own, there are several places they can go.”

Sarenya was sure J’kovu probably looked relieved, but she kept her face turned away until the weyrling had gone. “How did you manage to keep your face straight through that, Mine?”

“They don’t deserve to be laughed at,” he told her. “Especially the youngest ones.”

Sarenya sighed. “They’re just kids, aren’t they?”

“That’s what scares me.”

“It shouldn’t. You’ve always been good with kids.”

“I don’t know. L’stev’s not convinced.”

“You wouldn’t be here if he didn’t trust you. And anyway, they’ll help you as much as you’ll help them. You’ve been too isolated since – well. Since.”

C’mine looked off into nowhere, his face unreadable. Darshanth turned his head slowly to regard him with one sparkling eye. “I wasn’t looking for help.”

“Sometimes it comes looking for you, Mine.”

He smiled, but the expression didn’t get as far as his eyes. “Maybe I should have run faster.”

“You wouldn’t really have run. There are too many people here who still need you.” Sarenya started to count them off on her fingers. “T’kamen. Valonna. Carleah. Me.”

“None of you need me.”

“Not true, or you wouldn’t be here now.” Sarenya paused. “Did you tell T’kamen that you went to see Igen?”

C’mine looked chagrined. “No.”

“You should have. It might make him appreciate you a bit more.”

“You won’t say anything, will you?”

Sarenya wondered guiltily if he knew she’d told T’kamen she was worried about him. “I won’t.”

“Thank you.”

“You wouldn’t have liked all that sand, anyway,” Sarenya told him. The other weyrlings were heading over with their buckets. She took the lids off her last two sample jars in readiness. “It gets into everything. And how’s Djeth today, K’ralthe?”

Djeth was the bronze who’d gone floppy during his exam. K’ralthe shot Sarenya an annoyed look. “He’s fine.” He dropped his bucket with a thump. “There’s his dung.”

“It’s not much good to me in there,” Sarenya said. “In the bottle, please. You too, M’touf.”

She noticed M’touf glance sideways at K’ralthe for guidance, and then his body language became confrontational. The unspoken retort was clear: you don’t even have a dragon; why should we do what you say? Most of the Wildfire weyrlings were respectful of Sarenya’s knots, but this wasn’t the first time she’d encountered the entitled conceit of a young rider. She could have pointed out – as L’stev had several sevendays ago, in a similar situation with a different weyrling – that her craft rank gave her the same status as a junior-grade Wingsecond. Instead, she looked at C’mine. “Weyrlingmaster?”

C’mine almost gave a start when she called him by the title. It was the correct address for an assistant Weyrlingmaster, but Sarenya wondered if anyone had used it on him yet. “Do as the journeyman tells you, please, K’ralthe.”

K’ralthe seemed like he might answer back, but then Darshanth looked at him. Sighing as if unreasonably put upon, K’ralthe crammed some of his dragon’s droppings into a bottle, and shoved it at Sarenya. “Is that all?”

“Actually,” Sarenya said, turning back to C’mine, “I wonder if you could spare one of these lads to help me take these samples back to the infirmary. I’ve run out of hands.”

“Of course, Sarenya,” C’mine said. He hesitated, looking at the two weyrlings. Sarenya hoped he’d assign K’ralthe to the job, just to put the haughty little snot in his place, but then C’mine nodded at M’touf. “Would you help Sarenya, please?”

“I’ll send him directly back to you, Weyrlingmaster,” Sarenya promised. She wouldn’t normally have walked away from C’mine without at least squeezing his arm, but she didn’t want to undermine his authority in front of the weyrlings. She did think hard in Darshanth’s direction as she said, “This way, M’touf.” Tell him to keep his chin up and not to let them walk all over him.

Darshanth’s voice echoed back. He’s trying.

“Why d’you call him Weyrlingmaster?” M’touf asked, as he followed Sarenya back across the Bowl towards the infirmary with two of the sample jars. “He’s only Low-Brow’s assistant.”

“That still makes him a Weyrlingmaster,” Sarenya told him. She ignored M’touf’s deliberate use of L’stev’s nickname. They’d been calling the Weyrlingmaster ‘Low-Brow’ since Sarenya was a candidate. “You were much better company when Atath was injured, M’touf.”

“Well, she’s fine now,” M’touf said huffily, though he did at least look a shade contrite.

Sarenya had got to know M’touf quite well while his Atath had been in the infirmary. He’d even helped her with Sejanth a few times. He wasn’t a bad lad: he was just too worried about what his friends thought of him. “I’m glad she is. But don’t take advantage of C’mine’s good nature. He’s given more to this Weyr than most riders ever will. And he’s been the Weyrleader’s right-hand man for more Turns than you’ve been alive, so you and your pals might want to think about what reports get back to him.”

M’touf didn’t reply for a moment. Then he blurted, “Not going to matter if there’s something wrong with their dragons, is it?”

“Look, M’touf, I’m not a dragonrider, or an expert. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your dragons…”

“Never said there was anything wrong with mine.”

“… and whatever happened the other day, I’m certain L’stev’s going to get to the bottom of it.

“Why couldn’t he get it right the first time?” M’touf asked. “I mean, N’jen and Ivaryo, and Jenafa, they’re gone. They were fine, and now they’re just…y’know…gone. How could he let that happen? What if it had been us? Me and Atath could be dead right now. That could have been my mam crying her eyes out at the leave-taking last night.”

“M’touf.” Sarenya stopped and put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m not who you should be talking to about this.”

He flicked a look at her from underneath dark lashes. “Can’t talk to Low-Brow, can I?”

“Not if you don’t want to,” Sarenya said. “But you can talk to C’mine. Far more senior riders than you have been taking his advice for Turns.”

But he’s just a blue rider,” M’touf objected.

“There’s no ‘just’ about it. He’s the Weyrleader’s closest friend and one of the Weyrwoman’s most valued advisers. If he’s good enough for them, he’s sure as shards good enough for you.” She took her hand away. “Talk to C’mine. He’s the best listener in the Weyr. Trust me.”

M’touf followed her the rest of the way to the infirmary in pensive silence.

Vhion was nowhere in sight, but Sarenya put her two bottles down on his desk, and directed M’touf to do the same with his. “Go on back,” she told him. “That firestone’s not going to get broken up by itself.”

“I guess so,” M’touf said gloomily.

“And thank you,” Sarenya added. “For the help.”

“Sure.”

Sarenya checked the labelling on the bottles, then wiped the slate clean of its list of names and put it back on the pile of blanks. Then she sat down in Vhion’s chair, closing her eyes.

Had she done the right thing, sending M’touf off to C’mine? Time was, she wouldn’t have questioned the wisdom of it. C’mine had been everyone’s friend and confidante for as long as she’d known him. But he was so distracted and distant; so twitchy. She hated to admit it, even to herself, but he wasn’t the man he’d once been.

Are any of us?

The thought crawled unbidden from the same dark place where her nightmares dwelt. She tried to refuse it, but it hung there malevolently, taunting her.

Perhaps we’re not.

There’d been a time, before Hatching day, when things had seemed to be going right. There’d been a sense of buoyancy, of positivity, of hope for the future. T’kamen had become Weyrleader and, for a brief, tumultuous, glorious period, he and Sarenya had picked up where they’d left off all those Turns ago. C’los and C’mine had seemed unshakeable. Even Valonna had shown signs of emerging from her prison of self-doubt.

Then Katel had come to Madellon Weyr, and his murderous vendetta against those he believed had corrupted his brother had ruined them all. Katel had crushed Madellon’s newfound optimism, driven a wedge between C’mine and C’los, thrown the competence of T’kamen’s leadership into doubt. Katel had damaged T’kamen’s confidence in himself, leading him to lash out at Sarenya and frighten off Valonna. Katel had robbed C’mine of his weyrmate and Sarenya of her courage. Katel had forced them, all of them, apart.

There’d been a connection between them all, a series of links, some new and fragile, some old and seemingly unbreakable. Now some of those ties were gone completely, others trailed limp and broken, and those that remained were frayed and tattered and tenuous. Where once they’d shared a mutual purpose and direction and momentum, now they each inhabited their own private shells, orbiting each other at a careful distance, not daring to intersect. All that love, lost. All that trust, broken. All that hope, dashed. All because Katel had decided to impose his twisted, hateful perceptions of right and wrong upon people who didn’t share it.

Sarenya was almost certain that one of the phantoms she saw outside the dragon infirmary each day was his. She’d never looked closely enough to tell for sure. She didn’t dare, because she was certain that if she ever looked straight into the indistinct face of the shade of C’los’ murderer, she’d run at it, screaming and raging, and everyone would think she’d lost her mind.

With an effort, Sarenya pulled out of her bleak contemplation. Vhion’s chair was uncomfortably hard – his backside might provide all the padding he needed, but hers was considerably less ample. She got up gingerly and went to check on Sejanth.

He was asleep, his laboured breathing a painful rasp in the confines of the infirmary cavern. And he hadn’t touched his wherry. It lay wring-necked and abandoned just outside his wallow, and in the heat of the day, it was beginning to give off the faint but unmistakeable odour of decay.

Chapter ten: T’kamen

The southern continent of Pern, long believed to be Thread-blighted, was found to be remarkably hospitable to life when it was settled by a party of Fortian dragonriders resentful of the cramped living conditions of their overpopulated Weyr during the last quarter of the Sixth Interval. When the Seventh Pass began, Southern Weyr had established most of its current protectorate, and further land extending west into modern-day Peninsula territory.

The realities of the Pass forced Southern to limit the scope of its ambitions to be the largest and most powerful Weyr on Pern, but only slightly. While the Peninsula Weyr would later overtake Southern in both territory and population, Southern’s obsession with size and scale would come to define it. To this day, Southern Weyr is home to the biggest dragons on Pern – and some of the biggest egos, too.

– Weyrwoman Larvenia, A History of the Southern Weyrs

100.02.24 - 100.02.25 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON AND THE OTHER WEYRS OF PERN

T’kamen could count the number of times he’d been to the Weyrs of the northern continent on the fingers of one hand. He knew the visuals, of course – every dragonrider learned the reference for each Weyr of Pern – but it had been a long time since he’d been north. He made a point of looking up the names of the current northern Weyrleaders in Madellon’s records. But none of the watchdragons who challenged him and Epherineth when they arrived recognised them, and even after they announced themselves as Madellon’s senior pair, T’kamen’s unfamiliar southern shoulder-knots won them only a mixed reception.

Benden’s Weyrlingmaster was, as L’stev had said, new to his job, and more concerned with finding candidates for the clutch hardening on the Benden sands than with digging in records, though he made some vague promises to consult with his predecessor. Telgar had a class of weyrlings a few sevendays younger than Madellon’s, and T’kamen excused himself rather than waiting for the Weyrlingmaster to return from a training flight. Igen’s Weyrlingmaster A’stay sent T’kamen away with an armful of accounts of historical weyrling mishaps and the promise of more to come once he’d done some research. Tiny Ista, its Interval population barely topping three figures, hadn’t had a clutch in four Turns and had no standing Weyrlingmaster, but its Weyrwoman offered to check their Archives and send word with anything pertinent. Fort was a waste of time: its Weyrlingmaster, K’lay, was elderly and ponderous, and his mind wandered off the track of T’kamen’s enquiry too easily for him to be at all helpful.

By the time Epherineth brought them out into a howling blizzard above High Reaches Weyr, T’kamen was doubting he’d find help anywhere on Pern.

B’reko, the Weyrlingmaster of High Reaches, was the most grossly fat dragonrider T’kamen had ever met. If L’stev hadn’t warned him that the green rider was unconventional, T’kamen would have thought that the northern riders were playing some sort of prank on him. Even so, he had to readjust his thinking to compensate, making himself stop wondering how such a corpulent man could possibly serve as Weyrlingmaster. But B’reko welcomed him as a friend of L’stev’s, accepted the gift of fresh orangefruit with profuse thanks, and listened carefully as T’kamen described, for the sixth time that day, the weyrlings’ ill-fated jump between. “Odd,” he concluded. “Not like a dragonet to refuse. Riders, yes. Riders get scared, over-think things. Riders realise how hard it is. Dragonets find between easy. They’re how old?”

“Ten months,” said T’kamen.

B’reko nodded meditatively. The rolls of fat under his chin rippled in sequence with the motion. T’kamen found it oddly fascinating. “Bit young. Prefer to wait till eleven, even twelve months. Riders more serious then.” He shrugged his bulky shoulders. “L’stev’s Weyr. L’stev’s rule. Works for him. Never happened at Madellon before?”

“Not in living memory, nor so far as our records state,” said T’kamen. “But they don’t even go back as far as the last Pass.” He took a sip of the hot spiced wine B’reko had poured for him. His extremities still hadn’t thawed from flying down through the snowstorm. “Hence coming north.”

“Sensible,” B’reko said. “Some Weyrleaders wouldn’t do it. Some wouldn’t think of it.”

“You have more history than us,” T’kamen pointed out.

“Hm. What’s it they say? North, you go a hundred miles, it’s a long way. South, you go a hundred Turns, it’s a long time.”

T’kamen hadn’t heard that one before. “I guess there’s truth in that.”

“Wouldn’t say it if not.” B’reko tapped his thick fingers on his desk. “No. New to me. Dragonet goes between, dragonet doesn’t come out – happens. Two dragonets, same time…unlucky, not unheard of. Three, now, something wrong there. And none jumped correctly?”

“The one brown did come through eventually,” said T’kamen. “But he was between a long time, and his rider still hasn’t woken up.”

“Hm. Hm. Seen that before. Bad visual, dragon jumps in, can’t jump out. Can’t find the where. Can be retrieved. Have to keep a clear head, keep your dragon together, make a new visual. Better visual. Not good. Not fun. But survivable.”

T’kamen spread one hand. “L’stev was certain that all the visuals were sound.”

“Probably were, then. Hm. Any case, doesn’t explain the ones who didn’t jump. More to this. Need to think, need to read. Will look in the Archives.” B’reko shook his head. “Stacks are so narrow. Can’t turn around down there. But will send word if I find anything.”

T’kamen hoped his disappointment wasn’t too obvious. “I appreciate it, Weyrlingmaster,” he said. “And you’re welcome to visit with Madellon if you ever want a change from this weather you have up here.”

“Ha!” B’reko clapped his hands to his enormous belly. “Not a hot weather person. Not at all. Spent too many Turns building this up. Would sweat it off in a sevenday in the south. Milth might love you for it though.” He chuckled. “Strongest dragon on Pern, my girl. Has to be!”

It was night-time at Madellon when T’kamen returned from the north, feeling worse than when he’d begun. It was one thing to go to Weyrs that barely knew him with a problem, but another to expose himself to the criticism of Madellon’s neighbours. He’d hoped to find some historical precedent for the disaster that would credibly shift the blame away from Madellon before he went to Southern and the Peninsula. He doubted if the other southern Weyrs would have any extra insight, but he couldn’t ignore them. Madellon shared a border with the Peninsula, and news would certainly have reached there by now. And while it might take longer for word to spread as far as Southern – the most insular Weyr on Pern – P’raima would certainly take it as a personal affront if he were excluded.

T’kamen snatched a few hours’ sleep on the couch in his weyr – as much to give Epherineth a rest as for his own sake – and then made a swift pre-dawn pass through the dining hall for klah and meatrolls to wake himself up. Southern Weyr was a full eight hours ahead of Madellon, so it would be early afternoon there. “Let’s go,” he told Epherineth, pulling down the flying harness from the rack inside the bronze’s sleeping cavern.

Epherineth pushed himself up from where he’d been dozing on his couch, stretching one back leg, then the other. If you promise no snow this time.

T’kamen walked beside his dragon out onto the ledge. “It’s Southern, Epherineth. It’ll be even hotter than it is here.”

It had better be. Epherineth hadn’t liked High Reaches at all. Trebruth says that his rider would like to see you, he added.

That made T’kamen stop halfway through buckling the aft neck-strap. “At this time in the morning?”

He says that the Ops Wing is on night manoeuvres, if you wanted to see them in action.

“That’s tonight?”

Yes.

T’kamen dug a fingernail irritably into a stitch on his left-hand tether that was beginning to fray. He’d been intending to inspect M’ric’s Ops Wing for sevendays now, but he really didn’t want to put off going to Southern any longer. “We won’t be long at Southern. Tell him we’ll be back shortly.”

I will. I have.

The stitching on the tether still seemed sturdy enough. T’kamen climbed onto Epherineth’s neck and buckled in, then pulled down his goggles as the bronze readied himself to leap.

They went between a lot these days, T’kamen thought, as Epherineth lifted them towards altitude above the dark, silent Weyr. It was important for a Weyrleader to be visible. L’dro had spent more time out of Madellon than in, making himself well-known – and, depressingly, well-liked – outside the Weyr. For all his many faults, L’dro had radiated a certain ready charm that made people respond to him. T’kamen knew he wasn’t as charismatic as his predecessor, but he made it his business to be there for big tithe collections, to visit regularly with Madellon’s major and minor holders, and to keep abreast of changes in the structure of the Crafthalls based in Madellon territory. He didn’t know that it made him any more popular, but he hoped, at least, it showed he knew his duty.

Epherineth had a good memory for between references – for a dragon – but T’kamen didn’t like to take chances. He visualised Southern Weyr and shared the image with his dragon. Got it?

Yes, Epherineth agreed.

Take us there.

Coming out of between into a brilliantly sunny day was more of a shock than going into it from the darkness of night. Muggy though Madellon’s late summer could be, it didn’t compare to the close, clammy heat of Southern’s tropical latitudes. An instant film of sweat broke out all over T’kamen’s body beneath the winter-weight riding jacket he’d worn to visit the northern Weyrs and neglected to change for the summer one. He unbuttoned it, letting the wind cool him as Epherineth spiralled down towards Southern.

There was no Bowl, no Rim, no crater at all: just the jungle, with clearings and corridors cut out of it, connecting hundreds upon hundreds of low stone buildings that radiated from a central hub like the spokes of a wheel. Dragons of every colour soaked up the afternoon sun in their individual wallows, some partly hidden in the shade of massive trees. One enormous clearing served as the Hatching Ground, though there was no clutch on the sands. Southern Weyr sprawled out in all directions with no obvious boundaries or limitations. The ground there was grubbed, of course – Southern had more land where the Thread-eating organisms could thrive than anywhere else on Pern – but Southern’s complete disregard for the ingrained, Thread-fearing sensibilities of the rest of Pern had always made T’kamen uncomfortable.

A brown, perching on the roof of one of the large buildings that corresponded to any other Weyr’s lower caverns, cried out a challenge as they descended. Epherineth answered politely, but the Southern brown continued to protest  from his watch station, barking imperiously. Is there a problem? asked T’kamen.

Epherineth slowed his landing spiral, and turned his head from side to side in a keen-eyed sweep of the compound. He wants us to land immediately, on this side of the building, and wait to be received.

You’re not obeying, T’kamen observed.

He’s only a brown.

It’s his Weyr.

I don’t take orders from browns.

Epherineth wasn’t a colour-snob, so the Southern dragon must have been especially offensive. Don’t start a fight, Epherineth.

I’m not. He landed unhurriedly beside the uppity brown, who shrank away nervously. Do you see the weyrlings? he asked, furling his wings, and ignoring the watchdragon.

T’kamen hadn’t. The row of heads, green-blue-green-brown-blue-bronze-gold-brown-blue, watching from the camouflage of the canopy withdrew abruptly when he turned to look. Why so skittish?

They’re supposed to stay out of sight. Here comes Tezonth.

They were plunged into shadow as a big dragon appeared between them and the sun. T’kamen glanced up as he unbuckled his safety, recognising P’raima’s massive bronze. In the time it took for him to dismount from Epherineth and pull his goggles down, five more bronzes had landed in clearings around them, each with their stares fixed balefully on them. All of them were bigger than Epherineth, and all of them were almost identical in size, build, and colour. Their riders stared implacably down at T’kamen through the distinctive dark-tinted goggles that Southern’s riders all preferred.

Some welcome, he remarked to Epherineth, as Weyrleader P’raima strode up the steps.

P’raima was twice T’kamen’s age, but he moved with the martial grace of a much younger man, and while the Turns had whitened the hair that still fringed his balding scalp, they hadn’t softened the hard, square line of his jaw, or the forceful personality that burned in his narrowed eyes. “What in the Void do you think gives you the right to turn up at my Weyr unannounced, T’kamen?”

Even by P’raima’s standards, that was a more abrupt greeting than T’kamen had expected. “It’s not a sociable hour at Madellon, P’raima,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake Shimpath to bespeak Grizbath, and I didn’t think you’d like your queen to be disturbed in any case.”

P’raima eyed him sceptically, as if mistrusting his agenda. “What do you want?”

T’kamen thought about answering, Your help, but it seemed like the wrong place to start. “A few minutes of your Weyrlingmaster’s time.”

P’raima sucked a breath through his teeth. “What do you want with S’gert?”

“Some advice –”

“You won’t get any,” P’raima interrupted. “S’gert’s indisposed.”

“His assistant, then,” T’kamen said. “Someone must be looking after those weyrlings I saw when I came in.”

P’raima’s eyes narrowed still further. “Southern’s weyrlings are none of your business,” he said. “You’ve wasted a trip. Go back to your own Weyr.”

Between the heat, P’raima’s attitude, and his own weariness, T’kamen felt his temper stretch to snapping point. “I’ll keep this brief, Weyrleader,” he said, mustering all his self-control. “We’ve lost some weyrlings between –”

“And what do you want me to do about that?” P’raima asked. “Madellon’s weyrlings are Madellon’s problem.”

“I’m looking for precedent, P’raima,” T’kamen said. “I’ve been Weyrleader long enough to know I don’t have all the answers.”

“Long enough?” P’raima asked, and laughed. “You haven’t even got your Weyrwoman’s furs warm yet.”

The casual crudeness made T’kamen’s hackles rise. “You can be as impolite as you like to me, P’raima, but make a remark like that about my Weyrwoman again, and we’re going to have a problem.”

P’raima laughed again. “Why don’t you take your dick and wave it at someone who gives a shard, Madellon?”

It was pointless being there – P’raima clearly wasn’t going to give him any help at all – but T’kamen was blighted if he’d be dismissed. “So Southern refuses to offer any assistance?”

“Southern has no obligation to anywhere beyond its chartered borders,” said P’raima. “Least of all Madellon. Get out of my Weyr, T’kamen, before I have Tezonth  put you and your stringy wher of a dragon in your place.”

Tezonth roared in an echo of his rider’s threat, and Epherineth snarled in response, spreading his wings and rearing huge and protective over T’kamen. You call me a wher?

Detaching himself from Epherineth’s rage took T’kamen a titanic effort. “Madellon won’t forget this, P’raima,” he said. He knew his voice was shaking with anger. “If Southern ever needs help, don’t bother coming to me.”

“I’d sooner bite out my own tongue than ask you for anything,” said P’raima.

T’kamen wanted to say more, but he knew P’raima wouldn’t allow him the last word. So he didn’t hurry, as he turned to remount Epherineth. He took his time buttoning his jacket, tugging his goggles back up, re-fastening the safety strap. Aware though he was, as Epherineth was, of the orange-eyed Tezonth, and the other Southern bronzes, he’d leave in his own time. Let’s get out of this stinking jungle, Epherineth.

Epherineth stretched out his wings, rising onto his hind legs to cast the largest possible shadow on the hostile Southern bronzes, and looked around a final time with red-flecked eyes. T’kamen hadn’t felt him so angry in a long time. He deepened his seat for a big take-off, wrapping his legs more securely against his dragon’s neck. Then Epherineth snapped his wings tight to his sides and launched with a tremendous leap that carried them a full three dragonlengths straight up. He opened his wings for a single mighty downstroke, then jumped between.

The shock of cold should have cooled both their tempers, but when they emerged into the darkness that shrouded Madellon, T’kamen realised that he and Epherineth were both still trembling. He leaned over the fore-ridge, placing both hands flat against his neck. I know. I know.

They threatened me, Epherineth said. Incredulity rang in his voice. I had not come for their queens. I had not come for their weyrlings. I meant them no harm.

They threatened you?

Tezonth may be bigger than me, but he is old. Epherineth’s tone resounded with affronted pride. I’m not afraid of him.

Speechless, T’kamen stared down at the sleeping Bowl of his own Weyr. Tezonth would have attacked you?

If we hadn’t left when we did. He didn’t want us there.

What in Faranth’s name is going on at that Weyr? T’kamen leaned back as Epherineth began his descent towards their weyr. Southern had always been strange – proud, standoffish, insular. Its riders seldom visited Gathers outside its own territory. No one transferred into or out of the Weyr. And Southern never invited anyone, not even the other Weyrleaders of the south, to its Hatchings. P’raima and his Weyrwoman, Margone, had come to the Hatching of Shimpath and Epherineth’s clutch, but they’d been tight-lipped about Southern’s affairs. T’kamen hadn’t even known that Southern had weyrlings slightly older than Madellon’s, much less that there was a queen among them. Most Weyrleaders would have been only too happy to boast about a new queen, but not P’raima. He was notoriously antagonistic to outsiders in his Weyr, and T’kamen had been prepared for brusque disinterest – but not for the unvarnished belligerence with which his approach had been repelled. Is it their queen? She can’t be ready to rise again so soon.

No, Epherineth answered, with authority. But Tezonth was very angry with the weyrlings.

T’kamen remembered how quickly the dragonets had hidden themselves the instant he’d looked at them. He wondered if they’d ever seen a foreign dragon before. You said they were supposed to stay out of sight. Why?

They were all talking about how they’d catch it from Tezonth for popping their heads out. Epherineth sounded more like his usual self. The weyrling queen must have put them up to it. The others wouldn’t defy an order from the Weyrleader.

What did P’raima think we were going to do with his weyrlings? Steal them?

I don’t know. Epherineth’s quivering had slowed. In typical dragon fashion, he had felt the emotion intensely, but he was already putting it behind him. He would probably have forgotten the incident completely before the end of the day. Trebruth and his rider are waiting for us.

Oh, Faranth’s shaffing… Of course they sharding are.

Would you like me to tell them to come back later?

T’kamen almost told him yes. M’ric later had to be better than M’ric right now, especially in the mood he was in. Then his tiresome sense of duty reasserted itself. He’d been putting off dealing with M’ric’s Ops Wing for too long. He’d promised his Lords Holder that Madellon would field and train a Wing to deal with unusual situations like the Kellad wildfire, and he had to be seen to be taking that commitment seriously. Handing it off to Sh’zon or H’ned wouldn’t do – and he was blighted if he’d let M’ric operate without some kind of oversight. Later won’t be any less inconvenient. Tell him I’ll see him now.

M’ric was already waiting on one end of Epherineth’s ledge, leaning against his dragon’s foreleg. In the shadows, Trebruth was almost invisible, his dark brown hide blending into the gloom. As average-sized as Epherineth was, he still made M’ric’s dragon look tiny, but T’kamen overcame the petty urge to scorn the pair on that basis. The Peninsula’s dragons were bigger than Madellon’s, so Trebruth must have been the runt of his clutch, but the size of a dragon was no measure of the quality of his rider. T’kamen had known known plenty of bad riders of big dragons. But he still found he was irritated by the queen fire-lizard whose tail was twined lightly around M’ric’s neck. Why a dragonrider would have any use for a shoulder ornament, T’kamen couldn’t fathom.

M’ric stood up straighter as Epherineth landed and, perhaps conscious of T’kamen’s critical look, shooed the lizard off his shoulder and onto Trebruth’s. He inclined his head politely. “Weyrleader.”

T’kamen released his safety and dismounted. He pulled off his helmet and goggles. “Apologies for earlier. Too many places to be.”

“Of course, Weyrleader,” said M’ric. “I’d like you to see the Wing on manoeuvres. I’ve just sent them on ahead. They’re expecting us.”

“Fine, but I need a change of clothes,” said T’kamen. He was uncomfortably sweaty from the welcome he’d received at Southern. “Come in a minute.” He was stripping off his gloves and jacket and shirt as he spoke. “Tell me about the Ops Wing. Are you still recruiting?”

“Not anymore,” said M’ric. “We’re at strength.”

“Which is?”

“Sixteen, Trebruth excluded, on the basis of a twelve-dragon outfit with some reserves to cover sickness and injuries.”

T’kamen went into his bathing room. “Composition?”

“Ten greens, four blues, two bronzes.”

That made T’kamen frown as he raced through a cursory wash. “No browns?”

“No. There wasn’t one I liked enough.”

“Your own excepted,” T’kamen pointed out.

“My own excepted.”

“Some riders might consider that a little hypocritical.”

“They might.” M’ric didn’t sound concerned. “Madellon browns are a little light of frame for heavy lifting, and too big for the finesse work. Blues are more versatile.”

T’kamen crossed from his bathing room to his sleeping space and rifled through a drawer to find a clean shirt. “You have T’rello and B’mon as your Wingseconds?” he asked, over his shoulder.

“No. H’imo and Garlan.”

“Garlan?” T’kamen stopped with one arm in and one out of his fresh shirt. “And H’imo? They’re green riders.”

“They are.”

“A bronze won’t take orders from a green. It throws over the whole hierarchy.”

“You’d be surprised what prejudices dragons can set aside when they need to.”

T’kamen studied M’ric warily as he came back out into his weyr, wondering what other radical ideas he’d been trying out on Madellon’s riders. He was trying to be fair, but he didn’t like M’ric. He didn’t like him at all. He was just too sharding glib, too calm and confident and unruffled. No one should be that composed. And what was worse, no one else disliked him. He’d come from the Peninsula with Sh’zon in the exchange that had rid T’kamen of L’dro, but while Sh’zon had both critics and advocates, nobody seemed to have a bad word to say about the brown rider who’d quietly ridden his coat-tails to prominence at Madellon.

T’kamen was honest enough with himself to admit that Sarenya had more than a little to do with how he felt about M’ric. He saw them together sometimes. They made such a handsome couple that it made his teeth grind. But he went out of his way to resist punishing M’ric for that. He’d approved his promotion to senior-grade Wingsecond. He’d appointed him Wingleader of the Ops Wing, in recognition of his prior experience in search-and-rescue at the Peninsula. No one could accuse T’kamen of being spiteful towards M’ric. He’d been the beneficiary of enough of that himself. But he still didn’t like him. He still didn’t trust him. He still wished he were anywhere but at Madellon.

He raked his fingers irritably through his damp hair, making it stick up in obstinate spikes. “Fine.” He cast about for his jacket, which wasn’t where he thought he’d left it. “Where the shell is my –”

“This one?” M’ric asked.

It wasn’t the fur-lined jacket T’kamen had been wearing earlier, but he supposed it didn’t need to be. “Thanks,” he said, trying to sound gracious. He pulled on the summer-weight jacket. It lacked shoulder-knots or epaulettes, as he’d moved them onto his winter wherhides for his trip north but no one was likely to notice in the dark. “Where are we going?”

“Rift Valley in Jessaf,” said M’ric.

“Rift Valley? Why there? No one lives that far west.”

“Exactly,” said M’ric. “Your riders know Madellon’s passes too well. Rift has ravines and canyons that they haven’t overflown a thousand times. Great terrain for a mountain rescue exercise.”

“I guess that makes sense,” said T’kamen. “Lead on.”

M’ric turned to lead the way out, then stopped and turned back. “T’kamen,” he said. “About Sarenya.”

T’kamen felt his shoulders go rigid. He made them relax. “What about her?”

“I know what she means to you,” said M’ric. “And what you mean to her.”

It was the last thing T’kamen had expected him to say. Torn between annoyance at M’ric presumption and fierce curiosity about what had prompted it, he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

M’ric had gone very still. “She still loves you more than she’ll ever love me. And she always will.”

Nothing could have made T’kamen’s chest knot more painfully. “Why the shaff are you telling me this? Should I be worried about her?”

“No,” said M’ric. “You don’t need to worry. I won’t ever let any harm come to her. I want you to know that, too.”

T’kamen had never seen the brown rider look so uncomfortable. What was going on with him and Saren? Had they broken off their relationship? The prospect made his heart leap. “You’d better not,” he said roughly, to cover his sudden hopefulness. “Or you’ll be answering to me.”

“I know,” said M’ric. “And I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For taking you from Madellon. I know it’s the last thing you need right now.”

That was back on more familiar ground. “Pern doesn’t stop turning just because there’s a problem with our weyrlings,” T’kamen said. “I promised our Lords Holder that we’d have the ability to respond to emergencies. Your Wing is the fulfilment of that promise.”

“I appreciate your confidence in me,” said M’ric.

His respectful tone rang false to T’kamen, though that might have been down to his tiredness and irritation. “Do you have a visual for Rift Valley?”

M’ric nodded. “Trebruth will provide it to Epherineth.”

As they headed to their own dragons, T’kamen glanced across to Shimpath’s empty ledge. He was going to need Valonna’s help with the records he’d brought back from Igen. She was good at deciphering difficult handwriting, and Igen’s archivists seemed to favour an odd slanting script that T’kamen found very hard to read. Sooner or later there’d be more documents to come from the other Weyrs, too, and he wouldn’t be able to field them all alone. He thought again about finding a secretary to help him manage the endless record-shuffling that took up half of his days. Someone who could read fast, comprehend faster, and filter T’kamen’s workload before it reached his desk. It should have been C’los. He’d have come up with some clever system. T’kamen wondered what his old friend would have made of M’ric’s green-riding Wingseconds. He’d have approved, probably. C’los always had been a revolutionary at heart. Faranth, he missed him. C’los would have figured out what was wrong with the weyrlings. He’d have had a theory on Southern’s exaggerated hostility. He’d have known what was going on with M’ric and Sarenya.

Epherineth reported, I have the visual from Trebruth.

“Let’s see,” T’kamen said, and Epherineth shared the reference with him. A beacon fire atop a dark hold, a jagged ridge, an indigo eastern sky. Stars speckled against the darkness and the bright pinpricks of constellations. High and far, a Wing of dragons in black silhouette against the lightening sky. He fixed the unfamiliar reference points in his own mind. “Happy?”

Yes.

Trebruth made a very shallow leap from Epherineth’s ledge and disappeared between almost before he’d taken a wingstroke. T’kamen shook his head at the flashy take-off. “I suppose that’s why I gave him the Ops Wing.”

He is very agile, said Epherineth, with grudging admiration. He launched from his ledge with his normal power, and rose on mighty wingbeats. He wishes us a safe jump and good luck.

“Let’s go, then.”

Epherineth took them between.

The lighter jacket wasn’t much use against the infinite cold, but T’kamen couldn’t feel himself shiver. He tolerated it, as he always did, and then, as Epherineth brought them out into –

Except he didn’t. The moment when T’kamen would have expected them to emerge from between came, and then it went, and still they remained there. Epherineth?

T’kamen.

Where are we?

We are between.

We should be out by now!

And Epherineth’s reply, resolute and matter-of-fact, terrified him. I will find the way.

The fear would have choked T’kamen had there been air for his throat to miss; it would have turned his muscles to water had he been able to feel them, but there wasn’t, and he couldn’t. Epherineth! Forget that reference, take us home! He tried to release the visual he’d fixed in his mind, tried to shake it loose and replace it with the familiar shape of Madellon’s Bowl, but Epherineth was already committed, all his strength and concentration focused on the dark ridge and the beacon fire and the star-strewn sky with its line of dragons. Epherineth!

And still they lingered in darkness and cold and solitude. Did this happen to the weyrlings? T’kamen wondered desperately, but Epherineth’s relentless grip on his mind scattered the thought into a thousand fraying filaments.

We are nearly there!

Between was getting lighter. Between was turning white. And even without sensation, without orientation, T’kamen knew they were falling into an abyss. Oblivion gaped wide beneath them, its terrible jaws indifferent to their plight. The dreadful, implacable gravity dragged T’kamen and Epherineth down and down and down, unravelling them, undoing them –

A colossal fist smote T’kamen in the chest. Air! He dragged in an immense sucking breath, and the laboured rattle of his own inhalation was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

But still they fell.

Epherineth tumbled wildly, his flight profile all wrong, gone awry during their long sojourn between. He fought to open his wings, fought to defy gravity, but the ridge was too close. He flung himself into a cumbersome barrel roll and T’kamen saw the stars whirling crazily beneath them. The crimson light of the beacon flame made a bloody smear against the night. Epherineth’s wing caught the ridge, a shattering blow, and he cried out in pain. They lurched out of control, and then Epherineth’s hind paw snagged on something in the darkness, and the sky fell in on them.

The world spun. A bolt of indescribable agony shot from T’kamen’s hip to his ankle. They came to a juddering halt that flung him bruisingly hard against Epherineth’s fore-ridge and then snapped him back against the aft.

T’kamen hung limply from the safety strap, drifting. Swimming. A tether had broken. It dangled torn and loose. No. That was his leg...no, it was Epherineth’s wing…no, it was the tether… Beneath him, Epherineth’s every heaving breath made pain shudder through them both. His leg was wrong. T’kamen’s wing was wrong. Everything was wrong. Shimpath. T’kamen didn’t know if the thought was his or Epherineth’s. Shimpath. Shimpath! Where are you? Where are we?

Panic, rising. He tried to move. One arm worked. His other arm. A leg. The other –

Pain like a scarlet thunderclap, pain like a dragon’s scream, pain, pain, pain, and then nothing.

Chapter eleven: Valonna

The Weyrwoman is the pivotal piece on a chessboard. She must be protected at all costs, for once she is mated, the game is over. Yet the Weyrwoman, for all her importance, is gravely constrained. She may move in any direction, but only one space at a time, and never into jeopardy. Her power is limited, and she cannot be risked in any kind of offensive stratagem, except in the most desperate of end-games.

The Weyrleader, meanwhile, is the most powerful piece on the board. He may move an unlimited number of spaces in any direction and, played boldly, he will spearhead many offensive gambits.

Should the Weyrleader be captured, the game is not over, but the player lacking a Weyrleader will find himself at a grave disadvantage. However, should a Wingrider, against all odds, traverse the width of the chessboard and survive to reach the other side, he may be promoted to any higher-value piece (Wingsecond, Wingleader, Star Stone, or Weyrleader). In this way, a player who has lost his Weyrleader may replace his fallen asset; on rare occasions, promotion can result in one player having two Weyrleaders on the board at the same time.

– The Rules of Dragon Chess, third edition

100.02.25 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

The mourning keen of Madellon’s dragons rent the air of the Weyr, echoed from the walls of the Bowl, and reverberated far down into the deep quiet of the lower caverns where Valonna was working with the Headwoman.

She raced to Shimpath’s side where she had been keeping her vigil on the training grounds. “He’s gone?” she cried, heartbroken.

Shimpath lowered her head in sorrow, her chest heaving from the effort of her keen. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t stop him. He wouldn’t stay.

Valonna leaned her head against her dragon’s muzzle, fighting back the tears that had sprung into her eyes. “Oh, Shimpath. What happened?”

He said his rider was gone. He said he had to find him. He fought free of me. I could not hold him. He said his rider had gone between. He went to get him. Shimpath’s anguish seemed without limits. He is gone.

“It’s not your fault,” Valonna told her. “It couldn’t be your fault. At least…at least you were with him at the end. Oh! Your chest!”

The golden hide of Shimpath’s breast was bleeding, greenish ichor seeping from a dozen shallow slices. I could not hold him, she repeated mournfully.

One of the weyrlings, red-eyed and shaking, fetched Master Vhion from the infirmary. The Dragon Healer examined Shimpath’s wounds, the silent evidence of that final struggle, and pronounced them minor. He was treating them with redwort and numbweed when one of Master Isnan’s apprentices came to summon Valonna to the Weyr Healer’s domain bearing the most tragic tidings of all.

Kinnescath’s rider was still alive.

Valonna stood helplessly by as Isnan examined the unconscious G’dra: peeling back his eyelids, checking his pulse, testing his reflexes. The lad’s breathing had an odd rhythm to it, becoming progressively deeper and faster, then weaker and softer, until finally it stopped entirely for a moment before starting again. “Does he know?” she asked unhappily, watching the grey-faced youth’s chest rise sharply as he began to breathe again after one such pause.

“No, Weyrwoman,” said Isnan. “See his eyes, here.” He pushed up G’dra’s left eyelid, then his right, revealing the wide black pools of his pupils. “Both pupils are dilated and unreactive to light.” He pulled a glow-basket close to G’dra’s slack face to demonstrate. “When I observed him yesterday only the left was unresponsive. He’s fallen into a more profound state of coma, Weyrwoman, sunk so deeply into unconsciousness that Kinnescath could no longer find him.”

“But his breathing –”

“Only a sign of the damage to the part of his brain that controls respiration.”

“Then he couldn’t be – crying out inside? Knowing that Kinnescath is gone?”

Master Isnan shook his head. “He is too deeply insensate to know anything, Valonna. If any part of him were close to the surface, I’m certain Kinnescath would have recognised it.”

Valonna caught herself twisting her hands together and made herself stop. “Will he ever wake up?”

Isnan straightened, tucking his hands into the pockets of his smock. “Perhaps,” he answered at last, without inflection. “The Hall has records of patients rousing from comas after many days, even sevendays, with proper care. G’dra is still swallowing, so we can feed him, and even if that ceases we could introduce fluids intravenously – using needlethorn. But it’s more likely that he’ll simply sink deeper and deeper and gradually slip away. I know you’ll probably feel that would be the best thing for him, as a dragonrider.”

“He won’t want to live without Kinnescath,” Valonna said, quietly certain.

“I’ve been a Weyr Healer too long to argue that with you,” Isnan replied. “But I also feel that he’s a young man, and the young are sometimes more resilient than we realise. He’s only been a rider for a few months –”

Valonna shook her head. “He won’t want to live without Kinnescath.” She clutched at Shimpath as she repeated it, and felt her queen’s love wrap around her.

“As you say, Weyrwoman.” Isnan sounded resigned, but not surprised. “We’ll continue to care for him here. If Madellon cannot afford the resources to support him, I’ll send to the Hall to see if he might be transferred there.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Valonna insisted, although, treacherously, she’d already began to add up in her mind the cost of all the care G’dra would need, and how the resources and man-power might be more productively used elsewhere. “I’ll speak to the Weyrleader.” Shimpath, is Epherineth back yet?

He is not.

She wondered if T’kamen knew that Kinnescath was gone, if news of the dragonet’s death had reached Epherineth at Southern or Peninsula, wherever they were. She suspected not, or he would have returned by now. Dragons always reacted in the presence of a death, and to the loss of a queen anywhere on Pern, but they didn’t usually keen for dragons who died farther away than they could reach. The thought of having to present T’kamen with the news that they’d lost a fourth weyrling made Valonna fretful.

It wasn’t T’kamen’s fault – it couldn’t be – and yet she knew that the Weyrleader would find a way to take personal responsibility for Kinnescath’s death. Valonna didn’t think there was anyone more completely or passionately committed to the welfare of Madellon’s riders and dragons than T’kamen, but she feared how this latest tragedy would weigh on him. It wasn’t fair that so many catastrophes had befallen the Weyr in his short term as leader. E’rom’s death and C’los’ murder; the ongoing struggle to keep the Weyr supplied; the loss of the first three weyrlings, and now a fourth, in circumstances no one could explain.

“Faranth, this is a bad business,” L’stev said, when Valonna returned to the barracks to apprise him of G’dra’s condition. “Better the poor lad had died between with his dragonet in the first place.” He stared bleakly at nothing. He looked like he’d aged ten Turns in the last five days. The sudden realisation that the Weyrlingmaster was mortal – and getting no younger – distressed Valonna. They relied so completely on L’stev. “I’ll write to his Master in the Seacraft.”

“Shouldn’t I do it?” Valonna asked. “I’ve oversight of all non-rider deaths.”

The words came out before she thought them all the way through, and she cringed. Non-rider. Gidra, now, not G’dra. “No,” said L’stev. “He came to grief as a rider. that makes him my responsibility. I’m blighted if I’ll have you or T’kamen taking the lumps in my place.”

He meant it literally. L’stev was sporting a black eye from an altercation with the father of one of the other lost weyrlings, who’d turned up at the Weyr the previous evening in search of someone to blame for his daughter’s death. They’d thrown him, weeping, into Madellon’s seldom-used gaol cell to cool off. Valonna had assigned someone to watch him, just in case.

“How are they taking it?” she asked, watching the weyrlings work.

L’stev shrugged. “About as well as you’d expect. If there’s any good to be taken from this situation, maybe it’ll make the survivors think twice before doing anything stupid to risk themselves. But this problem with between… It makes no sense. They did everything right. And until I figure out what went wrong, we’re flying a holding stack. The next three months of training should all be about between. How can I teach them close-quarters flying if they can’t blink themselves out of a tight spot? How can I let them flame?”

Valonna didn’t know what to suggest. She didn’t suppose L’stev expected her to think of anything, but she hated feeling so useless. She’d felt, or been made to feel, inadequate for as long as she could remember, but especially since she’d Impressed Shimpath. As a queen rider, she should have had more control over her own life than almost anyone else on Pern, yet Fianine and L’dro and Adrissa had penned her in a cage of her own pointlessness, knowing she’d been too afraid to seek freedom.

She’d found her escape in the unlikeliest place. Madellon’s lower caverns had been enemy territory under Adrissa’s rule as Headwoman, but since Valonna had appointed Crauva in her place, the astonishing complex of passages and storerooms had opened to her. Together, she and Crauva had explored caves and niches that hadn’t been touched in decades, some of them abandoned early in the Interval when the Holders of Madellon’s territory had still been grateful for the establishment of their own Weyr. The vast storerooms closest to the living caverns of the Weyr had been insufficient to house the bountiful harvests of those post-Pass Turns, and Madellon’s population too small to consume all that was tithed. So a network of smaller passages and caves had been opened up, the surplus crammed in haphazardly, without record or inventory, and over time, as the main storerooms accumulated the clutter of nine decades of Weyrfolk, the smaller nooks and crannies, and their stored bounty, were gradually forgotten.

Much of it had spoiled long ago. They found disintegrating sacks filled with the desiccated remains of century-old wheat and barley, some of them almost untouched by the tunnel snakes that plagued the main stores, but inedible nonetheless. Heaps and rolls of hides – cow, sheep, and wherry – had become brittle and useless. Yet bolts of fabric came out of their storage chests undimmed by the passage of time. Ingots of iron and tin and copper stacked waist high to a man had gathered dust but no corrosion in the deep, dry caverns. They discovered dozens of wineskins, their contents long since evaporated and the skins themselves stiff and purple, and dozens more bottles of wine intact and perfect – although not every vintage had improved for the long Turns of neglect.

Finding everything had taken them sevendays of hard, exhausting, grimy work that had left Valonna with more barked shins, scraped knuckles, and torn fingernails than became a Senior Weyrwoman. But gradually, guiltily, she’d realised that her work amidst the detritus of a hundred Turns of Madellon dragonriders was the most fulfilling thing she’d done since Impressing Shimpath. The thrill of uncovering some hidden gem amidst the dross; the satisfaction of bringing useful order out of chaos; the companionship of a snatched klah break surrounded by dusty bales and boxes and accompanied by a dose of Crauva’s earthy common sense – these were things Valonna had come to enjoy.

Some of the things they found were too precious to be left unguarded, and those they locked in the stout cupboard in Crauva’s office – a gold necklace with a broken catch; a keepsake box filled with a jumble of uncut gemstones; a chess set carved in jade and jasper. Crauva had the master key, and Valonna a copy, cut while they watched by the Weyr Smith, hanging on the ring she wore on her belt. And some of the treasures were too beautiful to shut away. A garnet-encrusted silver filigree bracelet had come out of a box of lesser ornamentations black with tarnish, but splendidly adorned her own wrist now: her one secretive, guilty prize.

The business of lifting boxes and jockeying crates was almost complete now, but there were still lists to be written, tallies to be made, registers to be checked off. Adrissa had left almost no records of any use, and Crauva had begun her own. Each evening they sorted, fleshed out and copied the day’s findings – jotted piecemeal on slates – into one of the immense bound volumes of hide that were slowly filling the shelves in Crauva’s office. Valonna’s own handwriting had come to dominate those carefully-inscribed records in neat columns of figures, checked, re-checked, and totted up, an account of everything they’d discovered. She’d found herself to be more adept at figuring than she’d imagined she could be. Her passing education in numbers and sums had ended when she’d been Searched to Madellon not long after her fourteenth birthday. But Crauva had shown her how to make numbers obey her commands, how to make them agree with each other, how to set them out to yield an accounting. Fractions and percentages had come easily to her, as though they had only been waiting for her to discover them, like a dragon still in the egg.

Valonna knew she hadn’t served Madellon very well as its Weyrwoman in the Turns of her seniority. Fianine had died before Shimpath was even a Turn old, and Valonna had become Senior by default. By the time she had graduated from weyrlinghood, the bronze riders of Madellon’s Council had been doing most of the Weyrwoman’s work for so long that the idea of handing the serious business of running Madellon back to a sixteen-Turn-old queen rider must have seemed absurd to them. Valonna had kept Madellon’s chronicles as best she could, recording births and deaths and Hatchings into the Weyr Book, and she’d taken care of Shimpath to the exacting standards that L’stev’s training demanded. And, until T’kamen became her Weyrleader, that was all she’d done.

T’kamen expected more of her, and for all that Valonna was still tense around her driven, unsmiling Weyrleader, she was grateful to him. He could have drowned her in responsibilities, but he didn’t. He seemed to understand just how much she could manage. And he seemed, in his understated way, to approve of the work Valonna was doing in the lower caverns. She had thought he might want to take it over once the inventory had begun to yield useful resources, but T’kamen had never questioned Valonna’s ownership of the project.

Even so, Valonna felt a pang of shame when she returned to her work in Crauva’s cosy, orderly domain. Madellon’s historical stores and records and accounts had become her refuge: a calm, logical, non-judgmental sanctuary where the answers were either correct or not. And, she thought guiltily, as she bent her attention to the trunk full of children’s clothes she had been itemising, much easier than dealing with the upsetting reality of the poor traumatised weyrlings.

She was still there much later when H’ned came looking for her.

“Weyrwoman,” he said, “have you seen T’kamen?”

Valonna set down her pen, stretching cramped, inky fingers. “Not since last night. He’s not back from the other Weyrs?”

“No.” Something about the way H’ned said it made Valonna pay closer attention. He looked anxious. “Look – Weyrwoman – would you ask Shimpath to contact Epherineth?”

“Of course,” she said. “What would you like her to say?”

“Anything,” said H’ned. “Where are they, when they’ll be back.”

Would you find Epherineth and ask him where he is? “Perhaps the other Weyrlingmasters at Peninsula or Southern have been more helpful than he thought.”

“I doubt he’s had any luck at Southern,” said H’ned, relaxing slightly and leaning on a packing crate. “You know what they’re like.”

“Have they always been so unfriendly?” Valonna asked.

H’ned shrugged. “Ever since I’ve been riding, at least. They keep themselves to themselves. P’raima’s been Weyrleader there for about five hundred Turns.”

“Five hundred?” Valonna exclaimed, laughing.

“Well, maybe thirty. He’s on his second Weyrwoman. I don’t think it’s healthy for things to stay the same for so long.” He paused. “Any luck with Epherineth?”

Shimpath?

There was a long pause. I’m trying to find him.

Trying to find him?

Yes.

Shimpath didn’t sound concerned, but Valonna’s face must have betrayed her own confusion, because H’ned suddenly looked worried again. “Anything?”

“She says she’s looking for him,” Valonna told him, but she was baffled.

“Izath says the same,” H’ned said. “He can’t find Epherineth anywhere.”

Shimpath, Valonna said, trying not to let her sudden concern show, nothing’s…happened…to Epherineth, hasn’t it?

I can’t find him, Shimpath said matter-of-factly. He is not here.

“She can’t find him either?” asked H’ned.

Valonna shook her head. “Could he be asleep?”

Not asleep, Shimpath insisted. Not here.

“No dragon alive can sleep through a queen calling,” said H’ned. Then he winced at his own choice of words. “It’s not as if anything serious could have happened to him, but…”

“But he’s missing,” said Valonna.

They looked at each other.

“Right,” H’ned said, after that instant of silence. “Izath –” He hesitated, relaying instructions, then went on almost in the same breath. “Sh’zon’s going to meet us on Izath’s ledge. We’ll call in today’s watchriders and find out what they know.”

Valonna looked back at the ledger open on the table, its figures yet unbalanced, then put it out of her mind.

Kawanth was already on H’ned’s weyr ledge when they got there. H’ned’s own bronze didn’t seem to object to the visitor; the two dragons were sitting up either side of the entrance, like a pair of sentinels. Sh’zon came striding out of H’ned’s weyr looking stormy, and boomed, “What’s the story, H’ned?”

“We’ve lost the Weyrleader,” H’ned replied.

“Lost him? Where’d you last put him?”

“Funny,” said H’ned. “We think he went to either the Peninsula or Southern this morning, but Shimpath and Izath can’t find him.”

Sh’zon’s brows contracted over his beaky nose. “What do you mean, can’t?”

“It’s as H’ned says, Sh’zon,” Valonna said. “Shimpath says that Epherineth isn’t here.”

Sh’zon spun to point at his dragon and barked, “Kawanth!” Then he frowned even harder. “You’re pulling my leg.” He looked at H’ned, then Valonna, looking puzzled. “Well, where’s the man put himself?”

“Somewhere even a queen can’t find him, and that’s what worries me,” said H’ned.

“Who saw him last?”

H’ned frowned. “C’tan says Epherineth came and went a bit during morning watch,” he said after a minute’s consultation with Izath.

“Well then,” said Sh’zon. “Let’s get C’tan up here and see what he knows.”

C’tan was blowing a bit when he presented himself to them a few minutes later. “M’pologies, sirs and Weyrwoman,” he puffed. “Came straight up from the dining hall when Raborth got the shout. Thought we were off duty for the day.”

“It’s fine, blue rider,” said Sh’zon, at the same time as H’ned asked, “You took the morning watch?”

“We did, sir, we did,” C’tan said, drawing himself up to attention. “Right through till forenoon, sir.”

“Did…”

“And…”

H’ned and Sh’zon looked at each other. “You go on, Sh’zon,” H’ned offered.

“Aye, I will. Tell me, blue rider, did the Weyrleader leave the Weyr at any point during your watch?”

“Yes, sir. The Weyrleader did indeed depart Madellon. Epherineth told Raborth they were bound for Southern Weyr. And then –” C’tan paused dramatically. They all leaned in. “Then he returned, he and Epherineth, and not more than a fourth of an hour gone since they left.”

“He returned?” H’ned echoed.

“Then where the shell…”

“Ah!” C’tan cried, clearly enjoying the strange interrogation. “But he left again shortly after his return.”

“And where did he go that time?” asked Sh’zon. He was starting to sound annoyed, with H’ned as much as with the obtuse blue rider.

C’tan blinked. “Sir, Epherineth didn’t inform Raborth of his destination on the second occasion. He is the Weyrleader, sir. We should never presume to ask if he did not volunteer.”

“Sh’zon, if I might,” H’ned said crisply, then turned back to C’tan. “So, to be clear, T’kamen went to Southern Weyr, came back a quarter-hour later, and then left Madellon again without telling you where he was going?”

“Yes, sir,” said C’tan, “that is precisely the sequence of events.”

“Where –” Sh’zon began.

“And,” H’ned persisted, ignoring the other bronze rider, “there was nothing else unusual about the Weyrleader’s second departure?”

“Unusual, sir? No, sir. He and Epherineth cleared their ledge, ascended to altitude, and then went between.”

“And there was no other notable activity during your watch?”

“Only the departure of the Ops Wing, sir.”

“M’ric’s Wing?” asked H’ned, glancing sharply at Sh’zon, then back at C’tan.

“Just as you say, sir,” said C’tan. “Trebruth informed Raborth specifically that he was taking his Wing out on night manoeuvres. I recall that he and his riders left a short while before the Weyrleader departed for the first time.”

“And were there any other movements in or out of the Weyr during your watch, after T’kamen left for the second time?” asked H’ned.

“No, sir,” C’tan replied. “Apart from the Ops Wing and Epherineth, it was a quiet watch.”

“And the Ops Wing didn’t come back?”

“Not during morning watch,” said C’tan. “When green rider Jayena relieved me for forenoon watch, neither the Weyrleader nor the Ops Wing had yet returned.” He looked expectantly from H’ned to Sh’zon and back.

If he was hoping for an explanation, though, he didn’t get one. “You can go, wingrider,” H’ned told him. “Thank you for your help.”

“My duty to you, Wingleaders,” C’tan said. He inclined his head towards Valonna. “Weyrwoman.”

“That was like getting sense out of a green,” said H’ned, when C’tan was out of earshot.

“You’re the one who rostered him,” said Sh’zon.

H’ned ignored that. “Well, it sounds as if M’ric was about during morning watch. Ask him if he saw T’kamen.”

Sh’zon’s eyes went unfocused as he spoke to Kawanth. “He says the Weyrleader was meant to attend the Ops Wing’s manoeuvres at Rift Valley,” he said after a moment. “T’kamen didn’t turn up.”

“Does M’ric say why?”

“He says Epherineth told Trebruth that his rider wanted to go to Southern and the Peninsula before it got too late,” said Sh’zon. He shrugged. “M’ric says that’s the last he heard.”

“Did he see T’kamen?”

“He says he didn’t.” Sh’zon’s eyes refocused. “You want me to get him down here and ask him this yourself?”

“Is that a problem?” asked H’ned.

“Why would it be a problem?”

“I never said it was, Sh’zon, I was just asking.”

“Wingleaders,” Valonna ventured, when Sh’zon looked likely to fire off a retort, “might I make a suggestion?”

“Well of course, Weyrwoman,” H’ned said, turning to her smoothly.

“It seems that the last place we know T’kamen went was Southern Weyr, and we know the Peninsula was next on his itinerary. Perhaps we should enquire of them both? Maybe he’s still there.”

“We should go,” said Sh’zon. He poked a finger at H’ned’s chest, then his own. “You and me. One Weyr each. Do some first-hand investigation.”

“And leave the Weyrwoman without a Weyrleader or either of us?” H’ned asked.

“I think Sh’zon’s right,” said Valonna. “You should go. Wouldn’t Southern be offended if we sent a more junior rider?”

“Yes,” H’ned admitted. “But that still leaves our queens…” He hesitated. “Unguarded.”

“Unguarded?” Valonna asked. “There are twenty other bronzes at Madellon!”

“Thirteen,” H’ned corrected her. “Weyrlings, retirees, and Sejanth don’t count. But there’s no onward chain of command with T’kamen missing and both of us out-Weyr.”

“There must be,” said Sh’zon. “Who’s the most senior Wingleader?”

“Whoever’s still standing after F’yan and P’keo have had their annual slapping match over the honour,” said H’ned.

“Our priority should be finding the Weyrleader,” Valonna insisted, feeling colour rising in her cheeks.

H’ned sighed. “You’ll want to do the Peninsula, I suppose, Sh’zon?”

“If my Weyrwoman commands,” Sh’zon said, turning to Valonna with a half bow.

Valonna didn’t think the two bronze riders were really interested in what she thought, but she nodded anyway. “Yes. H’ned, you should go to Southern.”

“Yes, Weyrwoman,” he replied. He squinted up at the sun – only a few degrees higher than the western rim of the Bowl. “They won’t be pleased to see me. It’s the middle of the night there.”

“They won’t be pleased to see you whatever time it is,” said Sh’zon. “No sense in putting it off. We’ll head to the Peninsula directly. Weyrwoman.” He snapped his fingers at Kawanth, and the bronze obediently dropped onto his forearms.

“You will report in if you find anything,” she called after Sh’zon, but he just waved dismissively.

“We’ll keep Shimpath informed,” H’ned assured her. “Don’t let it worry you.”

Valonna just stood there on Izath’s weyr ledge, feeling totally redundant, and watched the two bronzes take off, gain height, and disappear.

They didn’t keep her waiting long. Valonna had barely completed the walk back to Shimpath and her own weyr when Kawanth reappeared above the Bowl, bearing a grimacing Sh’zon. “No sign of T’kamen,” he reported as he leapt down from his dragon’s neck. “Said he never was there, and that from a Peninsula rider I trust.”

He was probing his jaw gingerly with his fingertips as he spoke, and Valonna peered at him. “Are you all right, Sh’zon?”

“Just as right as rain,” he said, snatching his hand away, and revealing as he did a spreading discoloration under his blondish rake of stubble.

“Did someone punch you?” Valonna asked, startled.

“No,” he said, unconvincingly.

Valonna blinked. “What exactly did you find out?”

Sh’zon resumed rubbing his bruised face. “T’kamen never made it to the Peninsula. The watchrider said there’d not been a foreign rider all day. Not counting me of course. He didn’t have the cheek to call me foreign.”

“And –” Valonna glanced at his swollen face, “– whatever that was?”

“Went to see an old friend,” Sh’zon said guilelessly.

“An old friend hit you?”

“No, course not,” said Sh’zon. “But H’pold’s not my greatest admirer.”

“You got in a fight with the Weyrleader?”

“Never touched him,” said Sh’zon. “He came at me! Said I had a nerve showing my face at all!”

His cheerfulness baffled Valonna. “What did you say?”

“The truth! I was there on your orders, Weyrwoman. I’ll go wherever you sharding well tell me to, and H’pold be Threaded if he thinks I’d disobey a direct command from my Weyrwoman!”

“Sh’zon!” Valonna protested. “I didn’t tell you to get in an argument with the Peninsula’s Weyrleader!”

“I didn’t! I only –”

Shimpath interrupted with a very uncharacteristic rumble, and Sh’zon broke off. “Begging your pardon,” he said, but Shimpath paid him no attention, rising to her feet and raising her wings, her head lifted towards the sky. Kawanth tilted his muzzle curiously, then took two deliberate steps closer to the queen, suddenly tense.

“Shimpath?” Valonna asked.

A queen burst into the sky above Madellon, bigger than Shimpath, though not so bright. She craned her neck around to look down at the Bowl, beating her wings in a holding position, and even the brown dragon on watch made no sound, as if afraid to question her.

Shimpath gave throat to a long bugle of challenge, a shattering sound at such close range. The strange queen replied in a tone that Valonna could only read as conciliatory, dipping her wings in an gesture of appeasement. Shimpath barked out a question, and the other dragon responded with a softer cry. For an instant the space between the two queens seemed alive with the intensity of their communication. And then Shimpath subsided all at once, folding her wings calmly to her back and resettling herself in comfort on her ledge. I have told her she may land, she informed Valonna with a serenity that bordered on disinterest.

As Sh’zon blew out an explosive lungful of air, Valonna, looked at her dragon, bewildered. “What on Pern was that about, Shimpath? Who is she?”

Grizbath of Southern, Shimpath replied.

“That’s Margone,” said Sh’zon, almost at the same moment. “Southern’s Weyrwoman. And Izath’s right behind her, not that anyone’d notice after that entrance.” He gestured up at H’ned’s bronze. “I’m guessing H’ned’s found out more than we did.”

Grizbath had landed in the suddenly empty space in front of the lower caverns, not far from Shimpath’s ledge, and while Shimpath seemed relaxed now, Valonna could see her watching the Southern queen from the corner of one unblinking eye. “Do you have any enemies at Southern?” she asked Sh’zon.

“Not as I know of.”

“Then we must go and welcome Margone.” She felt completely inadequate to the task of greeting a Weyrwoman she’d met only a handful of times and never without her Weyrleader beside her, but there was nothing else for it. “Perhaps she has news of T’kamen.”

As they went to meet the strange queen, they passed several youngsters from the lower caverns who’d stopped to stare at the visitor. “Put your eyes back in your heads,” Sh’zon snapped at them. “You’ve never seen a queen before?”

“Wait!” Valonna said, as the children made to scatter. She saw a familiar face, the son of one of Crauva’s supervisors. “Segradon, isn’t it? Run to the kitchens and tell them to bring wine and fruit juice to my weyr.”

“Yes, Weyrwoman,” the boy said breathlessly, and bolted.

Izath had made a breakneck landing behind Grizbath, and H’ned was now at the Southern queen’s elbow, helping her rider down.

Margone was almost thrice Valonna’s age, and while she allowed H’ned to take her arm she didn’t even look at him. Instead she gazed at Valonna with piercing green eyes, incongruously bright in her tired, sallow face. “Thank you for receiving us, Weyrwoman.”

“Please be welcome to Madellon Weyr,” Valonna said hesitantly. “If I’d known you were coming…”

“Not your fault,” said Margone. “And we cannot stay long. The watchdragon at Southern will not remain silent once Tezonth realises we are gone.” She smiled, but the expression couldn’t banish the clear marks of strain – and illness – on her face.

“You must come to our weyr and rest a moment,” Valonna urged the older Weyrwoman, feeling an increasing sense of alarm.

“You’re very kind, Valonna, but time is short, and cannot be wasted on rest.”

Valonna caught her breath. “Then you know what’s become of T’kamen?”

“My dear.” Margone grasped her arm with a grip as light and frail as a child’s. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where your Weyrleader is now, though he did visit Southern today, and left it as a watch-wher might leave a nest of tunnel-snakes, if you’ll forgive my metaphor. I fear to say that I have come not to help you, but to seek your help.”

Over Margone’s shoulder, H’ned made a face, but Valonna ignored it. “Of course Madellon will help in any way it can, Weyrwoman.”

“First I must know this,” said Margone, “from your own lips, for what I gleaned today I heard only third-hand. Your Weyrleader came speaking of weyrlings lost between. Tell me, Valonna, is this so?”

Valonna swallowed hard, then nodded. “Yes. Three weyrlings lost to between all at once.” She closed her eyes for an instant. “Four lost. The last we lost only today.”

“Only four?” Margone asked. She placed her hand to her chest, as though in relief. “Four out of all your last clutch?”

“Yes, Weyrwoman,” Valonna assured her, but she was perplexed. Weren’t even four too many?

“Just four,” Margone whispered to herself. “And the others, they all went between successfully?”

“Well, no,” Valonna replied, even more confused. “Of the seven who tried, three couldn’t go between at all, and all the others – we lost all the others.”

Margone’s look was stricken. She staggered suddenly, putting out an arm to steady herself. H’ned moved quickly to support her. “Oh my sweet Grizbath,” she murmured. “What have we done?”

“Weyrwoman, you must come in and rest,” Valonna urged her. “You are unwell.”

“I am unwell,” Margone agreed faintly. She visibly gathered herself, though she still leaned on H’ned’s arm. “Your T’kamen came looking for our help, for Southern’s help?”

“Yes,” Valonna told her. “He hoped to find precedent in your Archives, to understand what happened. Madellon’s records go back only to the Pass.”

“Precedent,” Margone said, and then she cried, “Blight you, P’raima! Blight your pride, blight your arrogance, blight your dragon to the Thread-blighted Void!”

“Please, Weyrwoman, I don’t understand,” Valonna begged.

Margone clutched both of her hands. “Your poor, poor weyrlings. I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry. But at least…at least Madellon only lost four.”

The horror dawned on Valonna at the very instant that she saw H’ned go rigid with fury, and Sh’zon mouth, “Faranth between!”

“Yours, too?” Valonna whispered.

“Yes,” Margone said. Tears stood brightly in her eyes. “Grizbath’s last clutch Hatched twenty-one dragonets. One of Tezonth’s best showings, and a queen at last. Blight him. Blight him.”

“The queen –” Valonna began.

“Survived,” said Margone, “thank Faranth for that smallest of mercies. But now her clutchmates number only eight. At Southern, when our weyrlings go between for the first time, they go as a Wing. And so…those who tried… died as a Wing.”

The arithmetic was horribly simple. “You lost twelve?”

“We believed the fault was Southern’s,” Margone said despairingly. “No. I feared the fault was Southern’s. P’raima would entertain no such thing. P’raima blamed S’gert. Poor, faithful S’gert, who trained so many of our weyrlings. But I feared our dragonets, Southern’s dragonets, were faulty, that breeding father to daughter for all these Turns had finally taken its toll. Even so…I couldn’t bear…we tried…to stop them…”

Margone broke off. Her startling eyes sought and found no point of focus.

“But it can’t be your fault,” said Valonna. “Because it’s happening to us, too, exactly the same way. Half lost, half who wouldn’t try. Weyrwoman, you can’t blame yourself, or the breeding of your dragonets.” The realisation that T’kamen was wrong – that it wasn’t a flaw in Epherineth’s bloodline – gave Valonna a sudden staggering instant of relief. “Southern and Madellon face the same predicament, Margone. We can confront it together!”

“Dear Valonna,” said Margone. “To be as young and as hopeful as you.” She clutched Valonna’s hand in both of hers. “Don’t you see? A defective bloodline would be a tragedy to Southern, a calamity to all P’raima has built these thirty Turns. But a faulty queen, even a faulty Weyr, wouldn’t mean the ruin of all.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “But if this is not confined to Southern – if Madellon’s dragonets are equally afflicted – and if the pattern holds true for all the Weyrs of Pern… If dragons cannot go between safely and come out the other side, if they can’t jump, if they can’t dodge…then it won’t be just twelve lost, or sixteen.”

Margone choked off her words, covering her mouth with her hand, but her vivid green eyes met Valonna’s, and they were tortured with the enormity what she had left unsaid.

But Valonna completed it in her own mind, as she knew Sh’zon would, and H’ned.

If dragons can no longer go between, then when the Pass comes, and Thread falls, they’ll all be lost.

And Pern with them.

Chapter twelve: T’kamen

Sometimes you know as soon as you wake up that the day ahead is going to change your life forever. Sometimes the significance dawns on you slowly. And sometimes you have no idea until, much farther down the road, you look back and realise, ‘that was the moment, the exact moment, when everything changed’.

He swam clumsily up out of oblivion as if from the bottom of a deep and silty lake, tasting the sourness of old mud in his mouth, his lungs labouring against the thick soupy water, his eyes full of grit.

It wasn’t the first time he’d fumbled weakly out of the darkness. He’d broken surface before, more than once, gasping and streaming, half blind, and the voices that echoed hollow and distorted through the cloud of his perceptions had drawn closer, louder, almost resolving into words he could understand, before a dull flash of pain and a steady pressure from above pushed him gently but firmly back down into the abyss.

Not this time.

The thought sprang forth fully formed, almost excruciatingly sharp around the edges.

T’kamen opened his eyes.

Or tried to. One set of eyelids peeled reluctantly apart; the other, gummed shut, did not. Something rough and blunt loomed up out of the fog – his fist? – scrubbing inexpertly at his eye socket, chafing away the crust of mucus, and grudgingly his other eye cracked open.

He stared blearily at the field of grey that was the world outside his own skull for what seemed like hours, waiting for everything to start making sense.

When it did, awareness returned to him in pieces, like leaves drifting in the wind: some of them evading his sluggish attempts to catch them, others blowing hard and jagged into his flinching grasp.

His tongue was huge and thick in his parched mouth.

His right hip felt hot and swollen, and throbbed with a deep, continuous pulse of pain.

His torso ached, front and back, with every breath he took.

His dragon was asleep, his consciousness muffled as if by an enormously heavy blanket.

His nose itched madly, and he didn’t have fine enough control over the lumpen appendages at the ends of his arms to rub the sensation into quiescence without socking himself in the face.

His beard had grown, coarse and itchy.

His bladder was extremely full.

It was that urgent realisation that prodded him into motion. He screwed his eyes shut, then opened them, blinking rapidly to clear the blurriness. Turning his head on a neck that felt as rigid as an iron bar was harder, but he did it, and gradually his surroundings floated into focus.

He lay beneath piled furs on a hard and narrow cot in a space no more than seven feet by seven, defined by walls made of a faded greyish canvas. The left side of the cot butted up against the fabric. The right was bordered by a small table on which rested a partly-open glow-basket and a clay mug.

Thirst instantly overrode his other pressing needs. He reached out for the mug with eager desperation. His first grab missed. His second clipped the mug handle, knocking it to the edge of the table, where it seemed to teeter for an agonising age before tipping off and shattering into pieces on the floor.

He was still staring despondently at the wet starburst of pottery shards, dumbfounded by his own stupidity, when a woman came through the curtain at the foot of his bed.

“Hello, are you – oh!”

She wore a plain white smock. A healer? T’kamen shifted his gaze to her face. Grey hair, lined features, brown eyes. That was all the detail he could manage. “Need a drink,” he said. “Need to pee.” Except that his swollen dry tongue wouldn’t or couldn’t cooperate, and so the words came out as guttural sounds, unintelligible even to his own ears. He raised his eyes pleadingly to the healer and lifted his hand in a drinking motion, then pointed to his crotch in a gesture he hoped was explanatory rather than obscene.

She promptly hooked a pot out from under the folding table with one foot, then held up a cautionary hand. “Now, dear, let me help you. Your leg’s not anywhere near healed, and we don’t want you to dislocate that hip again.”

“Dislocate?” asked T’kamen, though it didn’t sound even close to right.

He got his answer when he tried to swivel his legs off the cot. White-hot agony blossomed from his right hip downwards, and for an instant he thought he was going to pass out.

“I said let me help you,” the healer said crisply. “Slowly now, and keep your weight on your left leg.”

Even then, lesser knives of pain stabbed down T’kamen’s thigh with the slightest movement, and his unhurt leg was pathetically weak. He had to lean on the elderly woman just to stand and, more humiliatingly, accept her brisk and efficient assistance to relieve himself. By the time she helped him lie back on his cot, T’kamen was shivering uncontrollably, though at least the pressure on his bladder was gone.

The healer went away, and then came back with a cup of water and a broom. “Sit up and drink this while I clear up, dear,” she told him.

T’kamen wrapped the fingers of both hands around the cup and brought it to his lips. Some of it spilled down his chin, but most went down his throat, and he collapsed back onto the single pillow, shaking.

The healer spoke over the tinkling sound of the broken pottery she was sweeping into a pile. “I’m glad you’ve woken up. We’ll be moving you by the end of today.”

He made himself open his eyes. “Where am I?” His voice was croaky, but at least the words were comprehensible.

“Our infirmary,” she replied, “under Master Taniel’s jurisdiction. I’m Lirelle.”

T’kamen tried to remember what had happened. “Why wasn’t I brought back to the Weyr?”

“Which Weyr do you mean?” Lirelle asked.

It made no sense. “Madellon. Where else would I want to go?”

Lirelle didn’t answer straight away. “That’s what your dragon said.”

“Epherineth,” T’kamen said, reaching for him. His dragon was still soundly, soddenly asleep. “Is he all right?”

“He has two broken wingspars and some very nasty tears,” said Lirelle, bending to collect the pieces of broken mug in a dustpan. “But he’s been a good patient, and Levierth has his pain under control.”

“Levierth?”

“My queen,” said Lirelle, tipping the dustpan into a bin.

T’kamen stared at her. His mind worked through his knowledge of Pern’s queens. He’d never heard of a Levierth. “I thought you were a Healer.”

“Oh, no, dear, only an interested amateur.” She dusted off her hands. “We couldn’t leave you unattended, you understand.”

T’kamen didn’t understand. His mind was – jerkily – racing. “Where are you from?”

“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” she said. “We’ve not had a report of a missing bronze rider down here, so you must be very far from home, hmm?”

“A missing –” T’kamen stopped. His brain still wasn’t operating at full capacity. He wondered if he was still unconscious and this was some sort of fever dream. “Weyrwoman, I’m T’kamen. The Weyrleader of Madellon.”

Lirelle’s eyebrows rose towards her hairline. “I do beg your pardon,” she said, smiling. “The Weyrleader of Madellon. Well, Weyrleader, that changes everything.”

“Didn’t Epherineth tell you?” T’kamen asked, relieved.

She placed a cool hand on his brow. “Of course he did, T’kamen, but he’s had a difficult few days too.”

“Days?” That made no sense, either. “How long have I been here?”

“Three days, just about,” Lirelle replied. “And under fellis for most of it. You dislocated your hip in that collision. Very painful. And it’s a wonder you didn’t crack a rib, but the bruises will be nasty enough, I’m sure.”

“Three days?” Why hadn’t they been taken back to the Weyr? “Does Valonna know where we are?”

“Valonna?” Lirelle asked.

“Shimpath’s rider.”

“Levierth doesn’t know a green called Shimpath, I’m afraid.”

“She’s not a green,” said T’kamen, baffled afresh. “She’s a queen. Madellon’s senior queen. She’s…”

“T’kamen,” said Lirelle, firmly this time. “You need to rest and gather your strength for the journey back to the Weyr this afternoon.”

He stared at her with a mixture of exasperation and disbelief. “You think I’m making this up?”

“I think you’ve had a nasty accident, and you’ve not quite gathered your wits –”

“So you think I’m raving?”

“– it’s not unusual to be disoriented after the sort of dosage you’ve been on, and the fellis dreams can be very vivid –”

“They aren’t dreams!” he shouted, and then swore as involuntary movement sent a new spike of agony down his leg.

“Bronze rider,” said Lirelle, and this time her voice crackled with command. “You’ll settle down, or I’ll stick you with enough fellis to put you back to sleep for a sevenday.”

The unmistakeable authority of a queen underpinned Lirelle’s voice. T’kamen discarded the possibility that she was lying about being a Weyrwoman. He closed his eyes, willing the bad dream to go away, but when he opened them again, Lirelle was still standing at his bedside. “All right,” he said, in what he hoped was a peaceable tone. “All right.” He tried to bring his memory to bear on what had happened. He remembered leaving the Weyr with M’ric, and… “M’ric,” he said suddenly. “Is he all right?”

“M’ric?” Lirelle asked sharply.

“Yes,” said T’kamen, hopeful again. “Brown rider. He was with us before…whatever happened, happened.”

Lirelle paused. “That’s a…curious…. And, ah, how do you know M’ric?”

“He’s a Madellon rider,” T’kamen said. “Of course I know him. I’m –”

“Weyrleader of Madellon, yes, dear,” said Lirelle, in a placatory voice.

“I’m not making this up,” T’kamen said. He knew it sounded petulant. He was too lost to care. “I don’t understand why you think I am.” He struggled for a way to convince the strange queen rider of his identity. “Ask M’ric. He’ll tell you!”

“Well, I’ll ask Levierth to bespeak his dragon, and then we’ll see what this is all about. I’m sure you must be hungry. Let me bring you some broth, and then you should try to get some more sleep before we move you to the Weyr.”

“Wait –”

But Lirelle swept out of the cubicle, leaving T’kamen no wiser than he had been on waking, and with more questions. As he lay on the pallet with his leg aching sullenly and his chest hurting and his head still fuzzy, he tried to put it all together. He and Epherineth had encountered some sort of mishap between. They’d crashed on emerging. They’d been found and brought to this strangely understaffed infirmary somewhere much colder than it had been at the Weyr. He was being tended by a Weyrwoman he’d never heard of, and who’d never heard of him. Is this part of M’ric’s Ops Wing exercise?

He reached out towards his dragon. Epherineth. No reaction. He pushed harder. Epherineth. Wake up.

Lethargically at first, and then with more resolve, Epherineth stirred. T’kamen. You’re awake.

He spoke the three words matter-of-factly, almost indifferently, and T’kamen sensed the calming pressure still being applied to his dragon; by Levierth, presumably. I’m awake. Are you all right?

Epherineth took a long time to consider the question. My wing is damaged.

Does it hurt?

Not very much.

Is it bad?

I must not fly.

That had the definite ring of a queenly command. Levierth’s rider said we’ll be returning to the Weyr this afternoon. Have you spoken to Shimpath?

Another pause, and then Epherineth said, She is not here.

She’ll be at the Weyr, T’kamen said, wondering how far Levierth’s restraint went. Perhaps Epherineth was under orders not to exert himself. Can’t you reach her?

She isn’t at the Weyr.

A cold tendril of fear made its presence suddenly apparent, deep in T’kamen’s gut. What about Izath? Kawanth?

Epherineth didn’t sound worried as he replied, No, T’kamen. None of them.

T’kamen made a decision then. Where are you, Epherineth? I’m coming out.

His intention was strong, but his body wasn’t. Moving at all made his leg shriek with pain. Just sitting up on the edge of the cot took a dozen attempts, each one sending fresh agonies shooting down his thigh. He was panting by the time he managed it, and cloaked in a second skin of sweat under his nightrobe.

Standing wasn’t too bad, after he’d taken a moment to get his breath. Walking was another matter. The first time he put weight on his injured leg the pain was so intense he thought he might be sick. He clung to the flimsy cubicle wall, fighting with the pain, the robe flapping absurdly around his knees as he tried to balance on one leg.

That was how Lirelle found him when she returned. She didn’t look surprised; only resigned. She set down the tray she was carrying and came to his side. “You’ll not help yourself, dear.”

Defeated, T’kamen didn’t resist as the Weyrwoman helped him to hop awkwardly back to the cot. He didn’t even object when he saw her add several drops of fellis to the steaming mug of broth on her tray. It wasn’t hot enough to burn him, so he drank it in convulsive gulps and laid his head back down on the hard pillow, willing sleep to take him back again.

“You need to keep off that leg,” Lirelle told him as he lay there. “The muscles you tore aren’t strong enough yet. You could pop the femur right out of the socket again, and then you’d be sorry.” She squeezed his hand reassuringly. “You’re not the first rider to do it, and you won’t be the last. Though I don’t know that I recall a bronze rider dislocating a hip. Did your fellow fancy he could fly like a blue?”

The fellis was working fast; T’kamen could feel it pushing implacably downwards on him. “Came out wrong,” he said. “In the…dark. In the…too low.” His grasp on consciousness had turned slippery, but then, unbidden, a thought swam up. “Not the weyrlings. Between. Between’s wrong. Got them. Got us. Between’s wrong.”

Faintly, as though from very far away, he felt the pressure on his hand increase, but something had already eased within him, and he slid helplessly back into insensibility.

The voices had been there at the edge of his awareness for a while, but it took longer for the back-and-forth cadence to coalesce into a dialogue. He lay still and listened.

“…seemed lucid enough before I dosed him back down,” said the female voice that belonged to Lirelle.

“I thought you said he was raving.”

“He was, but he didn’t seem delirious. He said some very strange things just before he went back to sleep.”

“You can put that down to the fellis, Lirelle. It’s not unheard of for it to bring on peculiar episodes. Some people respond to it that way. You could have found him stark naked declaring himself Faranth reborn.”

“But we’re no clearer on who he is or where he’s from. And – you’ve seen his dragon, Taniel.”

“There are outliers in any population,” said the man called Taniel. The Master Healer, T’kamen suddenly recalled from earlier. “Besides, if he is northern, we have no idea how their breeding programme has worked out. He might be normal for them.”

“He’s certainly not a southerner. Levierth put the word out and no one’s missing a bronze. There aren’t so many that we wouldn’t notice. He must be from the north, but that’s a long flight for any dragon, even a bronze his size. And how did he end up here? He’d have made landfall in Southern’s territory, assuming he came the shortest way. That’s half a continent away, and this is the first time he’s been detected?”

“So you think – what?”

“Perhaps he wasn’t rambling.”

“I think you’re being hopeful, Weyrwoman. The correct explanation is generally the simplest one. And I doubt R’lony would have left you two bronzes to keep an eye on him if he weren’t convinced they might be necessary.”

“It’s only that I’d sooner keep an open mind,” said Lirelle. “It’s not fair to condemn a man who can’t defend himself.”

“You should watch that. Leave your mind too open and there’s no telling what might fall out.”

“Taniel!”

The Healer chuckled. “When did you say that brown rider was arriving?”

“Any time now. He’ll certainly have some explaining to do.”

“You’re not concerned he’ll do something inadvisable?”

“Levierth gave his dragon an order. That should suffice to keep them obedient. And I don’t want to set R’lony’s watch-whers on him unless I have to. Him or this one.”

“You’re too tender-hearted, Lirelle.”

“That’s what they tell me. Ah, Levierth says the Wings are inbound.”

“We’d best rouse our patient, then, and get him ready to travel.”

“Your patient is awake,” said T’kamen, pushing himself half upright on one elbow.

The tall man who appeared from beyond T’kamen’s cubicle had a thin face and thinning hair, but the forearms revealed by the rolled-up sleeves of his smock were beefy, the hands large and strong. He appraised T’kamen with a glance, then extended one of those big hands to him. “Welcome back, bronze rider. I’m Master Healer Taniel. How are you feeling?”

“Never better,” T’kamen said, “as you can see.”

“Quite,” Taniel agreed mildly. “Our facilities are a shade rustic here, so we’re flying you out. I’m afraid it won’t be a comfortable journey for you, but there’s no sign of fractures or necrosis, and you’ll be better looked after there.”

“Necrosis?”

“Displacement of the thighbone can sometimes disrupt the blood vessels around the area. A loss of blood supply would be…very bad. Fortunately that hasn’t happened in your case.”

T’kamen resisted the urge to poke at his throbbing leg. “How long before I can walk?”

“The Weyr Healer will decide, but you’ll probably be able to start moving around a bit with crutches after a sevenday or so. It’ll be a month to six sevendays before you’ve healed, though, and you will need to take extra care with that leg from now on.”

A month to six sevendays. T’kamen closed his eyes briefly. “What about my dragon?”

“We’ll get you out to see him shortly,” Taniel promised. “Lirelle will get you ready to be transported first.”

Baffled, T’kamen asked, “Why is Lirelle acting as your assistant? She’s a weyrwoman.”

Taniel looked at him with the same mix of perplexity and wariness that Lirelle had worn earlier. “Well, of course she is. You can’t think they’d have anything less than a queen to control a bronze like yours.”

“But –” T’kamen began, and then he shook his head. “Never mind.”

He kept his growing list of questions to himself when Lirelle came to attend to him. “You’ll be much more comfortable at the Weyr, dear,” she said conversationally, helping him into a thick fur-lined coat. “They’ll give you a proper bath and a shave and you’ll feel more like yourself.” She paused, turning her head slightly. “Ah, that’s the first Wings now. Wait just a minute and we’ll get you outside to your dragon.”

She bustled off, leaving T’kamen in his seven-by-seven cubicle. He heard a door open and close, then open again, letting in a buzz of voices, some near and some distant, a few shouting orders.

“…see those greens go cross-eyed at the size of that bronze out there…”

“Riders,” Lirelle’s voice cracked from somewhere outside the cubicle. “This way, please.”

She appeared a moment later with two stocky men in riding leathers, bearing a padded litter on poles between them. “T’kamen, P’lav and N’hager will be getting you and Epherineth back to the Weyr.”

P’lav looked to be about fifty, N’hager a few Turns younger, and both wore what looked like the shoulder-cords of Madellon riders, bronze and indigo, though the knotwork was odd, and they weren’t wearing epaulettes at all. “That’s your bronze?” asked N’hager.

T’kamen didn’t like the way they were studying him, as if he were some exotic curiosity. “Why, what’s wrong with him?”

The two riders looked at each other, but if they had anything else to say on the subject, Lirelle cut them off. “Let’s just get T’kamen moved, shall we?”

T’kamen bore the discomfort – and indignity – of being lifted onto the litter with gritted teeth. He supposed that, with six sevendays of recovery ahead of him, he’d have to get used to being helpless.

“Take him out to his dragon, bronze riders,” Lirelle said crisply. “Through the side exit, please. No sense in having to fight our way through the crowd.”

As the two riders carried him out of the tiny cubicle, T’kamen got his first good look at the room. It was like a much smaller version of Madellon’s infirmary. Half a dozen cots like the one he’d just left each inhabited their own identical spaces, all empty. He spotted an open chest of Healer instruments in one of them. N’hager, bearing the front handles of the litter, turned left towards a set of double doors. Lirelle, walking ahead, pushed them open, and the procession continued outside.

The sky was brilliantly blue – so bright after the dimness of the infirmary that T’kamen had to shade his eyes – and punctuated by tufts of cloud scudding before a brisk, chilly wind. The long two-storey building from which they’d emerged nestled against a rocky outcrop. It might have been any of a dozen unmemorable minor holds in Madellon’s territory but for the sharp-toothed ridge that reared up into the sky beyond it. The memory of that ridge – black against a night sky, lit by a beacon fire, a line of dragons above – made him recoil in remembered terror, but now it was daytime, and no fire burned, and the dragons weren’t in the air; they were on the ground.

Greens and blues crowded the ridge, a mob of wings and necks and tails. Their shifting outlines made an accurate count almost impossible, though there must have been well over a hundred dragons up there. More joined them as he watched, apparently having dropped off their riders on the other side of the building from which he and his bearers had emerged, but they too represented only the junior colours. “Where are all the browns and bronzes?” he asked.

“They’ll be back,” Lirelle told him. “But look, here’s your fellow.”

Epherineth wasn’t up on the ridge with the others. He was lying on a flat area below the hold, or whatever it was, with two other bronzes and a queen. Weyrlings, by their size…but that thought came sluggishly from T’kamen’s drug-fogged brain. He made himself concentrate. They couldn’t be weyrlings, could they? The queen must be Levierth, the bronzes presumably N’hager’s and P’lav’s.

But Epherineth dwarfed them.

T’kamen’s dragon wasn’t particularly big. He was only eighth or ninth largest of Madellon’s bronzes by length. He’d actually been the smallest bronze Hatched from his clutch. Yet he was visibly taller than the queen. He was longer than her by a good armspan. And the contrast between him and his two fellow bronzes was even more marked. N’hager and P’lav’s dragons were no larger than small-to-middling browns. T’kamen looked back up at the ridge. At that distance, and without a point of reference it was hard to say, but if the blues and greens were proportionately smaller again, they must be tiny. And poorly though T’kamen’s reason was working through the residual haze of fellis, a dim understanding began to resolve itself in his brain.

Epherineth raised his head as they approached, and for a moment T’kamen forgot his preoccupation with size. “Right up to him, thank you, riders,” Lirelle directed, and the two bronze riders carried T’kamen directly to Epherineth’s side.

Ignoring the instability of the litter beneath him, he pushed himself up onto an elbow and put his hand out to his dragon’s muzzle. The contact of skin to hide sent an odd, giddy rush through him. It’s been three days. He’d never been apart from his dragon for so long. The realisation made his throat constrict with emotion.

Epherineth exhaled a long breath over him. I’ve been with you all the time, T’kamen You were very sick.

Only a dislocated hip. A weyrling injury.

You were very sick, Epherineth insisted. They thought you might not wake up. He bumped T’kamen very softly with the end of his nose. I knew you would.

T’kamen didn’t want to dwell on his own health. What about your wing?

Epherineth slowly unfolded the wing in question, the left one. The damage was plain to see. The sail between the outer edge, the wingspar, and next two wingfingers had been stitched along three ragged tears, and the spar and first wingfinger were splinted top and bottom. It wasn’t pretty, but T’kamen had seen a few broken wings in his time, and the spar repairs didn’t look too bad. Looks like we both got away with it. He looked around at Lirelle. “Will he be able to fly?”

“With Salionth and Recranth’s support on that side,” she said. “The wind will be in your favour, at least.”

That seemed a strange thing to say. T’kamen looked to see if Lirelle was making an obscure joke, but the Weyrwoman didn’t appear to be smiling. “I can’t ride astride, can I?”

“Not for a couple of sevendays yet, I’m afraid. N’hager and P’lav will get you rigged to travel. Salionth is quite accustomed to litter-bearing.”

“We’re going to put you down while we get the harness ready,” said N’hager. “Hold still.”

There wasn’t much of a bump as the two bronze riders set T’kamen’s litter down, though with Epherineth watching closely he supposed they wouldn’t dare. He put his hand back on his dragon’s muzzle. “Lirelle,” he said, when they’d moved away towards their own bronzes, “can we speak?”

“Of course, dear.”

He took a breath, shifting slightly and then regretting it as his leg answered with a new bolt of pain. “I think I know what’s happened to us. We’ve come to the wrong place.”

Lirelle looked pained. “Yes, dear. It’s quite clear that you have.”

“There’s something wrong with between,” T’kamen said. “That must be why we lost the weyrlings. Whatever sent them off course interfered with us too, but Epherineth’s an experienced dragon and he pulled us through to here. We can’t make contact with any of our Weyrmates. You don’t know who we are. I’ve never heard of you or your queen. Your dragons are small compared to Epherineth.” He paused, watching the expression on Lirelle’s face slowly transforming. “What Turn is it?”

“It’s –” she said, and for the first time she sounded like she almost wanted to believe what he was saying. “It’s 26.”

T’kamen closed his eyes. He could feel himself smiling so hard it hurt his face. “We’ve come back seventy-four Turns,” he said, opening his eyes. “No wonder everything’s so off.” He could have laughed out loud, almost light-headed with relief. “L’stev’s going to throw us to the watch-whers when he finds out we’ve slipped seventy-four Turns into the past.”

“T’kamen,” Lirelle said, and suddenly she knelt beside him, gripping his arm with disproportionate urgency. “T’kamen, that isn’t possible.”

“I’m not making this up,” he insisted. “Look, if this is 26, then Madellon Weyr’s only been established for, what, twenty-odd Turns? Does that mean M’dellon is still Weyrleader? Is it still called Western Weyr?”

“No,” said Lirelle. She stood up, brushing off her smock. She sounded disappointed. “I’m afraid your intelligence is rather out of date.”

“Then –” T’kamen groped for his Weyr history, trying to pluck the right names out of his memories of L’stev’s classes. M’dellon had been the very first Weyrleader of what had then been called simply Western Weyr, but for the life of him T’kamen couldn’t remember who had come next.

“Weyrwoman Lirelle?”

Lirelle whirled as if struck. “Oh! Brown rider, don’t make me jump like that! I’m not as young as I was!”

T’kamen couldn’t see the rider who’d walked up behind Lirelle, but he recognised the voice. “Blight it all, M’ric, is that you?”

Lirelle stepped aside. “Would you care to explain this?”

The person standing behind her was indisputably M’ric, brown Trebruth’s rider: tall, lean, with curly dark hair and dark eyes…

He frowned down at T’kamen. “Do I know you?”

…and about sixteen Turns old.

T’kamen stared up at him, thrown. How could M’ric be a teenager in 26? He shouldn’t even be born yet!

The youth looked from him to Lirelle and back again with a baffled expression. “Look, Lirelle, I don’t know what he’s said, but I’ve never seen this man before in my life.”

“He said he came between,” said Lirelle. “From the future.”

The young M’ric almost rolled his eyes. “And you believe him?”

T’kamen had the sudden irrational urge to grab the young snot’s ankle and pull him over. “You gave me the sharding visual!”

“How could I have given you anything? I don’t even know who you are!” The brown rider raised his hands in appeal to Lirelle. “Faranth, this is a complete fit-up!”

“You little shit,” T’kamen said. “If I could get up I’d –”

“T’kamen,” Lirelle interrupted, kneeling ponderously down to him again and putting a business-like hand on his arm. “You’re really in no condition to be defending yourself, so I suggest you hold your tongue until you’re more stable.”

“Defending myself? What am I being accused of?”

“Bronze rider –”

“Well you’re from the north, aren’t you?” M’ric asked. “Shards, and they gave you the worst cover story I’ve ever heard. You came between from the future? Who’s going to believe that?”

“Perhaps you should be more concerned for yourself, weyrling,” Lirelle told the boy ominously. “How does the bronze rider know your name?”

“Faranth, Lirelle, I don’t know! I swear I have no idea who this man is! Ask Trebruth if I’m lying!” M’ric scowled down at T’kamen. “Do you know how much trouble you’ve got me in now? You’re going to ruin my chances –”

“That’s enough, weyrling,” Lirelle said sharply. “I suggest you hold your tongue, too, before you say something you regret!”

“What’s the matter with you people?” T’kamen asked. He wanted to laugh with the absurdity of it all “They didn’t invent timing yesterday! Didn’t your Weyrlingmaster lecture you about it? Shards, haven’t you ever slipped an hour by accident going between on a visual that was too specific?”

“What?” M’ric asked, as if he were speaking a foreign language.

But Lirelle was looking at him strangely. “T’kamen, this is silly,” she said. “Can you even hear yourself? You’re talking like you’re sprung from some whimsical old Harper ballad about the days when dragons could go between.”

“Oh, shards,” M’ric said to Lirelle suddenly. “You don’t think they’ve figured it out up north, do you? Is this guy just the scout? Is he –”

“Weyrling, be quiet,” said Lirelle. She was looking more closely at T’kamen’s face which, he realised weakly, must have betrayed his horror.

He swallowed hard. “Your dragons can’t go between?”

“No, T’kamen,” said Lirelle. “Of course they can’t. Would that they could –”

“Since when? Weyrwoman, please, this is important. When did they stop?”

“The last dragons who could go between died when I wasn’t much more than a weyrling,” said Lirelle. “A dragon hasn’t come out of between in half a century.”

And this time, understanding didn’t creep up on T’kamen. It leapt upon him, wrestled him down and held him there. He felt suddenly adrift. Epherineth made a small querying sound in the back of his throat. “What Turn is it?” he asked. “You said it was 26 – 26 of what?”

“Of the Pass,” said M’ric, “obv–”

“Which Pass?”

“The Eighth Pass,” said Lirelle.

The hysterical laughter that had come so close to overwhelming T’kamen already finally broke through. It bubbled up helplessly in his throat, in his nose, in his mouth, so he couldn’t even answer when the Weyrwoman he’d never heard of and the brown rider who’d aged the wrong way asked him, with increasing urgency, what was so sharding funny.

If he could have answered, he would have explained that he was laughing at the sheer absurd irony of it. Lirelle and M’ric had been quite right to scoff at him. He and Epherineth had not, after all, timed it seventy-four Turns into the past.

They’d timed it one hundred and twenty-six Turns into the future.

ACT TWO

Chapter thirteen: Sh’zon

Secrets seldom stay secret for long in a Weyr. Dragons, for all their disinterest in human matters, are ferocious gossips when it comes to the business of other dragons. It only takes one excitable green – and it is almost always a green – getting wind of a choice rumour for the information to spread. Then it will burrow and multiply like an unburned Thread in the fertile ground of the Weyr’s imagination, until finally, having become a gorged, bloated parody of itself, it collapses under its own weight, leaving behind a shell of the original truth: ugly, empty, and of no further interest to anyone.

– Excerpt from Weyrwoman Fianine’s personal diaries

100.02.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Even the most hardened rumourmongers would think twice about gossiping openly with a foreign queen still in their midst, but Sh’zon had Kawanth start listening in on the speculation the instant Grizbath and her rider left. Epherineth has gone looking for our lost weyrlings, Kawanth reported dutifully. Southern Weyr has broken between. Epherineth’s rider tried to depose Tezonth’s rider and they’ve all gone between. Grizbath wishes to transfer to Madellon and leave her weyrling daughter as senior at Southern. Between is broken in the south but not the north. Between is broken for everyone.

That’s ridiculous, Sh’zon scoffed as he jogged up the steps to his weyr, overtaking two blue riders.

I’m only repeating what I’ve heard.

Still, as idiotic as some of the allegations circulating at Madellon were, the basic facts seemed to be well and truly out: Madellon’s weyrlings weren’t the only ones getting lost between, and the Weyrleader had gone missing.

All around the Bowl, riders were streaming towards the low-level weyrs of their Wingleaders. In the Council meeting that had continued after Margone’s departure, Sh’zon had proposed that the whole Weyr be informed of the facts. H’ned had seconded the motion. Sh’zon had then suggested that the Council should decide what information should be released and what was need-to-know only. With eleven vocal Wingleaders, plus the Weyrwoman and Weyrlingmaster, it had taken most of the night to reach a consensus.

None of them had slept, but one point on which they’d all agreed was that the Weyr must be briefed first thing, before the hearsay got out of hand. The Weyrwoman would address the Weyr Masters and her lower caverns section leaders, who would then disseminate the information to their people. L’stev, naturally, would inform the weyrlings – hopefully putting a stop to some of the more lurid conjecture that was coming from the youngsters. And each Wingleader was to address his own Wing. H’ned offered to include Madellon’s retired riders in his briefing, while Sh’zon put the word out to T’kamen’s Wingseconds that they and their wingmates should report to Kawanth’s weyr.

The briefing rooms attached to each Wingleader’s weyr had been designed for Pass-strength Wings of thirty or more riders. Sh’zon’s Wing and T’kamen’s combined barely numbered that many, so there was room for everyone, if not necessarily space on the benches. The riders had organised themselves by Wing on either side of the room. M’ric and J’tron stood one side of the door; B’ward and F’halig, T’kamen’s Wingseconds, the other: all of them looking serious. “You lot,” Sh’zon said, jabbing his fingers at them and trying not to look M’ric in the eye, “is everyone here?”

“Just waiting for a few stragglers,” said J’tron.

The pair of blue riders Sh’zon had passed on the stairs hurried in and found themselves space to stand on T’kamen’s side of the ready-room. One of Sh’zon’s own green riders came in behind them, looking dishevelled. He’d ordinarily have remarked on a girl coming to a Wing meeting with her hair still wet, but this wasn’t a normal Wing meeting. Sh’zon had washed but not shaved, preferring to let his stubble continue to obscure the visible evidence of the blow H’pold had landed on his jaw yesterday when the Peninsula Weyrleader had found him in Rallai’s weyr.

The crowded room and buzz of speculation took Sh’zon back to the last time he’d had to break serious news to a room full of riders. It wasn’t a memory he relished. Telling his Wing that he was leaving the Peninsula had been hard, facing the wariness and distrust of riders who’d flown under him for eight Turns even harder, and resisting the impulse to say what he really thought hardest of all. H’pold must have pulled a lot of strings and called in a lot of favours to expose the skeletons in Sh’zon’s family’s closet. If that was how he thought a Weyrleader’s influence should be spent…well, Sh’zon could have let his wingriders know his opinion of that. It wouldn’t have helped. Peninsula bronze riders were always running this scheme or that to discredit their rivals, but it wasn’t every day that the Weyr found out one of its senior Wingleaders was related to a bunch of murderers – or that he’d refused to condemn his kin for what they’d done. By the time Sh’zon had realised what a mistake it had been to try to defend his uncle, it had been too late to save his own reputation. Agreeing to transfer to Madellon had been his only graceful option.

The memory of that day, that briefing, that creeping realisation that H’pold had totally outmanoeuvred him, still made Sh’zon angry. He made himself put it aside. Today was different. The people, the circumstances, the focus. No one was accusing him of anything. It wasn’t the same at all. Save for one thing: M’ric at his back, steadfast and reliable and so hatefully knowing in his watchful silence, as if he’d anticipated this crisis and still lifted no finger to avert it.

“All here,” said M’ric, quietly, and J’tron pulled the curtain across the doorway.

No one had taken the big seat at the head of the room from which Sh’zon usually conducted his Wing meetings. He didn’t sit down, but rested his forearms on the back of the chair. “Want to thank you all for coming at this short notice,” he said, and then paused, looking around at the faces he knew and the ones he didn’t. “You all know there’ve been some things happening in the last day or so. The rumour mill’s been grinding out all kinds of nonsense, and most of it Harpers’ tales, a lot of people flapping their gums that they know what’s happening.

“Well, most of it’s guff. You’ve a right to know what’s really been going on, and that’s why all the Wingleaders have called meetings, right now, right across the Weyr. You’re getting the same news as everyone else, so when you get out of here and you talk to your weyrmates and your pals, they’ll know just the same as you.

“Firstly,” he said, holding up a finger. “The Weyrleader’s gone missing.” A ripple of uneasy mutters followed the statement. “He’s gone missing,” Sh’zon repeated over the hum, “but that doesn’t give anyone a pass to make up stories about what’s happened to him. What we do know is that he’s not dead, because you’d better believe Shimpath’d know about it if he was. So he is missing, that’s all, and we have no cause to think he won’t be back soon enough.”

He took a breath. One of T’kamen’s riders opened her mouth to ask a question. He cut her off. “If you’ll hold your peace while I talk, Suzallie, you can ask questions at the end. Now. While T’kamen’s absent, his duties as Weyrleader will fall to me and to Wingleader H’ned as his deputies. We’ll also be supporting the Weyrwoman and you’ll like as not see one or both of our dragons on her ledge, or on the Weyrleader’s, while we get to grips with all the thousand-and-one things that keep this Weyr flying.

“Secondly. You’ll all have noticed that we had a visitor yesterday. For those of you who don’t already know, that was Weyrwoman Margone from Southern. There’s been a lot of ash puked about the whys and wherefores, but I’m telling you now: Margone’s visit had nothing to do with T’kamen going missing. She didn’t even know he was missing. Margone came to Madellon for one reason and one reason only.” He held up his finger again for emphasis. “That was to help us understand what’s going on with the weyrlings.

“Now, there’s been a lot of talk about what happened, a lot of finger-pointing, a lot of blame being chucked around about the quality of Madellon’s dragons and the way they’re being trained. Well, that’s all the biggest heap of whershit.” He paused to let that sink it. “It’s whershit, because Southern Weyr has a group of weyrlings just about a month older than ours, and they lost a bunch of them between a couple of sevendays ago too.”

That caused a more vocal response from the riders, and Sh’zon even caught motion from the corner of his eye that must have been from one of the Wingseconds shifting uneasily. “For Faranth’s sake,” said one of the older blue riders from T’kamen’s Wing, “and they didn’t tell the rest of us?”

“That’s sharding Southern for you,” someone else said, and suddenly the ready-room was abuzz with the angry voices of thirty riders.

“…can’t believe they knew…”

“…might not have lost our kids…”

“…shaffing Southern dimglows…”

“All right,” Sh’zon bellowed over the clamour. “Wind your necks in!” He waited for the uproar to subside, glaring around the room. “See how you’re all quick to point the finger now, eh? Aye, Southern could’ve handled it better, and they’ll be facing some hard questions of their own. But when all’s said and done, there’s nothing to say that Southern caused the problem, and flaming them for it won’t sharding help.” He let them mutter for a moment. “Here’s the fact of it. I don’t have all the answers. No one on Pern does. But I’ll tell you this: we’re going to fix it. I’m on it, H’ned’s on it, the Weyrlingmaster’s on it and none of our weyrlings are going to be put at any risk until we knows exactly what the problem is.

“So.” He pushed himself up from where he’d been leaning on his chair. “That’s where we are. The situation’s changing all the time as we work on it, and we’ll be keeping you informed as and when we have new information. Now. Green rider. You had a question.”

Suzallie gave a start at the suddenness of the address, then composed herself. “I was just going to ask if the Weyrleader’s disappearance is connected to his investigation of the weyrlings’ accident.”

Sh’zon fixed her with a piercing stare. “Connected how?”

“Was he trying to replicate what happened to them?”

“I’m lots of things, green rider,” said Sh’zon, “but I’m not a mind-reader. I don’t know what T’kamen was doing when he disappeared and neither does anyone else.” He pointed to one of his own riders who’d raised a hand. “T’pial.”

The blue rider was one of the oldest and steadiest members of Sh’zon’s Wing, and he asked his question with quiet gravity. “Is between still safe?”

That was something they’d all agreed they should expect. “What’s affecting the weyrlings isn’t affecting adult dragons,” said Sh’zon, “so between is no more dangerous now than it’s ever been. That isn’t to say that taking extra care would be a bad thing. Anyone can go astray with a half-arsed visual, and I’d wager there’s none of us here who could say we’ve never been guilty of that at one time or other.”

G’tab, another of T’kamen’s riders, had his hand up. Sh’zon nodded at him. “Sir, what should we be saying if we’re asked about between? I was at Kellad yesterday and one of the journeyman Woodcrafters asked me if it was true that dragons were getting lost.”

The quiet murmur of consensus implied that G’tab wasn’t the only one who’d encountered that demand. “You tell them the truth,” said Sh’zon. “No adult dragonpair has been affected and there’s no reason to think they will be.”

“But what if they ask about T’kamen?” asked G’tab. “They’re bound to link the him and the weyrlings.”

“News of the Weyrleader’s absence hasn’t yet spread to the Holds,” said Sh’zon. This was another point that had come up at the long meeting of the Wingleaders overnight. “H’ned and I’ll be visiting Madellon’s Masters and Lords Holder later today to apprise them of the situation. Beyond that, you should answer any questions about T’kamen’s whereabouts, or the consequences of him being missing, with reassurance that Madellon’s in the hands of his deputies, and that there’s no cause for alarm. Yes, Ammia?”

“My brother’s boy is a weyrling at Telgar. What’s going to happen when his dragonet’s old enough to start going between?”

“I can’t speak for Telgar,” said Sh’zon, “or anywhere else, but all the Weyrleaders of Pern have been warned now, and no one’s going to be taking between training lightly. Anyway, we’ll more than likely have an answer and a solution to this problem long before it’s an issue for your nephew.” He scanned the room for any other raised hands. “Anyone else have a question?”

No more came. “Well then, I’ll –”

“I have a question, Wingleader.”

The voice came from  behind him, and belonged to F’halig, T’kamen’s burly senior Wingsecond. Sh’zon knew the brown rider had never thought much of him. Still, he turned to face him. “Go ahead, Wingsecond.”

“What if T’kamen doesn’t come back?” F’halig asked.

Sh’zon supposed he should have anticipated it. “He’ll be back. I have every confidence –”

“You said yourself that you don’t know where he’s gone or why,” F’halig pointed out. “So it follows that you have no idea if he’ll turn up again. Excuse me if I don’t find your assertions very comforting.”

“F’halig,” B’ward said to his wingmate, quietly urgent.

“No, Wingsecond, it’s all right,” said Sh’zon. He met F’halig’s stare unblinkingly. “Bit soon to be writing him off, don’t you think?”

“I think that it never takes the wherries long to start circling when a position becomes vacant in this Weyr,” F’halig replied. “And any bronze rider who claims he isn’t eyeing up the Weyrleader’s weyr right now is being disingenuous.”

“T’kamen’s not been gone a day yet,” said Sh’zon. “Like as not he’ll turn up before dinnertime.”

“And if he doesn’t?” F’halig asked. “What happens tomorrow, or next sevenday, or a month from now, if he’s still missing?”

The atmosphere in the room had gone from expectant to tense. “If he’s missing for an extended period,” said Sh’zon, “Madellon will have a procedure to choose a successor until the senior queen rises again.”

“And do you know what that procedure is at Madellon?” asked F’halig.

“No, but at the Peninsula, the Wingleaders vote –”

“At the Peninsula,” F’halig said witheringly. “Well, Wingleader, you may not know this, being a foreigner as you are, but T’kamen didn’t become Weyrleader here through a procedure or, Faranth forbid, a vote amongst the Wingleaders. We chose T’kamen. Us, the rank-and-file riders of the Weyr, the browns and greens and blues. We wanted him for our Weyrleader and when Shimpath rose we made sure we got him. So if you think Madellon’s going to take kindly to having a new Weyrleader imposed on us by a procedure, or by bronze riders, or by someone from the Peninsula, you’re very much mistaken.”

“F’halig, that’s enough,” B’ward told him, but the damage was already done. T’kamen’s riders were talking restlessly amongst themselves, and even Sh’zon’s were looking agitated.

“All right, settle it down,” said Sh’zon. “We’re jumping way ahead of where we are.” He must have misjudged the respect Madellon’s wingriders had for T’kamen. These were riders who had only recently wielded a degree of influence in the selection of their leader. He decided to take a risk. “Shame on you, F’halig, for having so little faith in T’kamen that you think he’d abandon Madellon!”

It paid off. F’halig looked genuinely shocked at the allegation of disloyalty. “I never said that!”

But suddenly the momentum was back with Sh’zon. “I may not be a Madellon rider born and bred like all of you,” he pushed on. “And I never expected to be made up to Wingleader the way it happened, much less Deputy Weyrleader. But since I was, I’ve done no less than my best for all of you and for my Weyr. This Weyr. If any rider among you thinks that’s not so, you say it to my face. I’ll not slate any rider for speaking his mind.” He paused expectantly, willing F’halig to let it go, looking around at the wingriders in the room and challenging any of them to call him out.

They didn’t, and F’halig held his tongue. Sh’zon relaxed fractionally. “T’kamen’s a fine Weyrleader,” he continued, in a placatory tone. “It’s no small job, being Madellon’s Weyrleader, and me and H’ned are finding that out! But T’kamen was the one who made us his deputies. He’s trusted us with his Weyr and his Weyrwoman. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll be back, but in the meantime we’re going to do everything in our power to pick up where he’s left off.”

He let that sink in for several long moments. Behind him, F’halig stayed sullenly silent. After what seemed like a reasonable period of time, Sh’zon asked, “Anyone have another question?”

No one did – or else no one wanted to stick their neck out to ask. “Then you’re free to go. And if any of you think of something later, my door is always open.”

The four Wingseconds, F’halig included, stayed at their posts on either side of the door as the wingriders left the room. “You can go,” Sh’zon told them, but he caught M’ric’s eye meaningfully.

He remained in the briefing room for a few minutes after everyone had gone, straightening the benches and turning the glow-baskets. When he quit the room, stepping back into his living quarters, M’ric was sitting in one of the chairs by the unlit hearth. “I need a drink,” Sh’zon told him, going to the shelf where he kept his wineskins. He slopped half a cupful of wine into a mug, drained it in a gulp, then refilled it. “You want a drop?”

“It’s a touch early for me.”

Sh’zon sipped from his second cup and made a face. “You’re not missing much.” He flung himself heavily into the second armchair and stared into the cold fireplace. “That was nearly a disaster.”

“I thought you pulled it back pretty well,” said M’ric.

“No thanks to you!”

M’ric smiled. “When you’re being flamed for being a foreign intruder, your equally foreign intruder of a Wingsecond isn’t going to be much help.”

Sh’zon snorted. “No one minds you.”

“No one ever suspects the brown rider.”

“They’d make an exception if they knew you.” Sh’zon put his wine cup down and levelled a penetrating stare at M’ric. “So are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“You say that as if I should know,” M’ric said mildly.

“Don’t give me that whershit, Malric.” Sh’zon leaned forwards. “You’ve been hinting that something’s about to happen for sevendays, and you were the last one to speak to T’kamen before he disappeared. So I ask you again. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

M’ric didn’t reply for a moment. “I can’t give you absolutes, Sh’zon,” he said at last. “You know that.”

“Absolute or not, you’re not telling me you know nothing about T’kamen’s disappearance.”

M’ric sighed. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything! Everything! Where’s he gone, when’s he coming back? Is he coming back?”

“Questions I can’t answer,” M’ric said.

“Can’t or won’t?”

M’ric shrugged.

“But you did have something to do with his disappearance.”

“I suppose you could…” M’ric began. Then he paused, reconsidered, and said, “Yes.”

“Faranth’s tits,” Sh’zon swore. “Is he still alive?”

“I haven’t killed him, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s not an answer, M’ric!”

“It’s the best I can do.”

“Thread blight you.” Sh’zon got up and started to pace. Then he stopped and looked directly at his Wingsecond. “Did you send him where you came from?”

M’ric returned the stare unflinchingly. “Where would that be, Sh’zon?”

Sh’zon made a frustrated gesture with one hand. He’d never been able to get M’ric to admit anything about his origins. So far as he knew, no one had. He’d still been a weyrling himself when M’ric had turned up in Peninsula territory all those Turns ago, but the mystery of his appearance had been a four-day wonder. Time-lost and time-addled, the consensus went; a young rider from some long-ago Pass, lost between during Fall. If M’ric remembered much of where – or when – he’d come from, he’d never shared it.  Whatever mishap he’d had, it didn’t seem to have put him off his little excursions. Sh’zon didn’t like timing, himself, but M’ric seemed to know what he was doing. His forays had always been too useful – and too profitable – for Sh’zon to make a stand against them. “Score it, M’ric,” he said. “I’ve always taken what you’ve said and done on nothing more than faith.”

“And I’ve never steered you wrong,” said M’ric. His voice had taken on a dangerous softness. “But you know my price. Don’t push me.”

Sh’zon glared at him. “This is different, M’ric. You’ve disappeared the Weyrleader.”

“I did what had to be done,” M’ric told him. “What was necessary.”

“And who the shaff are you to decide what’s necessary?”

M’ric turned an implacable gaze on him, and Sh’zon had to stop himself taking a step back. “With all we’ve done, you choose now to develop scruples?”

“I never needed scruples before!” Sh’zon said. “What did we ever do that wasn’t…”

“Necessary,” M’ric finished for him, when he faltered.

“You knew those weyrlings were going to die!” Sh’zon accused. “You knew and you did nothing.”

“I did what I could.”

“Tarshe could have died!”

“Tarshe was never in any danger.”

“If you’d told me –”

“You couldn’t have stopped it any more than I could,” said M’ric. “The best I could do was protect the ones assigned to me.” He looked away. Sh’zon wondered if he was imagining the flash of shame in the brown rider’s eyes. “Three weyrlings were always going to die.”

“Four weyrlings,” said Sh’zon. “And that’s not even counting the twelve dead at Southern. You could have done something!”

“No. I couldn’t. No more there than here. That’s not how it works, Sh’zon.” M’ric hesitated for a beat. “But you can. You have to convince the other Wingleaders to do as Margone asked. You have to get those weyrlings out of Southern.”

Sh’zon looked at him. He sat down. “How do you...?”

He stopped.

M’ric returned the look impassively.

“Shaffing shards, M’ric,” Sh’zon said. “Just how much else do you know?”

“More than I should,” said M’ric. “Not as much as I’d like. Margone’s asked Madellon for asylum, hasn’t she?”

“Not for herself,” said Sh’zon. He put his head in his hand. “Ah, Faranth, M’ric, but you should have seen her. I’ve never seen anyone so sharding scared. And a queen rider. You’d think Grizbath…” He trailed off. The memory of Margone’s desperate plea still gave him chills. “She’s afraid for the weyrlings – the ones they have left. She’s scared of what P’raima might make them do.” He shook his head. “P’raima’s a nasty bastard of a pit-wher, but he wouldn’t harm his own weyrlings!”

“There are a lot of ways to do harm,” said M’ric. “Not all of them obvious.”

Sh’zon stared at him. “What do you know about P’raima?”

M’ric raised his shoulders, barely. “What everyone else does. You heard it from K’ken as often as I did. He’s had it his own way at Southern for a long time. He won’t easily be turned from the path he believes is the right one. He can’t be reasoned with. And he doesn’t back down.”

“That doesn’t give us the right to take his weyrlings,” said Sh’zon. “It’s a betrayal of every law of Weyr autonomy there is!”

“But you didn’t tell Margone you wouldn’t?”

“We said we’d think about it,” said Sh’zon. “Well, Valonna did. Don’t know that Margone gave half a shell what me and H’ned thought about it.”

“That’s the key,” said M’ric. “The queens. The queen weyrling.”

“Oh, score it all between, M’ric!” Sh’zon exclaimed. “What shaffing game are you playing here?”

“The same game I’ve always been playing,” said M’ric. “With the same stakes. You have to trust that what I’m doing is for the right reasons. And that your prize isn’t far away.”

That froze Sh’zon’s anger, like the sharp shock of between. “Rallai.”

“Rallai,” said M’ric.

“How soon?”

“Soon, now,” said M’ric.

“That’s no use,” Sh’zon complained. “You know how unpredictable Ipith is. She should have risen half a Turn ago!”

“And if she rose tomorrow, you wouldn’t win her,” said M’ric. “For the same reason that you didn’t win her the last two times. You have to prove yourself to Rallai first, Sh’zon.” His eyes fell on Sh’zon’s jaw. “H’pold’s handiwork, I take it?”

Sh’zon fingered the bruise reflexively. “It was worth it,” he said. “If he hadn’t walked in at that moment…she’d have kissed it better, I know it.”

“You have a chance to prove yourself,” said M’ric. “You’re deputy Weyrleader of Madellon. You can show Rallai that you’re ready to be the Peninsula’s Weyrleader. But you have to step up. You can’t afford to be indecisive. Not now.”

A notion that was, at once, totally abhorrent and totally absurd suddenly struck Sh'zon. “Is that what this is?” he asked incredulously. “Did you get rid of T’kamen to make way for me?”

For an appallingly long moment, M’ric didn’t answer. Then he said, “I didn’t do it for you. But that doesn’t mean you should waste the opportunity.”

Sh’zon sat back in his chair, relieved. “I’m never going to understand what drives you, M’ric,” he said. “Most brown riders would settle for being a Wingsecond to a Wingleader.”

“They probably would,” said M’ric. He got up to leave. “But then, I’ve never been like other brown riders, have I?”

Chapter fourteen: T’kamen

No dragon can disobey a queen – for long. But asking a queen to compel the truth from a dragon should be done only as a last resort in the most grave of circumstances. Forcing a dragon to betray his rider will cause irreparable damage to guilty and innocent alike.

– Excerpt from A Weyrwoman’s Duty by Weyrwoman Nelaya

26.03.21-26.04.08 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

They told T’kamen he wasn’t a prisoner, which he took to mean that he was, but lodged as he was in a second-level weyr, and still incapable of tackling the steep and narrow stairs, he had no way of testing the theory.

For the first few days, exhausted from the nightmarish straight flight to Madellon, he did little more than drink fellis-laced soup and sleep. A Healer checked on him regularly, two women brought his food and changed his linens, and a Dragon Healer came to look at Epherineth’s wing twice daily. If they had any other visitors, T’kamen wasn’t awake to receive them.

Towards the end of the sevenday his Healer, journeyman Ondiar, told him that they were going to start reducing his medication, and over the next several days the dense fog in which he’d been mired began to lift. As T’kamen’s mind cleared, and alertness returned to him, he began to wonder why no one had come to see him now he was awake more than he was asleep, or why, as it was becoming increasingly obvious, those assigned to his care had been told not to engage in conversation with him.

“I can’t help you with that,” was the response T’kamen came to expect from Ondiar when he asked about anything other than his health. “We’re not to disturb your rest,” was the equally infuriating mantra that Tarlie and Agarenne repeated when they brought him his dinner or tidied his weyr. T’kamen’s protests that he’d rested enough went unheeded. And while the Dragon Healer, Gusinien, was happy to discuss the finer points of Epherineth’s recovery, he wouldn’t be drawn on any other subject. T’kamen’s appeals to talk to someone in charge were met with passive assurances that his request would be passed along. Still no one came.

On the eighth day, Ondiar brought him a set of crutches and the instruction that he should start using them as much as possible. After a sevenday laid out in bed, T’kamen was grateful for the small freedom of being able to get himself around, first only as far as the facilities, then to the dragon couch, and – by the end of the day – the whole two dragonlengths from the back of the weyr to the front of the ledge where Epherineth spent his days.

The first time he made it outside was almost his last. Weary from the effort, half blinded by the daylight after his enforced convalescence in the dimly glow-lit weyr, and over-intent on seeing his Weyr again, T’kamen nearly overshot the edge. Only Epherineth’s teeth in the back of his bedrobe steadied him. Be careful!

I’m sorry. T’kamen dropped one of his crutches in favour of holding onto his dragon’s head for balance. Epherineth bore the indignity of having an arm wrapped around his lower jaw with complete equanimity. Shards, Epherineth. What have they done to our Weyr?

The landscape of Madellon had changed so dramatically that T’kamen could hardly believe it was the same place. If not for the familiar shape of the caldera itself, he’d have sworn they were in another Weyr entirely. The lake, confined to the eastern third of the Bowl in his day, now fed a network of waterways that stretched silver fingers from one end of the Weyr to the other, spanned in dozens of places by bridges and stepping stones. Half the beast paddocks were gone, the pastures replaced by rows and rows of gleaming structures that seemed to be constructed entirely out of large panes of glass. Other new buildings punctuated the Bowl, one of them an impressive structure not unlike a small hold. T’kamen could only guess at their purpose.

There were new weyrs everywhere, crowded the length and breadth of the interior face of the crater. T’kamen counted at least a hundred and twenty caverns in the south-east quadrant that had been so long neglected in his own time. He hadn’t even found the marks for the blasting powder Master Gerlaven needed to develop that part of the Bowl, but at some point in the intervening Turns someone obviously had. The weyr in which he and Epherineth were staying was one of a dozen that hadn’t existed in the Interval, clustered above the dragon infirmary. Most of them were occupied by listless beasts in varying states of health: some swathed in bandages, others grey with sickness, and one, appallingly, with her left wing missing beyond the elbow.

About a third of the ledges T’kamen could see were empty, but even so there were as many dragons in the Bowl as he’d ever seen together in one place. The largest Interval Weyrs rostered perhaps four hundred beasts to Madellon’s two hundred and fifty, and there were at least that many here even with many ledges unoccupied. A queen – not Levierth – slept on the ledge that had belonged to Shimpath in T’kamen’s time. With so many dragons in evidence, T’kamen thought there must be at least four queens, but Levierth, up on the Rim, was the only other one he could see. Perhaps there were more in the Hatching cavern that still yawned at the western end of the Weyr. But there didn’t seem to be many bronzes, either, nor nearly the number of browns there ought to be. Instead, the Weyr teemed with greens, hundreds of them, and a lesser but still substantial population of blues.

“What happened to all the big dragons, Epherineth?” he wondered aloud.

They got smaller, Epherineth replied. He sounded unsettled. They say I am the biggest dragon they have ever seen.

Every dragon T’kamen could see was undersized by a full step: browns the size of blues, blues the size of greens, greens no larger than the ten-month-old dragonets they’d left behind in the Interval. “I thought they weren’t talking to you.”

Greens in heat don’t guard their thoughts very carefully.

“Not the most reliable source.”

It’s all I have.

As frustrating as T’kamen found his seclusion, it was much worse for Epherineth. For a dragon, being separated from his own community – his queen, his offspring, his wingmates – was bad enough, but the dragons of this time were actively excluding him from their society. A bronze could usually listen in even if he wasn’t party to a conversation, but either unfamiliarity with these dragons or some outside influence was preventing Epherineth from accessing the background chatter of the Weyr. Given that individual dragons were declining to converse with his bronze, T’kamen suspected the latter. That meant a queen, and in turn, that their ostracism was not an accident, but a command being enforced from high up in this Madellon’s hierarchy.

T’kamen understood that. He might have taken similar measures to keep an unknown quantity sequestered from his people under the same circumstances. But too many things hinted at captivity, not just quarantine – that they were neither welcome guests nor free to go. Epherineth’s wing was too fragile for unsupported flight, and the stairs were too narrow for him to scramble down safely, so when he needed to use the midden he was obliged to ask for an escort. Recranth and Salionth, the two bronzes who had borne most of Epherineth’s weight on the journey from Rift Valley, had become his constant companions. T’kamen looked down at the pair of bronzes. They had their backs to the ledge, but they sat alertly on their haunches, their heads turning constantly from side to side. “Are they your attendants or your gaolers?”

They will not allow me to go anywhere alone, said Epherineth.

“What would they do if I tried to leave?”

Stop you. Or try to.

Epherineth’s tone was scornful, but subdued. He was much bigger than either Pass bronze, but he was very aware of how his injured wing made him vulnerable. T’kamen touched his shoulder comfortingly. He knew the feeling. “I don’t think I could get down those steps on crutches, either.” He looked up at Epherineth’s splinted and stitched wing. “Could you get airborne without hurting yourself, if you had to?”

Airborne. I couldn’t go very far.

“You wouldn’t have to go far. Only high enough to get clear air around you for a jump between.”

Epherineth swivelled his head down to look directly at him. His eyes were still more dull than they should be. Between where?

“Home,” T’kamen said. “Back to our Madellon. Back to the Interval.”

No.

It was a flat refusal. “Is that coming from one of the queens?”

Your leg is injured. My wing is injured. I have no harness. No.

“I’m not saying it wouldn’t be risky,” T’kamen said. “But we have to get out of here. Back to Shimpath and your dragonets.”

Even that didn’t move Epherineth. I won’t risk you, T’kamen.

“Epherineth –”

The bronze dragon gave him a little mental shove. No.

T’kamen gave up. He leaned against Epherineth’s shoulder, staring out at Madellon. “Then I guess we’d better get used to this view,” he said. “I think we’re going to be here for a while.”

For the next several slow days, T’kamen spent most of his time on the ledge with Epherineth. The two ladies from the lower caverns brought him a couch to sit on, a footstool to elevate his leg, and pile of furs to keep him warm. T’kamen took the provision of the comforts to mean that no one objected to him watching the Weyr as long as he didn’t interact with it. So, for want of anything else to do, he sat and watched.

He watched dragons coming and going at all hours of the night and day, some with passengers, some heavily laden, some singly and some in formations. He watched weyrlings at their ground drills, practising manoeuvres on the dusty training grounds, sorting and sacking firestone from the vast bunkers in the Bowl. He watched dragons flying in and out of the Hatching cavern and recognised over time that there were just two queens and only eleven bronzes. He watched injured dragons being brought in as Epherineth had been, supported or outright carried in rigging by the same few bronzes. He watched a dozen greens rise to mate every day, their flights fast, acrobatic, and brief.

And in all the hours he sat there, just watching, he never saw a dragon appear from between, or disappear into it.

On the morning of the eleventh day he woke to a Weyr already abuzz with activity.

Recranth says I must visit the midden early if I wish to at all, Epherineth reported when T’kamen limped to his couch on the ledge.

T’kamen had discarded one of his crutches, relying on only one to get around. His right hip was still tender, and if he put too much weight on the leg it still hurt enough to put tears in his eyes, but otherwise the pain was much reduced. All around the Bowl dragons were loading up and taking off. He even saw the youngest, flightless weyrlings hitching lifts on the backs of adult dragons. “Where’s everyone going?”

Epherineth had no answer for him. They had to wait until Ondiar came to do his morning rounds for that. “Thread falls today,” the Healer said, as T’kamen demonstrated the range of motion of his right leg in the sequence that had become part of his morning routine.

“Thread falls nearly every day, doesn’t it?” T’kamen asked. He knew that from the Threadfall predictions of his own time. Madellon’s protectorate was large enough that Thread would fall there at least twice per sevenday by the height of a Pass: sometimes more, occasionally less. “What’s special about today?”

“It’s falling directly over the Weyr,” said Ondiar.

“So that’s why everyone’s clearing out.” T’kamen made himself relax as Ondiar ran through his usual observations with more than usual speed. “Are we going to be moved?”

“No,” said Ondiar. He didn’t meet T’kamen’s gaze. “Someone will come and tell you what to do.”

“What to do?” T’kamen sat up, then regretted it as the sudden motion made his hip register a protest.

But Ondiar didn’t elaborate. Gusinien came up soon after he left, lugging a bucket of something which he poured into the water trough in Epherineth’s chamber. “Have him drink it all down,” he told T’kamen. “It’ll be easier on you that way.”

“What is it?”

“Something to help keep him calm.”

Epherineth made a show of wetting his muzzle with the pungent concoction as Gusinien watched, but as soon as the Dragon Healer had gone, the bronze declined to touch any more. T’kamen wondered at that. Epherineth had mostly been a good patient, sensible enough to know that Gusinien was trying to help him. His refusal to drink the medicine, whatever it was, was out of character. “You’re sure you won’t take that?”

I don’t know what it is. I don’t want it.

“You should make him drink it.”

Epherineth mantled at the intruder standing silhouetted against the light from outside, and T’kamen put a hand on his shoulder to calm him. Your wing, he reminded him. He squinted at the figure in the cave entrance. “M’ric.”

“See, he’s already feeling it,” M’ric said.

It was a measure of how badly T’kamen craved company that even the young brown rider made a welcome sight, and he almost feared to pose any of the thousand and one questions he’d been burning to ask lest M’ric leave. “Feeling what?”

“Threadfall.” M’ric walked in uninvited, one hand thrust in a pocket. “Even the invalids go crazy when it’s overhead if they’re not sedated.”

“I’m not sedating him,” T’kamen said immediately.

M’ric studied Epherineth, who was still bristling with uncharacteristic irritation. “Then you can control him? Even under a Fall?”

“I don’t know,” said T’kamen. “We’ve never been under one before.”

M’ric looked at him sceptically. “You’ve never been under a Fall?”

“There isn’t any Thread in the Interval.”

“In the Interval. Obviously.”

M’ric didn’t seem to be guarding his words as carefully as their other attendants had. T’kamen hardly dared hope that he might finally get some answers. “Everyone else seems to be leaving. Are we going to be the only ones left?”

“You. Salionth and Recranth. A couple of the other sick ones who can’t be moved.” M’ric kicked the toe of his boot into the floor. “And now us.”

“Then you won’t be flying this Fall?” T’kamen asked.

“I bet you think that’s funny, don’t you?” M’ric sounded disgusted.

T’kamen set his jaw against the retort he wanted to deliver. “You’ll have to forgive my ignorance,” he said doggedly. “Why would I think that’s funny?”

“Well, apart from that fact that I’m grounded, because of you,” M’ric said, “can’t you read a shoulder-knot?” He grabbed the braid that looped his shoulder, holding it out for T’kamen to see.

Like all the rank cords T’kamen had seen in this era, M’ric’s were subtly different to the ones he knew, but the plain twist of brown for his dragon and indigo for his Weyr lacked any knotting that might have indicated adult status. “You’re still a weyrling.”

“I won’t be for much longer,” M’ric said, letting go of the braid.

“But you can’t be under sixteen?”

M’ric looked outraged. “I’ll be eighteen next month!”

“So why aren’t you flying firestone to the fighting Wings? Isn’t that what weyrlings do during the Pass?”

M’ric shook his head in clear exasperation. “Just because Trebruth’s brown! Faranth, have you seen the size of him? And he’s not going to grow any more. I’ve told C’rastro, he’s barely put on a handspan in six months!”

He sounded oddly proud about that, but T’kamen was more interested in the name. “C’rastro? Is that the Weyrleader? Or your Weyrlingmaster?”

M’ric eyed him warily. “I’m not…meant…to say.”

“Why not?” T’kamen asked. “Why won’t anyone tell me anything? Why am I being kept here?”

“Because of his wing,” said M’ric, pointing at Epherineth. “They want to let it heal –”

“I don’t mean just during Threadfall,” T’kamen said. “I mean why are we being kept isolated like this? Why hasn’t the Weyrleader come to see us? Why won’t any dragons talk to Epherineth?”

The questions he’d been burning to ask poured out of him. M’ric looked suddenly uncomfortable. He stepped away, rubbing the back of his neck. T’kamen thought for a moment he’d scared him off. But at last, the boy said, “You told Lirelle you were from the past.”

T’kamen realised he’d been holding his breath. He let it go. “It’s not the past to me.”

“You know that’s a completely ridiculous story, don’t you?”

“I suppose I can understand why you might think that now,” T’kamen said slowly. “But it’s not a story. We came between from the Interval. We didn’t mean to. You…” He stopped. He’d given a lot of thought to the puzzle of M’ric’s presence here in the future, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to confide in this youthfully brash incarnation of the rider he knew. “You just have to trust me.”

“No I don’t,” said M’ric. “I don’t have to trust you at all.”

“Why this suspicion?” T’kamen asked. “If you don’t believe I’m from where I say I am, where do you think I’m from?”

“Either Fort or Benden,” M’ric said, with alacrity. “You’re sort of tanned, but not enough to be Istan, I don’t think. I’m going with Fort. Their dragons are supposed to be massive.”

“Fort?”

M’ric looked crestfallen. “Benden, then,” he said, and then muttered, “I was so sure it was Fort.”

“You’re wrong in either case,” T’kamen said. “I’m from Madellon. The badge on my jacket –”

“Anyone could forge that,” M’ric said scornfully.

T’kamen exhaled hard. “Why would anyone want to? Why, if I were from the north, would I want to masquerade as a Madellon rider?”

“So you could get across the continent unchallenged,” said M’ric. “No holder would refuse a Madellon rider supplies.”

“Faranth’s teeth, M’ric, are you being deliberately obtuse?” T’kamen exclaimed. “Why would I be challenged? What could a northern rider possibly want to do in the south that would require that amount of subterfuge?”

“Well, recruit,” M’ric said, “obviously.”

T’kamen stared at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“They want to know who your contact is,” M’ric went on, ignoring him. “Because someone has to have passed you my name. And it sure as shards wasn’t me!”

“A contact?” T’kamen asked. “I don’t have a contact.”

“You asked for me by name!”

“I wasn’t asking for you,” T’kamen said. Irritation, more than caution, coloured the untruth.

“But you –”

“M’rik,” T’kamen said. “M-R-I-K. Brown Dolth’s rider.” He made the name up as he spoke. “A rider in my time.”

“Dolth?” M’ric blinked. Then he seemed to deflate a little. “My dragon’s called Trebruth.” He sounded perversely disappointed. Then he continued, angrily, “We’re in ten kinds of trouble because of you! Under investigation, Trebruth grounded, me yanked up in front of Dalka –”

“Dalka?” T’kamen asked. “Is that the Senior Weyrwoman?”

M’ric scowled. “I’m not supposed to tell you.”

“If I’m some kind of spy from Fort or Benden, shouldn’t I know your Weyrwoman’s name already?”

“Maybe you’re a really bad spy.”

“So your Senior Weyrwoman is Dalka,” T’kamen said. That must be the rider of the queen on Shimpath’s ledge. “Not Lirelle?”

M’ric scowled. “I’ve already told you too much.”

“You haven’t told me shaff-all,” T’kamen said. His temper was wearing very thin. “I’m not from the shaffing north. I’m not a shaffing spy. I’m a sharding Weyrleader of Madellon. I Impressed Epherineth in 85 and I became Weyrleader in 98. Even if no one’s taught you your history, five minutes in the Archives will confirm those dates. I – what?”

M’ric had started laughing. He shook his head. “That’s all fine, but you’re talking about stuff that happened a hundred and fifty Turns ago. Do you have any idea – well, no, I guess you wouldn’t, being from the Interval.”

“Enlighten me,” said T’kamen, flatly.

“190. Some idiot weyrling knocked over a candle in the Archives.” M’ric made a dramatic gesture with his hands. “Whoof!”

“There was a fire?”

“Everything went up. Weyr Books, old hides, paper, the lot. What was left of the weyrling was pretty crispy, too. Now you’re like to get sent to Westisle if you take anything hotter than a glow into the Records Room. And we don’t have any records going back farther than, what, thirty-five Turns?”

“Faranth,” T’kamen swore. That made things harder. “Well, what about the other Weyrs? They must have records of their dealings with Madellon in my time. H’pold was Weyrleader at the Peninsula, P’raima at Southern…”

“Look, it doesn’t matter anyway,” said M’ric. “Don’t you get it? The north has contacts at Southern and Peninsula and Starfall, so it would be easy for them to dig up the name of some old Madellon Weyrleader for you to use as a cover story.”

“It’s not a cover story!” T’kamen said. “And Epherineth’s Epherineth. How could he lie about his name?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” M’ric said. He frowned. “I’d like to believe you, T’kamen. I really would. It would make my life easier, for a start. And it would be amazing if it were true, wouldn’t it? A rider coming between – between times, even – in the Eighth Pass! I just wish someone had seen you come out of between. I wish I’d seen you come out of between!”

“When exactly did dragons stop going between?” T’kamen asked.

“Well, they didn’t, did they?”

T’kamen glared at him. “I don’t know. Did they?”

“No,” M’ric said, “I mean, it’s not going in that’s the problem. If they’re young enough they can still do that. They just don’t ever come out again.”

“All over Pern?” T’kamen pressed him. “Or just at Madellon?”

“Everywhere,” said M’ric. “Well. We presume they can’t do it in the north, either, else they’d be here by now, wouldn’t they?” He looked askance at him. “Which they might be if you’re lying.”

“I’m not lying,” T’kamen said, but the enormity of it was suddenly too much. He put his hand out to Epherineth for support. Is this our fault?

How could it be?

Our weyrlings must have been the first. This started happening on our watch. And now no one travels between. It must have spread. Blight it, Epherineth, it started with us.

“Seriously,” M’ric said, “wherever you’re from, can you really go between?”

“Yes,” T’kamen said shortly.

“What’s it like?”

“Cold.” He tried to order his thoughts. “Look, M’ric, I’m sorry you’ve got in trouble over this.” Although actually you brought it on yourself. “But I’m going to need your help to get home. Not until Epherineth can fly and I can ride, but there are things I’ll need – records, charts…”

M’ric’s face betrayed absolute astonishment. “Help you? You have got to be joking. Do you know what they’d do to me if I helped you?”

“I’m a prisoner here, M’ric,” T’kamen said. “No one’s talking to me, the other dragons are shunning Epherineth, and this is the first conversation I’ve had since I woke up in this Turn that didn’t involve my leg or his wing!”

“Well of course they’re not allowed to talk to you,” said M’ric. “Or him. You’re a northerner, remember? And even if you’re not, you’re either a crazy man or a time-traveller from more than a century ago. You say you were Madellon’s Weyrleader. Would you want someone like that mixing freely with your riders?”

“I still don’t understand what’s wrong with northerners,” T’kamen complained.

“You would say that, though, wouldn’t you?”

“Faranth, M’ric, you’re even more grating as a teenager than –” T’kamen caught himself. “I’m not a liar and I’m not crazy. Epherineth will tell you that much. And what possible harm can coming from the past do? I can’t predict the future. All I have is history.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” M’ric shook his head incredulously. “One way or another, you’re being kept here for your own protection. There are already people complaining about Madellon resources being wasted on a northerner. There are riders who’d have left you out for Thread where you were found. And if by some miracle you are telling the truth…”

He trailed off. T’kamen frowned. “What?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” M’ric looked at him with something between pity and admiration. “If you’re really a time-traveller, then you know how to go between safely, and if Madellon has a rider who can go between, then that changes everything.”

Chapter fifteen: C’mine

A young man who Impresses a green dragon faces some of the most difficult tests of any dragonrider of Pern, for no other rider must bridge the gap between his own gender and his dragon’s.

The records show us that young male-ridden greens are almost twice as likely to go between during mating flights than their female-ridden sisters. Theories abound as to the reason for this, but I posit that the physical demands of a mating flight are more likely to interfere with flight-merge when a man is obliged to assume the female’s role.

Preparation, therefore, is key to ensuring a safe and comfortable mating for all participants, regardless of gender or colour, and is the explicit responsibility of a Weyrlingmaster to ensure that each male green rider of his charge makes peace with the physical, emotional, and practical ramifications of riding a female dragon.

– Weyrlingmaster D’hor, Weyrling Training Manual, volume two

100.02.28 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

This, then, was torture.

His leg muscles shrieked in agony; his head thumped as though struck by a rock-hammer; the capacity of his chest felt so unequal to the heaving volume of his lungs it was as if a dragon had placed a foot on his torso and was bearing implacably down on it.

I’m going to die, he groaned.

You’re not going to die, Darshanth told him, from where he led the pack of dragonets in their hitching gallop wide of the weyrlings’ running track. You’ve just got fat and slow.

I mean it, Darshanth. I think I might die if I don’t stop.

You’re not going to die.

A man should be able to rely on his dragon for sympathy, C’mine accused.

A man should be able to run five laps of the lake without dying, Darshanth replied gaily. Then he looked over his shoulder at the dragonets. Last one home’s a watch-wher!

The dragonets squealed in outrage and redoubled their efforts to chase down the blue dragon loping easily ahead of them.

By all rights, C’mine thought, Darshanth should have been finding this equally gruelling. It had been a long time since he’d done any extended groundwork. But the blue was clearly enjoying himself, lolloping along like an overgrown puppy, eyes spinning like pinwheels, full of boisterous cheer. Though the weyrlings had been flying for some time now, none of the young dragonets had developed the controlled power of the vertical leap that they’d need to get airborne cleanly, and exercises on the ground was still the best way for them to build the strength in their hind legs. The dragonets were too disproportionate, too leggy and awkward, to make best use of themselves, so even those who were already bigger than Darshanth were struggling to keep up with his bounding adult pace.

C’mine hadn’t been at the head of his own pack since very early in the run. By the first quarter marker, three of the lads had overtaken him, and two more had drawn alongside, perhaps too polite to make as great a spectacle of their new Weyrlingmaster’s unfitness as it deserved. He’d still had enough breath then to tell them not to hold back on his account. H’nar and M’rany had stretched their legs, passing him easily, and gaining determined ground on K’ralthe, M’touf, and K’dam, running out ahead. By the end of the first circuit, all the boys bar two, and three of the girls, had moved ahead of him on the running track, and he’d been surrounded by most of the rest of the class, all elbows and long legs. His own puffing and blowing had been somewhat drowned by the rhythmical crunch of feet pounding packed gravel. Now, though, the chasing pack had long left him behind, and he battled on alone, trying, through the ringing in his ears and the nausea in his stomach, to think of a way to bow out without losing all face.

He didn’t know how L’stev still did this twice a sevenday. The Weyrlingmaster had nearly thirty Turns on C’mine, and to look at him, all big shoulders and short neck, you’d never imagine him a runner. Yet C’mine had seen him out with this very same group of weyrlings, matching the pace of kids one-fifth his age, and enough in control of his breath to bellow at the stragglers. “Lead them on their run this morning,” he’d said. “It’ll be good for you.” And L’stev had given him the briefest, most vicious, most knowing of little grins before turning responsibility of the Wildfires over into C’mine’s hands and leaving to resume his ongoing talks with Valonna and the deputy Weyrleaders.

Loath though C’mine was to admit it, Darshanth was right. He had got fat and slow. Wing drill kept a dragon sharp, and long flights gave him stamina, but a rider didn’t keep fit sitting strapped between neck-ridges and throwing the odd sack of firestone around. C’mine hadn’t lifted a finger in deliberate exercise in Turns, and his diet in recent months hadn’t done him many favours, either. That might have been the worst part of all: the sweat, breaking ceaselessly from every inch of his skin. It was as if every skin of bad wine, every glass of cheap whisky, every jar of sour beer he’d tipped down his throat in the last month had been waiting for just this opportunity to burst out from his pores. In an instant of black self-awareness he wondered what unforeseen consequences his other indulgences would turn out to have.

He struggled grimly on, barely more than jogging, each stride sending spikes of pain shooting up his legs. It wasn’t even the kind of torment that could distract him from his other troubles. The physical misery would have been worthwhile had it only provided a respite from the mess of preoccupations tumbling endlessly around his mind.

C’mine supposed that they, in their turn, served a useful purpose. Since T’kamen, L’stev, and Leah had bullied him into working with the weyrlings, the simple pulse of his grief for C’los had been swiftly overtaken by other concerns. Kinnescath’s death and its effect on the already-distressed weyrlings. The revelation that Madellon’s dragonets were not alone in their inability to travel between. The disappearance of the Weyrleader.

The rapid sequence of events had completely disrupted of L’stev’s plans for the weyrlings. The memorial service for N’jen, Ivaryo, and Jenafa had been hard on them – and on C’mine, for whom it had been yet another piercing reminder of his own loss – but it had also drawn a line beneath the tragedy. Darshanth, sniffing around in his inimitably unthreatening way, had expressed concern about one of the young blues, Goldevath, whose rider seemed to have taken the tragedy particularly hard, and C’mine had passed the bit of intelligence on to L’stev. By the following day they’d seemed a shade brighter, a fraction less wobbly. And then the day after that, Kinnescath’s suicide had sent them all back to where they’d started.

“Insult added to shaffing injury,” L’stev had raged to C’mine in the aftermath of the brown dragonet’s death. “Even G’dra ever wakes up, he’ll be in no state to tell us how he and Kinnescath made it through when none of the others did!”

C’mine was just grateful that he hadn’t been at the Weyr to hear the dragons keen for Kinnescath. He and Darshanth had been helping Jenavally get settled into her new temporary post as the watchrider at Teller Hold. Vanzanth had called Darshanth back shortly afterwards, but by then the worst had passed.

Darshanth, at his own suggestion, had slept on a spare couch in the weyrling barracks that night, the better to keep an eye on the dragonets. In fact, he’d barely slept at all, and even padded noisily through to the girls’ barracks part-way through the night to see if they were all right. C’mine had found him in the morning surrounded by eight greens, one only slightly disapproving queen, and half the girls using his tail as a footrest.

And then events had moved on again. L’stev, having been summoned to the Weyrwoman’s quarters more than once since the arrival of the Southern queen Grizbath, came back to the barracks not long before breakfast, sporting the bloodshot and rumpled look of a man who’d been up all night. That was when he’d told C’mine about the Southern weyrlings. And appalled though C’mine had been to find that Southern had covered up the loss of fully half a class of weyrlings in the name of vanity, the news had come as a strange, guilty relief. Whatever was wrong with between, neither Madellon’s breeding nor its training was responsible. Southern’s Weyrleader P’raima, in failing to warn the other Weyrs of what had happened to his dragonets, had become the target for all the blame and anger that losing three and then four weyrlings had engendered in the riders of Madellon.

It hadn’t even occurred to C’mine that L’stev had been the focus of at least some of that fury until he’d witnessed D’sion, one of the most senior Wingleaders of Madellon, ask the Weyrlingmaster to forgive him for casting aspersions on his competence to teach young dragonriders. And D’sion had only been the most high-ranking of the riders who’d made a point of apologising to L’stev. That C’mine had been so oblivious to the allegation, however false, that the Weyrlingmaster had been culpable spoke uncomfortably of how disconnected he’d become from the society of the Weyr.

L’stev didn’t seem unburdened by his personal exoneration. “Well, it’s a pity it wasn’t my fault, isn’t it?” he’d retorted, when C’mine had commented as much. “An incompetent Weyrlingmaster would be easy to solve. And there’s something else.” He’d paused a long time before elaborating. “T’kamen’s missing.”

That was the concern that kept rising to the top of C’mine’s thoughts, pushing aside all the others. T’kamen’s missing. Such a simple statement, and so absurd. A dragonrider couldn’t just go missing; or at least, his dragon couldn’t. There was nowhere on Pern remote enough to shield Epherineth from Shimpath’s call, nowhere for a bronze dragon to hide where his queen couldn’t find him. And yet the fact was undeniable: Shimpath couldn’t find Epherineth. Neither could Darshanth, when C’mine asked him to try – not that a blue could reach as far as a queen. The senior dragonpair of Madellon was nowhere to be found. And while C’mine and L’stev spoke the official line to the weyrlings – it’s only been a couple of days, he’ll turn up – neither of them took any comfort in it. Something had happened to the Weyrleader, something inexplicable, and Madellon was like a ship adrift without a captain at the helm.

Or, worse, with two would-be captains, fighting for control of the wheel, C’mine thought. H’ned was a solid enough Wingleader, but he’d been a little too friendly with L’dro for C’mine’s liking. Sh’zon, meanwhile, had a bluff, direct manner that C’mine found both intimidating and false. Sh’zon had used him – used Darshanth’s Search sensitivity – to exploit a loophole in the ruling that forbade him from removing anyone from the island where his family had been exiled. It had resulted in Tarshe’s Impression of Berzunth, and C’mine didn’t blame her for her family’s crimes, but he hadn’t forgiven Sh’zon for lying about it – or manipulating him. He didn’t trust either Deputy Weyrleader, and while T’kamen was shrewd enough to make use of both men while keeping them at arm’s length from Madellon’s real power, C’mine feared that in the Weyrleader’s absence, Valonna was not.

But it wasn’t even the prospect of Sh’zon or H’ned assuming the powers of Weyrleader, or leaning too strongly on the Weyrwoman, that worried C’mine the most. T’kamen was missing: T’kamen, not just the Weyrleader, but C’mine’s friend, the man he’d considered a brother for most of his life. The dragons would have known if Epherineth was…no, he couldn’t even think the word. He couldn’t give the notion that much credence. Life without C’los was unbearable enough. To envisage it without T’kamen was a step too far into the darkness.

C’mine rounded the turn back towards the start marker of the track for the fourth time. Just one more circuit to go. He glanced back and saw the leaders not far behind him, almost sprinting now to race each other to the finish. They’d probably snigger at him, the unfit little blue rider who couldn’t even run an easy five times round the lake without almost collapsing, but he’d rather they laughed at him for being slow than for giving up. He set his jaw as he passed the start point for the final time.

You can do it, Darshanth told him helpfully, from where he and the dragonets were galumphing on the other side of the lake.

He crossed the little bridge that spanned the narrowest stretch of water, close to where streams fed the lake from part way down the crater wall. His footfalls thumped dully on the stone blocks for a few strides before he hit the gravel again on the other side. He forced himself on, keeping his head down and trying not to be alarmed by the wheezing of his own breath.

The sound of someone else running over the stone bridge made him lift his head. C’mine looked back again. M’touf, who’d passed him what seemed like hours ago, was catching him steadily.

“You’ve done – your five – laps,” he panted, when the green weyrling pulled level with him for the second time. “You can – stop. Hit the – baths.”

“Yeah, I know,” said M’touf. He spoke without any breathlessness at all, even after five laps at a proper pace. “Just wanted to keep going for a bit.”

“If – you – like.”

C’mine expected him to pull away again, but M’touf seemed content to run at his much slower pace. Side by side, they jogged past the quarter marker. It was easier with company. “Don’t have to – wait – for me.”

“Kind of out of shape, aren’t you?” M’touf observed.

“Bit.”

M’touf studied him as they ran on. “You should breathe deeper,” he recommended. “Instead of panting like that. Get more air in your lungs. And look up. If you tip your head forward like that it just drags you down.”

C’mine wasn’t too proud to scorn advice. He raised his head a bit more, trying to ignore the protest of his neck muscles, and concentrated on sucking in more air with each breath.

“I just wanted to…” M’touf began, then hesitated. After a few more strides, he continued. “I wanted to talk to you.”

C’mine tried to speak again, but his mouth was drier than the gravel beneath his feet. He made a motion with his hand instead, encouraging the weyrling to go on.

“It’s just that… I never meant to do it, not really, but it just happened, and…”

C’mine found enough saliva to moisten his lips. “Do – what?”

M’touf stared straight ahead. “It’s just, I’m a green rider, all right? D’you know what it’s like being shit on by all your mates because they’re going to be Wingseconds and Wingleaders one day and I’m just going to be mooching around with one stripe for the rest of my life?”

C’mine decided that it wouldn’t have reassured the young rider to point out that he himself had worn no more than a single stripe for his entire riding career until a few days ago. Instead, he said, “Not all – bronzes – browns – make rank.”

“Yeah, but greens never do. It’s not fair.”

“Rather not – Impress – at all?”

“No!” M’touf said quickly. “No, of course not. Atath’s my whole world.” His voice rang with emotion as he said it. “But it’s hard, y’know, when Djeth’s massive and even Narwath’s going to be big. And Atath’s not. I mean, even for a green, she’s so tiny. People see her and go ‘look at the pretty little green, isn’t she darling’.” Bitterness had crept into his voice, displacing the love. “And then they look at me, and even if they don’t say anything, I can see it in their eyes. ‘Tall strapping lad, how come you only got a green? Not good enough for a proper man’s dragon?’”

C’mine just kept jogging doggedly. He glanced over to meet M’touf’s eyes briefly, to show he was still listening, but he didn’t want to interrupt the boy’s outburst. There was something more to this than simple resentment of the colour of his dragon. He could feel Darshanth shadowing him, quietly connecting with M’touf’s Atath, his touch whisper-light.

“And it’s just, y’know, greens are good too! I mean, they’re the fastest, aren’t they? There’s no dragon ever going to be quicker than a green! It’s just they can’t sprint forever, and then they get caught. They always get caught. They don’t have a choice in it. And K’ralthe and K’dam, they know it. K’dam said, ‘better start practising getting away, better work on her stamina, or when she gets older you’ll be waking up with some nasty old blue rider on top of you because you never had time to choose who you wanted to win’.” M’touf had angled his face away, but C’mine could see how shame had flushed his cheeks in a way that the exertion of running hadn’t. “And I never meant to overfly her. I swear I didn’t. But she’d do anything for me. She’s such a good girl. She’s my best girl. I just wanted to stay ahead of Narwath and Djeth, that was all. Just to show them we could, y’know? And she never told me it hurt, not till it really hurt. Not till something went in her chest.”

Through the headache still throbbing in his temples, C’mine tried to place the incident. L’stev had told him to read all twenty-odd of the weyrlings’ records, and he’d made a start, but he’d only just got all the names down. “She – strained the – upstroke – muscle?” He touched his own chest in the corresponding place.

M’touf nodded miserably. “And she’s fine now,” he said. “She’s totally fine. A sevenday in the infirmary, hardly nothing, and you’d never know she did it, not a mark on her.”

C’mine could hear the but coming. He waited. They passed the halfway marker at the western end of the lake, and the small part of his brain that was still more concerned with his physical agony than with M’touf’s story groaned at the prospect of another whole half circuit before he could stop.

“But she wasn’t fine when it happened,” M’touf continued at last. His voice was choked with remembered fear. “And we’d gone so far. We were meant to be doing sprints, that’s what Jenavally told us to do, but we’d gone so far. In between the high peaks to the east, y’know? And Atath’s quick. I mean, really quick. Djeth and Narwath were nowhere. We’d lost them behind a crag. But her chest hurt so much, like something tore. She couldn’t beat her wings. We started falling, just like a rock. Just like you’d drop a chunk of firestone, and you know that when it hits the ground…it’s going to shatter into bits. Into a hundred bits.”

M’touf broke off. His breathing had gone ragged, and it wasn’t from the exercise. C’mine quickly averted his eyes so the lad wouldn’t know that he’d seen the tears streaking his cheeks.

“And I said to her, I said, Atty, you’ve got to fly, we’re falling, we’re falling, you have to fly. And she said she couldn’t fly, it hurt too much and she was sorry but it hurt too much. And there was a lake, about half a mile away, and I said, just get us as far as that lake. Just get us to that water. It’ll be cool on your chest, it won’t hurt so much if you can just get us that far. And she said…she said ‘I can’t fly, it hurts too much, but I’ll get us there’.” M’touf made a snuffling noise, like the sound of a hand being dragged across a snotty nose. “And then. And then.”

“Go on,” C’mine urged him. The sensation of compression in his chest was no longer merely a result of his physical unfitness.

“Well, she did it, didn’t she? She took us there. Between. She took us between. And I think I... I’ve never been so scared of nothing in my life. Hanging there. Everything black and freezing. Everything just gone. It was like we were there for a Turn. And then we came out, right above that lake, and she just went smack! Right into it! I thought we were going to drown, and then three seconds later Vanzanth was there, and oh, shards, did we catch it from him…but she did it, C’mine.” M’touf sounded torn between disbelief and pride. “She did it. She went between. We could have died, we could have not come out like Saperth and Nedrith and Danementh didn’t, we could have come out with me all half dead like G’dra, but we didn’t. My girl took us between and saved us and we didn’t die.”

“Stop,” C’mine wheezed, grabbing feebly for M’touf’s arm as he stumbled, at last, to a halt. To his dismay, he found that stopping was nearly as bad as carrying on. His head spun, and he thought he might actually fall over. He bent double, gasping, gripping his knees with his sweaty hands, trying to get some air into his tortured lungs. Then, painfully, he straightened up. “Atath took you between?”

M’touf looked upset, as if C’mine were questioning his honesty. “That’s what I told you, isn’t it?”

“And when was this?”

“I guess it was about three sevendays ago.”

“Before you started between training?”

“Well, we’ve been doing visualisation stuff for ages, haven’t we? I mean, before the Wingseconds started mentoring us. So I knew, y’know, the theory. But Atath just did it. I never asked her to.”

C’mine put his hands on his aching lower back. “You didn’t tell the Weyrlingmaster.” He didn’t inflect it as a question.

M’touf shook his head. His eyes had gone evasive. “Already in enough trouble.”

“Did you tell anyone else? K’ralthe or K’dam?”

“Don’t think they’d believe me,” M’touf said. Then he added resentfully, “Wish they’d seen it.”

C’mine closed his eyes. The blood was pulsing red behind his eyelids in time with his thumping heart. Is he telling the truth?

Oh, yes.

“I just,” M’touf said, “just wanted to know how come we could do it, and the others couldn’t. ’Cause we could have died, couldn’t we? Shouldn’t we have? If half the Southern ones did and half of ours that tried? How come we could do it, and browns like Kinnescath and Danementh couldn’t, and Oaxuth didn’t even try?”

He was so transparent, so clearly hoping that C’mine would tell him it was because his green was special and unusual and better than all his friends’ dragons. C’mine was almost grateful it wasn’t so clear-cut. M’touf’s tangled feelings about Atath’s colour would plainly require more unpicking than that. “I don’t have an answer for you,” he said. “Not yet, anyway. You understand I have to take this to L’stev?”

M’touf looked unhappy, but he bobbed his head. “I know. He’s going to kill me.”

“He won’t,” C’mine assured him, although he wasn’t convinced of that himself. L’stev could build up a fearful temper where the safety of his weyrlings was concerned, and even M’touf’s assertion that he’d never meant for his dragonet to go between might not be enough to save him from a serious bollocking.

“Do you think he’ll still let me go to Little Madellon next sevenday?” M’touf asked anxiously. “Will you talk to him?”

Banning weyrlings from joining the much-anticipated excursions to Madellon’s sister crater had always been one of L’stev’s favourite threats. “I’ll talk to him,” C’mine promised. “But I do think you’ve done a really brave thing, telling me about Atath.”

“Yeah?” M’touf asked, half sceptical, half hopeful.

“Yeah,” said C’mine. “You didn’t have to say anything. But now you have, it could help us find out what’s really happening with between. Your experience could be the missing piece that helps us solve it.”

“Yeah,” said M’touf, brightening at the idea of being the saviour of his fellows. “And K’dam could stick that in his teeth and chew it, couldn’t he?”

“Yes he could,” C’mine agreed gravely.

M’touf snickered. Then he sobered a bit. “Thanks,” he said. “For not shouting at me. You’re all right. For a Weyrlingmaster.” Then, looking briefly horrified at his own chumminess, the lad started jogging on the spot. “C’mon, only a quarter lap to go. I’ll give you a length head start and race you back to the barracks!”

C’mine groaned and summoned up the last of his stamina. But even though, head start or not, M’touf sprinted past him before he’d gone fifty yards, he ran that final quarter circuit with more lightness than he could have believed possible. You’re all right. For a Weyrlingmaster. He hadn’t imagined that a weyrling’s approval could affect him so profoundly.

Even the sarcastic burst of applause that greeted his limping completion of the run couldn’t completely dampen his improved spirits. “Just a bit out of practice,” he gasped, sitting down hard on the sand.

After a moment, Leah came over with a mug. “Have some water, Mine,” she told him, pushing it into his hands. “You look like you’re going to die.”

C’mine drank gratefully, draining most of the cool liquid in three ragged gulps, then tipping the dregs over his head. He sighed in relief. “Thanks, Leah. I’d forgotten how hard those runs are.”

“Carleah,” she corrected him, as she did every time he used the familiar form of her name. “And they’re not that hard. What were you and M’touf talking about?”

He wiped sweat and water from his brow. “That’s between me and M’touf.” Then, anticipating Leah’s indignant reaction, he said, “Don’t give me that look. I’m your Weyrlingmaster now, not your informant.”

“Fine,” she said, sounding hurt. “You can get your own water next time.”

C’mine rubbed his eyes briefly with the heels of his hands as she stomped off in a fourteen-Turn-old’s high dudgeon. She was so like her father had been at that age, melodrama and all. How she’d managed it he couldn’t imagine; Robyn, her mother, was one of the most calm and serene women C’mine had ever known. He supposed her blood told. The thought made him proud and sad in equal measure.

He levered himself uncomfortably back to his feet, brushing sand off his backside. “All right,” he said, raising his voice to carry to all the weyrlings spread out on the training grounds. “Get your dragons and yourselves washed down, then off to your chores. Section leaders today are B’joro, S’terlion, H’nar, and Jardesse. I’ll see you back here at the end of forenoon.”

As the weyrlings dispersed to their dragonets, C’mine walked stiffly over to Darshanth. His blue was sporting an odd two-tone look, having worked up a fair sweat with his exertions and then collected a coating of sand from the training grounds. But C’mine patted the gritty shoulder anyway. “You looked good out there.”

Darshanth dropped his jaw in a grin. You didn’t.

“I won’t be so bad next time.”

I hope not. Then he added, conversationally, You smell terrible.

“Thanks.” C’mine leaned against Darshanth’s elbow. “Would you please ask Vanzanth if L’stev can extricate himself from his meeting?”

Darshanth turned his head in the direction of Shimpath’s weyr, across the Bowl, where Vanzanth, Izath, and Kawanth had been conspicuous by their presence all day. He says only if it’s life-or-death. They’re at a critical moment, but he’ll be out in a bit.

“Tell him it can wait, then. Do you want to go and throw yourself in the lake while I get changed?”

Darshanth got up from his sprawl and shook himself, showering C’mine with a fine spray of sand. Thought you’d never ask. Then, with his signature economy, he pushed himself a winglength aloft, glided out over the lake, and dived in past the floating buoys that marked the start of the deepest water.

C’mine trudged up the steps to the Weyrlingmaster’s weyr over the barracks. L’stev had told him to use the facilities as necessary. Although L’stev had been Madellon’s Weyrlingmaster for as long as C’mine had been a dragonrider, he kept his own quarters elsewhere in the Bowl, and used the weyr above the barracks only when he had a class in training. It accounted for the absence of personal touches to the Weyrlingmaster’s weyr. Everything was meticulously ordered and spotless, although L’stev grumbled on a daily basis that the woman who came in each day to clean and tidy wasn’t as good as the last one. As ‘the last one’ had been Crauva, who was now Headwoman, C’mine doubted that L’stev would ever be satisfied with a replacement.

It still seemed strange to clean up in someone else’s bathing room, although the water was better and hotter than what bubbled up through the pool in C’mine’s own weyr. It soothed the pain in his muscles, but he knew he’d still be feeling the effects of that nightmarish run tomorrow. He looked down at his belly as he dried off. Definitely a bit of a paunch, he thought ruefully.

Nothing a few more runs won’t solve, Darshanth commented.

The thought was too horrible to look at squarely. Instead, C’mine got dressed – remembering to put on his newly-braided Assistant Weyrlingmaster knots – and sat down in L’stev’s office. He used his key on the locked cabinet of records and ran a finger along the spines of the folders inside until he found the one labelled M’touf, green Atath.

L’stev’s report on the green dragonet’s injury was almost illegible. The mass of tightly-packed, abbreviation-heavy script in the Weyrlingmaster’s distinctive cramped hand defeated C’mine’s attempts to read it. He set it aside and found a more readable record, a copy of Master Vhion’s notes penned in the clear, fine writing that C’mine recognised as Sarenya’s.

Patient was admitted agitated and upset. Inspection found evidence of grade two tears in the upstroke muscle, and palpation revealed acute tenderness in this region. Superior extension of the wings aggravated the discomfort. Topical treatment with numbweed reduced the patient’s distress and regular applications of such, along with rest, were recommended.

There was no other mention of Atath’s mental state, or of M’touf’s. C’mine looked for the admission date. 100.02.06. Two sevendays before the ill-fated jumps between that had resulted in the deaths of four dragonets.

C’mine, said Darshanth, interrupting his thoughts. Cassath on watch has a visitor for us.

For us? C’mine asked.

Darshanth hesitated a moment, evidently querying the report. Not for us. For the Weyrleader, but the Weyrleader is not here. It is the Weyrlingmaster from High Reaches. Vanzanth says his rider will come soon, but will we please receive Milth’s rider on Madellon’s behalf.

The High Reaches Weyrlingmaster? Faranth, Darshanth, have they lost weyrlings too?

I don’t know. Cassath asks if she can send them to us.

C’mine pushed the records back into M’touf’s folder and returned it to its place in L’stev’s cabinet. Yes, of course. Are you respectable?

I’m always respectable, said Darshanth. Milth comes. Her rider is B’reko.

Darshanth was descending towards Vanzanth’s ledge when C’mine emerged from L’stev’s weyr. He stepped back to let his dragon land, noting with approval that he was clean, if still damp from his dip in the lake. Stay off the sand until you’re dry, won’t you?

His blue didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he swivelled his muzzle slightly to watch as an unfamiliar green dragon came gliding down from the direction of the Star Stones.

The rider who dismounted from the rather stocky green seemed to be wrapped in a disproportionate number of extra furs. It was winter in the High Reaches, C’mine reasoned – but then, as the northern rider came waddling around his dragon’s head, he blinked and looked closer. There were no extra furs. B’reko was just huge, tall as well as…bulky. This is definitely the Weyrlingmaster?

Yes. Milth is very pretty, isn’t she?

C’mine experienced a frozen instant of horror before he realised that his dragon was teasing him. Don’t be unkind.

Better keep at those runs.

Ignoring him, C’mine started down the steps. “Weyrlingmaster B’reko,” he greeted the enormous green rider. “Welcome to Madellon Weyr. I’m sorry the Weyrleader and the Weyrlingmaster aren’t here to meet you.”

“No. No. Quite understand…” B’reko glanced once at C’mine’s shoulder-knots, “…Weyrlingmaster. Realise I’ve come unannounced. Don’t expect you to drop everything.”

C’mine extended his forearm and found his wrist enveloped by B’reko’s massive hand. “C’mine and Darshanth at your service, sir. Will you come up?”

“I will. Hope it’s cool.” B’reko was tugging at the collar of his jacket as he spoke. “Don’t get on with this southern sun.”

“We’ve been having a hot summer,” C’mine agreed. A couple of the weyrlings from the section assigned to barracks cleaning were loitering near the bridge. Darshanth, tell Brancepath and Irdanth to send their riders to the kitchens for something cold to drink.

Certainly.

C’mine was gratified to see C’seon and Kessirke glance in his direction and then head briskly in the direction of the lower caverns. “Please come in,” he invited B’reko. “Darshanth will show your dragon to a shady place.”

“She’d rather the heat,” said B’reko. He didn’t sound out of breath, despite the climb. “Snow at the Reaches. Snow all winter. Snow all Turn! Suits me fine. Not her. Loves to bake. Let her roast.”

C’mine took B’reko’s jacket and helmet and hung them with L’stev’s on the end of Vanzanth’s harness rack. “L’stev’s on his way,” he told High Reaches’ Weyrlingmaster. “He’s been meeting with the Weyrwoman most of the morning.”

“Hm. And this business with your Weyrleader?”

Clearly the news of T’kamen’s disappearance had crossed the Southern Ocean at top speed. “Still no word,” said C’mine.

“Hm. Hm. Odd. Liked the man. Honest sort. Responsible. Still. Happens.” B’reko shrugged his big shoulders. “Found something for him. Wanted to bring it directly.” He set a leather record cylinder down on L’stev’s desk with an air of gravity.

“Good news, I hope,” C’mine ventured.

The very fact that B’reko didn’t reply immediately made it clear that it wasn’t. “Little enough of that anywhere,” he said at last.

A dragon landed on the ledge outside, and Darshanth reported, Vanzanth. A moment later L’stev steamed in.

B’reko rose laboriously to his feet. “L’stev,” he boomed.

“B’reko,” L’stev replied, with clear pleasure. The two Weyrlingmasters met with an embrace and much noisy slapping of backs. C’mine was disconcerted to see L’stev, who always cut a substantial figure, dwarfed by the Reaches green rider.

“Looking old, L’stev,” B’reko said.

“Looking fat, B’reko,” L’stev replied. “Even by your standards. Faranth, man, half the north must be going hungry to keep your gut in shape.”

“Only half the Reaches,” B’reko replied. He nodded at C’mine. “Got a polite one here. Not a hint of what he must have been thinking.”

“B’reko’s a fat tub of lard and doesn’t care who knows it,” L’stev told C’mine, with a malicious chuckle.

“I actually hadn’t noticed,” said C’mine.

“Ha!” B’reko pointed a finger at him. “I like this one too.”

L’stev made a noncommittal sound. “He’s working out almost useful. Now sit your flabby arse down, and if you break my chair, you can pay for a new one. You too, C’mine; sit down. You have drinks coming?”

“On their way.”

“Good. Wouldn’t want the Weyrlingmaster to think Madellon isn’t hospitable to its guests.” Then the growly bluster faded from L’stev’s manner. He leaned forwards, resting his elbows on his desk. “What do you have, old friend? It must be important to stir you out of your snow-drift.”

“Maybe nothing,” B’reko replied, but his tone made it plain that he doubted that. “Your Weyrleader came by. Asking about weyrlings.”

“Who do you think sent him to you?” L’stev asked. “Haven’t seen him since, have you?”

“No. Sorry. Couldn’t help him either. Still not sure I can. But sent my kids into the Archives. Your T’kamen wanted precedent. Sent them looking for it.” B’reko uttered a short laugh. “Looking in the wrong place for that. Should have sent them to Southern.”

“I don’t think that’s the sort of precedent T’kamen was hoping for,” L’stev said grimly. “And I wouldn’t recommend anyone send their weyrlings to Southern.”

“True. True. Terrible thing P’raima did.” B’reko shook his head. “Terrible.”

L’stev pointed at the document case. “But they found something?”

“Maybe. Yes. Maybe.” B’reko worked free the stopper from one end of the tube. “Have a sharp lad. Harper-trained. Blue rider.”

“A sharp weyrling? You’ll make me jealous. Most of mine are about as sharp as soup spoons.”

“This one, very sharp,” said B’reko. “Puts things together. Notices oddities. Good mind on him. Thought we’d lost him to a snake. Sent in a search party. Found him buried in hides.”

“Literally?” C’mine asked, despite himself.

“Not literally,” said B’reko. “Went deep though. Might’ve lost him forever. Worth it for what he found though.” He shook several rolls of hide out of the record cylinder. “Here. See the date.”

L’stev flattened the hide out and squinted over it. Then he frowned. “You’re pulling my leg, B’reko. This can’t be four hundred Turns old. That would date it to –” he paused as he made the calculation, “– somewhere in the back end of the Fifth Interval.”

“It’s a copy, L’stev,” B’reko said dismissively. “Probably a copy of a copy. Winters are cold in the Reaches. Keeps our weyrlings busy. Now. Read it.” He stabbed a place on the hide with a thick finger. “There.”

“Scribing could be clearer,” L’stev complained. “C’mine, bring me that glow-basket.”

C’mine fetched down the glow-basket from the shelf, giving it a shake to bring the freshest spores to the top before opening the aperture. He set it down at L’stev’s elbow.

“‘…never was a Weyrlingmaster with so many charges who should fail in the counting of their own feet were they not looking at them…’” L’stev read aloud. “Huh. Clearly some things never change. ‘Blindfold, I had them mark the proper count for a trip between and to raise hands when they judged the seconds had elapsed. Jubrynth couldn’t have sneezed in the time before the first boys stuck their arms in the air, as though being first would have them win some prize. Others I saw hold out their fingers, one after the other, and even then lose track before the moments had passed! And most judged it far too late, still sitting silent and motionless long after the nine-second count had gone by…’” The Weyrlingmaster frowned. “Nine seconds? For a jump between?”

“I always count ten,” said C’mine, and quashed the guilty little voice that piped up, except when we’re going between times.

“Ten’s what I teach,” L’stev said. “What I was taught, forty Turns ago when Vanzanth was a dragonet. Ten seconds: often more, never less.”

“Ten,” B’reko agreed, ominously. “The High Reaches too. Been ten since I was a skinny boy. Long time.”

“And you’re going to tell me that this count of nine, four hundred Turns ago, isn’t an anomaly or a mis-transcription?” L’stev asked.

B’reko pressed his chins to his chest. “Here too. Nine seconds,” he said, pushing another hide in front of L’stev. “Nine. Nine.” Two more hides. Then he lifted the last one. It looked the oldest of all, though C’mine guessed it too was several generations removed from its original. “This one. Seven hundred Turns old. Fourth Interval.” The High Reaches Weyrlingmaster laid it down gravely. “Eight seconds.”

“Faranth’s tail-fork,” said L’stev.

They sat there, the three of them, looking at the ancient northern records B’reko had brought with him from the High Reaches.

“Just to be clear,” C’mine said hesitantly, “because I’m not certain I am. Does this mean it’s taking dragons longer to travel between now than it was four hundred Turns ago, and four hundred Turns ago it took longer than it did three hundred Turns before that?”

“Yes,” both Weyrlingmasters said together.

C’mine looked at L’stev. Then he looked at B’reko. The two riders wore almost identical expressions of dismay. He didn’t know B’reko to judge, but L’stev looked sick.

“It shouldn’t matter,” L’stev said suddenly, striking the desk with the side of his hand for emphasis. “We’ve all been between longer than the minimum. Even if this generation of dragonets is taking longer again, it took seven centuries to go from eight seconds to ten. On that timescale, it should be thousands of Turns before the lag builds to the point where a jump isn’t survivable.”

“Yes,” B’reko said, holding up a finger. “But. Trend not the problem. Time taken, not the problem. Delay is a side-effect. Symptomatic of a root cause.”

“Then you’re saying something’s been amiss for a long time,” L’stev said. “It’s been building since the Fifth Interval, slowing dragons down. Not stopping them getting between, but delaying them getting out again.”

“Like stepping into a dark room,” said C’mine, suddenly inspired. “You know there’s a way out on the other side, but when the door closes behind you, you can’t find it.”

“Yes,” said B’reko, snapping his fingers at C’mine. “Yes. Good. Glows have been going out. Darker each generation. Harder for dragons to navigate. Taking them longer.”

“And now it’s reached a tipping point,” said L’stev. “A cut-off point. Any dragon who goes into that pitch black room without already knowing a way through it isn’t going to find a way. Ours can because they already know it. The weyrlings don’t. So –”

Vanzanth grumbled from outside, and then the knock at the door cut his rider off. L’stev glanced from C’mine to B’reko, then called, “Come!”

Kessirke and C’seon came in hesitantly, both weyrlings carrying pitchers that clinked with ice. C’seon goggled openly at B’reko, and Kessirke was left to speak for them. “The Headwoman said to send us back if you wanted more.”

“This is fine,” C’mine told her, relieving her of her burden. “Thank you both. You can go back to your sections.”

L’stev got up to find glasses as the two young riders made a hasty retreat. He plunked down three heavy tumblers and inspected the contents of the two pitchers. “Orange and red,” he pronounced. “What’s your preference, Weyrlingmaster?”

“Orange,” said B’reko.

“Red, please,” C’mine said, when L’stev looked at him.

L’stev poured iced juice into the three tumblers, picked up his own, took a sip, and then shook his head. “This won’t do.” He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a flask. He unscrewed the cap and poured a healthy measure of whisky into his redfruit juice, then shook the flask questioningly at B’reko and C’mine.

B’reko shrugged. “Past midday at home.” He shoved his glass towards L’stev, and the brown rider topped it up.

“Not for me,” C’mine said softly, when L’stev raised an eyebrow to him.

L’stev gave a tiny nod of assent, then put the flask away. “Well,” he said, after a long, fortifying gulp of his drink, “where in the Void do we go from here?”

“There’s something else,” said C’mine. B’reko’s unexpected visit had made his earlier conversation with M’touf slip his mind, but the two weyrlings had reminded him. “L’stev, Atath injured herself overflying a couple of sevendays ago, didn’t she?”

“Atath?” asked B’reko.

“One of our weyrling greens,” said L’stev. “Yes, C’mine. Why?”

“Did anyone see what actually happened?”

L’stev grimaced uncertainly. “Jenavally was supervising sprints. The dragonets got competitive, as they’re like to do at this age.”

“Oh yes,” B’reko agreed dryly.

“By all accounts Atath was trying to outfly Djeth,” L’stev went on. “She got carried away. Left him behind. When she got into trouble she bailed out in a lake. Could have been unpleasant but for that. Vanzanth had to give her a lift back.”

“M’touf came to speak to me during the run this morning,” said C’mine. “He said Atath went between.”

“She did what?”

C’mine sketched in the story M’touf had related to him. “He was keen to stress that he didn’t ask her to do it,” he finished, observing L’stev’s ominous expression.

“She did nothing wrong, except let her idiot rider goad her into overflying,” L’stev said darkly. “But I’ll have M’touf’s hide for harness for not telling me about it.”

“You start your weyrlings on absolutes?” asked B’reko.

“Of course.”

B’reko nodded. “Sounds like your Atath blinked.”

L’stev looked at him sharply. “You think the problem might only be with absolute jumps?”

“Can’t know,” B’reko replied. “Won’t until you replicate her experience. See if she can blink again. Then if she can jump on a visual.” He shrugged. “Only way to know.”

“Ah, Faranth, because a young male green rider like M’touf is going to be such a terrific test subject,” L’stev muttered. “But if Atath can still go between, and her classmates still can’t, we’re still no further towards a solution.”

“But we will be closer to knowing when something changed, won’t we?” asked C’mine. “When it tipped over.”

“So,” said B’reko. “Question to be asked. When did it tip? Southern’s dragonets perished first, yes?”

L’stev nodded. “About a sevenday before ours. The eleventh of the month.” He turned to the shelf behind his desk and pulled down the leather-bound training book. He flipped it open and leafed back through the pages. “That was the day Atath was released from the infirmary. That’s right. And half the others were grumpy that morning because…”

He trailed off, his brows knitting.

“Because?” B’reko prompted.

“Because something had woken them up during middle watch,” L’stev said. “Something that woke every dragon and rider in Madellon.” He looked at C’mine as he spoke.

“I remember,” C’mine said slowly. He’d been sleeping off too much drink that night, but Darshanth’s exclamation at the disturbance had penetrated his soddenly sleeping mind.

“What sort of something?” B’reko asked sharply.

“The sound of something…” L’stev’s face contorted. “Breaking.”

“Tits,” said B’reko. His round face had gone pale. “On the eleventh. Heard that at the Reaches. Dragons kicked off, no good reason for it. Thought nothing of it. Tits.”

L’stev looked nearly as pasty. “I’d wager Vanzanth’s tail that the times match,” he said. “That disturbance, and Southern’s weyrlings dying between.”

“But there wasn’t anything like that when our weyrlings tried to go between,” said C’mine.

“Wouldn’t be,” said B’reko. “Already broken. Southern did the breaking.” He flicked his fingers agitatedly. “Something P’raima did. Got to be.”

“We have to assume it’s Pern-wide, if you heard it at the Reaches,” said L’stev. “Shaffit. How old are your weyrlings, B’reko?”

“Old enough. All going between fine. Have been for months. Who else has weyrlings?”

“The Peninsula’s junior queen clutched over a Turn ago, so those dragonets are long past first between,” said L’stev. “You know more about the north’s clutches than me, B’reko. Who else has dragonets close to between age?”

“Hm. Hm. Not Ista. Nor Igen. Benden has a clutch on the sands. Telgar, perhaps.” Then B’reko nodded more definitely. “Telgar. Nine months old.”

“G’dorar’s still Weyrlingmaster at Telgar?” asked L’stev.

“He is. Rational man. You know he is. Won’t take chances with his weyrlings.”

“That’s fine,” said L’stev, “but if he doesn’t have them attempt between, how will he know if what’s happening to our dragonets holds true for his own?”

“Even if he does make them try,” said C’mine, “those weyrlings will know what happened to ours and Southern’s. They’ll be terrified.”

“Dragonets won’t risk them,” said B’reko, with finality. “Not stupid.”

L’stev looked incredulous. “Then what? No weyrling ever attempts to go between ever again?” He shook his head. “We can’t afford that. Pern can’t afford that. Faranth’s toenails.”

They lapsed again into horrified silence. Then B’reko drained his orangefruit juice, and heaved himself to his feet. “Going to Telgar.”

L’stev got up. “You’ll speak with G’dorar?”

B’reko jerked his chins in assent. “Him first. Then the others. Going to be everyone’s problem if we’re right.”

“Faranth help us, I hope we’re not,” said L’stev. “We have to figure out a way around this.”

“Have to spread the word first,” said B’reko.

L’stev walked his fellow Weyrlingmaster out to his dragon. C’mine remained where he was, thinking. When the brown rider returned, he lifted his gaze to L’stev’s. “What could P’raima possibly have done?”

“No idea,” L’stev replied shortly. He sat heavily in his chair, rubbing his temples with his hands. “Between’s bust,” he said. “T’kamen’s disappeared. And Southern…” He shook his head.

“What are we going to do?” C’mine asked.

L’stev stared at nothing for a moment. Then he leaned forward. “That’s what I’ve been discussing with the Weyrleaders,” he said. “Listen carefully, C’mine. We have a lot of preparations to make.”

Chapter sixteen: Valonna

History will judge me harshly, and it should. I should have been stronger. I should have stood up to P’raima more determinedly. I should have persuaded Grizbath against Tezonth.

It’s too late for me to change any of that. But perhaps the Weyrwomen of Pern who follow me will learn from my mistakes. Tezonth sired Grizbath. He has exerted influence over her since she was a hatchling. I should never have allowed him to become her mate and consolidate his hold over her. No bronze should wield that much power. No Weyrleader should go unchallenged for thirty Turns.

I told myself that if Southern truly wanted another Weyrleader, a different bronze – a younger bronze – would have flown Grizbath. I told myself that Tezonth dominates by the Weyr’s consent as well as through his own superiority. In that last part, at least, I was not wrong. He is superior, despite his Turns. As strongly as he stamps his offspring, none of them have ever quite matched his size or strength, or the formidable power of his mind.

But for the rest, I know I have been deceiving myself.

And now that I know how little time remains to me, I fear for Karika. I will be gone long before she is ready, and when I am, who will be left to protect her?

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Weyrwoman Margone

100.03.01 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON AND SOUTHERN WEYRS

The stars were coming out over Madellon, bright points pricking through the deepening indigo of the evening sky, but the moons were in hiding. Belior was shrouded in darkness and a narrow slice of the waxing Timor had almost set in the western sky. H’ned and Izath had returned from their reconnaissance to report that the skies were equally clear over Southern. Conditions were as good as could be expected, but Valonna still wished there’d been some cloud cover.

“Aye, would’ve been nice,” Sh’zon had agreed, when she’d said as much to him, “but if wishes were dragons we’d have a problem feeding ’em all. Don’t be fretting over the things we can’t control, Valonna. We’ve enough on our plates with what we can.”

It would be early in the morning watch at Southern, a few hours before dawn, but Madellon’s riders were only just sitting down to their evening meal, and secrecy was almost as critical here as it would be there. They couldn’t afford to let any whisper of what they were doing filter down to the Weyr at large. A rumour could cross the continent in minutes if passed between the right dragons, and if Southern’s Weyrleader heard about Madellon’s plot, the game would be up before it had even begun.

And it was a plot, for all that Sh’zon spoke of it as a rescue, or an evacuation, or a liberation. It was a plot that struck at the very sovereignty of the rightful leader of the oldest Weyr in the south. It was a plot whose execution could have consequences that made Valonna’s stomach twist into knots of dread.

But Margone had been so desperate.

All the adult bronzes were in on it: eighteen of them, excluding only Sejanth who lacked either the will or interest to question what was going on. Berzunth and her three bronze clutchmates were still too innocent of the Weyr’s communal consciousness to warrant inclusion. L’stev and C’mine were the only riders of dragons more junior than bronze who were in on the scheme. No one had questioned Vanzanth’s ability to keep his thoughts private, and L’stev had vouched personally for Darshanth. But no other dragon in Madellon could be permitted to know what the senior riders had planned.

H’ned had manipulated the rota to put a bronze on evening watch – Fr’ton, who could be trusted to obey and stay silent, if not to understand – but that had still left the issue of how to absent nine bronzes from Madellon at once without inviting remark from the Weyr at large. Most of them were Wingleaders, and Wingleaders were always visible. They’d be conspicuous by their absence at dinner, and if anyone noticed that their dragons were gone, too, that could be ruinous.

The three retired bronze riders, though, enjoyed a lower profile. Of them, R’hren had become increasingly frail over the last Turn, but Y’kat and A’krig were vigorous yet. Of the younger riders, T’rello, S’herdo, and B’mon were only Wingseconds, and would be less missed than their superiors. H’ned and Sh’zon, having agreed that one of them should remain at Madellon while the operation took place, had bickered over which of them would stay and which would go. Eventually they’d tossed a mark: Sh’zon had won. That left them just three to find from amongst the Wingleaders, and after a long discussion, E’dor, T’gat, and R’yeno had completed the roster.

They had not been without opposition. L’mis, who’d once been Weyrleader, had expressed concerns at both method and motive, and voted against the plan when they took a show of hands. V’stan had accepted the necessity of intervention but questioned its nature, opining that Madellon had no business taking such unilateral action. A’keret had asked H’ned and Sh’zon gravely if they weren’t overstepping the bounds of the authority they’d assumed in T’kamen’s absence. It had made H’ned waver. He’d been the less enthusiastic of the two deputies about granting Margone’s request since the beginning. The whole thing could have collapsed. And then Valonna had spoken up, surprising even herself, to claim complete ownership of the action – not as an act of aggression, but as one of preservation, pledged between two Weyrwomen of Pern.

That seemed to have stiffened all their spines, and the motion had passed with a majority, if not an emphatic one – but at a direct cost to Valonna. Having taken responsibility for the plan, she would be accountable for its outcome. The size of the gamble she’d taken made her feel physically nauseous.

But she’d promised Margone, one queen rider to another.

The bronzes had started leaving Madellon an hour ago, one at a time, so a mass exodus wouldn’t be obvious. Of course, they’d all return together, but by then it wouldn’t matter. Sh’zon had been the last to slip out – Valonna had watched Kawanth blink soundlessly between over the Weyr from her weyr ledge.

And that just left her.

She’d already rigged Shimpath with the special double-weight catching strap that they were all using. Shimpath hadn’t worn it since weyrlinghood, when she’d dutifully learned how to catch a dragon mid-air, and the leather was a bit less supple, the buckles more stiff, than the rest of her harness. If all went to plan they wouldn’t need it, but Shimpath wore it anyway. Just in case.

Valonna climbed astride the golden neck and strapped herself in, checking and re-checking the buckles and finishing with a good tug on the safety line. Then she sat for a moment, aware that she was trembling.

Would T’kamen have sanctioned this? She’d asked herself the question so many times in the last four days that she could no longer distinguish what she thought to be true from what she wanted to believe.

Shimpath was as tired of hearing the agonising as Valonna was of doing it. T’kamen is not here, she said, brutally matter-of-fact. We have sanctioned this. You and I. And if he returns and is displeased, he should not have left in the first place.

There were times when Valonna envied the simplicity of a dragon’s thinking. Shimpath wasn’t overly concerned by Epherineth’s absence. There was no evidence that anything untoward had happened to her mate, so she saw no need to worry. She had no eggs on the sands to be defended, and the constant attendance of one or both of H’ned and Sh’zon’s dragons seemed to satisfy her need for security. Valonna wondered if all queens were so aloof from their bronzes. Shimpath had never formed a strong attachment to Pierdeth, either.

But while Shimpath, and Madellon’s dragons in general, might not miss Epherineth, T’kamen’s absence was causing plenty of concern among the Weyr’s human inhabitants – and not only the riders. Sarenya had come to Valonna’s weyr in the pre-dawn gloom of the previous morning, apologetic but resolute, to ask after T’kamen’s whereabouts. Somehow, having no answers for her had been even more wretched for Valonna than having none for Madellon’s riders. Sarenya had covered her anguish well, but not completely. She and T’kamen had not been lovers for some time, so far as Valonna knew, but that scarcely mattered. Two people who’d shared such a tempestuous love affair would never be indifferent to each other’s fate. It made Valonna wistful and grateful in almost equal measure.

You are delaying, Shimpath said. Are you ready or not?

Valonna tucked her fingers tight under the fore-strap, guilty that she’d let herself procrastinate. I’m ready.

Shimpath sprang from her ledge. Peteorth, we go, Valonna heard her tell the watchdragon, and then, We come, sent to Kawanth, who would coordinate the other bronzes to converge on Southern Weyr.

Valonna summoned up the visual Izath had provided of their destination, just west of Southern. She felt Shimpath inspect her image, compare it to her own, and accept its veracity. They went between.

When they emerged, Valonna was suddenly grateful for the star-filled sky. Southern Weyr slept in darkness beneath them, its buildings and clearings and landing strips hidden by the lush forest, glowlight shielded by leaves and branches. The strange, alien Weyr could have been deserted entirely, but for the unmistakeable shape of a large dragon on watch atop the tallest building, facing east. And Valonna knew that if that dragon were alerted to their presence, then a hundred more would come boiling up out of the jungle to challenge them.

She felt, rather than saw, Shimpath sweep her head from one side to the other, and realised that the bronzes of Madellon had appeared to flank them, each with his inner eyelids closed to mute the telltale gleam. They were completely noiseless, gliding just above the canopy so they wouldn’t make obvious silhouettes against the sky, keeping their wingbeats to an absolute minimum. And the hush extended to communication, too: they had agreed there would be none from dragon to dragon, nor even from dragon to rider, on the chance that Southern had one of those rare sensitive riders who could hear everything. They must accomplish their goal in silence.

A dragon suddenly reared up out of the trees. For an instant Valonna went stiff with fear. Then, by the size, she identified her. Grizbath. Shimpath flipped her muzzle in silent greeting and the Southern queen flipped hers back, the agreed acknowledgement, before dipping below the treeline again.

That meant Margone was in position: so far, so good. They veered north, and suddenly Southern’s training grounds opened up below them, the pale sands reflecting starlight. A sliver of greenish glowlight marked the big entrance to the weyrling barracks, its doors ajar. Long moments passed, and Valonna strained her eyes to detect any movement. According to the plan, Margone would be moving from couch to couch, waking the weyrlings, getting them to harness their dragons as quickly and quietly as they could. She would have woken Karika, the queen weyrling, first, enlisting the help of the juvenile queen Megrith to calm and encourage her clutchmates. That had been Sh’zon’s idea. The queen weyrling’s the key, he’d said, and Margone had agreed. In a weyrling group’s insulated society, every dragonet looked to their golden sister.

Then light burst from the entrance to the weyrling barracks as its doors were flung wide open. The first dragonet appeared, blotting out the light as he loped through the door with his rider beside him. The weyrling scrambled aboard, and moments later the young blue leapt aloft, so quickly that Valonna feared his rider wasn’t strapped in properly. Two bronzes – Kidbeth and Zintyrath – moved in on the dragonet, and he checked his ascent in fright. Valonna saw the two bronze riders gesticulating animatedly at each other. Then Zintyrath broke away, and Kidbeth slipped below the panicky blue. The dragonet paddled frantically with all four feet as the Madellon dragon came up beneath him. His hind paws raked Kidbeth’s back, but the bronze drove up relentlessly, disrupting the Southern blue’s wingbeats. At last, the dragonet grabbed for the catching strap at the base of Kidbeth’s neck. Valonna saw E’dor turn and gesture to the Southern weyrling, and a moment later both dragons vanished.

Two more dragonets had emerged from the barracks and, as Valonna turned her attention back to the ground, a third joined them. They were bigger than Madellon’s weyrlings. At almost twelve months of age they would be nearing their adult length, if not yet their weight. The first two, a green and another blue, snagged onto the Madellon dragons who made for them. But the third was a brown, and a big one. Valonna saw Santinoth – Madellon’s biggest bronze – come about beneath the burly dragonet, matching his vector. But what the Southern brown had in size he lacked in agility. He folded his wings abruptly, half a beat too early, missed Santinoth’s broad back, and tumbled like a stone with a squeal that sliced through the night-time silence.

Shimpath! Valonna cried, but her queen was already moving. She lunged for the falling weyrling as he struggled to open his wings against his plunge, seizing his wing-shoulders in her powerful forepaws with an impact that rattled Valonna’s teeth. The brown hung helplessly in her grasp, unable to spread his wings or support his own weight. Shimpath beat her wings furiously to counteract the dragonet’s bulk, and Valonna felt her scrambling with her hind legs to get purchase on the brown’s back end, but Shimpath had never caught a dragon from above before, and the weight was dragging her down.

Then Santinoth powered upwards from beneath the dangling brown, taking the dragonet’s weight on his back. As Shimpath released the young dragon, he flung both forearms around Santinoth’s neck, barely missing T’rello. Instants later, Santinoth took them between. Valonna sagged with relief as Shimpath beat her wings, regaining height. The whole manoeuvre seemed to have taken forever, though only moments had actually passed.

But the brown dragonet’s cry had not gone unnoticed, and the watchdragon had turned in their direction. He tilted his head in a clear pose of confusion, and then froze, stock-still.

Grizbath has him, Shimpath said curtly.

The rest of the weyrlings were out of the barracks now. Some were still on the ground and others were snagging onto Madellon dragons with varying degrees of deftness. Another bronze went silently between, and another.

And then a shout – a human shout – went up from near the centre of the Weyr, and the jungle erupted with dragons.

Get the weyrlings away! Shimpath cried.

Dragons of every colour lifted their heads above the canopy. Queries rang out, progressing from sleepy to alarmed to angry in the span of moments. One of the dragonets squalled. A Madellon bronze swooped low, grabbed it off the ground, and vanished between.

And then a Southern bronze exploded out of the jungle towards them: huge, incandescent, thunderous. Tezonth. The remaining dragonet cowered. Kawanth, the last Madellon bronze, flinched. Even Shimpath recoiled from the violence implicit in that furious scream.

Kawanth veered sharply to intercept the Southern bronze, spreading his wings to their fullest extent, trying to match Tezonth’s size. He couldn’t. Tezonth was bigger than him and older than him, and he had his whole Weyr at his back. Bronze barrelled towards bronze, vast and enraged. He wasn’t going to stop. He wasn’t going to stop. Valonna’s stomach lurched. Shimpath!

Grizbath burst from the undergrowth, screaming, lunging at Tezonth.

Tezonth broke off from Kawanth with a clatter of wings. He spun, snarling, to face his queen mid-air. Grizbath kept up her cry, but she back-winged in the face of Tezonth’s rage.

She cannot sustain this, Shimpath said sharply. We must get the dragonet queen and go.

As if he’d heard her words, Tezonth suddenly hesitated in his assault on Grizbath. His head swivelled towards Shimpath. His nostrils flared. And then he plunged towards the barracks. Towards the weyrling queen.

She looked so small and so young as Tezonth landed in front of her, snarling, darting his head towards her with jaws agape, his wings spread above her, a terrifying sight.

Megrith screamed.

She reared onto her hind legs to meet him, beating her wings, flailing with her foreclaws, all but lashing him with her tail and the meaning of her wordless screech was vividly clear. How dare you!

Surprise took Tezonth off balance. He dropped back to all fours with a crash, and Megrith shrieked rebellion right into his face. Tezonth took one step backwards, then another, visibly startled. He turned his head towards Grizbath, but his bark of command lacked conviction. Grizbath hissed at him, and Tezonth recoiled in obvious shock. Shimpath added her cry to the chorus, and P’raima’s mighty bronze was suddenly paralysed.

Get her, Shimpath told Kawanth, and then, as Sh’zon’s bronze lunged for Megrith, she said, We must go too.

We can’t leave Grizbath, Valonna objected. Margone’s queen was quivering, the strain of subduing her Weyr and defying her mate taking a visible toll. Tell her to come with us to Madellon.

No. She will not leave Southern queenless. But she cannot hold her dragons forever.

Megrith leapt awkwardly towards Kawanth. For a moment it seemed as if the two dragons would foul each other mid-air, but then Kawanth caught the young queen neatly by her shoulders, wrapped his tail around hers, and heaved them both between.

A low moan rose from Tezonth’s chest, as though the magnitude of what had happened had suddenly dawned on him, and despite everything, Valonna’s stomach clenched in sympathy with the proud Southern bronze.

Enough, Shimpath told her. We return to Madellon.

They went between, leaving Southern behind in the night. After the chaos they’d left, the silence seemed deafening. Valonna felt weak with release from it.

Then Shimpath emerged into the darkening evening sky over Madellon, and to the sound of a different commotion.

H’ned was meant to have briefed Madellon’s riders once Shimpath had left for Southern, but dragons were still bellowing queries back and forth, squealing and barking in a state of high excitement. Half the roster crowded the Rim in a jagged crown, every hide dark against the deepening gloom, but each pair of gem-bright eyes, spinning in shades of yellow and orange alarm, fixed on the scene in the Bowl. Below, Kawanth and the other bronzes were disembarking their passengers on the training grounds under Vanzanth’s stern-eyed supervision. The Southern dragons seemed too shocked to do more than follow orders, but all around them the younger Madellon dragonets sat bolt upright, staring at the newcomers in their midst.

As Shimpath descended, she snapped a command to every Madellon dragon. Be calm and quiet. We have brought Grizbath’s weyrlings here to shelter them. Tezonth’s rider cannot be trusted with them.

The cacophony of draconic yelps and bugles subsided immediately, but Valonna sensed the ripple of excitement that travelled around the Bowl as Madellon’s dragons discussed their queen’s pronouncement. Didn’t H’ned speak to them?

Izath said he could not easily make himself heard, Shimpath replied. She landed beside Kawanth, who had just set Megrith lightly down on the gravel.

“Report, Sh’zon!” Valonna called across to the Wingleader, cupping her hands around her mouth.

“All here and accounted for, Weyrwoman!” Sh’zon yelled back. He sounded exhilarated. Clearly, losing a direct battle of wills with Tezonth hadn’t harmed his opinion of himself. He swung his leg forward over Kawanth’s neck in the flashy move that Valonna had always been taught not to do when dismounting, sliding to the ground with a flourish.

Valonna dismounted more cautiously from Shimpath. The Southern weyrlings crouched uncertainly at the centre of a ring of Madellon dragons. Some of them were shaking. But Megrith mantled in their midst, her eyes still blazing orange, her chest still expanded with pride and anger.

Valonna crossed quickly to the queen’s rider. “Weyrling Karika?”

The girl turned from her dragonet. She was rubbing her bare arms: few of the weyrlings had had time to put on wherhides. “W-weyrwoman V-valonna,” she said, through chattering teeth.

“You must be frozen!” Valonna exclaimed. She glanced around for L’stev or C’mine, but there were dragons everywhere she looked. Where’s the Weyrlingmaster? They need blankets!

He is coming.

Sh’zon swept up, dragging off his long Peninsula-style coat. “Here, missy,” he said, placing it around the young queen rider’s shoulders. “Faranth, but your queen! The way she stood up to Tezonth!”

“Th-thank you,” Karika replied, darting a look up at him. She was tiny, with black hair braided tightly back and flashing black eyes. “Margone explained everything. She said it was our j-job to make sure all the others got away.”

For all Karika’s apparent poise, Valonna sensed that it was a front. No amount of warning or preparation could have prepared her for what she’d faced in the last few minutes, and Karika was young – very young. “I’m so sorry, Karika, but we don’t have much… Oh – L’stev!”

The Weyrlingmaster was coming around Megrith’s hind end. He had a heavy woollen blanket over one arm. “You can give that coat back to the Wingleader, weyrling,” he said gruffly. “Here.”

Karika shrugged off Sh’zon’s coat and accepted the blanket around her shoulders in its place. “This is our Weyrlingmaster, L’stev,” Valonna told her. “He’ll be looking after you while you’re staying with us.”

“Yes, Weyrwoman,” Karika replied.

“Gather your classmates together, weyrling,” L’stev said. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“Of course, Weyrlingmaster,” Karika said. “Megrith…”

As she spoke, her queen sat taller, and each of the Southern dragonets turned their heads to look at her. Simultaneously the weyrling riders began to move towards Karika. Some of them wore jackets over nightclothes, some of them only nightclothes. Most had blankets, but all of them looked bewildered, and all of them were very young.

Valonna took a deep breath as the last of the nine weyrlings gathered around Karika. “Weyrlings,” she began, and found her voice had diminished to a squeak. “Weyrlings,” she tried again. “I know you’ve all had a shock, but you’re safe now.”

“Where are we?” one of the boys asked. He sounded pitifully disoriented, and he clutched at the blanket hanging half off his shoulder as if it were a favourite toy.

“You’re at Madellon Weyr,” Sh’zon said, stepping forward, when Valonna couldn’t find the words. “You’re safe, all of you. There’s hot food waiting, and warm beds for you and your dragons.”

“But what are we doing here?” asked one of the older boys.

“Weyrwoman Margone asked us to bring you here,” said Valonna, finding her voice again. “It’s just for a short while until things are sorted out back at Southern.”

“Is this because our dragonets can’t go between?” the second boy asked. He looked like he was probably the oldest, with a wispy fuzz of moustache on his top lip, but Valonna doubted if he was even sixteen Turns old. “Are we being punished?”

“No one’s being punished,” said Sh’zon. “You’re not in any trouble.”

“But Tezonth was so angry,” said one of the girls. Tears had tracked shining paths down her face.

“I want to go home,” the first boy added miserably.

“You’ll stay right here, P’lau!” Karika snapped, rounding on the boy. “And you can pull yourself together too, Sia! Have you forgotten who you are? You’re Southern dragonriders!”

To Valonna’s astonishment, both young weyrlings immediately swallowed their distress and stood stiffly at attention. She would have been impressed had the sight not been so sad: two children, clearly terrified out of their wits by the circumstances, falling back on the rigid discipline that Southern had taught them.

“I apologise on behalf of my fellow weyrlings, Weyrwoman Valonna,” Karika went on, turning to her. The presence of her peers seemed to have wiped away her hesitation. “We’re very grateful for Madellon’s hospitality.”

“But Karika –” the oldest boy started.

“Shut up, V’ranu,” Karika commanded, and the big lad closed his mouth with a snap.

“Don’t want you here any longer,” said L’stev, glancing at Valonna. “If you’ll take your dragonets into the barracks, there – girls on the left, boys on the right – Weyrlingmaster C’mine will help you get them settled.”

“What about our things?” asked another lad, in a high, unbroken voice. “Our clothes and everything?”

“We’ll sort that out in the morning,” said L’stev. “There are nightclothes for you all in the barracks. Inside, now.” His last order crackled with authority.

“Of course, Weyrlingmaster,” Karika answered promptly. She glanced around at her classmates. “Come on.”

“Well,” said Sh’zon, as the Southern youngsters stumbled after their queen rider, “she’s a hunk of firestone and no mistaking it.”

“They’re all so young,” Valonna said. “Karika can’t be more than twelve Turns old!”

“That’s Southern for you,” Sh’zon said. “Anything from Grizbath yet?”

Valonna shook her head. “I wish she’d come too. I’m worried for Margone and Grizbath. Grizbath was so brave, but Margone’s not well…I don’t know if she can stand up to P’raima.”

“I don’t know anyone could,” Sh’zon said, with a grimness that Valonna had never heard in his voice before. “But you can’t ask a queen to abandon her Weyr. And there’s only the one way to be rid of a Weyrleader.”

If he realised the crassness of his own remark, he was saved from having to apologise for it by the arrival of H’ned from the direction of the lower caverns. He looked harried. “Sh’zon. Weyrwoman. It all went off as planned?”

“More or less,” Sh’zon said. “Dragonet nearly took T’rello’s head clean off of his neck, but he seems to be in one piece. How’d it go back here?”

“Noisily,” said H’ned. “I’ve no clue how much anyone took in once the shouting started. I think the reaction was supportive. I’m glad we had more than one copy of that document Margone signed, though. I’m not sure the one I read out in the caverns is still in one piece.”

“And everyone’s ready?” Sh’zon asked.

H’ned began to respond, but then, Tezonth is coming! Shimpath snapped, and by Sh’zon and H’ned’s fractionally delayed responses, their dragons had relayed the same warning to them.

“Get those dragonets inside!” Sh’zon shouted at L’stev. Then he looked at H’ned. “Guess we’re about to find out.”

Valonna and Sh’zon ran for their dragons even as Izath touched down with a thump, spraying gravel everywhere. Shimpath barely waited for Valonna to strap in before leaping skyward.

Then the air above Madellon was abruptly full of angry bronzes, a  whole Wing of them, scarlet-eyed and bellowing with rage. Tezonth led them, howling, his talons curled as if to strike: a fearful sight despite his age. Shimpath bugled a pure high note of reprimand, and either side of her Izath and Kawanth added their deep voices to her rebuke. The answering roar from the massed dragons of Madellon echoed from one wall of the Bowl to the other, even as every adult bronze from Staamath to Santinoth launched to meet the Southern intruders mid-air.

You have stolen my children! Tezonth’s scream targeted Valonna as well as Shimpath. It felt like claws raking through her mind. You have stolen my daughter! Hand her back or feel Southern’s wrath!

Shimpath beat her wings, rising effortlessly to draw level with Tezonth, and her bronzes rose with her, nine of them on either side. Madellon was outnumbered, Valonna realised suddenly, with a lurch of dread. She counted nearly thirty snarling Southern bronzes above her Weyr. But as intimidating a sight as the unbroken line of male aggression made, it was missing the one element that would have made it truly terrifying. P’raima had no queen.

You will halt! Shimpath cried, and the force of her command struck the line of Southern bronzes like a physical blow, checking their descent towards Madellon.

Only Tezonth seemed able to resist, partially, the power of Shimpath’s cry. Petty queen, he bellowed, with all the weight of three decades’ seniority. You dare command me?

At Madellon I command all! You will take your dragons and leave!

I’m not leaving without my weyrlings!

They are not your weyrlings! There was contempt in Shimpath’s voice that Valonna had never heard there before. They are Grizbath’s sons and daughters and she has entrusted them to me!

Grizbath is weak! Tezonth snarled. She would have them be weak and useless too! They are my children, and my children will never be weak!

That you would sacrifice them in the name of your pride is crime enough, Shimpath cried. But your pride condemned my hatchlings to die!

What use is a dragon who cannot go between? No better than a watch-wher!

What use is a bronze who will not protect his weyrlings? Shimpath’s retort dripped scorn. No better than a tunnel-snake!

Tezonth screamed, and for a hideous instant Valonna thought the old Southern bronze was going to lash out, but Shimpath showed no fear. She lunged closer to him, as if daring him to try. Get out of my Weyr, Southern! Or we will force you out!

On Shimpath’s left, Izath let a tongue of flame lick out from his mouth, and in response to the signal the bronzes of Madellon opened their jaws and poured fiery breath into the night sky.

Tezonth recoiled from the display, and the Southern dragons pulled back, dismayed and alarmed. Below, the browns and greens and blues of Madellon joined their voices in a deafening roar, and even the Wildfire dragonets rose to their feet to shriek defiance at the interlopers, Berzunth’s brassy young voice unmistakeable among the yelps and squeals.

It was too much. As Madellon’s dragons filled the air with flame and fume and fury, the Southern line broke. The formation disintegrated into a rout, and even Tezonth back-winged in the face of Madellon’s united strength. This is not over, Madellon, he roared. This I will not forget! He barked at his disarrayed bronzes, left and then right, and an instant later, he disappeared between.

As the sky emptied of foreign wings, Madellon’s dragons went wild with victory. Valonna realised she’d been holding her breath. She let it go with a long groan of relief. Her head still rang painfully with the force of Tezonth’s voice. Shimpath. You were magnificent.

Yes, Shimpath said matter-of-factly. She turned her head from one side to the other, dismissing her flanking bronzes. Her eyes, Valonna noticed, were still orange. Kawanth, Santinoth, and the others who had brought the weyrlings from Southern banked away; those who still had flame to discharge angled higher to breathe it off. I should like this harness off, she added, rolling her shoulders. Kawanth says his rider and Izath’s will come to our weyr to debrief. Calproth, Redmyth, and Vidrilleth will stay on watch with Peteorth in case Tezonth comes back.

Do you think he will? Valonna asked, as they descended towards their ledge.

If he does, we will turn him away again. Grizbath’s dragonets are under my protection now.

But something Tezonth had said stayed with Valonna. What use is a dragon who cannot go between? Wasn’t there some truth in that? L’stev hadn’t had an answer when H’ned had asked him what he meant to do with Madellon’s dragonets. Now the Weyrlingmaster had nine more weyrlings with the same problem. Valonna had promised Margone that no harm would come to them while they were in Madellon’s custody. She was seized by sudden doubt. Had they really done the right thing? How could she possibly keep her promise when they still had no idea how to cure whatever was afflicting Pern’s dragonets? What if the other Weyrs took P’raima’s side?

We have done the right thing, Shimpath assured her. Grizbath’s dragonets will be safe with us. We have not stolen them.

“Except we have,” Valonna said fretfully, as Shimpath touched down on their weyr ledge. “It’s exactly what we’ve done.”

Chapter seventeen: T’kamen

They’re still in deadlock over what to do with T’kamen. It seems less and less likely with each passing day that he’s the northerner we assumed. Epherineth certainly doesn’t resemble any northern dragon we’ve ever seen. He doesn’t look like a scion of any of the southern bloodlines we know, either. And tall as he is, he’s not built for a bronze’s work. If he’s a northerner, what’s he been doing all his life?

We know a dragon can be compelled to claim a different name than the one he gave himself when he Hatched. There was, it seems, a Weyrleader of Madellon called T’kamen with a bronze called Epherineth during the Seventh Interval. I got that out of the Masterharper without arousing his suspicions – I think. It’s hard to know with Marlaw. But I don’t want him poking his nose in until I have a better idea of what we’re dealing with here. It’s not the Harperhall’s business. I just wish more of our Interval records had survived so I could verify T’kamen’s story.

It seems ridiculous that I’m even writing that. Verify his story. A bronze dragon and his rider turn up at Madellon West claiming to have come more than a hundred Turns between times from the last Interval. It’s like a joke waiting for a punchline. Are we the punchline?

R’lony still thinks Ista’s behind it, though. S’leondes concurs – may the wonders never cease – but as usual those two couldn’t actually fly a formation together if their lives depended on it. They can’t come to an agreement on what to do with our guests. We’ve never actually captured a northern rider before, so there’s no precedent for applying the statute amendment from 19. S’leondes wants to put T’kamen in front of a Justice. R’lony doesn’t, because a Justice has to be public, and he doesn’t want to give him the chance to grandstand.

And I’m undecided. Even if Epherineth is a pawn of Chrelith’s, I have no doubt that Donauth could break her hold on him and get to the bottom of his story. But no dragon is ever the same after he’s had a queen step on his neck, and Donauth’s too appreciative of Epherineth’s good looks to want to break him. He is extremely handsome, even if he is oversized. I suspect that’s why neither R’lony nor S’leondes want me going anywhere near T’kamen. If he’s half as good-looking as his dragon… Lirelle said he was a rather stern young man. Of course, everyone’s young to her. Maybe I’ll ask M’ric to report on that score. That’ll keep them on their toes.

There is one way to prove if he’s telling the truth or not. We can’t try it until T’kamen’s leg’s well enough for him to ride, and I’ll still have to make S’leondes and R’lony think they thought of it first, but…well. That’s what I do best, isn’t it?

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Weyrwoman Dalka

26.04.14 - 26.04.21 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

It was mid-morning of a cold, Thread-free day when M’ric came up to T’kamen’s weyr with Epherineth’s broken rig over one shoulder and a roll of heavy-grade hide under the opposite arm.

T’kamen sat up. “What’s going on?”

M’ric dumped hide and harness on the floor beside T’kamen’s couch. “You get to make Epherineth a new harness. I get to help. Let me just go and get my tools.”

T’kamen stared after the weyrling, and then at the leather and harness he’d left on the ledge, trying once again to figure him out.

M’ric had been coming daily to talk to him since the Threadfall over Madellon – the day when Epherineth had almost disgraced them both with his behaviour. I cannot stay here, he’d insisted. Thread is falling! I have to kill it!

Salionth and Recranth had had to restrain him from breaking into the firestone bunkers: brave of them, given that Epherineth was half as heavy again as either one of them, and angrier than both put together. N’hager and P’lav, close-mouthed as ever, had said nothing to T’kamen once their dragons had wrestled Epherineth back to his ledge, but M’ric had. “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you control your own dragon?”

T’kamen had sworn him clean out of his weyr, but later, grudgingly, he’d conceded that M’ric was right. He’d never locked wills with his dragon before. He’d never needed to. But being under a live Fall had awoken a side of Epherineth that T’kamen hadn’t experienced before. Curbing the fighting instincts of a bronze dragon with actual Thread overhead was something his training hadn’t covered. That wasn’t M’ric’s fault. Besides, for all that T’kamen didn’t care for the brown rider as a youth any more than he had as an adult, he’d been penned up in the weyr alone for so long that any kind of company was preferable to none.

He’d still been surprised when M’ric actually came back. “They say I know too much about you,” he said, when T’kamen queried his presence. “I’m already in the shit. And Donauth’s grounded Trebruth, so it’s not like I can go flying off to Fort in the middle of the night. As if I would anyway. I’m just not allowed to tell anyone else what you say.”

“Anyone else but them?” T’kamen asked.

M’ric had shrugged, unfazed by the accusation. “I don’t tell them everything.” He’d grinned, almost ferally. “I might get a better offer.”

He was a cocky young idiot, this unfinished M’ric. I won’t be used. I’m no one’s puppet. But he could also be frighteningly perceptive. T’kamen found himself having to choose his words with care when M’ric asked about the circumstances of his trip between times. He wasn’t ready to put a dragon among the wherries by telling M’ric the truth, but the boy seemed to sense when he was withholding information, and had an uncanny knack for filling in the gaps himself. In that, he reminded T’kamen irresistibly of C’los at his most irritating.

He didn’t trust him, though – not one bit, not in this Madellon. T’kamen had only the vaguest picture of the political climate, but his arrival had plainly stirred a pot already bubbling with tensions. He was obviously being monitored. Gusinien and Ondiar probably reported to Dalka, the Weyrwoman, but they only ever spoke to him about his health or Epherineth’s. N’hager and P’lav scarcely spoke at all. Their two bronzes were the largest and bulkiest of Madellon’s complement, and it was clear that their role was to contain Epherineth physically. If they were reporting to anyone, T’kamen doubted they had much to say. Only M’ric had really questioned him, or answered his questions, and T’kamen had no doubt that the weyrling was repeating every word he said back to his superiors.

But this new instruction still threw him. Epherineth’s wing was almost whole again, it was true. His broken bones had healed, and while he hadn’t yet regained fine control over the trailing edge, the membrane had regenerated nicely, with hardly any scarring. Madellon’s Dragon Healers, Gusinien had told T’kamen, were some of the best on Pern at fixing wings. Epherineth had started flying again – cautiously, and only over the Weyr – but with a confidence that increased each day.

T’kamen, though, was still at least a sevenday away from being able to risk riding. The muscles and ligaments of his leg were still weak enough that a sudden movement could cause his hip to dislocate again. He chafed at the delay, but he didn’t want to extend his convalescence by re-injuring himself. Ondiar had told him that the more he rested, the sooner he’d be fit. Not that T’kamen thought they’d let him go anywhere once he was – but perhaps something had changed.

“What do I need a harness for?” he asked, when M’ric returned with his leather-working kit.

“You put it on your dragon,” said M’ric. “So you don’t fall off him.”

“Don’t be a smart-arse. Am I free to go?”

“You’re not a prisoner,” said M’ric, but he rolled his eyes as he said it.

“Right,” T’kamen said, with equal scepticism. M’ric must have been given stock answers to T’kamen’s most common questions, but he’d repeated them so often now that even he clearly didn’t believe them. “So where are they wanting me to go that means Epherineth needs harness?”

“They want you to prove if you are who you say you are.”

T’kamen had a feeling he knew where this was leading, but he’d learned not to pre-empt M’ric. “And how do they propose I do that?”

“By going between,” said M’ric.

He really wasn’t hiding his eagerness very well, T’kamen thought. Whatever was happening, M’ric was excited about it. “Between where?”

“Anywhere!” M’ric waved an arm.  “I mean, it doesn’t matter, does it, so long as you show you can go between and come out again.”

“That just proves that Epherineth is capable of going between,” said T’kamen. “It doesn’t follow that I’m who I say I am.”

“No one really cares if you’re actually some Interval Weyrleader or just a crazy bronze rider,” said M’ric. “But we know that no one from this time can go between, so if you can, at the least you’re not lying about being a time-traveller.”

There were still holes in the logic, and the very fact that M’ric wasn’t pointing them out exposed just how keen he was to test the shaky theory. T’kamen decided not to make that particular observation. The chance of vindication was too tempting – and the prospect of going home much too sweet. Still, he was suspicious. “What’s brought this on?” he asked, shifting up on the couch so M’ric could lay out several lengths of measuring cord.

“I’m guessing you’re just close enough to being better that they have to decide what to do with you,” said M’ric. He never admitted to not knowing something. If he didn’t deliberately evade a question, he’d speculate instead. “You can’t sit in this weyr forever.”

“I’m glad someone else thinks so.”

“And maybe someone’s decided to believe you.”

“You mean you don’t?” T’kamen asked, heavy on the irony.

“I still haven’t decided. You could still be a terrible spy. Or a very clever one.” M’ric thought about it, then amended, “More likely a terrible one.”

“I wish you’d tell me what the northern Weyrs did,” T’kamen complained, but resignedly. That was one of the subjects M’ric wouldn’t touch, though there were times when he visibly burned to show off his knowledge. T’kamen had pieced together only the scantest of pictures. The northern and southern continents were obviously locked in a bitter dispute. Northern riders were regarded with suspicion, if not outright hostility, in the south. And relations were so bad that Madellon couldn’t or wouldn’t reach out to substantiate T’kamen’s repeated assertion that he wasn’t a spy or a trespasser.

Yet Madellon’s queens had refrained from leaning on Epherineth to force him to speak the truth – a fact for which T’kamen was very grateful – and the Weyrleader still hadn’t interrogated him personally. That bothered him even more than the mysterious north-south rift. If a strange rider had appeared in T’kamen’s Madellon, claiming to be a time-traveller, T’kamen would have wanted to question him himself. He couldn’t understand why neither Weyrwoman nor Weyrleader had come to see him. He hadn’t even been able to identify which of the handful of bronzes belonged to Pass Madellon’s Weyrleader. No dragon ever shared Donauth’s ledge. The weyr adjacent to the senior queen’s, where T’kamen and Epherineth had quartered over a hundred Turns ago, seemed to belong to a brown, and blue and green dragons took up most of the prime low-level caverns. T’kamen was perplexed by it all.

But he was also bored, and at least making Epherineth a new harness would give him something to do. “You’re going to have to help me measure him up,” he told M’ric. “This hip isn’t going to let me clamber around.”

“I thought we could use his old one as a guide,” M’ric said.

“He’s lost so much weight it wouldn’t be much use,” said T’kamen. He lifted the broken fore-strap, turning it over in his hands. Some of the rivets had popped under the strain of Epherineth’s crash-landing in the Pass. “The turnbuckles are still good, though. We can cut them out and reuse them.”

“Why?” asked M’ric. He poked one of the metal fittings. “They’ve gone rusty.”

“It’s nothing that won’t scour off.”

“But why bother? I’ll get the Weyr Smith to make new ones.”

“New ones are expensive,” T’kamen objected.

“It’s not like you have to pay for them out of your own marks, T’kamen,” said M’ric. “The harness failed. You should replace all of it.”

T’kamen had to accept the wisdom of that. “It’s just that I don’t know how many times I’ve reused these fittings when making Epherineth new harness,” he said. “They’re too costly to throw away.”

“They won’t be thrown away. They’ll be melted down, forged into something else.”

“Which costs in coal,” T’kamen said. “And the Smiths’ time.”

M’ric looked curiously at him. “There’s no shortage of coal. Or Smiths.”

“There is where I come from,” said T’kamen. “There’s a shortage of sharding everything.”

M’ric’s eyes narrowed. “In the Interval. When there’s no Thread.”

“That’s the point,” said T’kamen. “When there’s no Thread, the Holds don’t see why they should break their backs to support the Weyr.”

“But holders have it easy in an Interval. They don’t have to keep their herds in during Fall. Or limit their acreage to what the Weyr can protect. They can do what they like.”

“Including being stingy with their tithes,” said T’kamen. “The way Madellon’s holders see it, dragonriders don’t earn their keep during an Interval. We have to fight for every sack of grain and head of herdbeast.”

M’ric looked baffled, and annoyed. “Why would you stand for that?”

“What else can we do, when the Pass is a hundred Turns away?” T’kamen asked. “We don’t have any leverage. We have to take what we can get, and manage.”

“So your Madellon’s…poor?”

“No one’s starving,” said T’kamen. “Yet.” He shook his head. “I’ve had to lay off Crafters. I’m probably going to have to cut the stipend again. And…” He saw M’ric’s expression and stopped. “When I get back, anyway.”

“When you get back,” M’ric said. He was silent for a moment, just watching. Then he said, “Do you want to go back?”

T’kamen laughed. “Of course I do.”

“It doesn’t sound like much fun.”

“I left my Weyrwoman on her own, M’ric,” T’kamen said. “I left my Weyr without a Weyrleader. And my weyrlings….” He let the sentence trail off, but not the thought behind it. Dragons couldn’t go between any more. The three pairs they’d lost were only the beginning. “I have responsibilities. Fun doesn’t come into it.”

“Well,” M’ric said, after another long pause. “I suppose we’d better get on and make this harness, then.”

It took them several days. T’kamen could only stand for short periods, so he directed M’ric in most of the cutting that had to be done on the scarred and battered workbench that P’lav and N’hager hauled up to the weyr ledge. He made all the straps longer than Epherineth needed so that when he regained the condition he’d lost in convalescence his harness could be adjusted and still fit. M’ric took away all the metal parts from Epherineth’s old rig, and came back the next day with new ones. Then the long process of padding and sewing each strap began. T’kamen had thought to do all of that himself. He’d never let anyone else work on Epherineth’s harness before. But M’ric just picked up one of the pieces of the aft-strap and began punching holes in it with such accurate deftness that T’kamen let him get on with it. Whatever his other issues with M’ric, he couldn’t fault his steady eye, or his good hands.

One chill afternoon, when Epherineth’s harness was taking shape, M’ric looked up from the tether he was stitching. “How did you do it, then?”

“Do what?” T’kamen asked.

“Come between through time.”

T’kamen set down the buckle he’d been sewing onto the end of the second fore-strap girth. “Our visual must have been wrong.”

“Your visual?”

“That’s how dragons go between,” T’kamen said. “You give them a visual of where you want to go – a reference of what it looks like – and they take you there.”

“That’s it?” M’ric asked. He sounded disappointed.

T’kamen laughed. “Fundamentally. In practice it’s a little more complicated, if you don’t want to get yourself killed.”

M’ric went quiet for a very long time. “We’re not meant to think about between.”

T’kamen suspected that M’ric wasn’t meant to talk about it, either. “So you don’t even know the theory?”

“Too dangerous. We’re supposed to tell the Weyrlingmaster if our dragons start getting curious.”

He said Weyrlingmaster in a tone of barely-veiled distaste. “You don’t like him much, do you?” T’kamen asked.

“He doesn’t like me,” said M’ric. Then he seemed to remember himself. He straightened. “Anyway, I don’t need anyone strong-arming Trebruth into not thinking about between. I can keep my thoughts to myself.”

T’kamen made a connection then that he hadn’t before. “This is why Epherineth’s not been allowed to talk to any other dragons, isn’t it? And why the Weyr’s been told that we’re northerners. If it were common knowledge that we’d come between – true or not – everyone would be thinking about between…”

“And that’s dangerous,” M’ric finished for him. He raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Because it’s an instinct in dragons we have to suppress, isn’t it? And if they all start talking about between, thinking about between, because you’ve reminded them it exists….”

“They could instinctively use it to try and dodge,” said T’kamen.

“It’s like telling someone not to think about the pink watch-wher,” said M’ric. “It becomes all they can think about.” He leaned forwards slightly, his dark eyes alight. “But Epherineth can’t just go between. He can go between times.”

“It’s not something you ever do on purpose,” said T’kamen. “It’s against Weyr law, for one thing… The pink watch-wher?”

“See what I mean?”

T’kamen tried, unsuccessfully, to banish the mental image. “And it’s dangerous,” he went on. “Very. You can get lost between on a normal jump if your visual’s inaccurate and your dragon can’t find the where. If he has to find the when as well as the where, it’s much harder.”

“But it can be done?” M’ric asked. “Deliberately, I mean. Not just by accident?”

“I never have,” said T’kamen. “My Weyrlingmaster drilled that into me pretty hard when I was your age.”

“But if you wanted to do it…on purpose…how would you do it?”

T’kamen looked at M’ric. His face was intent. “Are you talking about how I would do it, or how you would?”

M’ric recoiled with a start. “Me?” He shook his head emphatically. “I’m not stupid, T’kamen. Trebruth’s unique, but he can’t go between any more than any other dragon can.”

T’kamen thought about the last moments he’d spent in the Interval, watching M’ric and Trebruth vanish between less than a winglength from Epherineth’s ledge. He covered his pause with a short laugh. “Everyone’s dragon is unique, M’ric.”

“Yeah, but Trebruth –” M’ric bit the sentence off. “I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about you. If you wanted to go home, back to your own time, what would you need?”

“A time-specific reference. Something that would let Epherineth pinpoint a when as well as a where.”

“Like what?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” T’kamen said. “It has to be exact, and it has to be unique. And you have to put back in all the temporal conditions that you usually take out to go from one place to another in the present.” He saw M’ric’s brow furrow. “This means nothing to you, does it?”

“Temporal conditions?”

“Where the sun is in the sky. The direction of shadows. The weather. If you’re jumping normally, and you know you’re going to be going from day to night, or night to day, you have to account for that, but if not, you have to take out the details, or your dragon can get caught up in trying to find your destination under those exact conditions, and if they don’t exist, or they aren’t unique…”

“You get lost between,” said M’ric.

“Right.”

“Shards.”

“If you could just find something,” T’kamen said. “Some account of me arriving back in the Interval…”

“I already told you, Madellon’s records don’t go back that far,” said M’ric.

“It wouldn’t have to be a Weyr record,” said T’kamen. “Surely the Harperhall at Kellad would have records from the Interval. He paused. “The Harperhall is still at Kellad, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” M’ric said, after a moment. “I have a girlfriend there.”

“Lord Meturvian was always making changes to the Hold proper,” T’kamen said, inspired. “After the wildfire in 98 he knocked down the temporary workshops in the courtyard and started rebuilding them in stone instead of wood. He –”

“Wood?” M’ric queried. “He had workshops made of wood?”

“It was the Interval, remember?” T’kamen said. “No Thread.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Maybe there’s a drawing or description of the new buildings,” T’kamen went on. “They weren’t finished when I was last there. He would have made an event of completing them. There has to be something. Can you ask your girlfriend?”

“I’m grounded,” M’ric said, but he looked thoughtful. “I’ll…see if I can get her a message.”

A couple of days later, M’ric came up to the weyr as normal, passing the attendant Recranth and Salionth below, but the brightness of his eyes betrayed that something was afoot. “Need to talk to you,” he told T’kamen, under his breath, and then said, loudly, “I’d kill for a cup of klah.”

T’kamen set aside the strap he’d been greasing. He picked up his single crutch – Ondiar had told him he didn’t need two any more. “I’ll put the kettle to heat.”

He’d hardly limped through Epherineth’s sleeping cavern and into the quarters beyond before M’ric hurried past him. “I’ve got it,” he said, pulling a record tube out of his jacket and slapping it triumphantly down on the table.

“Got what?” T’kamen asked.

“A record from Kellad!” M’ric opened the tube and shook it to empty out its contents. Dust and bits of desiccated vellum showered out, and he swore. “Shaffit!”

“Be careful with that!” T’kamen told him. “Shards, M’ric, you have to treat old hides gently!”

He took the tube off the weyrling and eased the roll of hide out of the tube. It was old and dry, its surface already webbed with a lattice of cracks where it had been handled too roughly. Gingerly, T’kamen unrolled it.

And caught his breath.

Time had darkened the surface of the vellum, but not enough to obscure the vibrant colours of the dragons depicted there, jewel-bright against an ashen sky, or the malevolent orange of the flames that boiled up from the trees in the background. In the foreground, a blue lay stricken in the courtyard of Kellad Hold, surrounded by dragons and people. It was vivid, visceral; it sent T’kamen so forcefully back to that day that he could smell the smoke, hear the crackling of the flames, feel the blistering heat. “Faranth,” he said, and coughed. “Faranth.”

“You said there was a wildfire in Interval 98,” M’ric said. He put his finger on the hide. “Look!”

T’kamen tugged his eyes away from the graphic portrayal. Madellon dragons fight the wildfire of I7/98. “I was there,” he said, more to himself than to M’ric. “We were there.” He shook his head. “This wasn’t much more than a Turn ago to me. But this picture’s…ancient.”

“But you can use it?” M’ric asked. He was almost beside himself with excitement. “You can jump back to this moment?”

T’kamen spread the hide out on the table, carefully, weighting down its corner with cups. He tried to set his disconcertion aside. “This is Darshanth,” he said, touching the blue. He moved his finger to a green dragon nearby in the courtyard. “This must be…Othanth. She brought the Dragon Healer from Madellon.” He moved his finger again to a bronze. “And this is…”

“Epherineth?” M’ric asked.

T’kamen looked at the dragons crowding around Darshanth, and the bubble of hope that had been expanding in his chest suddenly burst. “No,” he said. “It’s wrong.” He tapped the dragons whose hides had been painted with the green-gold hue of bronze. “There were three bronzes at Kellad that day. Epherineth, Peteorth, Santinoth. But not once Darshanth was on the ground. We sent Santinoth back to the Weyr to get help, before we landed. And the other dragons of the Wing didn’t come back to the Hold until the fire was out.” He shook his head, irrationally angry with the painting. “It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. It didn’t happen like this.”

M’ric looked even more crestfallen than T’kamen felt. “But can’t you correct it?” he ventured. “I mean, you know what’s wrong with it. Can’t you just…take out the dragons that shouldn’t be there?”

T’kamen looked at the painting. The shadows did look right. The weather, the time of day – both matched his recollection of that afternoon at Kellad. Epherineth?

Epherineth didn’t reply for a long moment. T’kamen could sense how he strained through his eyes to make sense of the inaccurate picture. Is that supposed to be me?

Nothing distinguished the bronze closest to Darshanth except for the general colour of his hide. I think so.

We were not there twice, T’kamen.

There was a lot going on, T’kamen pointed out. The fire, Darshanth, Shimpath rising. Maybe you were just distracted.

I think I would have noticed, Epherineth said doubtfully.

You think?

I’m not certain.

“Well?” M’ric asked.

“Epherineth isn’t sure,” said T’kamen. “He doesn’t think we were there twice.”

“He remembers?”

It’s not the sort of thing I would forget.

“I don’t think this is going to work.” T’kamen said it slowly, reluctant to give up the hope that the painting of Kellad could be their way home. “Even if we did get back to this moment, I wouldn’t be able to go back to the Weyr straightaway.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d already be there. I’d be doubled up for more than a Turn. And I wasn’t, as far as I know.”

“Doubled up,” said M’ric. He frowned. “But there’s no Thread. Couldn’t you just –”

“What?” T’kamen asked. “Camp out? For a Turn?”

“But you said you wanted to go home.”

“I do. Faranth, M’ric, I do.” T’kamen stared at the old picture, frustrated. “But I need a better visual than this.” He let out his breath. “Maybe once we’ve done this demonstration, proved we’re not lying, I can do some more research at the Harperhall. There has to be a reference to me arriving back in the Interval. Once I have that it should be easy.” He let the painting roll itself up, and carefully put it back into the record tube. “Can you get this back to your friend at the Harperhall?”

“I suppose so,” M’ric said.

He sounded subdued, and T’kamen almost felt sorry for him. He had taken a risk to get him the old record.

They finished Epherineth’s harness that afternoon. It looked good, T’kamen thought, as he stood back to admire their handiwork: nothing fancy, just top-quality hide, cut and sewn with even, solid stitches onto smoothly-polished metal fitments. The new riding belt he’d made for himself matched it. But he was still short a couple of items. “Do you know what happened to the rest of my gear?” he asked M’ric. “My jacket and helmet?”

“I’ll find out,” M’ric told him.

Left alone again, T’kamen resumed his place on the couch beside Epherineth. Half the Weyr’s dragons had left early in the day, and as evening fell they began to return, weary and soot-smeared and reeking so powerfully of firestone that the smell even reached T’kamen’s nostrils. The big dragons always arrived back later than the blues and greens, and as he watched, two of the larger bronzes came over the Rim with an injured green dangling below them in a complex rigging of ropes and chains. They set their stricken passenger down near the dragon infirmary, below T’kamen’s ledge, and crafters from the Dragon Healer’s staff came out to meet them.

The exchange between the new bronze riders and T’kamen’s minders, P’lav and N’hager, floated up to him in fragments.

“…bad one?”

“…be glad when you’re back flying…”

“…glad myself…”

“…wouldn’t mind your detail for a bit…”

“…won’t be long now…”

T’kamen looked at Epherineth where he was dozing with his head on his forearms. “Any idea what that means?” he asked softly.

The other dragons still aren’t letting me in, said Epherineth.

T’kamen reached over to touch his bronze’s elbow with his fingertips. “We’ll be out of here soon, Epherineth. I’m nearly fit now, and we’ll find a reference to get us home.”

Epherineth shifted his head slightly to fix him with a thoughtfully gleaming eye. I know.

“I get the impression that everyone here would be much happier if we’d just go away.” T’kamen smiled. “I suspect that’s why M’ric was so keen to help with that reference, anyway. I don’t think he was doing it for our sake.”

Don’t be too hard on him. He’s just a weyrling.

“A weyrling who’s responsible for putting us here in the first place.” T’kamen shifted his bad leg experimentally. It hardly hurt at all. “Faranth, Epherineth. What are we going to do about him when we do get back? What are we going to do about between? It’s a hundred Turns later and they haven’t found a solution.”

Perhaps that’s why we’re here, said Epherineth. Perhaps that’s why Trebruth’s rider sent us to this time.

“To fix between?” T’kamen asked. “We don’t even know why it’s broken.” He thought about it. “But you’re right. If M’ric and Trebruth are going to go back to the Interval, they’re going to have to learn how to go between.”

If they can do it, so can the others.

T’kamen watched the weary, dirty dragons of Madellon Weyr gliding in, some of them not even bothering to bathe, but heading straight for their weyr ledges to curl up and sleep. “M’ric was right,” he said. “If we’re here to restore between to these dragons, everything will change.”

He’d never gone a month without riding before, not since Epherineth was a very young dragonet and still too small to take his weight. Now, as T’kamen looked up and up at his tall dragon, the memory of looking down at an Epherineth whose shoulder barely reached his knee seemed very distant. When Epherineth stood with his forepaws braced on the ground and his forearms at full extension, he was more than twice T’kamen’s height at the withers.

It was technically possible to climb aboard a big dragon who was standing square. You could shin up the forearm as far as the elbow, then swing over, make a grab for the aft strap, and scramble up the rest of the way using the toe-loops. L’stev had made them all do it a few times as weyrlings. T’kamen remembered how easily the green and blue riders had done it – and how much harder it had been for the bronze and brown weyrlings.

He wasn’t going to put himself to that sort of test today. Instead, he touched Epherineth’s arm as he had ten thousand times before. Epherineth immediately dropped his shoulder, flexed his elbow, and offered his forelimb for a leg-up.

Don’t overdo it, T’kamen told him, very aware that they had an audience. Stiffly, careful of his bad leg, he stepped onto Epherineth’s wrist, then reached up to take hold of the fore-strap. Vaulting astride was beyond him, but a discreet boost from Epherineth gave him enough momentum to catch his left foot in one of the fore-strap toe-loops. From there, a cautious swing of his right leg brought him into position and, keeping all his weight through his left ankle, he settled into the space between Epherineth’s last two neck-ridges.

He just sat there for a minute, ignoring the dull ache of his hip, enjoying the familiarity of it: his dragon, his place, where he was meant to be.

“Everything all right, T’kamen?” Ondiar enquired from below.

“Everything’s fine,” he said, looking down. The journeyman Healer was frowning slightly. Beside him, Gusinien was scrutinising Epherineth’s posture. P’lav and N’hager were as impassive as ever, though from his high place on Epherineth’s neck T’kamen noticed sweat shining on P’lav’s thinning pate. And apart from them all stood M’ric: hands shoved in pockets, watching intently, seeing everything, storing up questions to annoy him with later.

T’kamen snapped the tethers that dangled from his belt to Epherineth’s fore and aft neck-straps, then buckled the safety and gave it a good yank. M’ric had brought up his jacket and helmet, goggles and gloves the previous evening – along with his orders. He had clearance to ride. He and Epherineth would be escorted out of the Weyr to the north-west training fields. Then they would be required to prove the veracity of their story by going between.

Salionth and Recranth were his escorts, as always, but M’ric had evidently been given permission to come along too. Donauth wasn’t on her weyr ledge, and T’kamen wondered if she’d meet them at their destination. He couldn’t believe that the Weyrleaders would miss this trial.

All are ready, said Epherineth. P’lav, N’hager, and M’ric had mounted their dragons on the ground below Epherineth’s weyr ledge. Trebruth looked tiny beside the two Pass bronzes; even amongst the undersized dragons of this time, he was very small for a brown. We can go.

T’kamen took a breath, settled his flying goggles more comfortably on the bridge of his nose, then dropped his hand to behind his leg, just touching Epherineth’s soft neck with his fingertips. Let’s fly.

Epherineth pushed off from the ledge lightly, resisting the flashy vertical leap that he normally favoured. It probably made him look unwieldy to the Pass riders, but T’kamen didn’t care. Ondiar had warned him a sudden jerking movement could re-dislocate his hip, and Epherineth was taking every care to look after him.

And it felt great to fly, to feel the wind in his face, like a good stretch after long confinement. He felt himself smiling, the cool air flow making his teeth ache, and he felt Epherineth’s spirits lift from their slump. Faranth, Epherineth, this is better.

As they ascended to the level of the Rim, the watchdragon called out. Recranth, on Epherineth’s near side, called back to her. She confirms that the skies are clear to the north-west, Epherineth said. Moderate winds, scattered rain showers. We are to follow Recranth.

He didn’t sound thrilled about that last part. T’kamen scrubbed the fore neck-ridge with his knuckles. Carry on.

As they flew over the Rim, T’kamen glanced back at the great caldera of Madellon. Shards. The outer face of the crater wall was dotted with weyr caverns. T’kamen had only ever seen that configuration once before, at Ista, with its forest-facing outer weyrs.

They beat north-west across Madellon’s territory, Epherineth penned within the triangle of Recranth, Salionth, and Trebruth. The shadows of the four dragons skimmed over the ridges and folds of the mountain range that was home to the Weyr. That, T’kamen thought at first, hadn’t changed much since his time. But as they flew farther from the crater, he realised he was wrong. The land below was blighted with swathes of black, acres upon acres where scrubby vegetation had been razed to ashes. Thread took root here, Epherineth confirmed T’kamen’s guess. It had to be burned out.

The bleak thought occupied T’kamen’s mind for long minutes. The badlands north of Madellon were sparsely populated, but if stray Thread was causing such widespread damage here, what was it doing to the fertile fields and woodlands of Madellon’s holds? Grubs didn’t do well in many parts of Madellon territory – they needed specific conditions to thrive – so they would only offer limited protection. How much Thread was getting through the Wings? Was it this bad all over Pern? The questions troubled him.

As they approached the edge of the north-western training fields, strewn with rock formations that truly hadn’t been changed by the passage of Turns, T’kamen felt Epherineth check his speed. They followed Recranth into a holding stack. We are here, Epherineth said. And so are they.

Five dragons waited atop one of the largest stone mesas that reared dozens of dragonlengths out of the barren ground: a queen, Donauth; two browns, a blue, and a green. Where’s the Weyrleader?

I don’t know, said Epherineth. He turned his head from side to side. Recranth and Salionth were spreading out, giving him space. Trebruth was still close behind. T’kamen could see M’ric watching him intently. Donauth commands that we go between to somewhere within visual range.

T’kamen glanced around at the familiar landscape. Harper’s Rock?

Epherineth banked to face the formation T’kamen suggested. It was one of the larger red sandstone mesas, named for the fact that it looked vaguely like a half-harp from one angle. L’stev used it as an easy visual for weyrlings to master in the early sevendays of between training. That will do.

It was only a mile or so away, and Epherineth could have blinked to it unaided, but T’kamen decided to do it properly. He called up the familiar reference, holding the distinctive shape of the mesa in his mind. They would come out of between east-south-east of the formation, and in plain sight of Donauth and the other watching dragons.  All right, let’s go there.

He felt Epherineth take the visualisation and braced himself for the bitter cold of between.

It never came.

Epherineth lurched. It was like nothing so much as the sensation of missing a step in the dark, and pulling back just in time to avoid toppling into the abyss. I can’t see the way, T’kamen. It isn’t there.

T’kamen gripped Epherineth’s fore-ridge with both hands. What do you mean, it isn’t there?

Epherineth turned his head back towards him, his eyes spinning too fast, and flecked yellow. There’s no way through. No way out.

T’kamen’s throat went dry. He discarded the mesa visual and constructed one of Madellon as they’d just left it: the structures within the Bowl, the tracery of streams, the new weyrs in the south-eastern quadrant. Can you jump to here?

No. There’s no way through.

Can you blink?

No! Epherineth’s eyes were completely yellow, and his distress almost overwhelmed T’kamen. It isn’t safe, I won’t take you!

It was those words, so horribly familiar, that rocked T’kamen back in his harness. Oh, Faranth. That’s what the weyrlings said. The ones who tried to go between and couldn’t. Epherineth, are you saying you can’t go between at all?

I could. I won’t. I can’t see the way through. It’s not safe!

Something crumpled inside them both at the same moment: T’kamen felt it resound through them as if they were of one body. The gentle turn of their holding pattern suddenly made him feel sick.

“T’kamen!” M’ric bellowed across the distance between their dragons, to get his attention. He made the arm signal, unchanged from the Interval, for report status.

You really can’t do it? T’kamen asked Epherineth desperately.

No. It’s not as it was. It isn’t safe.

Shaff! Curtly, hating the necessity of it, T’kamen signalled aborting jump.

M’ric hesitated, then motioned, unclear, repeat?

He doesn’t know the between signals, said Epherineth.

Of course he shaffing doesn’t. Tell Trebruth we’re aborting the jump. Tell him why.

It only took a moment for Epherineth to relay the message, and evidently Trebruth wasn’t the only one listening. Recranth and Salionth suddenly tucked in closer, and Donauth barked out a command. We’re to return to Madellon immediately, Epherineth reported unhappily. We must return to our weyr and wait for instructions.

Faranth, Epherineth, they’ll never let us out of there now!

Donauth commands it, Epherineth replied. I’m sorry, T’kamen. I can’t disobey her. We have to return to Madellon.

Chapter eighteen: Carleah

You taught me everything I know

I’ll never be as wise as you

You gave me everything I have

I’ll never be as kind as you

Daddy, all I ever want to be

Is the daughter of the father you will always be to me.

– Daddy, music and lyrics by green rider Carleah and Weyr Singer Jenavally

100.03.02 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

The weyrlings assigned to breakfast duty always had to rise early, but Carleah had been awake for ages already when Soleigh came quietly across the barracks to give her a nudge. “Psst. Carleah. Are you awake?”

Carleah sat up. “Yes,” she whispered back.

They stole towards the bathing room together, treading quietly so as not to disturb any of the other weyrlings, but Carleah couldn’t help but look at the three new humps of sleeping dragons as they passed: two greens the size of the larger Wildfire blues, and the queen, bigger than any of them.

“Faranth!” she exclaimed, once she and Soleigh had reached the privacy of the bathing room.

“Shshh,” Soleigh warned her, but she dimpled a quick conspiratorial grin. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Not a wink,” said Carleah. “You?”

Soleigh shook her head. “Bristath went down eventually, but did you hear Berzunth? She was restless the whole night.”

“Are you surprised?” Carleah asked. “With another queen in the barracks?”

“A bigger queen, too,” said Soleigh. “They must be older than ours.”

“They’re Southerners,” said Carleah. “My da always said that Southern dragons are the biggest on Pern.”

“If those bronzes who turned up are anything to go by, he wasn’t wrong,” said Soleigh. “Shards, could you believe it? And ours chasing them off with firestone?”

It was hard to imagine a more dramatic evening of events, or a more frustrating night than the one that had followed. L’stev had sent all the Wildfires to bed with the strictest instructions not to gossip about what had happened – and forbidding them to question the new Southern weyrlings. “You’ll have time enough for that tomorrow,” he’d told them, “and they’ve had enough disruption for one night. Leave them alone.”

So they had – or, at least, none of the Wildfire girls had flouted L’stev’s order. “Who’s on breakfast for the boys?”

“M’rany and S’terlion,” said Soleigh.

Carleah sighed. If it had been R’von or K’ralthe, or even K’dam, they might have had some information. M’rany and S’terlion were both far too dutiful to have disobeyed the Weyrlingmaster. “No chance of any gossip out of them.”

The one advantage to breakfast duty was not having to share the bathing room with eight other girls. Carleah and Soleigh hurried through their morning ablutions, and then slipped out through the harness room and into the barracks dining hall.

S’terlion and M’rany were already there, and deep in discussion by the dresser where the plates were kept. “There you are,” said M’rany. “We were just trying to work out how many extra places we need to set.”

“Trust you to be talking about that!” said Carleah. “Has anyone from your side got anything out of one of the Southern boys?”

“K’ralthe tried it,” said S’terlion. “H’nar and R’von made him stop. They’re all a bit upset.”

Carleah rolled her eyes. “Bronze riders.”

“How’s Berzunth taking it?” asked M’rany. “With that queen?”

“She kept us all awake, tossing and turning,” said Soleigh. “Do they have any bronzes?”

“One,” said M’rany. “And a couple of browns, and three blues. Six altogether.”

“We have two greens and the queen,” said Carleah.

“So nine extra places?” S’terlion asked seriously.

The long table could seat forty, though Carleah didn’t think it ever had. “I wonder if the kitchens know they need to send enough to feed nine more weyrlings,” said Soleigh. “Carleah, S’terli; why don’t you lay the table, and Rany and I’ll go to the lower caverns.”

“Why d’you think they’re here?” S’terlion asked Carleah, as they began to set plates and cups along the table. “Those Southern bronzes looked really mad.”

S’terlion had been Searched from Kellad, the same as her, but he hadn’t been born there, so he lacked either Carleah’s Harperhall upbringing or her dragonrider father. He could be terribly naïve when it came to Pernese politics. “Well, the queen, Grizbath, must have asked Madellon to take them,” Carleah explained patiently. “She wasn’t with the bronzes; didn’t you notice?”

“But why? I mean, why did the queen want Madellon to take them?”

“Because they’re not safe at Southern,” said Carleah. “We know they lost half their class going between. And no one warned us about it. And…oh, S’terli, really? We’re still setting their places?”

Even with nine extra weyrlings, they would have needed only thirty plates; S’terlion had put out thirty-four. The Wildfire weyrlings had been continuing to set places in the barracks dining hall for the classmates they’d lost. Carleah had thought it poignant the first day, puzzling the second, and stupid by the third. They weren’t coming back. N’jen and Ivaryo and poor shy Jenafa were gone, and G’dra might as well be. Saving seats for them wasn’t going to bring them back.

She’d kept that opinion almost completely to herself, only making one complaint to C’mine. “It’s stupid,” she’d told him, taking care not to be overheard by any of her classmates. “How long are they going to keep it up?”

“As long as they need to,” C’mine had replied. “Everyone deals with loss in their own ways, Leah. You know that.”

“Carleah,” she’d corrected him automatically, and then scowled. “That’s different.”

But S’terlion frowned, apparently missing her point. “Do you think we should do places for the Southerners who died, too?”

“Faranth, no, that would just be ridiculous,” said Carleah. She sighed. “All right, leave the places for ours. Everyone’s touchy enough already without making it worse.”

She was honest enough with herself to admit that part of her annoyance was down to the fact that her own way of addressing the deaths of her classmates wasn’t going very well. She might not ever have apprenticed to the Harpercraft, but she had a good enough voice to sing in the Hall’s choir, good enough hands to play gitar, and a good enough ear to turn a tune. That was what she’d set out to do in those horrible first days after the other weyrlings had gone between and not come back. She’d tried to write a song to express her sorrow and anger and confusion. But the tune wouldn’t come, and the words she scribbled down were clumsy and halting, and then she’d broken her slate by flinging it angrily away, and she hadn’t yet got up the courage to tell L’stev and ask for a new one.

It had been easier after her da had died. Then, she’d had Jenavally to help, and the words and notes had flowed out of her as naturally as her tears. Jenavally had sat with her, sung with her, even lent Carleah her gitar. She’d been able to play the chords she could hear in her head – every one minor, every one in harmony with the anguished throb of her broken heart – and the words, simple as they were, had articulated all she felt and all she’d lost.

But Jenavally was gone, too, now. She’d gone to Teller Hold, her home Hold, to grieve for N’jen. The thought of the sunny-natured brown rider still made Carleah’s insides wrench. He’d been such a clown, always teasing, always laughing. Maris had said that losing Naij was like losing a little brother, and even though he’d been only half a Turn younger than Carleah, she felt the same way.

Jenafa had been like a younger sister. Her loss had hurt Carleah personally the worst of all. Nedrith had slept on the next couch along from Jagunth’s, and the bare, empty platform was a constant reminder that they were gone. Carleah had helped C’mine pack up Jenafa’s few personal things, to give back to her father. Finding her hairbrush, with the long strands of Jenafa’s lovely red hair still caught in it, had almost set Carleah off.

Carleah had never really cared for Ivaryo – not because of her constant illicit trysts, but because she’d always bragged about them, as if anyone could actually be jealous – but now she felt guilty for having disliked her. And she felt even more guilty when she thought about G’dra – or rather, when she tried not to think about him. Was he even G’dra any longer with Kinnescath gone? The reality of it was so horrible that Carleah had never followed the thought through far enough to decide one way or the other.

Soleigh and M’rany returned from the lower caverns with several of the kitchen women as the other Wildfire weyrlings began to filter into the dining room. Carleah helped set out and uncover the dishes: big tureens of cereal, platters of scrambled eggs, baskets of rolls and fruit. No butter again, and the pitcher of milk to go with the klah looked like it had been watered down, but several big jars of stickleberry preserve. Carleah made sure to get a good dollop of that on her plate before she sat down at her usual place between Kessirke and Adzai.

Everyone was talking about the Southerners – weyrlings and adults. “What’s the problem with Southern anyway?” K’ralthe asked loudly. “Why do we have to have them?”

“That’s not very welcoming, K’ralthe,” said Maris, from the other side of the table.

“They lost classmates the same as we did,” said P’lian, glancing meaningfully at the vacant spaces where G’dra and N’jen had once sat.

“Anyway, it’ll be nice to have some new faces around the place,” Maris went on.

“But they’re just kids,” K’dam complained. “I mean, they’re not even old enough for their balls to have dropped –”

“K’dam!” Soleigh objected, and several of the other girls chorused their dismay. “Not at the breakfast table!”

“Maris is right,” said M’rany. “We should be hospitable.” He looked sideways at Tarshe. “Don’t you think so, Tarshe?”

Tarshe was never a vocal presence at the Wildfires’ mealtimes, but she looked up slowly from contemplating her plate as if she’d only just recognised there was a conversation going on.

“Did you know?” P’lian asked her. “Before they turned up? Did the Weyrlingmaster tell you they were coming?”

“No,” said Tarshe. “He didn’t say anything.”

“He should have,” said R’von. “You’re a queen rider. A sharding weyrwoman. He should have told you.”

R’von never missed an opportunity to criticise L’stev – more so than ever since the others had gone between – but Carleah thought there was more to it than that. All three of the bronze riders looked agitated, even the usually level-headed H’nar. It had to be because of Berzunth. She didn’t like sharing the barracks with another queen, her bronzes were reacting to her displeasure, and their riders were mirroring that irritation. Carleah examined her own feelings. She might be feeling a bit scratchy from a lack of sleep, but Jagunth was calm enough. The other green, blue, and brown riders around the table didn’t seem upset either. The bronzes had always been a bit deferential around Berzunth, but this was the first time Carleah had seen their riders reflecting their attitudes towards the queen quite so visibly.

It gave her a pang of – what? Jealousy? No, not jealousy. Tarshe was welcome to K’ralthe and R’von, and even H’nar, if she wanted them – though Carleah suspected she didn’t. Envy? Not that, either. Jagunth was the only dragon Carleah wanted. Annoyance, then. Annoyance, because it all seemed so arbitrary. Carleah liked Tarshe, but the bronze riders weren’t closing ranks around her because they liked her; they were doing it because of Berzunth. They’d have done the same if someone else had Impressed Berzunth – Chenda, say, or Jardesse. And given that Chenda was spiteful and Jardesse was thick, that would have been really annoying.

Kessirke’s elbow in her ribs prompted her out of her thoughts. “Carleah?”

“What?” she asked. Everyone was looking expectantly at her.

“K’ralthe was asking about Southern,” said Maris. “I said you’d know more about it than anyone.”

That made Carleah sit up, her pique forgotten in the pleasure of being recognised as erudite. “What do you want to know?” she asked, as she mentally reviewed her knowledge of Southern Weyr.

“Well, what’s their problem?” asked K’ralthe. “I heard Low-Brow saying to C’mine that they’re a bunch of hidebound, inbred tail-forks.”

“Oh, well, Southern doesn’t Search,” said Carleah. “And the Crafters don’t live up at the Weyr with the riders; they live in a sort of separate enclave.” She spoke casually, as though throwing out the facts off the top of her head, when in fact she was thinking very fast to recall what C’los had told her about Southern over the years. “It’s called the Weyrhall,” she added, as that detail rose to the surface.

“It doesn’t Search?”

“Why not?”

“Weyrhall?”

“I suppose they think Weyrbred’s better for dragons,” said Carleah.

“R’von’s Weyrbred, so that’s clearly whershit,” said K’ralthe.

“Oh, stop it, you two,” Soleigh said, when R’von began to get up from the bench to turn on K’ralthe.

“There has to be something positive, Carleah,” said Maris.

Carleah searched her memory. She couldn’t think of much. “My da didn’t know many Southern riders,” she said. “He knew more about the Peninsula, so for example, most Peninsula riders have their dragon’s name tattooed on them somewhere –”

“Really?” asked J’kovu. “Is that true, Tarshe?”

Tarshe frowned, clearly still preoccupied, but she said, “My cousin has Kawanth tattooed across his back.”

“That’s really cool!” said B’joro.

“Yeah, but we’re not talking about the Peninsula, we’re talking about Southern,” said K’ralthe.

Carleah cast about for a fact, and then hit on one. “Oh, my da said that Southerners always wear dark goggles,” she said.

“Dark goggles?” K’ralthe asked sceptically.

“I suppose because the sun’s much stronger in Southern territory.”

“Dark goggles sound pretty cool too,” said B’joro.

“Oh, shut up, B’joro,” K’ralthe told the blue rider.

R’von half rose again. “Why don’t you shaffing shut up, K’ralthe?”

“Enough,” Tarshe said sharply, and both boys fell silent – the whole room fell silent. The Wildfires turned, nearly as one, to face the door.

Several of the Southern weyrlings came into the dining room. Carleah hadn’t got much of a look at them the previous evening, between the darkness and the confusion and being ordered back into the barracks by L’stev. The eldest of the three boys was big and burly, but he couldn’t have been older than fifteen. The other two were closer in age to C’seon and W’lenze, the youngest of the Wildfires. All three wore slightly worn, mismatched garments that must have come from Madellon’s stores. They looked warily around the room.

Maris stood up. “Welcome,” she said. “Welcome to Madellon.”

“Who’re you?” the eldest Southerner asked abruptly.

“I’m Maris, green Indrahath’s rider, and –”

“V’ranu, brown Laselth’s,” the Southern boy said, before she could finish. “This is L’mern and B’rode.”

“Brown Jemonth’s,” said B’rode

“Bronze Desarth’s,” said L’mern, almost at the same moment.

An uncomfortable moment of silence elapsed. Maris cleared her throat. “Please, come and have some breakfast with us,” she said gamely.

V’ranu glanced at the platters laid out down the centre of the table. His top lip curled fractionally upwards in what might have been a sneer, but then he gave a tiny shrug of his shoulders, as if to say, sure, why not. He moved towards the table.

Carleah wasn’t the only Wildfire to divine where he was going. “Don’t –”

“You can’t –”

V’ranu sat down at the empty place at the end of the left-hand bench.

“– sit there!”

K’ralthe stood up. K’dam and P’lian rose to join him a moment later. “You can’t sit there,” said K’ralthe.

V’ranu looked up at K’ralthe. He made no indication that he intended to move. “Why not?”

“That’s G’dra’s place,” said K’ralthe.

The Southern weyrling made a show of looking around. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

R’von got up then, and W’lenze, and then half a dozen more of the Wildfires. More Southerners had been filtering gradually in, girls and boys. They clustered together near the door. “Get out of that seat, V’ranu,” said R’von. His scowl made him the absolute image of L’stev, forty-five Turns younger. “Now.”

“You stay exactly where you are, V’ranu.”

Every eye turned to the speaker. The girl was younger than Carleah, but she carried herself with an absolute self-assurance that belied her Turns. Her eyes sparkled black and fierce. “No one tells one of my riders what to do.”

And then Tarshe stood up. She was rigid with suppressed rage. “You’re not the only queen here, Southern. Remove your rider from that seat, or my riders will.”

Carleah found herself on her feet. All the Wildfires were on their feet. The only person still seated was the Southern brown rider who’d taken G’dra’s place. Even H’nar and M’rany – even Maris and Soleigh – had jumped up. Jagunth bristled huge and angry in Carleah’s mind, and she caught a glimpse of the scene outside: Madellon’s smaller but more numerous dragonets hissing and growling at the older and bigger Southern weyrlings.

And then L’stev flung open the door with a crash that made everyone jump. “You all have a choice,” he said. “You can stop this whershit right now and have some breakfast like civilised people, or you can keep posturing and go hungry for the rest of the day.” He stared around at them, looking disgusted. “Well?”

“He started it!” said K’ralthe, pointing at V’ranu.

“I didn’t do anything,” said V’ranu.

“Shut up, K’ralthe,” said L’stev. “Tarshe. Karika.” He snapped out the two names. “Have your queens control those dragonets.”

Tarshe straightened her shoulders, looking furious. Karika, the imperious Southerner, lifted her chin. It occurred to Carleah that it made a terrific target. “Southern’s weyrlings answer only to me.”

“Wrong,” said L’stev. “Every weyrling at Madellon answers to me. Control those dragonets, or Vanzanth will.”

Karika’s eyes flared, but then she tore them away from L’stev. “Very well.”

Carleah could feel Jagunth’s anger lessening, but not because she was any less aroused. It was Berzunth’s influence, smothering the fury of all the Wildfire dragonets. It wasn’t a comfortable sensation, but around the table, the tension was slowly leaving the Wildfire weyrlings’ faces.

“That’s better,” L’stev said. His voice was a low growl. “Now sit down. All of you.”

“But he’s sitting in G’dra’s place,” K’ralthe complained.

“Grow up,” said L’stev. “You’re not the only ones who’ve lost classmates. Southern’s weyrlings are our guests. Show some grace.”

A few of the Southerners were unwise enough to smirk. L’stev, who could detect a snigger from two dragonlengths’ distance, raked the offenders with a glare. “And you should all know better than to shame your Weyr with bad manners. Sit down and eat your breakfast.”

Karika walked down the table and seated herself at the seat on the end. The other Southerners followed her, leaving a gap between themselves and the Wildfires. After a moment, V’ranu got up from G’dra’s place and walked casually down the room to sit with his Weyrmates.

L’stev watched the Southerners without comment, though by the way his jaw hardened, he wasn’t pleased with their self-imposed segregation. “Wildfires. When you’re done here, you can collect your harnesses and report to Weyrlingmaster C’mine on the training grounds. Southern weyrlings, stay here for a briefing. And if I hear so much as a squeak out of any dragonet…”

No dragonet squeaked, and hardly anyone spoke around the table, for the remainder of breakfast. The Southerners talked amongst themselves in whispers, though Carleah didn’t see Karika joining in the discussion. The Madellon weyrlings mostly just exchanged looks. No one wanted to linger over the breakfast table, as some of the boys sometimes did to put off the inevitability of morning drills, but more than a few Wildfires stuffed rolls in their pockets for later.

Carleah had never wished so hard not to be on breakfast duty. As the other Madellon weyrlings left, she and Soleigh and S’terlion and M’rany stayed behind to clear and wipe the table, scrape leftovers into slop pails for the wherries, and stack all the dirty dishes in the washing-up basket. They worked in silence, intensely conscious of the Southern weyrlings still clustered at the end of the table, and though Carleah strained to catch any breath of a whisper, she heard nothing.

“Faranth!” S’terlion exclaimed, under his breath, when they finally left the dining hall.

“You go on,” Carleah whispered back. “I’ll just be a minute…”

She stayed by the door she’d left carefully just ajar, listening intently.

“…not staying here…”

“…what they call food…”

“…want to go home…”

“…why we’re even…”

“Stop moaning, all of you.” The louder voice was definitely Karika’s. “We’re riders of Southern Weyr. We don’t complain.”

“When are you going to tell us what this is about, Karika?” That sounded like V’ranu.

“When you need to know. You don’t need to know yet.”

“You’d better have a good reason. The Weyrleader was so mad…”

“Hear anything good?” L’stev asked.

Carleah jerked guiltily away from the door. She looked up at the Weyrlingmaster, trying to look innocent. “No, sir.”

L’stev exhaled a long breath through his nostrils. “Well, if you do, let me know.” He gestured with his head towards the training grounds. “Go on. C’mine’s waiting.”

“Weyrlingmaster…”

“What?”

“How long are they going to be here? The Southerners?”

“They’ll be here as long as they’re here.”

“They’re really rude,” said Carleah. “You didn’t see, before you came in…”

“They’re kids,” said L’stev. “Younger than you lot, and a long way from home.”

“But if they don’t want to stay…”

“That’s not for them to decide.”

Carleah chewed her lip. “What if the Southern bronzes come back for them?”

L’stev’s eyes narrowed. Then he turned his head. Carleah followed his gaze, up and up, to the Rim. Near the Star Stones, four big Madellon bronzes were chewing firestone.

“If they come back,” said L’stev, “we’ll be ready for them.”

Chapter nineteen: L’stev

The group dynamics of any class of weyrlings require delicate handling. Factions can form and dissolve overnight. Rivalries will blow up over the most absurd things. The young and the shy may find themselves singled out, shunned, or even victimised. Young dragonriders can be just as cruel and vicious as any other young people. Impressing won’t turn a bully into a paragon – or a victim into a hero.

And as if the frictions between a group of thirteen-to-twenty-Turn-olds of widely differing backgrounds aren’t enough to set them at each other’s throats, there’s nothing like a bunch of immature dragons to do the job. One green getting out of bed the wrong way in the morning can put all the rest in a bad mood. Bronzes suddenly discovering their natural authority over other dragons can turn their riders into monsters and fracture the whole class into cliques. And a queen allowed to dominate her clutchmates will command their obedience whether their riders agree or not.

– Weyrlingmaster T’geon, Management Of The Queen Weyrling

100.03.04 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

L’stev couldn’t impose harmony on his weyrlings. He could encourage it, nurture it, create scenarios in which it could flourish; but he couldn’t force his charges to get on, and they very often didn’t.

It was almost always riders of the same colour who developed the strongest loathing for each other. L’stev himself had despised one of his classmates, the other brown rider, with a passion that had never dimmed. He still couldn’t bear to be in the same room as F’jaye. T’kamen and L’dro had detested each other with a fervour that had carried through into their adult lives. And there’d been a tension simmering between R’von and K’ralthe ever since they’d both Impressed. They’d put it on hold after the deaths of their classmates, but the truce hadn’t lasted long.

But any Weyrlingmaster who thought he’d seen it all was deceiving himself, and in the last few days L’stev had discovered that there was one sure-fire way to make a class cleave together.

There was nothing like a common enemy.

“Berzunth’s nose is really out of joint,” said C’mine, sitting down across the desk from L’stev.

He looked tired – more than tired, really. Strained. Feeling everyone else’s troubles too personally, L’stev thought. That had always been C’mine’s problem. Empathic to a fault. “Can’t blame her,” he replied, tipping a beer mug towards the blue rider inquiringly.

C’mine gave him a sad look. “Are you going to keep doing that forever?”

“Forever’s a long time,” said L’stev. “A sevenday isn’t.”

“This last one has been,” C’mine said.

He had been pitched in at the deep end, L’stev conceded. All the more reason to keep an eye on how he was handling it. Riders with fewer issues than C’mine might have crawled back into a bottle to cope. He poured for himself from his aleskin, and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “There’s still some juice in the cooler. Help yourself.”

He sipped contemplatively at his beer as C’mine went to get himself a drink. He supposed it was going better than his natural pessimism had let him believe it might. L’stev had always liked C’mine, right from the moment he’d first laid eyes on him as a freshly-Searched candidate from the Holds. The old affection for that kind, willing, gentle boy had probably got the better of his judgement when T’kamen had suggested him as a prospective assistant. C’mine had been on a classic downward trajectory since his weyrmate’s death, following the tried and true path that so many grieving riders before him had flown. Most pulled out of the nose-dive – a dragon was a powerful motivator in that respect – but not all.

L’stev had told C’mine that he wasn’t interested in curing him. That wasn’t, strictly, true. He didn’t want to see him dash himself to pieces on the rocks of his own despair. He was watching him to make sure that proximity to the weyrlings’ trauma didn’t tip him back into a crisis – and, unasked, Vanzanth had tuned himself into Darshanth’s state of mind – but so far, neither dragon nor rider had given L’stev cause to regret their appointment. The fact that M’touf had confided in C’mine about Atath’s trip between after only a handful of days was proof of the blue rider’s natural aptitude for pastoral work.

C’mine returned to his chair with a mug of juice. “I don’t think it would have been so difficult if Megrith were the younger of the two,” he said. “I think being relegated to junior in her own barracks has shaken Berzunth’s confidence. It’s bringing out the worst in her.”

“Don’t think it’s natural to have two young queens so close.” L’stev rolled a sip of ale thoughtfully around his mouth. “Not that there’s much precedent for it. Some Weyrlingmasters never get one queen to train, let alone two at once. I think that’s the problem we have with queens, C’mine. I’ve trained dozens of greens and blues, and I’ve had enough practice with browns and bronzes to know what I’m doing with them. You don’t get to practice with queen weyrlings. You get one shot at getting them right, and if you cock it up, the whole Weyr suffers for it.”

“You didn’t cock up with Valonna,” said C’mine.

“You’re very loyal,” L’stev said. “But of course I cocked up. You take your eye off a strand, it’s going to score you. We were all looking elsewhere that Hatching. She wasn’t meant to Impress the queen. But that’s chewing old ash. I let Valonna get her head turned by L’dro, and here we are. I had it in my mind I wouldn’t let Tarshe go the same way. She’s a good girl. Solid. And that cousin of hers won’t let any of the other bronzes sniff around. Never thought I’d be so grateful for nepotism.”

“Darshanth did Search her.”

“Yes he did. And he never chooses poorly. But the other queen: that’s scorched everything up. Young queens aren’t used to having peers. As long as Berzunth and Megrith are burning holes in each other with their eyes, there’s no way those Southern kids are ever going to play nicely with ours.” He wiped foam from his mouth, and added, “Makes you grateful queens don’t chew firestone.”

“I think they’re…damaged,” said C’mine. “The Southern weyrlings. They lost half their class – some of them lost siblings – and yet it seems like only Karika is glad to be out of Southern. The rest still seem to be loyal to P’raima. The dragonets won’t disobey Megrith, but if she and Karika ever change their minds about Madellon being a safer place for them than Southern, we’ll have a problem.”

“None of them have the sense of an hour-old hatchling,” L’stev said. “Not one of them was born outside Southern. They’ve never known anything but that old bastard of a Weyrleader.”

“It’s their age that troubles me. That brown rider, B’rode, wasn’t eleven Turns when he Impressed, and he had a younger sister who died on a green. Shards, L’stev. A ten-Turn-old girl on a green dragon? What Weyrleader allows that?”

L’stev felt his lips curling in disgust at P’raima, at Southern – and at himself. Thank Faranth we don’t have that to deal with, had been his first instinctive thought when he’d heard about the ten-Turn-old green rider. Then he’d automatically started thinking about how he’d have got the poor child through her dragon’s first mating flight at the age of eleven. The youngest green riders he’d ever trained had been twelve at Impression, almost fourteen when their dragons had started mating, and that was problematic enough, especially when they were Holdbred. Green dragons respected neither preference nor age, and while female dragons with very young riders tended not to be early risers, L’stev had never known a green to go much past eighteen months for her first flight. There were rules about which dragons were permitted to rise in pursuit of maiden greens, but even then some of the kids weren’t ready – emotionally, mentally, or physically.

He put the fact that he hadn’t lost more green riders to bad first matings down to the delicate game he played with his weyrlings’ sex education. It was a part of his job he’d never relished. He appreciated a nice pair of legs and a perky bosom on a grown woman as much as the next man, but he’d be sixty in a few months, and the need to poke his nose into the sex lives of adolescents made him feel every last minute of his age. Fortunately, what L’stev thought prurient, his dragon simply found amusing. As the dragonets got closer to maturity, Vanzanth listened in shamelessly, and he was old enough and experienced enough to know when there was a problem brewing. Once dragons were a Turn old, any danger of them panicking over their riders’ nocturnal activities was past, and the older weyrlings usually couldn’t wait to get into each other’s furs. The move from barracks to their own weyrs gave them the privacy – Vanzanth’s avid eavesdropping notwithstanding – to get on and experiment before their dragons matured and forced the issue. But there were always a few who didn’t find their own way, and there L’stev did interfere. The rider of a female dragon going into a mating flight as a wide-eyed virgin was a recipe for the kind of disaster that no amount of lectures from the Weyr Healer or anecdotes from adult green riders could avert. That was when L’stev made it his business to find riders who were kind and experienced and young to seduce the late bloomers ahead of time. It was no comparison to the frenzy of a flight and it never would be, but it beat the alternative.

Still, he had to wonder what P’raima had thought he was doing, allowing such young children to Impress. There was no excuse for that kind of mismanagement. “A shaffing bad one, that’s what,” he said, in belated response to C’mine’s question.

“And yet he’s been Weyrleader all these Turns. And a bronze rider.”

“As if being a bronze rider were any guarantee of decency,” L’stev said. “You know better than that, C’mine.”

C’mine sighed. “I suppose growing up around the Harperhall embedded those beliefs in me pretty deeply.”

“Oh, yes,” L’stev said savagely. “All those soaring, heroic ballads about honouring those the dragons choose.” He snorted. “It’s in the interests of every Weyr on Pern to nurture the myths about dragonriders. It doesn’t make them true. Faranth, C’mine, we’ve both known cowardly riders. Stupid riders. Mad, bad, dangerous riders. A dragonet won’t choose an outright lunatic, but Impressing can’t fix a personality that’s already flawed, nor prevent it from twisting later.”

“I’d like to think Darshanth wouldn’t let me do anything reprehensible.”

“He wouldn’t because you’re inherently decent,” L’stev said. “But he didn’t hatch with a moral compass. He learned that from you. Frankly, I think a dragon’s love can enable as much as it restrains. I’ve known riders to explore some very dark places they might have left alone but for their dragons’ unquestioning approval.”

“Do you think P’raima will come back?”

“Like he did that first night?” L’stev shook his head slowly. “No. If he was going to, he would have done it already. He knows full well we have bronzes stoked for flame. No one wins if dragons start burning each other.” C’mine actually shuddered. L’stev couldn’t blame him. The firestone had been Sh’zon’s idea, and while L’stev had no argument with its effectiveness as a deterrent, the notion that any Weyr might use dragon flame offensively was utterly repugnant. “No,” L’stev concluded. “Force won’t do it. Especially while he lacks a queen’s wholehearted support.”

“Then you think he’ll petition the Peninsula?”

“I’d imagine he already has,” said L’stev. “But he has a weyrling’s chance in Threadfall of that bearing any fruit. H’pold isn’t going to want to take sides. No other Weyr will. If they support us, it looks like they’re sanctioning one Weyr taking drastic action against another. If they support Southern, they’re endorsing a Weyrleader who got half his weyrlings killed and then covered it up when coming clean could have saved lives elsewhere. Nobody wants to get scored with either strand, so nobody’s going to get involved.” L’stev laughed. “It’s going to make the Long Bay Gather very interesting.”

“Then how is this going to play out?”

L’stev shrugged. “P’raima comes to his senses and bows out. Or is forced out.”

C’mine looked alarmed. “By us?”

“No,” said L’stev. “By his own. Tezonth’s an exceptional bronze – there’s no doubt about that – but a dragon his age will only keep flying the queen as long as the rest of the Weyr still wants him to. What’ll be interesting is if this goes on until Grizbath’s next flight, or if Southern’s bronzes force him out sooner.” He chuckled. “Though I’ll admit the notion of H’ned and Sh’zon attempting to stage a coup tickles me.”

“But they did persuade the Wingleaders to take the weyrlings in the first place,” said C’mine.

“You give them too much credit,” said L’stev. “For one thing, the Weyrwoman forced it through. For another, I’m sure T’kamen would have done it if he’d been here. And most crucially of all, Margone specifically petitioned Valonna for their relocation. Weyrlings have always been in the bailiwick of the Weyrwoman, not the Weyrleader. The Weyrlingmaster is supposed to be a domestic appointment, not a fighting one; did you know that?” He jabbed himself in the chest with a thumb. “Fianine put me in the post. Which just goes to show what a mad old wherry-hen she was.”

“I can’t think of anyone who’d do a better job of it than you, L’stev.”

“Then if I dropped dead tomorrow you’d be in trouble.” L’stev chuckled at C’mine’s suddenly anxious expression, hearing the malevolence in his own laugh. “Don’t worry. I might be getting green around the muzzle, but I don’t have any plans to expire just yet. Still. I don’t think many riders would be fighting you for the privilege of unpicking this knot we’re in. Welcome to Madellon Weyr, home of every dragon in the world who can’t go between.” He snorted again and refilled his mug. “Mind you, assuming the problem is between and not just southern dragons, Telgar will be joining our happy little club soon enough.” He shook his head. “The pressure on G’dorar. We know our weyrlings are afflicted. He doesn’t until he gets his to try, and the whole of Pern’s watching. The poor helpless sods.”

“Every day, I’m grateful that Carleah wasn’t in that first group,” C’mine said.

“She should have been,” said L’stev. “You know how bright she is.”

C’mine drew a sharp little breath. “What held her back?”

“It’s all in her file,” L’stev said pointedly.

“I’m…still behind on my reading.”

L’stev let that pass. “She asked M’ric some leading questions when he was mentoring her. He picked up on it straight away and flagged it with me. She wasn’t the only one who hinted in that direction, but she had more reason than most to take an interest. Well, they do say it’s an ill wind that blows no good. At least now I’m not worrying about anyone fooling around with timing.”

C’mine swallowed, visibly. “She was asking how to do it?”

“She was asking if we’d be teaching them how to do it, would you credit it! Ha! I’d be as well to send them all between without a visual!” C’mine looked a bit sick, and L’stev regretted his tasteless choice of phrase. “Like I said, not going to happen now. Don’t worry, C’mine. The girl’s not in any danger. She has an excessive regard for her own cleverness, but she’s not entirely devoid of sense, and I had some fairly strong words with her.”

“Have you ever –” C’mine began. Then he stopped, and started again. “Do you know anyone who has done it?”

“Yes,” L’stev said flatly, and when C’mine looked at him in horror, he added, “To both questions. You weren’t wrong with the first one.”

C’mine didn’t reply for a long time. L’stev wondered what had shocked him more: the confession, or the fact he’d confessed. “Was there a good reason for it?”

“Yes. Well. It wasn’t because I wanted to cheat on the runner racing, if that’s what you mean.” L’stev sipped his ale, and turned his head slightly in the direction of Vanzanth’s ledge. C’mine remained silent, and eventually L’stev relented. “Do you remember – well, you’d have been very young – but do you remember that nasty sickness in the summer of 77?”

“I remember,” C’mine said slowly. “We were quarantined at Kellad, but we still lost…”

He trailed off. L’stev nodded. “It was during P’keo’s stint as Weyrleader,” he said. “They thought it had come to Madellon with the guests for Cherganth’s Hatching. Relatives of candidates and such. Anyone over eleven or twelve Turns only got it as a cough and a headache, and as for the rest – well, who pays much attention to kids with snotty noses?” He felt a slow pain start in his jaw. “Of course, by the time anyone did, it was too late. I remember them saying it was a mercy it spared the adolescents. All those new weyrlings we could have lost. It only took the under-tens.” He paused, feeling the shapes of the old memories, softened only partially by age. Vanzanth’s listening presence edged fractionally closer. “My two youngest were five and three.”

C’mine reached over the desk and gripped his wrist. L’stev looked at his hand, mildly surprised. He wasn’t used to physical contact with other riders, apart from the odd lucky green rider whose dragon caught Vanzanth’s eye, and those were few and far between these days. “I wasn’t the only one who tried to do something,” he went on lightly, determined not to dwell on the details. “But it’s never as simple as you imagine. Go back to a time you’re already in and you get slow and stupid. Get too close to your earlier self and you can lose your mind completely. And even if you don’t…well. Sometimes you end up causing the very thing you’re trying to prevent.” He forced a smile. “Anyway, we survived, for all the good we did. No one ended up any better off for what we tried to do, and some of us…a lot worse. That’s the problem with visiting the past. It’s like trying to stop a wagon rolling down a hill. Best case scenario, you get a close-up view of the carnage. Worst, you discover you were the one who took the brakes off.” He paused expectantly. “Go on. Call me a hypocrite. It wouldn’t be untrue.”

Slowly, C’mine shook his head. “I’m sorry about your children, L’stev.”

“So am I,” L’stev replied. Then, firmly, but not unkindly, he shook C’mine’s hand off his arm. “Well, that was that Turn’s problem. We have enough of our own to preoccupy us.”

“What will you do with the queens?” C’mine asked, considerately following L’stev’s cue to change the subject.

“Appeal to authority, I think,” L’stev said. “I’m going to have to get Valonna involved. While between’s off-limits there’s not much else I can do with Berzunth, and Shimpath’s the only dragon equipped to intervene between two queen dragonets. Faranth knows Vanzanth doesn’t want to.” He heaved a sigh. “We also need to investigate Atath’s situation, but the last thing we need is something going wrong with her that spooks the lot of them, ours and theirs.” He pawed among the documents on his desk until he found the slate he wanted. “Tomorrow I think we start putting the Southerners through their paces. They’re – let’s see – about six sevendays older than the Wildfires, so I want to see where they are before I start flying them with ours. We’ll put them in trios first, so they don’t feel too exposed, then look at them individually.” He glanced down the list of names, then divided the nine Southern weyrlings into three groups. “They’ve trained under a brown, so Vanzanth shouldn’t have any trouble making them pay attention, but Darshanth might have trouble with the bigger ones. Tell him not to tolerate it. They’re still dragonets, and while they’re here, they’ll do as they’re bid.” He scowled at the list of names and ages, then thrust it towards C’mine.

C’mine studied the slate. “Isn’t it strange that there are only two greens?”

L’stev raised his eyebrows. “Aren’t two green riders under the age of thirteen enough for you?”

“No, I just mean…we lost two greens out of the three who tried to go between. Are they more vulnerable to whatever’s going wrong?”

“I have the breakdown of the dragonets they lost, somewhere,” said L’stev. “But I don’t think we can base a theory on such a small sample. We lost two browns, too, don’t forget.” He rummaged around for the list Margone had provided. “Here it is. Clutch of twenty-one; losses comprised a bronze, three browns, five blues and three greens.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” said C’mine. “The class had eight blues and only five greens?”

“It’s unusual,” L’stev conceded. “But not unheard of. I saw a Hatching at the Peninsula, Turns ago, with more blues than greens, and B’reko once had a clutch where every second dragonet was brown. But I’ll give you unusual.”

The middle watchdragon has just come on duty, Vanzanth reported from outside.

L’stev finished the beer in his mug and pushed himself upright. “All right. Let’s make sure they’re all tucked up for the night.”

C’mine went to look in on the girls. The Madellon weyrlings had adjusted to having a male rider as their nursemaid faster than L’stev had thought they would, but then Darshanth had Searched half of them and C’mine himself was completely trustworthy. Ghosting through the boys’ barracks fell to L’stev.

The territorial lines had been drawn clearly enough: Madellon dragonpairs one end, Southern down the other. L’stev had let the newcomers pick their own places and they’d organised themselves in a defensive formation, the two biggest dragons on the outside, the smaller within. Madellon’s boys had always claimed berths according to their own hierarchy, the most dominant dragons generally securing the couches closest to the door, to natural light and the outside, and the least making do with quarters farther back. But they had redeployed themselves since the arrival of the six Southern lads, and now Ellendunth and Oaxuth lay inboard of their clutchmates as if to protect them from the interlopers. It was a pointless show of bravado, but after so long looking after weyrlings, L’stev wasn’t surprised by it.

He walked down the line with the soft-footed silence he’d perfected Turns ago. Most of the Wildfires were asleep in the inelegant tangles of limbs and sheets so characteristic of adolescent boys. B’joro had dragged his bedfurs onto Lovanth’s couch and lay in the protective curl of his dragonet’s forepaw as he had every night since the accident. L’stev didn’t usually hold with that, but he hadn’t pulled B’joro up on it yet.

Nerbeth was awake, betrayed by her eyes. They reflected the faint light from L’stev’s shielded glow-basket like moons in the darkness. L’stev paused by the end of her couch. S’terlion was still awake, too, lying stiffly with his eyes shut to feign slumber. L’stev addressed Nerbeth quietly. “What is it? Something bothering you?”

One of the Southerners, Vanzanth supplied.

L’stev shook his head. “Don’t let them worry you. Ellendunth’s between you and them, anyway.” He stroked the young dragon’s forearm. It was silky and smooth. She was very well-loved. “Go to sleep, little girl.”

He moved on down the barracks, towards the Southerners; six sevendays older, more than six sevendays bigger. All dragonets grew fast at this age as they approached adult size, but the Southerners were definitely going to favour their massive sire. They already ate significantly more than the Madellon dragonets. There’d been scuffles in the feeding paddocks with the bigger home weyrlings squaring up to their Southern counterparts. But while the Southern dragonets had age and size on their side, the Madellon weyrlings outnumbered them. One way or another they’d have to learn to integrate.

They were all awake, the Southern dragons and riders. They’d broken off their conversation and were, like S’terlion, faking sleep. L’stev knew they were struggling to adjust to Madellon’s time zone. He’d let them have an easy couple of days to get over the shock of their relocation, but tomorrow they’d start on the same rounds of chores as the Madellon weyrlings. By the day after that, with a better idea of their capabilities, he hoped to have an outline training plan in place for them. He couldn’t just skip ahead in his standard schedule – even if his standard schedule hadn’t been rendered virtually useless with between apparently out of bounds. But he knew of no better way to overcome time-lag than enforcing a new routine, and full days of chores and training would soon sort out their sleeping patterns.

But the person-shaped hump on the end pallet, the one farthest from the door, looked suspiciously immobile to L’stev’s experienced eye. Still stepping quietly, he went to investigate. He didn’t need to turn back the bedfur to see that it covered only a roll of clothes and a pillow.

He looked at the dragonet on the adjacent couch, one of the blues. “Where is he?” When that elicited no response, he nudged Vanzanth. Almost immediately the dragonet gave a start, as though poked. The Southern bronze three couches along swung his head around, emitting a low growl. Tell him to shut up, L’stev told Vanzanth. The growl choked off with a whimper, and L’stev smirked in the darkness even as the five Southern weyrlings shifted unhappily in their beds. If nothing else, they’d learn to mind Vanzanth. Where’s the blue’s rider?

Slipped out. Down by the lake. Vanzanth sent him a visual.

That shouldn’t be possible, unless they were both going deaf. L’stev kept the barracks door rusty for that very reason. No one could get into or out of the weyrling quarters without the hinges announcing it with a tortured shriek. He realised what the lad had done when he inspected the hinges and found them dripping with harness oil. The little sod greased them.

How original.

Interfering with L’stev’s safety measures carried a stiff penalty that every member of a class had to pay unless the culprit owned up. Of course, the Southerners didn’t know that. L’stev made a mental note to have a talk with them in the morning. And another to get Magardon’s apprentice to bring a bucket of solvent to dissolve the oil off his door.

The Southern weyrling must have known he was coming, but to his credit – and L’stev’s relief, because he didn’t feel like playing hide-and-seek in the dark – he hadn’t moved from the spot by the lake where Vanzanth had located him. The lad was sitting on the flat rock that the weyrlings used to scrub out their clothes on laundry days, his arms clasped around his knees, staring out at the water. In the feeble light of the glows he’d smuggled out of the barracks he looked incredibly young. L’stev set down his own, rather more luminescent, glow-basket. “You’re out of bed, weyrling.”

The boy wiped at his face, but not fast enough to hide the tears that had gathered thickly on his eyelashes. “I had to do some washing.”

L’stev didn’t look too closely at the bundle beside the weyrling. If he’d had an accident, he wasn’t going to humiliate him for it. “That’s as may be, but you don’t leave the barracks after glows-out.” He kept his growl soft. “It’s T’gala, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for a nod. “You need to go back to bed.”

“I don’t want to,” T’gala breathed.

“What was that?” L’stev asked.

“I want to go home.”

L’stev sighed, dismissing any hope of getting this one back to barracks any time soon. He eased himself laboriously down onto the edge of the rock where T’gala sat folded into himself. “You’ll go back to Southern when things have settled down there,” he said. “Until then you’ll be safe here. Not happy, maybe. Can’t always promise happy. That’s up to you and you dragon.” That didn’t prompt even the hint of a smile; if anything, T’gala curled in on himself even further. “Is someone making you unhappy?”

T’gala shook his head, barely, the kind of denial that L’stev didn’t believe. “Is it someone from Madellon?” he asked.

A more emphatic shake of the head.

“From Southern?” L’stev guessed.

No shake of the head at all this time, but fresh tears, dislodged by an almost imperceptible trembling, streamed down T’gala’s face.

L’stev had been cultivating his curmudgeonly reputation for decades, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t sensitive to a genuine crisis. “It’s all right, lad,” he said. “You don’t have to suffer in silence. Not here.” He put an arm around those slight shoulders, just lightly, just as he had a hundred times to a hundred weyrlings under his care.

Three things happened in rapid succession. T’gala flinched violently away from him, as if burned. The location, and the pile of clothes on the rock, suddenly made sense. And several things clicked together in L’stev’s mind.

Oh, said Vanzanth. Oh.

“I beg your pardon, T’gala,” he said gently. T’gala looked at him with naked fear. L’stev could read the expression as though it were scribed in sand. “How did this happen?” How did I not notice before?

T’gala’s face crumpled in misery. “I’m not meant to talk about it. They told me not to tell.”

“Who told you?” L’stev asked, still gently, though the initial shock he’d felt was quickly being superseded by anger. Why would I have thought of it? Faranth, Vanzanth. What else has been going on at Southern that we don’t know about?

“They said not to say anything!” T’gala cried.

“They aren’t here now,” he said. Is this P’raima’s doing? S’gert’s?

I don’t know.

“Come on, weyrling,” he said to T’gala. “You’d better come back inside. I think we need to have a talk.”

Chapter twenty: T’kamen

He didn’t much like me. I didn’t much like him. But Trebruth and Epherineth got along right from the start. You won’t often catch me mouthing the fatuous banalities that dragonriders want holders to believe – a dragon always knows, and all that tosh – but they knew. They knew.

26.04.21 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

The flight back to Madellon seemed to pass in moments. T’kamen was too numb with shock to do anything but stare at the horizon. They couldn’t go between. They couldn’t go between. How were they going to get home if they couldn’t shaffing well go between?

Salionth and Recranth maintained their positions close off Epherineth’s wingtips all the way down into the Bowl. When Epherineth touched down on his weyr ledge the two Pass bronzes alighted close by, never taking their eyes off him. Trebruth made a breakneck landing on Epherineth’s off side, apparently fearless of the baleful stares of his Weyrmates. He curved his head up towards T’kamen’s bronze with a sympathetic croon, and, to T’kamen’s surprise, Epherineth dipped his head dejectedly towards the young brown in response.

Don’t get cosy, he said rancorously, tugging down his goggles and rubbing his face with both hands.

It’s not his fault, T’kamen.

It shaffing is. T’kamen unsnapped his fighting straps, unbuckled the safety, and slid down Epherineth’s shoulder. The impact with the hard stone nearly took him to his knees, and his grabbed Epherineth’s arm for support. “Shaff!”

“Faranth, T’kamen, you’ll mess up your leg again!” M’ric vaulted down from Trebruth and ducked under Epherineth’s neck. “What the shell happened?”

“He wouldn’t do it,” T’kamen said. “He said it’s not safe. That’s what the weyrlings said. It’s not safe. I don’t understand. We got here, didn’t we?” He raised his eyes to Epherineth. “We got here. Why can’t you get us back?”

Epherineth gave a low moan, and Trebruth laid his head across his neck. Below, the other bronzes regarded them uncertainly. “Listen to me,” M’ric hissed. “Pull yourself together.” He jerked his chin towards the inner weyr. “And get inside out of sight.”

“What’s the rush?” T’kamen asked savagely. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Just get inside!” M’ric urged.

T’kamen had never lived lavishly, but the stark walls of the weyr felt more like a gaol cell than ever. His hip was throbbing from the brief ride. He was sweating under his flying jacket; he took it off, then sat down heavily with it across his lap. “So I guess that’s my last chance blown.”

M’ric was looking over his shoulder, as if to check that no one had followed them in. “Trebruth said he felt something,” he said. He looked straight at T’kamen. Some of the cockiness seemed to have gone out of his manner. “He said he could feel Epherineth reaching into something. He’s never felt anything like it before.”

“He was trying to plot his way through between,” said T’kamen. “And he couldn’t. Whatever’s stopping your dragons from going between is stopping him too.”

“But that’s just it,” said M’ric. “Trebruth’s never felt a dragon try. We’re trained to guard our dragons against even thinking about between, T’kamen. We have to convince our dragons to believe that between isn’t even there. But it is there. Because Epherineth can see it, and now I think Trebruth can too.”

He sounded far too excited. T’kamen didn’t have any patience for it. “It won’t do him any good,” he said. “If Epherineth can’t do it, what makes you think Trebruth…can?”

He faltered over the last part. Because he must, Epherineth filled in for him. Or how else will he go between to become the Trebruth we know?

M’ric had obviously noticed T’kamen’s hesitation. He regarded him with keen eyes. “How old is Epherineth?

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Older dragons can’t go between,” said M’ric. He’d lost the air of condescension that had coloured his explanations of things he obviously thought were self-evident. “Not at all, I mean. Not in or out. It’s like the ability atrophies somewhere between eight and ten Turns.”

“He’s nearly fifteen,” T’kamen said, “but he’s been going between all his life. A month on the ground can’t have made that big a difference!”

“But you don’t have any idea what made it stop working in the first place?”

“None! And it was only the weyrlings having trouble, not the adults. It makes no sense!” Then he looked sharply at M’ric. “You’re talking as if you still believe me.”

“I want to,” M’ric said. “More than ever as of just now. You’re too ignorant of everything to be faking it. You don’t know scorch-all about anything. Your shoulder-knots are all wrong. Epherineth’s the size of a mountain, and there’s no way you and he could have sneaked across the continent without anyone noticed even if you did manage to do the ocean crossing without getting Threaded to death. And if Epherineth had been trying to contact someone back north then our queens would have heard.”

M’ric’s reasoning had the ring of a speech he’d made before. T’kamen studied him. “You’ve put this argument to whoever you’re reporting to.”

“Well of course I have! Why do you think they even let you out today? I’ve got them half convinced, T’kamen. Or at least, I had. Now…I don’t know what else we can do to convince them.”

“I don’t care about convincing them,” T’kamen said. “I just want to go home. Faranth, M’ric, don’t you get it? If Epherineth can’t go between we can never get back to our Madellon! He has a queen, and I have riders relying on me, and…” A new realisation struck him a sudden, crushing blow. “And if I can’t get home, everyone I’ve ever known is…dead.”

He stared into nothing for a moment. The weyrlings he’d tried to save were long gone. Valonna would have grown old and died more than fifty Turns ago. C’mine, his oldest friend, was even longer dead, if he’d even survived his headlong descent into self-destruction. Every rider T’kamen had ever known was ancient dust between. And somewhere, in some lonely corner of a burial cave, lay the grave of a Seventh Interval Beastcrafter, perhaps with the hard-earned knots of a Master still discernible where she’d been laid to rest: lost to him forever.

It was that last horrible image – the idea of Sarenya, mouldered away to bones – that jolted him from his numb daze. “You knew where you were sending me,” he said quietly. He lifted his eyes to M’ric, feeling anger rising from the pit of his despair. “You knew. You must have known when you transferred in. You must have known for twenty Turns. You were just waiting for the right moment to do it.”

M’ric eyed him warily. “I…what?”

“I thought it was a good trade.” T’kamen said it to himself, ignoring the boy. Caution seemed pointless. “Lose L’dro, get you and Sh’zon in return. You’d think the bronze rider would be the problem. How could I have known that it was the brown who’d be the knife in my back? And you couldn’t just content yourself with taking my girl, could you? You had to take my life. You sent me here, to this! You arranged for this to happen! For all I know you’re taking over my Weyr right now! Right then! You conniving bastard of a tunnelsnake!”

M’ric backed away, holding his hands up defensively. “Whoa, whoa, calm down, T’kamen. You’re not making any sense!”

T’kamen laughed, a vicious hack. “Oh, I am. For the first time, I am.”

“I haven’t done any of those things! I haven’t done anything to you!”

“Yet.” T’kamen ground the word out. “You haven’t done them yet.”

“I thought you said you were from the past!”

“My past. Your future.” T’kamen bared his teeth at him in a snarl. “You’re going to slip through time, M’ric, and wherever – whenever – you end up, I hope you have an even shittier time of it than I am!”

M’ric’s face went very still, his eyes intent. “Me,” he said slowly. “I’m going to slip through time.”

“You’re going back to my time,” T’kamen said. “And I hope they call you a liar. I hope they call you a spy. I hope they lock you up and throw away the key. It’s what I should have done to you!”

They stared at each other. It was out, and T’kamen half expected the boy to laugh in his face. But M’ric’s expression betrayed his racing thoughts. He’s putting it together, T’kamen realised, with a jolt that cooled his anger. He hasn’t forgotten that I asked for him.

“And you know me?” M’ric asked, as if handling the notion with care. “Not this other M’rik?”

“I know you as you will be,” T’kamen said. “I wish I didn’t. The M’ric I know is twenty Turns older than you.”

“Twenty Turns…?” M’ric looked appalled at the idea of being almost forty. “But how is that even possible? If even you can’t go between, how can we?”

T’kamen wished he had some blistering retort, some vicious barb to put the weyrling in his place. He didn’t. “I don’t know. But if you don’t go back, you can’t send me here, and there’s no way we’d have jumped between to this time and place by accident.”

“That makes no sense! Why would I go back just to send you forward just to send me back?”

“You tell me! You started this!”

“No I didn’t! There’s no beginning or end to it! It just goes round and round in circles!”

T’kamen glared at M’ric, but he couldn’t contradict his logic. He tried to cast his mind back to L’stev’s remarks on timing. “You can’t change what you know has already happened,” he said out loud. “Anything you do while timed back to the past has already affected your present. You can’t change the outcome of a runner race, or get to training on time when you know you turned up late, or prevent…or prevent…” He stumbled over the last part. “Or prevent a disaster from happening.”

“But you’ve jumped forward,” said M’ric. “Not backwards. You might not be able to change history, but you can affect now. You don’t know what’s going to happen from now on.”

“Except that you’re going back in time,” T’kamen said slowly. The logic of timing had always made his head hurt, and L’stev’s warnings against it always sufficiently dire that he’d never had any desire to experiment with it. “I don’t know if it’ll be tomorrow or a sevenday from now or in ten Turns’ time, but you’re going to end up somewhere in the last Interval. And that means your brown’s going to have to learn how to go between. And if he can…”

“Then so can Epherineth,” M’ric completed for him.

The crushing despair was lifting. “I can’t fix between in the past,” T’kamen said, putting it together as he spoke. “But I can fix it now. That has to be why you sent me here. You knew I’d come forward and put it right. You did start it.”

“Well,” said M’ric, thoughtfully. “That sort of makes me the hero, doesn’t it?”

T’kamen looked at him, appalled at his sheer audacity. And then something in M’ric’s studied half-smile, in the pre-emptive wince around his eyes, gave him a sudden clear insight into the boy’s mind. That’s not arrogance. That’s overcompensation. “You are the biggest shaffing smart-arse….”

M’ric shrugged, as if embarrassed to have been called on it. “You’ve still got to prove it, T’kamen,” he said. “Who you are, that is. To the…to them. And that you’re telling the truth to me.” He folded his arms. “If you know me in the past – future – whatever – you must know something about me.”

T’kamen glared, but he could hardly blame M’ric for being sceptical. He actually thought better of him that he wasn’t willing to eat up any suggestion that he was important. And what seventeen-Turn-old doesn’t want to believe that about himself? He cast about for something. “You were a search-and-rescue rider at the Peninsula.”

M’ric unfolded his arms. “The Peninsula? Why would I be there?”

“I don’t know. You transferred to Madellon with a Wingleader called Sh’zon.”

“Never heard of him.” M’ric looked disappointed. “Don’t you know anything personal about me?”

“I’m your Weyrleader, not your weyrmate,” T’kamen said. “And you hadn’t been at Madellon long.”

“Peninsula,” said M’ric, as though trying to puzzle it out. “That just doesn’t make any sense. Starfall, I could understand, but why would I be at the Peninsula?”

That was the second time M’ric had mentioned the unfamiliar name. T’kamen seized on it. “Starfall?”

“Starfall Weyr,” M’ric said. “East of Southern.”

“There isn’t a Weyr east of…” T’kamen stopped. “There wasn’t one in my time.”

“Well, there is now,” said M’ric. “My father was a rider there.”

“Then why are you at Madellon?”

“M’gral died when I was seven. I grew up with my mum at Fiver Hold, so I was Searched here.”

“Fiver?” T’kamen racked his memory for a Madellon hold by that name. “Do you mean Sixer? In Peninsula territory?”

“It can’t have been called Sixer for –” M’ric stopped, obviously realising the redundancy of his remark even as he spoke. “It was called Sixer, about twenty Turns before I was born. But one of the hoodoos collapsed, and it’s been Fiver ever since.”

“Sixer looks to the Peninsula in my time. They must have redrawn the borders…” Then he made a belated connection. “You’re dragonspawn?”

M’ric looked offended. “So? My dad was a blue rider of Starfall! There’s no shame in being a fighting rider’s son.”

“I didn’t say there was,” T’kamen said, but the revelation almost made him smile. Some things, at least, hadn’t changed between the Interval and the Pass. Dragonspawn, the children of riders but raised in the Holds, always seemed to get defensive about their paternity. “But you were a Wingsecond at the Peninsula before you transferred to Madellon. If they have records going back to the Interval, you’ll find yourself there.”

“A Wingsecond,” M’ric said, half to himself, as though trying the thought out for the first time. He frowned. “The Peninsula isn’t going to let a Madellon weyrling go rifling through their Archives. And it’s not like I can tell anyone that I’m trying to get proof that I’m going to be a time-traveller too.”

“Maybe they’d let me,” said T’kamen. “If we could prove that I’m who I say I am. Then I could prove that you’re who I say you are, too.”

“Well, where were you born? Maybe if I can find a record of that it would help to build the case of who you really are.”

T’kamen shook his head. “I was born on the road. My father was second team boss of the Frankon trader train. I doubt there was a record of that even in my time, let alone now.”

“You said you became Weyrleader at Turn’s End of Interval 98?”

“Right.”

“So you weren’t Weyrleader for long?”

“I was a little over a Turn into my first term before I came here.” It sounded rather pitiful when he said it out loud. “But Shimpath rises on a three or four Turn cycle. It’s not likely she’d mate again and choose another Weyrleader until at least 101.”

“That’s a pretty narrow window,” M’ric said, and then, in the same thoughtful breath, “Is that what you meant about taking your girl?”

T’kamen had almost forgotten he’d said that. Faranth, but M’ric’s recall was a menace. “Don’t be ridiculous. Do you have any idea how big an Interval queen is?”

“Well; her rider, then?”

“Valonna was my Weyrwoman, not my weyrmate.”

“So who was your weyrmate?”

It grated on T’kamen that the honest answer to the question was so dismal, but Sarenya hadn’t ever been his weyrmate; not really. “It’s none of your business.”

“It sharding is if I’m going to steal her from you!”

“It doesn’t even matter any more!”

“Uh huh,” said M’ric. “Obviously. Doesn’t matter to you at all.” He cocked his head. “Is this why you don’t like me? Because your girlfriend left you for me? Or do you always have a trundlebug wedged up your ar –”

The compulsion to throw something at M’ric was too strong for T’kamen to resist. He didn’t even think about it: he just bunched his flying jacket in one hand and flung it at the smirking boy. M’ric fended it off with the quick reflexes of the young and a snort of laughter, and for an instant, as the jacket went flying off in the new direction impelled by M’ric’s deflection, T’kamen found a small part of himself that didn’t despise this half-formed, annoyingly sharp young man. “Shaffing smart-arse.”

The flying jacket crumpled to the floor with a dull thump, followed by the unmistakable chime and jingle of something metallic hitting the stone floor and then rolling away.

They looked at each other.

“What was that?” T’kamen asked, getting carefully to his feet.

“Did you have something in your pocket?” M’ric asked. “Sounded like metal.” His eyes were already sweeping the floor; they found the dim glint of gold a fraction of a second before T’kamen’s did. “There. I’ll get it.”

He scooped the item up off the floor. Then he stilled, looking at the small thing in his hand.

T’kamen couldn’t think what he’d have had in the pocket of his jacket. “What is it?”

M’ric’s eyes were riveted to the item in his hand. Slowly, he extended it out to T’kamen. “It’s a ring,” he said, in an odd tone.

T’kamen took it from him. It only took him a moment to identify the heavy gold ring. “This is my signet,” he said, puzzled. “The Madellon Weyrleader’s signet.” There was a trace of dark purple wax in the grooves and lines that made up the stylised M and the outspread wings of the dragon that clasped it. “This is it,” he said, with mounting excitement. “This is proof. This is evidence. There’s no way I could have this ring if I wasn’t who I said I was…”

“Where did you get it?” M’ric interrupted. He sounded rattled. He was pressing his fist to his chest.

“It’s the Weyrleader’s signet,” said T’kamen. “It passed to me when Epherineth flew Shimpath.”

“But where did you get it? Where did it come from?”

“I don’t know,” T’kamen said. “The last couple of Weyrleaders before me all used it. I don’t know why it was in my pocket. I don’t wear it. It’s too big for me, and I’ve never got round to having it resized. I leave it on a tray on my desk…” And as he spoke, a handful of small details resolved themselves into a coherent picture: M’ric in his weyr; M’ric handing him a jacket. I’m sorry. For taking you away from Madellon. I know it’s the last thing you need right now. “You put it there,” he realised aloud. “You took it off my desk and put it in this jacket, because you knew we’d find it now. Because I’m telling you now that that’s what happened…”

“T’kamen –”

“…You knew I’d need some proof of who I am and you made sure I had it…”

“T’kamen –”

“…shaffing timing logic is enough to tie anyone’s brain in knots…”

“T’kamen!” M’ric exclaimed, for the third and most explosive time, and when T’kamen finally stopped speaking, the boy pulled a necklace from under his shirt and thrust the pendant that hung from it towards him.

Except it wasn’t a pendant. It was a ring. It was made of silver, scratched and dinted with age and hard use, and tarnish darkened the etched design, but in every other way it was the mirror image of the gold ring T’kamen had used as Madellon’s Weyrleader.

He grabbed M’ric’s wrist, comparing the two rings side by side. “They’re the same,” he said, looking from one to the other. “How did you end up with a copy of the Madellon Weyrleader’s signet?”

“It was my dad’s,” M’ric said. “It was the family ring. My father was M’gral, his father was M’terlo, his father was…well, I can’t remember, but it all goes back to M’dan, the first Weyrleader of Starfall. My great-great-something grandfather. We all start with M. That’s why the ring has an M on it. When M’gral died this was sent to me, because he only had daughters at Starfall. It’s always been too big for me to wear on my hand.”

They stood looking at the two rings for a long moment.

“Well,” said T’kamen, “now what?”

M’ric took a long deep breath, still staring at the two signets: one silver, one gold. Then he visibly made a decision. He straightened up. For the first time, T’kamen realised that M’ric was taller than him. The sense that the boy was somehow incomplete, somehow unfinished, had been so strong that he’d overlooked the fact that physically, the seventeen-Turn-old brown rider already had the height he’d carry into adulthood, if not yet all of the breadth. It was as if M’ric were a carving still half buried in stone, his final shape emerging but not yet refined, the details still crude. But the transformation was happening even as T’kamen watched. For the first time, he saw the calm, competent, resolute M’ric he’d known and resented in the Interval. For the first time, he saw clarity and conviction in those too-clever dark eyes. “I’m not sorry I doubted you,” M’ric said. “There’s a difference between wanting to believe something and having good enough reason to be convinced.”

“And you have good enough reason now?”

“Yes.” He looked down at the silver signet ring on its leather thong. “Can I borrow yours?”

T’kamen hesitated. M’ric had apparently decided to trust him. Was that enough reason for him to trust him in return?

Yes, said Epherineth.

He had been a constant, silent presence throughout, though T’kamen had only just realised it. He weighed the gold ring in his hand for a moment, then held it out to M’ric. “I’ll want it back.”

M’ric accepted the signet gravely. “I know.” Then he grinned. “You didn’t ask what I want it for.”

“What do you want it for?”

“I’ll take it to Dalka. She’s the only one who can persuade R’lony to get those two bronze watch-whers out there off your back.”

“R’lony,” T’kamen repeated. It seemed to him that he’d heard the name before. “The Weyrleader?”

“Not –” M’ric stopped himself. “I promise I’ll explain everything, T’kamen. But let me go to Dalka with this. We need to get you out of here.”

“All right,” said T’kamen. “Go and do what you need to do.”

M’ric nodded and started to head for the ledge. Then he paused and looked back at T’kamen. “I’m really going to go back through time? Through between?”

“You really are.”

M’ric seemed to take that in for a moment. Then he grinned.

Great, T’kamen thought sourly, as the boy loped out. Now he knows he’s important.

But he is, said Epherineth. You and he. Trebruth and me. We are connected. We are all important.

Don’t let that slip to Trebruth.

Epherineth was unapologetic. We are connected, he insisted. Is Trebruth not a dragon of Madellon?

All right, T’kamen said. I’ll give you that much.

You know it’s more.

And he did. With nothing much to do, confined once again to the invalid weyr, with Recranth and Salionth standing guard outside, T’kamen stretched out on his bed to rest his aching hip and thought about the boy he would send back through time to become the man who would send him forward. A Turn ago – according to his own personal timeline – he’d never heard of M’ric of the Peninsula. Now it seemed increasingly clear that their fates were intertwined. Almost everything he thought he’d known about the brown rider had turned out to be a lie, or at best, an evasion. He had more reason than ever to dislike him.

He found he no longer did.

M’ric had been a convenient target for his anger and frustration, but it wasn’t his fault that T’kamen was here. It wasn’t his fault that Epherineth couldn’t go between. It wasn’t his fault that between was broken.

Then whose fault was it?

“It started with us,” T’kamen said aloud.

With us does not mean because of us, said Epherineth.

T’kamen had just started to think that dragons were very good at offering empty words of comfort, but they weren’t so good at providing solutions, when Epherineth rebuked him sharply. And you’re very good at claiming guilt that does not belong to you.

“I’m sorry, Epherineth.”

You should be. Then Epherineth’s displeasure softened. But why are we here if not to make it right again?

T’kamen thought about it. “Is between wrong?”

Epherineth hesitated for a long moment before replying. It’s different, he said at last. It’s…unfamiliar. I cannot see the way through to our destination.

“And you know that before you jump?”

Epherineth paused again. T’kamen sensed that he was asking him to quantify difficult concepts. Yes. You show me where we are to go. I see it. I see how our way between can take us there. Then I jump. We travel the way I have seen. We arrive at the place you told me to go. I can no longer see my way, T’kamen. I cannot risk you. I cannot jump when I cannot see.

“Then between is…” T’kamen groped for the right word. “Blocked? Damaged?”

Epherineth shifted audibly on his ledge. When you go from place to place, with your feet, you know the way. In your mind you see doors and passageways and rooms and you know which to use to reach the place where you are going.

T’kamen sat up a bit. He knew this was at the very farthest limits of what his dragon could explain. “All right.” He thought about going from his weyr to the Headwoman’s office, carefully outlining each step of the journey for Epherineth to see. “Like this?”

Yes, Epherineth said, as T’kamen painstakingly imagined the long winding corridor that led from the dining cavern to Crauva’s chambers. Now this happens.

In T’kamen’s visualised journey, a rock-fall suddenly filled the corridor. “The way is blocked.”

Yes! Epherineth seemed relieved to have expressed the notion. The way is blocked. If I took you between we would be stuck there. I will not take you between if I cannot see the way.

“If there was a rock-fall in that corridor, we’d have to clear it, or find a way around,” T’kamen said. “Can you do that between?”

I don’t know another way, Epherineth said. Also there is not a rock-fall between. There are no rocks between.

That retreat to draconic literalism was a clear signal that Epherineth had taken the abstraction as far as he could. “No. I know. Leave it there, Epherineth.”

It all made T’kamen’s head swim, too. He lay back on his bed, staring at the uneven ceiling of the weyr without seeing it. He thought about the silver ring, clearly a duplicate of his own. M’ric must have had it made at some point in the Interval. Certainly he’d slipped the Madellon signet into T’kamen’s jacket as a token his younger self would recognise. What else had the older M’ric done? Why hadn’t he done more? Or was he as limited as L’stev had always said by the way that timing worked? The thought chased its tail around and around in his head.

He must have slept, more wearied by the events of the day than he’d realised, because when Epherineth nudged him into alertness the pale semicircle of daylight that reached into the weyr had retreated almost to the doorway. Groggy, T’kamen sat up to the sound of a voice outside, and his dragon’s cautiously compliant rumble.

The woman who stepped into the shrinking puddle of daylight was perhaps in her late forties; tall, slender, striking. She wore the snuggest set of riding leathers T’kamen had ever seen, their every line tailored to match and accentuate the contours of her body. Her eyes were sharp and suspicious, her cheekbones merely sharp, her mouth a hard-set slash. She was a queen rider. T’kamen didn’t need to look at the rank cords on her shoulder to know it. She radiated her dragon, wore her as snugly as she wore those figure-hugging wherhides, walked with her hauteur oozing from every step. If not for Epherineth’s muted respect, T’kamen would have thought her a rider whose dragon was soon to rise. He’d seldom seen a woman so powerfully in command of her own authority, or her own sexuality. He was perturbed to find that his mouth had gone dry. It made his voice a rasp when he spoke. “Weyrwoman Dalka, I take it.”

“Bronze rider T’kamen.” She spoke in a low drawl, then arched an eyebrow. “Or do you prefer Weyrleader?”

“I do prefer it,” he replied, schooling himself not to react to the suggestion of mockery.

She regarded him with slow disdain. “I see.”

T’kamen was grateful for the dimness of the weyr. It hid the expression he knew had passed over his face. “If you’ve come to pass sentence on me, Weyrwoman, I’d appreciate the courtesy of sooner rather than later.”

“You are an impatient one,” Dalka said. “Not what I’d expected at all.”

“You have me at a disadvantage,” T’kamen said. “You have all M’ric’s reports to judge me by. He let precious little slip to me.”

“Did he?” Dalka asked. “R’lony will be delighted to know he was wrong on that count.” Then she went on in a less confrontational tone. “You have been a riddle, T’kamen. Everything a mystery. Who you are. Where you’re from. What you want. What to do with you.”

“You could just have had your dragon ask Epherineth,” T’kamen said. “He could no more lie to a queen than he could chew off his own arm.”

“You’d be surprised what a bronze could do under orders,” Dalka replied. “But M’ric brought me this.”

She held up her hand. The gold signet glinted in her fingers. “The seal of the Madellon Weyrleader,” said T’kamen.

“A claim we’ve been attempting to verify. I wonder if you’d do me a favour.” Dalka slid the ring into one of the pockets of her jacket, then extended a slate and chalk to him. “Take this down.”

T’kamen hesitated. Then he rose from his bed and limped cautiously forward to take the writing materials from her. He retreated back into the gloom and seated himself again. He propped the slate against his left thigh and positioned the chalk over it. “Go on.”

Dalka unrolled a flaking piece of hide, then began to read from it. “‘I commend to you the actions of these dragonpairs. A’len, brown Chyilth.’”

T’kamen had begun to write, but he stopped when he heard the name. “A’len,” he said. “He’s a Wingsecond. I’ve known him for Turns.”

Dalka’s eyes flickered, but she insisted, “Please humour me, T’kamen.” She cleared her throat, then continued to read. “‘B’frea, green Grissenth. C’desron, brown Ronth. C’mine, blue Darshanth. Fr’ton – ’”

“Stop. That’s wrong. C’desron’s not a brown rider.” He looked down at the slate. Unbidden, his hand had already written it correctly. “C’desron, blue Ronth.”

“‘Fr’ton, bronze Peteorth,’” Dalka went on, though a waver had crept into her voice. “‘G’pellas, blue Derthauth. H’lamin, green Turooth.’”

“No,” T’kamen interrupted her. “H’lamin’s green is Zemmath. These are my riders, Weyrwoman.” And then, in a rush, he connected the names. “L’stev,” he said. “Brown Vanzanth. T’rello, bronze Santinoth. V’gyat, blue Egrath. Jenavally, green Hinnarioth. Keva, green Freanth.” He wrote them as he said them, and when he couldn’t think of any others, he looked up at Dalka. She was watching him closely. “These are the riders who fought the wildfire at Kellad at Turn’s End of 98.”

Dalka stepped towards him, into shadow. She held her hand out for the slate. “Let me see.”

T’kamen gave it to her.

She turned back towards the light, comparing writing to record. “Faranth,” she said at last.

She handed him hide and slate. The vellum was old, crumbling beneath T’kamen’s fingers, the ink brown with age and illegible in places, but the hand was unmistakeable. It was the same script that now covered the surface of the slate in the white whispery ghost of the original. It was his own. And the medallion of faded wax, more grey than indigo, in the bottom corner of the century-old hide bore a perfect impression of the signet ring of the Madellon Weyrleader, stamped there by T’kamen himself over a hundred Turns ago.

As he looked back and forth between the two, Dalka reached down and twitched open the glow-basket beside T’kamen’s bed. He flinched instinctively away from the sudden wash of brightness.

“We seem to owe you –”

Dalka stopped halfway through the sentence. Her eyes fixed upon his face, fully-lit for the first time.

“An apology,” she went on, after a moment. “Weyrleader.”

Chapter twenty-one. L’stev

How do you get a dragon to change a glow-basket?

“I have dragons to change glow-baskets for me,” says the queen.

“I’ll change that glow-basket for you, my queen,” says the bronze.

“My Wingleader has delegated the changing of the glow-basket to me,” says the brown.

“No one ever asks me to change the glow-basket,” says the blue.

“What’s a glow-basket?” asks the green.

– Weyrling joke

100.03.05 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

“I beg your pardon, Weyrlingmaster,” said Valonna, after a pause. “T’gala’s a what?”

“A girl,” L’stev repeated. “And it’s obvious, to look at her, once you know the truth, but who’d even think to question it? Heppeth is blue; blues always choose boys; therefore, T’gala must be a boy.” He snorted. “Shows what we know.”

Valonna sat very still in her straight-backed chair, blinking rapidly, as she worked through the implications in her mind. Her expression was very similar to the one C’mine had worn when L’stev had told him about T’gala. C’mine had needed a minute to process the revelation, and L’stev intended to give the Weyrwoman the same few moments to think. It was very early for such startling news, after all. He’d decided not to wake Valonna in the middle of the night, but the day was young enough yet that none of the weyrlings were up, and even Vanzanth hadn’t shifted from his couch, although that was probably because he hadn’t wanted to disturb T’gala from her exhausted sleep on the cot beside him.

“Does this have anything to do with what’s happening with between?” Valonna asked, at length.

L’stev liked that she’d jumped to such a dire conclusion. He admired that sort of pessimism, even unfounded. A pessimist was only ever pleasantly surprised. “I don’t think so,” he said. “T’gala and the problem with between are both unusual – possibly unprecedented – situations that seem to have originated at Southern, but while I still can’t explain between, I can take a stab at the circumstances that led to T’gala Impressing Heppeth.”

“Has it ever happened before?” asked Valonna. “A girl Impressing a blue?”

“Not that I know of,” said L’stev. He shifted in his chair at Valonna’s table. “You know, we keep in touch, we Weyrlingmasters. It doesn’t matter what Weyr we’re from. We’ve all got the same job. We all face the same problems. So we talk. Not all of us, I’ll grant you, but most. Me. F’dalger at the Peninsula, B’reko at High Reaches, A’stay at Igen, G’dorar at Telgar. Not S’gert at Southern, at least not in recent Turns, but I’ll get to him in a moment. The rest of us, though, we get together. We talk about our candidates and weyrlings. We talk about what makes a dragonet choose the rider he does. And from time to time we’ve talked about why boys Impress female dragons, but a girl’s never Impressed a male one.”

“Until now,” said Valonna.

“Until now,” L’stev agreed. “Well, the way a rider like F’dalger sees it, a green dragon’s too dim to even know the difference.” He snorted. “And that’s why a bronze rider should never be a Weyrlingmaster. Greens might have their limitations, but they’re not stupid. They’re not choosing male riders because they think they’re girls. They’re just practical. How often do we have enough female candidates – and I don’t just mean warm bodies, I mean the ones who actually have what it takes to Impress – for all the greens we get in a clutch? If every green dragonet insisted on having a girl, we’d have unmatched greens every Hatching – and yet there’s not been a single dragonet unImpressed on Pern in living memory. And much as I’d like to say that’s because we’ve always presented a broad field of excellent candidates, that just hasn’t been the case. There’ve been clutches throughout Madellon’s history when we barely had a candidate for every egg, and one way or another, those dragonets found riders. They don’t give up easily. Take Hinnarioth. Jenavally Impressed her from the stands; did you know that?”

“I didn’t,” said Valonna.

“Jena was the Masterharper’s newest journeyman,” said L’stev. “She was only at the Hatching because he was. She’d been spotted on Search a few Turns earlier, it seems, but the Hall wouldn’t release her. Too much potential as a Harper. So you can imagine how pleased Gaffry was about losing his latest protégé to a green dragon, but Hinnarioth wasn’t interested in anyone else that day.

“And there was a brown rider, C’nune, who Impressed when he was twenty-eight Turns old. He’d never been Searched, but he was new to the Weyr: come to work at Madellon because he’d fallen out with his Holder. As soon as it came clear that this last brown wasn’t going to choose anyone on the sands, D’hor started marching every able-bodied fellow in the Weyr past him until someone took his fancy.” L’stev shrugged at the perversity of it. “Hatchlings aren’t stupid and they’re not suicidal. They want to find riders, and between with our preconceived ideas of who and how old and what gender those riders should be. Maybe once upon a time there were enough female candidates, and everyone assumed that greens always chose girls – it would seem logical, after all – but at some point there weren’t enough, and a green chose a male rider, and threw that rule in the midden.”

Valonna had been nodding along with his words. “Because dragons want to live,” she said.

“Exactly.” L’stev took a breath. “So we have a reason why green dragons choose male riders. There are lots of greens, and seldom enough girls to Impress them all, but always plenty of boys to make up the numbers.” He held up a finger. “Nearly always. Which brings us to Southern. And S’gert. He stopped coming to our conferences Turns ago, because he didn’t like hearing what we had to say. Southern had given up Searching for candidates, and consensus among the rest of us was that was an unhealthy business.”

“Why did it stop Searching?” asked Valonna.

“There’s a school of thought that claims Weyrbred riders are always better than Holdbred,” said L’stev. “Because they’re born to it. And there’s something to be said for the notion. Your Weyrbred green rider knows what to expect every six or eight sevendays when his dragon gets snappy. The kid who’s been around dragons his whole life already knows how to oil a hide and mend a bit of harness. But we’re isolated enough, up here in our mountains. We need the new blood, but we also need new ideas. We need to have our comfortable notions challenged by people who haven’t been brought up in a single undisputed tradition. And we’ve had as many Hold- and Craftbred Weyrleaders as Weyrbred. P’keo and L’dro and O’ret were Weyrbred, but T’kamen was Trader-bred. R’hren came from the Smithcraft. L’mis was Searched from a tiny cothold in southern Kellad.

“But Southern’s been looking exclusively to its own lower caverns for candidates these last ten Turns. Clutch after clutch, fishing from that same limited pool of candidates. It explains why the Southern weyrlings are so young. And it goes some way to explaining T’gala.

“The clutch that these weyrlings Impressed from had twenty-one eggs. You’d expect nine or ten greens, so a dozen girls and a dozen boys should be enough to Impress all the hatchlings. But it seems there were only five greens. Add those to the queen, and that leaves fifteen male dragons.” L’stev frowned. “This is where it gets murky. I could only get bits and pieces out of T’gala. As I understand it, there were only fifteen male candidates. Most of the girls would have been concentrating on the queen, and at least one boy Impressed a green. There were a couple of Impressions from the stands, including B’rode and P’lau, who were too young even by Southern’s standards. And Heppeth Hatched last, by which time there were only two boys left – and he didn’t want either of them.”

“So he chose T’gala,” said Valonna.

“It was the reverse of the normal situation,” said L’stev. “All those blues, and the queen distracting most of the female candidates. Heppeth just did what a green would do. He made the best of his situation. He chose to live.”

Valonna broke L’stev’s gaze for a moment. She looked quite moved. Then she gathered herself. “And T’gala has been passing herself off as a boy?”

“To us,” said L’stev. “Her Weyrmates know the truth, of course. But we didn’t know any better. So of course we bunked her in with the boys.” He clenched his jaw. “If I’d known…”

Valonna’s brow creased as she grasped the implications. “Why didn’t she say something?”

“Because she’s been made to believe that she’s some kind of freak for being the female rider of a male dragon,” said L’stev. “And the other Southerners clearly don’t want us to know about it. Not for her sake – but for theirs. Or Southern’s, anyway. She hasn’t been able to bathe for fear of letting ours boys see her undressed; she can barely go for a pee except when no one else is in the facilities.” He grimaced. “The worst of it is, Valonna, I still wouldn’t know except that she got out of the barracks after glows-out last night so she could go and do some…laundry.” When Valonna still looked blank, L’stev went on, painfully, “She’s thirteen Turns old. And a woman.”

“Oh,” Valonna said, her eyes widening. “Oh, poor T’gala.”

L’stev grumbled. “And I suspect those Southern boys have been unkind to her in other ways, too. You know what monsters teenage lads can be, especially when they have permission to be. I hope it hasn’t gone beyond them waggling their dicks at her to make her blush.”

Valonna went more pale. “But you think it could have?”

“Even if it hasn’t,” said L’stev, “she can’t be left where she is. Not for a moment longer.”

“Of course not,” said Valonna. “But we can’t just move her to the girls’ barracks, can we? We’d have to explain to our weyrlings, and the truth would soon be common knowledge. If she truly believes that she’s a – an aberration – then the last thing she’ll want is for the whole Weyr to know.”

“Agreed,” L’stev said. “But we can’t single her out, either. It would draw just as much attention if we were to assign her a weyr of her own.”

“Where is she now?”

“On a cot next to Vanzanth’s couch.” L’stev checked in with his dragon as he spoke. “Still asleep.”

Valonna frowned. “What if we moved all the Southerners into weyrs?”

“All of them?” asked L’stev.

“T’gala would have some privacy, but we wouldn’t be making a special exception for her.”

“I don’t like letting my weyrlings have their own weyrs until their dragonets are a Turn old,” said L’stev. “I can’t keep an eye on them once they’re out of the barracks, and if the older ones start sharing furs before their dragonets are old enough to deal with it…” Even as he said it, he was reminded of Ivaryo, but Saperth had been an unusually phlegmatic green. He sighed. “Though it would at least soothe Berzunth’s hackles, not having to share the barracks with Megrith. That’s a calamity waiting to happen.”

Valonna’s brows drew at the mention of the friction between the two weyrling queens. “What if you had them share weyrs?”

“I could match them up in pairs less likely to interfere with each other,” L’stev said. Then he shook his head. “But the high-level weyrs really aren’t big enough for anything more than a couple of half-grown browns. And that still leaves me needing to match T’gala with someone, and the numbers don’t work. Five boys, three girls, plus her.”

“We give Karika and Megrith their own weyr,” said Valonna. “And the bronze his own…”

“And then B’rode and P’lau together,” said L’stev, “and N’grier and V’ranu. And we find the mingiest cupboard of a weyr for T’gala and Heppeth, so no one begrudges them having their own space. Yes. That could work.”

“I’ll speak to Crauva,” said Valonna. “And…what should I say to H’ned and Sh’zon?”

“I don’t see that you have to say anything,” said L’stev. “Southern’s weyrlings are your business, not theirs. Margone made that very clear.”

Valonna straightened. “I wonder why she didn’t tell me about T’gala,” she said. “I wish I dared have Shimpath bespeak Grizbath…”

Margone was almost as complicit in the abnormalities at Southern as P’raima, L’stev thought. A Weyrwoman should be stronger than that. But he wouldn’t criticise her to Valonna. Instead, he said, “Best to let her alone, Valonna. Tezonth will be breathing down Grizbath’s neck. You’ll only bring Margone more grief if P’raima thinks she’s communicating with you.”

Valonna looked troubled. “It’s not right. He’s only a bronze rider.”

“Maybe the most formidable bronze rider on Pern,” said L’stev. “He’s had the whole of Southern in a death grip for decades. Keeping Margone under his thumb is nothing compared to that.”

“But why does Southern allow it?” Valonna asked.

“I don’t know,” said L’stev. “Maybe there’s something in the personality of a Southern rider that makes them crave domination. And Southern’s not poor. P’raima drives a hard bargain with his Holds and Halls. Maybe in that respect it’s not such a bad thing, flying under him. There’s no shortage of anything at Southern.” Valonna flinched, just slightly, at that, and L’stev wondered if he’d hit a nerve. “Well, what would you rather Madellon was?” he asked. “Rich and oppressed, or poor but free?”

“I know which I’d rather,” said Valonna. “But I’m not sure everyone would agree with me.”

“You’ll never please everyone, Valonna,” L’stev told her. “The trick is knowing who’s worth pleasing.”

She’s waking up, Vanzanth reported, from their weyr.

Tell her to stay put, L’stev said, and then added, Tell her she can use the bathing room. “T’gala’s stirring,” he told Valonna. “I’d like to get back over there. I’d sooner the others didn’t know she spent the whole night out of the barracks.”

“Of course, Weyrlingmaster,” said Valonna. “And if there’s anything else I can do…if you need Shimpath to speak to the queens…”

“I’ll come to you directly,” L’stev promised. He rose from his seat. His knees cracked as he did. Then, before he turned to leave, he said, “There’s still nothing on Epherineth…?”

“No,” she replied. Her eyes tightened. “Nothing.”

L’stev absorbed that grimly. “All right. I’ll keep you apprised, Weyrwoman.”

He didn’t walk too quickly back across the Bowl to the barracks, as much to spare his painful knees as to give T’gala time to complete her ablutions. Still, he was surprised, when he climbed the steps to Vanzanth’s ledge, to find the blankets on T’gala’s cot neatly folded, the set of clothes he’d found for her gone from the edge of Vanzanth’s couch, and the girl herself sitting dressed, washed, and agitated on one of the chairs in L’stev’s office.

L’stev ran an assessing eye over her. At first glance, anyone could have been forgiven for thinking she was just a rather slight pre-pubescent boy, but now he knew better, he could see through the short-cropped haircut and the defensively-hunched shoulders. Posture wouldn’t preserve her secret for long, he thought. She was developing a woman’s figure to go with her monthly cycle. “I trust Vanzanth’s snoring didn’t keep you awake,” he said, sitting in the other chair in front of his desk.

“He spoke to me,” she said. “It felt funny.”

“He doesn’t do that very often,” said L’stev. “I just didn’t want you running off before we’d had a chance to talk.”

“I need to get back to Heppeth before he wakes up,” T’gala said. “He gets upset if I’m not there.”

“Vanzanth’s keeping an ear on him,” said L’stev. He gestured to the side of his own head when T’gala looked disbelieving. “A mental ear. Listen, weyrling. I’ve spoken to the Weyrwoman about you. We –”

“You said you wouldn’t tell anyone!” T’gala cried.

“Weyrling.” L’stev let some of his usual authority underscore the word. Gentleness could only go so far. “Madellon is Weyrwoman Valonna’s domain, and you’re currently under her protection. She is not anyone.” He moderated his tone. “We’re going to move you all into weyrs. You won’t have to share quarters with the boys any more.”

T’gala’s shoulders sagged with relief . “Thank you, Weyrlingmaster. I’m sorry to have been an inconvenience.”

The word inflamed L’stev’s temper. He suppressed his retort. There was no point directing his anger at the victim. “You’re not an inconvenience, T’gala,” he said, in a low voice. “Not you, not Heppeth. Not for any reason.” He had to steady himself. “Whatever you think – whatever you may have been told – there’s nothing wrong with you or your dragon.”

T’gala tore her eyes away from his. In the light of day, her defences had gone back up. The moment of crisis that had brought them down last night had passed. She set her jaw, and said, “I’m grateful to you and to the Weyrwoman for making arrangements for me, Weyrlingmaster, but I don’t want any other special treatment.”

L’stev took in a long breath through his nostrils. “Like it or not, T’gala,” he said, “you’re different to the other weyrlings. Not worse, not wrong – but different. I’ll protect your privacy as long as I can, but sooner or later the truth will out. You’re my responsibility, and I want to make sure that when your secret does get out, you’re ready to deal with it.”

T’gala’s face had gone pale and pinched. “That won’t be necessary,” she said, under her breath.

“Why won’t it be necessary?”

“Because we’ll be going home,” she said. She lifted her head, glaring at him with angry tears in her eyes. “Back to Southern.”

“You’re not going anywhere any time soon,” L’stev told her.

“We are!” she insisted. “We agreed…we took a vote –” She cut off the sentence.

“Did you, now?” L’stev asked. “A vote? And what makes you think that you, as weyrlings, have the right to decide?”

“We never asked to come here,” said T’gala. “Everyone hates it. Everyone hates us! We only came because Megrith said so…” She broke off again, looking furious with herself. “You can’t make us stay!”

L’stev sat regarding the girl for a moment. “This vote,” he said. “It was unanimous?”

“Everyone agreed except for Karika.”

“And you also voted to go home?”

“Yes!”

“To the Weyr where they’ve told you that being the female rider of a blue dragon is something to be ashamed of?”

She didn’t answer, but L’stev didn’t need to hear the words to read them in her eyes. It is. He sat looking at her, trying to unravel what must be going on in her mind. He’d had weyrlings before who’d struggled with the colour of their dragons – male green riders, mostly – but T’gala was different. T’gala was, as far as L’stev knew, unique.

Heppeth’s awake, said Vanzanth.

T’gala reacted almost at the same instant. She went tense. “I need to go to him.”

“All right,” said L’stev. “Go.” He jabbed a warning finger. “Don’t tell your Weyrmates about the move. They’ll hear that from me soon enough.”

The girl fled.

L’stev followed her out of his weyr more slowly. Vanzanth had heaved himself out onto his ledge. He turned his head inscrutably towards L’stev. You have it all wrong.

“Do I?”

Her snoring kept me awake.

L’stev snorted. Then he put his hand up to his dragon’s jaw. “What are we going to do with them?”

She is wrong.

“What?”

Her thoughts are…twisted. Tangled. She loves Heppeth, and hates him for loving her. Vanzanth gave a little shudder. And hates herself.

“You went too deep,” L’stev said censoriously.

I didn’t have to. When she is awake and Heppeth sleeps, she drowns in her own self-loathing. When he woke, she buried it from him. And from me.

“All this because she Impressed a blue?” L’stev asked, baffled.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Darshanth came kiting across the Bowl from the direction of his weyr. He landed on the end of Vanzanth’s ledge and turned his head in greeting. Vanzanth grumbled back. “Morning,” L’stev said to C’mine, as the blue rider dismounted.

“Morning, L’stev,” C’mine replied. He looked tired. L’stev wondered if he’d had a sleepless night. “How is she?”

“He,” L’stev reminded him. “Back in the barracks, now. I spoke to Valonna.”

He sketched in the main points of his conversation with the Weyrwoman, and then related most of what T’gala had said. “Have Darshanth keep an eye on Heppeth,” he said, at last. “But keep him close. Even Vanzanth was unsettled by what he picked up from T’gala. A rider with that much ambiguity about her dragon…if she were a boy, and Heppeth were green, I’d say they were on course to go between and not come back in their first mating flight.” He frowned. “How would that work, with Heppeth? I mean, if he caught a green with a male rider, everything would be the wrong way round, but at least there’d be the potential for….”

“Interlocking?” C’mine offered, when L’stev couldn’t think of the right word.

“Interlocking,” L’stev said. “But if we’re talking a female-ridden blue and a female-ridden green, Faranth knows how the riders would mirror what their dragons are doing in the air.” He made a vaguely suggestive gesture. “Too many buckles, not enough tabs.”

“Maybe we should ask Samianne and Tiffa how it works for them?” C’mine suggested.

L’stev snorted. “You can ask them if you like, C’mine. Either one of them would have my head off in a trice if I asked them about their sex lives.” He grinned. “Though if you do ask them, you will let me know all the details, won’t you? Strictly in the pursuit of knowledge, you understand.” Then he sobered. “No. How you care to make love on your own terms, and how it happens when the dragons are in control – they aren’t the same thing at all. And if something breaks a rider out of flight-immersion before the deed’s done…” He stopped. C’mine’s eyes had gone distant. “What?”

“Nothing,” C’mine said. Then, when L’stev narrowed his eyes at him, he said, “I was just… C’los. Indioth’s first few flights. They weren’t easy for him.”

“So I recall,” L’stev said cautiously. The last thing he needed was for C’mine to retreat back into his self-indulgent wallowing over C’los.

But the blue rider gave himself a little shake. “What are you going to do about this vote the Southerners have had?”

“Confront it,” said L’stev. “If Karika was the holdout, then I’d wager V’ranu will speak for the others. Unless that vicious little bronze rider’s behind this…?”

“L’mern?” asked C’mine. “I don’t think so. The dragonets do defer to Desarth, but the Southerners definitely look to V’ranu for leadership.”

“All right,” said L’stev. “Go and wake them all up, and tell V’ranu and Karika I want to see them up here as soon as they’re dressed.”

He went back into his office. The slate with the trio assignments he’d drafted was on the edge of his desk where he’d left it the previous evening. He frowned over it for a while. Perhaps it would be best to delay moving them into their weyrs until after they’d had a taste of flying under Vanzanth’s direction. There was nothing like taking close orders from a senior dragon to put dragonets in their place.

The boy comes, Vanzanth noted.

L’stev sat up from his slump. There was a rap at the door. “Come in!”

V’ranu entered the room with something close to a swagger in his walk. His ego had definitely been given a boost by something, L’stev thought. The Southerner held himself in his second-hand Madellon wherhides as though faintly offended by the cast-off clothes, and he gazed around L’stev’s office with a mixture of curiosity and disdain. “Weyrling,” L’stev said crisply, to get his attention. He pointed at one of the chairs. “Sit.”

V’ranu obeyed, grudgingly. He didn’t slouch, but sat straight-shouldered and alert. L’stev would have admired the discipline – coveted it in his own weyrlings, even – if he hadn’t been so conscious of the regime at Southern that had engendered it.

“Did you have something you wanted to say?” L’stev asked.

V’ranu stared at him across the desk. His expression was easy to read. How did you know?

L’stev twisted his mouth into a nasty grin. “First thing you’ll learn at Madellon, boy,” he said. “I know everything.”

“Not everything,” said V’ranu. “I was going to bring this to you anyway. We want to go home.”

“Good for you,” said L’stev. He cocked his head. “Anything else?”

“We’re ready to go right now,” said V’ranu. The pitch of his voice had gone slightly higher. “Our Weyrleader will send dragons for us. You just have to get your queen to ask him.”

“Is that so?” L’stev asked. “Well, why don’t you get your queen to ask him? She can certainly reach as far as Southern.”

V’ranu lifted his head a fraction. “You also need to tell your bronzes to stand down.”

“No one’s standing down,” said L’stev. “No one’s sending to P’raima for anything. No one’s going home.”

The Southern brown rider stood up so abruptly that his chair tipped over with a crash. “Then we’re prisoners here?”

“You’re not prisoners, boy,” said L’stev. “You’re weyrlings.” He planted both hands on his desk and leaned over it towards V’ranu. “And you’re not going anywhere.”

“You abducted us from our home!”

“You were brought here at your Weyrwoman’s request,” said L’stev. “And until she says otherwise, this is where you’ll stay.”

“Margone!” V’ranu cried. “That stupid old woman –”

“You wouldn’t call her that to her face, V’ranu.” The speaker was Karika. She’d stepped quietly inside the door behind him. “So don’t you dare call her it behind her back.”

“Karika.” V’ranu spat the name in a fine spray of spittle.

Karika moved alongside him. “Weyrlingmaster,” she said, with all semblance of civility, and seated herself on the second chair.

L’stev had to admire her mettle. She was Turns younger than her classmate, and so tiny her feet probably only just touched the floor where she sat, but L’stev wouldn’t have taken any odds against her. “Weyrling,” he said. “V’ranu here was telling me that you want to go back to Southern.”

“V’ranu doesn’t speak for me,” said Karika. “V’ranu doesn’t speak for anyone but himself.”

“That’s not true and you know it,” V’ranu said, turning on her. “It was eight-to-one against you.”

“Half the others aren’t even old enough to shave yet,” Karika said. “They’d agree to anything you told them to.”

“You’d know all about that!” said V’ranu. “Megrith made us obey!”

“Megrith was following Grizbath’s orders!”

“And Grizbath disobeyed Tezonth!”

“Grizbath is Southern’s queen –”

“But P’raima’s the Weyrleader!” V’ranu shouted.

“All right,” L’stev interceded, before the argument could get any shriller. “V’ranu. You’re weyrlings. I don’t care what notions of bronze superiority P’raima’s put in your head; weyrlings belong to their Senior Weyrwoman. That’s Weyr law the world over. Margone entrusted you to us. You can protest that you want to go home until you’re blue in the face for all the good it’ll do you, or you can accept that you’re here until riders older and wiser than you have decided it’s safe for you to go home, and make the most of an opportunity to broaden your narrow Southern horizons.” He bored into the boy with his eyes as he spoke, not blinking. “The choice is entirely yours.”

V’ranu had screwed his face into an expression between a pout and a sneer. It wasn’t a good look. Finally, he folded his arms. “We’re not going to broaden our horizons at this second-rate Weyr.”

“Then if you’d rather surround yourself with the familiar and comfortable, I’ll make sure you’re assigned to the middens for your first few chore rotas,” said L’stev. “Madellon and Southern might be very different, but you’ll find dragon shit’s the same colour wherever you are.”

“You can’t –”

“Oh, but I can,” said L’stev. “And every time you disrespect a ranking rider, or Madellon, or me, you can expect to find your name on midden detail for another day.”

V’ranu bit his lip so hard he was like to draw blood, but he didn’t answer back. He just glared at L’stev with the most perfect look of entitled teenage loathing.

L’stev was unmoved. The hatred of weyrlings was like mother’s milk to him. “I’ll make the Weyrwoman aware of your opinion on the matter,” he said. “Was there anything else you had to say to me?”

It was probably too cruel. V’ranu clearly did have any number of things he’d have liked to say, few of them complimentary. But the threat of interminable midden duty obviously held as much dread to a Southern weyrling as it did to a Madellon one. V’ranu held his tongue. “No. Nothing else.” After a long pause, he added, “Sir.”

“Good. You can report to Weyrlingmaster C’mine in the barracks dining room.” Do warn Darshanth he’s coming, won’t you?

Gladly.

V’ranu stalked out of L’stev’s office with a final venomous glare at Karika. Karika ignored it.

L’stev waited until Vanzanth had reported that V’ranu was well clear. Then he looked at Karika. “Well,” he said. “You seem to be having a difference of opinions with your clutchmates.”

“My clutchmates are just children,” said Karika.

“And you’re not?” L’stev asked.

She lifted her chin. “I stopped being a child when I Impressed a queen.”

L’stev almost laughed, but there was too much steel in her voice for the statement to be wholly comical. “Why don’t you want to go back to Southern, Karika? What is it that you know that they don’t?”

“I do want to go back to Southern,” she said. “Southern’s my Weyr. My home. It’s still the best Weyr on Pern.”

“Then it’s P’raima you fear?” L’stev asked. He was watching her closely, but she didn’t flinch or recoil; she didn’t react at all.

“P’raima is the greatest Weyrleader Southern has ever had, or ever will have,” said Karika.

“And you’ve been fed that line since you were a babe in arms, or I know nothing of Southern,” said L’stev. “Why don’t you want to go home?”

Karika flashed him a look from dark eyes. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, little girl, if you knew how many times weyrlings had protested that to me,” L’stev said.

She just looked at him, and remained obstinately silent.

L’stev gave up. Perhaps some good news would make her more amenable. “We’re moving you out of the barracks.”

“Out of the barracks?” she repeated. “To where?”

“Weyrs of your own.”

“Weyrs. You mean caves?”

“Caves,” said L’stev. “And you can bet they’ll be the dankest, pokiest, nosebleediest caves we can find to shove you in. You get one to yourself, your bronze classmate too. And one other of the boys. Everyone else can double up.” He watched her carefully again. “Any suggestions which of the blues and browns should get his own place?”

“T’gala,” Karika said immediately.

“Why him?”

She shrugged. “No one likes him.”

“I see,” said L’stev. “I’ll take that into consideration.” Is she protecting T’gala, or just concealing her secret?

I don’t know. I can’t read her. Megrith would notice.

Then Karika added, “The others pick on him.”

“Do they?” L’stev asked. “Why do they pick on him?”

“It’s just the way it is,” said Karika.

L’stev regarded her for a long moment. She met his gaze calmly, inscrutably. Faranth, but she was a remarkable child. “Go and get some breakfast,” he told her. “You can tell your classmates about the weyrs.”

“Thank you, Weyrlingmaster,” she replied.

She couldn’t rise quite gracefully from her chair. L’stev suspected he’d been right about her feet not touching the floor. As she turned towards the door, he said, “Karika.” He waited for her to turn back towards him. “Aren’t you worried that your classmates will pick on you for disagreeing with them?”

Karika smiled: gleeful as a twelve-Turn-old girl, assured as a Weyrwoman three times her age. “Well,” she said. “They can try.”

Chapter twenty-two: Carleah

Were it only slightly larger, the crater we now know as Little Madellon could have been a Weyr in its own right. Indeed, it would have sufficed to accommodate the population of a northern Weyr, and in all ways except size – altitude, climate, beauty – it surpasses the spacious but uninspiring caldera that became known first as Western, then M’dellon’s, then Madellon Weyr.

M’dellon secured a boon from the first holders of his protectorate that Madellon’s riders enjoy to this day. Little Madellon belongs wholly to Madellon Weyr. While it is too close to Madellon proper to ever serve as the Weyr of a separate territory, Little Madellon’s fine views, comfortable caves, and excellent hunting make it a popular retreat for riders seeking a break from the day-to-day tedium of an Interval dragonrider’s life.

– From An Aerial Survey of Madellon Territory, by Weyrwoman Lowenda

100.03.05 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

“They’re hateful,” said Chenda, twisting a washcloth savagely in her hands, as Carleah stepped gingerly into the hot water of the bathing pool.

Chenda would know, Carleah thought: she could be pretty hateful herself. But she didn’t say that. “It’s not like we haven’t tried to be nice,” she said, settling into the steaming water. “They’re just not interested.”

“I was three hours with that Jhilia, helping her find new clothes,” Adzai chipped in. “You should have seen the way she looked at them. Like I was offering her rags.”

“Oh, they’ve all got that look,” Chenda went on, continuing to abuse the washcloth. “Like they’re better than us.”

“Like their dragons’ dung doesn’t smell!” Adzai agreed vehemently.

“And they’re completely kissing up to L’stev,” said Carleah. “Have you seen –”

“I know!” cried Chenda. “That prissy little wherry of a so-called queen rider Karika!”

Adzai put her hands together under her chin. “Yes, Weyrlingmaster, no Weyrlingmaster, can’t I please put my nose up your bum, Weyrlingmaster.”

“Oh, stop!” Carleah objected.

Even Chenda wrinkled her nose. “Adzai, that’s just wrong.” She paused, then went on, “You’re right, though. The way she’s always trying to be the perfect Weyrlingmaster’s pet. And she doesn’t even have tits yet. Why did a queen choose her?”

“Not much choice,” said Carleah. “They’re all Weyrbred.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being Weyrbred,” said Chenda, spikily.

“That’s not what I meant, Chenda,” Carleah said, trying not to roll her eyes. “But they’re never met anyone from outside Southern before. That’s where all this superiority stuff comes from. Their Weyrleader’s told them they’re special.”

“Wasn’t this the Weyrleader who wanted to make them all try to go between even though half their class died?” asked Adzai.

“That’s what I said to Sia,” said Carleah. “And do you know what she said? ‘Well at least we have a Weyrleader.’”

Adzai gasped, and Chenda raised her eyebrows so incredulously high they nearly vanished into her hairline. “Well, did you hear what that V’ranu said when M’rany was explaining why we’re called Wildfire Class?”

“No; what?”

“‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!’”

“He is such a tail-fork,” Carleah said. “Doesn’t he know that C’mine and Darshanth nearly died in that fire?”

“That’s what M’rany said,” said Chenda, “and V’ranu said it was moronic that we’d named ourselves after something like that.”

“It’s a commemoration,” Carleah exclaimed.

“I know.”

“I heard that we’re not going to get to go to Little Madellon next sevenday like we were meant to,” said Adzai.

“Oh, that’s old news, Adzai,” Chenda told her. “You thought that right from the start, didn’t you, Carleah?”

Carleah nodded. “There’s no way they could let the Southerners out of Madellon proper.”

“But why can’t we go?” Adzai complained. “It’s not fair!”

“Because L’stev would either have to leave the Southerners unattended here, or let us go without him.”

“And Low-Brow couldn’t bear to let Berzunth out of his sight for half a minute,” said Chenda.

“I can’t see us getting back to Little Madellon until this whole thing with Southern’s blown over,” Carleah continued.

“I wish they’d just go home,” said Chenda. “They clearly don’t like it here, and Faranth knows we don’t like them.”

There came a hammering on the door they’d locked, and a muffled shout. “It’s occupied!” they chorused back, not for the first time.

“And you know the worst thing?” Chenda went on, stretching her legs out in the hot water. “They’re younger than us, but their dragons are older. So on the feeding grounds, ours keep giving way. How is that fair?”

They didn’t all give way, Carleah thought. The two queen riders had quickly discovered the necessity of keeping their dragons as separate as possible. L’stev had lectured Tarshe and Karika – extensively, it seemed – on the fact that while juvenile dragons weren’t capable of restraining themselves, juvenile dragonriders were, and that much seemed to have sunk in. The two stayed as far apart from each other as they could. It hadn’t improved Tarshe’s mood. Carleah had bruises from their last hand-to-hand session, when Tarshe had thrown her to the ground with much more speed and force than required. Tarshe had apologised. But it was just one more small proof of how the presence of the Southern weyrlings was making life miserable for all of them.

The initial breakfast spat might have been forgotten entirely, had the Southerners just been willing to talk. There’d been plenty of opportunity. They weren’t training together yet, but they slept in the same barracks, ate at the same table, and did the same chores. L’stev had always assigned groups rather than letting the class default to its natural cliques, so Carleah had shovelled dung and washed floors and changed glows with all nine Southern weyrlings. It hadn’t taken long for her to realise that none of them had any interest in being friends.

She’d tried every technique, every angle she knew, but the Southerners met her attempts at starting conversations with indifference, outright hostility, or total silence. Questioning them on the most innocent subjects drew brief and nonspecific answers at best, icy retorts at worst. She’d tried flirting with the two oldest boys, V’ranu and N’grier, to no effect. Even complimenting their dragons – the surest way to a rider’s good opinion that Carleah knew – provoked no reaction warmer than a shrug, as if to say well, of course our dragons are better than yours.

The banging on the door came again. “We’re still in here!” Chenda shouted back irritably.

“I’m going to get out,” Carleah decided. She stood up from the pool, stripping the water from her arms and legs with her hands. Then she stepped out, picking up the towel she’d left on the tiled ledge by the basins.

“And they’re always complaining,” Chenda continued. “Like there’s something wrong with Madellon. So Southern was the first Weyr in the south; so what?”

“So ungrateful,” Adzai agreed quickly.

“To be fair, Southern’s not like any other Weyr on Pern,” said Carleah.

“Stop making excuses for them, Carleah,” said Chenda.

“I’m not,” she said. “But they aren’t used to being in the mountains. The air’s thinner up here. Even I noticed that when I first came here, coming up from living at Kellad. And it’s colder than they’re used to.”

“Colder,” Chenda scoffed. “It’s been boiling!”

“Is that why they won’t strip off to wash their dragons?” asked Adzai.

“It’s probably at least as warm at Southern all Turn round as it is here now,” said Carleah.

“Wait till it’s winter,” said Chenda. “Then they’ll really have something to bleat about.”

“If they’re still here by then,” said Adzai. “Faranth, do you think they will be?”

“L’stev said we had to have them because their Weyrleader wasn’t being reasonable about the problem with between,” said Chenda. “So once we’ve figured that out…”

Carleah paused in the process of belting her tunic. “They don’t know what’s gone wrong with between, Chenda. They don’t have any idea why our dragons can’t do it properly. I don’t think they know what to do about it, either.”

“C’mine told you that?”

“He didn’t have to.”

“Haven’t you thought that maybe between will just –” Adzai made a vague hand gesture, “– get better?”

“And what if it doesn’t?” Carleah challenged her. “What if it can’t? What if our dragons can never go between?”

“But it’s not just ours,” said Chenda. “The Southern dragons can’t either.”

“But don’t you see that that’s even worse?” Carleah asked. “If ours can’t, and Southern’s can’t, and then the dragonets from Telgar can’t…if dragons Hatched from now on can’t go between, then…what then?”

The pounding on the bathing room door came yet again before Chenda or Adzai could answer. Carleah pushed her damp hair behind her ears, then unbolted and opened the door.

Outside, Jardesse had her fist raised to knock again. She stopped just in time. “Faranth, Carleah, I thought you’d all drowned in there!”

“We were just talking,” Carleah said, with a glance over her shoulder at where the other girls were still lolling in the hot water.

“You’ve got to come,” Jardesse said. “R’von and V’ranu are having a fight in the harness room!”

Carleah had never seen Chenda and Adzai get out of the bath so fast.

They raced to the scene, pulling on robes as they went. Half a dozen weyrlings – mostly male – of both Weyrs were blocking the doorway into the harness room. Carleah elbowed her way through them to see what was going on.

She took in the scene with a glance. R’von and V’ranu were circling each other, fists up. V’ranu’s nose streamed blood – Carleah felt a fierce rush of pleasure at that – but behind R’von, S’terlion was sitting on the ground, clutching his right hand to his chest, his face drained of colour.

“You shaffing Southern shitbag!” R’von shouted at V’ranu. “I’ll break your shaffing face for you!”

V’ranu wiped his nose with the back of his wrist, smearing gore. “One of your riders touches one of mine again, I’ll break his face!”

“You broke his shaffing arm!” R’von bellowed.

He sounded – and looked – so much like L’stev at that moment that Carleah was momentarily disconcerted. K’dam was standing beside her. “You have to break it up!” she hissed at him. “L’stev’s going to go spare!”

“I’m not breaking anything up,” said K’dam, with relish. “I want to see what happens!”

“Idiot!” Carleah exclaimed. Jagunth, what’s going on?

The queens have forbidden us to make a fuss, Jagunth reported, though her voice was intense with emotion.

That meant L’stev wouldn’t even know yet. Carleah agonised. She didn’t want to be the snitch who went running to the Weyrlingmaster. But no one else in the room was likely to report to Vanzanth, either – C’seon, Jardesse, W’lenze, three of the Southern boys. Adzai wouldn’t unless Chenda told her to, and Chenda’s face was nearly as gleeful as K’dam’s. All the Madellon weyrlings who would have intervened or told L’stev were still out at chores.

Carleah sidled around the edge of the room to the other side of where the two boys were fighting. She crouched beside S’terlion. “Are you all right?”

“My wrist,” S’terlion moaned. “I think it’s broken.”

“Let me see,” Carleah said. The wrist looked swollen, and there were clear, livid fingermarks on S’terlion’s fair skin. Carleah’s temper flared. For a moment she felt Jagunth echo it, and then the green dragon’s anger snuffed out again. If the queens were controlling the dragonets, then not even S’terlion’s distress would be tangible to Vanzanth. “Maybe it’s not broken,” she ventured. “What happened?”

“I was getting Nerbeth’s harness,” he whispered back. “He was waiting for me! V’ranu!”

“Waiting for you?”

“He said I shouldn’t interfere with Southern riders,” said S’terlion. He gulped, and Carleah realised he was only just holding back tears. “But I wasn’t interfering! They were! They were –”

R’von’s shout of pain and anger interrupted him. L’mern, the little Southern bronze rider, had dashed out of the cluster of weyrlings and kicked him in the back of the leg. R’von went hard to one knee, swearing.

“You little tail-fork!” K’dam bawled, lunging at L’mern.

The situation was spiralling rapidly out of control. Carleah took a deep breath. Jagunth, tell Vanzanth

I can’t!

Why not?

Berzunth says not to!

Between with Berzunth! The boys were all facing off now, wild-eyed and shouting. Shards!

And L’stev was abruptly there in the doorway. “What in the shaff do you think you’re doing?” he roared.

Everyone froze. The muffling influence on Jagunth abruptly lifted. S’terlion’s whimpers were suddenly very loud in the silence.

L’stev stalked into the harness room. Wildfires and Southerners shrank from him. His gaze took in V’ranu’s bloody nose and R’von’s scuffed knuckles, but he stepped past them both, and dropped ponderously to one knee beside S’terlion. “You all right, lad?”

“It’s his wrist,” Carleah said, when S’terlion couldn’t speak through his gasps of pain.

“V’ranu broke it!” said R’von. He’d regained his feet, and was glowering at the Southern brown rider.

L’stev touched S’terlion’s wrist gently. S’terlion moaned with pain. “Chenda. W’lenze. Get a Healer. Double time.” As the two weyrlings hurried to obey, L’stev’s head turned sharply. “Not another step!”

P’lau, one of the Southerners, had been edging towards the door. He stopped dead, his face betraying his dismay. There was no point in trying to sneak out, Carleah thought. L’stev would already have identified and catalogued everyone in the room. No one was getting away unscathed. She mentally reviewed her account of events. She hadn’t done anything wrong!

Vanzanth is very angry, said Jagunth, confirming Carleah’s fears.

L’stev patted S’terlion’s left shoulder, then rose slowly back to his feet. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and thrust it at V’ranu, whose nose was still dribbling blood. “Tip your head back. It’ll stop bleeding in a minute.”

“He punched me in the face,” said V’ranu, casting a rancorous glare at R’von.

L’stev looked at R’von. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” said R’von, without hesitation.

“And did you do this to S’terlion?” L’stev asked V’ranu.

“Yes,” V’ranu replied indistinctly, through the handkerchief.

L’stev’s expression, seldom happy, went even stormier, and Carleah quailed despite herself. The Weyrlingmaster’s anger was terrifying even to witness. “Did anyone else here strike another weyrling?”

Carleah glanced sidelong at L’mern. The Southern bronze rider looked defiantly around, as if to dare anyone else to grass on him. Then he stepped forward. “I did.”

L’stev stared at him. Carleah almost – almost – admired the boy’s guts. “Anyone else?”

No one else spoke.

“You and you,” said L’stev, jabbing his finger at V’ranu and L’mern. “Go and wait for me in my office. “R’von, stay here. The rest of you, get out of my sight. I’ll be having words with you later.”

The weyrlings couldn’t move quickly enough. Carleah straightened up, but not before she’d stroked S’terlion’s uninjured arm comfortingly. “It’s going to be all right, S’terli.”

“Out, Carleah,” L’stev said. “And no listening at the door.”

She felt herself colour. “Yes, Weyrlingmaster,” she said, and fled.

“Tarshe is in so much trouble,” Kessirke said to Carleah later, as they both oiled their dragonets down by the sandy lakeside.

Berzunth was sitting at the base of Vanzanth’s mossy crag, the subject of the old brown dragon’s most withering stare. She didn’t look remotely contrite. “At least Karika is, too,” Carleah said. “That almost makes it worthwhile.”

“Do you think L’stev will put them on midden duty?” asked Kessirke. “I mean, you can’t have queens transporting poo.”

“I don’t see why not,” said Carleah. “We’ve all done it. Shards. I don’t think Tarshe’s ever been on punishment duties before.”

“Maybe she’ll just have to – I don’t know – help S’terli with Nerbeth,” said Kessirke. “I mean, he’s not going to be able to wash her or anything for sevendays with his wrist broken.”

S’terlion had come back from the infirmary with his hand and forearm in plaster, still obviously shaken, but with the pain much reduced. He wouldn’t answer any of Carleah’s questions about what had prompted V’ranu’s attack, though. “I just can’t understand why anyone would go after S’terli,” she said. “I mean, S’terli! He’s the most unthreatening rider in the whole Weyr!”

“He’s just a bully, that V’ranu,” said Kessirke. “I don’t even think the other Southerners like him.”

“They do what he says, though,” said Carleah. “They’re scared of him.” She sighed. “I wish I’d seen R’von plant that one on his nose.”

“That would have been good,” Kessirke agreed. “Don’t you think R’von looks handsome when he’s angry?”

“I think he looks like L’stev when he’s angry,” Carleah said, with a laugh.

“Oh,” Kessirke said, looking horrified. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. Oh, yuck!”

“T’rello’s over there, if you want to wash the thought out of your mind,” Carleah suggested.

Kessirke ducked under Irdanth’s neck. T’rello was bathing Santinoth, the largest bronze at Madellon, on the other side of the lake. He’d stripped down to his undershorts, and his muscles rippled in the afternoon sunshine. “R’von’s cute, but T’rello…” She sighed.

Carleah did throw one good look in T’rello’s direction, just for reference. “He’s a career bronze rider, Kess,” she said. “He’ll be after Tarshe. You just wait.”

“But maybe –”

Kessirke was interrupted by the sound of running footsteps. A moment later J’kovu swerved past their two greens. “Hey!” he shouted as he ran. “Hey, the Southerners are leaving! They’re leaving!”

Carleah and Kessirke looked at each other as J’kovu ran on down the beach calling the news to the other Wildfire weyrlings. “Faranth!”

But the Southern weyrlings weren’t leaving. “They’re just moving out of the barracks,” C’mine told Carleah. He was supervising as the Southern weyrlings lugged their borrowed belongings out in carrysacks.

“You mean they’re moving into weyrs?” Carleah asked incredulously. “They’re not even twelve months old!”

“It’ll be better for everyone,” he told her. “You can’t tell me you won’t be happier with them out from under your feet.”

“But they get to move into their own weyrs? How is that fair? V’ranu attacked S’terlion!”

“The Weyrwoman and Weyrlingmaster had already agreed this,” said C’mine. “What happened this morning just confirmed it was the right thing to do.”

“Will we get to move out when our dragonets are twelve months, then?” she asked.

“That’s up to the Weyrlingmaster.”

Carleah knew that tone, the one that meant don’t count on it. “That’s not fair, C’mine!”

“You know as well as I do how L’stev loves hearing weyrlings say that, Leah.”

Carleah glared at him, exasperated. “Car. Leah.”

She didn’t exactly see what happened at the barracks door. Most of the Southerners had loaded their gear onto their dragonets and taken off for their new weyrs. T’gala and B’rode, the two youngest boys, were the last out. One minute they were walking through the big double doors, laden down with their stuff, and the next both weyrlings were sprawling on the ground with the contents of their bags strewn around them.

Some of the watching Wildfires actually laughed, and then K’dam, who wasn’t clever enough to know when to keep his mouth shut, said, “Hope you both have a nice trip.”

“Oh, Faranth,” C’mine muttered, and then raised his voice. “K’dam!”

K’dam held up his hands, a picture of fake innocence. “Nothing to do with me, sir!”

C’mine frowned, an expression Carleah had always found endearing rather than alarming. “Wildfires, you should all still be getting ready for inspection. Anyone who doesn’t have anything better to do than stand around can go and report to the Headwoman for extra duties.” As he crossed to where the two Southerners were picking themselves up, he looked back at Carleah. “Come and give these two a hand.”

She sighed. The Southerners were never gracious about being helped. Resigned to it, she strolled over to help T’gala pick up some of the clothes that had spilled out of his carrysack.

“I don’t need any help,” he insisted. “Get off my stuff!”

He made a grab for the items Carleah had gathered up. Carleah reflexively pulled her hand back out of his reach. “Faranth, I’m trying to be helpful,” she said. “Here, have your stupid stuff.”

She thrust the parcel of clothes back at him. T’gala fumbled at it, and the bundle disintegrated into its component parts, scattering socks and shirts and underclothes.

For an endless, frozen moment, Carleah stared at the monthly belt that had landed smack on top of T’gala’s feet.

T’gala snatched it up, crumpling it and shoving it back inside the carrysack, and Carleah transferred her astonished stare to T’gala’s face, searching for and seeing there what she’d never have thought to find without a prompt. “Faranth’s shards and shells, you’re –”

“Leah.” C’mine’s hand closed abruptly on her shoulder. “I need you to run up to L’stev’s office and let him know the Southerners are all out of the barracks.”

Carleah dragged her eyes away from a study of T’gala’s suddenly ashen face: the shape of the cheekbones, the delicate jaw, the long lashes under the brutally short haircut that all the Southern boys shared. “But –”

“Carleah,” C’mine said, and there was a totally unprecedented forcefulness in his voice. “This is important. Speak to no one on your way and wait for me there. Go now.”

Darshanth is leaning on me, Jagunth exclaimed, with the same mixture of surprise and affront that Carleah felt herself.

Carleah stole a final astonished look at T’gala, and then hastened towards the stairs up to L’stev’s weyr, her mind buzzing with questions.

L’stev was hunching over a big chart unrolled on his desk. “What?” he asked as she entered, and then cocked his head. “What’s this Darshanth says about – oh.” He was silent for a long moment, his eyes boring into hers. “Well. I might have known.”

“I don’t understand,” Carleah said, and then, quickly, “Am I in trouble?”

L’stev seemed to give that some thought. “No,” he said, at length. “Suppose not.” He looked up as C’mine came into the room. “Are they all settled?”

“All but T’gala,” C’mine said regretfully. “Darshanth’s keeping Heppeth calm.”

“This had to happen now?” L’stev complained. “Bad enough that the other one worked it out. Give it another sevenday and every dragonrider from the Peninsula to Benden will know.”

“It’s not Leah’s fault,” said C’mine, walking over to stand behind her.

As he ruffled her hair, in the way he’d been doing ever since she was a little girl, Carleah turned around to look at him. “Am I right?” she asked. She looked back at L’stev, glowering behind his desk. “T’gala’s a girl?”

L’stev grumbled something under his breath. “Yes.”

“But Heppeth’s blue.” Carleah looked to C’mine again for confirmation. “Heppeth is blue, isn’t he? Not some weird…bluey…green?”

“He’s definitely blue,” C’mine agreed.

“Blues don’t choose girls,” Carleah said. “Everyone knows that.”

“Everyone’s wrong,” said L’stev.

Carleah’s thoughts whirled. “But how?”

L’stev sighed. “Long story.”

“This is why we’re moving all the Southerners out of the barracks,” said C’mine. “T’gala’s been…unhappy…bunked in with the boys.”

“But why couldn’t she just move into our barracks?”

“For the same reason that I sent you up here as soon as I saw your face,” said C’mine. “She doesn’t want everyone to know.”

“But the other Southerners must know!”

“Of course they know,” said L’stev. “But they don’t want to tell the world that their precious Weyr turns out deviant blues who choose girls for their riders.”

“Deviant?” Carleah echoed.

“Male dragon, female rider,” said L’stev. “It’s not natural, is it?”

His tone was sarcastic, but Carleah still objected to it. “My da was a male rider with a female dragon,” she said hotly. “And there was nothing deviant about him or Indioth!”

“No one’s saying there is,” L’stev said. He glanced at C’mine as he spoke. “Not here, anyway. Southern isn’t known for its tolerance of anything new or unusual. T’gala hasn’t been treated kindly there.”

“Those shaffing Southern tail-forks!”

“Language,” C’mine told her.

“You’ve now introduced another level of complication,” said L’stev, stabbing a finger at her. “The only way a weyrling can keep a secret is if he’s dead. Now there’s two of you. At this rate I’m going to run out of places to hide the bodies.”

“Who else knows?” asked Carleah.

L’stev heaved a great irritated sigh. “S’terlion.”

Carleah blinked. “Is that why V’ranu attacked him?”

L’stev and C’mine exchanged a look. “No sharding flies on this one, are there?” L’stev said disgustedly.

“There aren’t,” C’mine agreed.

“The other Southern lads have been pretty foul to T’gala in the barracks,” said L’stev. “Last night, S’terlion figured out why.” He snorted. “If you put any stock in V’ranu’s version of events, S’terlion threatened T’gala in the harness room this morning, and that’s why V’ranu went for him.”

“S’terlion wouldn’t threaten anyone!”

“No,” said L’stev. “And that’s why I’m inclined to believe his account. He said the Southern boys were being cruel to T’gala in the harness room this morning and he asked them to stop.” He shrugged. “You were there for the rest.”

“Poor S’terli,” said Carleah. “He was only trying to help.”

“If it makes you feel any more kindly towards T’gala, she’s very upset that he got hurt,” said L’stev. “She came to the infirmary to see him while the Healers were setting his wrist. Doubt she’s ever had anyone stick up for her before.”

“A female blue rider,” Carleah said. The idea was quite thrilling. She looked up. “And no one else knows? Apart from S’terli and me?”

“And the Weyrwoman,” said L’stev. “But that’s where it ends. And that’s the way I want to keep it, which means you keeping your mouth shut.”

“I can keep a secret,” Carleah said indignantly.

“You need to keep it secret that you even have a secret, Leah,” C’mine told her. “You’re just like…like your dad. I always knew when he was sitting on a juicy bit of gossip and bursting to tell someone.”

Carleah tried to find a way to be offended by that, but any comparison to her da could only be a compliment. “I won’t tell anyone,” she vowed. “I swear. I won’t even look at her – him – funny.”

“And Jagunth?”

“She won’t gossip,” Carleah said. “Anyway, I don’t think the dragons even notice most of the time. They only talk about so-and-so’s rider, not he or she.”

L’stev frowned more, the lines of his face compressing into a scowly squiggle. “Don’t discuss it with S’terlion,” he told her. “Or approach T’gala about it. We’ll make it clear to her that you’ve agreed to hold your tongue.” He squinted at the light coming from outside. “Evening inspection’s in less than an hour. Best you go.”

“Him,” Carleah corrected him piously, as she turned to leave.

“What?”

“T’gala’s a him, remember?”

“Faranth save me from over-clever weyrlings,” L’stev growled. “Now, get out of my sight.”

Chapter twenty-three: T’kamen

There has never been equality in the Weyr, and there will never be equality in the Weyr. These are facts of human, as well as draconic, nature.

But some forms of inequality are more just – more tolerable, to more people –

than others.

There are more of us than them.

– Excerpt from a speech by Wingsecond S’leondes

26.04.22 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

“What do you mean, Madellon doesn’t have a Weyrleader?” T’kamen asked.

“Well, it doesn’t,” said M’ric. “Hasn’t for Turns. Not since the very beginning of the Pass.”

“Then who’s in charge?”

M’ric grinned. “The Weyrleaders.”

T’kamen gave him a hard look. “Talk sense, or don’t talk at all.”

“Fine,” said M’ric, but he still looked like he was enjoying himself far too much. “The Weyrleaders are Weyrwoman Dalka; R’lony, the Weyrmarshal; and Weyrcommander S’leondes.”

“Then there are two Weyrleaders?”

“Kind of. The Commander leads Tactical. The fighting Wings. R’lony’s just in charge of Strategic, so the Seventh Flight and a few other riders.”

“The Seventh Flight,” T’kamen repeated.

“Bronzes, browns, a couple of fat blues,” said M’ric. “All the ones too slow to fight.”

T’kamen stopped so abruptly that he nearly tripped over his own walking cane, and M’ric carried on several paces before he noticed he’d halted. “Bronzes and browns don’t fight Thread?”

“Of course not,” said M’ric. “They’re too big and they can’t turn fast enough.” He looked askance at T’kamen. “You hadn’t figured that out?”

T’kamen realised that he should have. He’d noticed that blues and greens always flew separately from browns and bronzes on their way in and out of Madellon, but he’d assumed that was to do with relative speeds on long straight flights. “Then who’s leading the fighting Wings?”

“The Commander and his Flightleaders,” said M’ric.

“And they’re…”

“Blue and green riders, yes. Keep up, T’kamen.”

T’kamen was too thrown by the revelation to pull M’ric up for attitude. He could feel Epherineth turning the alien concepts over in his mind, too. Without between, big dragons would be very vulnerable to Thread, the bronze said at last. The blues and greens of this time are faster and more agile than any dragons I’ve ever seen.

T’kamen thought about the weyrling drills he’d watched from his ledge, young dragons practising the sort of breakneck acrobatics that would get them suspended in the Interval: dead stops, barrel rolls, breakneck dives and plunges. “Who anchors the formations?”

“The bigger blues,” said M’ric. “But they have to be able to break off and evade, too. There’s no room in the Wings for a dragon who can’t dodge.”

“What about Trebruth?” T’kamen asked. “He must be the smallest brown here.”

“He is the smallest brown,” M’ric said, with pride. “He’s going to be the first fighting brown in over twenty Turns."

“But Epherineth won’t be able to fight,” said T’kamen.

“Well, obviously,” said M’ric. “He’s bigger than Levierth. He wouldn’t last two minutes.”

Of all the Passes in history, we have to come to the one where we can’t fight Thread. T’kamen kept the thought between himself and Epherineth. “So what will we be doing?”

“You’ll be assigned to the Seventh,” said M’ric. “I mean, I still have to take you to see the Commander first, but it’s a formality. He’ll give you to R’lony.”

“Tell me about them,” said T’kamen. “The Commander. S’leondes? And R’lony.”

“R’lony’s Dalka’s weyrmate,” said M’ric. “He used to be Weyrleader, Turns ago, and he’s still bitter that he isn’t any more.”

“And S’leondes?”

“The Commander,” said M’ric. “You always call him the Commander.” He straightened his shoulders as he spoke. “He changed everything in the early Pass, when everything was going to shit because the Weyrs hadn’t figured out how to fight Thread without between. He was seventeen Turns old. He’d only been out of the Barracks a Turn.”

“Precocious,” said T’kamen.

“If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t even be here,” M’ric said. “Pern would be nothing but Thread by now and everyone would have starved to death.”

T’kamen tried not to smile at M’ric’s vehemence. “And his dragon?”

“Karzith. He’s blue.”

“The Commander doesn’t sound like any blue rider I’ve ever known.”

“Then you haven’t known any proper blue riders,” said M’ric. “He’s the best rider in the Weyr. He’s the best rider on Pern.”

“You’re doing him a disservice, M’ric. No one could possibly live up to that kind of hyperbole.”

“It’s not hyperbole,” M’ric insisted. “You’ll see.”

“If you say so.”

“You’ll see.” Then, as they came to a stone bridge that spanned one of the Bowl’s new streams, M’ric suddenly caught T’kamen’s arm. “Wait.”

“Why?” T’kamen asked

Two green riders were approaching the bridge from the other direction. “We give way to fighting riders,” M’ric said. He straightened slightly as the two young men, neither much older than M’ric himself, crossed the bridge. “Green riders.”

They ignored him, and for a moment it seemed as if they would ignore T’kamen, too. Then the taller of the pair paused, looking hard at him. “Hey, you’re that bronze’s rider, aren’t you?”

T’kamen didn’t need to glance at M’ric to sense how the weyrling was willing him to respond respectfully. He shifted his weight more comfortably onto his good leg, then extended his right hand towards the green rider. “T’kamen, bronze Epherineth’s rider.”

The green rider looked at his proffered hand as if amazed. Then he spoke to his companion. “Can you believe this, K’bard? This piece of northern shit thinks I’ll take his hand?”

“T’kamen’s not a northerner, C’don,” M’ric said quickly.

“Don’t talk back to me, weyrling,” said C’don. “I’ll have you –”

“No, he’s right, C’don,” K’bard said. “They said something about it at Wing muster this morning.”

C’don looked disappointed. “Oh. I missed muster. Handrinth’s flight, you know.”

“I noticed,” said K’bard. “Anyway, it seems this guy really is some old Weyrleader of Madellon from, like, five hundred Turns ago.”

“Five hundred Turns?” C’don asked incredulously.

T’kamen had lowered his hand, taken aback by the exchange. “Only a hundred and twenty-five or so.”

“A hundred and twenty-five,” said C’don. He looked him up and down scathingly. “Well, he’s still a bronze rider. I’m not shaking his hand.” He pointed a finger at M’ric. “And you should watch your mouth. Come on, K’bard.”

As the two riders moved off without a backward glance, T’kamen looked at M’ric. “What in the Void was that?”

“Ignore them, they’re idiots,” M’ric said. “C’don’s always had it in for me.”

“Does he have it in for bronze riders he’s never met, too?”

“Oh, you know what green riders are like,” M’ric said. “Come on.”

T’kamen resumed following him, though he was still perplexed. The previous evening, Dalka had asked him to stay in his weyr for just a little longer, until confirmation of his identity could be communicated around the Weyr. “I don’t want you being abused any more than you deserve,” she’d said, so aridly that T’kamen had assumed she was being ironic.

“What about M’ric?” he’d asked. “Is he un-grounded?”

“Yes.” Dalka’s expression had been coolly amused. “The Weyrlingmaster will be thrilled.”

The events of the previous day still seemed like a fever-dream, nightmarish and hopeful by turns, but the conspicuous absence of Recranth and Salionth from their guard post below Epherineth’s ledge that morning had been a tremendous relief. T’kamen hadn’t realised how much he’d come to loathe the sight of the two Pass bronzes, although some of that antipathy was probably Epherineth’s. He never had liked other bronzes very much. Are the other dragons letting you in now?

Slowly. A little. I’m still an outsider.

This was your Weyr before it was theirs, Epherineth.

I know.

T’kamen craved the society of his peers nearly as much as Epherineth did, but he was grateful enough for Dalka’s intervention on his behalf to respect her wishes. He’d shaved and dressed carefully, intending to make the best possible impression, and then paced his weyr through the crawling hours of forenoon until M’ric had arrived with orders that he report to Madellon’s leaders.

Just being allowed to walk the Bowl was a pleasure, although less so with his still-fragile leg than would otherwise have been the case. “Slow down a bit,” he told M’ric, as the boy’s long legs began to outpace him. “I don’t want to overdo it and end up weyr-bound for another month.”

M’ric checked his stride, fractionally. “I just don’t want you to be late.”

“Your Weyrleaders have had a month to meet me,” said T’kamen. “They can wait another ten minutes.” He squinted across the Bowl, then pointed towards the structures built almost totally out of glass. “Tell me about those.”

“The glassfarms?”

“Glassfarms.” The name made sense. “They’re Thread-proof?”

“Yes. Well. Mostly. I mean, if one of them took a direct hit from a Thread-bomb, it would probably break the glass, but that’s never happened as far as I know.”

“A Thread-bomb?”

“You know – well, you don’t know, of course – but it’s when a load of Thread gets wrapped around itself in a big dense knot.” M’ric put his two fists together to demonstrate. “So it falls really fast, and then when it hits something…” He opened his fists abruptly, spreading his hands to mime the ball of Thread bursting.

T’kamen grimaced at the thought. “I’ve never seen a building made out of glass before,” he said. “I don’t think they’d invented anything strong enough to make big spans like those in the Interval. Smaller panes, and coloured glass for decoration, but nothing you’d want as your only barrier against Thread.”

“No one’s supposed to take shelter in the glassfarms when Fall’s over the Weyr,” said M’ric.

His tone made T’kamen smile. “But you have?” At the brown rider’s look, he added, “I was a weyrling once, too, M’ric.”

M’ric shrugged. “All the new weyrlings dare each other to do it when they’re stuck in the Weyr during Fall. It’s kind of exciting, watching the Wings fight through the glass. Scary, but exciting. Though if the Weyrlingmaster catches you doing it, he’ll tear you up worse than Thread."

As they crossed the Bowl, M’ric described each of the unfamiliar buildings. “Weyrling barracks,” he said. “There, there, and there. You move barracks as your dragonets grow, so you don’t stay in one place any longer than about six months.” He pointed to a large, low building. “Stock barn, stables; all that Beastcrafty stuff.” T’kamen tried not to let the name of the craft make him flinch. “Speakers’ platform there,” M’ric went on, as they passed something like a permanent Harper stage, a dais facing a semicircle of stone benches. “And this is Command.”

Command was the imposing slate-roofed stone building that dominated the western end of the Bowl. It rose three storeys high, with smaller two-storey wings making three sides of a square. The flat roof of each wing was obviously intended for dragons to be able to land, drop off passengers, and take off again. Bronze shutters were folded back from rows of wide windows that spoke again to the advances in glass-making that the Pass enjoyed. The building fronted onto a broad paved terrace that overlooked the largest of the weyrling training grounds. “When was this built?” T’kamen asked.

“Back end of the Interval, I think,” said M’ric. “Before the Weyr split into Tactical and Strategic, anyway. This is where are the important decisions are made.” He pointed to the top floor. “The Commander’s office is up there, with the queen riders and the Council chamber. Middle floor is all Wingleaders, and the ground floor has offices for the Strategic staff, the big reception room for when Lords Holder visit, and the kitchens and storerooms.”

The fact that the Marshal and his officers shared a floor with the service areas gave T’kamen an uneasy feeling as M’ric led the way towards Command’s double doors. He slowed his limping pace. “M’ric…”

“Don’t hesitate now, for Faranth’s sake,” M’ric said. “The Commander can see us from his office, you know. You don’t want to look like you’re messing around out here when he’s waiting for you!”

T’kamen sighed and followed him in.

The girl who met them in the foyer of Command was even younger than M’ric – fifteen, perhaps sixteen Turns, T’kamen thought. She wore the green and indigo rank cords of a Madellon weyrling, but with an extra knot on the trailing end that T’kamen didn’t recognise. “Bronze rider T’kamen,” she said, with a crispness that belied her tender Turns. “I’m to escort you to Commander S’leondes. Please follow me.”

“I can take him to the Commander’s office, Fraza,” said M’ric.

The green rider let her eyes alight upon him for the merest fraction of an instant. “I have my orders, weyrling.”

“And I have mine,” said M’ric. “T’kamen’s not going anywhere without me.”

“The Commander instructed me to bring the bronze rider to him,” said Fraza. “He didn’t say anything about you.”

“Then he didn’t say I couldn’t come along too,” said M’ric.

Fraza narrowed her eyes at him, as if trying to determine if it was worth arguing. Evidently she decided it wasn’t. “Very well,” she said, turning smartly on her heel, the ruthlessly straight and neat braid of her dark red hair whipping behind her. “Follow me.”

“A friend?” T’kamen asked M’ric quietly, as they followed the girl up a flight of stairs.

“Her?” M’ric snorted. “Hardly.”

Stairs still weren’t easy for T’kamen, and he sensed Fraza’s impatience with his slow progress as she stopped on the landings of each floor and looked sternly down at his careful climb. M’ric, curiously, had lost his urgency, instead walking solicitously at T’kamen’s elbow, ready to catch him if he stumbled. T’kamen couldn’t decide if he found that reassuring or patronising.

“This way,” said Fraza, when they reached the second landing.

She led them through a small anteroom containing a desk and chair to an ornate set of double doors that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Lord Holder’s apartments. The polished brass plate beside the left-hand door bore an engraved inscription:

S’leondes

Weyrcommander

Fraza knocked, waited a breath, then briskly turned the carved bronze doorknob.

“…and if you can be sure your offside flank can support…” The speaker broke off as they entered. He was a big man, in height and in muscle, black-haired and black-bearded. He and half a dozen others were poring over a broad table in the centre of the room. “Fraza. Report.”

“This is bronze rider T’kamen, Commander,” Fraza replied. “And weyrling M’ric.”

“Thank you, Fraza.” S’leondes pointed at a couple of chairs along the wall. “Wait there while we finish this.” Then he turned back to the table and the other dragonriders. “Your offside, Querenne. Is it still strong enough to support this kind of assault, or do you need another anchor?”

T’kamen was grateful to sit down – the stairs had tired his leg. M’ric sat beside him, but Fraza removed herself to the other side of the door, where she stood at attention, her eyes fixed on the Commander.

“So this is the famous S’leondes?” T’kamen asked M’ric quietly.

“Ssshh!” M’ric hissed. “I told you, you always call him the Commander!”

“I’ll call him what I sharding well like, M’ric.”

“It makes me look bad if you’re rude to him,” M’ric said. “Faranth, haven’t you done my reputation enough damage?”

“Fine,” T’kamen said shortly.

He let his eyes roam over the room and its occupants, taking it in. The wide windows that dominated one wall looked straight down the Bowl. S’leondes would have a superb view of the training grounds and a direct line of sight to the watchdragon from this vantage. Two of the other walls were painted black and covered in chalked names and assignments: Madellon’s Wing rosters. T’kamen would have found the resemblance to the black-painted wall in his own office comfortingly familiar, except that Pass Madellon’s Wing list was almost three times the size of his own. He counted six Flights, eighteen Wings, a fighting complement close to six hundred. That would exclude the browns and bronzes, he reminded himself, so Madellon was probably flying at its intended Pass population of seven hundred dragonpairs. He found a certain satisfaction in that small evidence that, whatever else had gone wrong in the Interval, at least his Weyr was at strength.

He lifted his head slightly to try and get a better look at the table around which S’leondes and the other riders were standing. He could see several sets of glass shelves of different heights, each supporting a number of small models of dragons. It took him a moment, and the sight of S’leondes and some of the other riders moving this shelf or that around the table, to realise what they were doing. The table’s surface must be a map of terrain, the models indicative of fighting Wings at different elevations. He was as impressed by the innovation as he was fascinated to see it in action. It took him some effort to resist getting up for a clearer view.

He satisfied himself with studying the riders around the table instead. There were four other men besides S’leondes, and two women. They were blue and green riders, all of them, from the colours in their shoulder-knots – and ranking ones, from the tailed and tasselled complexity of the braiding. The eldest might have been forty, the youngest in their mid-twenties. S’leondes himself looked to have no more than a few Turns’ seniority over any of them, though the light glinted off silver hairs in his beard and at his temples. If these were the senior fighting riders of the Weyr, T’kamen thought, they were much younger than he’d have assumed. Some of them would barely have been weaned when the Pass began.

“Are these Wingleaders?” he asked M’ric quietly.

“Not just Wingleaders,” said M’ric. “Flightleaders. These are the most important riders in the Weyr.” He shifted in his seat, clearly excited. “I can’t believe they’re actually letting us sit in on a Tactical briefing!”

“This isn’t going to give us enough cover from the south,” one of the blue riders, a stocky man with shaggy blond hair, was saying. “We flew exactly this formation last Fall, and I swear, if we’d had to go another half hour with the Fifth –” he glared at one of the female green riders, “– letting through all that crap from above, I’d have lost two or three more dragonpairs.”

“Don’t blame the Fifth, G’sol,” said the green rider. “We were flying our asses off trying to thin out those tangles. I’d be happy to trade levels with you if you think the Third could do a better job –”

“The Third is doing the best it can!” G’sol snapped.

“Enough, G’sol, Jweta,” S’leondes interjected, as the two riders squared off. “G’sol, I was sure you knew what you were taking on with the Third when I made you Flightleader. Have I asked too much from you? Do you need more help?”

“No, Commander,” said G’sol, without hesitation. “I can rally the Third. If we just had a few more fast blues to replace the ones we’ve lost these last two months…”

“A fast blue would be wasted on the Third,” one of the other green riders muttered.

“Speak up, M’redd,” said S’leondes. “I didn’t quite hear that.”

M’redd looked discomfited. “It was nothing, Commander.”

“You can speak ill of the Third when the Sixth makes it through a Fall unscathed,” S’leondes told him. “Look to your own Flight.”

“Yes, sir,” M’redd said, bowing his head contritely.

“If you believe that fast blues will solve the Third’s problems, G’sol, then so be it,” said S’leondes. He nodded to each of the other Flightleaders. “I want each of you to nominate a good blue from your Flight. I’ll select three of them to move to the Third, one for each Wing. Those of you who lose a blue in the transfer can have first pick of the next group of weyrlings to replace them.”

The Flightleaders nodded, some more enthusiastically than others – but none objected. T’kamen couldn’t see how they could. S’leondes’ solution seemed both reasonable and fair. The way he allowed his Flightleaders some latitude, but reined them in when their disagreements became personal, was both deft and admirable. Blue and green riders or not, Madellon’s fighting Flightleaders were clearly men and women with strong opinions about how their Wings should be deployed – but all of them submitted to the Commander’s authority. That was really the baffling part. S’leondes was clearly a natural leader: compelling, charismatic, and competent. Why hadn’t he Impressed a bronze? T’kamen had nothing against blue riders, but he hadn’t known many whom he thought would make good Weyrleaders. S’leondes didn’t seem like the sort a typical mild-mannered blue would choose.

By the time the Commander and his Flightleaders concluded their meeting, T’kamen was full of questions, and itching to study the map table. His own theoretical forays into inventing and modelling formations had instilled him with a keen interest in Thread-fighting tactics that had no outlet in the Interval. Even if Epherineth was too big to fight in this between-less Pass, the idea of seeing Madellon’s Wings meeting Fall was a stirring prospect.

M’ric jumped up beside him as the Flightleaders began to leave. T’kamen followed his lead, wondering if he should introduce himself. The encounter with the pair of green riders outside had made him wary. But while each of the senior riders looked hard at him as they passed – with varying amounts of curiosity – none of them stopped to speak to him. T’kamen wondered if that was out of respect to him, or to S’leondes. The latter, he thought wryly.

The Commander was still standing at the map table, his hands planted far apart on its edge, shoulders squared, as he stared down at the modelled Wings and Flights of Madellon. As the last Flightleader left, he looked up from his preoccupation. “Fraza, would you wait outside?” he asked the green weyrling. “M’ric. You too.”

“Commander, sir,” Fraza answered promptly.

“Yes, sir,” M’ric added. He sounded marginally less crestfallen than T’kamen would have expected.

As the door closed behind the two weyrlings, S’leondes stepped around the table to meet T’kamen. He was even bigger and more impressive at close quarters than he had been from across the room, more than half a head taller than T’kamen, and two hands broader across the shoulders. He was a striking fellow – handsome, T’kamen supposed – made more striking by unusual gold-flecked brown eyes. That curiously tawny gaze, somehow reminiscent of an agitated dragon’s orange-eyed stare, fixed upon T’kamen. He raised his head slightly to meet it. Long moments passed as they regarded each other, silent and – out of mutual stubbornness, it seemed – unblinking.

He is only a blue rider, Epherineth observed.

The observation didn’t make T’kamen blink, but it did compel the corner of his mouth to twitch.

The lapse clearly wasn’t lost on S’leondes. The Commander’s eyes narrowed. “Bronze rider T’kamen,” he said.

The omission of T’kamen’s title could only have been deliberate. He considered repaying it in kind, but sense got the better of his annoyance. “Commander S’leondes.”

“Your dragon cannot go between.” S’leondes spoke bluntly. “Is that correct?”

T’kamen had at least expected to be questioned about that. “It would seem so,” he said cautiously.

“What does that mean?” S’leondes asked.

“Something seems to have affected his ability to see his way through between,” T’kamen said. “He won’t risk going in if he can’t see how he’s going to get out again.”

“And you cannot compel him to try?”

“I wouldn’t if I could,” T’kamen said. “Epherineth’s the expert when it comes to between. If he thinks it’s unsafe, I’m not going to overrule him.”

“Yet you came between from the Seventh Interval,” said S’leondes. “A time when dragons went between freely.”

“Something had started to go wrong just before I left,” said T’kamen. “My first weyrlings had just begun their between training. Half of them died in the attempt. The other half wouldn’t try.”

“But the adults were unaffected?” asked S’leondes.

“So it seemed. I don’t know. I was trying to figure out what was happening when I ended up…here.”

He didn’t want to go into the details of how his slip through time had occurred; fortunately, it seemed that S’leondes wasn’t interested. “Then your arrival in the Pass was, what, an accident?” the Commander asked. “An anomaly?”

T’kamen kept his tone neutral. “Most likely.”

“And you’re genuinely as incapable of going between safely now as any Pass rider?”

S’leondes’ question had an incredulous ring that T’kamen didn’t like. He decided to confront the barely-veiled accusation directly. “We didn’t stage yesterday’s demonstration,” he said. He wouldn’t call it a failure. “Why would we? If Epherineth could still go between we’d only be one solid visual away from getting back to the Interval where we belong.”

“Where you belong,” S’leondes repeated. He said nothing for a long moment, his eyes boring into T’kamen’s, as though he could divine the truth for himself if he only looked hard enough.

“I didn’t choose to come here, S’leondes,” said T’kamen. “I left behind a Weyr and a Weyrwoman of my own. All I’ve thought about for the last month is getting back to them. If we could have gone between yesterday, we would have. We couldn’t. We didn’t. I don’t know if we ever will.”

At last, S’leondes nodded. “I believe you.”

“I have no designs on your Weyr, S’leondes,” T’kamen said. “I don’t want to interfere. I’ve seen how everything has changed since my time. This isn’t my Madellon.”

The Commander nodded again, mollified. “I’m glad you appreciate that.”

“But…”

“But?”

T’kamen stole a glance sideways at the map table. “If I am trapped here – if there’s no way for me to get back – then I’d like to be useful.”

S’leondes regarded him evenly. “Useful?”

“I don’t have combat experience, but I did study the histories. I led flaming drills. I even developed some patterns of my own –”

“You led flaming drills,” said S’leondes.

“I know it’s no substitute for actual experience,” T’kamen went on, gamely. “But if Epherineth and I can’t fight, then at least we can help.”

“Stop,” said S’leondes.

There was enough raw authority in his voice that T’kamen did.

The Commander’s face hardly moved as he stared at him. For four long breaths, only the slightest flare of his nostrils escaped his control. “I’d nearly forgotten,” he said, at last. “I thought the days of bronze riders patronising me were a thing of the past.”

“I didn’t –”

“But then that describes you, doesn’t it?” S’leondes went on. “A thing of the past.” He took a deliberate half step towards T’kamen, closing the space between them. His big frame was angled to intimidate, but T’kamen wouldn’t cede ground. “Who do you think you are, that you’d condescend to offer help to me? Do you think anyone cares that you played at being a dragonrider when Pern’s skies were clear? Do you think the colour of your dragon’s hide still entitles you to power and privilege? Do you think that the histories and the drills and the made-up patterns of a man who’s never risked himself in live Fall mean anything to anyone?”

Too late, T’kamen realised how his offer must have sounded; too late, he realised how catastrophically he’d failed to grasp how deeply the changes of this time ran; too late, he realised how he’d blown his chance to make a good impression on this most powerful rider of Pass Madellon. He cast about desperately for a way to retrieve things.

Too late.

“What you once were, you no longer are,” said S’leondes. He hadn’t yet raised his voice. It made it even worse. “Now you’re just another rider with a dragon too big to fight. You call yourself a Weyrleader. It means nothing. You mean nothing. You’re a relic of an era that no longer exists, and I won’t allow your anachronistic sense of self-importance to be indulged.” Then he did raise his voice. “Fraza!”

The door flew open – too promptly – and Fraza appeared as though from between. “Yes, Commander?”

“Escort this bronze rider to the Marshal,” S’leondes told her. “I’m releasing him to the Strategic branch.”

T’kamen was frozen in place, gripped not only by his own almost paralysing fury and outrage – but by Epherineth’s. He could feel his lips curling back from his teeth, but he couldn’t be certain if the snarl was his or his dragon’s. Red rage raced through his veins, pumped by his pounding heart, filling his head with fire and his eyes with crimson.

Only the urgent contact of a hand on his arm – a wing across Epherineth’s neck – stayed the explosion that seemed the only possible outcome of that pent-up wrath. “T’kamen!” M’ric hissed, with a yank that upset T’kamen’s unsteady balance. He staggered, his cane poorly placed to support him, and M’ric shoved a shoulder under his arm. “Come on!”

S’leondes had already turned away from them. The Commander’s disinterest enraged T’kamen nearly as much as the barrage of slights had, but M’ric was already hauling him out, and for all T’kamen’s angry energy, the boy was strong.

It was Fraza who slammed the office door. She stared at T’kamen, wide-eyed, for a moment, and then seemed to recall her studied composure. “If you’ll come this way…”

“Just leave it, Fraza!” M’ric told her. “I’ll take him from here!”

“But the Commander told me –”

“To escort T’kamen to R’lony,” M’ric said. “So you delegated the escort to me.” He threw an exaggerated salute. “Yes sir, whatever you say sir!”

“What in the Void just happened?” T’kamen asked, as M’ric heaved him towards the stairs. “What in the shaffing Void…?”

“Calm down!” M’ric told him. “You have to calm down. Faranth, I really thought you were going to go for the Commander then! What the shaff were you thinking?”

“Go for him?” T’kamen repeated. “Did you hear what he said?”

“Not really,” said M’ric. “We couldn’t hear much through the door. Why, what did he say?”

Epherineth’s anger was already bleeding away, and some of T’kamen’s with it. He shrugged M’ric off, gripping his cane more determinedly, but S’leondes’ unexpected, unprovoked attack – spoken so evenly and calmly – kept repeating in his head. It means nothing. You mean nothing. He’d been disrespected before, as dragonrider and civilian, but never with such casual contempt from a complete stranger. “I didn’t expect deference for being a Weyrleader of Madellon, but I didn’t expect to be insulted for it, either.”

“You can’t take it personally, T’kamen,” M’ric said.

T’kamen looked at him disbelievingly. “How else am I meant to take it?”

“The Commander doesn’t have much time for big dragons or riders who can’t fight. You’re a bronze rider, and Epherineth’s huge, and that wouldn’t have mattered if you’d been able to go between, but…”

“But we can’t,” T’kamen finished for him. “That’s it? That’s why he just ripped into me? Because he’s disappointed Epherineth can’t go between? No. That wasn’t all. That was personal.”

“You have to look at it from where he’s standing,” said M’ric. “A bronze rider from the past who might have been able to show dragons how to go between again is one thing. A bronze rider from the past who can’t is…just another bronze rider.”

“Madellon’s scarcely overpopulated with bronzes,” T’kamen said, irritated anew by the implied insult to Epherineth’s colour.

“Most people consider that to be a good thing,” said M’ric. “Look. I have to take you to R’lony before Fraza gets in trouble. Will you calm down? You don’t want to make a bad first impression if the Commander’s officially released you to Strategic.”

“Should I brace myself for a fresh round of insults?” T’kamen asked.

“From R’lony? Probably not. He’s a tail-fork, but he doesn’t have a problem with bronze riders.”

Still, T’kamen seethed all the way down the stairs of Command. It’s not your fault that you can’t go between, he told Epherineth. And you deserve respect, between or not. You’re Shimpath’s mate and Berzunth’s father. That shaffing blue rider probably has you to thank for his dragon being born in the first place!

On the ground floor, M’ric led the way past a succession of rooms much smaller than the Commander’s sprawling office, if the space between doors was any indication. There were no brass nameplates; instead, slates hung by each door, chalked with unfamiliar names and unfamiliar ranks. They passed Crewleader Ch’fil and Watchleader G’bral, and then M’ric stopped at another antechamber like the one preceding the Commander’s, though smaller.

The burly young man sitting at the desk looked up. “All right, M’ric.” He nodded to T’kamen. “Bronze rider.”

“B’nam,” M’ric replied, neither deferent nor scornful. An equal, then, T’kamen thought, looking at B’nam’s shoulder-cords. He was another brown rider, and another weyrling but, like Fraza, he had an extra knot on the trailing end that M’ric lacked. M’ric nodded towards the inner door. “Is he ready for us?”

“Has been for a while,” said B’nam. “We didn’t think you’d be so long with the Commander.”

“We sat in on the end of the Tactical briefing,” said M’ric, with just the slightest hint of a preen.

“Uh huh.” B’nam didn’t sound sceptical so much as unimpressed. “Well, you can go in. The Marshal’s waiting.”

T’kamen let M’ric precede him inside. The room they entered was more modest than S’leondes’, less well-lit and with smaller windows, but still larger and lighter than the office off the Weyrleader’s weyr in the Interval. There was no map table, but one wall was dominated by a large painted chart of southern Pern, banded with chalk-marked diagonal stripes that could only be the footprints of Threadfalls, each one colour-coded and annotated with dates and names and notes.

“Sir, this is T’kamen, Epherineth’s rider,” M’ric said to the man sitting behind the desk at the windowed end of the room. “T’kamen: Weyrmarshal R’lony, Geninth’s rider.”

The Marshal was a substantial man of perhaps fifty Turns with big shoulders, iron-grey hair and a close-cropped beard to match, and deep-sunk eyes that raked T’kamen briefly before settling on M’ric. “Out, weyrling,” he said, with a jerk of his chin.

“Yes, Marshal,” M’ric said with a sigh, throwing T’kamen an aggrieved look before withdrawing from the room and closing the door behind him.

R’lony pushed away a document he’d been studying, then rose stiffly to his feet. “Take a seat, if you like,” he said, gesturing at one of the chairs before his desk.

“Thank you, but I’ll stand,” said T’kamen, crossing both hands on the hilt of his cane. R’lony’s shoulder-knots distracted him. “Weyrmarshal R’lony,” he added.

“T’kamen,” R’lony replied. He raised a heavy eyebrow just slightly, adding, “I’m at a loss for the appropriate title, so you’ll forgive my familiarity.”

“Four sevendays ago it would have been Weyrleader,” T’kamen said. “Four sevendays and a hundred and twenty-six Turns.”

R’lony made a short sound in the back of his throat, lowering himself back into the seat behind his desk. “You’ll find that honorific has lost something of its weight in the intervening decades.”

“So I’ve just learned,” said T’kamen. He looked, more pointedly, at R’lony’s rank cords. “You’re a brown rider.”

“And that surprises you,” said R’lony. “Well, I suppose it would.”

“M’ric said that you’re the Weyrwoman’s weyrmate,” said T’kamen, leaning on his cane. “So is Geninth…?”

“Donauth’s mate?” R’lony tipped his head up, a glimmer of satisfaction in his pale blue eyes. “Yes. And has been since the Interval.”

“He must be exceptional, to outfly Madellon’s bronzes,” T’kamen said.

R’lony laughed. “Bronzes? You are a packtail out of water, T’kamen. No bronze has been allowed to rise in a Madellon queen’s flight since before Geninth was shelled. And you’ll obey that law now that your fellow has regained his fitness. Donauth and Levierth are off-limits to you. Is that clear?”

The snap of command made T’kamen’s hackles rise. I’ve already been dressed down by a blue rider. Now I’m meant to take orders from a brown rider?

Can you blame him for being afraid of me? Epherineth asked reasonably.

His complacent assumption of his superiority soothed T’kamen’s irritation. He recalled only one anecdote about a brown rising to chase a queen – some northern dragon who’d fancied himself too much, only to come off much the worst in the bruising jostle of a pack of randy bronzes. And you have your own queen, he told him.

Indeed.

He schooled himself to answer R’lony politely. “If that’s the law, then Epherineth will take no part in your queens’ flights.” Then, intrigued enough to overcome his annoyance, he said, “Then this is why your dragons are so small compared to Epherineth. They’re all sired by browns.”

“Small is the point,” said R’lony. “The Weyrs of Pern were breeding for that long before bronzes were barred from chasing queens. But brown-gold matings began to produce a better size of dragon much faster than the restriction of flights to smaller bronzes ever did.”

“There are no other consequences?” T’kamen asked. “What sort of clutch size do you see?”

R’lony looked hard at him for a moment, and then smiled. “Ha, you were a Weyrleader, weren’t you? If you were any other rider, standing there interrogating me about the quality of my dragon’s offspring…but I guess I’d be asking the same kinds of questions if I were in your position. Well, let me answer. Look out there.” He gestured towards the window with a wide sweep of his arm. “Browns sired most of the dragons you’ve seen at Madellon. Do they look any the worse for their parentage?”

“Smaller,” T’kamen replied. “But not worse.”

“Tell me,” said R’lony. “In your day, was your Epherineth considered among the best because of his size?”

“Because of his size?” T’kamen asked. “No. Epherineth’s a long way from being the biggest bronze Interval Madellon ever bred.”

“Faranth,” R’lony said, shaking his head, “there were bigger bronzes?”

“Certainly,” said T’kamen. He thought about it. “I suppose there was the inclination for bronze and brown riders to boast about their dragons being the biggest of their colours. I can’t say I ever noticed much correlation between the size of the dragon and the quality of the rider, though.”

R’lony snorted. “We may prize small dragons now when once large were considered desirable, but the lack of correlation still holds true. That weyrling, M’ric, thinks he’s just about the finest brown rider that ever Impressed, based on his dragon being not thrice the size of a watch-wher.”

“M’ric seems very capable,” T’kamen said, carefully.

R’lony made a dismissive noise. “Do you want him?”

“Want him?”

“To tail you. Only until he graduates, but maybe it’ll distract him from his fanciful notion that he’ll be tapped to Tactical.”

T’kamen frowned. “Why shouldn’t he be? Trebruth’s smaller than a lot of the blues I’ve seen –”

“Trebruth is brown,” R’lony said, “and S’leondes wouldn’t accept a brown dragon into his precious fighting Wings if it was the size of a green and twice as fast.”

T’kamen was taken aback. M’ric had sounded so certain. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Don’t talk to me about fairness,” R’lony said, darkly. “Truth is, I’ve been hoping Trebruth would put on a couple of hands in height and be of use to me once the boy graduates, but it doesn’t seem likely he will now. I’m scored if I know what to do with him. Tailing you will keep him out of my hair – and out from under S’leondes’ feet. I don’t need a brown rider making a nuisance of himself around Tactical.”

Keeping M’ric close seemed like a wise idea, given how pivotal it seemed he was to T’kamen’s chance of returning to the Interval. “I’d be glad to have him as my guide. There’s so much I still don’t know about this Pass.”

“So I imagine,” said R’lony. “As I’m sure you appreciate that there’s so much we still don’t know about you, and why you’re here.”

“Is that why you kept me in quarantine for a month?” T’kamen asked.

“We didn’t know who you were. Your story made no sense.”

“And it was better to keep the Weyr thinking we were northerners than let them know we were time-travellers from the Seventh Interval?”

“Madellon’s riders have enough to think about without being distracted by Harper tales. Of course, the wherry’s out of the snare now.” R’lony sighed. “When M’ric and Dalka found verification of your story, I thought you might have been what we’ve been waiting for all these Turns.”

“Because of between,” said T’kamen.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry to have disappointed you in that respect. Epherineth has no explanation for why he can’t navigate between in this time.” The recent memory of S’leondes’ contempt for the failure still stung, and T’kamen added, “Or else I lack the ability to comprehend him. Dragons understand between in a way that we don’t. And even they couldn’t account for what had gone wrong with our weyrlings when I left the Interval.”

“M’ric reported that you said you think your weyrlings were the first,” said R’lony.

“We always lost a few weyrlings, learning to go between, but not like this,” said T’kamen. “Out of seven, three wouldn’t even try, three died, and one emerged late and his rider unconscious. There was no precedent for it. Not in Madellon’s records or any other Weyr’s.” He stared at nothing. “I thought there must be a fault in their breeding.”

“Then they were Epherineth’s offspring?” R’lony asked, as if only then making the connection between T’kamen’s rank and his weyrlings. When T’kamen nodded, the Marshal went on, “Unless your weyrlings went on to have an influence on every bloodline on Pern, I think not. No. As I understand my history, no dragonet Hatched after the hundredth Turn of the Interval has been able to traverse between safely. They can get between when they’re still young, but it’s a one-way trip.”

“I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse,” T’kamen admitted.

“How it makes you feel is irrelevant. The fact remains that your Epherineth is the only dragon on Pern today who has ever gone between and emerged with his life. The difference that would make to us…” R’lony shook his head.

“Browns and bronzes would be able to fight Thread again,” said T’kamen. Then another realisation struck him, so obvious that, for an instant, he was astounded that he hadn’t thought of it before. “You can’t just jump anywhere, can you? You have to fly straight to wherever Thread is falling.” He looked over his shoulder towards the chart on the wall. Madellon’s protectorate was huge, and it wasn’t even the biggest of the southern territories. “Just flying to Jessaf…and how does the Peninsula protect its south and west?”

“With difficulty,” said R’lony. “The borders were renegotiated a number of times in the latter half of the Interval. Peninsula ceded some of its westernmost territory to us.”

“M’ric mentioned that Sixer – Fiver – Hold is part of Madellon now.”

R’lony nodded. “We took on most of Redyen’s holdings. They’re closer to us than the Peninsula, as the dragon flies. Still, anything farther than six hours’ flight from a Weyr or Weyrstation puts us at a stretch.”

“A Weyrstation?”

“Well, you could hardly expect the Wings to fly ten hours non-stop, and then immediately fight a six-hour Fall without rest or food. They’d all drop dead of exhaustion. We stage our more distant Falls out of the Weyrstations. Madellon West, where you were found, is just south of Jessaf proper; Madellon North is near Mirshen Seahold; and Madellon South is a way southeast of Buckmore Minehold.”

That made several things make more sense in T’kamen’s mind. “I understand.”

R’lony waved his hand at the window to indicate the whole Weyr again. “It’s a rare day when all of Madellon is home. There are six fighting Wings flying down to cover off the Fall over Little Madellon this afternoon. Only a partial – there’s not much populated land to protect – so they’ll be back later tonight. But we’ll be sending out nine more in the morning to stage at Madellon West and meet the Fall over eastern Jessaf the day after tomorrow.” He squinted at the document in front of him. “Then we’re clear the day after that, but the following day we have a half Fall to pick up from the Peninsula over the border east of Gartner Hold, and I misremember what’s next, but…well. You get the idea.”

The scale of the operation made T’kamen’s head hurt. The sheer amount of organisation required to position hundreds of dragons across thousands of square miles of territory, with no way to get them there but flying every dragon straight, would be overwhelming. “And it falls to you to deploy the Wings.”

R’lony smiled so thinly that it was barely a smile at all. “To deploy them, yes. The riders of Strategic branch scout the predicted footprint of the Fall and report back on the terrain and weather conditions. The Commander uses that intelligence to decide how many fighting Wings he wants to fight the Fall. Then I see to it that his dragons are there in good time, rested and fed. I keep the Weyrstations manned and supplied. I field enough dragons of the Seventh Flight to resupply them, to catch their fallers and to deal with their injured. And to burn on the ground what they miss in the air. And then I get everyone home, and ready to go out to the next Fall to do it all again.” His voice increased in volume and vehemence as he spoke. “And if that doesn’t sound exciting or glorious to you, T’kamen, then you’d be right – it’s hard, grinding, thankless work. But if the riders of Strategic didn’t do what they do, then S’leondes’ heroic and valiant and fearless Tactical riders would be a heroic, valiant, fearless shambles.”

The bitterness of R’lony’s words was so hot and rank that T’kamen could almost taste it. He wondered how long R’lony had served as Weyrleader, and how the title had been taken from him. “You don’t care for the Commander, I take it.”

“That would be an understatement,” said R’lony. “And I can assure you the feeling is mutual.”

“Then we have that in common,” said T’kamen. “He was…extremely rude…to me.”

“I’d expect no less,” said R’lony, with a snort. “There’s nothing he despises more than a bronze rider. Except me, of course.” His grin was toothy and savage, almost gleeful at the idea that he was what the Commander hated the most.

“How did he become Commander?” T’kamen asked. “I take it his dragon hasn’t been flying any queens.”

R’lony laughed. “The day we breed a blue dragon who can catch a queen in flight hasn’t come quite yet. But S’leondes doesn’t need Karzith to fly a queen to be Commander. He only needs to convince the swarming masses of Tactical that he’s the best man for the job.”

T’kamen made himself consider what he’d seen of S’leondes’ Flight briefing dispassionately. “He seemed to be managing his Flightleaders well enough, from what I saw.”

“He knows how to play a clutch of bickering blue and green riders off each other,” said R’lony. “He knows how to inspire a Weyr full of kids too young and stupid to know better to go out and get themselves killed for him. I’ll even allow that his dragon’s smart and fast enough to still be alive after twenty Turns fighting Thread. But if it were up to me, S’leondes wouldn’t wear a Wingsecond’s braids, let alone the Commander’s.” R’lony shrugged his bulky shoulders. “It’s not up to me. Tactical will have who they’ll have, and while S’leondes still draws breath, no one will stand against him come ballot time.”

“Ballot time?” asked T’kamen. “The Commander is chosen with a vote?”

“Of course,” said R’lony.

It was yet another outlandish concept. “Where I’m from, the Weyrleadership derives entirely from the senior queen’s flights.”

“I’m familiar with the custom,” R’lony replied with perfect aridity. “And time was, even not so long ago, when flying a queen was a good enough test of man and dragon to ensure the faith of a Weyr’s riders. But not any more.”

His resentment oozed from him like pus from an old injury, toxic even Turns after it had been inflicted. And all of this for want of between. “I wish I could help you, Marshal,” T’kamen said.

R’lony looked at him, a searching sort of look, as if trying to discern if he was sincere. Then he pointed at T’kamen’s cane. “Have the Healers told you when you’ll be rid of that?”

“They say another two sevendays. I  can ride better than I can walk.”

“For Faranth’s sake, then, sit down.” R’lony pointed peremptorily at one of the chairs. “You’re man and rider enough to face me on your feet, and I appreciate that, but your point is made. You’re still healing. Sit.”

Grateful for R’lony’s understanding, T’kamen sat down, leaning his cane against the side of the chair. “Thank you.”

“What about your bronze?”

“His wing’s as good as new,” said T’kamen. “He’s not fit, but we can build that back up.”

R’lony regarded him critically. “You want to help?”

“What I want is to get back to my own time,” T’kamen said. “I’d like to do some investigation of old records at the other Weyrs, or maybe the Harperhall. If I find evidence that I make it back to the Interval, that means Epherineth will be able to go between again, and if he can go between, perhaps he can teach your dragons to do it.”

“All right,” said R’lony. “But I’m hearing a lot of ‘if’ and ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’. What if you don’t find what you’re looking for?”

T’kamen took a breath. There had to be a key to unlock the problem, or M’ric wouldn’t have made it back to the Interval, but he didn’t want to tell R’lony that. “If Epherineth and I are trapped here, then we’ll do whatever it is that a bronze dragonpair does in this Pass. If you’ll keep us. If you won’t, I guess we’ll petition the Peninsula, but…”

“But?”

“I’m a Madellon rider, R’lony,” he said. “Epherineth’s Madellon-bred, and the sire of Madellon dragons. He fathered a Madellon queen. He could be the ancestor of some of the dragons here today. So even if we can’t reach our own time, we’d at least prefer to stay in our own place.”

“Well,” said R’lony, scratching his short grey beard, “far be it from me to deny a man a place in the Weyr of his dragon’s Hatching. You’ll have your opportunity to seek records of your return. But I’d be doing you a disservice amongst your Weyrmates if I just cut you loose.” He leaned back, his eyes calculating. “Join the Seventh Flight. Fly with the browns and bronzes of Madellon. You’ll take a Seventh rider’s shoulder-knot, you’ll draw a Seventh rider’s pay, and no one will question your right to hunt your dragon from our herds or to sit at Strategic’s table in the mess.”

Yes, Epherineth said immediately.

T’kamen didn’t hesitate any longer than his bronze had. “I accept,” he said. “Although I may not be of much use until I’m fit again.”

“Fit, and retrained,” said R’lony. “The Seventh’s operations won’t bear much resemblance to whatever you learned in the Interval.” He reached for a pen and a clean piece of what looked like very thin vellum. “Let’s formalise this. I suppose technically you’re not a transfer, but I don’t think there’s much precedent for a rider resuming his post after going on hiatus for a century. Let’s begin with you. Who were you before you were T’kamen of Madellon Weyr?”

“Taskamen of the Frankon trader train, Madellon territory,” T’kamen replied. “Born Seventh Interval 67, Searched to Madellon and Impressed 85. Dragon bronze Epherineth out of Cherganth by Staamath. Bronze Staamath, that is. Graduated 86. Made up to Wingsecond 88. Made up to Wingleader 91. Dropped back to wingrider 94.”

R’lony looked up from recording T’kamen’s service history, raising his brows. “What happened?”

“New Weyrleader. He wasn’t an admirer of mine.”

“Ha!”

“I became Weyrleader in 98,” T’kamen went on. “My Weyrwoman was Valonna, Shimpath’s rider. Epherineth sired a clutch of twenty-five, including a queen, Berzunth, Impressed by Tarshe.”

He noticed R’lony mouthing twenty-five, with a small shake of his head. “And what happened to your great friend the previous Weyrleader?”

“L’dro. Bronze Pierdeth’s rider. He transferred to the Peninsula.”

“Was it a voluntary transfer?”

“It wasn’t involuntary.”

“Well, sometimes the best thing to do with the needlethorn in your side is to stick it in someone else’s.” R’lony continued to write. “How much does Epherineth eat?”

“Four head a sevenday, or five if they’re scrawny.” T’kamen laughed briefly. “They’ve all been scrawny for a while. The Holds weren’t over-enthusiastic about their tithes.”

“Four a sevenday?” R’lony asked. “Is that all?”

“He’s never been a glutton.”

“Well, he’ll eat more once he’s in full work. I don’t know what toll going between takes on a dragon against flying straight, but flying and carrying makes a dragon hungry.” R’lony looked pensive. “He’s the biggest bronze I’ve seen in length and height, but he’s light-framed compared to ours. Let him eat his fill. We’ve no shortage of food beasts.”

“Really?” T’kamen asked. “Even with Threadfall?”

“Dragons have to eat,” said R’lony. “No one complains about that.”

“That’s refreshing,” T’kamen said. “Epherineth’s never been a burly dragon, but he’s not at his fighting weight right now. Or whatever you call optimal weight now. I suppose I can’t call it fighting weight.”

“Call it what you like, so long as you don’t let a Tactical rider hear you say it,” said R’lony. “I don’t suppose you know what Epherineth’s working range is? His top load?” T’kamen shook his head, but R’lony didn’t seem fazed. “We’ll find out soon enough. Any past illnesses, injuries, or weaknesses?”

“Not that you don’t already know about,” T’kamen said.

R’lony made an assenting noise. He continued to make notes for several minutes. T’kamen wished he could read what he was writing. Then R’lony looked up at him. “You’re not the first rider to dislocate a hip, so no one’s going to look askance that you’re taking your recovery cautiously. The Weyr Healer has no bedside manner whatsoever, but he does know how to get a rider back fit, so do as he says.

“I’m assigning you to Crewleader Ch’fil for training. He’ll get you up to speed on what you should be doing.” R’lony wrote several lines on another piece of vellum and signed it. “Have your tail take you to Kanessa, the Headwoman. This chit will get you assigned a weyr and whatever clothes and oddments you need. Today if you’re polite to her, and next sevenday if you’re not.” He cocked his head. “Something amusing?”

T’kamen realised that a smile had crooked his mouth. “Not amusing. It’s comforting to know that keeping the right side of the Headwoman is still important. At least one thing hasn’t changed.”

“Thread,” said R’lony. He pushed the requisition chit across his desk. “Thread never changes.”

T’kamen picked it up and began to tuck it into the breast pocket of his jacket. Then he paused, recognising the unfamiliar texture of the material. “What is this?” he asked, rubbing his fingertips against the smooth surface of the sheet. “It doesn’t feel like hide.”

“It isn’t,” said R’lony. “It’s wood-pulp paper from Kellad. Didn’t they have that in the Interval?” He shrugged when T’kamen shook his head. “Oh, and you’ll need…” He rummaged in a drawer and finally came up with a braid of indigo and bronze. “This. Here. I’d put it on now if I were you. It won’t protect you from stares or stupid questions, but it legitimises you.”

The cords were knotted in an unfamiliar way, but the simple double-twist reminded T’kamen so strongly of his defiantly sloppy old wingrider knot that for an instant his longing to go home to his own time, his own Madellon, choked him. He took a deep breath, aware of Epherineth crowding suddenly close in solidarity, until the moment passed. Then he looped the rank knot over his arm and secured it to the shoulder strap. “Thank you, Marshal.”

“Things are very different now for brown and bronze riders than they used to be,” said R’lony. “Even within my lifetime. It’s not how I’d like it to be. It’s not how it should be – but while Threadfighting is the sole province of blues and greens, and while S’leondes leads them, it’s the way that it is.” His nostrils flared for a moment. “You were a Weyrleader, and I’d like to say you’d be respected for that, but in this time, this Pass, you won’t be. You’re a bronze rider, and however the dragons organise themselves, their riders no longer concur. Every Tactical rider in Madellon, however young or callow, outranks you. They can’t command you to do anything unless they have officer rank, but you’ll be expected to step aside for them, and if they’re rude to you, you have no right to seek satisfaction. There are those who will make sport of provoking Strategic riders and then having them Disciplined for colour intimidation. If that happens to you – and I have every reason to expect it will – don’t rise to it. Bite your tongue, block your ears, and most of all, restrain your dragon. It’ll go poorly for you if you don’t.”

The vague and undefined sense of unease that T’kamen had felt about Pass Madellon had been coming slowly into focus, and now, R’lony’s words snapped it into hard-edged clarity. “That’s going to be difficult for Epherineth,” he said carefully.

“I appreciate that, T’kamen,” said R’lony. “But you’re a Seventh rider now, and I can expect no less from you than I would of any other rider of mine. It would reflect badly on both of us if I were to coddle you with special treatment. Keep your bronze in hand. Don’t let him dominate on the feeding grounds. And don’t allow him to chase a green unless you’ve been invited by that green’s rider.”

T’kamen swallowed, hard. “I will…do my best.”

“Do better than that.” R’lony spoke flatly. “The balance between Strategic and Tactical is a delicate thing. Just your presence here threatens to upset it. Best you keep your head down and become part of the landscape as quickly as possible.” Then his tone lost something of its severity. “T’kamen, if it were up to me, I’d offer you all the privileges that a former Weyrleader of Madellon deserves. Giving you M’ric as your tail is as much as I can do. I’m sorry, but it’s the way it is.”

“I don’t have much use for privilege,” T’kamen said. “I won’t miss it.” He let out his breath. “We’ll keep our heads down, R’lony.”

“Thank you.” R’lony extended his hand to him, and T’kamen rose awkwardly from his seat to clasp his wrist. “M’ric won’t have gone far. Have him take you to the caverns and then show you around. But don’t be afraid to put him in his place when he warrants it. He’s an intelligent boy in his way, but he can be very stupid, and no good ever came of a clever rider thinking himself too special.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” T’kamen said.

“Good.”

R’lony turned his attention back to his work, but T’kamen hesitated before taking his leave. “One question, before I go.”

The Marshal lifted his eyes. “Go on.”

“You thought Epherineth and I were from the north when we first arrived.”

“It was the most obvious explanation for a strange bronze appearing in Madellon territory,” said R’lony. “But I suppose you want to know why we’d isolate a northern dragonpair.”

T’kamen nodded. “What’s happened between the north and the south to make a northern visitor so suspicious? M’ric’s talked about me being a spy, about recruiting, but he hasn’t explained what that means.”

“The northern Weyrs do things differently,” said R’lony. “Some of our riders think they’d like it better there. Some of their riders like to nudge them along that path of thinking.” Contempt twisted R’lony’s lip. “It’s not tolerated.”

“Then you thought we’d come to lure some of your riders to the north?”

“You would not have been the first northern rider to try. Or to succeed.”

“I see.” He didn’t, really – the thought that a rider would defect from his own Weyr  was inexplicable to him – but in deference to R’lony’s obviously strong feelings on the matter, he didn’t push. “Thank you for explaining. And for offering me the assignment to the Seventh.”

“Just stay out of trouble,” said R’lony. “Bronze rider.”

That was a definite dismissal. T’kamen found he didn’t resent it. By contrast to S’leondes, R’lony had been gracious indeed. He’d given T’kamen much to think about, and answered many of the questions that had been burning him up with frustration since his arrival in the Pass.

But something was wrong at Madellon. Badly wrong. It twisted T’kamen’s guts to think how the loss of between, the loss that had started with his weyrlings, had turned the natural order on its head. Because in a Weyr where blues and greens led the fighting Wings and browns flew the queens, what was left for bronzes to do?

Chapter twenty-four: Valonna

Weyrbred candidates are always preferable to those Searched from outside. The Weyrbred rider understands more at the moment of Impression than his Holdbred classmate will after a full Turn. He knows, instinctively, what will be expected of him, whatever colour his dragon’s hide. His loyalties are never weakened by any residual allegiance to Hold or Hall. He is a Weyr man: first, last, and always.

– Weyrleader O’ret, On Candidate Selection

100.03.09 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

The dragon sitting on the Weyrleader’s ledge gave Valonna’s heart cause to hesitate an instant in her chest before she blinked the sun-dazzle from her eyes and saw that it was only Izath.

They are alike, Shimpath sympathised, as she had every time Valonna had thought she’d seen Epherineth and dared to hope that T’kamen might have returned.

Shimpath’s commiseration was justified in Izath’s case. He and Epherineth were almost the same size – Izath the bulkier, Epherineth perhaps fractionally taller – and similar in hue, and although Izath was by far the deeper shade of bronze, in the dense shadow cast by the walls of the Bowl Epherineth could look nearly as dark.

As Valonna scooped up her skirts to climb the stairs to the Weyrleader’s weyr, a resounding bang that made Izath flinch echoed from the entrance, followed by an eloquently descriptive curse. Valonna paused, then hurried upwards.

Within T’kamen’s office, H’ned was turning away from the big skybroom desk with his hands on his hips and a frown creasing the bridge of his nose. “Wingleader?”

He froze, almost comically, then dropped his arms by his sides and offered her a short bow. “Beg your pardon, Weyrwoman. I didn’t know you were there.”

“I heard you…shouting. Is something the matter?”

“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” said H’ned. “I’m having a problem with T’kamen’s desk.” He kicked the bottom drawer with the toe of his boot – not for the first time, judging by the number of scuffs on the wood. “I’ll send for the Master Smith. I need to get at T’kamen’s strongbox, and I don’t have the key to it or the drawer.”

“You should have sent for me,” said Valonna. “I have both.”

H’ned blinked. “Do you?”

Valonna tried not to let his surprise offend her. She’d never had keys to any of the Weyr’s assets when L’dro was Weyrleader, but T’kamen had given her copies of everything less than a sevenday after Epherineth had flown Shimpath. She lifted the heavy ring of keys from her belt and began to turn it over, searching for the right ones. “What was it you needed the marks for?”

“It’s to pay the balance for the extra head of herdbeast we need to make up the shortfall until the next scheduled drive from Jessaf.”

Valonna stopped sorting through the keys. “Do you have T’kamen’s authorisation? I mean – did he approve it before he…went?”

“The purchase order has his chop on it,” said H’ned, pointing to a document on the desk. “I just need to drop the marks we still owe down to Winstone’s steward. Those Southern weyrlings are going to eat us out of hold and hall before long.”

Valonna pulled the hide towards her. Sure enough, T’kamen’s mark and seal were there, beneath the request for livestock – and the agreed price. That part made her wince. But the date next to T’kamen’s name troubled her more deeply. He’d signed the slate over a sevenday before the Southern weyrlings had arrived. “He didn’t even know about the Southerners,” she said. “For him to order these just to tide us over until the next scheduled drive, we must be short on food animals to feed our own dragons.” She pushed the purchase order away, feeling suddenly sick. “Have you overflown Kellad’s holding corrals recently?”

“Can’t say as I have,” said H’ned, “but we can make a pass when we go out to Jessaf. Don’t worry, Weyrwoman. Once I’ve delivered the payment they’ll release the extra stock, and we’ll have them in a couple of days.”

H’ned’s casual dismissal of the situation made Valonna even more anxious. “H’ned,” she said urgently, “don’t you understand; we can’t afford to be making up shortfalls to the tune of hundreds of marks! We’ve the crafters’ wages to pay at the end of the month, and the rider stipends, and with nine extra dragonets to feed –”

“Weyrwoman. I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think, or T’kamen wouldn’t have approved the purchase.”

“He didn’t have a choice. If you knew how he’s been agonising over the Weyr’s resources – how I have – you’d be scared between. We hardly have enough to get us to the end of the Turn.”

“You mustn’t worry, Weyrwoman,” H’ned told her. “Sh’zon and I will review the accounts and straighten all this out –”

“No,” Valonna heard herself say, in a flat hard tone that she’d never thought she could muster. “You won’t. The accounts aren’t yours to straighten.” It was as if all the times she’d nearly answered back, all the moments when she’d almost disagreed, all the instants she’d bitten her tongue for fear of the consequences of speaking up, had been stacking up in a heap, and now that teetering pile was finally collapsing under their weight. She’d obeyed her two Weyrleaders, but this wasn’t the same. “You’re not the Weyrleader,” she said, and marvelled at the strength of her own voice, and the backwards step H’ned took as she spoke, and Shimpath’s warm approval.

H’ned looked like he was going to say something in his defence, and then he sketched a bow, deeper than his first. “No. Of course, Weyrwoman, I’m not. My apologies.” He stopped, looking uncomfortable. “What do you want me to do?”

Indecision was one of Valonna’s most familiar companions, but something in her outburst seemed to have chased it away. “I want to see everything that T’kamen would have seen if he’d been here. Everything that you and Sh’zon have taken on.” She looked at the desk with its piles of scrolls and slates: the background detritus that the Deputies hadn’t considered important enough to spirit away. “And especially anything that we have to buy or pay for.” She looked at the bottom drawer. “I need to see the Ledger.”

For all that she’d spent the last several months buried in the Headwoman’s stores and records, Valonna had never presumed to ask T’kamen for a look at Madellon’s Ledger, the master record of all the Weyr’s tithes and purchases. She found the right key to unlock the drawer and lifted out, with both hands, the heavy strongbox that contained Madellon’s marks. Beneath it lay the thick leather-bound Weyr Ledger.

She set book and box on top of the desk, closing the drawer. It took her a moment to find the strongbox key, and when she did, the contents dismayed her: a jumble of coins, everything from thirty-seconds to the oversized discs of twenty-five and fifty-mark-pieces. It was impossible to tell at a glance how much the box contained, so she opened the crackling pages of the Ledger, made from the same thin vellum as the Weyr Book in which she recorded Madellon’s births and deaths and Hatchings.

It was a new book, begun when T’kamen became Weyrleader, but the handwriting on the first page belonged to D’feng. T’kamen’s angular hand took over several pages in, when the dates in the left-hand column overtook the date of the accident that had crippled both D’feng and his dragon. Valonna recognised many of the entries, duplicated from the records she and Crauva had inherited from Adrissa, the last Headwoman: details of each delivery or collection of goods for the Weyr, its date, its origin, its contents, who had brought it and who had received it. A final column, marked Cost, showed the notation T in most cases, showing that the item formed part of the Weyr’s tithes. But figures filled that column with increasing frequency as Valonna turned the pages of the ledger to the most recent entries.

“What does it say?” asked H’ned.

Valonna had almost forgotten he was still there. “It says we’ve been having to spend more hard marks on essentials than we have coming in,” she replied. She turned to a page showing positive figures – the income from the Weyr’s paid transportation service – but the numbers were too low to offset the expenditure from the earlier pages. “We’ve been running a deficit since…well, since before this record began.”

H’ned folded his arms, leaning his hip against the desk. “So we’re not getting enough in tithes?”

“Not nearly enough.” Valonna ran her finger down a column, stopping at each entry marked with a monetary value. “Herdbeasts, cured and raw hides, flour, sweetener, beer…these aren’t luxuries, H’ned. We’re not getting enough just to live on, and we’re making up the difference using Madellon’s reserves.”

“How much do we have in reserves?” asked H’ned.

She flipped back to the front of the ledger to check the figure carried forward from L’dro’s tenure. “We had about twenty-one thousand marks in currency when T’kamen became Weyrleader at the start of the Turn. Now we have…” She faltered.

“Go on,” H’ned prompted.

Valonna swallowed hard. “Now we have a little over fifteen thousand marks.”

“Faranth’s teeth,” H’ned swore. Then he cocked his head. “There are fifteen thousand marks in that box?”

“No, of course not.” Valonna rummaged amongst the mark pieces and dug out a signed and sealed piece of vellum. “This is a promissory note from the Woodcraft at Kellad. They hold the bulk of our marks for us.” She poked at the coins in the strongbox. “There are perhaps five or six hundred here. Enough for this consignment of herdbeasts. But not enough to pay the stipend or the crafter wages. I’ll have to go to the Woodcraft and draw on our funds to meet those.”

“How in the shell has T’kamen managed to spend his way through six thousand marks in just over a Turn?” H’ned wondered aloud.

“What he’s spent isn’t the thing,” said Valonna. “Why he’s having to spend it…. The Holds just aren’t tithing enough to support us. If I could find last Turn’s adjustment….” She flicked through the rest of the ledger, without success. “It must be here somewhere.”

“What are you looking for?” H’ned asked, almost diffidently.

“The tithe adjustment. It’s the list of everything we asked for from our Holds last Turn, amended for circumstances.” Valonna pointed. “Could you look on the shelves there?”

H’ned turned to check the rows of records. “What does it look like?”

“I don’t know,” Valonna admitted. “I’ve never seen one.”

H’ned paused in what he was doing, regarding her with those strange light eyes of his. Valonna knew what he was thinking. “I haven’t been involved in tithe negotiations since I’ve been Weyrwoman,” she said, aware of how weak it sounded. “But I do know how it works. In theory.”

“Well,” H’ned said slowly, “T’kamen’s not here, and D’feng’s in no state to advise. So I guess that makes you the most knowledgeable person here when it comes to tithes.”

So, perhaps, she was, although as they set to sorting through the mass of records and documents, Valonna began to quail at the thought of the task at hand. There was some indication that T’kamen had tried to keep his work in order, but evidence too of his frustration with it: records taken from a once-logical system and shoved back in out of place; bits of old scraped hide with notes and questions scrawled on them but no hint of what they referred to; certain documents, dated from months ago and untouched under a layer of dust, thrown into a pile that might as well have been labelled too difficult. Valonna wanted to tip everything onto the floor and start organising it properly. Only the urgency of the task at hand – and the thought of what T’kamen would do if he found her kneeling amongst the scattered contents of his office – stopped her.

After his unpromising start, H’ned warmed to the task. “Herd quotas 97-101?” he offered, holding out a hide from T’kamen’s record shelf.

Valonna glanced at the document, then shook her head. “That’s the agreement about the number of beasts we’re allowed to hunt from the wild,” she said. “But – let me have it. It does affect what we ask of the Holds.”

“And what’s this?” H’ned asked, holding out another document. “These nonsense symbols?”

Valonna took it. “That’s T’kamen’s shorthand. He writes notes in it sometimes. Though I’ve never seen a whole document written in it.”

“Can you translate it?” H’ned asked.

“He never told me the trick of it. But this won’t be what we’re looking for. The adjustment is an official document. It won’t be in shorthand.”

H’ned pulled out the next fat folder, perused the cover, then flipped it open. “Now this is something I’d wager many a Wingleader would like to see,” he said, with relish.

Valonna pushed a sheaf of loose Wing reports back into their binder, wiping her dusty hands on her skirt. “What is it?”

“Stipend record,” H’ned said, sitting back on his haunches. “All the way back to Fianine’s time.” He turned the pages avidly, then stabbed his finger at an entry. “That greedy wher L’mis is on four marks more than me!”

“You shouldn’t be reading that,” Valonna chided.

H’ned ignored the rebuke, still reading. “And Sh’zon would blow his smoke if he knew how much less he’s getting.”

Curious despite herself, Valonna asked, “Shouldn’t his allowance be the same as yours?”

“I’m still on the old scale,” H’ned said with a shrug. “Most of us are, even the ones who got bumped down when T’kamen reorganised the Wings. So there are bronze riders still on Flightleader stipends when the position doesn’t exist any more, and Wingleaders like me getting less for doing the same work, and new Wingleaders like Sh’zon who’ve come up since the changes on less still.” He thumbed through several more pages. “And not that I begrudged it, then or now, but all the blues and greens got a mark increase just after T’kamen became Weyrleader, and the browns half a mark. Everyone did all right except the bronze riders! Well, I suppose we were always doing all right. And he had to reward the riders who supported him before Shimpath’s flight.”

“He said he’d need to cut the stipend,” Valonna said, remembering that grim conversation they’d had in the Weyr Archives the day after the weyrlings had gone between. How bitter that must have tasted. “He knew we were in trouble with the tithes. I just didn’t think it was this bad.”

H’ned sobered, closing the stipend record. “Haven’t you and Crauva come up with all sorts of useful things in Stores?” he asked. “Wine and jewellery and such?”

“A few things we could sell,” Valonna said. “Mostly just spoiled grain, and snake-eaten old hides. They’d have been useful if they weren’t all rotten.” The pleasure she’d taken in each discovery seemed foolish now.

H’ned propped his elbow on his knee and his fist against his chin. “You know the Holds have had a bad time, these last few seasons,” he said. He spoke quietly, the forcefulness Valonna had come to expect from him tamped down. “Last Turn’s harvest was terrible, and if the rains don’t come in the autumn, this Turn’s will be worse. We’re not the first thing on our holders’ minds.”

“T’kamen thinks the Weyr lacks influence.”

H’ned’s reddish eyebrows twitched. “He said that to you?”

The tide is so far out we can’t even see it. “When he and D’feng came back from negotiating last Turn’s adjustment, before the Hatching, they argued,” Valonna said. “T’kamen said they needed to push for more, and D’feng said the Weyr didn’t have a hand to play. And we don’t, do we? Have a hand to play?”

“It’s not as if we can fold,” said H’ned. “But it wasn’t always like this. I don’t mean in Fianine’s time,” he added. “I mean before then, long before. I’m Madellon-bred to the bone. My granddad K’get came from High Reaches with M’dellon, you know, when they founded the Weyr.” He smiled. “He and his blue flew Thread in the last few Turns of the Seventh Pass. He used to tell me stories about it when I was still a fosterling. It always seemed to me that he sounded disappointed to have missed most of the Pass. He was hardly out of the Weyrling Wing when it ended. But he used to say that when he was a young man, a dragonrider could walk into any Hold or Hall on Pern and be guaranteed the best seat at the table, the first cut off the roast, and – well – the prettiest girl in the room.” H’ned shook his head ruefully. “K’get was a dirty old bugger until the day he died. But even by then things had changed. My father used to say that he’d never known times like K’get talked about. The respect was still there, but the gratitude…by then there was a whole generation of holders who’d never seen Thread, and riders who’d never fought it.  And there weren’t so many queens, so we didn’t have to Search so much. When I Impressed Izath there were only four boys who weren’t Weyrbred, and hardly anyone left alive who remembered Thread at all.

“So our holders aren’t grateful. I guess it’s understandable. It doesn’t make it right. And it doesn’t make it acceptable for them to be tithing us less than our rightful share.” H’ned waved his hand over the scattered documents. “D’feng wasn’t forceful enough to press for Madellon’s rights, and L’dro lacked the patience for negotiations. And T’kamen – I won’t speak ill of him, but he wasn’t Weyrbred. He didn’t grow up here, hearing about how it used to be – how it should be. He was still too worried about upsetting the Holds, at the Weyr’s expense, when it’s the Holds that should be worried about upsetting the Weyr.”

Valonna’s face must have betrayed her disquiet, because H’ned smiled. “But I’ll wager T’kamen was just as angry with the Holds as any Weyrbred rider.”

T’kamen had been more frustrated than angry, but then, bar the colour of their dragons, T’kamen wasn’t anything like H’ned. “I suppose so.”

“You know he’s not coming back, don’t you?”

H’ned put the question mildly, but it hit Valonna like a slap. For several long moments she had no words. “You don’t know that,” she said, at last.

“Would you be desolate, if he didn’t?”

“He’s my Weyrleader,” Valonna said. “He’s a good man.” Then, fretfully, “He wouldn’t leave me!”

“I don’t think he did leave you,” H’ned said soothingly. “Not on purpose. But riders do go missing. He’s been so distracted. Maybe he went between, and –”

“He’s not dead,” she insisted, so vehemently that Shimpath, on the ledge of the adjoining weyr, uttered a soft cry of sympathy. “Shimpath would know.”

“She’d know if he was still here, too,” H’ned told her. “I don’t mean to upset you, Weyrwoman. But it’s been a sevenday and there’s been no sign of him. There aren’t so many places you could lose a bronze dragon…”

Valonna took a breath and a firmer hold on herself. “Deputy Weyrleader, please.” She’d tried for crisp, but it still came out with a wobble. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

H’ned hesitated, then smoothly acquiesced. “My apologies, Weyrwoman.”

The ease that had briefly existed between them was gone, replaced with the brittleness of formality. Valonna didn’t want to look at him any more. Is he trying to court me so soon?

He is a bronze rider, said Shimpath. He has not forgotten that Izath almost won me.

Dispirited, Valonna turned her attention back to T’kamen’s desk. Several uncomfortably silent minutes passed before the corner of a document sticking out from under a pile of slates caught her eye. She tugged it free, and recognised at once the seals of Jessaf, Blue Shale, and Kellad affixed to the top page. “Here it is,” she said, as glad to break the awkward hush as she was to find the hide they’d been seeking.

H’ned put down the folder he’d been examining and turned his head expectantly. Valonna skimmed through the top page, with the standard phrasing – setting out the responsibility of Weyr to Hold and Hold to Weyr – that prefaced almost every agreement ever signed between Madellon and its protectorate. The second page outlined Madellon’s fighting strength, craft presence, support population, and the projected composition of Shimpath’s clutch, then still in the shell. The third began to list the Weyr’s requirements, the precise number or volume or value of each item expected from each Hold, and how that figure had been adjusted from the primary tithe agreement.

Valonna found a blank slate and chalk, jotted down the figures in the row marked Food beasts, then consulted the herd quota H’ned had found. The figure they used to work out how many animals they needed to feed the Weyr was based on average dragon consumption of a hundred herdbeasts per Turn, although the greens ate less and the bronzes more, and their diet always comprised a variety of different animals. Madellon’s allotted take of the wild herds that roamed the plains of the southern continent accounted for almost a third of their annual requirements. Valonna looked from one figure to the other. “I don’t understand,” she said finally.

“The numbers don’t add up?” asked H’ned.

“They do add up. That’s what I don’t understand. What the Holds have tithed should have been enough. Not generous, but enough. We shouldn’t be so short that we need to buy in extra beasts. Our dragons must be overeating.”

H’ned frowned. “Or the Holds are cheating us on what they’re sending up.”

“Surely they wouldn’t?”

“If they thought they could get away with it.”

A long strand of hair had worked loose from the braid Valonna kept pinned neatly in place. She pushed it back behind her ear. “I need to speak to Master Arrense.” The Weyr Beastcrafter had oversight of all the movement of food beasts in and out of Madellon. “He must have an explanation for the anomaly.”

H’ned didn’t reply for a minute. Valonna looked enquiringly towards him and found him looking at her with a curious expression on his face. H’ned gave a start, jerking his eyes away. “Well, what about the payment for the drive that’s incoming?” he asked. “It has T’kamen’s signature on it.”

“Then we’re bound by it.” Valonna unearthed the strongbox from beneath the drift of documents she’d been searching through. Most of the marks, and all of the high value pieces, were stamped with the tree symbol of the Woodcraft – Madellon territory’s dominant Crafthall. She counted out coins to the value of the herdbeast purchase, placing them in one of the cloth pouches tucked inside the lid of the strongbox. Then she turned to the appropriate page in the Ledger and wrote in the date and purchase and amount on the first blank row. She sanded the ink to dry it, tapped it off into T’kamen’s sand tray, and then held out the pouch to H’ned.

H’ned scrambled upright from where he’d been squatting on the floor. “We’ll go to Jessaf straightaway,” he told her, tucking the pouch into his belt. He looked around at the clutter they’d created. “Do you want me to help you with this?”

He didn’t sound enthusiastic at the prospect. Valonna shook her head. “No, Wingleader, I’ll see to it.”

“Then I’ll see you in the dining hall for the evening meal. Your leave, Weyrwoman.” H’ned performed another brief bow, then headed out of T’kamen’s weyr, keeping a hand resting on the pouch of marks at his hip the whole time.

Slowly, Valonna closed and locked the strongbox and put it back in its drawer. She looked down at the open Weyr Ledger, where her handwriting had joined T’kamen’s and D’feng’s. He’ll know I’ve been in here, she thought, with an instinctive stab of anxiety.

Shimpath dismissed that with a snort. Better you than another bronze rider.

I suppose. Valonna picked up several hides from the floor, then sat down in the chair in front of the desk with them in her lap. She wished she could get Crauva to help her correct the mess she and H’ned had made. But the Headwoman’s jurisdiction didn’t extend to Weyr or Wing business, and there were many records on T’kamen’s shelves that should have been for the Weyrleader’s eyes only. The thought made Valonna frown. Neither H’ned nor Sh’zon would have presumed to enter T’kamen’s office uninvited before his disappearance, but with the Weyrleader absent that tacit prohibition seemed to hold no sway. H’ned had more right than most to be there seeking marks to pay for Weyr purchases, but Valonna didn’t feel comfortable with the thought that he or Sh’zon or anyone else could walk in and help themselves to marks or documents that weren’t theirs to take. The stipend record alone could cause a mutiny, if H’ned’s reaction to it was any indication.

I should lock some of these up for safekeeping. Valonna began to gather the most sensitive records: conduct reports, disciplinary notices, anything that had to do with the stipend. The more documents she examined the more she found that would be troublesome in the wrong hands. She collected everything that she and H’ned had taken from the shelves and piled it on the desk.

The seals on many of the documents made her think of something else. The sealing wax in Madellon’s signature indigo was there beside the long matches T’kamen used to melt it, but the heavy gold ring bearing the crest of the Weyrleader which was usually there too was missing. Valonna frowned. She’d never seen T’kamen actually wear the Madellon signet. Had he taken it with him, wherever he’d gone, or had someone stolen the seal of the Weyrleader’s authority? It was another troubling thought to add to her burdens.

Then she stopped, looking at the chair tucked beneath it: T’kamen’s chair, and L’dro’s before him; the Weyrleader’s chair. The cushion on the seat was worn and flat from use, the leather arm pads dark and grimy with sweat.

No bronze ever flew a queen because his rider wanted to sit there, Shimpath remarked.

L’dro seldom had, Valonna realised. He had preferred to drill with his Wing, drink with his friends, and dine with the Lords Holder of Madellon, leaving D’feng to manage the day-to-day business of the Weyr. T’kamen had spent more time buried in the administrative quagmire of Madellon in his one Turn as Weyrleader than L’dro had in five.

Would you be? Shimpath asked.

Would I be what?

Desolate, if he didn’t come back.

Finding an answer that didn’t ring false had been hard enough when H’ned had asked that question; finding one for her queen was impossible. Valonna’s relationship with T’kamen was respectful rather than fond or even friendly. It frightens me, she said. I don’t think any of the other bronze riders really know what being the Weyrleader means. H’ned still patronises me like he used to when L’dro was here, and T’kamen’s not been gone for a sevenday before he’s moving in on me. Sh’zon just wanted to swoop into Southern and rescue those weyrlings like something from a Harper song. I don’t know if either of them could do what T’kamen does. Tithe negotiations…the herd quota…trying not to spend all our reserves…and that’s without even starting with the weyrlings and between and what we’re going to do with that Southern blue, and finding a new Weyr Singer if Jenavally doesn’t come back, and who’s going to represent us at the Long Bay Gather…

Shimpath cut across the growing list of woes with an authoritative crack. Then you must.

But I –

Shimpath spoke over the can’t that rose up unbidden in Valonna’s thoughts, drowning it out. Bronze riders will come and go, Valonna, but you remain. You are my rider and the Senior Weyrwoman of Madellon. You can and you must.

Valonna looked again at T’kamen’s seat. The thought of someone else – H’ned, or Sh’zon, or any of the other senior bronze riders – sitting in it filled her with unease. It wasn’t a comfortable chair, or an inviting one, but it was a seat that must be occupied.

Go on, urged Shimpath.

She sat down.

Chapter twenty-five: T’kamen

We had hoped that the hatching of Trebruth from the third clutch of Ceduth and Nonrith would mark the beginning of a new phase in Madellon’s dragon breeding programme. However, at the time of writing, and in spite of repeated re-matings of the same pair, he remains the only brown of his ilk at Madellon and, indeed, on Pern

– Excerpt from A Report on Madellon’s Breeding Potential, author unknown

26.04.22 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

M’ric was sitting on the end of B’nam’s desk when T’kamen came out of the Marshal’s office. “No joy eavesdropping through this door, either?” T’kamen asked.

“It’s not possible,” said B’nam, not looking up from the document he was reading.

“What he said,” said M’ric. He hopped off the desk, looking at the new rank knot on T’kamen’s shoulder. “R’lony’s made you join the Seventh?”

“We accepted his invitation,” said T’kamen.

“Like you really had a choice. Who’s he assigned you to?”

“Crewleader Ch’fil?”

“Oh, that’s not so bad,” said M’ric. “Smiler’s all right. I thought he’d stick you under R’ganff.”

“He won’t be fire-crew, though,” B’nam asked, lifting his eyes from his work. “With a dragon that size? He’ll bunker or catch, surely.”

“Once he’s been trained,” said M’ric. He looked back at T’kamen. “Ch’fil’s training officer for the Seventh as well as Crewleader. You’ll probably be reassigned once he’s done with you.”

“Can you take me to him?” T’kamen asked. “I’d like to introduce myself as soon as possible.”

“He and Stratomath left for Little Madellon a while ago,” said B’nam. “They’re leading the Seventh for this afternoon’s Fall. He won’t be back until late.”

“In that case, M’ric,” said T’kamen, “can we find the Headwoman?”

“I’ll take you to the caverns,” said M’ric. He cocked his head. “Did R’lony say anything about making me your tail?”

“Tail?” T’kamen asked, and then, recalling what R’lony had said about M’ric, went on, “He did say something about you tailing me –”

“Yes!” M’ric unbuttoned the shoulder-strap that held his rank cords in place and shook the weyrling braid down his arm. “This won’t take a minute. See, B’nam, I told you I’d get to tail!”

B’nam didn’t look impressed. B’nam, T’kamen thought, wasn’t the excitable type. “Good for you.”

“This is one of those things you’re going to have to explain, M’ric,” said T’kamen. “What’s a tail?”

M’ric looked up from the new knot he was tying into the trailing end of his braid. “A tail. Tailman. You didn’t have tailmen in the Interval?” When T’kamen shook his head, he continued, “Aides to the senior officers. Usually second-Turn weyrlings and junior riders too young to join the Wings, but, you know, promising ones, who’ll learn from being around rank.”

“So it’s a kind of mentorship arrangement?” T’kamen asked.

“It goes both ways,” said B’nam. “We serve our officers in different ways – running errands, cleaning kit, getting their dragons ready for Fall. I help the Marshal with his work –”

“B’nam tails for R’lony,” M’ric interjected, unnecessarily.

“– and in return I get to learn about how the Strategic division operates,” B’nam continued. “When I graduate, I’ll have a better chance of making rank.”

“There’s prestige to being a tail, then,” said T’kamen

M’ric nodded. “And privileges. I won’t have to do weyrling chores any more, and if I want to leave the Weyr for something, I only have to get your permission, not the Weyrlingmaster’s. But there’s prestige to having a tail, too. Usually only officers get them.” He put his shoulder knots back on. “All right, let’s go. See you later, B’nam.”

As M’ric led the way back to the lobby of Command, T’kamen wondered how his own lack of rank would affect M’ric’s new status. “R’lony seems a decent sort.”

M’ric snorted. “You don’t know him very well.”

“If his brown’s been flying Donauth for more than twenty Turns, he can’t be completely incompetent.”

“Hardly,” said M’ric. “I mean, sure, Geninth’s a good enough sire, for an old dragon, but that’s got nothing to do with R’lony’s competence. Except in Dalka’s furs, anyway.”

“Be civil,” T’kamen told him, as they emerged back out into the Bowl.

“I’m just saying,” said M’ric. “And it’s not even as if he gets a unanimous vote the way the Commander does.”

That took a moment to sink in. “You mean the Marshal is elected the same way as the Commander is?”

“Not the same way,” M’ric said. “You only get a vote in the Commander’s ballot if you’re a Tactical rider. Same applies for the Marshal. If you’re not in Strategic division, you don’t have a say. But there are only about a hundred dragonpairs in Strategic, and R’lony barely scraped a majority at the last Marshal ballot. It’s not exactly a mandate, is it?”

“Voting for leaders…” T’kamen shook his head, bemused.

“It beats letting a horny queen decide,” said M’ric. “Especially when half the time she’s only choosing based on who her rider wants in her weyr. Which is beyond stupid. And even if it were still decided that way, and there was a direct correlation between a dragon’s ability to catch a queen and his rider’s ability to lead, what if the best rider’s dragon’s injured on the day the queen rises, or he’s off fighting and can’t get back to the Weyr in time, or he’s had a big meal that morning and can’t compete because he has a full belly?”

“R’lony must manage, if Geninth’s been catching Donauth all these Turns,” said T’kamen.

“He doesn’t always get her. Nearly always, because Dalka knows when Donauth’s getting close and R’lony makes sure he’s around to chase. But the first time Donauth rose after I Impressed Trebruth, Geninth didn’t make it back from Madellon North in time, and Stratomath flew her. And no one was happy about that, least of all Ch’fil, because Donauth laid two bronzes, and that’s automatic grounding for Stratomath.”

“For siring bronzes?”

“There’s not a lot of call for bronzes,” M’ric said, with an apologetic shrug.

That had to be why there were so few of them at Madellon. If browns sired all the clutches, and those who threw bronzes were banned, it was no wonder that Madellon only had eleven bronze dragons. “Doesn’t Geninth sire bronzes?”

“Not often. He’s too clever. I think there are only two other bronzes younger than ten, apart from the weyrlings. Vralsanth and Monbeth. And Monbeth was out of Levierth, so nothing to do with Geninth.”

“Every time I think I’m starting to get a feel for this place,” T’kamen said. “I have  a lot of catching up to do.”

M’ric looked sideways at him. “But you’re not planning on staying, are you?”

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take to fix whatever’s wrong with Epherineth’s ability to go between,” said T’kamen. “It could be sevendays or months; it could be Turns, for all I know. As long as we’re here, I need to fit in and toe the line.”

“Is that what R’lony told you?”

“He was a lot more shaffing civil to me than S’leondes was, M’ric.”

M’ric snorted. “I suppose you have to kiss his arse now you’re a Seventh rider.”

“What is your problem with R’lony?” T’kamen asked, annoyed.

“I wouldn’t have a problem with R’lony if he didn’t have a problem with me,” M’ric said. “Or, rather, with my dragon.”

“What’s wrong with your dragon? I thought being small was desirable.”

“It is,” said M’ric. “For Tactical. R’lony thinks I’m a traitor to my colour because I don’t see the point in sucking up to Strategic when Trebruth’s small enough to fight.”

T’kamen thought of what R’lony had said about M’ric. S’leondes wouldn’t accept a brown dragon into his precious fighting Wings if it was the size of a green and twice as fast. “You might not be still here by the time you graduate,” he said, deciding to sidestep the issue.

“We’re not going anywhere until we’ve fought Thread,” M’ric said. He shrugged. “Sorry.”

T’kamen supposed he would have felt the same in his position. “I think Epherineth would like a chance to try his flame against Thread, himself.”

“I suppose he might get one if you have to go in for a catch,” said M’ric. “Sometimes the Seventh’s dragons have to burn a path through. You might not, though. Epherineth’s just so big.”

“Then I’ll consider myself lucky to have had a chance to see dragons fighting Thread at all,” said T’kamen.

“Seeing them fight isn’t the same as doing the fighting.”

“It’s still more than I ever expected I’d get to do,” T’kamen said. M’ric’s zeal on the subject was wearing on him, and he sought a new subject. They were approaching the entrance to the lower caverns, flanked now by a widely-spaced pair of curving walls. “Those are new.”

“The Wall,” said M’ric. His tone was reverent enough to imbue the word with significance. T’kamen looked at him, and M’ric went on, “Every dragonpair that dies in service goes on the Wall.”

T’kamen stopped to look at the right-hand wall. It was covered with names and dates, each one carved into the smooth surface of the pale grey stone blocks. He ran his fingers over the last few names, still recent enough that the dust of their creation came away on his fingertips. Wingrider K’lint and blue Miyath, Fourth Flight, P8/26.05.19. Wingrider Isaga and green Nenath, Third Flight, P8/28.06.19. Wingsecond F’vera and green Trilasiath, Third Flight, P8/26.05.19. Wingrider O’paken and green Marieth, Third Flight, P8/26.05.19. “Four on the same day?”

M’ric shrugged.

“And these last three all from Third Flight?”

“The Third takes a lot of casualties,” said M’ric. “The riders assigned there are probably the bravest in Madellon.”

T’kamen wondered if that was the truth, or if the Third was just where Madellon’s least capable riders were posted. “Isn’t it a little macabre to be walking past the reminder that all these riders have died every time you go into the caverns?”

“And it would be better to pretend they never existed?” M’ric asked. “All these riders died protecting Pern. Having the Wall here reminds us of what they sacrificed. We should remember them. They’re all heroes.”

It still struck T’kamen as morbid, but he let it drop.

He’d braced himself to find the Weyr’s dining hall dramatically transformed from his time, but for once he was pleasantly surprised. There were more tables and benches, packed in tighter to accommodate the greater population of Pass Madellon, but apart from that, very little seemed to have changed. The big hearths and the small ones hadn’t moved, the serving tables were where T’kamen expected them to be, and there were instrument stands and racks of music in the corner where the Weyr Singer had always played. For a moment, as they paused there just inside the big cavern, T’kamen half expected Crauva to come walking purposefully from the kitchens with Valonna close beside her.

There were riders sitting at various tables, singly and in small groups, with food and klah, cards and dice. “You can sit where you like most of the time, so long as a Tactical rider doesn’t tell you to move,” said M’ric, “but mostly riders sit with their wingmates. The two tables that side are the Seventh’s, and this one here, where El’yan and O’sten are.”

The two riders he named were playing dragon chess. Judging by the number of white pieces on the table beside them, the older man was winning handily. He looked up from the game as M’ric and T’kamen passed. “Going to introduce us to our new wingmate, boy?”

“Sure,” said M’ric. T’kamen noticed how he turned his shoulder deliberately towards the older rider, to show off his new tailman’s knot. “This is T’kamen, bronze Epherineth’s rider. T’kamen, this is El’yan, brown Ayarth’s rider, and O’sten, bronze Monbeth’s.”

O’sten, a dark-haired, dark-skinned rider in his early twenties, nodded politely before resuming his intent study of the chessboard before him. El’yan, though, regarded T’kamen with watery eyes. He was the oldest rider T’kamen had yet seen in the Pass. He was white-bearded and almost bald. His bare scalp was mottled with age spots, and his lower eyelids drooped like a hound’s. “Weyrleader T’kamen,” he said, extending his hand slowly towards him. His voice was rough and gravelly.

T’kamen clasped the proffered wrist, and was surprised at the firmness of the old rider’s grip. “The title isn’t necessary,” he said. “It’s just…” Then he realised he wasn’t sure what his Pass title was. He looked at M’ric. “What am I now, a wingrider?”

“‘Bronze rider’,” M’ric supplied.

T’kamen shrugged. “Bronze rider, then.”

“You get to my age and you think you’ve seen it all,” said El’yan. He glanced at the chessboard, moved a black Star Stone, then looked gloomily back at T’kamen. “You must have some tales to tell.”

“I doubt I have as many as you,” said T’kamen.

“My grandpa was born not much more than half through the Interval,” said El’yan. “He used to tell me about the days when most of the dragons of Pern could still go between. K’yan, Contith’s rider.”

The name wasn’t familiar. “I don’t think I knew him,” said T’kamen.

“He never mentioned you, either,” said El’yan. The least flicker of amusement betrayed his doleful expression. T’kamen caught it with his eyes, and El’yan chuckled rustily. “You’re all right, bronze rider.”

“Stay here a minute, T’kamen, I just saw Kanessa go by,” M’ric said suddenly. “I’ll go and get her.”

“He tailing for you?” El’yan asked, as M’ric jogged off towards the kitchens.

T’kamen nodded. “The Marshal was kind enough to assign him to me. I have a lot to learn. And I’m not too fast on my feet yet.”

“You dislocated your hip?”

T’kamen wondered how much of his private business was now public knowledge. “Yes.” He lifted his cane. “I’ll be glad to be rid of this. I’m so slow getting from place to place.”

El’yan smiled. He turned slightly where he sat, and T’kamen had to school himself not to recoil. The old brown rider’s right leg stopped at the knee. The missing lower limb had been replaced with a peg, carved from wood and strapped to the stump of the upper leg with a cradle of leather straps. “I can sympathise.”

“I’m sorry,” said T’kamen, horrified at his own crassness. “I didn’t know –”

“Of course you didn’t,” said El’yan. “I can get around almost as quick on this as I ever did when I had two whole legs.” He studied T’kamen with his weary, droopy eyes. “Yes. Lost it to Thread in the very first Turn of the Pass. And blighted lucky we were that half a leg and a chunk of Ayarth’s neck was all we lost.”

“I’m sorry,” T’kamen said again.

“Don’t be. I’m not.” El’yan casually moved another piece on the chessboard he seemed barely to be watching. “Checkmate, O’sten. I told you to keep an eye on my Wingsecond.”

“Thread take it!” O’sten complained, though he shook his head with rueful respect.

“You play chess?” El’yan asked T’kamen.

“Not well,” he said. “Poker, a little.”

“You’ll find plenty of Madellon riders happy to take your marks off you at the poker table,” said El’yan.

“I don’t have a great many marks.”

“Then you’re welcome to improve your chess game with me.”

It was the most honest offer he’d had for sevendays. “Thank you, El’yan. I may take you up on that.”

M’ric returned then, wearing an expression between annoyance and grudging admiration. “Kanessa says you’ve already been assigned F’vera’s weyr.”

It took T’kamen a moment to place the name. “One of the dead green riders from the Wall?”

“Well you couldn’t very well have his weyr if he was still alive, could you?” M’ric asked. He shook his head. “I can’t believe Dalka’s giving you a Wingsecond’s weyr. Is she insane?”

“Be civil,” T’kamen told him, realising as he did that it wasn’t the first time he’d reproved the weyrling for being rude about the Weyrwoman.

M’ric very nearly rolled his eyes. “You’re going to have a hard enough time without Dalka and R’lony burying you in privileges like nice weyrs and tailmen.”

He was probably right, T’kamen thought, if S’leondes’ reaction to him was any indication of how Madellon’s Tactical riders were going to treat him – but he wasn’t about to offend R’lony or Dalka by refusing their kindness. “I’ll burn that Thread when it falls on me.”

M’ric gave him a look. “It’s your hide.”

Beyond them, El’yan chuckled. “You’ll need to keep that one on a short leash, T’kamen.”

“So I’m discovering,” T’kamen replied.

“I’m your tail, not your pet,” M’ric said indignantly.

For some reason, that made T’kamen hesitate a moment, but he couldn’t put a finger on why. “Tail, pet; it’s all the same to me. Show me this weyr we’ve been assigned. I’d like to get Epherineth settled in.”

F’vera’s weyr – T’kamen’s, now – was one of the new ones in the south-eastern quadrant of the Bowl, overlooking the lake. The ledge would get the sun in the afternoon, though Epherineth remarked that it would be rather cool and shadowy in the mornings. Inside, the dragon couch was an adequate size – just – while the rider quarters comprised a decent-sized living area with a hearth, a smaller curtained-off sleeping chamber, and a bathing room with a cold water supply as well as a sunken hot pool.

M’ric took him down to the storerooms, where the chit R’lony had supplied got T’kamen access to a vast trove of clothes and tools and other sundries, the second-hand but often hardly used possessions of deceased riders. If T’kamen found the idea of inheriting dead men’s clothes vaguely ghoulish, his ingrained aversion to extravagance approved of the thrift. He found enough shirts and trousers and jackets in his size to meet his modest needs, and loaded Epherineth with several crates of linens, bedfurs, glowbaskets and the like.

He spent a quiet afternoon arranging his new possessions to his satisfaction. M’ric had gone off to his own drills and classes around noon, and a sizable number of Tactical dragons – about two hundred – left not long after that, presumably to fly the afternoon’s Fall. The ledges to either side of Epherineth’s were empty, and no one came to see how they were doing or to introduce themselves. T’kamen found the lack of interest curious, but not unwelcome. His encounters with S’leondes and R’lony had given him a lot to think about.

S’leondes was an arrogant bastard. Just the thought of the objectionable blue rider made T’kamen’s hackles rise. It was one thing to be the subject of a bronze rider’s contempt, or even a senior brown’s, but T’kamen couldn’t remember ever being so mortally insulted by a rider of one of the junior colours. Clearly, he would need to make some mental adjustments. The junior colours were junior no longer when bronzes and browns must step aside for them. It went against every instinct T’kamen had for the natural order of things. But for all S’leondes’ incivility towards him, the blue rider clearly commanded the respect of his officers – and M’ric’s regard for the Commander obviously went far beyond respect. T’kamen had come to trust the weyrling’s opinion on most matters, but M’ric’s reverence for S’leondes baffled him.

So did his disdain for the Marshal. T’kamen had much more time for R’lony, dour and unpretentious though he was, than he did for S’leondes. R’lony was probably better placed to understand T’kamen’s predicament than anyone else in Pass Pern: a former Weyrleader, unjustly stripped of his status, yet still committed to Madellon’s greater good. The story of how Madellon had come to be divided into Tactical and Strategic, with all its traditions overturned in the process, was one T’kamen knew he’d need to hear.

It was nearly dark by the time the Wings returned, streaming in with blue and green hides smudgy with ash and eyes dull with exhaustion. Later still, the dragons of the Seventh Flight came back, distinguishable only as black shapes against the darker sky. Three of them bore smaller dragons on their backs, casualties of the Fall, but aside from a few riders with their arms in slings, T’kamen saw no other sign of injuries.

“Where are all the other wounded?” he asked M’ric when the brown rider came up to attend him, as he’d promised he would, after the weyrlings’ evening muster.

M’ric had a wineskin and a bleak expression. “We don’t get many wounded,” he said. “Just a few wrenched shoulders and scorched wings.” He offered T’kamen the skin. “Here.”

“I don’t have any cups,” said T’kamen. “Does the Weyrlingmaster know you have that?”

“He doesn’t care so long as he has his own.” M’ric tipped his head back to take a long drink straight from the neck. Then he gave the skin to T’kamen and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “The young ones go between, you see,” he said. “When they get hit.”

T’kamen tried the wine. It wasn’t bad. “And they don’t come out.”

“It’s better than the alternative.”

“That green,” T’kamen said, thinking of the wretched dragon in the invalid weyr above theirs. “The one with half her wing missing.”

“Harlath.”

“Was she hit by Thread?”

M’ric nodded. “A few days before you turned up.” He took the wine back and gulped down another mouthful. “The only reason she’s still around is that they were flying over a river at the time. If you’re close enough to water, you can drown Thread before it kills you.” He stared out over the Weyr. “Complete fluke luck, though.”

As he started to take another drink, T’kamen reached over and took the wineskin off him. “What happened today?”

“Only two dead.” M’ric said it matter-of-factly, as if numb to the pain. “But one of the Fifth’s Wingleaders took a direct hit.”

“And went between?”

“Runiath was nearly twenty. And there wasn’t a river handy.”

After a moment, T’kamen gave him back the wineskin. “Do you still want to fly in the fighting Wings?”

M’ric raised his eyes. “Trebruth’s young. He’d go between before he let us get eaten to death.”

“Dead’s still dead.”

“I’m a dragonrider, T’kamen. I knew what the risks were when I accepted Search. You don’t stand at a Hatching and expect to die peacefully in your sleep.”

So that was why M’ric had reacted so strongly to the idea of living into his late thirties. They assume they’ll die young. The thought made T’kamen briefly nauseous. “But you Impressed a brown.”

“I didn’t expect to,” M’ric said, in a low voice. “I didn’t mean to…” He trailed off. “I wouldn’t swap Trebruth for any other dragon on Pern,” he continued, more vigorously. “Faranth, what rider ever would? But I wanted a blue. I wanted a good strong blue like my dad’s Ricquenth, like the Commander’s Karzith. Everyone wants a blue, don’t they?”

“In my time everyone wanted a bronze,” T’kamen said. “I know I did. And I was lucky that Epherineth wanted me back, but you can’t argue with a dragon’s choice once he’s made it.”

“You can put them off, though,” said M’ric. “Can’t you? Think unwelcoming thoughts at them, so they’ll look elsewhere? I mean, what colour dragon would you least have wanted?”

“Green,” T’kamen said. “But I wouldn’t have tried to discourage one coming my way. We don’t get many clutches in the Interval, M’ric. I was older than you are now when I was Searched, and if I hadn’t Impressed from that Hatching I wouldn’t have had another chance.”

“I didn’t have that excuse,” M’ric said. “There’s always another Hatching a few months away. I could have held out. I didn’t have to accept Trebruth.” He paused, then added gloomily, “At least not with so much enthusiasm.”

“No one keeps their composure when they Impress,” T’kamen told him. “I imagined I’d take it in my stride. Thought I’d be stoic about it. When it came to it, I was a wreck. You’ve never seen so much teenage pride brought low in tears and snot.”

M’ric sighed. “You don’t get it, T’kamen. There’s a…a stigma to Impressing a brown. To accepting a dragon who no one thinks will ever fight Thread. It’s like admitting you’re a coward. That you want all the privileges of being a dragonrider without any of the sacrifice.”

“Someone has to Impress the browns,” T’kamen said. “And when you stand to a clutch you have to be prepared for any dragonet to choose you, whatever preconceptions you might have about what colour would suit you. You can’t hold out, you can’t hedge your bets, you can’t try to hang on and wait for a better dragonet to break shell.”

“But it’s not always like that now,” said M’ric. “If the clutch had been Donauth’s or Levierth’s, of course I’d have been prepared for a brown. Even the slim possibility of a bronze. But there shouldn’t have been any chance at all of a brown hatching from one of Ceduth’s eggs.”

“Ceduth?” T’kamen asked, taking the wine back again. “There’s another queen?”

“No, Ceduth’s green. That’s just it. They didn’t think a brown could even hatch from a green-laid egg. Trebruth’s the only one who ever has.”

T’kamen froze with the wineskin half raised. Slowly, he lowered it. “Green-laid?”

“That’s the other reason R’lony doesn’t like Trebruth,” M’ric said, ignoring T’kamen’s confusion. “He thinks any dragon that hasn’t been clutched by a queen is inferior.”

Every time T’kamen thought he’d reached the farthest limits of his incredulity, Pass Madellon managed to confound him afresh. “Green dragons are clutching?” he asked. “How in Faranth’s name? Greens can’t clutch! They’re barren! They always have been!”

“Not all of them,” M’ric said. “Most of them are, and once they’ve had firestone, definitely. That’s why weyrling greens aren’t allowed to chew firestone until they’ve mated twice without producing a clutch. It’s rare, but there are seven fertile greens at Madellon now.”

T’kamen took a long swig of wine. He needed the fortification. Greens laying eggs? “How are you not overrun?” he asked lamely.

“Greens don’t lay big clutches. Never more than six eggs, and clutching reduces their mating cycle to something more like a queen’s anyway, twice a Turn or so. And there’s usually nothing bigger than a blue.”

As outlandish as the notion seemed, T’kamen had to admit that it did explain a few things: Trebruth’s size, M’ric’s isolation, and how Madellon was so populous with only two queens. “Faranth,” he said. “You’re going to tell me that watch-whers can fly, fire-lizards fight Thread, and tunnel-snakes make good eating, next.”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

“Clutching greens,” T’kamen said, half to himself. “How does that work with your training? You must have tiny classes.”

“Trebruth’s clutch Hatched about two sevendays before one of Levierth’s,” said M’ric. “Once they broke shell, they just joined up with us.”

“So you’re not the only brown rider in your class?”

He shook his head. “There are three browns of Levierth’s. But they’re about twice Trebruth’s size. What R’lony calls proper browns.” M’ric’s expression betrayed both chagrin and scorn. “Well, he’s welcome to them. As if they’d even want to go anywhere but the lousy Seventh when we graduate.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” T’kamen asked.

M’ric stared at him. “It’s the worst thing in the world. You can’t understand, T’kamen. The difference between a Tactical rider and a Strategic rider…” He stopped, shaking his head, as if even he couldn’t find strong enough words to express himself. “Fighting riders are heroes. They risk their lives to protect Pern from Thread. They literally put themselves and their dragons in harm’s way, knowing what price they’ll likely have to pay, knowing they could die horribly, knowing they’ll lose their friends and their wingmates. Knowing that if they don’t, all of Pern will disappear under a sea of Thread. Any fighting rider can walk into any Hold or Hall on the planet and there’s nothing he can’t ask for, nothing the people won’t do for him.

“But Strategic riders…” M’ric lifted his hands, then let them drop. “They sit on their arses, way out from under the Fall, in no danger whatsoever. Lugging firestone sacks. Burning out burrows if they’re lucky. And when you think what the fighting dragons go through for the rest of us, the thought of sitting there, like some fat blue too scared or too slow to do a real dragon’s work… Faranth!” He bit the oath off savagely. “We won’t do it, T’kamen. Trebruth’s just as capable of serving under the Commander as any blue or green. His colour shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t.”

“Have a drink, for Faranth’s sake,” T’kamen said, thumping the wineskin against M’ric’s chest. The boy was shaking with fervour, with righteous anger…and, T’kamen thought, with fear. Not unreasonably, given R’lony’s remarks. “But you think it will matter.”

M’ric set his jaw, looking stormy. Then he nodded. “But what would we do in the Seventh, T’kamen? Trebruth’s not big enough to be useful there. Shards, the Seventh is the one place where being big is useful. R’lony keeps saying that he doesn’t know what he’d do with me!”

“It’s not a given, then, that you’ll be posted direct to the Seventh when you graduate?”

“No one gets posted direct,” M’ric said. “Not even you. The Commander has first refusal on every new dragonpair, and R’lony gets what’s left.”

“The browns and bronzes,” T’kamen said.

“And the blues that wash out,” said M’ric. “No dragonpair’s guaranteed a place in the Wings. If they can’t pass their final assessments, the Commander won’t take them. And the tests are set just above the level of the slowest blues on an average day, so most of them – if they push really hard – should squeak through.”

“So if Trebruth’s at least as fast as a slow blue, he’ll pass.”

“He’s faster than a slow blue,” M’ric said with unshakeable conviction. “He’s faster than a fast blue.” Then his shoulders drooped. “I just don’t know if that’ll be enough to make them overlook the colour of his hide.”

“Because browns don’t fight Thread,” T’kamen said. He met M’ric’s eyes when the boy looked at him reproachfully, and said, “Just like greens don’t lay eggs.”

“Easy for you to say, now you know better.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned recently, M’ric, it’s that things change. What’s accepted as the truth in my time has been turned over in yours.”

“That’s not much use to Trebruth and me right now, though,” said M’ric. “Especially as you want me to go back, not forwards.”

“What I want has nothing to do with it, M’ric. You’re going back because you have gone back. That’s how this works.”

“And you’re such an authority on how it works, aren’t you? You said you’d never gone between times deliberately before!”

“Exactly,” said T’kamen. “Deliberately.” He held his hand out absently for the wine. M’ric put it in his grip. “Doesn’t mean I never did it by accident. It’s not unusual to find yourself slipping a couple of hours when you’re new to going between. Half the discipline is learning to provide a visualisation that’s specific enough for your dragon to find the where, but not so specific that he feels he also needs to find the when. Epherineth and I slipped about four hours once when we were weyrlings. We were jumping home from Birndes Hold in Peninsula territory in the middle of summer; it was blazing bright, and I let the position of the sun bleed into my visual. It would have been noonish, Madellon-time, but I put the sun in the mid-afternoon sky the same as it was at Birndes, and arrived home four hours later than expected.”

The tale seemed, mercifully, to have distracted M’ric from his agonising. “Did you get in trouble?”

“Faranth, yes. L’stev, my Weyrlingmaster, ripped me a new one in front of all the other weyrlings. He sent me up in front of the Weyrleader to explain myself – which wouldn’t have been so bad except the Weyrwoman happened to be there too.” T’kamen grimaced at the memory of that ignoble day. “We weren’t allowed to jump solo for a sevenday – we had to route all our visuals via L’stev’s dragon for approval first – and we had to stay in the barracks two extra sevendays by ourselves when all the rest of the class had moved out to their own weyrs. And that on top of latrine duties and cold watches.”

“Bet you never did it again,” said M’ric.

“You’re sharding right we didn’t.” T’kamen laughed mirthlessly. “Not until we ended up here, anyway.”

That wasn’t a mistake, Epherineth said, with an offended snort.

In response to M’ric’s raised eyebrow, T’kamen repeated his dragon’s comment. “And he’s right,” he said. “You gave us a visual. The ridge at Rift Valley in the rising light before dawn; the beacon fire; a Wing of dragons in the sky.”

M’ric looked at him intently. “I gave you that reference? Older-me? I wasn’t there! How would I know to tell you where to go?”

“I’ll telling you now.” Epherineth, can you share that visual with Trebruth?

No, Epherineth said sharply, and by M’ric’s little flinch, his brown had issued a similar denial.

“What was that about?” M’ric asked.

There was a scraping sound from Epherineth’s chamber, and then the bronze poked his great head through the archway into T’kamen’s inner weyr. His eyes were spinning amber. We may not do that.

“Why not?” T’kamen asked.

Because the visual must come from where it came.

“It has,” T’kamen protested. “M’ric’s older self gave it to me, and I’m giving it to him now so when he’s older he knows where to send us.”

No. The visual came from a dragon who was there.

“How do you know that, Epherineth?”

Epherineth retreated noisily back into his chamber. I just know.

When his bronze wouldn’t be drawn further, T’kamen related the exchange to M’ric. “Who would have been there to see that scene?”

“I don’t know,” said M’ric. “Someone who was at Madellon West when you arrived. It could have been anyone if they’d staged out of the Weyrstation the night before.” He frowned. “But that would mean that someone was there to see you come out of between.”

He was right, T’kamen realised. “If someone did see us arrive, why wouldn’t they say so?”

“I have no idea,” said M’ric. “With most riders it would have been all over the south before you even hit the ground.”

T’kamen winced at the reminder of their crash, nightmarishly distorted in his memory. “I’ve had too much wine to puzzle this out,” he said. “Is there any left?”

M’ric shook the depleted skin. “Just a slosh.”

“Give it here.”

M’ric handed it back, and T’kamen finished the last of the wine, ignoring the slightly gritty lees in the final swallow. “I’m probably going to regret this tomorrow.”

“You won’t be the only one,” said M’ric. “Do you want me to come by and make sure you’re awake in the morning?”

“You probably should, but I’m miserable company when I’m hungover.”

“Oh,” M’ric said, and then inquired, politely, “What’s your excuse the rest of the time?”

“Get out of my weyr, you smart-mouthed little shit,” T’kamen growled.

M’ric saluted him with a crispness that belied the half skin of wine he’d had. “Sir, yes sir!”

It wasn’t until the boy had gone, and T’kamen had limped out to Epherineth’s couch, that he appreciated how strong a vintage the wine must have been. You should sit down before you fall down, Epherineth remarked, observing T’kamen’s unsteady progress from his one open eye.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” T’kamen said, but he sat down anyway. His leg was tired, but it hardly hurt at all, and he felt agreeably light-headed. It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to blunt the edges of a day with so much wine. He wondered if he should have let M’ric match him, although the weyrling hadn’t seemed too badly affected by it. The resilience of the young, T’kamen thought. It was several minutes before a more likely explanation sprang into his tired mind. Only two dead, M’ric had said. Only. With even two queens clutching twice a Turn – not to mention the fertile greens, whose very existence T’kamen still found incredible – the attrition rate must be punishingly high to make room for all the new dragons. It didn’t make the thought any less grim or any less sad. No wonder the wine hadn’t affected M’ric. Even the strongest painkillers lost their potency with regular use.

Epherineth nudged him softly with the side of his head. Go to bed, T’kamen.

All right. He cuffed his dragon’s jaw. I’m going.

He should have gone off in a flash, but sleep proved oddly elusive once he’d sought his bed. He lay awake for a long time, distracted by the faintly damp smell of his new bedfurs, the irregular firmness of the mattress, and then the slightly odd resonance to the sound of Epherineth’s slow breaths in the chamber beyond. After a while he even got up to investigate, padding barefoot in the dark to see what was wrong, but it was only the unfamiliar acoustics of the new weyr, distorting and amplifying the sound of Epherineth’s breathing.

He went back to bed, and because he was a bit drunk, and because he was a long way from home, and because he had no reason not to, he gave in to the self-pity he’d normally despise in himself. He was so tired of being alone. If Epherineth had been awake, he would have reminded T’kamen that he wasn’t, but the bronze dragon had drifted readily into peaceful slumber, untroubled by thoughts of past or future. He was the centre of T’kamen’s world, the brightest and finest part of the whole they made together, but he was a dragon, and just as there were parts of Epherineth’s life that T’kamen would never touch, never grasp, never comprehend, so there were things, human things, that Epherineth could never truly share with him. Dragons needed the company of their own kind, and though pride might preclude them from admitting it, dragonriders were no less dependent on the companionship of other human beings. T’kamen had never been gregarious, conditioned to self-reliance from his formative Turns on the road with his family’s trade train, but neither was he a recluse. The month of almost complete isolation from any meaningful society had made him acutely aware of that. But it wasn’t just company he craved, nor even fellowship. He missed intimacy. He missed passion. He missed Sarenya. Faranth, but he missed her.

She’s not yours to miss any more, he told himself savagely, irritated with himself, in spite of the wine, for having succumbed to the admission. But it was like some absurd Harper farce. Here he was, displaced decades from his own era by his former lover’s new boyfriend, and required in this time to mentor that same man’s younger self. I ought to shove him off the Rim.

Yet just as he struggled to reconcile the brash, conflicted weyrling M’ric with the insufferably calm and steady Wingsecond he’d known in the Interval, so T’kamen wrestled with the notion that Sarenya had been taken from him. No. He, T’kamen, had driven her away. He’d learned nothing from their first tempestuous love affair, when his selfish tactlessness in the aftermath of Shimpath’s choice had sent Saren bolting back to her Craft. The disintegration of their relationship the second time around might have been modelled on the first: preoccupation, thoughtlessness, insensitivity combining in an irresistibly volatile combination that had gone up in flames in that final blazing row.

But he could have made it right. He could have swallowed his pride and won her back. Instead, oppressed beneath the burden of his responsibilities, T’kamen had let her go, and all he had left was the thin, pale scar beneath his eye, hardly visible at all now, where her fire-lizard had scratched him in her defence.

This is why you shouldn’t drink. It always had made him sentimental. He was glad his dragon wasn’t awake to overhear him pining after the woman he’d twice managed to lose. Epherineth would have had some soppy profundity to convey about Sarenya’s place in their collective life, some mawkish remark about wanting T’kamen to be happy. As if it would have made a spit of difference, trapped here as they were.

And then it hit him with a shock that punched through the muddling effects of the alcohol: a thought that had been tickling at him all day, finally given form.

I’m your tail, not your pet, M’ric had said.

“His pet,” T’kamen said aloud. “His pet.” Suddenly he remembered in perfect clarity those last moments in the Interval before the adult M’ric had sent him to this time. He sat bolt upright in bed, the musty furs falling away. “Where in the Void is his fire-lizard?”

Chapter twenty-six: Sarenya

Herdbeast ear tattoos indicate ownership and transit history; the left ear is marked if the animal is sold, and the right when it is moved across Hold or territory borders. In this way the individual beast’s origins and movements may be recorded. The preservation of clear and accurate tattoos is one of the most critical duties of the Beastcraft. During outbreaks of disease, the ability to discern the origin and recent movements of any given animals quickly and accurately can mean the difference between culling only those beasts likely to be infected, and the enforced slaughter of entire herds.

Runnerbeast tattoos, applied to the pink skin of the inside upper lip, mark only ownership. A runner that has been bought and sold many times – known colloquially as a green-lip – is often head-shy, as it recalls only too well the discomfort of its many lip tattoos.

– Beastcraft Tattoos and Brands, apprentice edition

100.03.14 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Sarenya was checking snares in the feed room when the clop of hooves against the stone flags of the yard alerted her to unexpected movement. She shook the limp carcass of a tunnel-snake free of the noose that had strangled it and hooked the wire back to reset the trap. “Ingany, has something got out?”

“Journey Saren?”

That wasn’t Ingany. Sarenya stepped out of the feed room, dead snake in hand. One of the Kellad herdsmen who’d escorted the beast drive was standing beside his runnerbeast in the stableyard. “Gadman,” she said, surprised. “Something I can do for you?”

Gadman, a weathered and bandy-legged drover who could have been anywhere in his fifth, sixth, or seventh decade, squinted at her. “Was ’specting Tebis.”

“We’ve changed assignments,” Sarenya said. “He has the Hatchery now. Master Arrense has me on the stables. Is there something I can help you with?”

“S’pose you could,” said Gadman, after a long moment’s pause. He jerked a thumb at his runnerbeast. “Thissun’s gone lame on way up t’passes.”

Sarenya tossed the tunnel-snake carcass onto the muck heap. “Walk him up the yard for me?”

Gadman clicked the runner on with his tongue. The hitch in the chestnut’s gait was clear enough. “See?”

“The off-fore,” said Sarenya. “Will he stand for me?”

“Oh, aye, Bovey’s a goodun,” said Gadman.

Sarenya approached the gelding, taking care not to move too quickly or suddenly. Goodun or not, she didn’t know Gadman’s runner. “All right, there, Bovey, you’re all right, aren’t you?” She touched the runner’s shoulder, then stroked his neck. Bovey turned his head towards her, nostrils flaring inquisitively. He had a broad white stripe running down his long face. Sarenya let him sniff her hand and kept up the soothing talk for several moments, until she was confident that the runner was calm. Then she ran her hand over his shoulder and down his foreleg. She’d barely reached the fetlock before Bovey lifted the foot. “There’s a good boy. Let’s have a look.” She brushed loose mud and bits of tithe-road gravel away from the inside of the hoof. “When was he last shod?”

“T’weren’t but a sevenday gone,” said Gadman.

“It looks like there’s a nail missing,” said Sarenya. “Maybe it worked loose and pricked his foot.” She took the worn hoof-pick from its sheath on her belt and used it to scrape away dried mud. The frog was warm but not hot, and there wasn’t a visible wound on the sole of the foot, but that didn’t rule out a puncture. She lowered the foot back to the ground and felt gradually up the leg, joint by joint. Then she stepped back. “Walk him up again, please?”

Gadman obliged, but while Bovey stepped out smartly enough that the short herdsman had to break into a jog to keep up, the gelding’s gait was still uneven. “Ain’t right, is he?” he said, sounding dismayed.

“There’s no heat in the leg, and nothing obviously wrong with the foot,” said Sarenya. “He’s probably just bruised his sole on that missing nail. I’d like to keep him here overnight and see if he’s sound by the morning.”

“Ah don’t want t’be making him no worse,” Gadman said doubtfully, “but Ah were s’posed to set back home with t’others.”

Sarenya rubbed the chestnut’s forehead. “You can borrow one of ours until the next drive. We’ll keep your fellow safe until you’re here next.”

“Obligated to ye, journey,” said Gadman. “T’wife, well, you know thattun. She always has summat t’say if Ah’m not back as Ah say Ah’ll be.”

“I know you need to get back to her,” said Sarenya. Casendie, Gadman’s wife, had a badly twisted foot, and while she could get around well enough in their cothold, she couldn’t bring in their livestock alone. “I don’t have anything as nice as this to offer you on loan, though. Hannser took it into his idiot head to dare some of the other apprentices to ride up the Water Tank yesterday. I have one lame behind, another who threw both front shoes, and the other two out in the paddock getting over the trauma.”

Gadman chortled, tucking his thumbs into the loops of his belt. “Boys’ll be boys,” he said. “Prentices bin riding up yon gorge since long afore t’Weyr were here.”

“Prentices and journeymen,” Sarenya said ruefully. The other Beastcrafters had cajoled her into riding the steep ravine – named for the rusted-out water tank wedged halfway down it – at the end of last summer. Once had been enough. It might be a much faster way to get from the high pastures to the foot of the Weyr than riding around the gentle curves and gradient of the tithe road, but it was punishing on the runners – not to mention terrifying. She glanced along the row of stalls that comprised Madellon’s modest stables. “Will Crawler do? He’s not the fastest, but if yours doesn’t come sound before you’re next up here, he’ll keep you going on your rounds.”

“T’will do fine,” said Gadman.

“This fellow’s very nice,” Sarenya said, rubbing Bovey’s nose. “Is he new?”

“Aye, new,” said Gadman. “Bucks like a mule, though, thissun. Weren’t none wanted a bucker. Lip’s as green as grass. Mild as milk to do, but them bucks…”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Sarenya. “Now, where’s that girl…Ingany!”

Ingany popped her head out from a stable. “I’m here, journeyman!”

Sarenya unbuckled Bovey’s girth and lifted the saddle off his back. “Here. Put up Gadman’s rig for me, and then saddle Crawler.”

“With this saddle?” Ingany asked uncertainly.

“With his own.” Sarenya glanced over her shoulder at Gadman. “If you’re happy for us to look after your saddle as well as your runner, that is? It’s only that Crawler’s not so high-withered as your fellow here.”

“Aye, aye,” said Gadman. “S’fine.”

Sarenya led Bovey into a vacant stall, took off his bridle, then checked to see if there was water in the bucket. There wasn’t, so she crossed the yard to the tank. It was almost empty. “When you’ve done that, you can refill the cistern,” she shouted after Ingany, lugging the full bucket back to Bovey’s stall. “And give Sunny that new hay-net; it’s soaked long enough now.”

She groomed Gadman’s gelding herself, enjoying the opportunity to handle a runner of quality. Madellon kept a limited string, just twelve runnerbeasts in total. There was one three-Turn-old, whose training Sarenya had taken over from Tebis, and Master Arrense’s personal mount, the bad-tempered Franc, but the rest were phlegmatic old plodders, surefooted on drives, and inured by long exposure to the proximity of dragons. Bovey, by contrast, was almost nice enough to have been a Holder’s mount, but by the row of ownership tattoos that Sarenya found inside the chestnut’s upper lip, he’d changed hands rather a lot. Even the best-looking runner would be sold if it wasn’t a mannerly ride.

She’d almost finished brushing the chestnut when Sleek chirruped a greeting from his favourite basking spot on the slate roof of the stable block. Another fire-lizard responded, and a moment later M’ric appeared at the stable door with Agusta clinging to his shoulder. “There you are,” he said. “I wondered where you’d got to.”

“Shards, is it noon already?” Sarenya gave a final swipe to Bovey’s neck, then racked the brush and let herself out of the stable. “I’m so sorry, M’ric. I’ve been running late all morning. Jarrisam got on the end of a kick in the milking shed, so I had to ride down to meet the drive in his place, and then Gadman’s runner came in lame –”

“It’s fine, Saren,” M’ric interrupted. “There’s no rush. But this one just turned up, and I thought you might like to take a look at her before she disappears again.”

Agusta had been missing for a couple of days – not unexpectedly, all things considered. “Been off laying eggs, have you?” Saren asked the little queen.

“She wouldn’t tell you if she could,” M’ric said wryly. “Likes to keep it a secret; don’t you, Agusta?”

“She’s just doing what’s instinctive,” Sarenya said. Bovey had put his nose over the stable door to nibble the sleeve of her tunic. She pushed him off. “Let me just finish up here, and we’ll take her into the cot.”

“No rush,” M’ric repeated. He nodded at the chestnut runnerbeast. “He’s friendly.”

“He’s not one of ours,” said Sarenya. “He belongs to one of the regular herdsmen from the beast drives. He’s rather nice, actually. If he comes sound before the next drive I’ll probably have to ride him. He’ll go mad standing in his box.”

M’ric looked at the runnerbeast with that classic dragonrider disinterest in any creature that didn’t have wings. “Handy for you to have a runner for a patient, though, just as you’ve taken over the stables.”

“Don’t you start,” Sarenya said, without rancour. “It’s bad enough that Arrense and Vhion have ganged up on me.”

“It’s good that they have,” said M’ric. “You’ve been saying you need to do more with runnerbeasts.”

“It does beat Hatchery duty,” Sarenya admitted. “I’m still not likely to get much useful runner experience in Madellon’s stables, though.”

“And you need runner experience for your Mastery?” M’ric asked.

“I need it to even qualify to begin advanced studies,” Sarenya said. “I just wish everyone would stop nagging me about Mastery. I’m not even thirty yet, and no one makes Master before thirty-five.”

“I don’t mean to nag,” said M’ric. “I’m sorry, Saren.”

“It’s all right,” she said, touching his arm. “It means a lot that you care.”

Still, she felt faintly harried as she raced through the remainder of her stable rounds. She did want to make Master one day. Not every crafter did, and there was no shame at all in being content with a journeyman’s knot, but Sarenya had always aspired to Mastery of the Beastcraft – out of pure bloody-mindedness as much as anything. She’d been encountering resistance to her Craft ambitions since even before she’d apprenticed. The Beastcraft, she’d been informed by any number of people over the Turns, was no place for a girl. Even after seven Turns as a journeyman she was still hearing that. A female Beastcrafter would never be as strong as her male counterparts, she’d been told; she wouldn’t be able to control headstrong studs or calving cows; she’d never command the respect of backwoods holders; she’d probably get pregnant and then be useless on all counts. It made Sarenya irritable. She might not have the raw brawn required to pull an overlarge calf from its mother, but muscle was easy to come by – an understanding of when to intercede and when to let nature take its course wasn’t. No one, not even her burly uncle, could make an angry bull or stallion do anything by brute strength, but skilful management and gentle handling could keep a stud calm and avert the need for force. Backwoods holders often didn’t respect Beastcrafters male or female. And as for the accusation that she might fall pregnant; she’d been taking measures to prevent that for Turns.

She liked her Craft. She liked working with animals. She liked being outdoors most of the time – but she enjoyed the mental challenge of studying, too, the reading that extended her knowledge of beast-medicine beyond what she could get from practical experience. She liked teaching apprentices – and even non-Craft helpers like Ingany. She was good at it. Her Masters over the Turns had all commented that she had a feel for the work, an instinct that guided her intellect, a touch with the animals. She was realistic enough about the ingrained gender-bias of the Beastcraft to know that she probably wouldn’t have earned her knots if she were merely competent. She knew she should be grateful that both Arrense and Vhion were pushing her. And she wasn’t afraid of the Turns of hard work and learning that she’d need to put into achieving her Master’s topaz. She was just afraid of what she’d have to give up to do it.

Once the stables were in order, Sarenya took M’ric and Agusta into the Beastcrafters’ cothold. Master Arrense was making himself a cup of klah in the common room when they passed through. “Wingsecond,” he greeted M’ric laconically, and then, “Shouldn’t you be off shift by now, Saren? You’re down for the afternoon off.”

“I am, Master,” she said. “But Agusta’s in clutch, and I’d like to give her a once-over. I was going to use the examining room, if that’s all right.”

“You know where it is,” said Arrense. Then he pointed at M’ric with his mug. “Don’t let her get side-tracked. She works too much as it is.”

“Master,” Sarenya protested.

“We’re going to get out of the Weyr for a few hours once we’re done here,” said M’ric. “Absolutely no work, I promise.”

Arrense nodded grudgingly. “Carry on.”

M’ric was smiling as Sarenya showed him into the room they used to examine their smaller patients – stable cats, spit dogs, and the odd fire-lizard. “What?” she asked, glancing at him as she opened the shutters to let in more daylight.

“Nothing,” he said. “It always just tickles me, how correct you are around your Master.”

“What, because I’m not correct around anyone else?”

“It’s not as if it’s a secret that he’s your uncle,” said M’ric. “And anyone who didn’t know would soon figure it out. You only have to look at the two of you together.”

Sarenya paused as she washed her hands, giving him a stare of mock-horror. “With the beak he has on him? Faranth forbid anyone would see that and think of me!”

“Not the nose,” said M’ric. “But you do have the same eyes as him.”

“Technically I have the same eyes as my dad,” said Sarenya.

“Who was your Master’s brother.”

“I don’t want there to be any accusation that he gives me special treatment. Tebis is really put out that I’ve got his assignment. If there was even a hint that Arrense gave me the stables because we’re related…”

“There’s nothing wrong with a bit of favouritism towards family members, Saren,” M’ric told her. “It makes the world go round.”

He was teasing her. Sarenya knew it, and he knew she knew it. “Not my world, it doesn’t,” she told him ominously, playing along. “All right. See if you can get Agusta to stand on the balance there.”

Agusta refused at first, shaking her head irritably and gripping onto M’ric’s shoulder harder as he tried to coax her down onto the brass plate of the scales. She’d been short-tempered, disobedient, and ravenous for several days before her recent absence. “She always gets like this before she clutches?”

“I’ve always presumed that’s what it’s all about,” said M’ric. He finally managed to disentangle Agusta’s tail from around his upper arm, and set her firmly down on the balance. “She goes off for a few days, comes back to eat everything in sight, then vanishes for a few more days. It goes on for seven or ten days and then she’s back as if nothing ever happened. And completely unrepentant about her behaviour, aren’t you?”

Agusta rustled her wings defiantly at the censure as Sarenya read the weight off the scale. “And you have no idea where she goes to clutch?”

“She’s been coming back sandy, but apart from that… Oh, and this was stuck to her foot this morning.” M’ric took a ribbon of desiccated purple-green seaweed, crusted with salt, from his pocket.

Saren took it off him. “Deep greenwrack, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

“You’re the seaholder,” she told him. “Don’t you know your sea plants?”

M’ric shrugged. “It’s been a long time.”

“It may narrow down where she’s been laying, anyway. Greenwrack’s seasonal. It only washes up in the summer if there’s been a storm to bring it up.”

“I didn’t know you were a botanist as well as a Beastcrafter, Saren.”

“I was five Turns at Blue Shale. After fish and fire-lizards, seaweed is probably their most important resource. This stuff’s quite tasty if you know how to cook it.” Sarenya frowned at the frond of seaweed. “I hadn’t heard there’d been any bad weather along the Madellon coast. But then Agusta isn’t a Madellon fire-lizard, is she? She’s not even a southern species.”

“She’s…not.”

Sarenya gave him a hard look. “You never have told me how you got your hands on a queen before you were even a dragonrider.”

“I can’t,” M’ric said, with an unconvincingly guileless expression. “I’d…compromise your integrity if I did.”

“Did you steal her?”

M’ric pulled a comically shifty face.

“And you got away with it?”

“I didn’t exactly go unpunished.”

Sarenya shook her head. “I can’t imagine you as a delinquent, M’ric.”

“A lot of Turns separate me from the boy I was when I Impressed Agusta,” he said. He cocked his head. “Why do you say she’s not southern?”

“Too many ridges on her tail,” said Sarenya. “Let me see if I can get Sleek in here to show you what I mean.” She sent an insistent thought to her blue, who’d gone back to sleep on the stable roof. “These last two ridges at the base of her tail are fully developed. If she were from a southern strain, they wouldn’t be. They’d still be the short type that run between her wings. She’s bigger than a southern queen, she has a more pointed muzzle, and her trailing edges attach farther down.” She thought harder at her own fire-lizard. “Come on, Sleek, you lazy wherry!”

Sleek didn’t come. M’ric laughed. “Never mind, Saren. I believe you.”

“One of these days I’m going to have to make another run at training him to obey,” said Sarenya. “I can’t even get him to wear a message band. He just eats them. Which reminds me…” She opened drawers until she found a packet of wherry jerky. “Will Agusta be all right with me handling her?”

“Trebruth will control her,” M’ric said. “She won’t scratch you.”

Sarenya fed the queen a piece of wherry to sweeten her. “See if she’ll jump down onto the table for me.”

Agusta looked disapproving, but she didn’t scream or struggle or disappear when Sarenya started her inspection. It was a scaled-down equivalent to the dragon nose-to-tail that she did with the weyrlings. Pinching up the hide to check for hydration – a test that took both hands on a dragon – could be done between thumb and forefinger on a fire-lizard. The pulses were lighter and more rapid. Agusta allowed her to open her wings one at a time, and then to lift each foot and, applying gentle pressure, splay out the individual toes. The queen’s hide was healthy, her eyes bright, all her limbs straight and sound. Her teeth were good and her breath neutral, if not exactly sweet. Sarenya placed a hand on one side of the lizard’s belly. Agusta mantled her wings at that, but only for a moment. “Well, she’s definitely in clutch.”

“She doesn’t look it,” said. M’ric. “Not like an egg-heavy dragon does, anyway.”

“I’ve never examined a gravid dragon,” said Sarenya. “So all my knowledge of dragon gestation is from Vhion’s apprentice notes. Queen dragons carry their eggs much longer than fire-lizards do.” She pressed her fingertips lightly against the other side of Agusta’s abdomen. “In fact the whole cycle is longer. With fire-lizards, it’s usually only forty-five or forty-six days between mating and hatching, and the eggs will all be laid by day thirty-four. And a queen dragon will lay twenty-something eggs over two or three days without a break. I’ve seen fire-lizard clutches with as many as thirty eggs, but they won’t all have been laid at the same time. They just don’t have the internal space to carry that many fully-developed eggs at once. Take her on your arm a moment?”

M’ric persuaded Agusta to hop onto his wrist with the enticement of another bit of meat. “So she’ll lay her clutch in batches?”

“Yes. She’s carrying six or seven mature eggs now from what I could feel, which is consistent with her weight. She’ll lay these, then start forming the shell for the next batch, and so on until she’s laid all the young she’s carrying, over a sevenday or so. That’s why greens only produce small clutches. They don’t have the bodily resources to sustain more than one laying, so any extra young get reabsorbed.”

“Reabsorbed?” M’ric asked, with a grimace.

“Hold her up for me?” Sarenya peered at the queen’s underside. “She’s already laid at least one set. See the cloacal swelling back between her hind legs?”

“That may be more than I need to know about female fire-lizard anatomy, Saren.”

“You shouldn’t be squeamish about it,” Sarenya told him. “She could get egg-bound. It’s the most common cause of death among domesticated green and gold fire-lizards. But she seems fine. She’s hydrated and bright. What’s she been eating?”

“Just the usual meat scraps from the kitchens,” said M’ric.

“She’s probably hunting for herself along the coast, but it wouldn’t hurt to feed her something to help her replace the minerals that are going into her hatchlings and their eggshells. Spiderclaws would be best – something with a semi-hard shell for her to eat.” She frowned. “What happens to the shells of dragon eggs after a Hatching? Does the queen eat them?”

“I’m not really sure,” said M’ric. “I had a bit of Trebruth’s eggshell as a keepsake, but I lost it a long time ago. I don’t know what happens to the rest. Is that what a fire-lizard would do, eat them?”

“It’s what wherries do,” said Sarenya. “The hens eat the eggshells once they’ve hatched. Along with any young they don’t like the look of.”

“There’s nothing like a mother’s love.”

“That’s why we incubate wherry eggs in the Hatchery,” Sarenya said. “Otherwise we’d lose half of them. In theory, fire-lizards would do the same, but in practice, they don’t often get the chance. A hatching fire-lizard clutch attracts too much attention to make it safe for a wild queen and her fair to stick around for long. As soon as there’s the least sniff of a wherry or a snake, they abandon the eggs and any hatchlings that aren’t strong enough to follow. Sometimes all of them.”

“It’s a good thing dragons aren’t put off so easily,” said M’ric.

“I suppose that comes of having no natural predators.” Sarenya went back to the sink to wash her hands again. “And human intervention never hurts.”

“So why is it that Agusta won’t tell me where she lays her eggs?” asked M’ric. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for her to do it where I can protect them?”

Sarenya dried her hands on a towel. “Well, what happens if two queen dragons have eggs on the sands at the same time?”

“They –” M’ric paused, looking thoughtful. Then he continued. “It doesn’t really happen. They rise so infrequently in the Interval, and they mostly seem to sort out their own cycles so they don’t coincide with each other. But I did hear a story once about two queens sharing Hatching sands. The senior waited for the junior to go out to hunt, and while she was away, she, ah, ate some of her eggs.”

Sarenya winced. “Well, that’s something they have in common with fire-lizards. And that’s why Agusta keeps her eggs hidden from you. She’s concerned that you’ll eat them.”

M’ric looked at her. “My own fire-lizard thinks I’m going to eat her offspring?”

“Don’t take it personally. When a lizard queen’s in clutch, all the learned behaviours that she’s developed as your companion are superseded by her natural instincts. It’s a very artificial state, really, for a lizard to be attached to a human. In the wild, a fire-lizard that hatches with its parent fair in attendance effectively Impresses to the dominant queen, and by extension the rest of the fair. The fair’s entire purpose is to protect its dominant queen and her eggs. When a juvenile queen – or even a green – reaches maturity and lays a clutch, the dominant queen can’t allow her fair’s attention to be divided – it would put her own eggs in jeopardy. So the dominant queen and her bronzes will find the lesser clutch and eat the eggs. Just as that senior dragon queen did to the junior’s eggs.” She paused. “What happened in that situation?”

“The junior transferred out,” said M’ric. “I don’t suppose she’d ever have forgiven the other queen, even with a dragon’s memory.”

“Fire-lizards queens are the same,” Sarenya said. “Greens don’t care, but a junior queen won’t tolerate it. She’ll usually leave the fair of her own volition, though sometimes she’ll challenge the dominant queen for seniority. The younger queen generally loses, unless the dominant is sick or injured. Assuming she’s not killed in the fight, she’s then on her own until she can either form her own fair of unattached lizards or successfully challenge an established dominant queen for her fair. And when one queen is ousted by another, the new queen’s very first priority is to find and eat all her predecessor’s eggs.”

“They’re not nice, are they?” M’ric asked.

“Fire-lizards?” Sarenya laughed. “Not particularly, no. But they’re just trying to survive, like every other creature on Pern.”

“All right,” said M’ric. “But I still don’t understand why Agusta thinks I’m a threat. I’m not a rival queen.”

Sarenya feigned shock. “And all this time I was labouring under the misconception that you were!”

“It’s a mistake many have made,” M’ric admitted. Then, quite gravely, he stuck his tongue out at her.

“Didn’t you mother ever tell you not to make faces, M’ric? If the wind changes, you’ll be stuck like that, and then you’ll be sorry.”

“It might be an improvement,” he suggested.

“Now you’re just fishing for compliments.”

“I’ll take whatever I can get.”

Sarenya rolled her eyes at him. “You can have her back, by the way,” she said, indicating Agusta. “She’s all done.”

M’ric patted his shoulder, and after a moment’s hesitation, Agusta consented to flutter up and perch there. “But she should know that too, seeing as I’m neither gold nor a fire-lizard.”

“But you are the dominant individual of her fair,” said Sarenya.

“Trebruth would have something to say about that.”

Sarenya grinned. “You’re the closest thing to a senior queen. The relationship doesn’t map exactly, but like I said, being Impressed to a person is an unnatural condition for a fire-lizard, so she’s just acting on her instincts as best she can fit them to her situation. She won’t leave you outright – the lizard-to-human Impression bond is too strong for that – but she won’t let you near her eggs if she can help it, either.” She looked regretfully at Agusta, who’d wrapped her tail around M’ric’s neck. “Unfortunately, the outcome’s the same for her clutch. She’s a lone queen without a fair to help protect her eggs, and no way of gathering one since Impressing to a human seems to shut off a fire-lizard’s ability to make Impressions to other lizards. She can’t be with her clutch all the time, and even if she could, she’d be powerless to stop a wherry from taking them. Or even a rival queen in the same area, for that matter. I hate to say it, but her eggs probably don’t even get as far as hatching before something gets them.”

M’ric turned his head to look at Agusta. “You’d really be a lot better off if you’d just trust me, you know.” Then he looked back at Sarenya. “I suppose that’s why she won’t tell Trebruth, either.”

“You’re the first dragonrider I’ve known with a queen, so I can’t say for sure, but I suspect she considers him to be part of your fair, too, and therefore just as untrustworthy as you.”

“You wouldn’t know it with the way she tries to boss him around sometimes.” M’ric tilted his head fractionally, then added, “Trebruth says that ‘tries’ is correct, but ‘tries and fails’ would be more correct.”

“Tell him his supremacy over a creature the size of his left nostril is noted.”

M’ric grinned. Then he shook his head. “All these Turns I’d just assumed she was seeing to her clutches and that I should mind my own business and leave her to it. I’m a terrible owner.”

“You’re not,” said Sarenya. “There’s not much you can do that the Beastcrafters at Blue Shale haven’t already tried. It would be very convenient if domestic queens would just lay on their handlers’ hearths, but they never do.”

“So how do you know where they have clutched?”

“Educated guessing,” said Sarenya. “We’re fairly certain that the first instinct of human-Impressed lizards is to try their clutching ground first – wherever they were clutched, not where they hatched. But the best places tend to be in the territories of established fairs. A loner like Agusta would either be chased off or come back to her clutch site and find her eggs gone. That’s another reason why queens lay in sets, by the way – it gives them a second chance if the first laying is eaten. So then she’d try to move on to somewhere else suitable nearby. If that place works out, she’ll start to revisit it in future, at least until she’s chased off again. If you knew where her egg was actually laid, you could search nearby. But I’m guessing you don’t know, given that she must have been laid on a northern beach.”

“Would it always be a beach?”

“Fire-lizards are coastal,” said Sarenya. “They don’t live inland; not wild ones, anyway. They need to eat oily fish – sea fish – to keep their hides healthy. They don’t have the benefit of humans to oil them whenever they need it!”

“Maybe I should feed Trebruth some fish,” M’ric said ruefully. “I seem to spend my whole life putting oil on that scaly patch of his.”

“It would take an awful lot of fish to feed Trebruth,” said Sarenya.

“So there’s really no way we can find out where Agusta’s clutching?”

“Not really,” said Sarenya. “We can narrow it down to a beach in the north –perhaps somewhere that’s been stormy recently, going by that greenwrack – but that’s about it. If I still had Tarnish…” She sighed.

“He’d have known?”

“He might have. The handlers at Blue Shale have had some success in that respect. That’s assuming he’d sired the clutch.”

“He would have,” M’ric assured her.

“He flew a couple of queens, but he was young, and the older ones usually beat him. He wasn’t always wily enough.”

“Wily or not, he’d have caught Agusta,” M’ric said. Unhurriedly, he lifted his hand to Sarenya’s brow to stroke her temple. “They respond to connection, you know.”

Sarenya turned her face into his touch, smiling slightly. “I’ve heard that,” she admitted.

“It’s true,” he told her. “I’ll show you.”

He bent his head to her. Sarenya still had to stretch up a little to accept his kiss. On M’ric’s shoulder, Agusta emitted an unambiguous croon of endorsement, and their kiss dissolved as they both laughed at the fire-lizard queen’s imperious approval.

“See?” M’ric asked. “I bet that’s one thing you never learned at Blue Shale.”

“No,” Sarenya agreed. “Strangely, in between all the hours I spent lying in sand dunes, watching wild fairs and getting sunburnt in some sensitive places, it wasn’t.”

“Sunburnt?” He gave her a slow, frank look , up and down. “In sensitive places? How sensitive?”

“Pretty sensitive,” Saren told him. “It’s all the sand, you see. It can really…chafe.”

“Saren,” M’ric said reprovingly. “And I was having such a nice mental image.”

“Can’t have that,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to upset Trebruth as well as Agusta.”

He laughed. “Believe me, Trebruth’s a long way from upset. Come on. I promised your uncle I wouldn’t let you work any longer than you needed to. Let’s get out of Madellon.”

“What did you have in mind?”

M’ric spread his arms wide. “All of Pern is at your disposal.”

“I do have to be back for evening stables,” Sarenya reminded him. “And to see to Sejanth. And –”

“Stop thinking about work,” he said. “And don’t worry about the time. We won’t be late. Trust me. I’m a dragonrider.”

“Well,” Sarenya said, contemplating it, “the Blue Shale beaches are nice at this time of Turn.” She waited to see M’ric’s grin broaden, and then added, “And the sevenday market will be open down on the harbour. We could go and get Agusta some spiderclaws so we don’t have to spend all afternoon wading through rock-pools.”

“That,” M’ric said, “sounds like a plan.”

Even after more than a Turn at Madellon, Sarenya still found dragon-flight exciting. She spent more hours on runnerback in a sevenday than she likely ever would aboard a dragon. Since she’d been seeing M’ric she’d ridden more regularly – he and Trebruth took her out of the Weyr every couple of sevendays – but even then she could have counted the trips she’d made between without reaching much higher than twenty.

So it was with enjoyment of the privilege that, having rushed through a quick bath and change of clothes, she accepted M’ric’s hand up to her place behind him on Trebruth’s neck. The brown was the smallest dragon she’d ridden, and he would have been the most comfortable, if not for his fondness for precision flying and breakneck manoeuvres. M’ric double-checked that Sarenya was strapped in correctly, but once he had, she hardly had a chance to do more than grab onto his flying belt before Trebruth kicked aloft and, a single downstroke later, took them between.

They emerged above Blue Shale, the busy seahold where Sarenya had spent five Turns as a junior and then senior journeyman. She hadn’t been back there since being reassigned to Madellon, and she felt a weight lift from her. The Weyr had become such a gloomy place since the loss of the weyrlings and T’kamen’s disappearance. Even the heat that had been so stifling at Madellon was leavened here by the prevailing breeze from offshore, and the briny smell of the ocean was welcome, and familiar, and invigorating.

As Trebruth banked across the bay, Sarenya sighted the sevenday market by the harbour. “There!” she shouted in M’ric’s ear, pointing towards the bustle of people.

He gave her a thumbs-up, and Trebruth spiralled to land on the end of the quietest pier. The handful of fishermen coiling ropes and mending net along planked walkway still stopped to watch. Sarenya supposed that, even with a blue assigned to watch duties at the Hold proper these days, dragons were still a rare sight down by the docks.

“Feeling at home yet?” she asked M’ric as they dismounted, Sleek and Agusta fluttering down to their respective shoulders from where they’d hitched a ride with M’ric’s dragon.

He shook his head. “I’ve been a dragonrider for too long for anything but a Weyr to feel like home.” He paused as Trebruth turned his muzzle down to him. “Go on, then, if you must.”

Trebruth snorted, a distinctly offended sound, and then loped towards the end of the pier. Sarenya thought he was going to belly-flop into the sea, but while the brown flung himself off the planks with every appearance of pure indolence, he spread his wings and soared effortlessly upwards without touching the water with so much as a toe.

“He’s such a show-off,” Sarenya told M’ric.

“It makes him happy,” M’ric said casually, although the hint of a smile belied his nonchalance. “Lead on.”

Hand in hand, they walked down the pier towards the market. They passed skiffs and fishing trawlers, coastal rafts and river barges, and two of the great ocean-going three-masters that braved the open seas, fierce currents and temperamental weather conditions that lay between the southern continent and the north. A fast clipper sailed in as they watched, slicing through the chop of Shale Bay with her great sails billowing, then heeling sharply as she entered the protection of the long breakwater, her crew swarming the masts to lower the canvas.

The sevenday market stretched the length of the quayside. Blue Shale’s inland holders set up their stalls on the wharves, while the trawlermen and line fishermen displayed their catches in crates and kegs on the decks of their vessels. Marks did change hands, but barter was just as common: an inlander might trade a barrel of flour for a netful of fingertails, or a sack of tubers for a dripping basket of rock mussels. The dock rang with the competing shouts of fisherman boasting about their catch.

There were fire-lizards everywhere. At this hub of the trade in their eggs, few shoulders were bare of at least a green or blue. Many of them wore collars or leg cuffs of braided cords, identifying their owners or their owners’ ships. “Keep Agusta close,” Sarenya told M’ric. “If she goes for anything in a box or a bucket, you’ll have to pay for it. Anything that touches the ground, though – ah – see?” She pointed to where half a dozen squabbling lizards had converged on a yellowtail that had fallen from a clumsily-lifted crate.

“She understands,” M’ric assured her. “Sleek’s behaving himself.”

“He was hatched here,” Sarenya said. “He knows the rules.” She rubbed her blue fondly under the chin with her knuckles. “And he also knows I’m not going to bring him here without buying him something.”

“I’d say the same for you,” M’ric said, “but I’m not sure you’re in the market for a seven-pound redfin. How about I buy you lunch?”

They found a stall with a cookfire set up, selling strips of fish dipped in meal and fried crisp in sizzling hot oil, a treat Sarenya had enjoyed many times in her Turns at the Hold. The stallholder, a wizened and tiny old lady whose hands flashed lightning-fast as she turned the frying whitefish slices in their pan, dished two portions onto clay platters for them, but refused the eighth mark piece that M’ric offered her. “Don’t charge dragonriders,” she croaked. “Nor a dragonrider’s girl.” She flapped her hands at them. “Go. Eat.”

M’ric looked like he was about to object, but Sarenya gripped his arm in warning. “Thank you, grandmother,” she said gravely. “You’re more than kind.”

Trebruth had found a good place overlooking the bay to bask in the sunshine. They climbed up some rocks to join him there. “You should have let me pay, Saren,” M’ric told her, setting the plate of fried fish down between them.

“She would have been horribly offended,” said Sarenya. “You don’t ever refuse a kindness from a grand-matriarch of the Seacraft like that.” When M’ric looked inquiringly at her, she returned the look with a frank one of her own. “Didn’t you see her gansey? She was a Master Fisher in her own day, and she has great-grandchildren in the Craft now. There’s probably no one more respected in the whole harbour.”

“It’s just been a long time since I’ve expected a free lunch just for being a dragonrider,” said M’ric.

“She was probably born in the Pass,” Saren said. “Or not much after it ended, anyway.” She bit the end off one of the fish strips, still almost hot enough to burn her mouth, and rolled her eyes. “Faranth, I’d forgotten how good fresh fish tastes. It’s one of the things I really miss at Madellon.”

M’ric fed a bit of his to Agusta before taking a bite himself. “Do you miss a lot of things, at the Weyr?”

“I miss this place,” Sarenya said frankly. “Blue Shale was a prize of an assignment. And I was longer here than I’ve been anywhere since I left to apprentice out. Madellon’s still a post, not my home.” She looked out to sea. “Do you miss the Peninsula?”

“Sometimes,” said M’ric. “But sometimes I think it’s as well to be away from a place with painful associations.”

Saren almost laughed – what was Madellon to her, if not a place with painful associations? – but she controlled the reaction in time. M’ric had lost a weyrmate and a daughter at the Peninsula, and she had no desire to make light of his grief. Instead, she said, “Dragonriders never seem to talk much about their lives before they Impressed.”

“I suppose we don’t,” he replied.

He didn’t elaborate, chewing pensively on his fried fish. Sleek begged and creeled on Saren’s shoulder until she broke off a piece and gave it to him. Sarenya studied M’ric in profile. The keen dark eyes that saw so much gave nothing away. “You were a very different person then, weren’t you?”

“Weren’t we all?” he asked. “You weren’t Craftbred, were you?”

Sarenya shook her head. “I was born at Lanen Hold. So I’m no more a Madellon native than you are.”

“Western Peninsula, though,” said M’ric. “It’s not as if you’re one of those incomprehensibly-accented easterners.”

“Like Sh’zon?”

“Sh’zon used to be almost incomprehensible,” said M’ric. “He’s rubbed off the sharp edges. When did you last go home?”

“To Lanen?” Sarenya asked. “Never. Not since I apprenticed out.”

“Do you want to? It’s only a hop between for Trebruth.”

“Not really.” Then Sarenya considered how that sounded. “That came out wrong. I don’t mean to imply that I had an unhappy life before I went to the Beastcraft. I didn’t. Unremarkable, perhaps, but not unhappy.”

“Then we’re more alike than you realise,” M’ric said. He cocked his head. “It wasn’t the family craft, then? The Beastcraft?”

“Other than my uncle, no. And I hardly knew him before I came to Madellon. He took me to the big racing festival at Peninsula West, once, when I was very small.” She smiled. “I don’t remember, but supposedly I went through the card. Picked every winner. And then I ate too many pies, and threw up on his shoes.”

M’ric laughed. “Maybe you’ve suppressed the memory on account of the pies.”

“Maybe,” Sarenya said. “It would account for why I can’t stand the sharding things.”

“And you haven’t seen your family in fifteen Turns?”

“I last saw my dad about eight Turns ago.” Then, self-consciously, she clarified, “You know, at the Hatching.”

An expression of sympathy briefly crossed M’ric face. “Of course.”

“But he’d remarried not long before that,” Sarenya went on. “My mother died a couple of Turns after I apprenticed to the Beastcraft. I suppose I have some half-siblings at Lanen now as well as my brothers.” She shrugged. “It’s like I said. I didn’t have a tragic childhood. It’s just…in the past. The Beastcraft’s been my home and family for longer than Lanen was.

“And I do want to make Master, M’ric.” She looked up at him. “Arrense knows I do. So does Vhion. That’s why they’re starting to put pressure on me.”

“To give up your work in the dragon infirmary?” M’ric asked.

“It’s not just that,” Sarenya said. “I  need to spend two or three Turns somewhere…well, somewhere that isn’t Madellon. There’s a limit to how much I can learn at a Weyr. But leaving Madellon…when so much of what matters to me is there… You, for starters. Sejanth. C’mine and Darshanth.”

There was another name that she wanted to add, but it caught in her throat. T’kamen had been gone more than a fortnight now. Gone. Not dead: Sarenya wouldn’t entertain that unthinkable explanation for his disappearance. Valonna had told her that Shimpath would have known if Epherineth had died. The opinion of a queen dragon was good enough for Sarenya, no matter what anyone else said. And there was plenty of talk Sarenya would rather not have overheard.

“When you talked to him that night,” she began, and then stopped, realising she’d spoken without context.

M’ric understood anyway. “T’kamen? I didn’t talk to him. Trebruth spoke with Epherineth.”

Sarenya stared out at the bay. A small boat, the harbour pilot, was leading one of the big three-masters back out to sea, guiding it through the deep channel. “Sam thinks he saw Trebruth on Epherineth’s ledge.”

“Sam?”

“Jarrisam. He was up early for the drive that morning. He said he saw a dragon on the Weyrleader’s ledge. Small. Dark.” She looked sideways at M’ric, then past him. “He said it could have been Trebruth.”

M’ric met her look candidly. “We were at Rift Valley with the Ops Wing. T’kamen was going to join us there, but he never turned up. I didn’t put any significance on it until the next day. I just assumed something else had come up.”

“Then you didn’t see him? Sarenya asked. “Before he disappeared?”

M’ric shook his head. “I was out with Ops. I couldn’t very well be in two places at once. Maybe there was another dragon on Epherineth’s ledge. Trebruth’s not the only small, dark dragon at Madellon.”

“But if there was someone else with T’kamen that night, why haven’t they come forward?” Sarenya asked.

“Maybe it was a green rider.”

“What green rider?”

M’ric shrugged apologetically. “Any green rider. Maybe he had a girlfriend, and she hasn’t said anything because he wanted her to keep it private.”

Little as Sarenya liked to hear it, that did have the ring of truth. She’d been on the sharp end of T’kamen’s desire for discretion herself. “I just wish whoever it was would say something. I mean… How can a dragon go missing? Just disappear like that, without being…”

She stopped. She wouldn’t say the word.

“I don’t know,” M’ric replied softly.

Sleek made a mournful sound, picking up on her sadness. Saren put her hand up to him, stroking the velvety hide. “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? If you’d heard anything? If Sh’zon told you?”

“Of course I would, Saren. I know what he means to you.”

“I’m sorry,” she said miserably. “I know you’re probably sick of hearing me talk about him. It’s just that he…”

“You don’t have to apologise,” said M’ric. “Or explain. I understand.”

He put his arm around her, and Sarenya leaned against his shoulder until the wretched moment passed.

M’ric eventually succeeded in disposing of his eighth mark piece in return for a bucket of live spiderclaws from one of the fishing boats moored against the quay. Agusta swooped on them gleefully, seizing them in her forepaws two at a time and gobbling them down. She’d gorged herself on more than half of them before she let Sleek close enough to snatch a couple of his own.

They walked some of Blue Shale’s beaches – without Agusta, who’d disappeared between as soon as she’d had enough spiderclaws – and returned to Madellon as the light was fading. Sarenya had M’ric drop her off at the dragon infirmary. Sejanth would be waiting.

As she turned to go inside, the great golden form of Shimpath, landing on her ledge, caught Sarenya’s eye. Even at dusk, the queen shone, almost glowing. A Turn at the Weyr hadn’t completely softened the old jolt of regret Sarenya felt when looking at the dragon who might have been hers. But she would have welcomed the second jab of loss, the one that had always come from seeing Epherineth on his weyr ledge beside Shimpath’s.

I just have this feeling, T’kamen had said, that last time they’d spoken. Something’s coming… Nothing good.

Sarenya turned, deliberately, to look at the indistinct forms of the ghosts that stood silently by the infirmary archway. Still just two of them. They reassured her. If something terrible had happened to T’kamen, if he’d died – she hated even thinking the word – then surely his shade would have joined them there. It hadn’t. He wasn’t dead. He’d be back.

She had to believe that, even if no one else did.

Chapter twenty-seven: Sh’zon

When Lord Coffleby of Long Bay Hold died suddenly in the fifty-ninth Turn of the Seventh Interval, it was widely feared that the struggle to succeed him would consume the wealth he had spent twenty Turns accumulating for his Hold. While Coffleby had sired seven healthy children on his wife in the decade of their marriage, all were still minors. Coffleby’s two adult heirs – his younger half-brother Coffadan, who had served indifferently as Coffleby’s steward, and their nephew Arcollen, a sea captain of uncertain character – seemed likely to plunge the holders of Long Bay into protracted disarray in their efforts to be confirmed as Lord Holder.

Coffleby had not been buried a sevenday when Coffadan was found dead in his bed – apparently of the same heart weakness that had claimed his older brother. His supporters cried foul play, accusing Arcollen of complicity in this most convenient turn of events. Arcollen, at sea when the news of Coffadan’s death reached him via fire-lizard, immediately turned his ship around to return to Long Bay, presumably to claim the now uncontested Lordship.

He never set foot on land again. In spite of calm seas and fine weather, Arcollen went missing one night from the deck of his own vessel. No one saw him go overboard but, after a thorough investigation, that was presumed to be the only explanation for his disappearance.

In the absence of any adult males of Coffleby’s line, his widow, the Lady Gianna, was quickly confirmed as Lady Holder. Although she was Long Bay only by marriage, not by blood, Gianna took the name Lady Coffleby, and pledged not only to protect her husband’s lands, but to raise his children so that any and all of them would prove equal to the task of succeeding her.

– Masterharper Hennidge, Chronicle of the Seventh Interval

100.03.15 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

“We don’t have the firestone for it, T’gat,” said H’ned. “I don’t know how many times you need me to say it. We’re short, and I can’t conjure more out of thin air.”

“My riders haven’t flown a hot drill in almost a month,” said T’gat. “Not since S’ped and Peyanth joined. I told T’kamen I’d hold off until Schanna went on birthing leave, but she’s been on the invalid list for nearly three sevendays now, and we still haven’t had clearance to take stone from the bunkers.”

“There just isn’t –”

“Hold on just a moment there, H’ned,” said Sh’zon. He’d let the pair of them argue over firestone without interrupting, but T’gat wasn’t taking H’ned’s refusal for an answer, and the two were like to come to blows. He knew the pair of them had history. “T’gat has a point. West Low’s gone the longest without a flaming drill of any Wing in the Weyr.”

“Thank you,” said T’gat, turning towards him with an air of relief. “That’s what I’ve been trying to say.”

“And I’m not denying we’re tight,” Sh’zon went on, ignoring H’ned’s flat stare. “We are. But maybe you could have a little stone from my Wing’s allocation. A little from H’ned’s. Maybe not enough for a three-sack drill, but we can scrape together enough so you can singe S’ped’s ears, eh?”

T’gat still didn’t look happy. He rubbed his temples in a way that, Sh’zon thought, wouldn’t do anything but accelerate the rapid retreat his hair was making there. “I suppose that would be better than nothing,” he said, at last. “But something has to be done about this. My riders are getting restless.”

“Yours and mine both, T’gat,” Sh’zon said. “Leave it with me. I’ll see you get your stone.”

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” H’ned complained, when T’gat had left.

“Done what?” Sh’zon asked. “Sent the man away happy?”

“T’gat’s never happy,” said H’ned. “And you bought a temporary respite from his whingeing with my firestone!”

“It’s Madellon’s firestone,” said Sh’zon.

“And there’s not enough of it to go around,” said H’ned. “What with the confounded Ops Wing laying claim to half of what we do have…”

“You’re not raiding that.”

“…and most of the rest stockpiled up on the Rim…”

“You can’t have that, either,” said Sh’zon. “Not unless you want Southern to come in all dragons blazing.”

H’ned sighed. “I’ll remind you that I was opposed to the Southern business on principle.”

Sh’zon snorted. H’ned had lent his support quickly enough once Valonna had claimed ownership of the operation. “There’s no calling back that flame.”

“I suppose not,” said H’ned, with resignation. “I just wish I’d known how low our stocks had gone. Frankly, Sh’zon, I always thought T’kamen was over-extending when he promised to increase the frequency of flaming drills. There was a reason why L’dro cut it back to the minimum. Madellon’s always been thin on decent firestone mines.”

“Then Madellon’s going to have a problem a hundred Turns from now.”

“They’ve found deposits in southern Jessaf,” said H’ned. “It’s just that sinking the shafts takes time and labour. And there’s tin and copper there, easier to mine out – and of more value to the mineholders, at this point in an Interval.”

“No good ever came of mineholders getting greedy over copper,” Sh’zon said hotly. Then he controlled his instinctive reaction to that tender old nerve. “Dragons need to flame.”

“Dragons need to go between, too,” said H’ned. “I just hope L’stev has an answer this afternoon.” He frowned down at a document on the cluttered surface of the Weyrleader’s desk. They hadn’t been able to agree on who should get to use the office in T’kamen’s absence, and working out of their own weyrs was inefficient when they had so many Weyr affairs to discuss. Valonna had suggested they just put another desk in the room, and that was what they’d done. Sh’zon had ceded the hulking skybroom edifice to H’ned in favour of the new one. The chair was much more comfortable. “Look, about this luncheon that T’kamen and Valonna are supposed to be attending at Long Bay.”

“Lady Coffleby’s shindig,” said Sh’zon.

“Assuming T’kamen’s not reappeared, one of us will need to take Valonna,” said H’ned.

Sh’zon looked across the room, unblinking. “Aye, we will.”

“Who else is going to be there?”

“Well, Madellon was invited, so I’m guessing Southern will have been, too,” said Sh’zon.

“Faranth,” said H’ned, “that’s going to be uncomfortable. ‘Sorry we stole your weyrlings and humiliated you in front of your whole Weyr, P’raima. Pass the salt?’”

“Wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t turn up at all,” said Sh’zon. “Southern has no investment in Long Bay. P’raima won’t care how much offence Gianna takes if he and Margone snub her.”

“Gianna?”

“Lady Coffleby,” said Sh’zon.

“You know her well, then?”

“Probably fairer to say that she knows me,” said Sh’zon. “Long Bay’s the Peninsula’s richest Hold. Any time the Lady wants a ride somewhere, you’d best be sure you send a bronze. Kawanth and I did our fair share of flying her about when we were younger. She knew every Peninsula bronze rider by name and every bronze to look at. Had opinions about ’em all, too. Some she wouldn’t have, even if it meant waiting for someone else to be summoned. She would have made some Weyrwoman, let me tell you.”

If H’ned was impressed by Sh’zon’s familiarity with Long Bay’s formidable Lady Holder, he didn’t show it. “H’pold and Rallai will be there, presumably.”

“And Sirtis,” said Sh’zon. “The Peninsula’s Weyrwoman Second, and whoever she’s weyring with at the moment.”

“Sirtis is the pretty one, isn’t she?” asked H’ned.

“Oh, she’s pretty, all right, but she’s all ash between the ears,” said Sh’zon. “Now, Britt, the other queen rider – she’s never going to be a beauty, but she’s bright. Doubt she’ll be at this do, though. She’s still a weyrling.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to press too hard, Sh’zon,” said H’ned, “but now you’ve mentioned Sirtis, I think I should be the one to represent Madellon with Valonna.”

“You do, do you?” Sh’zon asked, frowning.

“You’ve been at Madellon less than a Turn,” said H’ned. “You still sound like a Peninsularite. And it’s going to be inflammatory enough, having P’raima and Margone there, without throwing your little rivalry with H’pold into the mix.”

Sh’zon almost pointed out that there was nothing little about his rivalry with H’pold. “Are you questioning my loyalty to Madellon?”

“Of course not,” said H’ned. “But the Peninsula’s going to be well-represented. Your Lady Gianna might appreciate a little more Madellon flavour with her luncheon.”

Sh’zon grumbled. He couldn’t really argue with H’ned’s logic. “Don’t go calling her Gianna unless she tells you to,” he said. “She doesn’t hold with that kind of familiarity.”

“T’kamen had made a note here about sourcing some wine of a decent vintage to take along,” said H’ned, looking down at his document. Then he folded his arms atop the hide, looking thoughtful. “Do you think he did it on purpose?”

“Did what?”

“I mean, what with our supply issues, and the primary tithe negotiations coming up; and then losing the weyrlings…”

Sh’zon stared hard at H’ned. “You think T’kamen walked out on Madellon deliberately?”

“You saw how he was letting the business of the Weyr consume him, even before the weyrlings died. It was eating him alive. And that’s probably why he appointed us as his deputies, but he wasn’t throwing anything serious at us. He kept all that for himself. Maybe it just all became…” H’ned spread his hands. “Too much.”

Sh’zon hadn’t known T’kamen well, but with what he knew about the Weyrleader’s disappearance, he hated to see aspersions cast on his character. “You want to mind what dirt you sling in T’kamen’s direction,” he said. “You’ll rile his riders. They admired him a fair bit.”

“Well, of course they did,” said H’ned. “He promised the junior colours all sorts of concessions when he was building up support before Shimpath’s last flight. If he’d stayed around another Turn or two, with half those promises unfulfilled or revoked, some of the shine would have gone off him. Look, I liked T’kamen, Sh’zon, but he wasn’t realistic about how far the Weyr’s largesse can spread this deep in an Interval.”

“Maybe that’s so, but it still doesn’t make him a coward,” Sh’zon insisted. “I didn’t know him long, but I knew him long enough to know he’d never have abandoned his Weyr. Or his Weyrwoman.”

“There’s no sense in us arguing the toss, I suppose,” said H’ned. “But you can’t think he’ll be back, can you?”

“Faranth, H’ned, he’s not been gone three sevendays yet!”

“I’m not suggesting we do anything hasty,” H’ned said. “There’s not much precedent for a Weyrleader just vanishing, but there is a convention that the Council can select a Weyrleader Regent in the event of a serving Weyrleader being unable to fulfil his duties.”

“And I suppose that piece of Madellon legislation just fell into your lap, didn’t it?” Sh’zon asked.

H’ned had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. “Sooner or later, Madellon’s going to want the stability of knowing who’s the Weyrleader. I’m not saying that it should be me, necessarily. But it has to be someone.”

Believe that, you’ll believe anything, Sh’zon thought. “Let’s have at least a month of clear air between T’kamen’s disappearance and anything that official,” he said. “Give the man a chance to turn up again. Faranth knows, I wouldn’t like to be sitting in his chair, wearing his knots, if he does walk back into Madellon one of these days!”

It wasn’t that Sh’zon coveted Madellon’s Weyrleadership, or even that he wanted to block H’ned from claiming it. If it came to it, H’ned would probably do as good a job as any of Madellon’s bronze riders. It was only that he felt some small amount of responsibility for what had happened to T’kamen. Not enough to make him turn M’ric in – but M’ric was his Wingsecond. He wouldn’t even have been at Madellon if Sh’zon hadn’t brought him from the Peninsula. He wasn’t accountable for M’ric’s actions, but he did feel he owed it to T’kamen to fend off H’ned’s ambitions – until the Weyrleader’s seat was cold, at the very least.

The classroom in Madellon’s weyrling barracks took Sh’zon back. The Weyr might be different, but the room, with the rows of desks defaced by generations of bored weyrlings, and the arse-numbingly hard benches that prevented the same weyrlings from ever getting comfortable enough to fall asleep, could have been the same as the one in which he’d spent too much of his weyrlinghood. He had to make a conscious effort not to take a seat at the back. He sat down in the second row, where Valonna and H’ned had already seated themselves.

Up at the front, L’stev had been conferring with B’reko, the fat Weyrlingmaster from High Reaches. Now, the brown rider turned to them. “Weyrwoman. Wingleaders.” Without further preamble, he went on, “We don’t know much about how dragons go between. It’s something we’ve always just taken for granted that they can do. And yes, it’s always been dangerous for weyrlings learning about it, and yes, even an experienced rider can bugger up a reference and get himself lost; but our weyrlings didn’t die because of novice error or carelessness.

“Something fundamental has changed with between itself. That much seems plain. Beyond that, Weyrlingmaster B’reko and I have been trying to figure out the answers to three questions.” L’stev had already written them on the blackboard; as he spoke, he underlined each one. “What has changed. Why did it change. And how can we fix it.”

B’reko took over. “First question seems simple. It isn’t. Lots of talk that this affects only dragonets. Fallacious thinking! Plenty of dragonets on Pern going between. Mine, Peninsula’s. Older than yours or Southern’s. So, it affects only younger dragonets, yes? Seems logical. Still fallacious. Issue has manifested only with ten- and eleven-month-old dragonets because that’s when they first start going between. Experience, not age, is key. Dragons who have not gone between before meet with difficulties.”

“Difficulties,” said Sh’zon. “That’s a delicate way to put it.”

“The problem manifests in more than one way,” said L’stev. “Hence difficulties. Madellon lost three dragonets who went between well enough, but didn’t come out again. The fourth, Kinnescath, went in and came out after several minutes had passed, by which time his rider had suffered serious brain damage from lack of air. The remaining three dragonets expressed a specific and consistent reason for refusing to even try, namely that it was not safe.”

“Southern dragonets have introduced additional insight,” said B’reko. “All Southern weyrlings attempted between simultaneously. Twelve of twenty-one went between. None emerged. Remaining nine refused. Cited similar reason. Unsafe to do so.”

“But weren’t they just reacting to the fact that some of their clutchmates had already gone between and were in trouble?” asked H’ned. “We all know how juveniles pick up on each other’s feelings.”

“This was our first assumption,” said L’stev. “We posited that the ones who jumped and died were just slightly more confident, and those who remained and ultimately refused to jump were responding to their distress.” His eyebrows descended. “But it didn’t make sense. If you have a bronze in a group, he’s usually the first to jump, almost without exception. Oaxuth certainly didn’t lack for confidence. I remember thinking it was odd that he’d let a brown beat him to being the first between. One of the greens we lost, Nedrith, was probably the least confident of that group.

“When I spoke to the three riders who survived that day – R’von, S’terlion, and B’joro – they all said something very similar. Their dragons were uneasy before any of the others even went between. Now, B’joro is one of those young riders who thinks and feels everything his dragon thinks and feels, all the time. He told me that as soon as Vanzanth gave the command to go between, Lovanth was terrified. B’joro thought it was just because it was their first time, and he told Lovanth not to be such a coward. Lovanth wouldn’t have it, thank Faranth for stubborn dragonets.”

“Then he already knew something was wrong with between,” said Valonna. She was writing notes, recording the meeting.

“And so did Oaxuth and Nerbeth,” said L’stev.

“Others didn’t,” said B’reko. “So, new question. Why did some know, others not?”

“Vanzanth’s spoken to all the dragonets,” said L’stev. “He asked each of them to think about between, and how they would feel about making a jump.” He tapped the left-hand side of the blackboard, where the names of the Wildfire dragonets had been listed in two columns. “These ones expressed no specific concern, even when they were reminded that some of their clutchmates had died going between. But these ones all said something familiar. ‘It’s not safe.’”

“Dear Faranth,” said H’ned.

He sounded choked. It took Sh’zon a moment to realise why. He’d already found Berzunth’s name in the second list. Something M’ric had said floated back to him. Tarshe was never in any danger. But when he ran his eye down the first column, he saw why H’ned had reacted. Ellendunth, his son’s bronze, was listed there. Sh’zon reached over to thump H’ned reassuringly on the shoulder. “Breathe, man,” he said. “It didn’t happen.”

“I see you’ve all grasped the meaning,” said L’stev. “If all of our dragonets had tried to go between together, those in this first list most likely wouldn’t have returned.”

“The lists are almost the same length,” H’ned protested. “We’d have lost half the class!”

“As Southern did,” said B’reko. “More than half.”

“And there’s no obvious pattern,” said L’stev. “The colours are split almost down the middle. There seems to be no correlation between the dragonets I’d call the more sensible or intelligent and the second column. Berzunth, you’ll notice, would have refused to go between, but both of the other bronzes are in the first column.”

“Have developed a theory,” said B’reko. “Matter of procedure. Like making klah. Always need a cup. But some people, water first, then milk. Others, milk, then water.”

“Who the shaff puts milk in the cup before the water?” Sh’zon asked incredulously.

“I do,” said H’ned.

Sh’zon looked askance at him. “Remind me never to let you make the klah.”

“Result is the same,” said B’reko. “Cup of klah. No difference.”

“And under normal circumstances, the same would apply with going between,” said L’stev. “The visual always comes first. That’s the cup, if you like. Then the dragon has two more steps. The actual jump from here into between, and navigation to the destination.”

“Jump is milk,” said B’reko. “Navigation is water.”

“Then you’re saying that some dragons put the milk in before the water?” asked Valonna.

“Exactly,” said L’stev. “They have a visual. They jump between, and only then worry about how they’re going to reach the destination.”

“Others navigate first,” said B’reko. “See the way through between first. Then jump.”

“They’re the ones who refused,” said H’ned. “Because they couldn’t see a way to their destination.”

“That’s the principle of it,” said L’stev.

“But why do some do it one way and others the other?” asked Sh’zon.

B’reko shrugged his vast shoulders. “Why are some people left-handed?”

Do you jump first or navigate first? Sh’zon asked Kawanth.

I go between, said Kawanth. He sounded baffled. I don’t think about how I do it. I just do it.

“It hasn’t mattered up until now,” said L’stev. “Or, anyway, it hasn’t killed off dragonets at a rate of fifty percent of every clutch. But now it does matter, because something has changed between.”

“Dragonets unable to navigate,” said B’reko. “Between inscrutable to them. Dark.”

“But not to adult dragons?” asked H’ned.

“Because adult dragons can already navigate their own route between,” said L’stev. “Even when it’s pitch black in my weyr, I can still find the way to the facilities if I need to take a piss in the night. Because I already know the way.

“And there’s something else. We don’t know if it’s connected, but it’s taking longer than it used to for dragons to go from one place to another between. We’re only talking a matter of two extra seconds in seven hundred Turns, but it’s another piece of evidence that between is changing – that it can change. Whatever between actually is, it’s not static. The changes might happen slowly, over hundreds of Turns, but it does change.”

“What about M’touf?” asked Valonna. “Weyrlingmaster, you said that he told C’mine that he and Atath had gone between, without permission.”

“That’s right,” said L’stev. “It wasn’t M’touf’s fault, loath as I am to admit it. Atath blinked. A relative jump, like a dodge in Threadfall, rather than an absolute.”

“You don’t need a reference for a rellie,” said Sh’zon. “Is that what this is about? Rellies work, but not absolutes?”

“No,” said B’reko. He flicked his fat fingers at Sh’zon in something like disgust. “No, no, no. Still a reference. Don’t go anywhere without a reference. Dragon has the reference. Absolute jump, rider supplies. Can’t rely on dragon to remember arbitrary place, arbitrary time. Relative jump, reference is there relative to here. Same formation, farther on. Relative to this dragon, that mountain, those lakes. Still a reference. Always a reference. But dragon does it without rider guidance. Still has to navigate between.”

“And this leads to the second question.” L’stev rapped his knuckles against the board again. “Why did between change? We think we know when it did. Atath’s foray was on the sixth of last month. Our dragonets made their attempts on the twenty-first. And in between those two dates, the Southerners’ first between was on the tenth.” He paused, and added, “The night we all heard that immense crack.”

“Faranth,” said Sh’zon. He’d almost forgotten that night. “That? I thought it was just the mountain shifting!”

“Heard it in the Reaches,” said B’reko. “Heard it everywhere. But only dragonriders.”

“We think that was the moment that between went dark,” said L’stev. “And that it corresponds to the moment when the Southern weyrlings tried to go between, and failed.”

No one spoke for long minutes.

At last, Valonna said, “Do you mean that they caused it?”

L’stev and B’reko looked at each other. “We don’t know,” said L’stev.

“Correlation, causation, not the same,” added B’reko.

“Well, have the Southern kids said anything about what happened when they tried to go between?” asked H’ned.

“Nothing that makes their experience much different to what happened with ours,” said L’stev. “All the survivors – all those we brought here from Southern – fall into this second column. They refused to go between.

“Could be scale,” said B’reko. “Twenty-one dragonets all at once. Twenty-one new paths to find through between. Overwhelming. Maybe.” He shrugged. “Guesswork.”

“We just don’t know enough about between,” said L’stev. “Which is to say we don’t know shaff-all about between.”

“Then how are you going to fix it?” asked H’ned.

“Can’t,” said B’reko. “Between is between.”

“We’re theorising here,” said L’stev. “We can only compare it to things we understand a little better. Take air currents. Our dragons use them to fly; they use thermals to rise easily; they can ride airstreams to go faster in certain directions. But they’re all conveniences we take for granted. If all that interaction of weather and temperature stopped, we couldn’t fix it.”

“What would we do?” asked Valonna.

“Walk,” said B’reko.

“Dragons who had already gone between before the tenth of last month can still go between,” said L’stev. “If B’reko and I are right, that includes Atath.”

“She’s not listed in either of those columns,” said H’ned, looking at the chalkboard.

“She’s a special case,” said L’stev. “As was Kinnescath, for a different reason. Plainly, he found a way through between in the end; only too late for G’dra.”

“Dragon can survive minutes without air between,” said B’reko. “Rider can’t.”

“But you must have asked Atath how she feels about trying to go between again,” said Sh’zon.

“Atath’s very sanguine about it,” said L’stev. “M’touf less so. But if we’re right, they’re the one weyrling pair we can expect to succeed. I just don’t think it’s going to be much help to the others.”

“You can’t make any of those weyrlings try,” said Valonna. “We took the dragonets from Southern because Margone was afraid for them. If we force a single dragonpair between without knowing it’s safe, we’re no better than P’raima.”

“No one’s going to be forced, Weyrwoman,” L’stev told her. “The moment I start suggesting anything of the sort, you can shaffing well send me to South Cove with the gibbering dribblers. As it happens, there’s no need to force anyone. We have volunteers. There are some brave kids among the Wildfires.”

“You’re not experimenting with my son,” H’ned said immediately. “I don’t care if he volunteered.”

“As a matter of fact, he did,” said L’stev. “But he’s not top of my list. Ellendunth’s  nearly as long as Vanzanth. It’s going to be much safer to do this with a smaller dragon.”

“Do what?” asked Sh’zon.

“Inexperienced dragonets can’t navigate between,” said B’reko. “Experienced dragons can.”

“So you mean to show them the way,” said Valonna.

L’stev actually smiled. “That’s exactly it, Weyrwoman.” He circled a name from each column with a flourish. “Bristath is one of the ones who didn’t want to try jumping; Rementh wasn’t concerned. Soleigh and M’rany are both old enough to know their own minds, and their dragonets are still small enough for Vanzanth to manage. So he’ll carry them between. See if taking them in there with him will give them the experience they need to find their own paths through.”

“But we already brought the Southern dragonets between,” said Sh’zon. “Shouldn’t they be able to do it?”

“The Southerners had just been snatched from their beds in the middle of the night,” said L’stev. “They probably had other things on their mind than the mechanics of between. Vanzanth will talk Bristath and Rementh through the process as he goes, make them aware of whatever it is a dragon needs to be aware of to navigate.” He shrugged. “Whatever that is. He doesn’t seem to be able to explain it to me, but he says another dragon would understand.”

“So Vanzanth carries these dragonets between,” said H’ned. “What next?”

“Next, Vanzanth and Bristath jump between together, connected by a tether,” said L’stev. “Vanzanth isn’t carrying Bristath at this point. The tether merely maintains a connection, so if Bristath still can’t navigate once she’s between, Vanzanth still has a physical link to her and can bring both of them out again.”

“Istan technique,” B’reko noted. “Used when weyrling is very nervous. Like holding a child’s hand.”

“If Bristath can navigate under her own power, then we repeat the experiment without the tether,” said L’stev. “Vanzanth will still jump alongside her, so he’ll be between with her for encouragement. And assuming that’s successful, the final step is for Bristath to jump alone.”

“That…” Sh’zon exchanged a glance with H’ned. “That does sound like a reasonable approach. And if Bristath cracks it, what happens next? You repeat with all the rest?”

“Precisely,” said B’reko.

“What if Bristath still doesn’t want to go between after he first trip aboard Vanzanth?” asked Valonna.

“Then Rementh takes her place,” said L’stev. “He’s already demonstrated he’s willing to go between.”

“Couldn’t we potentially have a situation where half the dragonets will go between and half won’t?” asked H’ned. “I mean, if you’re wrong about some planning before they jump, and actually it’s just that some of them are too scared to try.”

“Dragonets, not intrinsically cowardly,” said B’reko.

“And Berzunth’s in that second column, H’ned, so I’ll thank you for not calling my cousin’s courage into question, either,” said Sh’zon.

“Right now, getting one weyrling between and out again in one piece would be progress,” said L’stev. “Though if we’re not successful with Bristath and Rementh, we’d need to expand the experiment to include the other dragonets. Wildfires and Southerners.”

Valonna looked troubled. “Are you certain this won’t put them at risk?”

“Certain?” L’stev asked. His fleshy face was morose. “No.”

“Weyrlings, always at risk,” said B’reko. “Good Weyrlingmaster hopes – plans – for the best. And prepares for the worst.”

“What is the worst?” asked Sh’zon. “We lose another weyrling?”

“For Faranth’s sake, don’t let it be one of the Southerners,” said H’ned. “Not that I want to lose one of ours, either,” he added, when Sh’zon and Valonna both looked accusingly at him. “But we’re in a precarious enough position with Southern as it is. If we got one of their dragonpairs killed, I doubt if all the firestone on Pern would keep P’raima from our doorstep.”

“When do you propose to begin these flights, L’stev?” asked Valonna.

“As soon as you’ve approved them. There’s not much point in waiting.”

“Maybe we could all have a little time to give it some thought,” said Sh’zon, when Valonna frowned. “Think it over. Get comfortable with it.”

L’stev looked briefly irritated. “I serve at the Weyrwoman’s pleasure.”

“Only a little time, Weyrlingmaster,” said Valonna. “Perhaps until the morning?”

He shrugged grudgingly. “I’ll need at least that long to make preparations I suppose.”

“And would you send the two weyrlings to me?” Valonna asked. “Soleigh and M’rany?”

L’stev agreed to do so, and they dispersed back to their various duties. Sh’zon took a moment to thank B’reko for coming from the High Reaches. It was at least reassuring to have a second Weyrlingmaster’s opinion.

But he didn’t return to the Weyrleader’s office. Instead, he crossed the Bowl towards the main firestone bunker, sending Kawanth a request as he went.

The heavy metal doors were bolted but not locked. Sh’zon shot the bolt back, wondering idly as he did if they should start locking up Madellon’s firestone stocks.

He swung the door open, and the strong phosphine stench hit him like a miasma. Sh’zon sneezed explosively, then reached inside to open the closest glow-baskets. Their light revealed the firestone sacks piled against the walls. The weyrlings had broken it up and graded it by colour. There was no raw stone at all. Sh’zon frowned at the modest heap of sacks marked with the Z that indicated they’d been graded for bronze. He took down the requisition log that hung on the wall inside the door, and flipped through the first couple of pages, wondering when someone had last checked the record against the actual stock.

The crunch of boots on gravel alerted him a moment before M’ric stepped into the doorway. “You’re blocking out all the light,” Sh’zon complained.

M’ric came fully inside, letting sunlight shaft in again. He coughed on the firestone dust that hung in the air. “Trebruth said you wanted to see me?”

“How much stone have you been taking for Ops?” Sh’zon asked, comparing figures.

“I have a record in my weyr,” said M’ric. “But none this sevenday.”

Sh’zon sneezed again. He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose noisily. “I think we’re short in here. Someone’s been pinching stone without logging it.”

“Not to tell tales, but it’s probably A’keret,” said M’ric.

“How’d you reach that conclusion?”

“Trebruth flew B’vel’s Senvarth the day before yesterday. They absolutely reeked of firestone. I didn’t think East Low had a hot drill scheduled.”

“That’d be because it didn’t,” said Sh’zon. He hung the record back on its hook. “I’ll be having words with A’keret. Sneaky bastard.”

“It’s probably not the first time it’s happened,” said M’ric. “Maybe you should get a padlock for this door.”

“Maybe I should,” said Sh’zon.

“Did you get me down here to talk about firestone?”

“We do need to skim enough off everyone’s quota to give T’gat enough for a drill,” Sh’zon said. “But no. That’s not why I wanted to see you.”

M’ric leaned against the door frame, folding his arms. “What is it?”

“Soleigh and green Bristath. M’rany and blue Rementh.” Sh’zon looked expectantly at M’ric as he said the names. “Mean anything to you?”

“Should they?” M’ric asked. He shook his head. “They’re weyrlings. I don’t know much more than that.”

“You’re sure? Nothing at all?”

“What’s significant about them?”

Sh’zon narrowed his eyes. “You knew that those three Wildfire weyrlings were going to die.”

“And you’re asking me if the same’s going to happen to these two?”

“Well, is it?”

M’ric nudged a stray bit of firestone along the floor with the toe of his boot. “I’ve told you before, Sh’zon, these fishing expeditions won’t get you anywhere.”

“T’kamen’s gone, M’ric! I’m in charge here now! If more kids are going to die on my watch, I want to know about it!”

“And what if you did?” M’ric asked. “What if I told you that, yes, those two weyrlings are going to die?”

“Faranth, Malric, are you saying they are?”

“Sh’zon, I have no idea. I don’t know anything about those two weyrlings. Or any two weyrlings, for that matter. I don’t know everything. I don’t know a fraction of everything.”

Sh’zon glared at him. “I need your insight more now than ever. This is serious business!”

“If I had anything, I’d bring it to you,” said M’ric. “But I don’t know anything about those weyrlings. Why? What’s happening?”

“The Weyrlingmaster has this plan, to try and get them going between,” Sh’zon said. He sighed. “But if they’re just going to die, I’d sooner he didn’t do it.”

M’ric was silent for a minute. Then he said, “L’stev’s pretty sharp. I’m sure he wouldn’t risk them lightly.”

“Suppose we don’t have much choice,” Sh’zon said gloomily. “We have to do something to get to the bottom of this between nonsense. It’d be nice if we could pack those sharding Southern weyrlings back home before the Long Bay Gather.”

M’ric cocked his head slightly, frowning, as if he’d just recalled something.

“What?” Sh’zon demanded.

The lines between M’ric’s brows smoothed out again. “Long Bay,” he said. “We should talk about Long Bay.”

Chapter twenty-eight: C’mine

We tend to refer to young dragons as ‘dragonets’ until they graduate from weyrlinghood, but the distinction between juvenile and adult isn’t really that clear-cut.

A dragonet is, more properly, a young dragon under one full Turn of age – the age at which the most precocious of them reach sexual maturity. Bronze dragons aged one Turn and over are capable of participating in mating flights, though for obvious reasons, weyrling bronzes are prohibited from taking part in senior flights. In practice, a young bronze is best served by leaving the Weyr entirely during a queen flight. His biological imperative would oblige him to chase, but the exertion of pursuing a queen – and the rough-and-tumble of the chasing pack – could do permanent harm to a dragon who has yet to come into his full growth.

Brown and blue dragons are also capable of rising in pursuit of greens by the time they are a Turn old, though they tend to be slightly less forward than their bronze siblings – who often seem to think they have something to prove. A young male of any colour will struggle to compete with experienced dragons, but some adult green riders will take pity on juvenile males who are still virgin and allow them to catch their greens. This is often a useful educational experience for young rider and young dragon alike, though a Weyrlingmaster must take care to see that none of his charges are being exploited by their elders.

Green dragons are slightly slower to reach mating maturity, but most will rise for the first time between the ages of fifteen and nineteen months. These maiden flights are strictly restricted to dragons of a similar age group to the rising green – typically, her own clutchmates, and dragons from the clutch or two before – though a green weyrling may also get permission for an older dragon to join the pursuit if he or she has a particular attachment. Again, the Weyrlingmaster must take pains to ensure that such a rider is not taking advantage of a weyrling’s youth, inexperience, or infatuation.

Queens are slower still. A queen will not typically reach sexual maturity until she is at least two, and more often two and a half or even three Turns of age, by which time she is no longer the Weyrlingmaster’s responsibility, and by which age he can no longer offer her the same protection that he did to her clutch- and classmates.

– Weyrlingmaster L’stev, From Dragonet To Dragon

100.03.17 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

C’mine was inspecting W’lenze’s latest attempt at bevelling the edge of an offcut of harness leather when Darshanth interrupted him with a report. Vanzanth has returned with Djeth.

“You’re still not getting the angle quite right,” C’mine told W’lenze. “I think you’re gripping the beveller too tightly. You want to hold it firmly but not tightly, and let it follow the line of the hide rather than forcing it.” He demonstrated on the other edge of the scrap of hide as he spoke, paring off a thin shaving of leather. “Do you see?”

“I think so,” W’lenze said doubtfully.

“The rest of your leatherwork is fine,” C’mine said. “It’s just the finishing on the edges that still needs some work. It doesn’t matter so much now, when you’re cutting new harness so often, but when Goldevath stops growing you’ll want to craft his rig to last. You can do it. The edges on your current harness look great.”

After a painfully long pause, W’lenze said, “G’dra helped me with those.”

C’mine winced. He gripped the young rider’s shoulder, feeling Darshanth’s attention shift to Goldevath. “It’s all right, W’lenze,” he said, and then, when he felt the lad tremble, “Hey. It’s all right.”

W’lenze was the youngest of Madellon’s weyrlings, only just thirteen Turns of age, and he’d taken the deaths of his classmates very hard. He bit his lip and raised his head, dry-eyed. He shot a glance sideways at the adjacent table, where three of the Southern weyrlings were working on their fighting straps. “I’m fine, C’mine,” he said. “I am.”

C’mine took his hand off his shoulder. A young man’s pride was a fragile thing at thirteen. “Good lad. Practise some more on that scrap, and then we’ll work on the real thing together.”

As he got up to return to his own bench, K’ralthe preceded L’stev into the workshop, carrying Djeth’s harness over his shoulder. K’ralthe wore an expression betraying the same mixture of disappointment and relief common to all those who’d gone out with the Weyrlingmaster before him. After the first six such excursions had yielded no results, C’mine had stopped asking Darshanth for a report, and after twelve, even the other weyrlings had ceased looking up expectantly when L’stev returned with yet another dragonpair.

At least they hadn’t lost anyone. That was the main thing.

L’stev stumped over to C’mine’s workbench and sat down, looking weary. “All quiet here?”

“Mostly,” C’mine replied. L’stev didn’t need to know that K’dam and L’mern had come almost to blows over the use of a particular grooving tool. There were plenty of tools to go around, but some were better than others, and the two groups of weyrlings needed no encouragement to find a point of contention. “How did Djeth go?”

“Same as the rest of the guessers,” said L’stev. He poked distractedly at the carved leather of Darshanth’s dress harness with one stubby finger. “Jumped in fine, but couldn’t find his own way on the tether.”

The day had begun so well. M’touf and Atath had gone between and emerged, triumphant, shortly thereafter. L’stev had had them repeat the feat several times, coaching them through both blink jumps and absolutes. Each time Atath reappeared exactly where she was asked after exactly ten seconds. C’mine had never seen a young rider bursting quite so openly with pride for his dragon.

But then L’stev had started his work with Soleigh and M’rany, and the early victory of Atath’s success was overshadowed by their failure. Even after Vanzanth had carried her between and out the other side, Bristath still refused to jump alone. She consented to go between on the tether, with Vanzanth beside her, but panicked once she was there. Vanzanth had brought them both out again. L’stev had stood the shaken Bristath down for the day.

It had been the same story with each of the other Wildfire dragonpairs. Some would go between and some wouldn’t, but none of them could find their way out again. The experiment they’d begun with such nervous high hopes in the morning was producing, if not the worst possible outcome, then the second-worst. Atath excepted, Madellon’s dragonets couldn’t go between.

Neither could Southern’s. After the first dozen Wildfires had tried and failed, L’stev had consulted briefly with Valonna, and then taken one of the Southern blues between. Palth had met with no more success than any of the Wildfires. Nor had any of his clutchmates.

But L’stev didn’t believe in leaving a thing half done. “Who’s next?” C’mine asked.

“Tarshe,” L’stev said. He made a disgusted face. “And Sh’zon’s insisting that Kawanth takes Berzunth between, so I’m having to wait for them to be available. Idiotic. Santinoth’s already done five. I’ll have to brief Sh’zon from scratch.”

“Tarshe tells me Sh’zon’s protective of her when it comes to other bronze riders,” said C’mine.

“T’rello’s far too mannerly to get inappropriate with a weyrling. Tarshe could do worse than pair up with a rider like him when the time comes, even if he is younger than her. T’rello’s a Weyrleader of the future, C’mine; you wait and see if I’m wrong. Making him P’keo’s Wingsecond was one of the wisest decisions T’kamen ever made.”

C’mine tensed reflexively at the mention of T’kamen’s name, then made himself relax. “If he doesn’t come back –”

“Don’t play that game,” L’stev told him. “Not yet.” He looked irritated. “But we can’t have Deputies running the place forever. If it comes down to a choice between the two, H’ned’s not so appalling.” He cocked his head. “Sh’zon’s ready. Keep the lid on this lot. Tarshe!”

C’mine felt a degree of extra anxiety as Tarshe followed L’stev out of the workshop. He knew it was irrational. Karika and Megrith had already tried and failed without mishap. But C’mine didn’t have the attachment to Karika that he did to Tarshe, and Darshanth didn’t pay Megrith the same kind of close attention that he did Berzunth. Perhaps that would change over time. C’mine didn’t know how long it took for a transferred queen to win the devotion of a new Weyr. Once Megrith was mature she would command other dragons just as any queen could, but C’mine wondered if a foreigner would ever equal a native queen in the opinion of Madellon’s dragons.

He turned his attention back to the rig lying in pieces on the workbench before him. The weyrlings spent several afternoons each sevenday working on harness, and L’stev had suggested that C’mine lead by example with some of his own. Darshanth’s dress rig had hung untouched on the rack in their weyr for months, and the leather had suffered from the neglect. C’mine had disassembled it, taking apart each strap, removing the buckles, and unpicking the stitching around the metal fittings. The buckles and rings were soaking in a vinegar solution to loosen the rust while C’mine cleaned and greased the wherhide.

All around him, the weyrlings of both groups toiled at their own harness. L’stev had always been very strict about upkeep. Harness put away dirty or wet deteriorated fast, and good hide was at a premium. The Weyrlingmaster inspected the harness room most mornings, and any weyrling whose rig didn’t meet his standards could expect to spend the breakfast hour bringing it up to scratch. It hadn’t happened since C’mine had been working with the weyrlings. The importance of good harness maintenance was ingrained into the Wildfires, as it was into every Madellon rider L’stev had trained. But the Southerners took excellent care of their rig, too. L’stev wouldn’t have ignored a fault just to keep them quiet. Young as they were, the Southern weyrlings had been well taught.

Some of the Wildfires were cutting completely new harness. Weyrling rig was always crafted with growing room, but all the Madellon blues and greens were in the eleven-month growth spurt that C’mine recalled from his own weyrlinghood, and their riders were having to buckle to the last notch or two of their main straps. L’stev had started them on cutting their new harness the previous sevenday, and most of the Wildfires had almost finished. Only W’lenze was really struggling, and C’mine wondered how much of that was down to genuine difficulty with the craft and how much to his continued grief for G’dra who, it seemed, had been the standout leatherworker of the Wildfires, as well as one of W’lenze’s closest friends.

C’mine finished rubbing oil into the aft neck band and laid the heavy piece of wherhide down on the bench. Then he got up, partly to stretch his legs, and partly to distract himself from the thought that Berzunth was up there now attempting to fly between. He moved slowly between workbenches, seeing how the weyrlings were doing. “You’ll get that finished a lot sooner if you work and talk at the same time,” he said quietly as he passed the bench where the two Southern green weyrlings, Jhilia and Sia, sat with their heads bent close together, whispering furiously to each other, their leatherwork neglected in front of them.

W’lenze was working with the bevelling tool, concentrating hard as he pushed it along the edge of the piece of scrap hide. C’mine watched for a moment as a narrow curl of leather peeled away from the edge under the steady pressure of the v-shaped blade. “That’s it,” he said. “I think you’ve got it now. Why don’t you have a go at the edge of your safety now?”

He stayed long enough to see W’lenze, with increasing confidence, bevel the top and bottom edges of the safety-strap, and then moved on.

Karika sat at the end of a workbench, rubbing leather soap into the soft inner of Megrith’s harness, alone. While Megrith was still clearly the centre of the Southern dragonet band, Karika had become increasingly isolated from her Weyrmates. The Weyrlingmaster tracts C’mine had been reading from L’stev’s collection remarked that queen weyrlings often did end up detached from their classmates, usually by choice, but that clearly wasn’t the case with Karika. The Southerners had begun to shun her after their abortive attempt at democracy had met with failure: subtly at first, and then with increasing ostentation.

C’mine paused by the bench where Leah was sitting with her friend Kessirke. “Karika’s all on her own over there,” he said.

“You should see what it’s like in the barracks,” Leah said, with relish. “No one’s talking to her at all!”

“Why don’t you invite her over to join you?”

Leah looked horrified. “Do we have to?”

“No,” C’mine said. “But I’m asking you.”

“There’s not enough room,” Leah complained, casually spreading out bits of Jagunth’s harness to cover more of the surface of the table.

C’mine looked at her.

She sighed exaggeratedly. “All right. Fine. You ask her over.”

It wasn’t quite the inclusive response C’mine had wanted, but he supposed he was asking quite a lot. He stepped around the benches to where Karika was working. “Karika, why don’t you move over and sit with Leah and Kessirke?”

Karika didn’t lift her eyes from her work. “Thank you, Weyrlingmaster, but I’m happy here.”

“Wouldn’t you like to –”

“Really, Weyrlingmaster, I’m fine.”

C’mine hesitated. L’stev had told him not to let the weyrlings defy his authority. Karika was always flawlessly polite and proper in her manner, but this wasn’t the first time she’d politely and properly resisted a suggestion. “Karika,” he said, “you’d be setting a really good example to your Weyrmates if you’d try to get along a little better with Madellon’s weyrlings.”

Karika raised her gaze to his. “I’d rather not.”

In the back of C’mine’s mind, Darshanth gave a surprised little start, as though someone had poked him with a pin.

Did Megrith just try to lean on you? C’mine asked him, taken aback.

Darshanth sounded more outraged than intimidated. Yes!

C’mine frowned at Karika. “Don’t try to do that again,” he told her, in what he hoped was a no-nonsense tone of voice. “You’re a weyrling and a guest, and if I ever catch your dragonet trying to bully another dragon of any age, I’ll…”

Have her sent back to Southern, Darshanth supplied.

“…have you sent back to Southern.”

Karika’s nostrils flared, and she lifted her chin. “That’s not up to you.”

She was right, but she was also twelve. “Do you want to rely on that?” C’mine asked. When Karika didn’t answer, he said, “If you’re planning on staying at Madellon, you need to make an effort to find some common ground with our weyrlings. Now go and sit with Leah and Kessirke.”

Karika gave him a filthy look, but, with a show of enormous disgust, she picked up the pieces of Megrith’s harness and carried them over to Leah’s bench.

Jagunth says her rider says thank you so much, said Darshanth.

Tell her she’s welcome. C’mine resumed his rounds of the workshop. Did the idea of threatening to send her back to Southern come from Megrith?

She thinks very loudly when she’s afraid.

Afraid?

Because they didn’t go between. They are afraid we’ll send them back now.

How does that follow?

I don’t know.

Can you press her for any more?

No. She’s cut me out now. Darshanth sounded resigned. But Nerbeth’s rider wants to talk to you.

S’terlion was hiding away at the corner workbench with the least natural light. T’gala was sitting beside him. That part almost made C’mine smile as he made his way between tables. “What do you need, S’terli?”

“I was just wondering if you could maybe help with the spacing of the notches on Nerbeth’s main straps,” S’terlion said, looking up from beneath his shaggy fringe.

“Nerbeth’s smaller than Heppeth,” said T’gala. “I wasn’t sure how far apart they should go for a green.”

“Let me see,” C’mine said. “Budge up, T’gala.”

T’gala moved along, and C’mine sat down in the space she vacated. Between them, the two weyrlings had made a neat job of Nerbeth’s new harness. The cut was true, the bevels well-angled; all the stitching looked solid. There were a few places where the suede backing might have been skived down more precisely to fit the line of the heavy strap hide, but it didn’t really matter on a dragonet’s harness. The fore- and aft-straps fastened with two buckles each in case one failed, and all four had been sewn tightly to the billets and reinforced with rivets. The harness only lacked its last few touches – toe loops, keepers, fleece to pad out the throat ring where the two main bands joined under the dragon’s neck – and the holes where the tang of each buckle would notch.

“This is a very nice piece of work, S’terlion,” C’mine said, running the wherhide through his hands. “L’stev will be really happy with this.”

“T’gala’s done most of it,” S’terlion said, looking down at his cast wrist.

“I haven’t,” said T’gala. “Only the bits you need two hands for.”

“That’s most of it,” said S’terlion. “I’m useless with my left hand.”

“You’ve been doing fine, S’terlion,” C’mine told him. He’d finally made the time to look at L’stev’s dossiers on each weyrling, and S’terlion’s file made for uncomfortable reading. C’mine didn’t remember him being so retiring and tongue-tied when he’d helped him with Darshanth’s convalescence at Kellad. Impression could change a person’s character, and not always for the better. S’terlion had become very shy and passive, as though he’d taken a green’s place in dragon hierarchy to mean he should be submissive, too. “Do you have Nerbeth’s measurements?”

S’terlion pushed a slate across the workbench with his left hand. Beneath the notations of length and circumference and ridge-to-ridge distance, L’stev’s distinctive scrawl noted an estimated adult size. “She’s got quite a bit of growing still to do,” C’mine said. “So I’d say half-hand spacing would be about right. Have you marked where it fits her now?”

“Here,” S’terlion said, showing him a chalk mark on the unfinished neck band.

“You should start the notches two intervals smaller than that,” C’mine said. “Sometimes if you measure just after they’ve eaten, the extra water in their bodies can make them bulk out more than normal. Do you remember the procedure?”

S’terlion shook his head, and C’mine switched his attention to T’gala. “What about you, T’gala? How were you taught to punch the holes in your harness at Southern?”

T’gala shifted on the bench. “You measure the centre of the billet and mark it,” she said, in the quiet high voice that C’mine knew now to be feminine rather than just pre-pubescent. “Measure off the intervals you want. Then punch them with the punch and small hammer.” She paused. “At Southern we finish them with grommets.”

She said the last part almost apologetically. “We do here, too,” C’mine said.

Berzunth’s back, Darshanth said. Vanzanth says to send out Sparth’s rider.

“P’lian,” C’mine said, raising his voice over the tap of hammers and snick of knives. “You can go out to the Weyrlingmaster now.”

P’lian put down the oilcloth he’d been using to grease his harness. C’mine noticed T’gala following him from the room with her eyes.

S’terlion noticed, too. “He’ll be all right,” he told T’gala. “Everyone else has been.”

T’gala gave a little jump, snatching her eyes away. “No, I mean, I’m not…” Colour leapt to her cheeks. She was fair-skinned for a Southerner. “I mean, I’m…” She cleared her throat, and began again, deepening her voice in an attempt to sound more manly that C’mine found rather poignant. “I mean, I’m a blue rider, and he’s a brown rider.”

“That doesn’t matter,” C’mine said. “You don’t have to weyr with who your dragon fancies. There are at least two blue-brown weyrmatings at Madellon, and plenty of other combinations.”

“Other combinations?” S’terlion asked.

C’mine tried not to smile. S’terlion might have become withdrawn and quiet, but he was still a teenage boy, and there’d never been a teenage boy alive who wasn’t obsessed with sex. “Lots of doubling up,” he said. “Brown and brown is unusual, but blue-blue isn’t, and neither’s green-green, same gender and mixed. I even knew a bronze rider once who had a male weyrmate for a while.”

“Really?” S’terlion asked, with sudden avid interest. “Who?”

C’mine hesitated, realising he shouldn’t have mentioned it. “It wasn’t at Madellon,” he lied. T’gat was a Wingleader and shouldn’t be the subject of weyrling gossip. Even in the Weyr, the notion of a bronze rider in a relationship with another man – however long ago the affair had been – was unusual enough to be salacious. “But the point is, the colour of your dragon doesn’t dictate who you weyr with. Or that you have to weyr with any other rider, or anyone at all. Some riders never do.”

It was veering uncomfortably close to subject matter he didn’t want to discuss, but T’gala was obviously preoccupied with her own situation. “It’s just different for me,” she said, in a very low voice. “It’s always going to be different for me. Because I’m…wrong.”

“You’re not wrong, T’gala,” C’mine said, trying to put conviction in his voice without raising it loud enough for the weyrlings at the other benches to hear. “Different, yes, but different and wrong aren’t the same thing at all.”

T’gala looked down at the awl in her hands, turning the tool over and over. L’stev had been very worried about her in the first few days after they’d discovered her secret, and he’d asked C’mine to keep an eye on her. Darshanth was developing a closer rapport with Heppeth than he had with any of the other Southern dragonets, and C’mine himself took pains to make himself available to T’gala without crowding her or exerting any pressure on her to talk. But it was her friendship with S’terlion that seemed to be coaxing the truth of T’gala’s knotted fears and insecurities out into the open. The two shy weyrlings had been spending more and more time together. They were both too isolated from their respective clutchmates, in their different ways, to form a bridge between Wildfires and Southerners, but they had to be good for each other.

“But it is wrong, isn’t it?” T’gala asked, at length. “Because of what happened the last time.”

That was new information. C’mine hesitated, not wanting to pounce, but S’terlion turned to T’gala. “Last time? There are other blue riders who…who’re like you…at Southern?”

“No,” said T’gala. “I’m the only one now. But…there was one before. I know I shouldn’t have, but…Heppeth was all alone…”

“You don’t have to apologise for Impressing your dragon, T’gala,” C’mine told her firmly. “He chose you. A dragon’s choice is final, no matter how unusual it is.”

“They said it was only because there was no one else,” she said, with brittle self-doubt. “Because he was the last dragon to hatch and there wasn’t anyone else left.”

“Nerbeth was last to hatch from her clutch, too!” said S’terlion.

“Really?” T’gala asked, turning to him.

It was such a lovely moment of connection between them that C’mine had to hide his smile behind a cough. He knew L’stev always had reservations about late-Hatching dragonets, who could only choose from the few candidates that were left, but he wasn’t about to mention that. “They both needed you to wait,” he said.

But T’gala clearly wasn’t convinced. “They said it isn’t natural,” she said quietly. “That it’s not supposed to happen. They said that’s why B’nain died.”

“She –” C’mine caught himself, then rephrased. “B’nain was the other blue rider like you?”

T’gala nodded. “It was Turns ago. I was very small.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“Only that it was during a flight,” she said. “And it was before…” She broke off, looking uneasy.

Weyrbred weyrlings were generally pretty sanguine about dragon mating habits. T’gala, like all the Southerners, would have grown up knowing what to expect – but she would have imagined herself the rider of a female dragon, not a male one. She’d have a different role to play when Heppeth caught a green. C’mine wondered if that incongruity had been responsible for whatever had happened to B’nain. Young male green riders sometimes struggled with the physical reality of their dragons’ mating flights. The consequences could be tragic. A mating dragon whose rider, through fear or discomfort, suddenly broke the deep immersion of flight-merge might panic and go between. The thought tripped an old memory that he didn’t want to dwell upon. “It’s months yet before you need to worry about flights, T’gala,” he said. “And even when Heppeth is old enough to start taking an interest, he’s under no obligation to chase a green until both of you feel ready. Blue riders have the luxury of picking and choosing the dragons we pursue.”

T’gala looked suddenly hopeful. “Do you mean…he might not want to chase any greens?”

Darshanth, listening in, made a dismissive sound that C’mine hoped was only mental.

“He is a dragon, T’gala,” he said, gently, “and adult dragons have needs. It wouldn’t be fair to ask him not to ever act on those needs. It might not be comfortable or easy for you at first, but it comes with being a dragonrider, and in time you’ll find that it’s just an everyday part of your life together, like keeping him clean or mending your harness.”

“Every day?” T’gala exclaimed.

C’mine laughed. “I didn’t mean every day in that sense.”

“It’s all right for you, anyway,” said S’terlion. “At least you get a say in who your dragon mates with.”

“It’s not that bad, S’terlion,” C’mine said. “Most adult greens have favourites. Nerbeth will have regular suitors and you’ll get to know their riders. And we don’t let just anyone get involved with weyrling mating flights, so when Nerbeth does rise for the first time, it won’t be a stranger.”

Sparth has returned, said Darshanth. He almost sounded bored. Vanzanth says to send Ellendunth.

T’gala relaxed a bit, clearly relieved that P’lian was back safely, but S’terlion still seemed preoccupied with the issue of flight partners. “Is it true you can arrange for someone else to – you know – be…there? Instead of whoever wins?”

L’stev had told C’mine to expect that question, though he needn’t have. Half the non-Weyrbred green riders in his own weyrling class had hypothesised on the same subject. “It’s been tried,” he said, delicately. “It doesn’t really work.”

“Why not?”

C’mine supposed that the mechanics of what actually went on in a flight weyr during dragon mating had to be experienced, or at least witnessed, to be grasped. Once the dragonets were a Turn old, the weyrlings would be chaperoned in small groups to observe a real green flight in progress. It could be an eye-opening moment even for the most worldly young riders. “Well,” he said, resorting to the most banal reason why substitutes didn’t work, “for one thing, it’s very difficult to arrange. If you had an alternative partner, all the other riders in the flight would need one too. Greens don’t always rise to a schedule, so expecting all those extra people to drop everything and rush up to a flight weyr when your dragon takes off would be very…impractical. Nothing would ever get done in the Weyr.”

S’terlion looked crestfallen. “Oh. I hadn’t thought about that.”

C’mine was relieved when he didn’t push for any further explanation. There were other reasons why flight substitutes didn’t work – not least that anyone trying to interpose themselves between the riders of two mating dragons risked an ungentle experience at best, outright injury at worst – but C’mine was glad he hadn’t been required to explain that to a couple of very young weyrlings in graphic detail.

You dodged a tangle there, Darshanth commented, amused. Aren’t you glad they aren’t –

They aren’t what? C’mine asked, when he stopped abruptly.

Darshanth didn’t reply. C’mine was about to ask him again, and then he said. Oh. Oh, no. Oh!

And an instant later – long enough for C’mine to realise that every weyrling in the room had gone stiff and motionless – Darshanth’s mental moan, and the audible cry of all Madellon’s dragons, rose in a heartbroken scream that reverberated thunderously around the Weyr.

It went through C’mine like a knife, like the cruellest of blades, sunk into his chest, and twisted. Once again he heard the echo of that awful night, the one clear memory that remained to him of the worst day of his life, forever associated with the keening of dragons. Indioth is no more!

He couldn’t breathe.

C’mine! Darshanth’s consciousness slammed into his with dizzying force. Be with me now!

Darshanth’s mind was all around his, a muffling, comforting barrier, blocking out the cacophonous howl of mourning dragons. Shielded from the anguish of a whole Weyr, C’mine tried to gather his scattered wits. Oh, Faranth, it’s Ellendunth, isn’t it? For a seemingly endless moment his mind raced through everything he’d said to H’nar, every piece of advice he’d given him, anything he might have told him differently that could have averted this terrible outcome…

Then Darshanth crowded closer still; suffocatingly close. No. Ellendunth lives. It is Grizbath who has gone between.

Chapter twenty-nine: T’kamen

Assuming a standard fighting regime, the average blue dragon needs to eat approximately one-and-a-half times more than the average green dragon.

The average brown will consume more than twice as much as a green; a bronze dragon almost four times as much.

What would you rather have in your Wing: one bronze dragon, or four extra greens?

– Excerpt from a speech by Wingsecond S’leondes

26.05.10 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR AND KELLAD HOLD

Epherineth was in a foul mood.

He shifted and grumbled, paying little attention to requests – polite or otherwise – for cooperation as T’kamen moved around him, trying to rig him with the new cargo harness. He lashed his tail at a crucial moment, loosening the crupper that hadn’t yet been buckled up. And he swatted with such contemptuous disgust at the cargo netting that T’kamen had laid out that he ripped a hole in the mesh that would take an hour to mend.

T’kamen’s mood wasn’t much better than his dragon’s, and that last offence – literally – tore it. He struck Epherineth a blow with his fist, right between the nostrils. “That’s enough!”

The blow probably hurt his knuckles more than it could a dragon’s bony nose, but Epherineth actually bared his teeth at him. Get off me!

“You’re having this harness on whether you like it or not,” T’kamen told him. “And if it makes you uncomfortable on the way to Kellad because you won’t let me adjust it, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”

I’m not going to Kellad.

“Yes you are. And stop staring at Donauth. The sooner you accept that you’re not chasing her, the happier we’ll both be.”

Epherineth swung his head bad-temperedly away from him with an angry grunt.

“The big fella giving you lip?” asked Ch’fil, stepping around his own dragon’s tail.

“Yes,” T’kamen said shortly.

“My lad’s all of a whinge himself. Give ’em an hour’s clear air out of the Weyr and they’ll sort themselves out.” Ch’fil slapped T’kamen’s shoulder companionably. “Always the same when there’s gold tail to chase.”

T’kamen reacted to the blow with a flinch and something that was nearly a snarl. “You –”

“Thought so,” said Ch’fil. “Got a lot of dragon in you, don’t you?”

“Sorry.” T’kamen bit it out.

“Aye, I know. Let’s get gone before that queen wakes up.”

“The cargo net –”

“Take it as it is,” said Ch’fil. “They’ll fix it for you at Kellad.”

T’kamen strapped the bundle of netting to one of the heavy cargo rings on Epherineth’s aft neck-strap. Then, grimly, he went around tightening all the buckles. Epherineth didn’t resist, but he did stare balefully at him.

Finally, T’kamen climbed up onto his dragon’s neck. At least he could climb, now, although he still moved with caution, and he wasn’t very graceful. He was glad M’ric was on the ground on the other side of Trebruth and not watching. The weyrling couldn’t ever resist a smart remark about Epherineth’s height or T’kamen’s limp, and he was apt to lose an arm if he irritated either of them.

Trebruth didn’t seem perturbed by Donauth’s heat at all – or by the fact that, as a weyrling, he wasn’t allowed to chase her, either. Browns just didn’t have the biological compulsion to chase that was making Epherineth so angry. Only Madellon’s adult bronzes were required to leave the Weyr in plenty of time before a queen’s flight. Stratomath could have stayed, but Ch’fil preferred to take his disqualified brown away, too. “Less hassle that way,” he’d explained to T’kamen. “He only goes and gets himself self-righteous otherwise.”

T’kamen might have mistaken Ch’fil’s dragon for a bronze had he not known otherwise. Stratomath was an impressive brown, sleek and proportionate rather than compact and rugged like R’lony’s Geninth, with a faint green-gold dappling on his flanks and shoulders. His two bronze sons, the weyrlings Bularth and Stenseth, exhibited the same coloration more overtly, emphasising their parentage, and T’kamen could see Stratomath’s stamp on several of the other dragonets of their age.

Ch’fil himself lacked his dragon’s refinement, at least on the outside. He had the burly frame and big shoulders that seemed the standard amongst riders of the Seventh Flight – ‘firestone shoulders’, as M’ric described them – but where each of the other Seventh officers prided themselves on immaculate turn-out, Ch’fil was perpetually scruffy. His leathers were scuffed, his greying hair was lank, his beard unkempt. Even the braid of his rank – Crewleader, roughly equivalent to a fighting Wingleader – was unravelling on his shoulder. He spoke with the strong accent of the eastern Peninsula, and even still wore the grey-and-ochre badge of his native Weyr on his jacket sleeve below the newer indigo diamond of Madellon.

And then there were the scars, a matched pair of them curving out from either side of his mouth, and clearly the origin of the brown rider’s nickname: Smiler. Ch’fil hadn’t explained, and T’kamen hadn’t asked, but M’ric, never one to keep a lurid piece of intelligence to himself, had seen fit to enlighten him. “It happened at a Gather when he was a weyrling. He called out some shady wagerman who was trying to cheat him. Made a big scene, got the crook thrown out. After dark, a couple of thugs jumped him. Sliced his face up, said he needed to smile more.” M’ric had paused, then added, with macabre relish, “Stratomath went mad. He flew in, pulled one man’s head right off his shoulders, and bit the other in half. And that was the last time a dragonrider ever got hurt at a Gather.”

The story, presumably, had grown in the telling, but whatever the truth, the disfiguring facial scars gave Ch’fil a forbidding appearance. It didn’t match his personality. Ch’fil seemed philosophical about the strictures of ranks and rules that bound Pass Madellon so tightly. He accepted with apparent equanimity that his dragon had been grounded for siring bronzes – and that R’lony hadn’t yet forgiven him for flying Donauth at all. And he was either oblivious to or disinterested in the fact that, according to M’ric, he’d almost outpolled R’lony in the last Marshal ballot.

T’kamen wasn’t sure if Ch’fil’s indifference to that spoke to a lack of ambition or merely an aversion to the thought of taking the top Strategic job, but he liked him. So many of the Seventh riders he’d met over the last couple of sevendays were sullen, jaded, lethargic old whers, the bronze riders especially. Ch’fil was refreshingly good-humoured, and even Epherineth didn’t mind taking instruction from Stratomath.

H’juke, Ch’fil’s slender young tailman, came jogging over from the direction of the lower caverns carrying a bulky satchel embossed with Madellon’s badge. “The post, sir.”

“About time too, Jukey,” said Ch’fil said, taking it off him without ceremony. “Donauth’s like to wake up any time now. Get your ass on Bularth.”

Most of the other bronzes had already gone, dispatched in twos and threes to wherever their size and strength might most productively be put to use. T’kamen had been pleased to find that he and Epherineth had been assigned to pick up tithe at Kellad Hold. It was a three-hour flight from the Weyr, which was farther than they’d flown straight together in a great many Turns, but Ch’fil had been building up their endurance over the last couple of sevendays, and it would be a good test of their fitness.

More importantly, the trip to Kellad would at last give T’kamen opportunity to visit the Harperhall. Dalka had let him into Madellon’s Archives, but as M’ric had warned him, very little remained from the first three-quarters of the Interval except a few charred and sooty scraps of vellum. The Harperhall’s records would surely be of more use. The Weyrwoman had given him a letter of introduction to Marlaw, the current Masterharper; it was tucked into the breast of his jacket now.

Ch’fil finished lashing the satchel of correspondence bound for Kellad to Stratomath’s harness, then swung up to his place between the neck-ridges. “All set?”

“All set,” T’kamen said, and from their own dragons, M’ric and H’juke did the same.

Ch’fil jerked his thumb skyward. Stratomath leapt aloft. Trebruth and Bularth followed a moment later, but Epherineth hesitated beneath T’kamen. Donauth’s allure was growing stronger by the moment. T’kamen set his jaw against both Epherineth’s truculence and the indirect pull of the queen that bled through their connection. Don’t disobey me. You will not chase her.

For moments that seemed to stretch into infinity, Epherineth resisted, and more than resisted: he leaned with all the strength of a bronze dragon on T’kamen’s mind, trying to force him to submit to his desire. I will!

It battered against T’kamen like a storm battering a skybroom tree, all primal fury and wild power. It hurt. But T’kamen’s resolve was rooted deep. He summoned all his strength – the strength that was his alone, not founded in his dragon. He didn’t take Epherineth on. He didn’t try to overpower him. He just stood firm, letting his dragon’s anger break against him like waves upon the shore. No. Epherineth. You will not.

And Epherineth, slowly, subsided.

T’kamen let out his breath. He pressed his hands against Epherineth’s neck. For a moment they remained there, recovering themselves.

Then Stratomath bugled from his position aloft. Epherineth lifted his head. Kellad, then?

Kellad, T’kamen agreed.

Epherineth leapt skywards, and within a couple of wingbeats he’d matched Stratomath’s altitude. Ch’fil looked across from the brown’s neck. Stratomath’s rider asks us to take point.

T’kamen was grateful that Ch’fil hadn’t commented on their battle. He looked down at the map strapped to his thigh, and then at the compass clipped to Epherineth’s fore strap. Come about, Epherineth; thirty degrees to your left.

As Epherineth wheeled – not quite on the spot – to face north-northeast, T’kamen watched the compass needle swing. Then he glanced to his right to see if Ch’fil or Stratomath, flying off Epherineth’s flank, would correct their heading. It was the first time T’kamen had had to navigate with map and compass, and he didn’t want to take them off course. Ch’fil made a brief arm signal, Vector’s good, and T’kamen acknowledged it. Strike on, Epherineth. Cruising speed. He looked over his other shoulder. Bularth, H’juke’s young bronze, had their other flank, and M’ric on Trebruth brought up the rear. And don’t forget that Trebruth is a lot smaller than you.

How could I? Epherineth asked.

The evidence that Epherineth’s mood was improving was a relief. T’kamen patted his neck again. You know Shimpath would chew your tail off if she thought you had designs on another queen.

Shimpath isn’t here, Epherineth said sulkily.

I’m working on that, T’kamen told him. If you’re really antsy we’ll find you a green to chase.

I’d turn one of these greens inside out.

It was a nasty enough remark that T’kamen decided to let Epherineth stew to himself a bit longer. A bronze dragon wasn’t good company when he was annoyed.

He tugged his long flying coat a little closer as Epherineth beat steadily into the wind. Madellon territory was heading towards winter, with temperatures dropping noticeably each day. He’d already found himself longing for the fierce but fleeting cold of between over the lesser but sustained chill of the wind during long straight flights. Small wonder that so many of Pass Madellon’s riders wore beards. It was just one more minor adjustment to the Pern T’kamen had known.

With each day he spent in the Pass, he grasped more fully how the loss of between had changed things. Everything was so far away. Dragon wings were still the fastest way to get anywhere, but even a swift dragon could only fly so fast and carry so much – and he had to rest and eat to regain his strength. Epherineth had begun to eat dramatically more than he ever had in the Interval, made ravenous by the physical demands of training with Ch’fil and Stratomath. And any long journey must be rigorously planned to make efficient use of dragonpower. The need for Madellon’s bronzes to leave the Weyr during Donauth’s heat was no exception to that rule. Epherineth, Stratomath, and Bularth were all rigged for cargo, and would be bringing full loads home from Kellad. Even Trebruth would be expected to carry a small load. Some of the other bronzes had gone to collect tithe from other Holds. Others were escorting Search dragons, ready to bring new candidates back to the Weyr. And still more were at the Weyrstations, resupplying them with food and fuel and firestone ahead of the next Falls. The Weyrmarshal, T’kamen thought, was well named. The administration of Madellon’s complex supply lines was a formidable task, and R’lony managed it adeptly.

And yet the Marshal and his division commanded no respect from the fighting riders. M’ric’s dismissive attitude towards R’lony was clearly a reflection of how most of the Tactical branch felt about the Seventh Flight in general. Madellon was divided starkly down colour lines. With few exceptions, Strategic and Tactical riders didn’t mix – and the bronze and brown riders, vastly outnumbered as they were, got the worse end of it. T’kamen had seen a handful of actual clashes between riders, each time over some petty issue at the lake or in the dining hall. Most points of contention ended with the Strategic rider ceding to the Tactical. But, overwhelmingly, the riders of the two divisions just seemed to ignore each other.

The segregation baffled T’kamen. Wingleaders, it was true, tended to hold themselves apart from the riders serving beneath them, and most Interval bronze riders ended up as Wingleaders – but almost every bronze rider he knew had had a green rider for a girlfriend, if not a weyrmate. His own friendship with C’mine and C’los pre-dated their Search, but Impressing bronze and blue and green hadn’t changed anything. And the vast majority of the riders T’kamen knew in the Interval had friends of every colour. They were, in the end, all riders, all endowed with the same responsibilities and privileges of being bonded to dragons of Pern. They had more in common with each other than they would ever share with anyone who wasn’t a dragonrider.

The dragons, though, seemed curiously unaffected by how their riders had disassociated themselves – at least when they were left to their own devices. T’kamen often saw greens make space for browns and bronzes in the best basking spots on the Rim. And Epherineth, who’d always had admirers, attracted a fair amount of attention among Madellon’s green dragons. It was almost comical to see how the little Pass greens would sidle up to him. T’kamen didn’t have to tell his bronze to behave himself. Epherineth wasn’t particularly interested in greens. But a few riders had approached him nonetheless – some commenting, through the filter of their own dragons’ heat, presumably – that Epherineth was very handsome, and others telling T’kamen in no uncertain terms to keep his brute away from their greens.

How’s the harness feeling? he asked Epherineth as they flew over the sparsely-populated highlands north of Madellon.

Epherineth extended his right arm and rotated his shoulder gingerly. Stiff. He tucked the arm back under his chest into flight profile. And it chafes in my armpit.

Do you want to stop and adjust it?

It’s not that bad.

The effects of Donauth’s heat were definitely fading. T’kamen wondered how far they’d need to go before they were out of range completely. He’d never needed to remove Epherineth from the vicinity of a flight before. There’d been a bronze rider visiting Madellon from the Peninsula back when Cherganth had risen in her final flight back in 91 – the flight that had resulted in Shimpath. Cherganth had been the type of queen to rise without much warning, and the Peninsula rider hadn’t got away in time. His dragon hadn’t won, but T’kamen remembered talking to C’los, Turns later, about what would have happened if a foreigner had outflown all of Madellon’s bronzes. “The Weyrleadership would have defaulted back to L’mis,” C’los had said. “Senior flights are closed, so if a foreigner did get caught up and win, he’d have no right to the leadership. More interesting is what would have happened if Cherganth hadn’t clutched that gold egg. She only lasted another Turn. We’d have had to lure some junior weyrwoman from another Weyr to come in and take over.” He’d shrugged. “Still might’ve been better than what we’ve got now.”

Epherineth flew on. T’kamen leaned back, stretching one leg, then the other, before snagging his feet back in the toe-loops. He checked their heading on the compass and looked at the map again. They were almost halfway. The next landmark would be Hogener – one of the Holds that had apparently flourished in the Pass, owing to its proximity to the Weyr. In the Interval it had been only a minor holding, raising hill-stock known for their tough meat and coarse wool on the limited grazing of Madellon’s bleak highlands, but it had grown in size in the intervening Turns.

The charred evidence of burned-out Thread burrows was everywhere. Some of the blackened expanses were fresh and others much older, with new growth breaking through the destruction of the old where Thread had been exterminated before it could strip the nutrients from the ground. That, T’kamen had been surprised to learn, was largely the work of dragons, too. He and Epherineth had been learning how to flame Thread burrows from above, without touching down, in their training with Ch’fil and Stratomath.

“Where there’s one burrow, there’s usually more,” Ch’fil had told T’kamen in one of their early sessions, sketching a diagram on the chalkboard in their training room. “You don’t want to be landing on ground that could be riddled with trapdoor burrows. That’s how you get yourself eaten. So you stay in the air, survey the strike and the conditions and the weather, and flame along the path of it.”

T’kamen studied Ch’fil’s diagram until he understood the lines and arrows. “How do you know if you’ve got it all?”

“You don’t,” said Ch’fil. “But you’ll usually see if you’ve got into a bad patch. Set light to one end of a piece of Thread and the rest goes up like tarred rope. Now, when it’s gone underground, it’s not so simple, because there’s no air for the flame to breathe. You have to feed it. That’s where getting your angle of attack comes in. Line up right and your wingbeats will force air into the burrow along with the fire. A big fella like Epherineth isn’t going to be precise. Wingspan like that, he can’t get close enough to the ground to target his flame. But if we had a big infestation over a wide area, calling him in for a strafing run might be just what we need.”

Most of the dragons of the Seventh had to be versatile, capable of flying different roles as the circumstances demanded. The smallest generally flew in G’bral’s Watch section, scouting and monitoring the conditions of a Fall, and ferrying Healers and Dragon Healers as required. Ch’fil led a diverse range of dragonpairs to deal with ground infestations in his fire crews. Br’lom, the Bunkerleader, coordinated most of the heavier bronzes and browns in resupplying the fighting dragons with firestone. And the Aid section, led by R’ganff, was responsible for rescuing dragons in distress.

T’kamen was finding that element of their training the most interesting of all, not least because it gave Epherineth the chance to show off his flaming. Under ideal conditions, a rescue involved three Seventh dragons: the catcher, the holder, and the spotter. “The catcher gets below the dragon you’re rescuing,” Ch’fil had explained. “He needs to be able to sustain a controlled glide, because once he has a dragon on his back, he can’t be beating his wings. The holder comes in from above to steady. He has to match speed and course with the catcher, and be ready to grab the one they’re catching if something goes wrong. So it’s the spotter’s job to keep the air above and around them clear. He’s the only one who can move around. He might have a lot of Thread to deal with or none at all, but he has to stay focused, not go chasing off after every stray bit.”

They joined some of the older weyrlings in a training exercise out over the mesa field to put theory into practice. A green, Muenth, acted the role of the stricken dragon, with Stenseth catching, Bularth holding, and Epherineth spotting. Ch’fil placed four or five weyrlings in stacks on either side to simulate the presence of other dragons in the sky, and the remaining weyrlings were assigned to drop dummy Threads from above.

Muenth had a fine sense of theatricality. She let out a blood-curdling scream and folded her left wing almost completely to feign a serious injury. As she tumbled from altitude, Epherineth and the two weyrling bronzes sprinted from their lateral positions to intercept her, and the weyrlings above began to throw dyed rope through the gap in the formation.

The young blues and greens had been issued with firestone, and the air around Epherineth was hot and acrid. He flew in slightly ahead of Stenseth and Bularth, calling to the dragons either side of Muenth’s trajectory to hold their fire. Some of them did and others didn’t. That, too, was a simulation of the real conditions they might face during a Fall. A dragon flaming for his life couldn’t always stop when asked.

It wasn’t a windy day, but the air currents, and the downdraft of many pairs of wings, still blew the mock Threads about. While they were still among fighting dragons, Epherineth couldn’t use his full flame range. He had to target individual ropes and tangles instead, spitting short, focused bursts of flame at them, one after another. He shrugged off without flinching the still-burning tail of one piece, then curved his head beneath his wing to destroy it as it fell past him.

Below, Stenseth had caught Muenth, and Bularth had the green secure from above. The two bronzes, alike in size, angled below the level of the lowest fighting dragonpairs with the little green secure between them, then turned in an almost perfectly synchronised manoeuvre. Epherineth shadowed them, and now that they were clear of the other dragons he could wield his flame with impunity to protect them as they escaped the Thread corridor. He turned his head in sweeping arcs, incinerating everything that came within a dragonlength of his jaws, until Ch’fil and Stratomath, observing the exercise, signalled that they were out of danger.

“Good for a first one,” Ch’fil told him afterwards, “but you made two mistakes. You let yourself get hit by a half-burned Thread, which could have killed you, and then you wasted time burning it when it had gone past you. It wasn’t a danger to your catch. You need to focus more on the task at hand.”

T’kamen took the criticism on the chin. He didn’t protest that the habits of fifteen Turns of rope drills were difficult to overcome, or that Epherineth hated the idea of letting Thread get past him.

They repeated the exercise several times, changing roles, and Epherineth was equally capable of holding and catching as spotting. But it was his firepower that T’kamen overheard being discussed by the weyrlings afterwards.

“…ever seen range like that…”

“…punch a hole in leading edge…”

“…stupid…wouldn’t last ten minutes…”

“…he’s bronze…can’t turn for shards…”

“…shame though…”

Epherineth nudged T’kamen out of his thoughts. Hogener Hold coming up.

He sat up straighter. The pitched roofs of the Hold zigzagged unfamiliarly against the horizon like a row of teeth. Ask the others if they need to stop for anything.

No. I think Stratomath’s rider is asleep.

T’kamen turned in the straps to see. Ch’fil had braced one knee against Stratomath’s fore-ridge, propped his chin on his chest, and folded his arms. I’d better check the map.

Stratomath says that he’ll put us right if you get lost.

If I get lost? T’kamen asked.

He wouldn’t dare suggest that I might.

T’kamen didn’t blame Ch’fil for snatching the opportunity for a nap. On a Thread-free day, with clear air, and three other dragonpairs in formation, there was very little for a rider to do in transit. He took a piece of travel-cake out of the pack strapped to Epherineth’s fore-ridge, reflecting as he did that it was strange to be eating on dragonback.

As he ate, he glanced back at the other dragons in the formation. Stratomath and Trebruth, for all that they were nominally the same colour, couldn’t have been more different. Stratomath was long in the leading edges and wide in the chest – he could have been a scaled-down bronze. Trebruth was closer to the classic stocky brown, but even he didn’t really conform. His wings were more than proportionately shorter, the wingtips more curved, and the sail broader, with the trailing edges freer and more flexible for optimal manoeuvrability. His dam, Ceduth, wasn’t allowed to fight Thread, but it was plain that Trebruth took after her. He had her wing shape, combined with the close-coupled and deep-chested build of a brown, presumably from his sire. T’kamen had watched Trebruth flying with the other weyrlings of his age, and while he wasn’t as agile as the very nimblest greens, he outstripped many of the blues, and his extra lung capacity gave him stamina that the junior colours couldn’t match. The thought of such a small dragon chasing – much less catching – a queen was nearly comical, but T’kamen wondered what sort of offspring such a combination would produce.

The thought reminded him of the flight they’d left Madellon to avoid. Any word from the Weyr on Donauth yet?

Epherineth hesitated, and T’kamen felt him reaching out. Then he recoiled smartly, as if stung. She’s in flight, he reported, momentarily mulish again.

However brief the contact, T’kamen got an instant’s impression of the scene: Donauth’s shining golden form surrounded by a swarm of valiantly-chasing browns. He even felt a whisper of the lustful urgency of queen and suitors. That part I could do without, he said, pushing the sensation away before it could start to affect him.

Epherineth grumbled. I could outfly that crowd with one wing missing.

T’kamen winced at the image: it was too close a reminder of the mutilated dragons in the infirmary weyrs. You’d outlast them, but I’ll bet Geninth has a few tricks up his sleeve.

Geninth doesn’t have sleeves. And he’s only a brown.

Only a brown who’s probably flown Donauth thirty times or more. You only have a one-in-four strike rate with queens, Epherineth.

Are you complaining?

T’kamen thought about their first two queen chases – in pursuit of Cherganth – and shuddered at the thought of waking up to Fianine. Perhaps not.

Epherineth turned slightly east as they passed Hogener Hold, and they flew on without stopping, only acknowledging the ageing blue on the watch-tower as they went by. The Hold was far behind them when Epherineth noted, Geninth caught Donauth.

It began to rain, not heavily, but enough to prompt T’kamen to untie his foul-weather cape, carefully, from Epherineth’s rig. He didn’t want it to blow away. He looked back to see H’juke following his example, and M’ric already hooded, but Ch’fil had simply hunched his shoulders a bit more against the weather. T’kamen wondered if the Crewleader would wake up before they reached Kellad.

As they moved down out of the foothills, the great plains of north-eastern Madellon opened up. Minor holds and cotholds became more regular features, dotting the landscape wherever a natural feature invited their construction: at the base of a rocky outcrop, in the angle between two cliffs, or where a fast-flowing river powered a waterwheel. Beasts and people crawled across the landscape, and they even saw a trader caravan that could have been the one T’kamen had grown up in all those chronological decades ago. No one on the ground reacted to the four dragons overhead. They were too high, T’kamen thought, for even Epherineth’s size to cause a stir on what must be a well-travelled flightpath for Madellon dragons heading east.

Wings in the sky would be a much more common sight now than they had ever been in the past. The southern continent’s entire population of dragons hadn’t exceeded eight hundred in the Interval. Now, Madellon’s complement alone wasn’t far off that number, and if the other Weyrs were at similar strength, there must be something like three thousand dragons in the skies of southern Pern alone. It was an extraordinary thought.

He wondered what Starfall looked like. He wondered what Southern looked like. Grubs or not, they surely couldn’t still be living in amongst the jungle. Even if Epherineth had been able to go between, they couldn’t have risked it on their old Interval visual. How would they get there now? He looked down at the map again, connecting the dots of Holds and Halls and Weyrstations. Rain was beading on the treated surface of the hide, and on the glass of his goggles. He wiped it off with his sleeve, but it just smeared. He pulled his hood down a bit more. There wasn’t much to see anyway, now the weather had turned. There were bits of sleet mixed with the rain. Madellon didn’t usually get snow until after midwinter, but it was definitely getting colder. Maybe he’d let his beard grow. Everyone else seemed to. At least it would keep his face warm. He wasn’t too cold, though. Epherineth was warm underneath him, and the flying coat was lined with fur, and at least his feet were warm. Pass winter boots were really warm. They knew how to keep the cold out, Pass riders.

T’kamen. We’re here.

What? T’kamen raised his head with a jerk. Already? His goggles were steamed up. He pulled them down. Did I doze off?

Yes.

We were supposed to change course at Minony Beasthold!

We did. Stratomath gave me the heading.

Epherineth sounded quite pleased with himself. T’kamen sat up from where he’d slumped in his harness and looked down, expecting to see Kellad Hold’s distinctive fire-heights rising out of the dark ocean of trees that blanketed Madellon’s second-largest Hold.

Instead, he saw only paddocks, crammed with grazing animals. We’ve come to the wrong place, Epherineth! This isn’t Kellad!

Epherineth turned his head in Stratomath’s direction. Stratomath says it is. He tilted slightly on a wing, bringing them around. There is the Hold.

And he was right. The two round towers were there, soot-stained and more weathered than T’kamen remembered, and the green-and-brown quartered banner of Kellad fluttered against the dismal sky.

But the bountiful woodlands that had distinguished Kellad, the forest Hold, the home of the Pernese Woodcraft, were gone. The vast timber lots that had supplied wood to most of southern Pern had been reduced to a few isolated copses dotted here and there across the naked undulations of a landscape stripped almost totally bare of its defining features. Where once the bright green of new saplings had marked the boundaries between old stands and new, now only the dull grey lines of stone walls delineated one immense pasture from the next: windswept, dusty, and ravaged in swathes by the pestilential black blight of old, burned-out Threadscore.

Chapter thirty: C’mine

South Cove, on the Southern/Peninsula border, is nominally neutral territory, open to dragons of all the southern continent Weyrs who have retired from active service for reasons of age or infirmity.

It was pledged when the community was founded that queens of all three southern Weyrs should make regular visits. Even the oldest and vaguest dragon takes heart from the sight of a golden hide, and from knowing he is still counted as a subject of his own Weyr’s queen. Any dragon sickens and pines if divested completely from the reassuring authority of a queen.

Yet in recent decades, this practice seems to have fallen into disuse. Southern has not sent Grizbath in ten Turns, and Fianine of Madellon has been caught up in her constant change of Weyrleaders. The Peninsula alone sees to the pastoral care of southern Pern’s elderly dragons. In this, I pledge that Haeith and I, and whichever of our junior queens succeeds us, shall never be found derelict in our duty.

– Weyrwoman Larvenia, A History of the Southern Weyrs

100.03.17 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

“T’gala,” S’terlion said, and then, gripping her arm, more urgently, “T’gala!” He looked helplessly at C’mine. “What should I do?”

C’mine didn’t have an answer. He was paralysed, useless beneath the smothering protection of Darshanth’s mind, and the scene played out like a Harper’s tale, and him no more than a passive observer.

The Southern weyrlings were reeling. Some of them swayed where they sat; some of them had collapsed. All were weeping, the tears running helplessly down their pinched young faces. L’mern bent over suddenly to be sick, bringing up his lunch on the workshop floor.

C’mine couldn’t react. Darshanth was all around him, blocking out everything, shielding him so aggressively from the brutal onslaught of grief for Grizbath’s death that he couldn’t move or think or feel.

The Wildfire weyrlings looked upset and confused, but not traumatised like their Southern counterparts. Across the workshop, Soleigh gave herself a little shake, and then lunged to seize L’mern’s shoulders before he could pitch over. Carleah had grabbed Karika and was half hugging the younger girl to her, looking bewilderedly around for guidance. V’ranu struck aside the hand that R’von extended to him, raging and shouting, as tears streamed down his face.

And still C’mine could do nothing, say nothing, feel nothing.

LET HIM GO!

The roar sliced through his mind like talons raking through flesh. Darshanth yelped and pulled away, and the returning force of the raw emotion reverberating around the Weyr hit C’mine like a tide. He’d been frozen; now he was drowning again, drowning in grief, past and present.

Pull yourself together! The voice wasn’t Darshanth’s. It was alien, jarring, wrong, like chalk screeching on a slate. It was Vanzanth’s. See to the weyrlings!

C’mine started moving before the echoes of that angry roar had died away. He reached clumsily for T’gala, but she was already clinging to S’terlion. His head swam. “S’terlion,” he said. His voice sounded thick, distorted. “Hold her.”

Too late, he realised he’d called T’gala her, but no one seemed to notice. C’mine staggered to his feet, looking around, trying to decide what to do. All around the room, Madellon weyrlings were comforting Southerners. He caught a glimpse of the scene outside: dragonets crying piteously, crawling towards each other, seeking reassurance. Adult dragons crowded the Rim, white-eyed with sorrow and calling queries back and forth. A queen of Pern was dead, and every dragon alive grieved her loss.

And then the door slammed back and L’stev strode in. “All right, weyrlings,” he said. “It’s all right. It’s all right.” His tone was soothing, calming, a balm; the polar opposite of Vanzanth’s fury. Weyrlings began to turn to him. He stepped quickly around the workshop, gripping a shoulder here, grasping a hand there, and everywhere he went some of the tension and shock went out of the weyrlings’ faces. “Stand down, son,” he told V’ranu, who’d bunched his fists, ready to fight. “It’s over now. It’s over.” Then he turned his head. “C’mine.”

C’mine stumbled around the workbenches. The echoes of the death cry were dying away, but he still felt like he’d been punched and strangled and mauled, in that order, and Darshanth was quailing beneath Vanzanth’s displeasure. Somehow he mastered his thoughts. “What happened?”

“Go to Isnan,” L’stev told him. He spoke softly. His glare was anything but soft. “I want enough sedative to put a dragon down.”

“But I just –”

“Go now, C’mine,” L’stev snapped. “We’ll talk later.”

C’mine fled.

It was much later when he responded to Vanzanth’s summons – via Darshanth, mercifully – and presented himself in L’stev’s office. The weyrlings had all settled down, riders and dragonets, sedated and subdued. Madellon’s dragons had resumed their normal evening activities. But the fires would burn on for hours yet in the dining hall, where the people of Madellon still drank in honour of the dead Southern queen, and the glows would shine late into the night in Valonna’s weyr, where she and the deputy Weyrleaders argued on about the ramifications of Margone’s death.

She was old. She’d been sick. C’mine had heard the Southern weyrlings saying it. He’d spent the afternoon with them, keeping himself occupied, trying to make up for how badly he’d let them down. She was taking medicine. She was old. They comforted each other with tales of Margone’s illness, of Grizbath’s age. She hadn’t been looking well. How old was she, anyway? They rationalised their Weyrwoman’s death, even as they ignored the fact that she’d been younger than P’raima. But now there’s no queen at Southern. And inevitably, eyes had turned accusingly to Karika.

L’stev was behind his desk. He didn’t even look up when C’mine came in, not even to glare. He looked greyer and wearier and older than C’mine had ever seen him before. “What a shaffing disaster,” he said, and poured what clearly wasn’t his first shot of whiskey into his klah mug.

C’mine watched him toss it back. “Do you mean –”

“I mean everything,” L’stev said. “Name me one shaffing thing that hasn’t been a complete shaffing catastrophe today.”

C’mine sat down across the desk. He knew his own reprimand was coming, but he still hoped to delay it a bit longer. “We didn’t lose any weyrlings,” he said. “And Atath can go between.”

“Atath,” L’stev said. “Great. The last shaffing dragonet on Pern who can go between.” He banged down his mug and scowled at it. “So much for my theory that blinks might still work. That shaffing anything might work. P’raima was right. What shaffing use are dragons that can’t go between?”

“But he still wants them back,” said C’mine.

“Of course he does,” said L’stev. “Especially now Margone’s dead. No Weyr can be without a queen. It’s a marvel only the one Southern bronze turned up this afternoon and not the whole shaffing Weyr.”

The Madellon bronzes on watch had reacted dramatically to the single Southern dragon who’d appeared above the Rim shortly after the keen for Grizbath’s death. “Karika said that was a rider called D’pantha,” said C’mine. “P’raima’s deputy.”

“I’d imagine P’raima himself is too busy keeping Southern from tearing itself apart to leave right now.”

“Did he ask for all the weyrlings back, or just Karika?”

“All of them, and he didn’t ask,” said L’stev. “But I’d wager Southern would compromise at having her and leaving the rest.”

“Karika’s the one who doesn’t want to go back,” said C’mine. “More so than ever now.”

“Why more so than ever?”

“Since Megrith failed to go between today.”

“She didn’t fail,” said L’stev. “She refused. I doubt even Tezonth could force her into a suicidal attempt. And why would he? A live queen who can’t go between is better than no queen at all.” He frowned. “It can’t be that she’s worried Tezonth has plans to fly Megrith when she’s old enough. I can’t believe that Southern would have it. It’s one thing for an old queen like Grizbath and a weak Weyrwoman like Margone to keep letting the same bronze win them. It’s quite another with a strong young pair like Karika and Megrith. And a Weyr full of Tezonth’s sons who’ve been denied the least sniff at a queen for decades. You saw that bronze of D’pantha’s today. Tezonth’s image, twenty Turns younger.”

“Karika must have her reasons,” said C’mine.

“Karika might,” said L’stev. “But Karika’s feelings on the matter weren’t why Valonna agreed to bring them here. That was between her and Margone, Weyrwoman to Weyrwoman. Now Margone’s dead, and there’s no other queen rider at Southern, responsibility for the weyrlings reverts to the Weyrleader. P’raima will say that Margone’s agreement with Valonna died with her. And I’m not at all sure he’d be wrong.”

“But we can’t send Karika back against her will,” said C’mine.

L’stev didn’t reply for a moment. “We can if that’s what Valonna and the Deputies decide.”

“She’s just a child, L’stev! She’s not equipped to be a Weyrwoman. She’s twelve Turns old, for Faranth’s sake!”

“Thirteen, next month,” L’stev said. “Which would make her less than two Turns younger than Valonna was when Fianine died.” He was silent for a long moment, and then his expression contracted with revulsion. “Would you listen to this whershit,” he said. “I wouldn’t send my worst enemy back to the snake-pit that Southern’s become. And here I am trying to justify it to myself.” He splashed more whiskey agitatedly into his cup. “It’s not just Karika. It’s not even between. Nothing about how those kids behave is normal. The age they are. The arrogance of them. The blind devotion they have to P’raima. Southern’s all they’ve ever known. And even after a taste of freedom here, they still want to go back.”

“Except Karika,” said C’mine.

“She’s as arrogant as any of them are about Southern’s superiority,” said L’stev. “And she still won’t talk about why she’s afraid to go back. Not to me; not even to Valonna.”

“What if I could persuade her to talk,” said C’mine. “If Darshanth could work on Megrith…”

L’stev raised his eyes from his whiskey. “After your performance today?” he asked quietly.

C’mine steeled himself. There was no more putting this off. “It was the keen for Grizbath. I wasn’t expecting it. It took me unawares…”

“You froze,” said L’stev. His eyes bored accusingly into C’mine’s. “I left you in charge of thirty weyrlings, and you froze.”

“I’m sorry, L’stev,” C’mine said. He knew it sounded feeble. It was feeble. “I just –”

“And not only that,” L’stev went on, the volume of his voice rising, “Darshanth helped you! He consciously, deliberately shut you down!”

C’mine wished he could look away. “He was protecting me.”

“Protecting you,” L’stev said, “at the expense of the weyrlings that you should have been protecting! Do you know what it took for Vanzanth to get through to you? Do you have any idea what it cost him to punch through Darshanth’s walls! Blight it all, C’mine, when I took you on as my assistant I thought it was the drink I had to look out for! I didn’t think your own dragon would be the problem!”

“It’s not Darshanth’s fault!” C’mine insisted.

L’stev stared at him. “Do you know what, C’mine? I don’t think it matters. I can’t make use of him without you. And I can’t make use of you without him. I don’t know if what you can contribute outweighs the risk of a repeat of today’s performance. I don’t know if I can trust you.”

“I wasn’t expecting Grizbath to die –”

“Don’t make this about Grizbath! We both knew we could have lost another weyrling today! Are you telling me you’d have been fine if that had happened!” L’stev slammed his fists down on the desktop. “Dragons die, C’mine! If you can’t hold yourself together, then how can I ever trust you with my kids again? What if you were out with a group and one of them made a mistake and got himself killed? Could you get the others home safely, or would you and Darshanth just curl yourselves into a ball of misery and leave them to fend for themselves? Are you going to fall apart every time the dragons keen for the rest of your life? Well?”

Please don’t let him dismiss us, Darshanth said, in barely more than a whisper.

“I don’t know, L’stev,” C’mine said faintly. “I just don’t know.”

It wasn’t L’stev’s anger that hurt so much. It was his disappointment. “Get out of here,” he said at last. “Take the evening off and think about if you’re really up to this job. We’ll talk in the morning.”

Darshanth was on the ledge outside, looking small and dejected in Vanzanth’s disapproving shadow. C’mine climbed slowly onto his neck. Let’s go home.

He’d forgotten how little his weyr felt like home any more. In the couple of sevendays since he’d become Assistant Weyrlingmaster, he’d spent the barest minimum of time there. Returning to it now just reminded him of how dirty and inhospitable he’d let it become. It was dark and smelled stale, and there was nothing to eat. And while he supposed he could have gone down to the dining hall for some food, the knowledge that it would still be full of riders using the death of a queen as an excuse to get roaring drunk put him off.

Faranth, how he envied them.

It was a mark of how unhappy Darshanth was that the thought didn’t rouse him immediately from his gloom. C’mine buried the idea before Darshanth did notice, but buried didn’t mean banished. As he moved around his weyr, opening a couple of glow-baskets so he could see, the notion tugged at him from that private corner of his mind. He needed a break, just a short one, a break from knowing and feeling and caring so much. Nothing serious. Just a respite. Just a few hours.

He hunted methodically through drawers and under furniture for what he told himself was nothing in particular, right up until the moment he thought he’d found it. When, searching through a chest of plates and cups, his fingers encountered the cool, curved surface of a glass bottle, he pulled it forth with a giddy surge of triumph…and found it was empty.

He stood there for a moment, looking at the long-drained brandy bottle that someone – someone – had put away when they should have thrown it out. Sudden rage rushed up through his body, down his arm, into his hand; he hurled the bottle savagely at the nearest wall where it exploded into tiny shards.

No! Darshanth’s fury bludgeoned him before the shattered pieces of glass had even come to their tinkling rest. You promised!

The anger left C’mine as quickly as it had consumed him, leaving him in the grip of a familiar gut-twisting shame. He sank to a crouch, covering his face with his hands. L’stev was right. I can’t be trusted. Not even by my own dragon. I can’t do this alone, Darshanth!

Darshanth shoved his head through the archway into the inner weyr. His eyes were yellow with agitation. You are not alone!

“That’s not what I mean!” C’mine cast about for the right way to explain. “You don’t understand! I can’t just forget things like you can! It’s always here, always hanging over me!”

You want to go away. Darshanth’s accusation was pitiless.

“I just want a break,” C’mine pleaded. “From knowing he’s gone.”

Then find a when when he isn’t, Darshanth said. I will take you there.

C’mine knew he should have refused. If he timed it and L’stev found out, he’d be finished with the weyrlings. But he couldn’t face the prospect of an evening alone with his thoughts, with his shame, with his grief. Not when Darshanth could give him back C’los for a few priceless moments.

He crawled across the floor to the alcove where he kept all his records, and pulled one of C’los’ journals down into his lap. It was interleaved with scraps of vellum where he’d found a likely entry, an anomaly, an opportunity. Feverishly, he turned to the first of them. Kellad Hold, nearly five Turns ago; Carleah’s tenth Turnday. They’d both got very drunk that day, he and C’los. C’mine had fallen asleep on Robyn’s kitchen table, and C’los on the floor, and they’d both woken up the next morning with howling hangovers. C’los’ journal mentioned how Robyn had said she and C’mine between them had carried C’los onto her bed. That was why C’mine had marked the entry – he had no recollection of it. Maybe the him who’d helped Robin had been his future self? But now he read back through the account, he couldn’t believe he’d seriously considered it. It was far too tenuous, far too vague. He’d been drunk; of course he didn’t remember properly.

He flipped to another reference. C’los had written of a punishment watch he’d stood one night when they’d only just graduated, and how C’mine had come up and joined him for part of it. C’los had done cold watches on more than one occasion as a young wingrider when he’d been Disciplined for some minor infraction – disrespecting his Wingleader, usually – and C’mine had sometimes sneaked up to the Star Stones to keep C’los company. But C’los had remarked on this occasion that C’mine had stayed only briefly, and seemed distracted. C’mine couldn’t recall the precise occasion, but it would have been dark enough that C’los might not have noticed if his visitor had been an older C’mine than the one he was expecting. But he didn’t have a good enough temporal reference for that night. C’los’ account mentioned it had been overcast, so C’mine couldn’t use the stars or moons for a visual. Try though he might, he couldn’t find a way to reach that moment in time.

That was how it went for the next hour. He took down more volumes of C’los’ journals, flicking through the familiar pages, finding opportunities and ruling them out, then piling the discards beside him, until the stack of leather-bound books towered twelve high. His eyes hurt from poring over C’los’ handwriting in the barely-adequate glowlight. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, trying to relieve the strain.

He wondered if the Wildfire weyrlings had asked L’stev why he hadn’t been in to put them to bed for the night. He hated feeling that he’d abandoned them, today of all days, when they needed him the most. He worried that Karika would be lying awake in her weyr, fearing she’d be sent back to Southern. He worried about T’gala, too, and how she would cope with returning to Southern’s unsympathetic treatment. He worried about Jhilia and Sia, who would be so young when their greens rose to mate in a few months’ time. First mating flights were never easy for the riders of female dragons, and –

C’mine opened his eyes, blinking, as the thought tripped something tantalisingly like an idea in his brain.

He looked down at the book that lay open on his knee. 94: much too late. The piled journals at his elbow weren’t in any order, but he knew them well enough now to take a stab at the right one. The faded grey cloth covering one of the earliest caught his eye. 86 – that would be right. C’mine pulled it from the stack and flipped to the last quarter, then skimmed the entries, looking for the one he wanted.

C’los had always been as verbose in his memoirs as he was in his speech. C’mine had often returned to their quarters to find him sitting at the table or sprawling on the couch, scribbling furiously in his latest journal. He’d learned very early in their weyrmating not to disturb C’los when he was writing, or, far worse, to touch one of the diaries. C’mine had once moved a couple of volumes off the floor when tidying up, and that had earned him a full day of chilly ostracism. The memory made a dull ache start in his chest.

But the long passages written in C’los close, efficient script were interspersed with shorter excerpts in cipher. At a glance, it looked like Harperhall shorthand, a sequence of lines and dots, but it wasn’t. C’los, Carellos, had invented the secret code one summer when they were boys at Kellad, and he’d often boasted it was impossible to crack. C’mine wasn’t sure anyone had ever actually tried. The symbols represented groups of letters, but the letters themselves then had to be decoded using a keyword. Carellos had taught the cipher to Taskamen when the Frankon train arrived for its winter layover in Kellad’s Gather meadow, and the three of them had spent the season writing elaborate coded messages to each other – to the irritation of the other boys of Kellad Hold.

C’los had never stopped using the code in his personal diaries, and even T’kamen had still used it from time to time when he wanted to keep something secret, but C’mine hadn’t been fluent in the cipher for Turns, and the encrypted parts of C’los’ journals had been opaque to him at first. It had taken him a while to recall the trick, and even then he’d realised after several hours of struggling that C’los had used a different keyword to encode his private thoughts. He’d made several guesses – Indioth and Carleah and even Cairmine – before he’d hit on the right one. Naverik had been – was still – the finest instrument-maker at the Harperhall. C’los’ precious gitar was his work, and the old Master had left an inscription on the back of the headstock. For when even you can’t find the right words.

None of the encoded fragments were easy reads, in any sense. The least of them were angry rants, pouring scorn on the competence, intelligence, and legitimacy of the various riders who’d served as C’los’ superior officers over the Turns. Others were lengthy discourses on the injustice inherent in the lowly status of a green rider. Still more were complaints about C’mine himself. Those were very difficult for him to read, even when the grievances C’los had raised were unreasonable or outright untrue. And a few were so painful, so harrowing, that C’mine had had to force himself to translate them to the bitter end.

The ciphered entry dated to the spring of 86 was one of them. Even someone who didn’t know the code could have guessed at the frame of mind C’los had been in when he’d written it. The lines had been slashed black and spiky, the dots stabbed so hard that they’d pierced through the thin vellum pages, and in places the ink had been smudged – washed out, almost – by the fall of helpless tears.

She’s asleep now. Finally. Thank Faranth. I don’t know how much longer I could have kept it from her. Still don’t know what I’ll do when she wakes up again. Guess she’ll probably have forgotten it all by then anyway. It’s fine for her. This was what she wanted. Not like I got any shaffing say in the matter, is it?

Isnan’s signed me off for two days. Two days and a pot of numbweed, that’s all a green rider gets. I even had to take the sick note to Low-Brow myself. And he was so sympathetic, wasn’t he? Asked if I was all right. Yeah, I said, Weyrlingmaster, I’m great. Just shaffing wonderful. Hadn’t H’ben told him just how delightful an experience I’d had?

He said H’ben hadn’t said anything and was there something I wanted to tell him.

What was I going to say? That I don’t think I can do this four times a Turn? Six times a Turn? Oh, Faranth, because I don’t think I can. I don’t know how anyone can.

They look at me and think, just because I’m eighteen and not thirteen, this is going to be easy. That I’m old enough that it’s nothing to me to come round with a man on me, in me, who I never asked to be there. That it’s not going to hurt me because I’m clearly experienced. Well they’re wrong. I’m not. There’s only ever been Mine, and never like that, never…he’s never hurt me. Wouldn’t, couldn’t. Why couldn’t it have been him today? Why didn’t Darshanth win?

What if he had? Would it be any different? Would it have been any better if it was him I’d been…him who’d.…

I don’t know why H’ben was there. He sounded mad when he dragged O’zer off me. I didn’t think anyone was meant to interfere while the dragons were still involved, even once the merge is broken.

Thank Faranth he did.

He said it’ll get better. But he never told us the truth before, did he? He or L’stev. They wriggle around it like tunnel snakes avoiding a snare. ‘You have to give yourself to your dragon’. ‘It’s part of being a dragonrider’. ‘The dragon decides, the rider complies’.

‘Complies’. Not ‘consents’. Because there’s nothing shaffing consensual about it. When Indy gets mated, so do I. No ifs or buts. No choice of when, no choice of who.

He said it would be better next time. Next time…oh, shards. How could it be better? What if it’s worse? What if I’ve not healed by then?

I love that girl so much. Faranth, I’d do anything for her. I know she’d do anything for me. And I know she can’t help it. I know she’s a slave to her own urges. I know if she had any say in the matter she wouldn’t put me through it.

But there’s a word for what it is, a word they’ll never use, never mention when they talk about mating flights. I can’t even write it myself. Not even in code

Because if I do, if I use that word, if I write it down, then it becomes real, and I don’t think I can face the prospect of this being my life for the next sixty Turns.

It was the final sentence that broke C’mine’s heart: C’los’ assumption that he had a long span of Turns ahead of him. Would that you had, Los, he thought despairingly. But even knowing that C’los had come to terms with being at the mercy of Indioth’s mating urges; that he’d found ways to make her heat less arduous on himself – C’mine had never entirely shed the guilt of his and Darshanth’s failure in Indioth’s maiden flight. They’d been there – of course they had – and he remembered the day with perfect, painful clarity. He remembered exactly which dragons had joined Darshanth in the chase: Ruorth, Belserath, and Wiverth from their own class; Hozrath, Jekilth, and Herroith from amongst the older dragons. He remembered the weather and the time of day and the direction in which Indioth had flown, screaming with lust.

It had been their first chase, and C’mine had always thought that accounted for the hesitance at the crucial moment that had allowed O’zer’s Jekilth to slide past Darshanth to claim Indioth. He’d always thought his own confusion during and after the flight had been down to the shock of being subsumed completely into Darshanth’s consciousness for the very first time. He’d always taken at face value C’los’ account of how H’ben, who’d been L’stev’s assistant during their training, had stormed into the flight weyr to haul O’zer away when his participation had turned excessively rough.

But what if he’d been wrong?

Darshanth’s indecision hadn’t manifested in a flight since. C’mine himself had never again felt that same muzzy disorientation when merged in pursuit of a green. And H’ben, their phlegmatic Assistant Weyrlingmaster, had always professed complete ignorance of the intervention C’los had attributed to him. H’ben had always been an compassionate Weyrlingmaster, apt to gloss over minor embarrassments, so they’d assumed he was merely pretending that he hadn’t been involved to spare C’los any further discomfiture.

But what if H’ben hadn’t been pretending?

L’stev had said something in their conversation about timing. Go back to a time you’re already in and you get slow and stupid.

What if Darshanth’s hesitation hadn’t been a symptom of his youth, but a reaction to the echo of another Darshanth?

What if C’mine’s fogginess hadn’t been caused by the unfamiliar flight-merge, but by the nearby presence of his own older self?

And what if C’los, in his own confusion, had been mistaken in identifying H’ben as the blue rider, the Assistant Weyrlingmaster, who’d come to his rescue?

C’mine looked down at his sleeve, at the chevron of his Weyrlingmaster rank that was sewn there, silver edged in blue.

“Los,” he said aloud, and heard Darshanth rouse in the chamber next door. “Los, I’m coming for you.”

Chapter thirty-one: Valonna

When preparing for a dragonrider to give birth, as much consideration must be given to management of the dragon as to the labouring woman. A green dragon, frightened by shared discomfort, can be more hindrance than help to her rider, and her distress will upset the rest of the Weyr. She should always be supported by a more senior dragon – preferably a queen, and never the father’s dragon, who may find himself abused most fiercely when woman and green alike are seeking a convenient target to blame for the most gruelling transitional phase of labour.

– Excerpt from Childbirth and the Dragon Rider, by Weyr Healer Lenoya

100.03.19 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

It was barely light when Crauva came to Valonna’s weyr to tell her that Schanna was in the early stages of labour, but Valonna was already awake. She’d been up late the previous evening, and what sleep she had snatched had been sporadic and restless and plagued with half-formed nightmares. Rising had been a relief.

The news of Schanna was half welcome distraction, half extra worry. “When’s the baby likely to arrive?” Valonna asked, as she accompanied Crauva down towards the birthing rooms.

“It’s hard to say with any degree of precision,” said Crauva. “I’ve helped with dozens of deliveries, and no two have been quite the same. But this is Schanna’s fourth, and her last two came along fairly speedily. That’s why we’ve moved her down to the birthing room now. I didn’t want her having to get down from her weyr in a panic if she progresses more quickly than last time.”

The early architects of Madellon had thoughtfully situated the birthing rooms on the Bowl side of the infirmary, where a dragon could stay as close as possible to her labouring rider. Etymonth, Schanna’s green, was sitting just outside, flexing her talons into the rut that a hundred greens before her – and a few queens, Valonna didn’t doubt – had scored while waiting for their riders to give birth. Her eyes were spinning at a fractionally faster rate than standard, but they were still mostly blue, with only occasional facets flashing orange with agitation.

Inside, Schanna was walking gingerly around the soothingly-lit birthing room, rubbing her lower back with one hand. She was a tall woman, and she carried her advanced pregnancy well, but Valonna still didn’t envy her the discomfort. “How are you feeling, green rider?”

“Like I want to get this over with,” said Schanna. “I always forget how – oooh!”

She stopped, putting her free hand to the wall for support with a grimace. Outside, Etymonth made a strangled keening sound.

“Oh for Faranth’s sake, Etymonth,” Schanna said. She straightened, her face relaxing, and then resumed her walking. “You think she’d never been through a labour with me before.” She paused, frowned, and then said hotly, “This is your fault, you know!”

“How far apart are your contractions?” asked Crauva.

Schanna glanced over towards the water-clock. She sighed. “Still about six minutes.”

“Is there anything we can get for you?” Valonna asked. “Some breakfast? Your weyrmate?”

“Keva said she’d sit with me, but her Wing’s on manoeuvres this morning.”

“I’ll ask the deputy Weyrleaders if she can be excused,” said Valonna.

“I don’t want to be a nuisance,” said Schanna. “I know you have a busy day ahead.”

“But you do, too,” Valonna told her. “If Etymonth wants to bespeak Shimpath at any time, please tell her she must.”

Schanna smiled wearily. “That’s very kind of you, Weyrwoman.”

Crauva walked back outside with Valonna. “I suspect Yarayn’s going to deliver today, too,” she said. “It’s going to be a busy day for everyone.”

“At least Yarayn doesn’t have a dragon to worry about,” said Valonna. She looked at the restless Etymonth. “Do you think it’s likely she’ll be delivering while the other Weyrleaders are here?”

“Newborns aren’t known for picking convenient moments to make their appearance,” Crauva said, with a wry smile. “The baby will come when it comes, and if Etymonth’s howling – well, even Southern must understand that a rider can’t help when she gives birth.”

Valonna had her doubts if P’raima would be understanding of anything, but she didn’t say that. “I’ll ask Shimpath to keep her calm, if necessary.”

“The other Weyrleaders are still due around noon?” Crauva asked.

“Yes,” Valonna replied.

She thought she’d done a good job of hiding the dread in her voice, but the tiny crinkles of concern around Crauva’s eyes told her she was wrong. “Keep your chin up, Weyrwoman,” the Headwoman told her, in the low, firm voice that always steadied Valonna. “Don’t forget that this is your Weyr.”

“I won’t forget. I’ll be in my office, if you need to find me.”

“Good.” The note of approval in Crauva’s tone made Valonna straighten. “Your new outfit will be in your weyr by the time you need to change. And be sure to look in a mirror before the conference.”

Valonna smiled ruefully at the reminder that she had attended the Headwoman’s last section meeting with an inky smudge on her cheek. “I will.”

Could you ask Izath if H’ned would excuse Keva and Freanth from their Wing practice this morning? Valonna asked Shimpath as she crossed the Bowl back towards their weyr.

Several moments passed before Shimpath replied. Izath wants to know why.

Tell him Schanna’s having her baby, and Keva’s going to keep her company.

Izath asks why Freanth’s rider and not the child’s father.

I don’t think Schanna knows who the father is, said Valonna. She was beginning to find the interrogation intrusive. Just tell him, Shimpath!

I will.

Shimpath sounded tetchy herself. Valonna wondered how much of her own annoyance with H’ned was reflected from her own dragon. Then she noticed that the dragonets were down at the killing pens. Are Berzunth and Megrith at it again?

Yes.

The two dragonets were at opposite ends of the paddock, but physical distance alone still wasn’t soothing their mutual antagonism. The bullocks in the pen were in a panic, stampeding blindly from one side to another as the young queens locked stares above them. They’re running that herd to death. Even as Valonna said it, Darshanth glided over from the direction of the barracks, humming a gentle chastisement. Both queens instantly turned their heads to look at him, and Darshanth shrank back a little. Back Darshanth up. If they’re not going to kill something, they can get away from that paddock. We’re too short of livestock to have them worrying it to bone.

A moment later, Megrith reached out and grabbed a herdbeast, then lifted off towards the barracks with it dangling from her forepaws. Berzunth took a steer of her own and carried it to the other end of the training grounds. They each crouched over their kills, tearing into still-kicking herdbeast with far more viciousness than necessary.

Valonna sighed. Thank you.

And I have told Izath that he may have an opinion on what a mother needs when he can produce eggs of his own.

That made Valonna wince. That was a bit rude, Shimpath.

What does a bronze know of clutching? Shimpath asked. Although I fail to see why Etymonth is making such a fuss. Her rider has only a single hatchling to birth. How would she like to deliver a clutch of twenty?

“I think it’s a bit different for humans,” Valonna said, as she climbed the steps to their weyr. Shimpath was on the ledge, arranged in a tidy coil of neck and tail, but her eyes gleamed irritably orange. Valonna extended her hand to her as she passed, letting her fingers trail along the golden flank. “We have to present a united front today. Maybe you should…”

Apologise to Izath? Shimpath asked, and snorted.

“Those blighted dragonets,” Valonna said. Shimpath was usually an even-tempered dragon, but the constant low-level hostility being emitted by the two juvenile queens had really begun to wear on her nerves. It’ll probably be over by the end of the day.

She’d intended the thought to be private, but Shimpath overheard. Only if you allow it, she said, with a sharpness that owed less to her weary irritation than it did to her impatience with Valonna’s doubts.

It was a testament to the strength of Shimpath’s character that she had put Valonna under no pressure to capitulate to Southern. Returning Megrith to her native Weyr would be the easiest way to restore harmony to Madellon. But what was easy and what was right were seldom the same thing, and the grim expression that shadowed Karika’s young face whenever they discussed a return to Southern was still enough to stop Valonna from ceding to P’raima’s demands.

But Shimpath wasn’t the only Madellon dragon who would benefit from Megrith’s relocation. Valonna paused before she stepped into the dimness of her weyr, raising her eyes to the Rim. The bronzes on watch – increased to six since Grizbath’s death – still kept their vigil over the Weyr. They’d be grateful to stand down. H’ned would be glad to get the stockpiled firestone back. The Wildfire weyrlings would be pleased to get rid of their Southern counterparts, and L’stev and C’mine would likely be relieved to see the back of them, too.

In fact there probably wasn’t a rider in all of Madellon who wouldn’t be happy for the Southerners to go home. There’d been incidents between Madellon riders and Southern in the sevendays since the rescue, but the unpleasantness had escalated sharply since Grizbath had gone between. Southern’s riders didn’t stray from their own territory very much, but some contact was inevitable with the Crafthalls of southern Pern so distributed between the protectorates. The watchrider at Kellad had reported an intimidating encounter with two Southern browns visiting the Woodcrafthall. Sh’zon had upgraded a courtesy flight for Lord Zinner from green to bronze to forestall any possibility of the conveying dragonpair running into a more senior dragonpair at Noone Seahold. And all brown, blue, and green riders had been told to travel in company, for safety. That wasn’t a popular order, even if most did recognise its necessity. But Sh’zon and H’ned had both reported the undercurrent of dissatisfaction amongst Madellon’s riders at the continued presence of Southern’s weyrlings. They were eating too much, disrupting Madellon’s own youngsters, and upsetting Berzunth. And now that Grizbath was gone, the prevailing opinion was that keeping Megrith from her own Weyr could no longer be justified.

The very fact that P’raima had sent his deputy, D’pantha, to reiterate his demand for the return of the weyrlings was eloquent evidence of Southern’s disarray. Obviously, P’raima had felt he couldn’t leave his Weyr himself in the immediate aftermath of Margone’s death. It was the only upside to the whole situation. It had given Madellon precious room to breathe, H’ned – under Sh’zon’s advice – time to reach out to the Peninsula, and Valonna the chance to formulate a plan. A long, glow-lit night in the Archives had finally yielded what she needed. Now, there was nothing more to do but wait for noon, and the other Weyrleaders of the south, to arrive.

Well, Valonna corrected herself: that wasn’t strictly true. She had plenty to do. More than enough. And while the stack of work heaped on T’kamen’s desk caused her worries of its own, it was a welcome distraction from fretting about the day ahead.

She sometimes worried that T’kamen would be furious with her for interfering with his office. After the first few times she’d gone looking for a document and found it only after a lengthy search, she’d come to the unhappy conclusion that T’kamen’s filing system – if it could even be called that – wasn’t working. She’d spent two full days kneeling on the floor of his office, surrounded by scrolls and slates and folders, sorting every record she could find into something that resembled a sensible order.

It wouldn’t have taken her quite so long if she hadn’t found herself reading everything. She’d been hesitant, at first, to pry into the affairs of the Wings – training reports, disciplinary records, performance evaluations – but in spite of her best intentions, she’d been sucked in. After one morning of reading, she knew more about the character of each of Madellon Wingleaders than she’d learned in seven full Turns as Weyrwoman. A’keret’s reports were always terse to the point of unwillingness; D’sion’s by contrast, so verbose that he used more hide than any three other Wingleaders put together. T’gat delegated the writing of his reports to one of his Wingseconds, only initialling the bottom of each one. Some Wingleaders left contentious issues to the very last paragraphs – perhaps in the hope that the Weyrleader wouldn’t read all the way to the end. Valonna doubted if that had ever worked with T’kamen. Still, it could be startling to find, after two pages of turgid prose on the minutiae of a cold drill, an offhand mention that blue rider H’wat was still complaining of an itchy rash in the nether regions, and was therefore suspended from mating flights until it cleared up.

And yet as tedious as they could be, the Wing records had brought the fighting life of Madellon Weyr into vivid focus in Valonna’s mind. She’d never been part of a Wing, never gone out with dragons on manoeuvres, never learned the formations or tactics that every fighting rider knew by heart. Once the dragonets of Shimpath’s weyrling group had mastered going between, Valonna had begun to spend less and less time with her classmates and more and more with the failing Fianine. She hadn’t learned as much in those sporadic, difficult sessions with the dying Weyrwoman as she should have, but she’d been taught even less about how the fighting Wings worked. R’hren, Fianine’s last Weyrleader, had been too absorbed in his duties to teach her anything; L’dro, Valonna’s first, had told her she didn’t need to concern herself with such things.

The echo of that dismissal still had the power to constrain her. This isn’t my business. Valonna had returned every document pertaining to the Wings to T’kamen’s shelves – albeit it in a place that made some logical sense. But not every record strewn around the office dealt with fighting matters. At least half of them concerned tithes, supplies, staffing, accommodation, stipends – all the affairs that should have been the Weyrwoman’s responsibility. The realisation of how little T’kamen had truly entrusted to her caused Valonna a different kind of guilt.

She’d dealt with it by transferring all the domestic records to her own office. That had been a daunting task in itself, and when she’d stood looking at the single set of shelves that furnished her office she’d realised she needed more space. Crauva had sent up several additional storage cabinets, and Valonna had quickly repeated the filing exercise from T’kamen’s office. She’d also procured a strong lock from Magardon, the Weyr Smith. It secured the stoutest cabinet, where Valonna had stowed T’kamen’s strongbox, the Weyr Ledger, and several other documents of a sensitive nature. She had the only key. Sh’zon and H’ned had both asked for copies – separately and together – but Valonna had evaded their requests. Neither of them was the Weyrleader. It didn’t seem proper.

Still, she wondered if she’d done the right thing. T’kamen had been gone almost a month, and no one had recently volunteered an opinion that he might yet return. And he had thought well enough of both Sh’zon and H’ned to make them his deputies. Valonna just didn’t know if she really trusted either one, especially given the undercurrent of rivalry between them that bubbled just beneath the surface.

Never forget that they are bronze riders first, Shimpath said, as Valonna stared thoughtfully at the locked cabinet. They certainly won’t.

Do you have a preference? Valonna asked.

Izath thinks too highly of himself.

But he did almost fly you.

Almost is a long way from in fact.

What about Kawanth?

Kawanth, Shimpath said meditatively. She didn’t continue for a long time. No, I don’t care for Kawanth, either.

Do you like anyone?

Shimpath sniffed delicately. Do you?

I liked L’dro, Valonna said. And that was a mistake. It doesn’t matter who I like. It matters who would make a good Weyrleader.

She felt like a traitor as she said it. T’kamen hadn’t been gone that long. It was far too soon to be thinking about a new Weyrleader. Shimpath wouldn’t rise for Turns yet. Even if the bronze rider Council endorsed one of the deputies over the other as Regent, it would be a long time before Valonna’s preference or lack of it, had any influence on the leadership.

She put the thought out of her mind and turned her attention resolutely to the task at hand; or, at least, the biggest one.

The date for the primary tithe renegotiation was approaching fast. In less than two months, Madellon would need to present its supply requirements for the next five Turns to the Lords of the protectorate. Valonna had only a vague understanding of how the last negotiation had gone. She remembered the frequent meetings between D’feng, L’dro’s Deputy, and Adrissa, the previous Headwoman. She remembered how bad-tempered L’dro had been about having to attend many of those meetings. And she definitely remembered how he’d discouraged her from getting involved. She’d been relieved, in fact. The memory of that relief was yet another source of guilt.

It was staggering how the Holds of Madellon had nibbled away at the edges of the 95 primary agreement in each Turn’s interim adjustment under L’dro’s leadership. The tithe agreements cited poor harvests and a downward trend in Madellon’s dragon population as the reason for reducing what the Holds were required to supply to the Weyr. T’kamen had tried to redress the balance in the 99 adjustment, with only partial success. The addition of twenty-five extra dragonets had caused more consternation than celebration among Madellon’s Lords Holder, and even Berzunth – who should have been a point of pride for the territory – had been declared problematic, given that two breeding queens would increase Madellon’s already excessive Interval population even more quickly than one.

T’kamen had clearly decided to reassess Madellon’s needs from the ground up, discarding all previous calculations, but – just as clearly – the size of the task had daunted him. Valonna could trace the many times he had begun working on his plan, abandoned it, then resumed, by the different shades of ink on many half-finished documents. She couldn’t blame him for feeling overwhelmed. She, with her recently-acquired knowledge of Madellon’s lower caverns, felt woefully ill-equipped to pick up where T’kamen had left off. Yet the primary demand must be drafted. L’dro was gone, T’kamen had disappeared, and D’feng was certainly too ill to help. Valonna didn’t think either H’ned or Sh’zon would be capable of grasping Madellon’s complex supply needs in time to be much use. And so it fell to her.

Crauva had been a tremendous help, as she was in so many aspects of Madellon’s management. “He had the right idea, but his understanding of what we really need in the caverns is rather skewed,” the Headwoman had said, when she and Valonna had sat down to review T’kamen’s list of requirements. “But then he’s a man. And a bronze rider. He hasn’t been trained for this.”

Valonna turned to the list T’kamen had begun beneath the heading Quarters. He’d written only a few items: bedfurs and glows and the nebulous sundry furnishings. Valonna supposed he’d been going by his own rather austere way of life. T’kamen’s weyr was bare of all but the most basic of comforts. He was one of those riders oblivious to luxuries beyond a warm place to sleep, a clean place to wash, and perhaps a place at least passingly soft to sit down.

Harraquy, the steward for Quarters, had given Valonna a far more comprehensive list of his needs, and furniture was the least of it. Indeed, bedframes and chairs and tables were in relative abundance in Madellon’s storerooms – so long as a rider didn’t object to third-hand pieces with scuffs and scratches from previous hard use. It was the consumable items, those that were used up, or wore out, or got broken, that were most critical. Paint, limewash, varnish, wax. Glows, certainly, but also glow-baskets, and candles, and matches, and spills. Towels, washcloths, sweet oil. Coarse sand and rushes for strewing. Rugs, tapestries, bed linens and blankets. Curtains and curtain rails and curtain rings. Hooks, hangers, pegs, nails. Glue, caulk, mortar. Brushes, buckets, cleaning rags. Vinegar, soda, wood-ash, lime. Plates and cups. Pitchers and ewers. Chamber pots. The list went on and on.

She was copying items from slates onto hide, keeping her writing as small as possible to save space, when Shimpath made a noise on the ledge outside. There is a man.

That meant someone who wasn’t a dragonrider, or Shimpath would have reported the visitor as so-and-so’s rider. Valonna put down her pen. Show me?

Shimpath shared her sight with her. Valonna didn’t recognise the dust-covered man her queen could see for a moment – at least until she saw the intricate braid of a Weyr Master on his shoulder. “Master Arrense,” she called out. “Please, come in.”

Arrense stepped inside her office, but he didn’t move far from the entrance. “I’ve brought half the trail with me. I don’t want to leave it on your floor.”

Since neither Sh’zon nor H’ned ever troubled to wipe their boots before tramping dirt onto the floor, Valonna didn’t suppose that Arrense’s dust would make much of a difference. “It’s really no bother,” she said. “Can I get you a drink? You must be parched.”

“I’d be glad of one.”

Valonna kept juice and water in the cooler. She got up to pour Arrense a glass, using the moments to compose herself. The Beastcraft Master had always slightly intimidated her. It wasn’t just that he was a big man – although he was burly, and he towered over Valonna. It was his stern, no-nonsense demeanour that made her nervous. Arrense had penetrating blue eyes and an intense stare that she found hard to meet, over a bent prow of a nose and a fierce moustache. Valonna had seen him at work, handling runners and herdbeasts with an absolute assuredness that many Wingleaders would have envied. Some of Madellon’s Masters left the hard labour to their subordinates, but Arrense seemed to relish it. She’d once come upon him throwing a huge horned bull that had come up in one of the cattle drives, demonstrating to his apprentices how it was done. Sarenya had been standing nearby, looking rueful. “Not a hope,” she’d said, when Valonna had asked if she ever handled livestock in the same way. “Come gelding time, I always get the knife, not the rope.”

Now, Arrense’s resemblance to his niece was somewhat obscured by the quantity of dust coating him from head to foot. He scrubbed a hand through his hair as he accepted the drink from Valonna, releasing a cloud of fine powder. “Thank you,” he said, and quaffed half the glass in a single long swallow. “I wouldn’t normally come up to you wearing ten pounds of road, but I know you’re concerned about the situation with our tithed stock.”

“What is the situation?” Valonna asked.

“I rode the corrals at Jessaf before joining up with the drive. The five hundred head we brought up are broadly representative of what’s in those pens. The steers this summer are just poor all round. The best of them are underweight by three parts in ten. It’s not that anyone at Madellon is overfeeding. The dragons are just having to take more animals to meet their needs.”

It tallied with Valonna’s own experience. Shimpath, who had never been a greedy dragon, seemed to have been going back to the killing paddocks once or twice more than she used to these days. “What do you recommend, Master?”

Arrense laughed. “More beasts in the tithe would be the obvious solution, but I suspect that’s not an option.” He rubbed his chin, dislodging dust that had found its way beneath the bandanna knotted around his neck. “The breeding programme we began last Turn is looking promising, but it’ll be Turns before we see any significant returns, and that’s assuming we can continue to add decent stock to the breeding herds.”

“What about the wherry hatchery?” Valonna asked.

“We could increase production there,” said Arrense, “much as my staff wouldn’t thank you for it – but only by a little. Between the wherries and the swine, the kitchen and garden refuse can only go so far, so we’d have to buy in feed, and that’s expensive, too.”

He lapsed into silence, but Valonna sensed he had more to say. “Is there something else?”

Arrense began to shake his shaggy head, and then he stopped himself. “There is,” he said. “But the Weyrleader didn’t like it when I put it to him, and I don’t imagine it’ll be much to your taste, either.”

“Go on,” Valonna prompted him.

“It’s a simple equation. Energy out  requires energy in. The more work you demand out of a body, the more food you need to put into it. That law holds whether you’re a man, a runnerbeast, or a dragon. Just being a man, a runnerbeast, or a dragon takes a lot of energy. But if I send my apprentices on an all-day drive, or if I’m training a runnerbeast to race, they’ll need more food by evening than they would if they’d been at rest all day.”

Arrense left his analogy there, but Valonna didn’t need him to complete it, just as she didn’t need to hold his uncomfortably direct gaze for long to understand that he was ill at ease with even the unspoken suggestion. Something T’kamen had said the morning after the first weyrlings had gone between came back to Valonna. Do less drilling with firestone. Do less drilling in general, to save on harness hide. And more than harness hide, Valonna thought. T’kamen had known then what Arrense was implying now.

“I see,” she said. She wondered if she should add, You’ll need to discuss that with the Deputy Weyrleaders. Decisions about the frequency and nature of Wing drill weren’t hers to make. But the words stuck in her throat. Having asserted her ownership of Madellon’s lower caverns, she was loath to cede a resourcing issue to someone else. If there was a common thread that tied all the bronze riders who had been her Weyrleaders – actual and acting – it was that they relished the fighting drills upon which their position was predicated. With the Pass so distant, and Pern’s reverence for the Weyr at so low an ebb, it was the closest any of them would ever get to feeling like real dragonriders. Valonna knew from the Wing reports that several Wingleaders were complaining about the recent cutbacks in hot drills, where firestone was deployed. Any suggestion that even cold manoeuvres needed to be restricted would be taken even worse. She felt certain that H’ned and Sh’zon would take it personally, as an emasculating blow at the very heart of their identity as bronze riders. That Arrense had already dared raise it with T’kamen spoke to the magnitude of his concern – and to his trust in T’kamen’s rational pragmatism. L’dro would have dismissed a Weyr Master for less.

Arrense was still looking at her, waiting for a response. He was a shrewd crafter as well as a capable one. No Hall ever sent a Master who couldn’t engage with Weyr politics to be its representative among dragonriders. Valonna wondered if he thought she was the guileless girl that most of Madellon still did.

Let them all believe as they will, Shimpath advised softly. But this one recognises more in you than most.

Because of Sarenya? Valonna asked.

Perhaps. He is not unlike her. But he may begin to doubt his own good opinion of you if you delay your reply much longer.

Valonna lifted her head to cover the pause. “Thank you, Arrense,” she said. “I’ll take what you’ve said into careful consideration. If there’s anything else you think I should know about…”

“I’ll bring it to you directly,” said Arrense. He inclined his head briefly. “Weyrwoman.”

It wasn’t until Arrense had gone that Valonna realised she’d forgotten to be nervous of him. The insight gave her a brief feeling of accomplishment, which Shimpath silently reflected back on her.

One of the primary tithe documents she’d taken from T’kamen’s office concerned the Beastcraft’s needs. It only took Valonna a moment to put her hand to it. T’kamen had written a summary of Arrense’s staffing requirements. Two journeymen, six apprentices. Valonna hesitated. Only two journeymen? Arrense currently had three: Jarrisam, his right-hand man; the Weyrbred Tebis, whom Valonna had known briefly when they’d both been candidates; and Sarenya. And the Beastcraft had already lost two of its nine apprentices to other assignments recently, without replacing them. The loss of yet another would reduce their strength by a full third.

There wasn’t a crafter in the Weyr who didn’t fear, to some degree, for his job. T’kamen had been asking the Weyr Masters to allow contracts to lapse for several months. Even Valonna knew that crafters were expensive. But T’kamen’s plans for the Beastcraft staff made Valonna uncomfortable, lingering in her thoughts long after she put the document aside to focus on Harraquy’s budgetary requirements. How could Arrense be asked to let a journeyman go when one had never known a home outside the Weyr, another was his indispensable deputy, and the third was his own niece?

She was almost relieved when the angle of the light reflecting into the office from outside told her that it was time to set aside her work and prepare for the conference. She rose from her desk, rubbing the back of her neck to relieve the tension that always plagued her after a long session struggling with the business of the Weyr, and stepped through the archway into her living quarters.

As Crauva had promised, Valonna’s new outfit was ready. It hung from the privacy panel that screened off the dressing area of her quarters: the first complete suit of fighting leathers she’d owned since she was a weyrling. And they were fighting leathers, cut deliberately to evoke the style of a Wingleader’s dress blacks, not the more casual look of everyday riding clothes. The hide had been dyed in the formal brown-black, but the lapels and cuffs and the facings of all the pockets had been edged in Madellon’s indigo. Madellon’s emblem had been sewn to the sleeve in hide, not cloth, of the same colour, above the stylised gold dragon badge representing Shimpath. And gold thread had been used liberally in the complex braiding of the Senior Weyrwoman’s rank knot, and in the figuring of the two five-point gold stars that decorated the epaulettes on both shoulders.

Crauva had come up with the idea to dress Valonna in the style of a fighting rider. H’ned had questioned it, but Sh’zon thought it was a stroke of genius. Master Mannis, the Weyr Tanner, had been delighted with the challenge of designing and producing a one-of-a-kind set of wherhides for Valonna, and he and his most talented journeymen had cut, sewn, and finished the set in the course of a single day and night. The resulting outfit was certainly dramatic.

And Valonna still hated it.

She’d always found the dragonrider’s uniform of form-fitting leathers hot and confining and exposing. Valonna was the youngest daughter of Holder Televal of Peranvo Hold, and as such she’d dressed in the fine goods of that prosperous Hold all her life. She was still most comfortable in the kind of long gown and elegant fabric that she would have worn if she’d been married to a son of Lord Winstone instead of being Searched to Madellon. Not all of her dresses were long, and she usually wore divided skirts to ride, but she’d never truly overcome her uneasiness with a dragonrider’s wherhides.

“And that’s the problem,” Crauva had said to her, in private, before they’d put the plan into action. “The Weyrleaders of Southern and the Peninsula will look at your fine Peranvo satin and lace, and they’ll see the Valonna they know: a girl who still pines to be Lady of the Hold, rather than a Weyrwoman to be respected.”

The ruthless insight had stung. “But they’ll laugh at me if I dress like a fighting rider,” Valonna had protested.

“You won’t be dressed like a fighting rider,” Crauva had said. “These will be a Weyrwoman’s dress blacks. But there’ll be enough martial accents to make them reconsider their preconception of you. And you might just distract them enough to keep you half a step ahead in the negotiations.”

That had unnerved Valonna still further, but she’d bowed to Crauva’s wisdom. Now, though, she grimly set about the task of dressing in the brand-new wherhides – feeling, she imagined, like a dragonrider gearing up to face her first Threadfall.

The thought reminded her of Schanna. How’s Etymonth doing?

She’s still pacing about. I don’t think her rider has clutched yet.

You’ll keep an eye on them?

Of course.

Mannis had done an exceptional job, Valonna thought, when she’d buttoned the jacket to the top. The hide was beautifully soft and, despite its newness, so supple that it barely whispered as she moved. The new boots had a slight lift built in to raise her height an inch or so, and the cut of the jacket forced her shoulders back and down, obliging her to adopt a confident posture. When she stepped out to regard herself in the full-length looking glass, she hardly recognised the woman reflected back at her.

Shimpath reminded her softly, Your hair.

Valonna raised her hand to her head with a start. Of course. She began to unpin her intricate braids. They, too, Crauva had intimated, smacked too much of the Holds. Valonna let them all down. Unbound, her hair reached more than halfway down her back in soft pale-gold waves. That wouldn’t do, either. She picked up a brush.

Izath’s rider comes.

Valonna did a quick check to make sure there were no ink smudges on her face. Let him in.

She was still brushing her hair when H’ned came into the weyr. He was wearing his own dress blacks, and he’d polished every brass button and buckle to a high sheen. “Weyrwoman, are you –”

He broke off halfway through the sentence. Valonna turned anxiously to him, fearing she’d forgotten some crucial part of her attire, but H’ned was just blinking at her. “Is there something wrong, H’ned?”

“Ah. No. Nothing wrong.” H’ned seemed to give himself a little shake, but his eyes remained fixed on Valonna. On her hair, she realised suddenly. “I, ah, just came to see if you’re ready.”

The attention was disconcerting. “I’ll only be a moment,” Valonna said. She turned away from H’ned, but as she smoothed her hair back and then began to braid it, fishtail-style, she could feel his eyes on the back of her head. She tamed a few unruly locks with a couple of pins, and only then turned back to H’ned, forcing a smile she didn’t feel. “Does that look all right?”

He still looked bemused. “Weyrwoman, you look…” He groped for a moment, and then finished, lamely, “Really nice.”

“But I don’t want to look nice,” Valonna objected, perversely cross with the assessment. “I want to look formidable.”

At any other moment, the adjective would have struck her as an absurd way to describe herself, but H’ned just shook his head. “You’re spectacular.”

The naked admiration in his voice almost left Valonna speechless, but she made herself gather her wits. “Well,” she said, trying to keep her tone businesslike. “Is the council room ready?”

“It’s all as you want it,” H’ned replied.

Ipith and Suffath have departed the Peninsula, Shimpath said suddenly.

Izath must have received the same communication, because H’ned tilted his head fractionally. “The Peninsula Weyrleaders are inbound,” he said. “Which, assuming P’raima won’t trouble to announce himself, means that he and Tezonth won’t be far behind.”

Valonna straightened her shoulders, although in the new wherhides she already felt rigid. “Very well. Let us receive them, then.”

Chapter thirty-two: T’kamen

The Pass was always going to be a challenge for our Craft. We’ve been planning for it since Kellad was founded. We’ve gathered nuts and seeds and cones to form the basis of the Eighth Interval’s woodlands for nearly two hundred Turns. We’ve always known this was coming.

And yes, it hurts that we underestimated the scale of destruction that would be necessary. It hurts to see some of the stands we selected as the most precious razed to the ground. It hurts to look out over a field where once fine trees grew straight and tall, and now only stumps disfigure the ground, like pox scars.

But we endure, because we must. Because our Craft has always taken the long view. Because sacrifices must be made in a Pass.

And because we remember what happened to Peranvo.

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Masterwoodcrafter Yarwell

26.05.10 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

KELLAD HOLD AND THE HARPERHALL

“They cut it down,” T’kamen said. He felt numb. “They cut it all down.”

It was only when Epherineth rumbled sympathetically that T’kamen realised how deeply Kellad’s ravaged state had affected him. It doesn’t look as I remember it, either, he offered.

They’d visited Kellad regularly enough in the Interval that Epherineth probably did recall the visual. T’kamen put his hand on his dragon’s fore-ridge. “This was home before I was a dragonrider,” he said. “Or as close to a home as I ever had. Shards, Epherineth. Kellad was its forests. How in the Void has it survived without the lumber trade?”

It wasn’t the sort of question any dragon would have been able to answer. Stratomath says to let him speak with the watchdragon, Epherineth said instead.

There was an elderly green dragon on the Kellad fire-heights. She rose unsteadily to her feet as they approached, bugling a quavering challenge. Stratomath called back politely. The green appeared to think about his greeting, then snorted, shook her wings, and lay ponderously back down again.

We are expected, Epherineth reported. There are wherries for us. And the tithe is ready to be loaded.

He sounded much more interested in the wherries than the tithe. T’kamen couldn’t blame him. Don’t eat too many. You’ll be laden enough on the way home. Has the harness settled?

It had been bothering Epherineth under his arm – T’kamen knew that. Perhaps you could adjust it.

As soon as we land.

Epherineth followed Stratomath down towards Kellad’s paved courtyard. T’kamen unbuckled and slid stiffly down. His leg didn’t feel too bad – tired more than painful – but he was grateful to be able to walk around and stretch. The long, damp, uneventful flight had wearied him. Faranth, but he missed being able to go between. He kept the thought to himself, and ducked beneath Epherineth’s neck to inspect his armpit.

The cargo harness had rubbed quite badly under Epherineth’s right arm. One of the turnbuckles wasn’t lying flush, and it had twisted the strap whose edge had caused the abrasion. There were several other places where the harness had chafed him less badly, too. Ch’fil came over as T’kamen was examining the damage. “Well, it could’ve been worse.”

“Worse?” T’kamen asked. “He hasn’t had a lesion like this since he was a dragonet!”

“It’s his first time flying long distance in this type of rig,” said Ch’fil. “It was bound to catch him somewhere.”

“I wouldn’t let him go between like this,” said T’kamen.

“Wouldn’t that be a nice problem to have.” Ch’fil peered up at Epherineth’s armpit, then pointed. “Have M’ric take that piece out. If he pads the strap and wraps the turnbuckle, it shouldn’t do any more harm on the way home. You can rework the fit once we’re back at the Weyr.”

“I’d sooner see to it –”

“You don’t keep a runner and trot yourself, T’kamen,” said Ch’fil. “It does a tail good to run about after you. Keeps ’em humble.”

“Have you met M’ric?”

Ch’fil grinned. “I’d best go chat up the watchrider.”

M’ric approached as Ch’fil walked away. “Did you have a nice sleep?”

T’kamen ignored that. “Epherineth’s new rig isn’t fitting under his arm. Can you fix it?”

“Take it out, pad it, put it back,” said M’ric. He craned his neck to look up at Epherineth. “And I’ll put some salve on that wound.”

“What sort of salve?”

“Wool grease, aloe, a bit of numbweed. I use it on Trebruth all the time. I do know what I’m doing, you know.”

“All right, all right,” T’kamen said. “Could you take a look at the cargo net, too? He made a hole in it back at Madellon. And don’t let him eat too many wherries.”

“Leave it all to me,” said M’ric. He threw a glance in the direction of the main Harperhall building. “You’ll be in there?”

“In the Archives, hopefully, if the Masterharper allows it.”

“I’ll come and find you once I’m done here and I’ve checked in with Kheleina.”

“Your girlfriend?”

“I want to show her my new knot.”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

M’ric gave him a look.

“Don’t get her in trouble.”

“I won’t,” M’ric promised airily. “Her Master knows about me. It’s fine.”

Ch’fil’s shout from across the courtyard prevented T’kamen from replying. “T’kamen!” He beckoned him over with a sweep of his arm. “Over here!”

He was standing with one of the most ancient riders T’kamen had ever seen. She was bent and shrunken inside a fur-lined cloak, and leaning hard on a sturdy walking stick. She must have been in her eighties, but her pure white hair was still bound back in an immaculate knot at the nape of her neck. “This is Lannira, Kellad’s watchrider,” Ch’fil told T’kamen.

“That’s green rider Lannira to you, boy,” the old woman said, rapping her walking stick smartly into Ch’fil’s ankle.

“Forgive me,” Ch’fil said. “Green rider, of course.”

Lannira ignored him and squinted up at T’kamen. “And who do you call yourself, with that monster of a dragon?”

“I’m T’kamen, Epherineth’s rider,” he replied, with careful respect.

Lannira sniffed dismissively. “Oh, you’re that one. Ought to be ashamed of yourself, with a dragon that big. Wager he does nothing but eat!”

“Green rider, T’kamen’s from the Interval,” Ch’fil told her. “He –”

“Don’t you tell me about the Interval, boy!” Lannira said sharply. “What do you know about the Interval! You’d not have been but a stripling with a dragonet until the Threads began to fall. I know about the Interval! I was born when the skies were clear! When this was all still forest, and the last real dragons were flying between!”

“I remember this all being forest, too,” said T’kamen.

“Well, it was,” said Lannira. “It was! And now it’s all gone for firewood and planks and paper and what-have-you! Criminal! Criminal!”

“It would only have fallen to Thread, Lannira,” Ch’fil said gently.

“Thread,” she repeated, and sighed. “I could tell you about the time we fought Thread, Bienath and me. Only the once, mind, before they retired us out of the Wings. Too old, too slow. It’s a young dragon’s game, Thread. And it’s been a long span of Turns since we were young.”

T’kamen exchanged a glance with Ch’fil. “Who was Weyrleader when you were a weyrling, green rider?”

“Weyrleader? Weyrleader? Ah! For the days when that meant something!” Lannira clutched Ch’fil’s arm, glaring up at him. “Is that R’lony still Weyrleader?”

“R’lony’s Weyrmarshal, green rider,” said Ch’fil. “He hasn’t been Weyrleader for a long time.”

“Well, good,” said Lannira. “What does a wretched watch-wher like that know about leading the Weyr! He’s not even a bronze rider. Not like my grand-daddy, oh, no!”

“Your grandfather was a bronze rider?” T’kamen asked. He tried to calculate it in his head. Lannira had probably been born about forty Turns after he’d left the Interval. “Was he a Weyrleader?”

“I just told you he was,” Lannira snapped. “Weren’t you listening, boy?”

“What was his name?” T’kamen asked.

“T’shan, T’shan,” said Lannira. “Weyrleader T’shan. You look in the records! You look, you’ll find him there! My grand-daddy! Weyrleader of Madellon!”

Ch’fil looked inquiringly at T’kamen. T’kamen gave the briefest shake of his head. He hadn’t known a rider by that name. “We’ll look him up,” Ch’fil told Lannira. “We’ll bring you the record to see if you’d like.”

“What use is a record to me? You think these eyes can still read a record?” Lannira raised her head defiantly. “They still see well enough to ride watch; isn’t that enough?”

“Of course it is, green rider,” Ch’fil said.

“Now, you’ll come and sit with me and tell me all the to-do of the Weyr,” Lannira said. “Who’s flown who, and how’s that young queen, and  what’s this nonsense about a rider coming between.”

“It’ll be my pleasure, green rider,” said Ch’fil. He shrugged the satchel of post off his shoulder and handed it to T’kamen. “Do me a favour and take this to the duty journeyman in the Harperhall.”

T’kamen slung the heavy bag over his shoulder. “Understood.”

As he started across the courtyard, he wondered why such an elderly lady was still serving, even if only as a Hold watchrider. It didn’t seem right. Surely a green rider of such advanced Turns had earned a retirement.

Bienath is still quite sharp, Epherineth remarked. She likes being on watch. And her rider enjoys the music. They have no wish to retire.

But Lannira isn’t quite all there, said T’kamen. And Kellad’s a major Hold. Couldn’t someone younger serve?

Perhaps no one else could be spared.

I suppose so.

The courtyard at Kellad had always been fragrant with the scents of resinous trees and sweet new sawdust. Now, the only smells were those of animals and animal dung, drifting from the direction of the vast beast paddocks beyond the Hold. The stone-built workshops that hadn’t even been finished in T’kamen’s time had been turned into cotholds. The Hold itself hadn’t changed much, though its stones, once a pleasant golden-brown, had faded and weathered to a dull buff. The borders where shrubs and flowers had once grown had been emptied completely, of soil as well as greenery. Kellad’s holders clearly did an assiduous job of clearing all but the most necessary growth of vegetation from close to their buildings.

The wide, shallow flight of steps up to the entrance of the Harperhall was almost as T’kamen remembered, though the lip of each step had been worn concave by the fall of thousands of feet. T’kamen recalled running up these same stairs as a boy, lengthening his stride to reach each subsequent step without stutter-stepping in between. He couldn’t do that any more – at least, not yet. Ondiar had allowed him to stop using his walking cane, but there was no point in putting unwarranted strain on his newly-healed hip. Being an invalid hadn’t suited T’kamen at all, and the last thing he needed was a relapse.

And the Harperhall itself really hadn’t changed. As T’kamen stepped into the entrance hall, he could have been stepping back through time. The portraits of old Masters that stared down from the walls were new, but everything else – the polished tile floor, the faded blue drapes, even the big visitor ledger on the marble-topped desk – was exactly as he remembered it.

A thin, greying journeyman sat behind the desk, and behind him four apprentices were scribbling furiously on record hides. The journeyman looked up from the slate he was reading. “Can I help you, bronze rider?”

“I hope so,” T’kamen said. He hefted the post satchel onto the desk. “This is the correspondence from Madellon Weyr.”

“Ah, yes.” The journeyman took a slip of hide – no, paper, T’kamen corrected himself; the stuff made from wood pulp – from a stack and wrote something on it, then pushed it across the desk. “If you’d just sign it over to me…”

T’kamen noticed the journeyman checking that the seal on the satchel was still intact. He had to remind himself not to write Weyrleader beneath his signature, and instead scrawled Bronze rider of Epherineth.

The journeyman took the slip back, countersigned it, and then slid the satchel deftly over the desk. “Janner,” he said, turning to the row of apprentices, “run this down to the Postmaster immediately. Thank you, bronze rider.”

“There’s something else,” T’kamen said, as the apprentice whisked the post bag away. He took the note Dalka had given him from his jacket. “This is a letter of introduction from Weyrwoman Dalka.”

The Harper inspected the name written on the front of the missive. He looked again at the slip T’kamen had signed, and then lifted his eyes to study his face with a disquietingly avid gaze. “Bronze rider T’kamen,” he said, sounding fascinated. “Yes. Of course. The Masterharper has been expecting you.” He handed back Dalka’s letter, then turned again to the row of apprentices. Their activity had slowed noticeably as first one, then all of them abandoned their work to stare at T’kamen. “Kolasch, escort the bronze rider up to Master Marlaw’s study. And don’t bother him with questions, do you understand?”

I think they know who I am, T’kamen commented to Epherineth.

The long trek up staircases and along corridors to the Masterharper’s office was yet another thing that hadn’t changed. It struck T’kamen that the Harperhall, with the emphasis it put on preserving history and language and tradition, would be the most likely place to have maintained its ways in the century and more since he’d last set foot in the Hall. He would have found it reassuring, except that every window they passed reminded him of the dramatic changes to the landscape of the Kellad he knew.

T’kamen’s entire knowledge of Masterharpers was based on the only one he’d ever known: Gaffry, who’d been in the post for the best part of twenty Turns. He supposed that that limited experience coloured his expectation of the current post-holder. Gaffry was – or had been – a robust crafter in his late sixth or early seventh decade with a practised smile, a polished turn of phrase, and suspiciously dark and even-coloured hair. “He dyes it,” C’los had once said, long ago, with perfect scorn, and that had settled it. T’kamen had never quite been able to take Gaffry seriously since.

Masterharper Marlaw was a different type altogether. He was younger than T’kamen would have expected, with the dark complexion and almost black hair that distinguished many Kelladian Holders – though he was reassuringly silver at his temples. His eyes were a startling light green-brown, and afire with a candid interest. “Bronze rider T’kamen,” he said, setting down his pen and rising to his feet. “This is a pleasure. I’d hoped we might meet.”

T’kamen gripped Marlaw’s proffered wrist. “I hadn’t thought I’d be recognised.”

“I’d be a sadly deficient Master of my craft if I couldn’t spot a new face,” said Marlaw. He made a gesture with his head to Kolasch, who was still loitering near the door. “Back to your post, apprentice. Please, bronze rider, will you take a seat? I understand you’re still recuperating from an injury.”

“All but healed,” T’kamen said, though he did accept the offer. “You have me off-balance, Master Marlaw. I hadn’t expected my reputation to precede me.”

“Less preceded than raced ahead of you like Thread into a wheat-field,” said Marlaw. “It’s rather inconvenient, really. When first I heard reports that Madellon had captured a northern rider, I  wrote a song about justice and duty and the fair rule of law. I was quite pleased with it. Rousing, educational. Hardly a trace of sanctimony. I think it could have become a lasting addition to the standards. And then it turns out that you aren’t a northern raider at all, but a Weyrleader of Pern, lost in time.” Marlaw’s eyes gleamed. “A bitter disappointment, as you can imagine.”

“I’m sure.” T’kamen placed Dalka’s letter on the Masterharper’s desk. “The Weyrwoman’s introduction seems redundant at this point, but here it is anyway.”

“No words set down by Weyrwoman Dalka’s fair hand could ever be redundant,” said Marlaw. He broke the seal on the folded paper with a practised flick of his thumb. His eyes scanned rapidly down the page, then stopped, moved back up, narrowed almost imperceptibly. “Unnecessary, perhaps, but never redundant,” he added.

“What did she say?” T’kamen asked, leaning forwards.

Marlaw re-folded the note, opened a drawer in his desk, deposited the paper there, and closed it again, briskly. “Nothing, I’m afraid, that I can share with you at this time. Now, bronze rider. What can I do for you?”

T’kamen looked at the drawer. He would have wagered anything that, the instant his back was turned, Marlaw would whisk Dalka’s letter to a safer hiding place. What in the Void had Dalka said? He’d had very little to do with her since that first day in the invalid weyr.

“Bronze rider?” Marlaw prompted him.

T’kamen schooled himself to patience. He’d talk to Dalka when he got back to Madellon. “I was hoping I could spend some time in your Archives,” he said.

Marlaw didn’t look surprised. “What do you hope to find there?”

“Records from my time,” said T’kamen. “Madellon has so few.”

“Records,” said Marlaw. “What sort of records?”

“I don’t know,” said T’kamen. “But you’re a Harper. If you were in my position, wouldn’t you want to know what had happened back in your own time?”

“If I were in your position,” Marlaw repeated. “You mean if I were an Interval Weyrleader of Madellon, thrown a century and more forward in time to a Weyr and a Pass not my own?” He smiled, but he didn’t answer the question. “Time travel a-dragonback, T’kamen. The stuff of stories and children’s tales.”

“We don’t talk about it,” T’kamen said. “Never outside the Weyr. Not often inside. It’s too dangerous.”

“Our dragonriders don’t talk much about between at all,” said Marlaw. “I’ve often wondered if, a Pass or two from now, the very idea that dragons could once go between safely and at will might become just as much of a myth.”

“It’s no myth,” said T’kamen.

“But Epherineth cannot go between now?”

“He couldn’t, when we tried,” T’kamen admitted.

“Then you’re only looking for history?”

T’kamen met Marlaw’s gaze evenly. “What else would I be looking for?”

“A way home,” said Marlaw.

They sat looking at each other for the span of several moments. T’kamen had half expected this to be an interrogation. Harpers never could let anything be without picking at it. “Is that what Dalka’s letter says?” he asked, at last. “Is she concerned that I’m looking for a way to leave?”

“I believe the Weyrwoman has your best interests at heart,” said Marlaw. He leaned slightly forward. “Say you were looking for a way back. What would you need?”

T’kamen hesitated. He didn’t like discussing dragon business with someone who wasn’t even a dragonrider, but Marlaw knew far more than he was letting on. He probably already had what T’kamen needed. Harpers. “Epherineth needs a time-specific visual if he’s going to jump back to the Interval. A good one. Accurate.”

“But if he can’t go between…”

Marlaw let the sentence trail off. T’kamen suddenly recognised the technique. C’los had relied upon it many times when he wanted to get information out of someone. Leave a space, and let him fill it. He realised how many times Marlaw had already used it on him. “If we’ve gone back, then we will go back,” he said, slowly, hating that he’d yielded to the trick, hating that he was spilling Weyr secrets to the Masterharper. “That’s how it works.”

Marlaw blinked. It was the first time he’d looked even slightly nonplussed. “Then you believe that dragons can regain the ability to go between?”

T’kamen thought about M’ric and Trebruth. “It must be possible,” he said. “There has to be a way.”

“And if you find one,” said Marlaw. “You’ll use it to go home?”

“It’s where we belong,” said T’kamen.

“Where you belong,” Marlaw echoed. He sat back. His eyes searched T’kamen’s face. “Who did you leave behind, T’kamen? Who is it that you’re so desperate to get back to? Your Weyrwoman, Valonna?”

It was a more personal question than the ones he’d asked before. T’kamen found it curiously offensive. “Why don’t you tell me?” he asked. “I don’t doubt that you know more about me than I do myself. You’ve had a couple of sevendays to unearth everything there is to know about me. Faranth, I’m surprised the whole sharding Hall doesn’t know my whole sharding life story.”

“We moved swiftly to make sure that wouldn’t happen,” Marlaw replied. “Wherever – whenever – you are from, you are a dragonrider, and owed respect accordingly.” He smiled slightly. “Though once the bare facts became common knowledge, every apprentice and journeyman with two chords to rub together started racing to be the first to write your Ballad.”

“My Ballad?” T’kamen asked sharply.

“We don’t get many time-travelling dragonriders stumbling into our Pass,” said Marlaw. “The Hall is lousy with half-written songs about you. And lousy is the right word. Every Harper fancies himself the composer of the next Golden Egg of Faranth or Shadow Wings or More Of Us.”

“I’d sooner they didn’t,” said T’kamen. “I haven’t done anything worth writing a song about.” He laughed. “Yet. If I figure out how to get dragons going between again, then you can write me a song.”

“What would that look like?” asked Marlaw. His tone was strange: wistful, almost rhetorical. “A Pern where dragons can go between?”

“There’d be a lot more trees outside your window, for a start,” said T’kamen. “When did they cut down the forest?”

“It didn’t happen all at once,” said Marlaw. “Kellad was always pragmatic about it. Though the first few Turns of the Pass were worse than anyone had predicted.”

“So they exchanged trees for cows,” said T’kamen.

“We discovered that dragons don’t much care for trees,” said Marlaw.

Absolutely not, said Epherineth, from where he was demolishing several wherries.

“Is it like this everywhere?” T’kamen asked. “Just beast pens as far as the eye can see?”

“Supporting the Weyr is Pern’s first priority, T’kamen,” Marlaw said. He spoke neutrally, without any inflection to indicate his opinion on the matter.

“So I can see,” said T’kamen. Kellad’s ravaged landscape was the most graphic illustration he’d yet seen of the change that losing between had forced upon Pern. For all the issues his own Madellon had faced with wringing a living tithe from the Holds, he could take no pleasure from how the pendulum had swung back in the Weyr’s favour. It redoubled his resolve to find an answer. “Will you allow me into the Hall’s Archives, Masterharper?”

“I don’t know if you’ll find anything there that my Master Archivist hasn’t already unearthed,” said Marlaw. He shrugged slightly in response to T’kamen’s frown. “Of course we’ve been looking into your history, T’kamen.”

“And what have you found?” T’kamen asked.

“Not as much as Madellon’s own Records would have yielded, had they not been lost to that fire,” said Marlaw. “We have turned up several dozen documents that mention you. Minutes of meetings; tithe requests; a journal entry from a journeyman who attended a Madellon Hatching.”

“And the commendation I wrote for the riders who fought the Kellad wildfire in 98?”

“That came from Kellad Hold’s own Archives,” Marlaw said. “So we have pieced together a narrative of your Weyrleadership that’s perhaps more rounded than your entry in the Hall’s chronicle of the last Interval describes, but…”

When Marlaw broke off, T’kamen prompted him urgently, “But?”

The Masterharper rose from his desk. “But you should read it for yourself.”

T’kamen watched tensely as Marlaw unlocked a bureau and removed from it a large, ornately leather-bound book. The Masterharper placed the book on the desk and opened it to a page he’d obviously marked before. He began to push it across the desk towards T’kamen, and then paused. “I’d respectfully suggest, T’kamen, that you don’t turn to the next page.”

That made T’kamen hesitate for a long moment as he tried to discern Marlaw’s meaning, but at last he pulled the book towards him.

What struck him first was the brevity of the entry. Half a page, and no picture, though a square frame had been left blank as if one had been intended but never begun. His name had been lettered carefully below the concluding paragraph of L’dro’s entry, which covered the entire left-hand page and presumably some of the previous one as well. T’kamen wasn’t vain, but the offence he felt at the much more detailed account of L’dro’s era overrode, for a moment, his growing sense of alarm.

Weyrleader T’kamen (I7/98 – I7/100)

T’kamen, the rider of bronze Epherineth, was the twelfth chronological Weyrleader of Madellon, the ninth individual rider to assume that title, and the second Weyrleader of Senior Weyrwoman Valonna (see page 275, Weyrwoman Valonna, Madellon Weyr).

Early premiership

T’kamen became Weyrleader in I7/98, and despite the short duration of his term in office, many events that would be pivotal in the development of the southern Weyrs as we know them now had their roots in his tenure. There is even some evidence to suggest that T’kamen’s ascension to the Weyrleadership was based in part on a proto-democratic campaign conducted among the green and blue riders of Madellon – then very much the junior members of Weyr society – decades before direct democracy became the norm in the Dragonweyrs of southern Pern.

The clutch sired by Epherineth on Shimpath in I7/99 was part of the first generation of dragonets in whom the dragons’ legendary ability to travel between did not manifest correctly. While Madellon’s weyrlings were not the first to fail to go between (see page 124, Weyrleader P’raima, Southern Weyr), Madellon was the first Weyr to communicate news of the problem to the other Weyrs of Pern.

Disappearance and presumed death

In spite of T’kamen’s brief stint as Weyrleader of Madellon – indeed, owing to it – his fate remains one of the most intriguing riddles of Pern’s history. Little is known of T’kamen’s movements on the summer morning in I7/100 when he went missing from Madellon Weyr. He left no note to explain his absence, and there is no indication that those close to him had reason to believe he planned to abandon his post. The most likely explanation is that he succumbed to an error of judgement while in transit between, although as the dragons of the time never keened for Epherineth’s death, it cannot be stated with any conviction that this was the case. All that is certain regarding Weyrleader T’kamen’s disappearance from Madellon Weyr is that he was never seen again.

Breeding influence of dragon

Epherineth’s lasting contribution to the bloodlines of Madellon’s dragons was limited by the fact that his queen daughter Berzunth –

As T’kamen began to turn the page, Marlaw’s hand thudded down hard on the book to stop him. “I really recommend you don’t read any more, bronze rider.”

T’kamen looked incredulously up at the Masterharper. “But this says I was never seen again.”

“I’ve read it, T’kamen,” Marlaw said quietly. “Of course, this was written twenty-odd Turns ago, just after the end of the Interval. Its author couldn’t possibly have known that you would be seen again.”

“But not in my own time.” T’kamen looked down at the chronicle, with its detached, dismissive summary of his minor place in history. “If this is correct, if this is true…”

He couldn’t say the words aloud. He didn’t need to. Epherineth picked them effortlessly from his mind and said them for him. Are we never to go home?

T’kamen swallowed hard. “But this can’t be right,” he said, trying to steady his own voice. “Is there anything to corroborate it?”

“There are other documents,” Marlaw told him, still in that soft and even tone. “Surprisingly few, given your status as Weyrleader in the Interval, but they all seem to agree that you disappeared, and they all seem to agree that you didn’t come back. There’s no reference to you at all after the hundredth Turn. You never returned to Madellon. You never resumed your post.” He paused. “I’m sorry, bronze rider.”

T’kamen stared at the book. He felt…insulted. He seized on that reaction. It was the least terrible of the emotions seething inside him. It offended him to see the Weyrleadership he’d dedicated most of his adult life to winning distilled to half a page of terse narrative. “This is whershit,” he muttered. “It’s whershit. Whoever wrote this didn’t know a shaffing thing about me or my Weyr. It says our weyrlings weren’t the first –” Then he ran his finger along the offending line, reading it again. “This implies that it was Southern…Faranth, no wonder P’raima didn’t want us poking around that day. Can I –”

Marlaw pulled the chronicle fractionally away as T’kamen moved to leaf back through the pages. “I don’t think you should do that,” he said.

“Why not?” T’kamen asked hotly. “What are you trying to hide?”

“Nothing,” said Marlaw. For the first time, his voice had some steel in it. “But that book is full of history that should have been your future, written by Masterharpers committing only the broadest strokes, the barest facts, to posterity. You’re angry because it trivialises your contribution. I would be, too. But imagine how much angrier you’d be if you turned that page and found the same reductive treatment given to everyone you knew, everyone you served with, all your family and friends and lovers. Imagine how it will hurt you to read about the lifetimes you should have shared in brutal summation.”

“I need to know what happened to them,” T’kamen said. “I have to know!”

“But you don’t have to know now,” said Marlaw. He placed his hand lightly on top of the chronicle. “T’kamen. A few minutes ago, you were certain that you’d return to your own time. This suggests very strongly that you won’t. That’s enough of a shock for anyone to deal with. Don’t crush yourself with personal heartache too. History isn’t going anywhere, and nor is this chronicle. It’ll still be here when you’re ready for it.”

He is right, Epherineth said very gently, and T’kamen felt some of his disbelieving rage blunted by his presence. You already hurt. It does no good to add pain to pain.

Stiffly, T’kamen nodded. “All right. All right. But I want to see these other documents. I want to see everything you have on the Interval. If there’s anything – any reference to me getting back that your Archivist might have missed – anything at all…”

“Of course,” said Marlaw. “We’ll check again, and I’ll have everything prepared for you.”

There was too much sympathy in his eyes. Sympathy, or pity. He’s humouring me, T’kamen thought. Blight it. There’s nothing. There’s really nothing. “I will be back,” he said, but he knew the defiance had already gone out of his voice.

“You’ll always be welcome at the Harperhall, bronze rider,” Marlaw said. He raised his light eyes to T’kamen’s. “What will you do?”

T’kamen forced himself to smile. “I’m a dragonrider of Pern, Masterharper,” he said. The words sounded mocking to his own ears. “I’ll think of something.”

Marlaw offered him an escort, but T’kamen refused it. The fewer inquisitive harpers he had to face, the better. He felt light-headed as he descended the many stairs to the Harperhall’s ground level. He didn’t make eye contact with any of the people he encountered, and when he passed back through the entrance hall, he ignored the duty journeyman. Epherineth’s mental presence hovering protectively over him was numbing his perceptions. He barely noticed the chill dampness of the air as he stepped outside.

He was halfway across the courtyard before a hand caught his arm. “Hey, I asked if you were all right!”

It was M’ric, chasing after him. T’kamen stopped. He looked at the boy. He didn’t know what to say.

“What happened? Did you find a reference?”

T’kamen resumed walking. “There is no reference,” he said. “I don’t go back.”

M’ric stood still for a moment. Then he jogged after him again. “What do you mean, you don’t go back?”

“I don’t,” said T’kamen. “Haven’t. Won’t. There’s no record of me going back. I disappeared. I was never seen again.”

“But,” M’ric said, as if he were having trouble making sense of it. “But absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, is it? Maybe the record’s wrong?”

Almost, T’kamen made himself hope. Almost. “There’s no mention of me after the hundredth Turn,” he said. “My entire Weyrleadership rates half a page in the Chronicle of the Seventh Interval. The only thing – the only thing – I’m noted for is disappearing without a trace. There’s no footnote that says I turned up again, ever. Because I didn’t. I didn’t go back. I’m never going back.”

“Faranth, T’kamen,” said M’ric. “I’m…I’m sorry.”

T’kamen didn’t trust himself to say any more. Against Epherineth’s attempts to keep him calm, something black and terrible was rising inside his chest. Where are you, Epherineth?

In the Gather meadow, by the tithe barns.

He turned that way. He didn’t have to think. Kellad had been his home. It wasn’t any more, but his feet still knew the way. He was aware of people passing, looking at him strangely; he was aware of M’ric trailing him. Tailing him. The thought should have amused him, but it didn’t.

Epherineth had risen to his hind legs to look for him. He was heavily loaded, his cargo harness laden with sacks and bales, the netting slung below him filled with casks and crates. He looked like a burdenbeast. T’kamen lengthened his stride, ignoring the twinge that began in his hip, and then fell into a laboured jog. It was the best he could do. It hurt and he didn’t care. Epherineth dropped back to all fours with a tremendous clatter. T’kamen stumbled to a stop beneath his head, framed by his braced forearms, and Epherineth lowered his head to him, humming almost too softly to be audible, a  low vibration of sympathy and sorrow that resonated precisely with the anguish in T’kamen’s heart.

“We’re never going home, Epherineth,” he said. His tongue felt heavy with the weight of the words. “We’re never going back to our Madellon. We’re trapped here forever.”

Epherineth exhaled over him, a long warm breath. Then we are trapped here together.

“Together. Alone.” T’kamen pressed his brow to Epherineth’s soft muzzle. “No Shimpath. No Saren. They’re gone. We’re never getting them back.”

“Um…T’kamen?”

He raised his head. He could feel moisture seeping shamefully from the corners of his eyes. He didn’t turn to look at M’ric. “What?”

“It’s just that…I was wondering…well…am I still going to go back in time?”

The rage surged up much faster than the despair had descended. T’kamen felt his lips peel back from his teeth; he spun, he lashed out. In that instant, the explosive collision of bone with bone was all he desired.

T’kamen!

Epherineth’s cry of dismay rocked him back to himself. M’ric was staggering, stumbling away, clutching his face. He tripped and went to his knees. Trebruth leapt towards T’kamen, screaming. For a moment, a frenzy of angry brown dragon filled his entire world.

And then Epherineth turned his shoulder to Trebruth, effortlessly deflecting his spring. Trebruth scrambled to recover himself in a whirl of wings and limbs, but before he could, Epherineth lunged. His jaws seized Trebruth’s neck, just behind his head, and both dragons went perfectly still.

It had all happened in the space of ten heartbeats. Stratomath and Bularth had only just begun to react to the clash. On the ground, M’ric was moaning incoherently. T’kamen’s hands were still bunched into fists. There was blood on his knuckles.

“What in Faranth’s shaffing name is going on?” The shout jolted T’kamen out of his daze. Ch’fil was sprinting across the Gather meadow towards them. “Get the shaff off him!” he roared at Epherineth.

Epherineth, his eyes flecked red, relaxed the pressure of his fangs only slightly.

“Call him off, score you!” Ch’fil shouted at T’kamen.

T’kamen made himself uncurl his fists. “Let him go, Epherineth.”

Epherineth opened his jaws, and Trebruth pulled free. The indentations of Epherineth’s teeth were clearly visible on his dark hide. He flattened himself nearly to the ground, visibly cowed, but he crept close enough to extend his muzzle anxiously to M’ric.

“Out of the way,” Ch’fil said, shoving Trebruth’s questing nose aside. He looked down at M’ric. “You all right, boy?”

“I dink by dose is broke,” M’ric groaned.

Ch’fil grabbed his shoulder and hauled him to his feet. “Stand still and look at me.” He took M’ric’s head in both hands. Blood was running from his nose, and his left cheek and eye socket were swelling already. Ch’fil brusquely wiped away blood. “I don’t think your nose is broken,” he said. He poked at M’ric’s cheekbone, eliciting a yelp of pain. “Or anything else. Sit down and pinch your nose until the bleeding stops. H’juke!” His bellow brought his tailman running. “Go to the Hold and see if there’s a healer who’ll come take a look at M’ric’s face.”

“What do I say happened?” H’juke asked, looking wide-eyed from M’ric to T’kamen.

“He fell over,” said Ch’fil. “Go.”

As H’juke sprinted off, Ch’fil turned his glare on T’kamen. “What the shaff was that, man?”

T’kamen realised he was shaking. The moment of pleasure he’d taken in punching M’ric had already evaporated. The knuckles of his right hand throbbed. “I don’t know,” he said unsteadily.

“Not good enough!” In anger, Ch’fil’s Peninsula accent became more pronounced, and so did the scars that seamed his face. He looked genuinely frightening. “You don’t get to rearrange your tailman’s face, ya bastard! Not now, not ever!”

Then M’ric said, thickly, “Was by fault.”

“What?” Ch’fil snapped, turning on the boy.

“Was…” M’ric said a word that had the cadence of disrespectful, although it was hard to tell for sure.

Ch’fil narrowed his eyes. “Any other tail in the Weyr and I’d say you knew better than that. But if anyone’s an exception to that rule, it’s you. Let this be a lesson about minding that smart mouth of yours around your superiors.” Then he turned his glower back on T’kamen. “And you can get a grip on your temper. You want to give him a clip round the ear, that’s your business, but you strike a rider with a closed fist again, and we’re going to have a problem. R’lony might not give a shaff how you choose to keep your tail in line, but I do. Faranth’s tits, I’ve never know a rider with so much of his dragon in him.” He glared up at Epherineth. “And you! Dragons scrapping in public! At a Hold! I ought to ground your fork for a month!”

“I’m sorry, Ch’fil,” T’kamen said roughly. Now that his rage had fled, he was appalled with himself. “I won’t…it won’t happen again.”

“You’re shaffing right it won’t!” Then Ch’fil gestured dismissively to a group of startled holders standing near the tithe barns. “Just dragons roughhousing. Nothing to be worried about!” He glared at T’kamen again, though with less rancour than before. “I’m going to see if Epherineth’s shaken anything loose with this shit. And you can shaffing apologise to the boy.”

As Ch’fil stalked off down Epherineth’s side to inspect his cargo, T’kamen turned to look at M’ric. He was sitting against Trebruth’s forepaw, dabbing experimentally at his nose with his sleeve. “It’s still bleeding,” T’kamen told him.

M’ric’s bruises were darkening quickly beneath the smeared blood. He shot T’kamen a wounded look. “You didden ab do puch be.”

T’kamen lowered himself to the ground to sit beside him. “No. I didn’t. I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

M’ric made an unlovely snuffling noise and wiped at his nose again. “You’re ubsed.”

“Yeah.” T’kamen stared at nothing. “I guess I am.”

“I didden bean do bake id worse.”

“Stop talking, M’ric, you sound ridiculous.” T’kamen scrubbed a hand through his hair. “You might just have picked a better moment to point out that you’re going back to my time, and I’m not.”

M’ric looked sideways at him. “Ab I, doh?”

“You know you are. We’ve already been through this.”

“Bud if I can do id, why nod you?”

“I don’t know,” T’kamen admitted, and then repeated himself more forcefully. “I don’t know.” He paused. “The only thing I can think of is the fire-lizard…”

“I already dold you,” M’ric insisted. “Dobody as fire-lizds. Nasdy dirdy digs.”

“Well, you do. Or you will.” T’kamen shook his head. “Why dirty? I never liked the irritating little buggers, but they’re popular enough in my time.”

“Dere garriub eders,” M’ric said. He screwed up his face as he spoke, and then moaned, “Ow.”

“I can’t understand you,” T’kamen said. He raised his head to see if Ch’fil’s tailman was coming back yet. “Looks like H’juke’s found you a Healer.”

M’ric felt gingerly at his puffy cheek. “Lease Ghleda idden aroud do see be dis way.”

“I don’t think I’ve done you any lasting damage,” said T’kamen. “Faranth knows how. I used to be a decent boxer.”

“Do?”

“Yeah, me.”

“Huh.”

“You’ll still have a black eye to show for it, though.”

“Well danks a don.”

“Consider it payment in advance for sending me on a one-way trip to this miserable era,” T’kamen said. “Since I’ll never get to hit your future self in the face the way I’d like to.”

“Dat’s brobly why by fudure self dormeds you,” M’ric said. “Geddig by own back.”

“You’re still up on that trade,” said T’kamen.

The Healer, flanked by H’juke, was almost upon them. T’kamen got up, brushing dirt off his flying leathers. “Journeyman. Your patient’s here.”

“Oh, dear,” said the Healer, looking at M’ric’s bruised face. “And you say that this young man –”

“Fell ober,” said M’ric, climbing to his feet. “Yub. Clubsy, dad’s be.”

T’kamen put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, gripping hard for a moment, hoping M’ric knew he meant his apology. Then he released him to let the Healer do his work. Is Trebruth all right? he asked Epherineth.

I only scared him, Epherineth replied. I would not have hurt a dragon so much younger and weaker than me.

That made T’kamen more ashamed than ever of his outburst. He stood by, watching as the Kellad Healer cleaned up M’ric’s face, until Ch’fil returned from his inspection of Epherineth’s load.

“He didn’t shake anything loose,” Ch’fil said. “How’s the boy?”

“I think he’ll be all right,” T’kamen said.

Ch’fil watched the Healer attending M’ric for a moment. Then he said, “Didn’t find the answers you were hoping for, did you?”

T’kamen shook his head.

“I’m sorry to hear it.” Ch’fil paused. “So what’s next? What’ll you do now?”

“What can I do?” T’kamen asked. He spoke more lightly than he felt. “Stay, assuming R’lony will have us.”

“Aye, he’ll have you.” Ch’fil squinted at Epherineth. “Let’s see how he does getting home. If he’s not too sore, we have five days to get him ready.”

“What happens in five days?” asked T’kamen.

“Threadfall,” said Ch’fil. “It’s time you saw what being a dragonrider of the Pass is really all about.”

Chapter thirty-three: Valonna

Naventh of Ista and Haxath of Benden were both young queens in their prime when they moved south to co-found Western Weyr. Naventh was first to rise, and in being caught by M’dellon’s bronze Tiuth, became the first senior queen of the new Weyr.

Being Istan, Naventh was not a large queen, and Tiuth, while hailing from the High Reaches, was noted as one of the smallest bronzes on Pern in the early Seventh Interval. They flew consistently well together, though, and Tiuth caught Naventh in seven straight flights. When he failed to catch her in her eighth flight, the heart went out of Tiuth. He did not live to see Naventh lay her final clutch, by bronze Paith, but no dragon of that Hatching ever went on to catch a queen, and to this day, dragons with Tiuth’s light-framed, speedy conformation still dominate Madellon Weyr’s Wings.

– From Bloodlines of Madellon Weyr by Weyrwoman Fianine

100.03.19 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Sh’zon met them on Shimpath’s ledge. It was hot outside of the comfortable shade of the weyr, but he, like Valonna and H’ned, wore his dress blacks. They were obviously new, and Valonna wondered fleetingly why Sh’zon had chosen to have his blacks sewn in the Peninsula style when he so frequently complained of still being regarded as an outsider at Madellon.

Then two dragons appeared in the sky above the Bowl, followed after a moment by a third. The watchdragon reports they are Ipith and Suffath of the Peninsula, and Tezonth of Southern, said Shimpath.

Tell Santinoth they may land, said Valonna. Are the Southern weyrlings in hand?

Yes.

Keep them close.

It was rare for dragons of all three southern Weyrs to come together. Valonna had almost forgotten how much smaller and sleeker Madellon dragons were by comparison to their Southern and Peninsularite counterparts. Tezonth was colossal, but even H’pold’s bronze Suffath was noticeably bigger and burlier than most of Madellon’s dragons. Ipith, the Peninsula queen, wasn’t as large as Grizbath had been, but she was bigger than Shimpath, and older, and more senior. She was the largest dragon in all of southern Pern now, and she was awe-inspiring, even if she and her rider had been the Peninsula’s senior pair barely a Turn longer than Shimpath and Valonna had served as Madellon’s. But Madellon was Shimpath’s Weyr. The two hundred and more dragons watching from their weyr ledges were hers, however magnificent the foreign queen in their midst. And in Shimpath’s present frame of mind – controlling, as she was, two feuding juvenile queens, half a Wing of semi-friendly Southern weyrlings, and a fractious adult green – she had small interest in showing deference to the queen of another Weyr.

Certainly I do not, Shimpath said, mantling her wings fractionally at the very notion. And neither should you.

Valonna drew on her queen’s conviction, suppressing the fearful part of herself that wanted to flee to the depths of the lower caverns and stay there until all this was over. As the three foreign dragons landed below Shimpath’s ledge, she descended the steps to meet them. It took all her will to resist looking over her shoulder to make sure H’ned and Sh’zon were behind her. “Welcome to Madellon, Weyrleaders,” she said, once all three had dismounted. “I hope you’ll –”

P’raima’s rasp stopped her. “Spare me the farcical pleasantries.” He ripped off his smoked-glass goggles and glared at her with burning dark eyes. “This isn’t a social visit.”

Valonna hadn’t expected him to be friendly, but the brusqueness of his tone took her aback. It had been some time since anyone had spoken to her so rudely, and for all the recent troubles between Madellon and Southern, she hadn’t seen P’raima himself since Shimpath’s last Hatching. The open aggression dented her fragile confidence. She felt herself beginning to look instinctively to Sh’zon for guidance.

And then H’pold, the Peninsula’s Weyrleader, stepped forwards slightly, blocking P’raima’s confrontational approach. He was a tall man in his forties, impressive in his dress tunic, and handsome in a severe way, but his smile revealed more teeth than warmth. “You mustn’t criticise Valonna’s courtesies, P’raima,” he said, and then he turned his attention to Valonna. “Weyrwoman.” His eyes, glacier-blue, raked her from head to toe and back again. “You look well, under the circumstances.”

He grasped her wrist rather hard, and Valonna had to school herself not to wince. “Thank you, Weyrleader H’pold,” she said. “And these are Madellon’s Deputy Weyrleaders, H’ned and Sh’zon.”

H’pold barely glanced at H’ned, but when he looked at Sh’zon his eyes went, if possible, even more frosty. “Yes, Weyrwoman; we’re acquainted.”

Valonna’s heart sank. Sh’zon’s enmity with the Weyrleader who’d engineered his transfer away from the Peninsula was no secret, and although Sh’zon had vowed to keep his conduct professional, she dreaded him breaking the promise. The Peninsula’s willingness to broker this meeting had not been a given, and the last thing Madellon needed was for H’pold to take against their position before discussion had even begun.

It was Rallai, H’pold’s Weyrwoman, who glossed over the awkwardness, stepping forwards to embrace Valonna gravely. Rallai was nearly as tall as her Weyrleader, and, in long divided riding skirts and a beautifully tooled riding jacket, effortlessly elegant. Valonna envied her on both counts. “Welcome, Rallai,” she said, with gratitude.

“Valonna,” Rallai replied simply, but the quick squeeze she gave to Valonna’s forearms as they parted was unambiguously supportive.

It gave Valonna the courage she needed to look P’raima in the eye. She didn’t extend her hand in greeting, and neither did he. “Weyrleader P’raima,” she said. She was aware, gratefully, of Sh’zon and H’ned flanking her. “Please accept my condolences for the loss of your Weyrwoman.”

He glowered down at her. “You have a nerve.”

Valonna lifted her chin. Shimpath’s irritation was bleeding into her mood. This is my Weyr, she reminded herself. “I admired Margone greatly,” she replied. “Her death was a blow to all of Pern.”

“Enough,” said P’raima. “If you don’t have the common decency to restore my weyrlings to their rightful place of your own volition, then you’ll at least do me the courtesy of not wasting my time with platitudes.”

“Margone was an example to us all,” said Rallai. Smoothly and skilfully, she took P’raima’s arm. “We would be remiss to forget her graciousness and gentility at this turbulent time. Valonna, perhaps you’d lead on?”

P’raima seemed momentarily wrong-footed by Rallai’s gesture. “Before we go anywhere, I want to see my weyrlings.”

“I’m sure you saw them as you flew in,” H’ned pointed out. His tone, Valonna was glad to note, was politely neutral. “We have no need to hide them.”

“You misunderstand me, Wingleader,” P’raima said. His inflection was contemptuous of H’ned’s rank. “I don’t doubt that they are here. I wish to verify that they are whole and undamaged.”

Even H’pold looked taken aback at the implication, and Valonna couldn’t quite prevent her own sharp intake of breath. “Oh, you’ll find they’re whole, all right,” Sh’zon said. “Every one of ’em still alive, would you fancy! And no more damaged than they were when we relieved you of their care!”

“Wingleader!” Valonna said quickly, and at the same instant, Rallai said, “Sh’zon!”

They looked at each other. Rallai’s face betrayed an instant of contrition that she’d allowed her mask of serenity to crack, and then she made a tiny motion of her head to acknowledge Valonna’s precedence. Valonna cleared her throat to cover her surprise, and then spoke directly to P’raima. “I can promise you that your weyrlings are well and healthy in the care of our very experienced Weyrlingmaster. You will, of course, be welcome to inspect them to see this for yourself…after our discussions have concluded. I believe it would be disruptive for them to see you before plans for their future have been decided.”

“I’m inclined to agree with Valonna, P’raima,” H’pold said, before P’raima could object. “The welfare of the weyrlings is, after all, of paramount importance to all of us, is it not?”

The question, posited as though the answer were self-evident, gave Valonna hope. She doubted if the welfare of the weyrlings were nearly so important to P’raima as reclaiming custody of the sole living Southern queen. But P’raima couldn’t dispute H’pold’s remark without damaging his own moral position, and in placing the well-being of the Southern weyrlings, rather than P’raima’s sovereign rights over them, at the heart of the issue, H’pold was already setting a tone that would favour Madellon’s position.

P’raima had arrived at the same conclusion. “I can see this is going to be an exercise in futility. Am I supposed to believe the Peninsula unbiased, H’pold?”

“The Peninsula has no quarrel with Southern,” H’pold assured him. “And no special love for Madellon.” The smile he directed at Sh’zon gave the truth to that. “And would you sooner have brought the north to bear on southern Pern’s squabbles?”

That made P’raima’s face harden, but it also sent a chill through Valonna. H’pold was very good. It made her worry that he had an agenda of his own. “Please, Weyrleaders, let’s repair to the council chamber.”

“Of course, Valonna,” said H’pold. He took her hand and placed it firmly – over-familiarly, perhaps – on his arm. “Lead on.”

Valonna was relieved just to be getting their interactions out from under the eyes of the whole Weyr, but she realised, with a feeling of dread, that H’ned and Sh’zon had been excluded from the show of inter-Weyr cordiality. It made Valonna feel very exposed, and very alone.

Don’t be ridiculous, Shimpath told her distractedly. I am here.

But Valonna didn’t have a chance to reply. H’pold had leaned slightly down to speak in her ear. “You would have done better to sit Sh’zon out of this one, Valonna. Better still to allow the Peninsula to host it.”

She didn’t want to disagree with him about Sh’zon, in part because she couldn’t. “It was kind of you to offer, H’pold, but I couldn’t take Shimpath away from Madellon with two young queens in residence.”

“Ah,” said H’pold, as if that explained everything. He chuckled with what sounded more like amusement than sympathy, and squeezed her arm conspiratorially. “So this is a matter of pride over principle.”

Valonna looked at him, aghast, but H’pold just laughed, as if they’d shared a joke, displaying all his very white, unnaturally sharp-looking teeth. She was grateful indeed when they reached the council chamber, and she could remove her hand from his arm without causing offence, although she had to make herself resist scrubbing her fingers on the leg of her wherhide trousers.

The Madellon council chamber had been seldom used in Valonna’s time as Weyrwoman. Even in Fianine’s day, Madellon’s Council had preferred to use the more convenient ready room off the Weyrleader’s weyr for conferences. The council room was located off the upper level of the Hatching Grounds, in a hollow that had once formed a spur of the big cavern. Madellon’s early masons had partially bricked in the opening to leave a colonnade that afforded a precipitous view down to the Sands, and built a steep staircase leading up from below. The long table must have been assembled in situ – it couldn’t possibly have fit through the door in one piece – and seated ten to a side, with the heavy Weyrleader’s chair at one end and a smaller, more ornate seat for the Weyrwoman beside it. Most of the Wingleader chairs had been missing for Turns, appropriated for one use or another, and Valonna had agonised over restoring them all for this crucial meeting. Crauva had tracked down fifteen of them, and fourteen of those were spaced rather widely, seven to a side. Water, wine, and klah waited in pitchers on the table, placed there at the last possible moment to keep the hot drinks hot and the cold ones cold; there was a bowl of fruit that nobody was expected to touch; and expensive scented candles burned in a cluster, mellowing the harsher glow-light, and casting flickering shadows over the portraits of past Madellon Weyrleaders and Weyrwoman that stared in sightless judgement from the walls.

Under any other circumstances, the Weyrleader would have taken the big chair at the end of the table, with Valonna beside him, and the visiting Weyrleaders seated to either side. Had T’kamen left just one deputy, he would have taken the Weyrleader’s seat. But neither H’ned nor Sh’zon would give way to the other; they couldn’t both sit in T’kamen’s place; and the nature of this particular conference made the arrangement unworkable anyway. Valonna had decided to yield the Weyrleader and Weyrwoman’s chairs to H’pold and Rallai. As they were the neutral party, it made sense for them to sit at the head of the table. P’raima would sit to their left; Valonna and her Deputy Weyrleaders to their right. It was an unorthodox seating plan, but then, it was an unorthodox move, to invite the leaders of another Weyr to mediate a peace. Valonna still hoped it had been the right decision.

As they settled into their seats, Valonna watched P’raima covertly. He tolerated the polite motions of holding out chairs, the offering of wine and handing round of fruit which no one took; but impatiently, refusing each courtesy with a terse shake of his head. She’d met him only twice before, she realised: both times at Shimpath’s Hatchings, which he and Margone had attended even though they’d never reciprocated the invitation. She recalled how curt and unhelpful he’d been at the Wildfires’ Hatching, when first Bronth and then Indioth had gone between. She didn’t remember him making her feel this uneasy. Of the four bronze riders in the room, P’raima was both the oldest and physically the least impressive, and yet as wary as Valonna was of H’ned and Sh’zon, and as objectionable as she found H’pold’s calculated smarm, P’raima unsettled her the most. His gaze, still narrowed even in the soft light of the council chamber, never rested long in one place. He sat  straight-backed and motionless in his chair, in wherhides cut to such a restrictive pattern that they looked desperately uncomfortable, yet he gave no indication that he was ill at ease. And he emanated a relentless self-certainty that made H’pold’s easy confidence seem superficial, Sh’zon’s crude, and H’ned’s non-existent. P’raima was a man accustomed to being obeyed, a man who carried his authority as though it ran in his blood, a man on whose face the effort of containing and channelling that force had left its mark in grimness graven deep. It was no new aspect, Valonna saw; no recent addition brought on by the death of his Weyrwoman. Perhaps it was merely the inescapable consequence of having led a Weyr for over three decades. Perhaps P’raima’s face was the face all long-serving Weyrleaders would inevitably come to wear as the job ground them down, and they struggled to stay a step ahead of being consumed by it, unwilling or unable to relinquish control.

Control, said Shimpath. She sounded uncomfortable herself, as if even sharing Valonna’s thoughts on the subject was distasteful to her. I cannot understand why Grizbath’s rider allowed him to control her for so long.

Valonna could. Because it can be a relief to let someone else, someone competent, make the decisions.

Even when those decisions are wrong?

She managed to prevent the shudder that prickled her skin from manifesting. Sometimes you don’t know if a decision is wrong or right until it’s too late.

“Very well,” said H’pold, when everyone had a drink. He looked casually at ease in T’kamen’s chair. “Weyrleader P’raima has made certain requests on behalf of Southern; requests that Madellon is not willing to meet –”

“Not requests, H’pold,” said P’raima. “Demands. Madellon will release the weyrlings it abducted from Southern.”

“They weren’t abducted,” Sh’zon countered, leaning across the table.

“Not abducted?” P’raima dismissed Sh’zon’s assertion with a flick of his hand. “They were dragged from their beds in the dead of night. They were taken without permission, by subterfuge and coercion, to be held hostage at a foreign Weyr.”

“They are not and never have been hostages, Weyrleader,” Valonna said. “They’ve been our honoured guests –”

“You stole my weyrlings, Madellon,” said P’raima. “You snatched my dragon’s young and spirited them away, and when we came to reclaim them you drove us off with firestone.” His voice vibrated with disgust. “You bade your dragons stoke flame to use against other dragons.” He looked at H’pold, who was listening with a carefully dispassionate face. “Remember that, Peninsula, when they try to claim the moral high ground.”

“It’s not for me to decide who holds the moral high ground, P’raima,” said H’pold. “I’m not sitting in judgement.”

“Perhaps you should be,” said P’raima. “Lest Madellon Weyr take a dislike to your decisions and take it upon themselves to snatch away your weyrlings.”

“We didn’t snatch your weyrlings,” Valonna said before H’pold could respond, putting as much firmness as she could gather in her voice. “We acted only on the request of your Weyrwoman. Margone bade us take your surviving weyrlings into our care.”

“The ones you didn’t kill when you sent ’em all between,” Sh’zon added. “The ones you were going to force to try again, when half their friends had already met their deaths in the cold.”

“The deaths you covered up, P’raima,” H’ned put in. “That you deliberately concealed, when telling the rest of Pern might have spared our weyrlings!”

“So that’s your justification, is it?” P’raima asked. “You took Southern’s weyrlings in some misguided attempt at vengeance for the ones you lost?”

“It wasn’t about vengeance,” said H’ned. “You must have known something had gone wrong with between!”

“I knew no such thing! I only knew that calamity had befallen my weyrlings! And that could only be a failing of their training! I should have had my Weyrlingmaster replaced Turns ago, but my Weyrwoman insisted he was still fit for the job!”

“So now you’re blaming your Weyrlingmaster and your poor late Weyrwoman, rest her between?” demanded Sh’zon.

“With no evidence to the contrary, where would you have me put responsibility?”

“You might have taken it on yourself,” H’ned said, “as our Weyrleader did, unfounded though that was.”

Valonna knew instantly that mentioning T’kamen had been a mistake. “Your Weyrleader,” P’raima echoed. “And where is he, this paragon of accountability?” When none of them replied, he leaned forward. “You don’t know, do you? I’ll tell you where he is. Gone. Fled. Run away from your Weyr and all his responsibility.”

“You don’t know that,” said Valonna, and found herself struggling to keep her voice level.

“I saw him that day,” P’raima went on, ignoring her. “He came mewling to me. A Weyrleader of Pern, come cap in hand to Southern for help –”

“Perhaps because he wasn’t so swollen with conceit that he put his pride before the well-being of his weyrlings!” Valonna cried.

And that did get through. “You preach to me of pride, little girl?” P’raima snarled. “What vanity, what self-righteousness, drove you to flout the sovereign right of another Weyr to govern itself?”

“The righteousness of a queen of Pern!” Shimpath’s anger was in Valonna’s voice, and its force rippled through the other dragons of Madellon like a stone dropped in water.

“Enough!” H’pold interjected, and in the same breath spoke to his Weyrwoman. “Rallai!”

Rallai had already put her hand on Valonna’s wrist. “Let us keep this between us and our dragons, Valonna. There’s nothing to be gained by upsetting your whole Weyr.”

Shimpath made a strange, surprised little sound in Valonna’s mind, but her anger was suddenly muted, like a muffled bell.

P’raima’s burning eyes betrayed satisfaction that Ipith had quelled Shimpath. “Bring your queen to bear against Tezonth if you wish, Valonna,” he said. “But know that you may regret it.”

There was something foul in the invitation, some barely-veiled intimation that made Valonna’s skin crawl, even as she found herself unable to look away from P’raima’s stare.

Sh’zon thumped his fist on the Council table, breaking the spell. “You’ll not threaten our queen in her own Weyr, Southern!”

“Now, don’t overreact, Sh’zon,” H’pold said silkily, sounding very much like he’d been waiting for an opportunity to slap his old rival down.

P’raima finally looked away from Valonna. “This is all so much wasted breath,” he said. “You’ll hand over the weyrlings, or your queen be blighted; I’ll return with every dragon in Southern stoked for flame.”

“And what was that you were saying about the moral high ground, P’raima?” H’ned asked.

Valonna struggled to overcome Shimpath’s outrage. “We took in your weyrlings because Margone feared for their safety,” she said, stressing the point that had been lost in Sh’zon and H’ned’s barbs earlier. “She came to me, one Weyrwoman to another, and asked Madellon to protect them.”

“Margone was weak,” P’raima replied flatly. “She would have cosseted our weyrlings –”

H’ned interrupted, “And you’d have forced them between to die!”

“And what use is a dragon who can’t go between?” P’raima snapped. “In a hundred Turns, when the Red Star passes, do you think Pern will thank us for pandering to the fears of an ineffectual Weyrwoman –”

“Her fears were well founded!” Sh’zon shouted. “Between’s wrong; between’s been going wrong for centuries, and driving the children that pass for weyrlings in your Weyr to their deaths won’t change that no matter how you slice it!”

“You have no evidence –”

“We have evidence,” H’ned said. “High Reaches Weyr –”

“Afraid to risk their own weyrlings, I’ll wager.”

“High Reaches doesn’t have any weyrlings young enough to be affected,” said Valonna. “Telgar will be next, then Igen.” She slid her gaze sideways to H’pold. “And then the Peninsula.”

The only sign that H’pold found the prospect troubling was the infinitesimal narrowing of his eyes. “Weyrleaders,” he said. “Perhaps we’re digressing from the point of this congress…”

“But we’re not,” said Valonna. “Weyrwoman Margone entrusted her weyrlings to me. And until P’raima can guarantee that they’ll still be safe back at Southern, my conscience won’t allow me to release them to him.”

P’raima had clearly been about to speak over her again, but he closed his mouth with an audible click of his teeth. Plainly, he hadn’t missed her implication. Before he could answer, H’pold interjected again. “Then you’re prepared to return the weyrlings to Southern if P’raima pledges to keep them safe there?”

“That’s absurd,” said P’raima. “There are a dozen ways for a weyrling to be injured or killed in training.”

“The cause of death for the twelve you lost was the same in every case, P’raima,” Valonna said.

“Dragons must go between…”

“Dragonets can’t go between! Don’t you understand, Weyrleader? No amount of bullying or coercion will do anything but get them killed! Between is broken, and until we know more about how and why, forcing any weyrling between is a death sentence!”

P’raima glowered at her, but he couldn’t rebut her argument. At length, he sat back in his seat. “So you’d have me swear not to send my weyrlings between. Is that your price?”

“It’s hardly a price,” said H’ned.

P’raima ignored him, staring at Valonna. “Well? Is that what it’ll take?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “If you’ll vow to suspend between training until we understand more about the problem, I’ll give my permission for them to leave.”

P’raima looked for a moment as if he would find some other objection, but then he pounded his fist down on the table. “Fine. So vowed. Stand down your watchdragons. My bronzes will be removing the weyrlings within the hour.”

Valonna took a deep breath as P’raima rose from his place. Shimpath’s presence steadied her for what was coming. “There’s just one thing, Weyrleader,” she said. She lifted her eyes to P’raima’s, and tried not to quail beneath his suddenly renewed suspicion. “Not all of your weyrlings want to leave.”

For a long, hideous instant, no one spoke. Next to Valonna, Sh’zon and H’ned sat in mute solidarity. Rallai let slip the barest surprised intake of breath. H’pold tilted his head. And P’raima stood staring down at her with a look of abhorrence so caustic it could have seared Thread from the sky.

When he spoke, he did so very deliberately, enunciating each word with staccato precision. “What do you mean?”

Valonna wanted to break his gaze, intimidated by the malice in it, but Shimpath was there, like a wall behind her, forbidding her to escape. “Two of your weyrlings have expressed a wish to remain at Madellon Weyr.”

“You said you’d send them back,” P’raima said. His voice was still soft. The anger was there, the anger was building – but he had it under control, as if clenched in his two fists.

“The Weyrwoman said no such thing,” Sh’zon said, with ill-timed glee in his voice. “I think you’ll find she said she’d give ’em permission to leave.”

Valonna could have kicked him, but reprimanding Sh’zon wouldn’t have pacified P’raima. “Which ones?” he asked. “Which of those silly children have decided they prefer this farce of a Weyr to their home?”

Make sure the dragonets are well protected from Tezonth, Valonna warned Shimpath. “Blue rider T’gala,” she said. Then, because she couldn’t put off the inevitable any longer, she continued, “And queen rider Karika.”

P’raima recoiled – staggered, stupefied – and then he lunged so violently at Valonna that Sh’zon leapt up beside her to fend him off. “You’ll not have my queen, you conniving spit-bitch!”

The room erupted.

Valonna was aware of the deputy Weyrleaders pulling her back out of P’raima’s reach; she was aware of H’pold, on his feet, trying to calm the shouting bronze riders on both sides of the table; she was even aware that Rallai was calling for calm. But she was aware of all those things only through the red-tinged lens of Shimpath’s rage, and when she spoke it was with her queen’s words and with her queen’s authority. “Be seated, rider of Tezonth,” she commanded. The words reverberated with Shimpath’s voice in her own ears.

“Be seated,” Rallai echoed, and Ipith’s power rang in her voice too.

The effect on P’raima was immediate. He pitched back into his seat as if physically shoved. He may as well have been. The pressure of two queens on a mind even as powerful as Tezonth’s must have been devastating. For an instant P’raima blinked up at Valonna, visibly dazed.

She pressed her advantage while it lasted. She placed her hands on the table, and the part of her that was most tightly woven with Shimpath’s consciousness wanted to sink claws she didn’t possess into the hard wood. She shook loose of it, trying to reclaim her own voice. “T’gala and Karika will stay at Madellon for as long as they both wish,” she said. She still didn’t recognise the authority she could hear in her words.

P’raima lifted his head slowly to stare at her, as though the very action of moving took an immense effort. “Keep the blue rider,” he said labouredly. “Keep them all and be blighted. But I want my queen. Southern needs its queen.”

“Weyrwoman,” H’pold said quickly, before Valonna could respond. “Weyrleader. Please.” He glanced between them. “Valonna. You have every right to be concerned for the weyrlings, but P’raima’s given you his word that they won’t be made to go between, and you agreed to let them go.”

“To let them go, yes,” Valonna replied. “Not to send them away against their will. Karika has explicitly requested to stay at Madellon.”

“What poison have you whispered in her ear?” P’raima breathed. “What lies, to turn her against the Weyr that bred her, raised her, that gave her a queen?”

“Do you think a queen’s rider could be so readily swayed, P’raima?” Valonna asked.

“She is a child. She is twelve Turns old. She has no right to deprive her Weyr of its only queen!”

“Valonna,” said H’pold. “P’raima’s point is valid. Karika is Southern’s Weyrwoman. By Weyr law, no Weyrwoman may abandon her Weyr without a replacement –”

“No,” said P’raima. “Karika is not Southern’s Weyrwoman.” He narrowed his eyes at Valonna. “You hope to claim that your agreement with Margone carried over to Karika on her death, don’t you?”

Valonna just looked at him, saying nothing, waiting. She felt Sh’zon and H’ned shifting uncomfortably beside her.

“Karika is not Weyrwoman until Southern’s Council confirms her as such,” said P’raima. “She wields no such authority over herself. Your agreement with Margone died with her. In seeking to keep Karika from her rightful Weyr without even the flimsy protection of such an agreement, you contravene every law of Weyr autonomy that Pern possesses. Any Weyrleader found guilty of seeking to destabilise the leadership of another Weyr is subject to removal from his or her position by the other Weyrleaders of Pern.” He quoted the wording with a triumphant flourish. “Are you willing to sacrifice your own position to defy me, Weyrwoman Valonna?”

Valonna lifted her head. “Karika may not be Southern’s Weyrwoman, P’raima,” she said quietly. “But she is a weyrwoman. She is a queen’s rider. And queen dragons are not subject to the laws of men.” Valonna took a breath, then quoted her own excerpt from the law books. “The will of a queen dragon of Pern supersedes all other authorities, except her rider’s and her Weyrleaders’.”

“You can’t possibly expect to cite that,” P’raima said scornfully.

“Karika is a child. She is twelve Turns old.” Valonna hadn’t meant to throw P’raima’s words back at him, but they came so easily. “Until she is older, she is subject to Megrith’s will, and she does not want to return to Southern. Last night, Megrith came to Shimpath to beg asylum for herself, and for her clutchmate, and Shimpath granted it. I will not overrule Shimpath, and Karika is incapable of overruling Megrith. Karika is not Southern’s Weyrwoman, and so you are not her Weyrleader. My Weyrleader is absent. No authority exists that can deny the agreement between Shimpath and Megrith.”

Not even H’ned or Sh’zon had known exactly how Valonna would manipulate Weyr law to protect Karika. She hoped their faces didn’t betray their lack of foreknowledge, even as she hoped that Rallai would support the interpretation. She needn’t have worried. Though H’pold looked uncertainly to his Weyrwoman, Rallai’s tiny nod confirmed it.

“You scheming she-wher,” P’raima said softly, and sat back in his seat, staring at Valonna, as though he’d never dreamed she could defy him so inventively.

H’pold cleared his throat. “If Shimpath and Megrith are in agreement, then nothing we can say will change their minds,” he said. There was, perhaps, a trace of admiration in his tone. “But this still leaves Southern Weyr without a queen. I’m sure we can all concur that the situation is untenable.” He barely paused for breath before going on, with a bright, cold cheer. “Luckily, we have two junior queens at the Peninsula. Tynerith is still a weyrling, but Ranquiath is a proven queen, and Sirtis well-trained and very capable. I can arrange –”

P’raima lurched out of his seat so abruptly that his chair tipped over. “This is what you wanted all along, wasn’t it, H’pold? To infiltrate Southern with a Peninsula queen? To pollute the only pure lineage in the South with mongrel blood? Did you expect me to be grateful?”

For the first time, H’pold looked genuinely off-balance, as though he’d never contemplated the scenario of P’raima refusing his offer. “Be reasonable, P’raima…”

P’raima didn’t let him finish. “Southern doesn’t want your charity. Or your inferior queen. This has been a charade from start to finish. I should never have entertained the possibility of this being anything but a farce!” He looked around at each of them with burning, hate-filled eyes. “This is not over.”

“Weyrleader –” Rallai began.

But P’raima brushed her aside, and strode, seething, from the council chamber.

Would you have me break Tezonth in two? Shimpath asked Valonna.

Valonna wasn’t completely certain if she meant the question seriously. No. Let them go.

Sh’zon was the first to recover from P’raima’s explosion. “Yeah, why don’t you get the shell out of our Weyr!” he shouted after him.

Valonna closed her eyes briefly. “H’ned, Sh’zon, would you make sure P’raima finds his way out?”

“Weyrwoman?” H’ned asked, glancing at H’pold and Rallai.

Sh’zon didn’t looked happy about leaving her with H’pold either, but then neither of Valonna’s Deputy Weyrleaders could have known how resolutely Rallai had backed her throughout the council. The Peninsula Weyrwoman’s impassive demeanour gave so little away. “Please, Wingleader. I don’t want him making any…detours…on his way home.”

“Well,” H’pold said, when Sh’zon and H’ned had gone after P’raima, “I suppose I’ll have to tell Sirtis she isn’t to be Southern’s Weyrwoman after all.”

He sounded mildly piqued. Valonna looked at him. “You wanted to offer a queen to Southern?”

“Two breeding queens are manageable, Valonna,” H’pold said. “Three could be…costly.” He smiled at her with all the warmth of a winter blizzard. “As you’ll no doubt discover for yourself in the Turns to come.”

“H’pold,” Rallai said reprovingly.

“Don’t be so prickly, darling,” said H’pold. “You’d have been as pleased to see Sirtis otherwise assigned as I. And likely she will be before the season is over. Southern won’t abide being queenless for long, and if P’raima can’t provide what the Weyr needs…well, then Southern won’t abide him for long, either.”

“What’s made him so vile?” Valonna asked, helpless to hold the question back.

“Who knows,” said H’pold. “Perhaps there’s just something about the Southern climate that twists a man.” For a moment, his eyes revealed a depth of revulsion that belied his dismissive tone. “But well played, Weyrwoman. I’d wager your T’kamen wouldn’t have shown half your restraint. Or cunning.” He smiled again. “Your outfit becomes you in more ways than one.”

After P’raima’s loathsomeness, H’pold’s merely slimy remark hardly registered against Valonna’s sense of outrage. Indeed, she thought, with a grimness she hadn’t possessed an hour ago, he was more right than he realised. The martial aspect of her new wherhides had contributed nearly as much to the mask she’d worn as Shimpath’s fierce backing had. She certainly couldn’t imagine facing down P’raima in satin and lace.

But the effort of maintaining that front for so long, at so high a level, had drained her. Now, with P’raima gone, and the nervous energy that had sustained her through the confrontation sapped almost to nothing, she wanted nothing more than to hide herself in her weyr and let the Deputies manage things for a while. It was only a matter of how she could ask H’pold and Rallai to leave without seeming rude. Valonna nearly laughed aloud at herself. Given the nature of P’raima’s exit, it seemed absurd to be worrying about being thought discourteous.

Rallai, again, was her saviour. She rose from her place. “We’ll not presume on your hospitality any longer, Valonna.”

H’pold looked as though he might have liked to stay longer, but after an instant’s hesitation he too stood up. “Yes, I suppose you have rather a lot on your plate, what with two weyrling queens and no Weyrleader.” He paused, smiling in that perfectly insincere manner of his. “And will you take a piece of advice?”

“Of course, Weyrleader,” Valonna said, wishing he’d kept his counsel to himself.

“Come the Long Bay Gather at the end of the month, bring H’ned as your escort. Lady Coffleby has grown irritable with the Turns, and I don’t think Sh’zon’s quite well-trained enough to keep his mouth closed as often as he should.”

Valonna had expected H’pold to make some sort of direct dig at Sh’zon, so it was the almost imperceptible change in Rallai’s expression – the tiny, incredulous flick of her eyes in H’pold’s direction – that she noticed. “Thank you, Weyrleader.” She made it neutral, though the insult to Sh’zon was as good as an insult to T’kamen for appointing him. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

She walked with them back down to their dragons. P’raima and Tezonth had gone, though the bronzes up on the Rim – Kawanth and Izath included – still looked unsettled and ill-tempered.

The Deputy Weyrleaders were waiting near Suffath and Ipith. “I’ve briefed L’stev,” H’ned told Valonna quietly, falling into step beside her. “The ones who are going back are ready to go as soon as P’raima’s bronzes get here.”

“Good. Ask the Weyrlingmaster to have Karika and T’gala come to my weyr once the Peninsula Weyrleaders have gone. And…ask Tarshe if she’d come, too.” Then Valonna turned, with a smile she didn’t feel, to H’pold and Rallai. “Thank you for coming, Weyrleader. I appreciate that you didn’t have to mediate this dispute.”

“But of course, Valonna,” said H’pold. “Preserving the harmonious state of relations between the Weyrs of the south is in all our interests.” In the moment it took for Valonna to marvel at the disingenuousness of that statement, he leaned a little closer. “And I’m sure there’ll be an opportunity for you to return me the favour at some time in the future.”

Valonna didn’t like the sound of that at all. “I’m…sure there will be, Weyrleader,” she said, just desperate for him to go away.

As H’pold turned to mount Suffath, Valonna clasped hands with Rallai. The other Weyrwoman squeezed her wrists meaningfully. “I’m sorry about H’pold,” she said, low and rapid. “He can be truly foul when it comes to Sh’zon. Please don’t let it colour your opinion of the Peninsula.”

“Of course not, Rallai,” Valonna assured her. “Thank you for all you’ve done.”

“You’re a Weyrwoman alone, Valonna,” Rallai said. “In some ways I envy you, but your lack of a Weyrleader makes you vulnerable. Be careful. Find riders you can trust and keep them around you.”

Valonna hesitated over the question she really wanted to pose, and then modified it. “Can I trust Sh’zon?”

“To keep a cool head, or bite his tongue, or rise above an insult? No.” Rallai’s frustration was tinged with a fondness that answered the question Valonna hadn’t asked. “Flawed as he is, there’s no badness in him. But he is a bronze rider. Never forget that.”

“I won’t,” Valonna promised.

“And keep your bronzes on alert,” said Rallai. “P’raima’s going to have an angry Weyr to contend with when he gets home. That may play into your hands, if he’s deposed sooner rather than later. I take it Karika’s reluctance to go home stems from P’raima personally rather than Southern generally?”

“I think so,” said Valonna. “She hasn’t been forthcoming with an explanation.”

“She’s Southern, all right,” said Rallai. “But if she’s willing to go back once the other bronze riders topple P’raima, she should seriously consider taking Sirtis too, even if only as a temporary measure. No twelve-Turn-old girl should have to bear the weight of a Weyr alone.” She glanced over her shoulder. H’pold was looking down from Suffath’s neck. “I should go. If there’s anything you need, have Shimpath bespeak Ipith. If Margone’s death has taught me anything, it’s that we queen riders need to look out for each other more. Goodbye, Valonna. And good luck.”

Valonna stood back as Rallai stepped gracefully aboard Ipith. Her remark about Margone troubled her. Was there something more she could have done to help Southern’s late Weyrwoman?

As the Peninsula dragons made altitude above the Bowl and disappeared, she heaved at last the enormous sigh that she’d been longing to express and turned towards her own weyr. Inevitably, H’ned and Sh’zon, standing nearby to see the Peninsula Weyrleaders leave, eased towards her. Valonna could have screamed. Can’t you make them go away, too? she begged Shimpath. Just for five minutes?

Shimpath didn’t respond, but first Sh’zon and then H’ned looked suddenly alarmed. “Ah, could we debrief after you’ve spoken to L’stev?” H’ned asked, glancing urgently towards Izath.

“After would be better,” Sh’zon agreed, also shooting a startled look up at his bronze.

“Certainly,” Valonna said, mystified. “I’ll have Shimpath call your bronzes when we’re ready for you.” What did you do?

Don’t ask.

Shimpath was still looking mysterious by the time Valonna reached her ledge. She raised her head from her forearms. You did very well, Valonna. Epherineth’s rider would have been proud of you. As I am.

Valonna put her hands on Shimpath’s forearm, drawing strength from the contact. The mention of T’kamen caused a wobble that she hadn’t expected. She suddenly missed him dreadfully. Not as a lover, which he’d never been to her; nor as a friend; but as a Weyrleader who’d tried, in his own determined way, to make their coalition work. Their relationship might not have been close, or even especially warm, but he’d never belittled her, never insulted her, never disrespected her. The reality of what Margone must have had to endure as P’raima’s Weyrwoman horrified her, and even the thought of being in Rallai’s place, required to tolerate H’pold’s sly smarm, made her grasp exactly how lucky she’d been with T’kamen. Would have been? she echoed, suddenly realising what her queen had said. Shimpath? Are you saying…

I don’t know, Shimpath replied sadly. I’m sorry. She lowered her head. The weyrlings are within.

But…

He is not here. You are. Madellon goes on, and so must you. The weyrlings, dearest one.

Valonna let her shoulders sag, feeling the weight of Madellon pressing down on them. Then she straightened up, forced her face into a composure she didn’t feel, and went inside.

The three weyrlings were waiting in her office: three girls, two of them scarcely into adolescence, the third only slightly younger than Valonna herself. She wondered if the Turns she felt she’d aged that day would show on her face. Karika and T’gala, watched her come in with a kind of pinched apprehension; Tarshe – older, wiser, and far less invested in the outcome of the conclave – merely watched quietly. “Karika,” Valonna said. “T’gala. You can both stay at Madellon.”

T’gala’s features went slack with relief, and Karika covered her face with her hands. “Thank you, Weyrwoman,” she said, sounding choked. “Thank Faranth, thank you.”

“Thank you,” T’gala echoed, in the softest hint of a whisper.

C’mine had come to Valonna with T’gala’s request to stay only the previous evening. “She’s very conflicted,” he’d told Valonna. “She still feels loyalty to Southern. But the other Southerners have treated her terribly for having Impressed a blue. She’ll do better here.” He’d paused, and added, “I’ll feel better, for keeping her here.”

Valonna knew that L’stev had concerns about the practicalities of a girl riding a male dragon. She knew he had concerns about the long-term impact of having two juvenile queens at Madellon. But those were problems for another day. For now, Valonna could at least take some satisfaction in extending her protection over two vulnerable young women.

“Blue rider,” she said to T’gala. “Would you please go back to the Weyrlingmaster, and tell him Tarshe and Karika will rejoin you very shortly.”

“Yes, Weyrwoman. Thank you, Weyrwoman.”

As T’gala hastened out, Valonna eased herself onto the edge of her desk. She was exhausted, but Rallai’s words had resonated with her in a way she felt bound to act upon. “Karika,” she said, “Tarshe, there’s something I need from you both.”

“Of course, Weyrwoman,” Tarshe replied soberly.

“Anything,” promised Karika.

Valonna opened her mouth to begin, but the words that came out weren’t the ones she’d planned to use. “We’re so few,” she said instead. “There are only six of us in the south. Fewer than twenty in the world.”

Tarshe said, “You mean queen riders?”

“Yes,” said Valonna. “We’re party to secrets and mysteries that even other dragonriders will never understand.” Incongruously, she wondered again what Shimpath had done to distract Izath and Kawanth. “We share the minds and the lives and the love of the mightiest creatures on Pern. It’s the most breath-taking privilege…and the most overwhelming responsibility. From the moment we all Impress, we’re made aware of our accountability to our dragons, to our Weyrs, to our world. But we have another obligation: one that isn’t taught to us, because it can only come from us. We have a duty to each other. To every other woman of Pern who rides a queen. Whatever differences we may have, however jealous our queens may be, we’re the Weyrwomen of Pern and we should be allies, not enemies.”

She found herself repeating something Shimpath had said. “Bronze riders will come and go. Weyrleaders, too. We’re the ones who remain. We’ll always be the focus of intrigues and agendas that aren’t of our choosing. But we can choose to support each other. We can and we must.” She looked at Karika, at those dark, defiant eyes, huge in the childlike face. “Margone was alone in a way that no Weyrwoman should have to be. I don’t want either of you to ever find yourselves in that situation. Faranth. I don’t ever want to be there myself!” She stared at the two weyrlings. “But if you two persist in quarrelling – if you can’t set your differences aside – then you put me, and Shimpath, in an impossible position. We have to stand together. We have to pull together. Not just for Madellon, but for ourselves. United, no force on Pern can compel us. Divided, we’re at the mercy of the P’raimas of this world.”

She stopped to get her breath, looking from one to the other. Karika looked every bit like the girl she still was, caught between defiance and vulnerability. Tarshe, though, looked aside from Valonna’s gaze, as if ashamed to have disappointed her, and it was she who spoke first. “I’m sorry, Weyrwoman,” she said softly. “I never meant to make things difficult for you.” She turned her head to look at Karika. “But Berzunth and Megrith…”

“They don’t like each other,” Karika completed, when Tarshe let the sentence trail off. “They don’t like having to share.”

“Of course they don’t,” Valonna replied. “They’re queens, they’re immature, and they’ve been forced together without notice or preparation. There’d be something amiss if two juvenile queens did like each other.” Then she let her tone take on the gravity she felt. “But you two aren’t juveniles. Even you, Karika, even as young as you are; you gave up your right to conduct yourself according to your age when you Impressed Megrith. And neither of you would have Impressed your queens if you didn’t have the strength to control them. They may not like each other; they may resent each other’s very existence; but it’s down to you to make sure they respect each other’s right to be here. If you can’t, the burden falls on Shimpath, and Shimpath already has so many calls on her attention. Please. I need you both to support me.”

Karika looked ready to pledge her obedience, but Tarshe still looked troubled. “Weyrwoman,” she said. “I don’t mean to be uncooperative, but…Berzunth’s younger than Megrith. It’s an issue of…” She glanced again at the younger girl. “Seniority.”

“I understand, Tarshe. And I hope you do, too, Karika.” Valonna took a deep breath. “Karika. You and I need to talk about the future. If things change at Southern, you may still want to go back.” Karika nodded slowly. “But if things don’t change – or you don’t want to go back – and you’re here at Madellon permanently, then we have to consider seniority. While you’re both weyrlings, you’re equals, not matter whose dragonet is older. But,” she went on, raising her hand to forestall their objections, “when you graduate, Tarshe will be Weyrwoman Second.”

“But –” Karika protested.

“She is your elder by six Turns, Karika,” Valonna told her. “But more importantly, Berzunth is a Madellon queen. Megrith is still a stranger here, and while that may change over time, Madellon’s dragons will be happier for having one of their own take precedence.”

Karika heaved a great sigh that poignantly illustrated the youth Valonna couldn’t afford to indulge. “Very well,” she said. “I suppose…I suppose I’ll explain it to Megrith.”

“Good,” said Valonna. “And you, Tarshe?”

Tarshe’s mouth curled in a strange half-smile. “It’s odd,” she said. “I was never much of one to bother about rank and precedence before I Impressed Berzunth, but now it seems like just about the most important thing in the world.” She turned to Karika, held her hand out, and asked, “Weyrwoman?”

Karika looked surprised at the form of address. Then, stiffly, some of her imperious composure regained, she grasped Tarshe’s wrist. “Weyrwoman.”

As the two weyrlings took that first critical step towards peace, Valonna felt a great weight lift from her shoulders. She thought at first it was the immediate lessening of the tensions between Berzunth and Megrith that had so vexed Shimpath, but then her queen corrected her. No. Etymonth’s rider has laid her hatchling. It is a male.

Valonna had completely forgotten about Schanna’s labour. “It’s a boy?” she asked, delighted enough by the small and timely piece of good news that she spoke aloud.

Yes.

“Who’s a boy?” asked Karika.

Tarshe was quicker to put Valonna’s exclamation in context. “Someone’s had a baby?”

“Green rider Schanna,” Valonna said. “She went into labour early this morning.” I didn’t hear anything from Etymonth!

Of course you didn’t, Shimpath said indignantly. I all but sat on her.

“Can we go and see it?” Karika asked, brightening.

“I don’t know…” Valonna said. Then she stopped, reconsidering. “Well…all right. If Schanna doesn’t mind. And then I’ll show you both how to record the birth in the Weyr Book.”

Etymonth looked as tired and happy as if she’d borne the infant herself where she sat outside the infirmary. Valonna smiled up at the green dragon as she led the two weyrlings past. Crauva met them at the entrance. “They’re both fine,” she said. “You girls can go in, but you’d best wash your hands before you touch the babe,” she added to Tarshe and Karika.

“Has Yarayn delivered?” Valonna asked, letting the weyrlings go ahead.

“No; she’s still moaning and groaning away,” Crauva replied. She regarded her searchingly. “You look as though you’ve flown a five-hour Fall, Valonna. We all saw the Southern bronze leave in high dudgeon. I take it he didn’t go satisfied?”

Valonna shook her head. “I’m not sure anyone truly did.”

“Go in and see Schanna’s baby,” Crauva told her. “And then you’re to go and have half an hour’s time to yourself.”

“After I’ve debriefed H’ned and Sh’zon.”

Crauva gave her a sharp look. “Well, I’m sending some food up to your weyr. You’ll need every bit of strength you have.” She paused, then added, “You do look quite extraordinary in those wherhides.”

Tarshe and Karika were on either side of Schanna’s bed, inspecting the green rider’s newborn. Schanna was sitting up, propped against a pile of pillows, her baby cradled against her breast. She smiled tiredly as Valonna came in. “I swear, Weyrwoman, my first thought once he was out was that Shimpath wouldn’t have to squash Etymonth anymore.”

“I’m quite sure it wasn’t,” Valonna replied, as she washed her hands in clean hot water. She crossed the room to Schanna’s side and looked down at the infant in the green rider’s arms. He was tiny, red and wrinkled, with a fine dusting of gold-blond hair. “He’s beautiful, Schanna.”

“He is, isn’t he?”

“Have you chosen a name?”

Schanna gazed at her son. “Well. Now he’s here, I’m almost certain he’s F’gellin’s.”

“Almost certain?” Valonna asked.

“The fair hair, you see, and Hestyath did fly Etymonth three times in a row last winter.” Schanna gave a little one-shouldered shrug of distaste. “Anyway, Etymonth and I were thinking to call him Etyschan.”

“That’s a lovely name,” Valonna said politely. “Would you like F’gellin to acknowledge him?”

“Faranth, no,” said Schanna. “Put him down in the Weyr Book, but I swore off getting the fathers to acknowledge them after my first. It gives them ideas.”

“Of course,” said Valonna. “And have you thought about a foster-mother?”

“I’ve asked Yarayn. All being well with her babe, at least. She has this one’s brother already, and it would be nice for them to grow up together.”

Valonna glanced at the Headwoman. Crauva nodded. “The timing couldn’t have worked out better, and Yarayn’s never happy unless she has at least two babies on the go.”

“That’s settled, then,” said Valonna. She reached out and stroked the wispy golden hair on the infant’s tiny head. “Welcome to Madellon Weyr, Etyschan.”

Being among the first to hear the names of the children born to Madellon’s women was one of the few privileges of being Weyrwoman that Valonna genuinely enjoyed. After the day she’d had, the safe and sound arrival of little Etyschan was a welcome balm, and taking Tarshe and Karika to the Archives to record it strangely satisfying. “Would you get that volume down for me, Tarshe?” she asked, pointing out the shelf.

As Tarshe – taller than Valonna by half a head – obliged, Karika asked, “What did that green rider mean? About not getting her baby’s father to acknowledge him?”

Valonna opened the heavy book. “Some women prefer not to get the fathers of their children involved,” she said. “Perhaps because they don’t like them, or if there’s a weyrmate involved that they’d sooner not upset.”

Karika looked outraged. “But how will that baby know who he’s related to when he’s older?”

“Many children of green riders don’t know who their fathers are,” said Valonna. “When Etyschan’s older, he’ll be able to ask to see his birth record in the Weyr Book and find out if his father’s name is mentioned.” She turned the pages of the book until she reached the appropriate entry. “Schanna has three other children, all by different riders. A little girl, Annami, by blue rider A’min – see the notations here, confirmed means Schanna was sure he was the father and acknowledged that he accepts her as being his daughter. Then another girl, Chetyian, marked speculated and unacknowledged – Schanna thought she was probably blue rider C’tan’s, but it was a guess, and he wasn’t asked to acknowledge her. And then her son…”

She trailed off as she read the record for Schanna’s elder son, born a little more than two Turns ago. “What about him?” Karika asked, craning her neck to look.

Tarshe crowded in too to look at the entry that had made Valonna’s words dry up. “Oh!”

“Not a word to anyone,” Valonna told them both quickly. “It’s very important that we respect Schanna’s wishes. Now, let’s write in Etyschan.”

But she couldn’t stop her eyes from drifting back to the entry above, and every time they did, she smiled.

Chapter thirty-four: T’kamen

We honour the courage of those who choose to stay, and we honour the memory of those who choose to go.

– Inscription on The Wall

26.05.15 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON SOUTH WEYRSTATION

M’ric crossed the courtyard by a roundabout route to avoid the worst puddles, hunched over to protect the klah he was carrying from the torrential rain, and made the shelter of the waxed canvas awning with a sound of disgust. “If it keeps coming down like this they won’t need firestone!”

T’kamen relieved him of one of the klah mugs and took the wrapped parcel of meatrolls M’ric passed him from the inside pocket of his streaming foul-weather cape. “How long until we muster?”

M’ric craned his neck to look up at the big time-dial that hung on the outside of the Weyrstation. “Maybe half an hour,” he said, taking off his cape and hanging it with the others near the brazier to dry. “This clock’s slow.”

T’kamen had only become aware of Pass Pern’s preoccupation with keeping accurate time in the last couple of days, and he hadn’t yet picked up the knack of reading the hour and minute off the circular clock-faces that had become common across Madellon territory. The Smithcrafthall had been the only place where such a timepiece could be found in the Interval; everywhere else used sand and sun and water clocks to approximate the time of day. Time for one more wherry, he said to Epherineth.

Epherineth responded to the suggestion with phlegmatic agreement rather than enthusiasm. He was hungry all the time now – R’lony had been quite right about the effects of flying straight on a dragon’s appetite – but the novelty of eating whenever and wherever he liked had already begun to pall. Food was fuel, and Epherineth needed a lot of fuel.

So did T’kamen. The flight from the Weyr to Madellon South had taken a good six hours; they’d set out before first light and arrived well before noon, by which time riders and dragons alike were all hungry. Thread was expected to fall early-afternoon, so there’d been time for everyone to rest and eat. But a major Fall like this one, six full hours wholly over Madellon territory, necessitated a major deployment. Fourteen fighting Wings, supported by a Wingful of tailmen and more than half of the Seventh Flight, meant more than five hundred dragons and the same numbers of riders to feed. There was no shelter to be had for the dragons, who stoically endured the weather as only they could, but the big mess hall of the Weyrstation couldn’t accommodate so many people. Riders were crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder in a dismal miasma of dripping capes and disgruntled remarks about the ability of Strategic division to stage a big Fall adequately. L’gran, the ageing brown rider who ran Madellon South, was explaining wearily to anyone who complained that he’d asked for the resources to extend the Weyrstation and been refused. R’lony had pointed out, just as wearily, that it was unusual for so many dragons to be deployed for one Fall. And T’kamen, like most of the Seventh’s riders, had volunteered to cede the minimal comforts of the damp, crowded mess to Tactical. It was wetter and colder outside, but cold and wet were easier to endure than the barbs of blue and green rider looking to pick a fight.

Ch’fil stirred from where he’d been dozing. “G’less said Elsterth’s certain this’ll stop before Fall starts.” He uncurled a finger from around his klah mug to point at the eastern sky. “See, it’s lightening up. Don’t you worry, T’kamen, there’ll be live Thread for your first Fall.”

“Thanks for the reassurance,” said T’kamen. “I’m sure that’ll be a great comfort if we get a faceful of it.”

“Not likely unless you break formation, and the big fella would be rash to do that unstoked.”

Epherineth was forbidden to chew any stone for this, his first participation in an actual Threadfall. He’d been assigned to R’ganff’s Bunker section, charged with carrying dozens of sacks of firestone with which to resupply the fighting dragons. Ch’fil had told T’kamen it was the usual entry point for a bronze dragon flying in the Seventh for the first time. Stoking Epherineth for flame would be a waste of stone. T’kamen understood, on an intellectual level, that it was also a safety measure, intended to suppress Epherineth’s desire to burn Thread. Instinctively, though, he chafed against the restriction as much as his dragon did. The sound of almost five hundred dragons crushing firestone to powder in their massive jaws wasn’t exactly musical, but Epherineth’s exclusion from the ritual was making him morose. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t.”

Ch’fil slurped the last klah from his mug, then spat into the mud by his boots. “Get me some more of this, Ricky-boy,” he told M’ric, holding out his cup.

H’juke, Ch’fil’s tailman, was back at the Weyr, grounded temporarily with the ankle he’d twisted trying to dismount from his Bularth too quickly. It was a long way down even from a Pass bronze. T’kamen in no way begrudged Ch’fil the use of his own tail, even if it meant sending M’ric out in the rain again. M’ric just rolled his eyes and dragged his wet oilskin back on.

T’kamen watched him squish across the churned courtyard, past the row of Seventh riders who were squatting, hunched and miserable, under the canvas awning, boots caked with mud, wet-weather gear hanging all around in the forlorn hope that it might dry out slightly before they had to put it back on. It made sense that the comfort of the fighting riders should take priority. Of course it did. But this marginalisation of the Seventh still sat ill with him. No dragonrider deserved to be treated with contempt.

Although, he reflected, most of the riders of Strategic division didn’t help themselves. R’ganff and Br’lom, Aidleader and Bunkerleader respectively, made an especially unpleasant double act. They were Madellon’s eldest serving bronze riders, and T’kamen seldom saw them out of each other’s company – probably because no one else wanted anything to do with them. R’ganff had the citron-sucking face of a man who’d been a Wingleader when bronze riders could still aspire to such prestige, and whose bitterness at being stripped of the rank had flourished rather than faded in the Turns since. He delighted in complaining, repetitively, about everything, and while he didn’t seem to care if anyone was listening or not, he would latch onto the merest hint of interest like a terrier with a tunnelsnake. Being polite to the old guffer only led to long spit-flecked lectures on everything that was wrong with the world, and T’kamen was losing interest in being polite. If R’ganff disliked him for that any more than he’d already disliked him, a bronze rider hailing from an era even more halcyon for riders of their colour as his own, it was hard to tell.

Br’lom had also been a Wingleader, but he didn’t talk about that half as often as he bragged of how his Shadith had once sired a clutch at Southern Weyr. This singular event, T’kamen gathered, had occurred some forty-five Turns previously, although to hear Br’lom talk about it there’d never been a queen flight to match it, before or since. That in itself didn’t make him loathsome – only tedious. The loathsomeness was thanks to Br’lom’s repulsive habit of speculating, loudly and salaciously, about how any given female rider, no matter how inappropriately young, would compare to the Southern queen rider he’d once bedded. Being the scion of a Southern bloodline, Shadith was one of the bigger bronzes, and T’kamen had been obliged to log some training hours with Br’lom, learning the best way to keep Epherineth’s firestone load balanced during an extended Threadfall. Enduring the constant stream of dirty stories was one thing, but Br’lom had taken far too prurient an interest in T’kamen’s own queen-winning experience. Valonna and Shimpath might be long dead in this time, but T’kamen still wouldn’t tolerate any insult to their memory, and his refusal to join in with Br’lom’s nasty banter had soon soured the old bronze rider to him.

R’lony, mercifully, hadn’t reassigned T’kamen to either bronze rider. “You get on well enough with Ch’fil; you may as well keep reporting to him,” the Marshal had said the previous day, when he’d cleared T’kamen and Epherineth to fly in their first Fall. “And I sense you don’t think much of your colour-mates.”

He was right, but T’kamen hadn’t mentioned that he didn’t think a whole lot of most of the Seventh’s other riders, either. There were exceptions among the brown riders – Ch’fil; El’yan; a few of the younger ones who had yet to develop the ennui of their older fellows – but most were older than T’kamen, many much older, and their apathy with the world was painfully obvious. The small cohort of blue riders who flew in the Seventh were so insular and standoffish that T’kamen had been unable to engage with any of them. The overwhelming impression T’kamen got from his Flightmates was that they were just dully, sullenly resigned to their lowly status as second-class riders of dragons too big to be anything but burden-beasts.

And that, T’kamen had come to realise, wasn’t just how they were perceived – it was what they were. Seventh dragons were seldom out of cargo harness. They fetched and carried everywhere they went: passengers, tithe, firestone. Flying bunker in Threadfall was exactly as unexciting as it sounded. Each dragon was simply a mobile firestone bunker, flying parallel to the fighting Wings at a safe distance from the Thread corridor. T’kamen understood the importance of the role – without between, there was no other way to get more stone to the Wings – but he also understood, now, why bunker was such a thankless detail. A bunker dragon was a flying wagon, a caravan with wings. There was little skill or finesse to the role, no glory or excitement to be had. And it was worst for the bronzes, who couldn’t even stoke their pride by chasing a queen. A boy who Impressed a bronze dragon in this Pass must despair at the thought of his future. It was so brutally the opposite of the prestige associated with bronze-riding in T’kamen’s time that he could still hardly grasp that this, now, was his lot, too.

M’ric came splashing back across the courtyard with Ch’fil’s klah. His black eye had subsided to a lurid purplish yellow. T’kamen had braced himself for a reprimand over his treatment of his tailman, and the Weyrlingmaster had asked to see him the morning after they’d returned from Kellad. But C’rastro had seemed more concerned with whatever offence M’ric had committed to deserve a blow than with T’kamen’s heavy-handed discipline. T’kamen had insisted the matter was closed and that M’ric didn’t need any more chastisement. But the whole incident left him with the troubling impression that the Weyrlingmaster wasn’t as quick to defend his weyrlings’ rights as he ought to be. L’stev would never have accepted the physical mistreatment of one of his kids with such indifference.

Ch’fil was right about the weather. By the time the word came down the line that they were to muster to their dragons, the rain had petered out. The fighting riders who came streaming out of the mess were muttering about that. The clouds still bore down from above, thick and ashen and oppressive, but clouds alone weren’t enough to drown Thread.

“All right, have a good one,” Ch’fil said, thumping T’kamen hard on the shoulder. “We’ll not likely see you unless one of my lads over-stokes. Just keep Epherineth together, and don’t be too proud to call in to Br’lom if either of you gets tired. We still have half a Pass to go, and overflying your first Fall won’t do anyone any good.”

“Good flaming, Crewleader,” T’kamen replied. Then, as Ch’fil started calling together his detail, and the other Seventh riders began to pull on their oilskins and form up, T’kamen jerked his head at M’ric. “Let’s go.”

Then he had to check his stride – they all did – as the Commander emerged from the mess hall. S’leondes was flanked by his Wingseconds, and Fraza trotted loyally behind him, but his attention was on the rider at his side. The young man’s face was earnest as he spoke in a low voice, looking up at S’leondes often, as if seeking his approval. Which he probably was, T’kamen thought sourly, since seeking S’leondes’ approval was all any fighting rider of Madellon ever seemed to do. S’leondes gave every indication that he was listening closely; at last, he said something that made the younger rider’s head lift and his eyes shine. The Commander laid his arm bracingly across the other rider’s shoulders, and they continued so towards their dragons.

“What was that about?” T’kamen asked.

He caught the look on M’ric’s face an instant before the boy composed himself. Envy. “No idea.”

“Who was the other rider?” T’kamen asked. “Lover, son; what?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but neither,” said M’ric. “Skerith’s not even in the Commander’s Flight. D’lev’s probably just sucking up.”

T’kamen kept the obvious retort to that to himself.

It was a long walk to where the Seventh Flight dragons waited: past the long phosphine-reeking lines of blues and greens and their riders, checking harness and buckling on their own kit. T’kamen hadn’t seen fighting riders up close since he’d arrived in the Pass; now, he found it hard not to stare. There’d clearly been advances in fighting garb in the twenty-six Turns of Threadfall Pern had faced without between. No one wore shoulder-knots or insignia, which made it hard to identify riders, but the headgear was the most startling change. The plain leather helmet and separate goggles that had been standard wear for dragonriders as long as T’kamen could remember had been replaced by a metal-plated helmet with a glass visor that covered most of the face. The whole face-plate hinged at the top, and most of the riders preparing their dragons for flight were doing so with their visors flipped up. Some riders wore varying amounts of metal plating on their wherhides – shoulders, gloves, thighs – and moved more clumsily around their dragons than their unarmoured wingmates. “Won’t that restrict his movement?” T’kamen asked M’ric as they passed a green rider shouldering awkwardly into his armoured jacket.

“That’s why some riders don’t wear any extra plating,” said M’ric. “The ones who do swear it doesn’t make much difference in the air, but…”

“But?”

He shrugged. “The chance of Thread hitting me without hitting Trebruth too is almost non-existent. What’s the point of me being protected if he isn’t?”

“They haven’t figured out how to put armour on a dragon yet, then,” T’kamen said, mostly in jest.

M’ric gave him a look.

“You don’t object to those full-face helmets, though?”

“They make sense,” M’ric said. “You don’t want to get a faceful of hot ash. Riders used to come back with the lower parts of their faces all pocked with burns. And supposedly a green rider at Starfall once breathed in some ash. She retires from the Fall with a coughing fit. She gets back to the Weyr and then starts coughing up blood. She died right there in the infirmary.” He paused for macabre effect. “Next thing the Healers know, Thread starts erupting from her chest. They think she must have inhaled some tiny bits of live Thread along with the ash. It ate her alive. From the inside. Slowly.”

It was the sort of lurid tale M’ric loved to tell, and T’kamen wasn’t sure he entirely believed it – but he had to admit it was a chilling notion. “Seventh riders are fair game to breathe in Thread and get eaten alive, though?” he asked lightly.

“You won’t be close enough,” said M’ric. “Anyway, all that metal’s expensive.” He motioned, with a tiny movement of his head, towards a rider whose left shoulder-plate was weeping redly in the rain. “She’s going to catch it if her Wingsecond notices she’s let her armour go rusty.”

T’kamen wondered how M’ric knew that the green rider was female. Women made up about a quarter of the fighting Wings, he’d learned, but the extra bulk added by the armour plating made it hard to pick them out with their visors shading their faces.  Still, T’kamen thought cheerlessly, they probably weren’t the ones lining up for a final pre-Threadfall piss into the latrine ditch behind their dragons.

The fighting dragonriders of Madellon, he remarked to Epherineth. Not the heroic sight the Ballads would have us believe.

It won’t be so bad once we’re in the air, Epherineth offered. It’s very muddy here.

Dragons shouldn’t get muddy, T’kamen said, with a sudden rush of revulsion for the scene, and the realisation, a moment later, that that was what had been bothering him ever since they’d reached Madellon South. It wasn’t the segregation of colours, or the marginalisation of the bronzes and browns, or the fact that the Seventh’s riders had been obliged to wait outside in the cold. It was the mud. Dragons were creatures of the air. They should be flying freely over the sodden earth, not wallowing miserably in it. T’kamen’s boots were encrusted with filth. He knew he’d leave dirty footprints on Epherineth’s shoulder when he mounted, however carefully he tried to wipe his boots clean. Some of the Seventh dragons he passed were still tracked with mud from an earlier rest stop – mud that their riders hadn’t bothered to wipe away, because what was the point, when they’d only get more dirty later anyway? A brown or bronze hide might not show the dirt as clearly as a jewel-bright blue or green, but the lack of pride many Seventh riders showed in keeping their dragons properly clean disgusted T’kamen. This careless soiling of men and dragons was a befouling that went beyond the merely physical. It offended him to the core of his Interval bronze rider’s soul.

The dragons on bunker duty were waiting near the top of the ridge just west of the Weyrstation, but it was just as muddy up there as anywhere down below. T’kamen walked down Epherineth’s side with a rag, wiping away some of the worst smears on his flanks. There was nothing he could do about the dirt that had caked his feet or splashed up onto his belly. Epherineth had, at least, held his tail clear of the ground.

M’ric trailed silently behind him. He, and most of the other tailmen, would be flying straight to Stanten Hold, close to the predicted end of the Threadfall’s footprint, to prepare to receive the Wings when Fall was over. He’d been unusually subdued all day. “Everything all right?” T’kamen asked, running his hand under the strap that looped Epherineth’s near hind leg.

M’ric shot him a glance, the flash of dark eyes that T’kamen had come to recognise as the precursor to an outburst. But it didn’t come. The boy just shrugged his shoulders under his sodden cloak. “Everything’s fine.”

“You’re not put out that I’m going up there and you’re not?”

“Like I’d be jealous of a bunker assignment. I have flown during Fall, you know. With the other weyrlings. Not like I haven’t ever seen it before.”

There was something more than just insolence in M’ric’s tone. T’kamen gave him a sharp look. “Then what’s got you so sulky today?”

M’ric stubbed the toe of his boot in the mud for a moment. Then he said, “There was a letter from the Harperhall this morning.”

T’kamen checked the release knot on a pair of Epherineth’s firestone sacks. The bags were soaking wet; not that it would matter, by the time a dragon had chewed the stone to paste. “Oh?”

“To the Weyrlingmaster,” M’ric went on. “From Master Jondren.”

“That’s your girlfriend’s Master, isn’t it?”

M’ric scowled. “Her name’s Kheleina.”

“Kheleina’s Master, then.”

“Yes.” M’ric went broodingly silent for a moment, and then carried on, “He’s said I’m not to go and see her any more.”

T’kamen leaned against Epherineth’s side. “Why would he say that?”

“Well, I don’t know, do I?”

“Did you get her in trouble?”

“I didn’t do any –” M’ric began, and then stopped, grasping what T’kamen meant. “You mean – did I – is she –”

“Well, did you?” T’kamen asked reasonably.

M’ric stared at him, clearly torn between outrage and embarrassment, a flush creeping up his cheeks and making a vivid contrast to his yellowing bruises. “No!” Then, with complete indignation, he asked, “What sort of man do you think I am?”

“A young one,” T’kamen replied, “and a dragonrider, and dragonspawn yourself, and that’s never been the most chaste combination.”

“That was different,” M’ric said. “My mother wasn’t apprenticed to the Harperhall. I’m not stupid.”

“All right,” said T’kamen. “So what’s made Jondren take against you? Or is this coming from Kheleina?”

“It’s not coming from her,” M’ric insisted. “She was fine the other day. We were fine.”

T’kamen detected a hint of doubt. “You’re sure she hasn’t…I don’t know, met someone else? How often do you even get a chance to go to Kellad, anyway?”

“Not often enough,” M’ric said. “And it’ll be even less once we graduate, but…” He looked at T’kamen, a picture of youthful agony. “You really think she’s met someone else?”

T’kamen laughed. “Don’t ask me, M’ric. I don’t know the girl, and anyway, I’m just about the last person you’d want to come to for relationship advice.”

M’ric looked even less happy than he had to begin with. “Trebruth’s almost two.”

It didn’t seem to follow on from his previous complaint, but T’kamen knew more about dragons than he did about women. “So you buy him a wherry and make a big fuss. Dragons are easy to please.”

M’ric glared at him. “What I mean is that we won’t be weyrlings anymore.”

“That’s usually something to celebrate.”

“Unless it isn’t.”

T’kamen waited.

“They posted the date for our final assessments on the noticeboard last night. The twenty-second of next month. Five sevendays.”

“So you get your chance to show what Trebruth can do,” said T’kamen.

“Yes, but…” M’ric sighed. “My classmate B’neven said he’s had three Wingleaders take him aside after practice. He reckons he’ll have the pick of which Wing he goes to.”

“That’s just bragging, M’ric,” said T’kamen. “Weyrlings have never had a say over where they get tapped. That’s up to the Weyrleader and his Wingleaders. Or the Commander, now.”

“But he’s not the only one. Fraza’s the Commander’s tail, so she’s guaranteed a place in First. L’argo’s been talking about how he’s going to be assigned to his dad’s Wing ever since he Impressed. Even F’sta’s been talking to one of the Wingseconds from Third Flight, and Tetketh is literally the slowest dragon in the class!”

It did sound like Madellon’s Wingleaders were putting down markers on the weyrlings they wanted. T’kamen had been on both ends of that process himself. “And none of the Wingleaders have singled you out?”

M’ric shook his head.

“What about the other brown riders in your class?”

“They all washed out of formation training months ago, when they got too big to turn. They know they’re going to the Seventh. They don’t care. They never expected anything else.”

“But Trebruth’s still training with the fighting colours?”

“They can’t wash him out when he’s beating most of the blues and some of the greens in speed manoeuvres,” M’ric said, with defiant pride. “He’s not like a normal brown. He’s a special case.” Then he deflated again. “And it’s not going to sharding matter, is it?”

“Look, M’ric,” said T’kamen. “You just said it yourself: you’re a special case. It’s harder for them to decide how to place you and Trebruth compared to just another blue or green. They’d need to build the entire Wing around him.”

M’ric looked at him sceptically.

“Don’t give me that look,” T’kamen said. “I might not have led Wings against actual Thread, but we didn’t spend the Interval sitting around doing nothing. When I became Weyrleader, the Wings were a mess. Too many of them, with too few dragons in each. I reorganised them completely, but it took months. You can’t just divide up your colours evenly and call it a job done. Every dragon’s an individual. Every dragon has strengths and weaknesses, and you have to judge them against the strengths and weaknesses of every other dragon you want to put in that Wing. You don’t want a Wing just made up of veterans or just of youngsters, but there’s no point putting older dragons who’ve slowed down in a Wing where they need to be fast. If you have anything out of the ordinary – a small, fast bronze, or a green with more flame-range than average – you might even have to build an entire strategy around that dragon’s skills. And even dragons who fall within expected parameters for their colour can’t just be swapped around interchangeably. A green who works perfectly in tight manoeuvres at the centre of a formation would probably be lost if you stuck her out on the flank to fly mop-up. And then you have to think about temperament and personality fit and colour dynamics. Maybe that green would be intimidated by having a bronze flying too close – or maybe she’d benefit from the reassurance of a big dragon in range. Maybe she won’t concentrate if there’s a male in the Wing who’s flown her; maybe she’ll fly better for it. Maybe having one of her own clutchmates deployed nearby will make her feel comfortable and maybe it’ll distract her. No two dragons are the same, not even dragons of the same colour. And given that your fighting Wings have been made up of greens and blues for – what, most of the Pass? – it’s hardly surprising that no one knows what to do with a brown. Trebruth’s not just a blue with a coat of paint. He’s unique, and that makes him very difficult to place. Until your Commander really figures out how to use him, it would be crazy to just shove him in a Wing and hope for the best.”

M’ric’s expression had been a picture as T’kamen spoke, changing gradually from incredulity to curiosity to intense interest. Now, his face might almost – almost – have worn a look of respect. “Do you think that’s what it is?”

The naked hope in his voice nearly made T’kamen wince. He didn’t want to raise the boy’s expectations too high. Everything he’d seen of the schism between the colours in Pass Madellon matched what R’lony had said about M’ric’s chances of joining Tactical. “I just think there’s probably more going on under the surface than you think,” he said. “Maybe you will be shut out because of Trebruth’s colour. Maybe you won’t. Bellyaching about it isn’t going to help. If they’re going to discriminate against you, there’s not much you can do about it. All you can do is make sure that you and Trebruth do everything in your power to show the Commander you deserve a place in the fighting Wings. At least then you’ll know that, whatever happens, you did your best.”

M’ric nodded, and for an instant T’kamen saw again the confident and capable rider he would grow up to be. But then the boy’s shoulders dipped, and he looked at Toonbith, the brown dragon along the line from Epherineth. “And if our best isn’t enough…”

Then you’ll be joining Epherineth and me in the Seventh, T’kamen thought, at least until you figure out how to get between back to the Interval.

But he didn’t say it. The lightest Seventh dragons – the blues and smallest browns – most flew in G’bral’s Watch section: flying reconnaissance, scouting the Thread-corridor for deviations in its pattern, relaying intelligence about the terrain that lay ahead. T’kamen suspected that this was the role that awaited M’ric and Trebruth if they didn’t make the cut for the fighting Wings. And yet, once again, while he understood the reasoning behind the division of labour in this Madellon, he was disgusted by whatever it was – the dogmatism, the prejudice, the bloody-mindedness – that would probably relegate a young brown rider with a sharp and clever brain and a dragon at least as quick and agile as a fighting blue to the fringes of Threadfall and the margins of Madellon’s society.

He didn’t know what he was going to say to console M’ric when it happened. He didn’t know what he could say now. Since their visit to the Harperhall he’d been struggling to manage his own black moods. But despite himself, he was consoled by one thing. M’ric wasn’t yet resigned to his fate. He hadn’t given up. He still believed in a destiny for himself that exceeded what was expected of him. Under different circumstances S’leondes and R’lony would have had reason to fear this proud and promising young man, rather than dismiss him.

He gripped M’ric’s forearm, hard enough that the boy flinched. “One thing at a time, M’ric. Deal with the assessment as it comes, and your assignment, whatever it is, when it happens. That’s all you can do.”

M’ric sighed, as if it were far too much to ask. “What about Kheleina?”

T’kamen laughed, trying and failing to hide the degree of satisfaction he took in the curtailment of M’ric’s love-life. “Stay away from crafters,” he said. “Crafters are trouble. Especially Beastcrafters. They’ll break your heart.”

“Beastcrafters?”

T’kamen shook his head. “I’m wasting my breath. That’s one piece of advice I know you’re not going to listen to.”

M’ric looked mystified for a moment, and then, with characteristic swiftness, he put it together. “Your girlfriend was a Beastcrafter? I thought she was a dragonrider!”

“She should have been,” T’kamen said. “It didn’t work out that way.”

“What’s her name?”

“Sarenya.”

“Sarenya,” M’ric repeated, as if trying the name out to see how he liked it.

It stung to hear her name from this uncouth boy’s lips. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this,” T’kamen said irritably.

“Me neither,” said M’ric. “I mean, this could be twenty Turns away for me. Are you telling me to be celibate for twenty Turns?”

“No,” said T’kamen. “You do what you want.”

“What do you want me to do?” M’ric asked. “Not take up with your girlfriend?”

“It’s going to happen anyway,” said T’kamen. “Whatever I tell you.”

M’ric’s expression clouded. “I don’t like the idea of that much. I mean, she could be ugly or anything.”

T’kamen threw a look at him that, satisfyingly, made him recoil a bit.

“All right, not ugly, then,” M’ric said, in a mollifying tone of voice. “Just, you know, not my type.”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”

“Is she pretty, then?” M’ric asked, brightening. “Does she have –”

Mercifully, he was cut short by the shout that went up from far down the line, calling for all riders to mount. T’kamen spared a moment to glower at M’ric, then flung his muddy rag at him. He turned to walk back down towards Epherineth’s head, not waiting for the boy to follow. He swung up to his place on the bronze’s neck, recognising only the faintest twinge in his weak hip.

He’d left boot-prints on Epherineth’s glossy wet hide. T’kamen leaned down to wipe them away with his glove, and then M’ric was there with the rag. He mopped the dirty marks off, all attentive competence. Then he placed a hand on Epherineth’s arm. Riders didn’t often touch one another’s dragons deliberately, and T’kamen felt M’ric’s hand as if it were touching his own shoulder.

“Kamen.” It was the first time M’ric had used the familiar version of T’kamen’s name. “I’m sorry about your girlfriend. I’m sorry you don’t get to go back to the Interval.” He looked up at him. “But I still need your help if I’m going to.”

“No you don’t,” T’kamen said shortly. “It’s going to happen anyway. It makes no difference if I’m involved or not.”

“It makes a difference to me,” said M’ric.

T’kamen looked away, pretending to check his safety-strap, unable to quite meet that fierce black stare.

He was done. He’d decided to take no further part in the tangle of cause and effect that had stranded him here. In the aftermath of the revelation that he’d never made it back to the Interval, he’d worked through every shade in the spectrum of anger: from fury to outrage, from outrage to resentment, from resentment to bitterness. The bitterness had shaped his decision. T’kamen had never held with the idea of predestination. He’d always believed that a man made his own future, that he and he alone was responsible for the path of his life. The gradual realisation that everything he’d ever done had simply moved him closer to his inevitable exile in the Eighth Pass had made a mockery of that treasured self-determination. Fate – mindless, arbitrary fate – had chewed him up and puked him out, and the only fist he could shake in its face was a point-blank refusal to play along any more. It was ridiculous, but it was all he had. And while M’ric – or at least, this young version of him – had the balance of a life that would be spent dancing to destiny’s tune still ahead of him, T’kamen didn’t see why he should collude in the subjugation of another man’s free will.

“We’ve been over this,” he said at last. “You’ll find a way to go between, with my help or without it. You don’t need me.”

M’ric looked exasperated. “And what if it’s Turns and Turns before I figure it out?”

“What if it is? The past isn’t going anywhere.”

“But it could be my secret weapon,” M’ric said. “It could be the key.”

“The key to what?”

M’ric caught his breath, then let it out. “To an assignment in Tactical. If Trebruth could go between, there’s no way the Commander could refuse us. But how are we supposed to learn how without you and Epherineth to teach us? You’re the only dragonpair on Pern who’s ever done it!”

“Faranth,” T’kamen said, incredulous, “you just don’t give up, do you?”

“No,” M’ric answered defiantly. “I don’t. And I won’t. Even if you have.” He removed his hand from Epherineth’s arm. “Good luck with the Fall. Not that you’ll need it.”

You deserved that, Epherineth commented, as M’ric walked stiffly away.

He was right, but T’kamen was blighted if he’d admit it. We have to focus on what we can change, he insisted. Not what we can’t. M’ric’s destiny is out of my hands now.

How do you know that? Even if the destination is fixed, T’kamen, is the journey there not just as important?

T’kamen didn’t have an answer for that.

He was saved from having to find one by Shadith’s peremptory bugle. Epherineth turned his head towards Br’lom’s bronze. We are ready, T’kamen heard him say, and down the line the other browns and bronzes on bunker detail rose to their feet, ponderous with their firestone payloads. One at a time, each dragon spread his wings, took a short run-up, and then launched off the ridge. T’kamen clenched his teeth as Epherineth began his ungainly lope towards the edge, mindful of Ch’fil’s cautionary tale about riders biting through their tongues. Epherineth pushed off horizontally – even he couldn’t launch vertically with such a heavy load – and for a fraction of an instant they dropped like a stone. Then Epherineth caught the air beneath his wings. He regained height with short, laborious wingstrokes, and then found the same air current that each of the dragons before him had ridden to altitude. T’kamen relaxed as Epherineth’s flight smoothed out. He turned in his place to look back, between downstrokes, along his dragon’s bulging sides. Everything lying all right?

All fine, said Epherineth.

Let me know if the harness starts to rub anywhere.

I will.

Despite the wet, despite the drear, despite M’ric’s gloominess and his own bleak mood, T’kamen felt his spirits rise with his dragon. How often had he lamented his misfortune to be born in an Interval and denied the chance to ever face Thread? As removed as they might be from the real action, at least he and Epherineth would at last take some part in the defence of Pern. Here, today, in however small a fashion, they would make their difference.

Ahead and around and behind, the other dragons of Madellon Weyr beat north-east towards Thread’s predicted insertion zone, a short twenty minutes’ flight away. Four full Flights – First, Third, Fifth and Sixth – flew in loose formation, dozens upon dozens of blue and green shapes studding the grey sky like gems. The reserve Wings, both from Second, would fly lateral to the corridor for the first part of the Fall, before rotating in to give individual Wings a breather.

The brown dragons of Ch’fil Crew section flew lower, already fanning out into the sparse pattern that would allow them to comb the ground for missed Threads. Aid and Bunker dragons flew together, easily distinguishable from each other by their different harness. The blues and smaller browns of the Watch section would already have taken up their high-altitude positions around the perimeter of Thread’s expected first footprint, ready to guide in the Wings to meet it. Depending on the weather and time of Turn, it could vary by several miles in any direction, and the sooner G’bral’s Watch dragons confirmed visual contact, the sooner the fighting Wings could intercept.

R’lony sat Geninth a level above Epherineth, alone. Had the sun been in the sky, Geninth would have cast a black shadow on the men and dragons below, but in the dismal light he was visible only when T’kamen looked up. The rain had stopped, but the clouds hung low and threatening, and already the Wings assigned the highest level were disappearing into the oppressive gloom, ascending through layers of suspended water droplets to the clear thin air beyond.

The course correction, issued by an unseen dragon high above, passed through the massed Wings in a ripple. Every dragon adjusted his heading slightly north. The fighting Wings began to form up. Small tongues of fire escaped a few dragons too excited to hold them back.

A shudder passed through Epherineth. He turned his head to the east, and T’kamen saw his spinning eye transition from green to yellow to amber in the space of three quick heartbeats. Thread! The sullen sky bloomed dully orange as the unseen dragons above the clouds began to flame. And then silver veins laced the undersides of those brooding charcoal masses, veins that thickened to streaks, and Thread came streaming through to rain death upon Pern.

The world turned red. His lips skinned back from his teeth. He gathered himself to thrust forward with powerful strokes of his wings, and fury rumbled in his chest. This was his enemy. This was what he’d been born to do. This…

T’kamen struggled to tear himself free of Epherineth. He took a short, sucking breath into lungs frozen with anger. We’re not here to fight!

Thread is falling!

Epherineth’s howl was incandescent with rage. His body trembled with it. There could be no reasoning with him. He couldn’t be reminded of how they’d trained. He wouldn’t be stopped by the fact that he had no flame. Epherineth would have attacked Thread with fangs and claws. For the second time in a sevenday, T’kamen bent his will in direct opposition to his dragon’s. Epherineth. No.

He’d thought that stopping Epherineth from chasing Donauth had been difficult. He’d thought that the need to pursue a rising queen was the most driving imperative a bronze possessed. He’d thought that resisting Epherineth’s mating instincts was the most ferocious battle of wills he’d ever have with his dragon.

On all counts, he’d been wrong.

Epherineth had wanted Donauth, craved her, coveted her. His anger at being refused had been founded in desire, and T’kamen had never let desire cloud his thinking. He’d never done something he’d regretted out of lust.

He couldn’t say the same for hate.

Epherineth’s hatred for Thread was a seething mass within him, an ugliness of red and black, wrath and revulsion, vengeance and outrage. Only destruction would satisfy it. Only murder would satisfy it.

He’d put his hands around Katel’s throat, and looked into his eyes, and known an instant of certainty that squeezing the breath and the life from C’los’ killer would be the sweetest fulfilment of all the rage and pain he’d ever felt.

So nearly he’d toppled into that abyss.

So narrowly Epherineth, who had never known rage, had pulled him back from its edge.

And now Epherineth teetered on the brink, and the darkness in T’kamen that had once almost choked a man to death stirred and boiled and unfolded, and wished to plunge down into the depths alongside him. Why resist when it was what they both wanted?

Epherineth flinched. His anger suddenly cooled as though quenched with water. And T’kamen was abruptly in control of himself again. Sweat had burst from his skin, drenching him beneath his wherhides. His head ached and his eyes burned, but Epherineth’s need to destroy was gone, and so was his.

T’kamen pulled down his goggles to let the cold damp air hit his face. He felt shaken – scorched, even, as though he’d reached for a hot stove and barely drawn back from it in time.

Shadith asks if all is well.

T’kamen sought and found Br’lom’s bronze, flying slightly higher than the other bunker dragons. Br’lom was looking back over his shoulder at them. T’kamen raised his arm to signal an affirmative. Tell him yes.

Only then did he steel himself to look again at the Fall.

Every weyrling learned about Thread. Every dragonrider dreamed about it. In his ignorant Interval vanity, T’kamen had even presumed to strategise against it. But all the Falls he’d imagined, all the records he’d read, couldn’t have prepared him for the reality. Thread didn’t just fall. It sliced down from the sky in waves, a thousand silvery knives glinting in the dim light. It rippled as it raced towards the ground, undulating like an unimaginable hail of tunnelsnakes. It unravelled in ribbons, its filaments spooling out, lengthening, spreading a lethal net. It capered in the wind and the weather, blowing into tangles, into snarls; individual strands wrapped around each other, clumped, fell faster, harder, more erratically, less predictably. Much had been written of the mindlessness of Thread. Now, at last, T’kamen saw for himself what that meant.

And there was so much of it. In the Interval they trained with ropes dropped from above, but those drills in no way simulated the sheer volume of Thread descending on the lower Wings, or the expanse it covered. Even that only represented the part of the Fall that had got past the upper Flights, still out of sight above the clouds. It was merciless. It was endless. It seemed like any attempt to stop it would be hopeless.

But it wasn’t.

The fighting dragons of Madellon Weyr rose to meet it; they rose, they met it, and they destroyed it. The breakneck flying, the reckless dives and rolls and loops T’kamen had watched the small dragons practising over the Weyr, suddenly all made sense. Wings climbed and turned together, flaming, then broke off, scattering, pursuing individual strands, before forming up again to take on the next wave. Blue dragons held the pattern, the hubs around which each formation turned; greens filled the gaps, weaving in and out, climbing to sear Threads from below, diving to catch ribbons from above. Some dragons worked in pairs, some in trios, some alone, but each sub-formation made part of the larger pattern, anchored to its parent Wing. And all the time the Wings pushed forwards, chasing the Fall from north-east to south-west, pursuing it relentlessly, destroying it ruthlessly.

It took T’kamen’s breath away. The grace, the power, the split-second timing. The agility and daring. It was every bit as inspiring as every Harper ballad ever written about Threadfall made it out to be. And, finally, T’kamen grasped why the browns and bronzes of Madellon couldn’t fight Thread. Epherineth could never have manoeuvred fast enough; he’d have been hit a dozen times already, too big to slip sideways through narrow gaps in the Fall, too big to turn on a wingtip and slide away in another direction, too big to reposition to where he was needed without being scored. Between would have let him evade, would have frozen off a Threadstrike, would have been an escape route and a shortcut. Without it, Epherineth would be nothing more than the biggest target in the sky.

Overwhelmed by that realisation, T’kamen tore his eyes away, making himself focus on the bunker dragon in front of them. It was a moment before he realised that the lenses of his goggles were speckled black. He glanced down and realised that Epherineth was stippled with the same residue. He wiped the back of his glove across his face and ash smeared greasily brown-black across the glass. It was Thread. Burned Thread, dead Thread, but Thread all the same. M’ric’s weyrling horror story suddenly seemed less fanciful. T’kamen tugged his scarf up around the lower part of his face. Try not to breathe too much of that stuff in, Epherineth.

I’ll try.

Below the fighting dragons, Ch’fil’s low-flying flame crews were hard at work already, finding and burning the Thread that had eluded both stacks of Wings. Epherineth angled his shoulder slightly to give T’kamen a clearer view back along their flightpath. Small fires spotted the landscape as far as he could see, sending up oily plumes of smoke. The greens and blues weren’t getting everything; not by a long way.

And it was clear, maddeningly clear, why. T’kamen watched a green chase down a tangle almost to the lowest level before breaking off and letting it fall. In the time it took her to regain the altitude she’d lost, the gap she’d left in her formation had let through several more strands. T’kamen watched, almost cringing, as the green dragon picked off two, then barely evaded the last. If she could only have gone between she could have blinked to intercept the stray, then blinked back into formation before her absence compromised the line.

Two blues went for the same piece, both spotting it and reacting before they could warn the other off. They barely avoiding colliding with each other. Only the sharp reactions of the smaller dragon saved them – he turned an impossibly tight reverse loop at the last instant – but it cost him. He dropped out of formation, listing badly, and three browns from the Aid section veered beneath the Wings to assist in his withdrawal. Wrenched wing, Epherineth confirmed tersely. T’kamen tried to see how the blue’s Wing would recover from the loss of a member, but it was hard to identify specific formations in the mass of green and blue bodies. He’d known every dragon of his own Madellon on sight, but he wasn’t familiar enough with the Pass Weyr’s complement yet.

And the tactics the small dragons employed bore little resemblance to those T’kamen knew. Their formations were much more fluid, much less stable. The anchoring blues didn’t have the flame range or sustain to contain the edges of a Fall in the way a traditional brown or bronze would have, and they frequently had to abandon their positions, diving or rolling out of the path of more Thread than they could burn, and then scrambling to resume their places. Epherineth couldn’t have dodged so nimbly or so often, but at least a dragon with a decent flame range could have cut more of a swathe where Thread was falling thickest. And the need for dragons to preserve their own hides at all costs contributed to the heavy toll taken on the land below, in burrowed Thread and cleansing flame.

It was as frustrating to watch as it was fascinating, and while T’kamen was riveted by the terrible spectacle, he was grateful when the first riders started breaking formation for firestone. At least they’d have something to do.

Ready? he asked Epherineth.

Ready.

Br’lom had already marshalled a dozen pick-ups before he assigned one to T’kamen and Epherineth. Jastath on my far side, Epherineth reported, as a green dragon flew fast towards them.

Epherineth steadied, locking his wings into a glide as the green came up beneath him and to the right. When they were in position, Jastath’s soot-streaked rider stood up in his straps, bracing his knees against his dragon’s neck, and pulled on the first long rope dangling from Epherineth’s row of firestone sacks. The quick-release knot disengaged and a pair of bags dropped from Epherineth’s side to land neatly across Jastath’s neck, just behind her rider. Firestone away, Epherineth said, sounding relieved, and beating his wings again to regain the altitude he’d lost in gliding. Jastath’s rider signalled thanks as the green veered sharply away, already tearing open the neck of the first sack to feed her more firestone.

Good job, Epherineth, T’kamen told him, patting the ashy neck.

After that, the flow of transfers increased as dragons exhausted their flame and ducked out to resupply. Epherineth’s confidence increased with each successful collection, and before long Br’lom was giving them double pick-ups as well as singles, allowing dragons to approach Epherineth from both sides simultaneously to collect their firestone.

They flew on. Geninth, flying a circuit around the moving front, checked in to see how they were feeling. T’kamen’s hip ached but it was tolerable, and Epherineth was still flying strongly. He’d settled into his rhythm and seemed to have conquered his violent reaction to Threadfall. T’kamen had him relay back to Geninth that they were fine.

There weren’t many casualties in the first part of the Fall. Two greens clipped wingtips, sending the smaller of the pair spinning off out of formation. She checked her descent, but retired soon after. Epherineth remarked that one of her safety-straps had snapped in the collision. Another green made an unlucky turn into a mass of burning Thread. It didn’t adhere, but the impact left her scorched and shaken. An Aid bronze assisted her withdrawal from the Wings. Men pulled muscles and broke bones in flight drill even in the Interval, so it came as no surprise to T’kamen when several retired from the Fall with dislocated shoulders and broken collarbones. The fast blues of the Watch section ferried Healers and Dragon Healers back and forth to attend to the injured.

After the first couple of hours, the Second Flight reserves began to rotate in to relieve individual Wings. Tired greens and blues flew out into the clear air beyond the bunker line, limiting their wingbeats to conserve energy, but still just about keeping pace with the Fall. T’kamen watched their Wingleaders flying up and down the line, checking dragons and riders. A few pairs – singed or scorched, or just shaken – were pulled out and dismissed, and they flew away from the Thread corridor with drooping heads: whether ashamed or exhausted, T’kamen couldn’t tell.

But as the third hour ticked over into the fourth, and Thread still poured out of the sky in tireless waves, the gallant greens and blues began to flag. Their acrobatics became less crisp, their turns less precise. Their formations grew sloppy, ragged, the gaps between dragons yawning wider. Even more Thread got through and was left to fall. The fire crews were stretched thin, trying to hunt down every strand that evaded flame aloft. Only the bunker dragons had it easier the longer Fall went on. Epherineth’s load lightened with every dragon that came in for firestone, and he flew on without wearying.

Sprilth on my near side, he announced to T’kamen.

All of the fighting dragons were covered in ash, but the green who came upsides Epherineth looked even greyer than most. She wobbled a bit as she matched speed with them. “Is she all right?” T’kamen shouted down to her rider.

Sprilth’s rider looked up sharply, missing her grab at the release rope. The visor of her helmet didn’t quite conceal her face. “She’s…we’re…fine!”

They didn’t look fine to T’kamen: dragon or rider. “You look like shit!” he shouted back. “Have you taken a break?”

“Not our turn yet,” the green rider shouted back. She made another grab for the rope, and missed again as Sprilth bumped Epherineth’s side. “Shard it!”

The knock didn’t faze Epherineth, but T’kamen didn’t like the way Sprilth was moving. “Who’s your Wingleader?”

“I just need to get our stone and get back to the Wing!” Sprilth’s rider made a third attempt at the quick-release, and the pair of firestone sacks fell squarely over the green dragon’s neck. She sighed with relief. “Thanks!”

T’kamen watched as Sprilth broke away from Epherineth’s side, beating her wings determinedly. Can you find out who her Wingleader is? That dragon looks fit to drop.

Geninth says it’s not our place to interfere, said Epherineth. Idarth on my off side.

They were kept busy over the next span of minutes as dragon after dragon came alongside for firestone. Another green had just banked away from her pick-up when Epherineth groaned, a low, desperate sound. Oridelth is no more.

T’kamen didn’t recognise the name, but the deep jolt of Epherineth’s sorrow hit him in the stomach. What happened?

She was hit. She went between.

The fighting dragons didn’t keen. They couldn’t afford that luxury in the midst of Fall. But they did mourn, and their sadness, amplified through Epherineth, weighed on T’kamen. Was it a bad hit?

I don’t know. She is gone.

A few minutes later, Epherineth groaned again. Teewith.

Another one?

They are getting tired.

Can’t someone relieve them? T’kamen looked at the fighting dragons snatching a respite outboard of the bunker line. There should be more reserves!

Epherineth didn’t have an answer for that. The next time a dragon came alongside, T’kamen shouted down to his rider, “What’s happening out there?”

The blue rider ignored him, pulling down his firestone sacks and then directing his dragon away again without replying.

T’kamen saw the next one vanish out of the corner of his eye: a green, there one moment and gone the next. What the shaff is happening? Epherineth, ask Geninth if this is normal.

Geninth says it is Threadfall and what do we expect, Epherineth replied grimly.

The skill and precision of the early hours of the Fall was crumbling. T’kamen almost couldn’t watch any more as dragons barely escaped Threadstrike, or narrowly missed colliding with each other, or gave up on strands that earlier they would have caught. Thread fell as implacably as ever, making no concessions to the tiring, toiling Wings below.

And then a dragon on the fringe of one of the middle Flights suddenly began to thrash her left wing. T’kamen’s eyes weren’t good enough to see what was happening, but Epherineth’s were. He shared his dragon’s sight, and horror clenched, fist-like in his stomach.

It was Sprilth. A tendril of Thread had glanced the edge of her wingsail, slapped up against the underside of her wing, stuck there.

As T’kamen and Epherineth watched, it began to spread.

Epherineth couldn’t look away, and T’kamen wouldn’t let him watch alone.

A lattice of silver raced across Sprilth’s wing with appalling speed, dissolving translucent sail as it went. All her frantic flailing couldn’t dislodge it. As Thread consumed the wing, Sprilth began to fall. And to scream.

Why doesn’t she go between? T’kamen cried.

Because she can’t!

Sprilth fell, screaming.

T’kamen had heard dragons screaming before. He heard them shrieking with anger and lust and even with pain. He’d heard the heart-breaking cry of a riderless dragon hurling itself into oblivion. And none of those experiences could begin to compare to the sound of a dragon’s screams of terror and agony as Thread ate her alive. Those screams slashed through every dragonpair in the sky, even as dragons swerved in all directions to avoid their plummeting sister. Thread streamed unchecked past the Wings, and still Sprilth fell and screamed and was consumed.

Nothing could have prepared T’kamen for the hideous sight of that doomed, dying green dragon. No weyrling horror story could have captured the obscenity of seeing a dragon overwhelmed by Thread, hide and flesh transformed into seething, bloated Thread infestation. For Faranth’s sake can’t someone help her? Where the shaff are the Aid dragons?

And then the Aid dragons were there.

Salionth and Recranth pulled in either side of the stricken green, a formation somehow horribly reminiscent of a mating flight pursuit. T’kamen couldn’t think how they planned to help her. If they tried to catch her, the Thread would spread to them. There was no water nearby to drown it. Sprilth was already lost.

And then he understood, and his stomach turned queasily over.

He’d watched his own dragon take down a thousand herdbeasts in their Turns together. He’d observed and admired Epherineth’s lethal economy as he singled out his prey, tracked it, matched speed with it, and then plunged down upon it with implacable finality. A twist, a shake, a broken neck, and it was over. He was as good a judge of killing technique as anyone.

And he couldn’t fault Recranth’s technique, or his economy. He couldn’t fault the quality of Recranth’s mercy, even as he dipped sharply over Sprilth with claws outstretched to perform his ghastly duty. Sprilth’s dreadful screams cut off abruptly, shockingly. She tumbled away from Recranth, plummeting end over end towards the ground. Her rider had pitched bonelessly forward on her grotesquely flopping neck, and the relentless silver filaments of Thread still swarmed and roiled over them.

T’kamen didn’t see Sprilth’s ruined body hit the ground, but he heard it.

He caught the briefest glimpse of Salionth and Recranth descending below the trailing Wings, belching fire, and then he clawed the scarf away from his mouth barely in time to vomit in helpless convulsions down Epherineth’s shoulder.

Shadith asks if we want to retire.

Epherineth’s voice was numb. T’kamen wiped his mouth, then lifted the waterskin that hung behind his leg. He gulped, washing away the acid tang of half-digested meatrolls. He spat. He poured water down Epherineth’s shoulder, sluicing away puke and ash.

No, he said. We fly on.

Epherineth seemed to shake himself. Then he said, Nankinth, near side.

Thread claimed no more lives. Sprilth’s grisly death seemed to make every fighting dragon more cautious. Dragons from the fire crews bunkered to resupply, and browns and blues from Watch descended from their high positions to help them burn out dozens of extra burrows. And, gradually, the Fall began to thin out. It didn’t just stop; it petered out, dribbling anticlimactically off. The fighting patterns that had become so ragged re-formed as the number of strands getting through the cloud cover diminished, and the blues and greens finally gave up their acrobatics. The constant background roar of fire-breathing faded away, punctuated by only the occasional cough as a dragon charred a last stray filament or two, and then even those died out.

Is that it? T’kamen asked. Is it over?

He felt Epherineth suck in a deep breath beneath him, and then the bronze exhaled it again in a keen. Every dragon in the sky lifted his head to add his voice to the mourning cry. It pierced through T’kamen’s soul as much as his ears. When it finally died away, he asked, For all the ones who died? Sprilth and Oridelth and Teewith?

No, said Epherineth. That was for Skerith.

What?

He went between.

But Fall’s over!

He went between.

As Epherineth spoke, the upper Wings burst through the cloud, a mass of colour against the murk. The blue dragon flying at the very apex of the pyramid of Flights flung his wings wide, clawing at the sky and lashing his tail as he roared with triumph and defiance. And if T’kamen found the sight of Karzith, bellowing as if he’d just flown himself a queen, almost offensively inappropriate, he was alone in his reaction. The thunderous chorus of bugles that erupted from the fighting dragons in response to Karzith’s cry was deafening. Some of them turned loops, or flipped through barrel rolls, or even barged their own wingmates in a frenzy of celebration. T’kamen watched, lost. What the shaff are they doing, Epherineth?

I don’t know. I’m too tired to think, T’kamen.

T’kamen rubbed the fore neck-ridge. Just a little longer.

He was tired, too: tired enough that they had already turned north-west towards Stanten Hold before comprehension dawned on him. The fighting dragons were drunk, drunk on the knowledge that they’d flown in the face of death and survived. The mania would get them home, or at least to Stanten, fuelling minds and muscles that had been pushed to the limits of endurance and beyond. The realities of grief and exhaustion and remembered horror had to be staved off until riders and dragons could bury them with enough sleep or wine or sex to keep them functioning until the next Threadfall.

But for the dragons of the Seventh Flight there was no survivor’s euphoria, no elation in glorious victory. Epherineth’s fatigue didn’t come merely from his inexperience: it was rooted in the physical toll of carrying a heavy burden, the mental effort of suppressing his instinct to fight, the emotional cost of watching impotently as dragons died in front of him. Even the satisfaction of knowing they had performed their duties without error seemed a thin and paltry thing. The other riders of Bunker section were hunching, weary and miserable, over their soot-stained dragons’ necks. Ch’fil’s fire-crews were still at work, dealing with the hundreds of Thread-strikes that had eluded the Wings. Recranth and Salionth were nowhere to be seen.

The contrast couldn’t have been starker between the exultant young Tactical pairs and the dull, tired support dragons: the former burning bright and hot and fleetingly; the latter barely glowing at all, like the last sullenly-smouldering embers of a dying fire. The contrast between a jewel-hued green or blue and a drab brown or bronze only reinforced the distinction. But the obvious disparities between the two groups of dragonriders masked a deeper commonality than T’kamen thought any of them could see from either side of their rigid division. The same force formed the bedrock of every rider’s soul. They were all, every one of them, devoid of hope, devoid of optimism, devoid of any faith whatsoever that anything could change for the better. They were men and women with no reason to believe that the next twenty-five Turns would bring anything but toil and grief. Tactical riders flung themselves into short, glorious lives and early deaths. Strategic riders resigned themselves to long careers in obscurity or ignominy. Neither dared hope that anything could change.

And well did T’kamen understand the allure of a surrender to despair.

Maybe this is why I’m here. I’m the only one in this time who knows how quickly things can change. That things can change at all.

A lightness came over T’kamen. It was the most perverse feeling. He was exhausted and filthy. He couldn’t remember a more continuously harrowing six hours of his life. He’d seen things, heard things, that he knew would revisit him in his nightmares until the end of his days. The sick ache of desolation and loneliness that had become his constant companion hadn’t left him.

But neither, he realised, had hope.

Even if the destination is fixed, T’kamen, is the journey there not just as important?

Epherineth’s question, posed with all the paradoxical simplicity and complexity that only a dragon could combine, had the right of it.

Tell Trebruth we’re on our way to Stanten, T’kamen told him And ask him to tell M’ric that he’s wrong. He pulled down his goggles, letting the cold damp air hit his face. I haven’t given up. Not yet.

ACT THREE

Chapter thirty-five: Sarenya

If knowledge is power, and ignorance is bliss, then a little of each is agony.

As always, I knew far too much, and not nearly enough.

100.03.25 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR AND LONG BAY HOLD

Beastcrafters didn’t get lie-ins. Herdbeasts and wherries, after all, weren’t noted for keeping sociable hours. Ewes lambed to their own schedule. Runners would gather at the paddock gate, waiting expectantly to be brought in for their breakfast, no matter how far the sun still had to travel to crest the Rim. Sarenya was used to spending the first part of her day in the half light and eerie hush of pre-dawn, moving around the stables and pens to check on her charges with a mug of the strong black klah that stewed perpetually on the Beastcraft cothold’s hearth in one hand, acknowledging her fellow crafters with a mutually-agreed economy of words in recognition of the smallness of the hour.

Sarenya had fallen so easily into the routine as an apprentice that she rose early even on her days off, unable as well as unwilling to break the habit. So it was a rare thing for her to be woken, with the gentlest touch on her shoulder and the smell of a fresh brew of klah in her nostrils, and two fire-lizards nestled against her hip in the recently-vacated warmth beside her.

She sat up abruptly, displacing Sleek and Agusta. “What time is it? Did I oversleep?”

“You didn’t oversleep,” M’ric told her. He brought a mug of klah from his small hearth. “The morning watchdragon went on duty about half an hour ago.”

Sarenya relaxed, curling her fingers around the cup. “What woke you up so early?” Then, suddenly self-conscious, she asked, “I wasn’t talking in my sleep, was I?”

“No,” said M’ric. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so deeply asleep, actually.”

“That probably means I was drooling on the pillow.”

M’ric sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked her shoulder. “Only very appealingly.”

He’d evaded her first question, and Sarenya studied him, looking for the signs of sleeplessness that she so often found in her own reflection. M’ric clearly hadn’t yet touched a comb: his hair was in shaggy disarray, and badly needed a cut. He hadn’t shaved, either. But while his gaze was clear and alert, there were shadows under his eyes, and the only way he could have known that she’d had a settled night was if he hadn’t. “What was Sh’zon really after last night?”

Sh’zon had come to M’ric’s weyr late the previous evening, after they’d gone to bed. Trebruth, thankfully, had kept the deputy Weyrleader from simply barging in. “I’d better see what he wants,” M’ric had told her, putting on a shirt to make himself decent. “I won’t be a minute.”

He’d been more than a minute. Sarenya had resolved not to eavesdrop, deliberately or otherwise, and the conversation had been muffled by the drapes between M’ric’s quarters and Trebruth’s chamber in any case – though she’d heard Sh’zon’s voice rising in volume. “Is there news?” she’d asked when M’ric came back in.

“No,” he’d said, taking off his shirt and throwing it over the back of a chair. “Just Wing business.”

He hadn’t been any more specific than that, and Sarenya, both relieved and disappointed, hadn’t pushed him. Now, though, M’ric sipped his own klah, and said, “He’s just worried about the Gather. It probably couldn’t have come at a worse time for Madellon. It wouldn’t take a lot to touch things off between our riders and Southern’s, and once something like that starts it’s going to be very hard to contain.”

“Isn’t there a rule about dragonriders not getting into fights?” Sarenya asked.

“Some riders seem to feel it can be interpreted more as a suggestion than a rule, under the appropriate circumstances. Usually from the wrong side of one drink too many.”

Sarenya winced. “How are you going to prevent it?”

“Vigilance,” he said, “and sobriety. All Wingseconds have to stay off the booze and on the lookout.”

“I’ll bet that’s not been popular.”

“You wouldn’t lose your stake if you did. But Sh’zon’s of the opinion that a few unhappy Wingseconds are a small price to pay for having riders he can trust keeping an eye on things.”

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that clearer heads might be prevailing at Southern by now?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Sh’zon sounded upset last night,” said Sarenya. “I couldn’t hear what you were saying, but that much came through.”

“He’s never been very good at keeping his voice down,” said M’ric. “He’s asked me to be on hand to help him out both days.”

“Oh.” Sarenya tried and failed to conceal the disappointment in her voice. “Well, if he needs you…”

“Don’t worry, I told him where he could put that idea. He can have me there, and he can have me sober, but I’m not running around after him all day. We’ve had plans for this Gather for sevendays.”

“You mean I’ve had plans for this Gather for sevendays,” Sarenya teased him. “Involving such dragonriderly pursuits as looking at prize cows, and losing marks on the runner races, and maybe buying a new dress.”

“I might not have mentioned the part about the cows.”

“Good thing, too. If you had, he’d have thought you’d started on the sauce early.” Sarenya put her hand lightly on his leg for emphasis. “I just don’t want you to feel you have to shirk your responsibilities on my account.”

M’ric smiled. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“No. Not at all.” Sarenya idly traced the line of the old scar that curled around M’ric’s thigh with her fingertips. “But you’re a dragonrider. You have responsibilities that trump your obligation to me.”

“Fewer than you think, Saren,” M’ric said. “And I wish you didn’t feel you had to be so stoic about them.”

“Pragmatic, not stoic.” She managed a smile, to take the starkness out of it, but she didn’t meet M’ric’s gaze, so that he wouldn’t see the shadow of T’kamen she knew he’d notice in her eyes.

“Well, short of a Pern-wide emergency, you’re not going to cut me loose that easily,” he said. “I want to help you choose that new dress. And you never know, maybe I’ll win a few marks on the runners. Beginner’s fortune.”

“You’ll be looking at them with Trebruth in the back of your mind licking his chops.”

“Probably,” he admitted.

Once Sarenya had washed and dressed, Trebruth conveyed her down from his weyr ledge to the Beastcraft cothold. Early as it was, most of the Weyr was already up and about. Long Bay Hold was four hours ahead of Madellon, so the Gather would be getting started there by now, and everyone who could beg a ride wanted to get there as soon as possible.

The Beastcraft apprentices were no exception to that rule, and Sarenya had to get tough on them at morning stables. She found a dirty bridle that someone had tried to hide at the back of the tack room, and two stalls whose straw had been turned hastily over but not changed. She shouted at Dorvan, the culprit behind the uncleaned tack, and left Ingany skipping out the two boxes while she rode a quick circuit of the Bowl’s paddocks to check the herds.

Sarenya took Bovey on that short ride. The chestnut runnerbeast had come sound after a couple of days’ box rest, but Gadman hadn’t been up to the Weyr to retrieve him. If Sarenya thought that a little strange, then she wasn’t about to complain. She’d nearly forgotten what a pleasure it was to ride a really nice runner – and the chestnut gelding was really nice. For all Gadman’s warnings, Bovey had only ever bucked twice, and both of those out of sheer exuberance the first time Sarenya had ridden him. He’d been perfectly well-mannered since. Sarenya knew she should probably stop by Gadman’s cothold the next time she had to ride down the valley for count, but she was loath to give Bovey back any sooner than she had to.

She went into Arrense’s office in the cothold with the tally. Her Master was there, frowning over a document. He glanced up from it when Sarenya put her tally slate on his desk. “I take it you’re heading off to Long Bay?”

“As soon as I’ve done Sejanth,” Sarenya replied. “Are you going?”

“Not until tomorrow.” Arrense gave her a thoughtful look. “Were you planning to look at the stock?”

“Only the main show ring. I don’t think M’ric would thank me for dragging him around every last corral.”

“M’ric likely wouldn’t,” said Arrense. “But do me a favour and find out what the better Keroon steers are going for.”

Sarenya regarded him uncertainly. “Master?”

“I want to know what market rate is for a decent beef animal in Peninsula territory.”

“Wouldn’t you be better off checking with the Hall?” she asked doubtfully.

“You’d be forgiven for thinking so.” Arrense leaned forwards. “Bypass the Craft’s pens and ask around some of the small herders. They’ll be able to tell you what they’re getting for the beasts they sell into the Craft’s herds. You don’t have to spend hours at it. But I’d like to know what the going mark is, and I want your opinion of the stock.”

“All right.” Sarenya was mystified. She knew her Master had been looking into the quality of the herdbeasts they’d been getting from Kellad and Jessaf, but his implied insistence on covert information-gathering baffled her. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Don’t let it make you miss any of the racing,” he told her.

Despite herself, Sarenya couldn’t hide the little smile that crept to the corner of her mouth. “No chance of that.”

“I wish I’d thought to get you the last results bulletin for the Peninsula’s meetings,” Arrense said, shaking his head.

“I’m no good at reading the form anyway,” said Saren. “I’d rather just look at them in the parade ring. That’s always worked out best for me.”

“So I recall. Well.” Arrense flipped a mark at her. Sarenya caught it reflexively. “If you can double this with the wagermen, you can give it back to me later. If you can’t, I don’t want to hear about it.”

“You shouldn’t, Master,” Sarenya began.

“Faranth’s sake, Sarenya,” he said, with tolerant exasperation. “If I want to give my niece –” he looked at her pointedly as he said it, “– one measly mark to throw away on the runners, I sharding well will.” He pointed a commanding finger at her. “Put it away.”

Reluctantly, she obeyed. “Thank you, Master.” Then, in response to his glare, she corrected herself. “Thank you Arrense.”

By the time she left the cothold to see to Sejanth, the Weyr was half empty. The weyrling dragonets were sitting forlornly on their training grounds, excluded from the festive atmosphere, and some of the oldest and most senior dragons watched disdainfully from their weyr ledges, but most of Madellon seemed to have gone to Long Bay already.

D’feng was in the dragon infirmary. Sarenya checked her stride when she saw him. The bronze rider’s visits were usually kept brief to minimise the distress that he and his dragon caused each other when they were in physical proximity. But D’feng looked better than Sarenya had seen him. He was still bandaged, of course – the Healers had done wonders with his burns, but the healthy skin they had stretched and patched over his wounds was still desperately fragile – and the wasted muscle drooped from his sadly thin frame. But he was standing up out of his chair, leaning against his dragon’s head, with only one burly Weyr lad standing by to catch him should he falter, and Sejanth seemed more alert than usual.

“Bronze rider,” Sarenya greeted him respectfully as she approached Sejanth.

D’feng and Sejanth turned their heads as one, slowly. “Journeyman,” D’feng said raspily.

Sarenya steered her wheelbarrow to the edge of Sejanth’s wallow. She didn’t want to interrupt D’feng’s communion with his dragon, but she was conscious that time was passing and M’ric was waiting. “How are you both today?”

Sejanth responded by folding his decimated wing back slightly, giving her easier access to his chest. D’feng watched the movement with bloodshot eyes. “You’d know more about that than me.”

There was no rancour in his voice, only an immense weariness. Still, Sarenya felt guilty. “He’s good with our routine,” she said, “but he’s not been eating well for the last several sevendays. Do you mind if I…”

“Please,” D’feng said. He sat heavily back down in his chair, and his attendant fussed around him.

Sarenya went through her normal observations with a shade more decorum than usual, conscious of D’feng’s presence. Her usual familiarity with Sejanth might have offended his rider. The results were surprisingly cheering. Sejanth’s vitals were marginally more positive, his pulses and respiration and responses all just a touch more encouraging than she’d come to expect. “He’s doing well this morning,” she told D’feng. “I think having you here is good for him.”

“You’re very kind,” said D’feng. He stretched out a hand towards his dragon. His fingers just brushed Sejanth’s neck. “You’ve been more of a companion to him in these last months than I ever will be again.”

Sarenya wasn’t sure how to answer that. “It’s my privilege to treat him, bronze rider.”

D’feng didn’t reply. He just sat in his chair, staring at Sejanth with no expression at all on his face.

“Has something happened with D’feng’s recovery?” Sarenya asked Vhion quietly, a discreet distance from bronze and rider, once she’d tended to Sejanth.

“I don’t know,” Vhion said. But there was reservation in his voice. When he met Sarenya’s questioning look, his eyes were troubled, but he shook his head minutely. “Go and enjoy the Gather, journeyman. I’ll see you tonight.”

Vhion’s concern made Sarenya second-guess her own assessment as she returned to the cothold to get changed. Sejanth had looked better, hadn’t he? Or had she misjudged him? Had that been a sparkle of renewed health in his eyes, or merely a febrile glitter? Were his hearts beating more briskly out of excitement for seeing his rider, or in the laboured rhythm of strain?

It was still bothering her when she emerged from the cothold – bathed and dressed, and Sleek on her shoulder – to find Trebruth and M’ric waiting for her. Trebruth was spotless, his hide burnished nearly black, and the tooled straps of his best dress harness contrastingly pale where they’d been rigged with him. “Don’t you look fine,” Sarenya told him, touching the muzzle he lowered to her gingerly, lest she mar his finish.

M’ric stepped out from under his shadow, fumbling with an epaulette. “Scrubs up well, doesn’t he?”

Sarenya gave him an appraising look, and her concerns about Sejanth temporarily fled her mind. M’ric was as immaculate as his dragon in his dress blacks, the tall and handsome epitome of how a dragonrider should look. “He really does,” she said, holding her hand out for the epaulette that he was still struggling to attach. “Will I do?”

M’ric put it in her hand. “You’ll more than do. You look beautiful in that dress.”

He probably hadn’t noticed, because Sarenya so rarely had the opportunity to wear it, but it was her only dress. The one she’d bought not long after coming to Madellon hadn’t survived Hatching night. She put the thought out of her mind instinctively. “It’ll be no good for the evening, though,” she said, smoothing down the heathery grey linen. “That’s why I need to find something new.” She flattened out the epaulette and untwisted the strap on M’ric’s right shoulder where it was meant to sit. Then she frowned at the three gold bars on it. “I thought you were going to talk to Sh’zon about wearing Wingleader stripes.”

M’ric shrugged. “He’s had other things on his mind.”

It was a minor marvel that M’ric was wearing his stripes at all, Sarenya thought, as she threaded the strap through the epaulette, but the word had come down from the interim Weyrleaders that everyone attending the Long Bay Gather – rider, crafter and Weyrfolk – should wear identifying insignia at all times. Sarenya’s own shoulder knots clashed somewhat with her outfit – but then, the garish braid of indigo and yellow would have clashed with anything. She tugged M’ric’s more tasteful indigo-and-brown Wingsecond rank cords where they looped his shoulder. “There.”

“All in order?” he asked gravely.

“Apart from this,” she said, ruffling his unruly hair where it had grown long enough to touch his collar. “I don’t understand why you didn’t just go and see Z’fell. He cuts everyone’s hair.”

“Jyelth’s a bit sweet on Trebruth,” M’ric said, with the smallest shrug. “I’d sooner not give them the wrong impression, if I can help it.”

It took Sarenya a moment to make the connection. “Oh,” she said, and glanced away before he could notice the wince she could feel around her eyes. “Well, then, we really need to find you a barber at Long Bay.”

“We’ll do that first,” he promised, as Trebruth bent his elbow for them.

The watchdragon called out an enquiry as Trebruth carried them aloft. Sarenya felt and heard the brown respond, and then M’ric briefly squeezed her hand where it rested on his waist. It gave her an instant to brace herself before Trebruth took them between.

They emerged sooner than Sarenya had expected in a sky filled with dragons. She tightened her grip instinctively on M’ric’s belt, flinching at the density of wings in the airspace around them. They’d arrived amidst a blizzard of dragons, all of them waiting their turn to land and disembark their passengers. M’ric reached back to touch her leg reassuringly.

Long Bay unfolded beneath them. It was the richest Hold in Peninsula territory, and one of the largest on Pern. Sarenya had been there only once before, on a cattle drive in her apprentice days, and that had been early in the morning and from a far less advantageous viewpoint. From above, the proportions of the Hold proper were even more impressive. It was a great fortress built of the reddish, iron-rich local stone, with towers of different heights at each of its four corners and the enormous fireheight rising from the centre of the Hold was already crammed with dragons.

The fields were darkly golden, wheat and oats and barley all ripened by the fine weather, and the hay meadows too. From above Sarenya could see that the nearest had been cut recently to make way for the Gather. Everything would be coated in the fine powder of hay-dust. And out beyond the Gather square, and the rows upon rows of tents and stalls and marquees, and the great fire-pits already glowing with coals beneath their spitted wherries and herdbeasts, and the pens crowded with bawling stock, stretched the fine green turf of the racecourse.

They didn’t have to wait long for a landing slot. Trebruth half-folded his wings and dropped neatly out of the congestion, landing without a jolt in the precise centre of one of the crosses that had been painted on the paving stones. M’ric helped Sarenya down, mindful of the skirts that made dismounting a more delicate business than usual. Agusta and Sleek had already vanished into the cloud of fire-lizards over the Hold.

M’ric sent Trebruth off to find a space among the hundreds of dragons lining the cliffs, and then he and Sarenya joined the crowds making their way out to the Gather meadow. Most of the new arrivals wore Madellon colours, it being the most westerly Weyr. Most of the riders from Southern and the Peninsula would have arrived earlier in the day, although there were a few latecomers wearing forest green or grey-and-ochre, and even a fair sprinkling who sported the colours of the northern Weyrs: enticed south, no doubt, in search of some summer warmth. There was much shouting of halloos between riders of different Weyrs – M’ric himself acknowledged half a dozen greetings from Peninsula riders – but the tide of people towards the Gather meadow was relentless and left little opportunity to stop and talk.

There was an older Madellon Wingsecond standing at one of the gates into the Gather meadow. He nodded to M’ric as they approached. “Afternoon, J’zen,” M’ric greeted him. “All quiet so far?”

“So far,” the other brown rider replied. “Hoping it’ll stay that way. Most of Southern’s been and gone.”

“That sounds encouraging.”

“I wouldn’t let your guard down too much,” J’zen cautioned. “There are still a few of them around. Enjoy the Gather.”

“Did you want to go straight to the racecourse, Saren?” M’ric asked, as they filed through the gate.

Sarenya looked up at the sun, not far past its midday zenith. “They won’t be racing yet. Let’s do some exploring.”

It was an enormous, elaborate fair. The main square alone was bigger than most of the Gathers Sarenya had ever visited, but even it couldn’t accommodate everything. Several smaller squares branched off from it, each with its own booths and tents, its own roasting pits and Harper platforms. Strings of bunting swooped from poles overhead, crisscrossing the walkways, and the stout canvas stalls had been dyed in festive colours. Signboards at every juncture pointed the way towards the major features – the Hold, the racecourse, the dancing square, the wagermen’s tents – and enterprising stallholders had pinned up their own hand-crafted notices underneath the signs, coaxing visitors to patronise this booth or that. Jugglers and stilt-walkers made their way through the crowds, and men with painted faces prompted cries of delight as they pulled mark bits from behind children’s ears and then made them disappear again. The smells of cooking food were everywhere, from the savoury promise of whole hoglets turning on spits to the pungent scent of spiced cheese pastries and the ubiquitous sickly-sweetness of berry pies pulled hot from the oven.

“You’re sure there’s nothing you want to see while we’re here?” Sarenya asked, as they paused in front of a signboard. “The footraces? The prize fights?” She looked down the board. “The wher pits?”

M’ric frowned. “Can’t think of many things I’d like less.”

That was a relief to Sarenya. Wher-fighting wasn’t to her taste, either. “Let’s go and find you that haircut, then.”

The number of riders thinned out the farther they went. Sarenya supposed that, even if every dragonrider on the southern continent was here, eight hundred or so individuals would still make up only a small fraction of the throng. M’ric always looked calm, but after they’d walked one whole side of the main square and only seen two riders with Southern rank-knots, Sarenya thought he’d relaxed entirely.

They found a barber down one of the quieter rows, his shingle painted with the shears-and-comb symbol of his trade. M’ric paid an eighth for the haircut he so badly needed, and emerged looking all the better for the trim. At a Smithcraft stall not much farther along, Sarenya bought a new hoof-knife, and paid to have her name etched onto it – good hoof-knives having the habit of going missing with alarming regularity in the cothold. While they waited, M’ric admired an exquisitely-decorated short sword in a silver-chased scabbard that the shy Smith behind the booth admitted was for display only and not for sale.

M’ric stopped at a Tannercraft stall to buy gloves, black and completely plain, but made of expensive kidhide that snugged to his fingers like a second skin. Sarenya asked him why he spent his own money on something he could have requisitioned from the lower caverns. M’ric had an answer, as he always did. “Madellon’s Tanner doesn’t make anything as fine as these,” he said. “He’s more of a harness-man. It’s nearly impossible to take notes in fur-lined gloves.”

The crafters manning a busy Woodcraft stall were baking scrolls of klahbark in a cast iron roaster, to arresting effect. The aroma of roasting klah had drawn an avid crowd of customers. Sarenya and M’ric joined the queue to have a Master customise them a blend, selecting from different varieties of bark from all over the continent, and different roasts, from the spiciest light toasts to the smoky-darks. Sarenya, accustomed to the formidable black brews of the Beastcraft hearth, chose a barely roasted variety, almost tea-like in its delicacy. M’ric opted for a more robust blend of Peninsula klahs. Once the Master Woodcrafter had measured their blends, the long shreds of bark were turned over to an industrious row of apprentices to be ground, graded, poured into small sacks, and sealed with wax and the Master’s own personal seal.

They stopped at a firepit for lunch – hot seasoned wherry and fried tuber wrapped in soft and floury flatbread – and ate standing close to a Harper platform featuring two moderately talented gitar players and an excellent tenor. Sarenya would have liked to stay longer, but she was too aware of the sun creeping towards the west and the many things she still had to do before the racing began.

“New dress first,” she told M’ric, “and then I need to go and look at the stock. You’re sure there’s nothing you’d rather be doing?”

“Nothing in the world,” he assured her.

Sarenya moved quickly down the nearest line of booths, scanning the rails for likely candidates. The sheer choice was overwhelming. M’ric had taken her to a couple of modest Gathers earlier in the Turn, but each of those had boasted perhaps three or four stalls selling clothes, precious few pieces sporting a Tailor-stamp, and all of those prohibitively expensive. Here, there were three Tailorcraft stalls on the one row alone, and the competition seemed to have driven the price down to a level Sarenya could very nearly afford.

She could have spent the whole afternoon browsing for just the right thing, but the prospect of missing the racing was unthinkable – and besides, after the first half-dozen stalls, M’ric had begun to look glazed and sleepy. After the third time he replied to her request for an opinion with, “Uh huh, that’s nice,” Sarenya decided that she’d probably imposed on his forbearance long enough.

“I’m just going to look in a few more booths,” she told him. “Then we’ll do something else.”

“Don’t rush on my account,” he said good-naturedly.

He’d hardly said it when a rider walking by stopped and hailed him. “M’ric!”

M’ric seemed to wake from his shopping-induced torpor. “S’rebren,” he exclaimed, clasping wrists with the other man.

“Shards, I almost didn’t recognise you!” The green rider – a Peninsula man, by his insignia – pumped M’ric’s arm genially. “You’re looking well. Madellon Weyr must be agreeing with you.”

“Nothing to complain about,” M’ric replied. “Krodith’s well, and F’rint?”

“She’s well as a wherry, and F’rint’s as he always is.” S’rebren looked at Sarenya. “And who’s this?”

“This is Sarenya, a journeyman of the Madellon Beastcraft,” M’ric introduced her. “Saren, this is S’rebren, Krodith’s rider.”

Sarenya gripped the green rider’s wrist. “It’s nice to meet you, S’rebren.”

“S’rebren and I go back a long way,” M’ric explained.

“Oh, a long way,” said S’rebren, giving Sarenya a wink. “Not all the way, but far enough.”

Sarenya wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but she laughed politely anyway. M’ric looked faintly pained. Perhaps it was something embarrassing? “Why don’t you keep looking for that dress while S’rebren and I catch up?”

“All right,” Sarenya said. “I’ll be either here or at that stall over there.”

She left the two riders talking and resumed hunting through the clothes racks in earnest, relieved that M’ric had something more interesting to do than trail after her.

Two stalls down, at a booth presided over by a smiling, round-figured lady Tailor, Sarenya found what she was looking for: rich blue velvet, long enough for the evening but short enough to be swingy, not cut too generously. “How much for this one?” she asked the stallholder, who’d drifted closer.

The Tailor looked at her speculatively. “Well, why don’t you see how it looks on you first before we talk about the marks?”

“Oh, dear,” said Sarenya. “That sounds expensive.”

The Tailor laughed and ushered Sarenya behind a canvas screen. “Try it on, try it on!”

She did, stepping out of her linen dress and slipping the lovely blue velvet on over her head, noticing as she did the two sigils stamped on the lining: Tailor and Weaver. “Shards,” she murmured, dismayed, “this is going to cost a fortune.”

But it was perfect. It could have been made with her in mind: snug on the bust, where she didn’t need extra room; fuller in the skirt than she’d thought, rippling in satisfyingly soft and weighty folds. The only detailing was a silver tracery on the ends of the sash that took it in at the waist: it was fine enough to need no extra embellishment. A good thing, too, Saren thought wryly: with two Hall endorsements, it would be expensive enough already. She knew she should take it back and find something less costly…but there was no harm in letting M’ric see her in it first, was there?

“Let’s see you,” said the Tailor, and then exclaimed, “Well, if that gown couldn’t have been made with you in mind! Come, come, take a look at yourself!”

“It is gorgeous,” Sarenya admitted, examining herself in the stall’s half-length looking-glass. She briefly considered trying to point out some flaw in the fabric, some blemish she could use as leverage to bargain the price down, but there just wasn’t one. “But I don’t think I can afford it.”

“Well, why don’t we talk about that? I won’t lie; it’s not a cheap piece, what with being Master-woven and Master-sewn; you did see the stamps, hmm?”

“I did, and now I’m sure I can’t afford it.” Sarenya paused, and asked resignedly, “How much?”

“Six marks. And a half. But…you’re a fellow Craftswoman, so I’ll take the half off…and another quarter off because I don’t believe I’d ever see it look so well on anyone else.”

“Five and three-quarters.” It was more than Sarenya’s quarterly pay. She sighed, fingering the soft pile of the velvet regretfully. “It’s not going to fit every woman,” she pointed out. “I’m smaller on the bust than most, and it’s snug on me; anyone with a halfway decent bosom won’t get into it.”

The Tailor smiled broadly, clearly not offended by the half-hearted attempt to bargain her down. “Well, you might be right, journeyman,” she said, “but it’s really a matter of what it’s worth to you isn’t it?”

“I could go to three and a half marks,” Sarenya said dubiously.

“Five and a quarter. I can’t say fairer than that.”

Sarenya agonised over it. If she had a good afternoon on the runners she could make the marks back comfortably. On the other hand, she could just as easily lose every last fraction she had. “You wouldn’t consider putting it by for me until the end of the day?”

The Tailor sucked her teeth. “I could,” she said, at length, “but I’d need you to put down a deposit on it. A mark. Non-returnable.”

Sarenya shook her head. “I can’t risk a mark. I’m sorry. It really is lovely.”

She started to turn away, to go back behind the canvas screen to change out of the beautiful velvet, and then the Tailor journeyman suddenly looked behind her and clapped her hands together delightedly. “Brown rider!”

M’ric had appeared from the throng. “Hello, Trinsy,” he greeted her warmly. “You’ve been looking after Saren?”

The Tailor looked from him to Sarenya then back again. “You’re with M’ric? Well, why didn’t you say so! Oh, give him a twirl!”

Sarenya sighed but complied. The velvet swirled as she moved. “It’s out of my price range,” she told M’ric wistfully.

M’ric was already smiling as she completed her turn for him. “You have no idea how much trouble that dress is going to get you into tonight.”

“I can’t afford it,” she told him softly. “I have four and a few bits in my purse, and the mark Arrense gave me to wager. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have bought that hoof-knife, but…”

“Come on, Trinsy,” M’ric said, turning his smile on the Tailor. “Four and a half.”

“M’ric!” Sarenya hissed.

“Well…perhaps…” Then Trinsy let out a great exaggerated breath. “Since it’s you, M’ric…four and a half.”

Sarenya protested, “I don’t have four and a half!”

M’ric put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a fistful of coins. “Have you got the half?”

“Yes…but…”

He took her wrist, turned her hand over, and counted marks into her palm. “Now you have four and a half.”

“I can’t take these, M’ric,” she objected, trying to give them back.

Firmly, M’ric closed her fingers over the money. “Shush. I told you I wanted to buy you a dress. Just…on two conditions.”

“I can’t believe you,” she said. “What conditions?”

“You have to help me keep Sh’zon off the sherry. You remind him, tonight, that nothing good ever came of him drinking dessert wine.”

Sarenya gave him an incredulous look. “Sh’zon likes sherry?”

“It doesn’t agree with him,” said M’ric. “And he needs to keep his wits about him. So you tell him. He never pays any attention to me when I warn him about his drinking, but you, in that dress…he’ll pay attention to you!”

“And what’s the other condition?”

“That you don’t dance with anyone else tonight. You’ll get into far too much trouble!”

Sarenya looked at him, then looked at the maternally-beaming Trinsy. “Am I the only one who just doesn’t understand dragonriders?”

Trinsy laughed throatily. “No, my dear, you’re not the only one. But you’ll want to keep hold of this one nonetheless, I think.”

Saren shook her head, reaching into her purse for the last half mark to make up the price. “I know,” she said, counting out the marks. Hers was a treemark, a Woodcraft coin; M’ric’s were Beastcraft bullmarks. “But I can’t tell him that, or he’ll never let me forget it.” She put the last mark in Trinsy’s hand. “Thank you, journeyman.”

“Well, I’ll not say I’ve made much margin on it, but it’s my pleasure to see you smiling so, and this one too.” Trinsy gave M’ric’s arm a familiar squeeze. “Will you be wearing it now?”

“I’ll change back,” Saren said. “It’s too fine for an afternoon tramping around the racecourse.”

“That reminds me,” said M’ric. “There’s a runner called Wonder Dream in the first race. S’rebren reckoned it’s got a chance.”

“He follows the runners?” Sarenya asked.

“All over Pern,” M’ric agreed. “Anyway, I won’t remember the name, so you’d better. Wonder Dream.”

“All right,” she said. “But I reserve the right not to back it if it’s got three legs!”

Saren felt an odd mixture of elation and discomfiture as she retreated behind the screen once more to wriggle out of the fabulous velvet dress and back into her lightweight linen. Elation because the dress was exquisite; discomfiture because four marks was an enormous amount of money. She didn’t know exactly what a Madellon Wingsecond made in hard marks, but she was willing to bet that M’ric’s quarterly stipend wasn’t very much more than the sum he’d just spent on her. It wasn’t that she had any concerns about what M’ric might expect in return; she just felt uneasy having that sort of money lavished on her. Arrense’s mark had been bad enough. She’d always made enough on her own to spend on occasional indulgences without needing to rely on a Master or a boyfriend, however well-meaning. And yet rebuffing either gift could only have caused offence. She sighed. Perhaps she just needed to learn to accept gifts more gracefully.

When she stepped back out from behind the screen, the velvet dress folded carefully in her bag, M’ric had disappeared again. Sarenya scanned the crowd. The Gather was even busier now than it had been when they’d arrived. “Where are you, M’ric?” she muttered to herself, wishing Sleek hadn’t flown off. There was no way her blue would heed a recall with so many other fire-lizards diverting his attention.

A green rider wearing Madellon colours whom she vaguely recognised was browsing the neighbouring stall, and Sarenya had started to think about approaching her to get a message through to Trebruth when M’ric suddenly appeared out of the crowd. “How are you doing?”

“There you are,” Sarenya said, relieved. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Sorry about that,” he apologised. “I keep bumping into people I know. Most of the Peninsula is here.”

“You don’t want to say good-bye to journeyman – what was it, Trinsy – before we go?” She nodded at the Tailor, who was working a familiar-sounding patter on a couple of Hold girls.

M’ric hesitated. “She looks like she has her hands full. You’re done, then? With clothes?”

“I’m done,” she said firmly. “I don’t think I’ll be buying another dress ever again.” She slipped her arm through his. “Thank you, M’ric. You really shouldn’t have spent that much on me, but at least I won’t embarrass you tonight.”

He looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“If I’d turned up wearing this to an evening dance at a Hold like this,” Sarenya said, indicating her linen dress, “I’d have been laughed all the way back to the Weyr.”

“Don’t be daft,” he said. “You look lovely.”

“Come on,” Sarenya said. “I need to have a quick look at the stock for my Master, and then we’ll head over to the racecourse.”

The beast pens covered a huge area beyond the Gather meadow proper. The closest, permanent paddocks were ringed with dry-stone walls; those slightly farther out were post-and-rail; and farther even than those the most modest corrals were enclosed with not much more than poles and baling twine. The grassy surface of the walkways that criss-crossed the maze of pens had already been worn away by the movement of hundreds of people and thousands of animals, and a cloud of fine, powdery dust hung almost motionless over the whole area.

Sarenya led M’ric briskly past the first few enclosures, looking at the animals standing within only in passing. “These are the show beasts,” she told him as they passed. “Top-class livestock. These are the ones who’ll be winning prizes in the show ring tomorrow.”

“Breeding stock?” M’ric asked.

“Yes. There are classes for castrates, too, but the real money’s in the prime sires. If you have a bull or a ram who’s won prizes at a few big Gathers, you can charge top mark for covers. They exhibit them out here in the front paddocks so all the local herders can get a close look. Journeyman.” She said the last in response to the passing Beastcrafter who’d spotted her shoulder-knot and nodded at her politely. “But Arrense wanted me to look at the herds that are here to be sold. We have to go a bit farther afield for those.”

Beyond the big public paddocks, the paths between the fences became narrower and dustier, and busy with herders and herders’ boys hauling water to their charges. M’ric got a few sideways looks – it wasn’t a natural place for a dragonrider to be – but Sarenya’s Beastcraft insignia let them pass without challenge.

“This is more the thing,” she said, when they reached the smaller pens of fifteen or twenty herdbeasts. She slowed her pace, scrutinising the animals they passed until she identified a likely-looking herd. She stopped by a pen containing a couple of dozen Keroon Red bullocks. “What do you think, M’ric? Would Trebruth fancy one of those for his dinner?”

He grinned. “He says yes, please. They’re much better than what we’re getting at Madellon, aren’t they?”

“Oh, yes,” Sarenya agreed. “Madellon territory has had a terrible spring for livestock. Kellad’s herds are in a really sorry state. These are better than you’d expect in a proper tithe drive, but not by that much.” The steers’ owner, a weathered and wrinkled little herder, was leaning on the fence; she caught his eye, and he limped over. “You have some nice beef here.”

“Aye, as I do,” said the herdsman. He squinted at Sarenya, taking in her shoulder-knot, and then looked at M’ric. “Ye buyin’ fur a dragin?”

“How much?” Sarenya asked.

“Fur one? Ain’t wort to have lessen id git a head fur all. Stampers, thessuns. Too gud fur dragins.”

“How much for all of them?”

The herder gave her a hard look. “Sevner-half a bist.”

“Do you mind if I take a look?”

“Git ye’s dress dusty.”

Sarenya shrugged. The herdsman took a rope halter from the fence and ambled over to the nearest bullock. He returned with the herdbeast following docilely behind him, and Saren ducked under the fence to inspect it.

It was a well-conformed steer: not too long in the neck, not too short in the body; well-fleshed, but not over-fat. Its hide bore a distinctive shiny streak down the spine, and the skin was wrinkled over its neck, both good indicators of particularly tender meat. Its hide was clean and relatively unscarred, and the inside of its left ear had been tattooed with the mark of the Long Bay satellite holding it had come from, green against the pink skin. “Six and a half,” she said as she completed her examination.

“Sevner-quarter,” the herdsman countered.

“Six and three-parts.”

“Sevner.”

“You want seven for this beast?” Sarenya asked, projecting scepticism.

The herder’s eyes narrowed, if possible, still further. “Ye know dim well t’will cost ye’s draginman eight-half on the morn wit a Beastcraft mark in the ear.”

Sarenya ducked back under the fence. “You’re right, you know,” she said. “It is too good for dragons. Thank you for showing me your steer.”

She walked on rapidly from the paddock. M’ric caught her up in a stride or two. “What was that about?” he asked. “For a moment there I thought you were going to commit me to buying Trebruth a seven-mark herdbeast!”

“If I’m worth four, then he has to be good for at least twice that,” Sarenya replied. Then, when they’d moved far enough on from the paddock, she stopped. “I don’t understand why he’d have let it go for seven marks. If the Beastcraft is marking up prime steers to eight and a half, they should be paying seven and a half or seven and three-quarters. Seven’s too low for an animal of that quality.” She thought about it, then reasoned aloud, “Unless there’s something wrong with that herd that I didn’t pick up. I didn’t look that closely.”

“Do you want to go back?” M’ric asked.

“No. I think I’d like to look at some other stock, though.”

They stopped twice more, both times at paddocks with smallish herds of Keroon beef cattle. The second herder wanted a little more for his steers, the third a little less, but the price they tried to negotiate was broadly the same as the first herdsman had asked.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Sarenya said, as they walked back towards the Gather meadow. “These herders should be holding out for more marks than they say they are.”

“If the Beastcraft’s buying at seven and selling at eight and a half, where are they adding value?” M’ric asked.

Sarenya shrugged. “A Beastcraft tattoo on the ear certifies that the animal’s disease-free. Any beast the Craft buys will be monitored for a sevenday to make sure of it. And the Hall only buys prime stock. Some Holds put a lot of importance on the quality of the beef they buy in.” They were passing a Beastcraft paddock as she spoke, signified by the white and yellow pennant, and she stopped to point at a Keroon bullock grazing near the fence as they passed. “This one, for example. It’s been bought by the Beastcraft. See the two marks on the left ear? The bull head, the Beastcraft mark, is fresh, and the other one…”

“What about the other one?” M’ric asked, when she broke off.

Sarenya leaned over the fence to get a view at the steer’s right ear. “That’s odd.”

“What is?”

“This steer’s marked as originating from Birndes Hold. But the transit tattoos show that it’s come here via Gartner Hold.”

“Gartner?” M’ric asked. “In the mountains? I wouldn’t have thought that’s herdbeast country.”

“It isn’t,” said Sarenya. “Not as a point of origin, anyway. The Gartner Pass is where animals are driven through the mountains from Madellon to Peninsula territory, or vice versa. There are corrals there, but no grazing.”

M’ric looked at her inquiringly. “So what’s the significance of this one having a Gartner tattoo?”

“It’s a transit tat. It means this animal passed through Gartner on its way here from Birndes. Except that doesn’t make any sense. You’d have to detour to make that journey.” Sarenya frowned, peering closely at the bullock’s flank, where a stippled pattern of scars showed on the reddish hide. “And that’s the first case of river itch I’ve seen in a Peninsula bullock today. Unless it’s…”

“Not a Peninsula bullock?” M’ric supplied.

Sarenya shook her head. “But that would mean those tattoos have been forged, and that’s not possible. The Beastcraft wouldn’t have bought in an animal with dubious provenance. It’s not worth the damage to the Hall’s reputation if a dodgy steer got a Craft tattoo.”

Then there came a great fanfare of trumpets from the direction of the racecourse. Torn, Sarenya threw one last hard look at the obliviously-grazing herdbeast, trying to puzzle it out. Then she shook her head. “My Master seemed to think something strange was going on. Maybe it’ll make some sense to him. Come on, M’ric; let’s go racing.”

Back in the Gather meadow, the crowds were heading towards the racecourse with purpose. The sun had dipped slightly, less fierce in its glare, and the elite racing runners would be being led out from their temporary stables for the Gather-goers to see. The thought made Sarenya quicken her pace with anticipation.

One final stall caught her eye as they joined the throng heading towards the racecourse. The Blue Shale Beastcraft had a booth on the corner near one of the breaks in the fence allowing access through to the racing flats. The familiar combination of colours made Sarenya pause, and when she did, M’ric glanced across and straightaway discerned the reason. “Did you want to go and look?”

“I think that’s my old apprentice,” Sarenya said. “I should go and say hello.”

The young man sitting behind the empty counter had shot up a couple more inches in the Turn since Sarenya had last seen him, though not much else had changed. The braid of a junior journeyman was a new adornment on his left shoulder; the unusually alert green fire-lizard an old one on the other. His hair still stuck up at the crown of his head, impervious to brush, comb, or licked hand, as it had when he’d been given to Sarenya to mentor. She waited for a gap in the stream of people, then crossed quickly to the edge of the walkway. “I said you’d make journeyman before your twenty-first, Fajon.”

The Beastcraft journeyman had barely raised his eyes to her face before he broke out in a grin. “Journeyman Saren!” He jumped up from his stool, almost dislodging his fire-lizard in his haste to grasp Sarenya’s proffered wrist. He had big, powerful hands, and knew it; he’d long since learned to be gentle. “I didn’t think to see you here!”

“When did you walk?” Saren asked, warmly returning the grip. Fajon had always been the most conscientious of the apprentices at Blue Shale, and she was pleased that he’d done so well. “I take it you’ve not been reassigned yet?”

“It’s been about six sevendays,” said Fajon. “I’m still reporting to Master Kaddyston until the new apprentice arrives, and then I’m off to Judzen Hold for two Turns. And you, you’re still at the Weyr? You’re well? Tarnish and Sleek too?”

Sarenya wished he hadn’t asked after her fire-lizards. She might in good conscience have glossed over the tragedy and trauma of her time at Madellon, but Fajon’s green had come from the same clutch as her boys, and she didn’t like to lie about them. “Tarnish had an accident,” she said, keeping her voice regretful but neutral, not wanting to allude to the circumstances of her bronze lizard’s demise. “So it’s just Sleek now.”

“Oh,” Fajon said. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” He darted a glance at Sarenya’s bare right shoulder, looking very much like he was trying to think of the most polite way to ask for more details.

Fortunately Sarenya wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. M’ric eased closer, making a point of examining Fajon’s stock. “These are all from Blue Shale, then?”

“My friend M’ric,” Sarenya introduced him.

“They are indeed, br- that is, Wingsecond,” Fajon said, hastily correcting himself when he identified M’ric’s insignia. “Every one good Blue Shale stock, even the green-laid, and our best greens do sometimes lay blues and even browns, you know.”

M’ric looked amused by the assertion. “I have no doubt of that whatsoever,” he said, smiling. “I take it the bigger ones come from queen clutches?”

“Yes, sir, and all our queen-laid eggs are graded and guaranteed.” Fajon kept glancing at Sarenya as he ran through his proposition, as if embarrassed to be pitching in front of her. “The difference back if your fire-lizard hatches out a lesser colour than you paid for.”

“You can tell with that much accuracy?” M’ric asked, turning to Sarenya.

“Most of the time,” she said. “Weight, texture, colour; you can usually made an educated guess.” She looked at the long troughs that lined the back of Fajon’s booth, warmed from below by oil lamps. The eggs were well buried, each visible only as a gentle rise in the sand. The tariff had been painted on a blackboard in jaunty dragon colours, ranging from eight and a half marks for a green-laid egg to fifteen for a guaranteed bronze. “The prices seem steep,” she observed.

Fajon spread his big hands. “It’s been a bad Turn for snake-damage,” he said. “We’re setting traps twice a day around the nests, but they can burrow under and hollow out a clutch without ever touching the snares.”

“Why not bring the whole clutch in for safekeeping?” M’ric asked.

Sarenya shook her head, but let Fajon explain. “We can take a few eggs without them noticing – one in ten, sometimes one in eight – but if we remove too many the fair abandons the nest site,” he said. “Then, come next season, who knows where the queen will clutch.”

“That’s what did for Peninsula’s fire-lizard population,” Sarenya said. “Over-zealous harvesting. Seventy Turns ago you could buy an egg for two or three marks, but the beaches were stripped, the wild queens couldn’t build up fairs big enough to defend themselves, they became prey to wherries, and they died out.” She looked sidelong at M’ric. “Which brings us back to the question of how you got your hands on a Northern queen egg before you were even Searched.”

“You have a queen?” Fajon asked, with candid envy, and a little deflation that M’ric evidently wasn’t going to be a customer.

“It’s a long story,” M’ric said. He looked up at the sun. “Saren, didn’t you want to get over to the racecourse?”

“Shards, yes.” Sarenya gripped Fajon’s wrist again. “Really good to see you, journeyman, and please pass on my best to Master Kaddyston.”

“I will, journeyman Saren,” Fajon said, returning the gesture. “Are you wagering? I’ve heard that Boll River has a good chance in the first.”

Sarenya promised to look at the runnerbeast even as she let M’ric take her arm and deftly manoeuvre them back into the fast-moving flow of traffic.

It was really crowded now, and as they neared the boundary of the track the booming voices of the strong-lunged race callers thundered across the mob. “This way holdfolk, this way craftfolk, this way Weyrfolk, for the fastest racing runners you’ll see this side of the southern ocean and the best view of the finest racetrack on all of Pern, and that’s a guarantee. Get your wagers on for the first race, don’t be shy, this way holdfolk, this way craftfolk, this way Weyrfolk…”

They went through the gate into the racecourse. The runners for the first race were already being led around the parade ring, their jockeys’ brightly-coloured caps bobbing up and down beyond the obscuring crush of bodies. The familiar pungent whiff of liniment that came floating through the warm air evoked an instant memory of the runner races Sarenya had attended as a child, the modest local meetings held on Lanen Hold’s racing flats. It had been a treat then, and it still was. Looking at steers was work: racing runners were pleasure.

Sarenya scanned the enclosure, then pointed to a spot on the top terrace, overlooking the railed parade ring and with a good view of the wagermen’s pitches. “Let’s go up there.”

“So is this the sort of racing when they have to jump over things?” M’ric asked as they made their way through the crush.

“They only do that in the winter,” Sarenya replied, “when the ground’s softer. Some people would have you believe that it’s the only proper racing.” She smiled, thinking of some of the passionately-argued positions she’d heard for jump versus flat racing, and vice versa, in the Beastcraft cothold. “But these races will all be on the flat, over distances of between five and twelve furlongs.”

“How many dragonlengths in a furlong?”

“About twenty-two.” Sarenya made the calculation in her head. “So between 110 and 270 dragonlengths.” She pointed down at the runners circling the parade ring. “These look like sprinters, so they probably won’t be running over more than six furlongs.”

She would have liked to get closer, to better appraise the runners’ physiques, but the sunshine glowed on their coats as they walked around the cinder path in the ring. “The one your apprentice mentioned is number two,” said M’ric, looking from the parade to the wagermen’s boards and back again. “Boll River.”

Sarenya looked at the number-two runner: a lean bay with an off-centre blaze, jogging nervously beneath his rider. “I don’t like him over the distance,” she said critically. “Too rangy. And he’s sweating up between his back legs. I prefer the chestnut, number three. Or number eleven, the big grey there.”

M’ric looked back at the board while Sarenya continued to study the parading runnerbeasts. “Number three is called Southstar, and number eleven is Wonder Dream.”

“Wonder Dream?” Sarenya looked at the board to confirm. “That’s the one your green rider friend tipped, wasn’t it?”

“Was it?” M’ric asked. Then he cocked his head slightly. “That’s right, it was.”

“The market doesn’t have much confidence in him,” Sarenya said, following the bunchy dapple-grey with her eyes. “He’s sixteen-to-one with most of the wagermen.”

“I like those odds,” M’ric said, grinning.

“I don’t,” Sarenya said. “These wagermen know more about the form than I do. They wouldn’t have him at that price if they thought he was going to win. Southstar’s nine-to-two. That’s a bit more feasible.”

“S’rebren’s pretty good at picking runners,” said M’ric.

“All right,” Sarenya said, shaking her head. “Let’s go and see what odds we can get.”

Most of the wagermen displayed the blue and brown crest of Long Bay Hold at the top of their odds-boards, but a few pitches flew Craft colours. Sarenya led M’ric towards the wagerman in Beastcraft yellow. “Best odds on number three, journeyman?”

The Beastcraft wagerman acknowledged Sarenya’s shoulder-knot with a nod. “It’s nine-to-two across the board, journeyman, but I can go to fives”

“Half to win,” Sarenya told him, extending a woodmark.

The wagerman took the coin, wrote the odds and stake on a slip of hide, then stamped it with the Beastcraft’s wagermark. “Good fortune, journeyman,” he said, handing Sarenya the slip and a Beastcraft half-bullmark. “Yes, Wingsecond?”

“Wonder Dream,” said M’ric. “Two marks to win.”

“Shells, M’ric,” Sarenya said incredulously. “At least put it on each way!”

“Where’s the fun in that?” he asked, handing over two treemarks.

“You’ve heard a whisper, eh?” the wagerman asked, punching M’ric’s betting slip.

“I just liked its colours,” M’ric said, shrugging.

“Well, good fortune.” The wagerman turned to his next customer. “Yes, sir?”

As they walked away, Sarenya glanced back at the Beastcraft betting pitch. The wagerman had already wiped the odds for Wonder Dream off the board, and was replacing them with the notation 14/1. “See what you’ve done? Now everyone’s going to start backing that colt.”

“If it wins, they’ll have me to thank!”

They pushed their way through the crowds. The last few runners were cantering down to the start, three-quarters of a mile from the viewing terraces. Wonder Dream, the only grey runner in the race, was already there, standing out amongst his bay and chestnut rivals.

Sarenya felt the familiar excitement start roiling about in her stomach, the nervous flutters that only having money riding on an elite runner race could provoke. She gripped the white running-rail, leaning over to watch as the fourteen runnerbeasts came into line down at the start. “I can’t believe you put two marks on that runner,” she fretted.

“Don’t worry,” M’ric told her. “I have a good feeling about it.”

“I just don’t want you losing your shirt on the first race!”

M’ric grinned, showing all his teeth. “Shirts are overrated,” he told her, and with a great roar from the crowd, the tapes went up.

Chapter thirty-six: T’kamen

I was dragonspawn: born in the Hold but of the Weyr. I didn’t know my father. My stepfather didn’t want to know me. Then I made the mistake of Impressing a brown dragon, so no Tactical rider would want me for a tail, but a green-laid brown dragon, so nor would anyone from Strategic. I didn’t belong anywhere. I wasn’t wanted anywhere. I always fell between one thing and another, neither fish nor fowl, never fitting in, an outsider to everyone.

No one ever stood up for me, took my side, had my back.

Not before him.

26.06.02 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

“That could be a bronze,” said A’dry, leaning over the low barrier that separated the bottom tier from the Hatching sands. “Faranth, T’kamen, it really could. Just look at the size of it!”

T’kamen studied the egg that Levierth had just produced: the ninth of her clutch so far. She was licking it carefully clean of sand and fluid with long, patient sweeps of her tongue, revealing the markings on the rather elongated shell. The most pointed end of the egg sported a cluster of vivid blue-green spots beneath the faint iridescence. “I don’t know,” he said. “Once it’s rounded itself out again, I don’t think it’ll be much bigger than those two with the yellow speckles.”

A’dry didn’t look convinced. “But the markings, those spots… Monbeth Hatched from an egg just like that.”

T’kamen thought back to Epherineth’s hatching. He had come from a perfectly nondescript egg, unmarked and unremarked. “I don’t think spots mean anything.”

A’dry sat down. “I hope you’re right,” he said mournfully. “Plumiath already has a strike against him. One more bronze, and his queen-chasing days will be over.”

T’kamen didn’t feel particularly sympathetic towards him, given his own dragon’s exclusion from mating flights, but it might have been crass for him to say so. Instead, he asked, “This is your second clutch, then?”

“Third,” said A’dry, a hint of smugness overriding his anxiety for a moment. “And when you think how free Levierth is with her favours, that counts for a lot. Half the browns in the Weyr have had her at some point, but Plumiath’s the only one who’s caught her three times.” He squinted anxiously at the new egg. “I’m going to go and ask Lirelle what she thinks. She had a feeling last time Levierth threw a bronze. I just hope to Faranth she doesn’t have it again.”

As A’dry hurried off around the tiers, T’kamen reflected that diversity in the sires of Levierth’s clutches could only be a good thing. Geninth’s influence on Madellon’s bloodlines was plain to see in the large number of dragons with his distinctive short-winged frame. In the three Falls T’kamen had now flown with the Seventh, he’d begun to recognise how any given fighting dragon’s conformation was the chief element that defined his place in the Wings. The dragons that chased tricky clumps and stray filaments were clearly the most manoeuvrable, but their straight, narrow wings made them slow in a straight line, and their size contributed to their rather limited flaming-range. The blues that anchored the fighting formations were noticeably longer in the leading edges and deeper in the wingsail, giving them a straight-line speed advantage at the cost of some agility. T’kamen was getting to know Madellon’s dragons well enough to identify many of them on sight, and the pattern that had emerged from his observations troubled him. Geninth’s domination of Donauth’s flights had resulted in Wings full of small dragons who could turn well and stay out of trouble, but whose puny flame limited their effectiveness. The great majority of the more versatile anchor dragons were Levierth’s offspring, not Donauth’s. Clearly, a small surface area was still the most desirable characteristic in any dragon, but T’kamen thought that the obsession with reducing size at the expense of other qualities was hampering Madellon’s ability to protect its lands.

He shifted on the hard stone bench of the tier, surveying the Hatching ground. It surprised him that so few people had come in to watch Levierth’s clutching on a Thread-free restday. Lirelle was there, of course; A’dry had a personal investment as the rider of the clutch’s sire; and R’lony was scrutinising the eggs several rows up from where T’kamen sat. A handful of candidates were the only other watchers. Levierth herself clearly wasn’t bothered by the audience – in that, she behaved quite differently to Shimpath and Cherganth, both of whom had been fiercely protective of their privacy when laying. Perhaps the novelty had simply worn off, clutches being so frequent mid-Pass.

The thought made T’kamen look over at the corner of the sands where, behind a discreetly positioned screen, eight more eggs were hardening in the heat. They were clustered in two groups, one of five and the other three. All were much smaller than the smallest Levierth had yet produced. That stood to reason. A green dragon couldn’t be expected to produce eggs as large as those of a queen twice her length and many times her weight. T’kamen was fascinated by the modest clutch – two clutches, he supposed, since they were the product of two different greens, laid almost a sevenday apart. It still jarred him to think that some green dragons could be fertile, but apart from their size – and the absence of a protective mother watching over them – the green-laid eggs looked healthy enough to him.

T’kamen got up from his place and climbed half a dozen levels to where R’lony sat. The Marshal acknowledged his presence with a flick of pale blue eyes as T’kamen sat down beside him. “Something I can do for you, bronze rider?”

“I was wondering what happens with the green eggs,” he said. “Does a queen have to look after them?”

R’lony made a short, disparaging sound. “The queens won’t have anything to do with them. Bad enough they have to tolerate someone else’s eggs on the sands with their own. They once tried to slip a green egg into one of Levierth’s clutches when she was out feeding. Thought she wouldn’t notice one more when she already had sixteen.” He looked up from the slate he’d been studying to stare unblinkingly at Levierth’s half-laid clutch. “Didn’t end well.”

“I see,” said T’kamen.

“So long as they’re kept out of sight they leave them be, but they have to be turned by hand,” R’lony continued. “Green dragons don’t have the slightest interest in their eggs, so their riders do it. That’s why green-laid hatchlings are as they are.”

“Which is – what?”

“Used to be that half of them never hatched at all. And the ones that did see the light of day sometimes weren’t right. Blind, or wings deformed, or just so spindly and weak they’d never amount to anything. Once two dragonets hatched from a single shell, neither of them bigger than this.” R’lony indicated something less than two feet long with his hands. “Not that they lived long. Thankfully.”

T’kamen had learned not to expect much sensitivity from the Marshal, but in this scenario he concurred. “I’ve heard of that even in a queen’s clutch,” he said. “There was a double hatching at the Peninsula. Two blues, I think. They didn’t survive, either.”

R’lony shrugged. “But there’s still no substitute for proper mothering. I suppose the greens’ riders have got better at tending the things, because there aren’t so many duds and deformities these days, but I wouldn’t have liked to Impress a hatchling from a badly-turned egg.”

It did put a different complexion on the Marshal’s open distaste for green-laid dragons, T’kamen thought. “Perhaps not,” he said. He looked back at Levierth, fussing over the positioning of her latest egg. “Where do the queens come from?”

R’lony looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

That was a more defensive reaction than T’kamen would have expected. “What I said. Bronze eggs are rare enough from brown-sired clutches, judging by the population, so how are you breeding new queens?”

“We don’t need any more queens,” R’lony said. “Levierth and Donauth are two of the best layers in the South. We’re lucky to have them.”

“But they’re not young,” said T’kamen. “Donauth has to be thirty, and Levierth can’t have many more good laying Turns left.” It had already occurred to him that both queens must have hatched before the Pass began. “Madellon hasn’t bred a queen since Donauth, has it?”

R’lony’s heavy brows descended over his eyes, and T’kamen wondered if he’d nettled the Marshal’s pride. “Donauth’s not home-bred,” R’lony said, at last. “She came over from Starfall at the end of the Interval.”

“Starfall had an excess of queens?”

“No more so than any of us,” said R’lony. “But their senior queen was particularly territorial. There was an incident. Dalka transferred here.” He smiled a thin-lipped smile. “Can’t say I’m sorry about that.”

“Then she’s Madellon’s last home-bred queen?” T’kamen asked, glancing at Levierth.

“I know what you’re getting at, T’kamen,” R’lony said. “But you’re wrong. You don’t need a bronze to sire a queen.”

“Madellon’s current roster would seem to put the lie to that.”

R’lony put his slate down with a crack. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Donauth’s sire was a Starfall brown. Levierth’s was a Madellon brown. Go to Peninsula or Southern, and you’ll find most of their queens are the daughters of browns. Not all, I’ll grant you, but most.” He emphasised his point with a jabbing finger. “It’s done the breed good. You’ve seen Threadfall now. You’ve seen how the fighting dragons fly. Do you think they’d be capable of manoeuvres like that if they’d been sired by brutes like Salionth?” He shook his head. “The day of the bronze dragon is done, T’kamen. With all respect to what your Epherineth achieved in the Interval, they’re just not necessary any more.”

That was the bluntest articulation T’kamen had yet heard of an opinion that pervaded Pass Madellon. He resolved not to take R’lony’s remark personally. Madellon’s other bronze riders weren’t an inspiring bunch, on the whole. The glaring absence of a queen younger than middle-aged bothered him more than the colour prejudice he was beginning to accept as the norm. “But if even browns with a proven ability to throw senior colours are being excluded from queen flights, how are you ever going to breed another queen?”

“We did breed another queen,” said R’lony, snapping the words out. “Geninth got a gold egg on Donauth in 17.”

That was definitely a sore point. R’lony’s whole posture oozed hostility, from his lowered brows to his clenched jaw to the belligerent set of his shoulders. T’kamen considered the revelation for a moment. “What happened to her?”

R’lony continued to glower at him. Then he looked past T’kamen. “Ask him,” he said, with a dismissive jerk of his chin. “I don’t want to discuss this any longer.”

T’kamen followed the Marshal’s line of sight. M’ric was waiting at the end of the tier. “I’ll do that.”

“What were you talking to R’lony about?” M’ric asked, when T’kamen made his way over to him. “He looked like he was about to smack you one.”

“Let’s get out of here, and I’ll tell you,” said T’kamen.

As they walked along the tier towards the exit to the Bowl, M’ric looked over his shoulder at the screened-off green eggs. “They’ll be hatching soon. Ceduth’s, anyway.”

“Concerned that Trebruth won’t be unique anymore?” T’kamen asked dryly.

“He’ll always be unique,” M’ric replied defensively. “And anyway, Nonrith’s caught Ceduth every single time since Trebruth hatched, and she hasn’t produced another brown yet.”

T’kamen masked his amusement at M’ric’s sensitivity. “Has C’rastro released you to me?”

“Oh, he wants to see you about something,” M’ric said. “But he said you could have me for the whole day. He’s spending the morning coaching F’sta on Tetketh’s lateral rolls anyway. He’s still too slow, and F’sta’s petrified they’ll wash out on assessment day. Probably will, too.”

“You should be more concerned about your own performance,” T’kamen told him. “You can’t give S’leondes any reason to fail you.”

“There won’t be one,” M’ric assured him.

They passed through the tunnel between the Hatching ground and the Bowl, into the autumn sunshine. Madellon was as full of dragons as T’kamen had ever seen it: clustered on the Rim, splashing in the lake, sprawling on the sunnier ledges. There were plenty of greens whose brilliant hides announced that they would be rising before the morning was out, and plenty of blues eyeing them up speculatively.

Trebruth, waiting in a patch of early sun outside the mouth of the tunnel, sat up as they emerged. T’kamen inspected the young brown with more care than usual, R’lony’s comments about green-laid dragonets still in his thoughts, but M’ric’s dragon looked a picture of health. “When do you get to send him after a green?”

“Any time I like,” M’ric said. “He’s old enough.”

T’kamen looked at him. “But you haven’t yet.”

“I have.”

“My mistake,” said T’kamen. “How was it?”

M’ric looked away. “I didn’t say we won.” He shrugged. “Didn’t really want to anyway. S’gon’s all right, but I’d sooner not wake up next to him.”

“That’s all fine, until Trebruth gets fed up with waiting,” T’kamen told him. “When you have a randy, bad-tempered dragon on your hands, you won’t care what’s waiting for you in that flight weyr.”

“There are about two hundred greens with female riders in the Weyr, T’kamen,” M’ric said, with a long-suffering sigh. “It’s not that unreasonable to want to make sure we catch one of those. Anyway, it’s not as if I’m not getting any. Unlike some people I could name.”

T’kamen ignored the insinuation. “Are you ready to go once I’ve spoken to the Weyrlingmaster?”

M’ric shrugged. “I’m all yours. Where are we going?” Before T’kamen could reply, he sighed. “You still want to find fire-lizards, don’t you?”

“Groan all you like, M’ric, but you wanted help getting Trebruth between safely, and this is my best idea.”

“And what if it doesn’t work? Will it be watch-whers next?”

“I’d remember if you’d had a watch-wher in tow,” T’kamen said. “We’ll start at Blue Shale. That was the centre of the trade in fire-lizard eggs in my time. They might not be in favour any more, but there should still be records of the best beaches to try.” Then, when M’ric shook his head, he asked, “What?”

M’ric furrowed his brow, looking very much like he wished he hadn’t indicated his disagreement. “It’s five hours to Blue Shale,” he said at last.

T’kamen wondered if M’ric was just being obstructive. “Since when were you afraid of a long flight?”

“It’ll be mid-afternoon by the time we get there, and we’ll only have a couple of hours before it gets dark.”

“So we’ll both get to practise navigating by the stars on the way back.” T’kamen gave him a hard look. “What is it you’re not telling me, M’ric? You usually can’t wait to tell me why I’m wrong.”

M’ric sighed exaggeratedly. “It’s just a long way to go on a wild wherry hunt.”

“You don’t think we’ll find any fire-lizards at Blue Shale?”

M’ric raised his shoulders. “Maybe you will. I doubt it, but you can try if you like.” He paused, visibly torn now between hiding something he didn’t want to say, and showing off his knowledge. The latter won. “But Blue Shale’s not the most likely place you’ll find fire-lizards.”

“All right,” T’kamen said. He kept his tone carefully neutral. “Where would you suggest we look?”

M’ric looked even more reluctant. “You’re really going to drag this out of me?”

“I can beat it out of you, if you’d prefer.”

M’ric responded to that with a derisory snort that belied his still-just-visible bruises. “Like Ch’fil wouldn’t pound you to snot if you did that.”

“Just spit it out,” T’kamen told him. Involuntarily, he rubbed his face. “I don’t like fire-lizards any more than you do.”

“Maybe not,” M’ric said. “But I bet not for the same reasons.” He folded his arms. “Fine. You’ll have to ask Dalka’s permission to go and see Alanne at Little Madellon.”

“At Little Madellon?”

“It’s a crater about an hour south of here.”

“I know what Little Madellon is, M’ric. Is it populated now? We used to go down there all the time in the Interval. The hot springs are the best in the range.”

M’ric gave him a look. “No one goes bathing there. But there are fire-lizards.”

“Are you sure?” T’kamen asked. “They’re coastal creatures. I’ve never heard of wild fairs living inland.”

“They’re not exactly wild,” said M’ric. He sighed. “Look. There’s no point us even having this conversation if you can’t get Dalka’s permission to see Alanne.”

“Who’s Alanne?”

“The…woman…who lives at Little Madellon.”

T’kamen gave him a pointed look. “Care to elaborate?”

“Weyrlings aren’t supposed to know about Alanne,” M’ric admitted.

“That’s never stopped you in the past.”

“Dalka’s going to know I told you about her. I’ll get in trouble.”

“That’s never stopped you in the past, either.”

“All right, all right. Alanne was a queen rider at Madellon about a thousand Turns ago.” He sighed again at T’kamen’s frown. “All right, not a thousand, but decades before the Pass, anyway.”

“What’s she doing at Little Madellon?”

“I don’t know. Whatever crazy people do.” M’ric deliberately avoided T’kamen gaze. “They say she lost her mind when she lost her dragon.”

T’kamen winced. Unasked, Epherineth bumped his thoughts reassuringly. There wasn’t a rider alive who relished thinking about the prospect of outliving his own dragon, and interacting with the dragonless was as brutal a reminder of that unthinkable fate as could be, but at least it was a lead. “And there are definitely fire-lizards at Little Madellon?”

“Definitely.”

“Fine.” Epherineth, would you ask Donauth if her rider would see me?

Epherineth responded promptly. She says her rider is in her office and can see you presently.

“All right,” said T’kamen. “M’ric, go to my weyr and get Epherineth harnessed. Dalka will see me now, and I’ll go to C’rastro on my way back from her. Be rigged and ready to go when I get back.”

As they split up, a green launched from her perch on the Rim. Half a dozen blues, and a single brown, took off after her in a flurry of pumping wings and lashing tails. T’kamen followed the pursuit with his eyes until the participants all disappeared out of sight, wondering if it had been Suatreth.

No, said Epherineth, immediately. She is not here.

His brisk response amused T’kamen. I thought you told me you’d turn one of these greens inside out.

My attentions do come at a price.

T’kamen almost laughed out loud. Keep me informed on Suatreth. We’ll chase her if we can.

While he understood the prohibition on bronzes chasing queens, the idea that a Seventh Flight rider needed permission to allow his dragon to chase any given green had initially struck T’kamen as ludicrous. There were more greens in Madellon than all the other colours combined, over four hundred of them: it was hardly depriving fighting blues of mates for a brown or bronze to catch a few. Since Epherineth had flown his first Fall, though, T’kamen had realised that permission wasn’t really a problem. He’d been approached five times in the last sevenday by green riders inviting Epherineth to join their dragons’ mating flights. Epherineth, after a long contemplation of the greens on offer, had remarked that Suatreth wasn’t entirely disagreeable.

The fact that Epherineth was willing to consider chasing greens again was a clear sign that his faithfulness to Shimpath was waning. No queen would tolerate the insult of her mate flying other females, so it had been a while since Epherineth’s last chase. It was only natural that the time and distance – temporal, if not geographical – that now separated him from his queen had eroded his commitment to her. Still, it stung T’kamen more than he’d thought it would that his dragon had come to accept their stranding in Pass Madellon. He kept his sadness as much to himself as he could. If Epherineth fancied a green, T’kamen had no intention of denying him the pleasure. But showing an interest in the green’s rider was more of a step than he himself was willing to take. Suatreth’s rider, Leda, was small and dark and pretty, and at least ten Turns his junior. Her candid proposition of him was, T’kamen admitted privately, quite flattering. Under different circumstances he might have been more responsive to her. As it stood, he was still too vainly angry at the injustice of his situation, too rawly conscious of all he had lost, and too pridefully wounded by the trivial reality of his place in history. It was bad enough that he couldn’t help but share his bleakness with his dragon; he wouldn’t inflict it on an unsuspecting woman, too.

At Command, T’kamen paused by the signboard in the small foyer to orient himself. The names, ranks, and room numbers chalked on the blackboard told their own interesting story. In direct contrast to the convention for weyr location – which became increasingly desirable with proximity to ground level – the upper floors of the administration block were the most prestigious. Certainly the fact that the Seventh’s senior officers were all on the ground floor spoke to the inferiority of their position. The first floor was all Wingleaders, while the top level accommodated just three riders: Dalka, Lirelle, and the Commander.

The dull thump of heavy footfalls from above shivered through the banister as T’kamen started up the stairs. He increased his pace slightly, but not by much. He’d always habitually taken steps two at a time, but Ondiar, who had treated T’kamen’s dislocated hip, had warned him against such exertions. He glanced up to see who was coming downstairs. Whoever it was, they’d just have to be patient.

There could have been no less likely candidate for patience. S’leondes filled the top of the stairwell: breadth, height, and presence alike.

They looked at each other for a long moment.

Then S’leondes looked deliberately past him. He started down the stairs, paying T’kamen as much heed as he might have an insect. T’kamen flattened himself back against the wall as the Commander swept past. Even so, S’leondes’ bulky shoulder caught him a glancing jostle that almost sent him staggering. “Hey!” T’kamen objected, catching the banister with one hand.

S’leondes ignored him. He simply forged on down the stairs as if T’kamen weren’t even there.

Something wrong?

Epherineth’s question was mildly put, but if anything, it riled T’kamen even more. The Commander just nearly knocked me down the stairs!

But he did not?

No. T’kamen collected himself, squaring his shoulders. But I don’t think he’d have apologised if he had.

He’d had very little contact with the Commander since their first disastrous meeting. They seldom encountered each other at all, and when T’kamen had seen S’leondes around the Weyr, he was usually flanked by one or several of his officers, or by Fraza following obediently at his side. T’kamen knew he’d made a poor first impression, but he thought, stubbornly, that S’leondes hadn’t covered himself in glory, either. He wished, perversely, that he could find more fault with the Commander’s leadership, but it was hard. He’d seen S’leondes and Karzith in action in enough Falls now to see that they were very good. They didn’t fly a fixed position, but moved constantly around the stacked Flights, monitoring the Fall and repositioning Wings as necessary. And for all that seven dragonpairs had died in T’kamen’s first Fall, two in the second, and four in the third, T’kamen struggled to see what he could have done better with the tools available. There was just so much Thread, so many opportunities for fatal strikes. It seemed a wonder that twice as many didn’t die in each Fall.

The thought made him refocus on his mission. Between. That was the only thing that could reduce the death toll – and mitigate the destruction on the ground below. S’leondes wouldn’t be so keen to disparage a Pass bronze rider and an oversized bronze if they could restore between to Pern’s beleaguered dragons.

He rapped his knuckles on Dalka’s pine-planked door, wondering idly as he did if the lumber had come from Kellad. As he waited for a response from within, he let his eyes follow the lettering of the plaque beside the door, brass like the Commander’s. Senior Weyrwoman Dalka. The precedence still accorded the queen riders of Madellon was surprising, given how deeply their position had been undermined. Browns had comprehensively replaced bronzes in every way that mattered, it didn’t seem entirely far-fetched to think that greens might in their turn supersede queens. T’kamen couldn’t blame R’lony for his mistrust of green-laid dragons. If greens could throw offspring of all three junior colours – and in the compact proportions so prized by the fighting officers of the Pass – then it wouldn’t take so many more fertile greens to render queens redundant. The thought added to the low-level, but ever-present, sense of wrongness and disquiet that had ridden with T’kamen since he’d first arrived in the Eighth Pass.

Perhaps that was what guided his choice of greeting when Dalka opened the door to him. “Senior Weyrwoman.”

The formal nature of his address was not lost on Dalka. “Weyrleader,” she replied, with a sardonic quirk of her lips. She opened the door more widely. “Come in.”

T’kamen complied, but Dalka’s attire nearly made him stop dead. She wore a loose wrapper of some thin, fine fabric. It was belted at the waist, but the two sides of the garment crossed low enough to make it obvious that it was all she was wearing. T’kamen raise his eyes resolutely to Dalka’s face. Her expression dared and mocked in equal measure. “If this isn’t a good time –”

“Why wouldn’t it be a good time?” Dalka asked. She stepped backwards into her office. “You’re not interrupting the work of the Weyr. Even a queen rider is entitled to a rest day.”

It would have been discourteous to refuse the invitation. T’kamen stepped inside. “Interrupting a rest day with work might be as unwelcome as interrupting a work day with – rest.” He paused only fractionally before that final word, aware even as he spoke it how it might be taken.

“Then it’s work that brings you to me,” said Dalka.

T’kamen couldn’t tell one way or another if that disappointed her. He caught himself looking at the improbably deep vee of her robe’s neckline again. Averting his eyes completely would have been the more gallant choice, yet he found he couldn’t make himself look away from her. He tried looking down instead. “Not work exactly,” he said, and then realised he was addressing her feet. They were bare, and her toenails painted dark red. He dragged his gaze back up, and then up again, back to her face. “I’d thought to take M’ric down to Little Madellon for the day.”

“Little Madellon?” Dalka echoed. “What’s that boy done now to deserve that?”

Her incredulous tone was puzzling. “He’ll be finishing his training this month,” T’kamen said. “When I was a weyrling, it was traditional for the riders of a graduating class to be set at liberty down there for a couple of days of camping and hunting.”

Dalka’s expression was a picture. “How…charming. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but Little Madellon doesn’t bear much resemblance to your boyhood idyll any longer.”

“M’ric said that a dragonless queen rider lives there now.”

“Did he?” Dalka asked, and then went on, “Of course he did.” She smiled thinly. “That’s one thing that won’t have changed. Weyrlings finding out about things they ought not know.”

T’kamen was reminded again of C’los. “It never did us too much harm.”

“That was then.” Dalka turned away, and T’kamen found himself able to exhale properly for the first time since he’d knocked on her door. “Wine, T’kamen?”

“Well watered,” he replied. He’d found that was the least contentious way to accept a drink without spending the day half drunk. The ubiquity of wine as a drink for all occasions had as much to do with its abundance in the Weyr as the reliance many riders seemed to have on it, but he had no ambition to build up a tolerance.

While Dalka was busy mixing red wine and water from the carafes on a side-table, T’kamen took the opportunity to look around her office. It was twice the size of R’lony’s, and the wide windows set into two of the walls would have made it one of the sunniest places in Madellon, but for the filmy curtains draping both of them and muting the morning light. But while the normal furnishings of desk and case and cabinet were all there, it was clear that Dalka’s room was as much studio and workshop as office. The easel set up where the light from one of the windows would best fall, and the box of paints and pens flung open beside it, made Dalka’s rest day pursuits clear enough, and the walls were covered with the works that could only be hers. Some of them had been done on canvas, some on vellum, some on panels of skybroom wood, and they’d been hung or pinned up haphazardly, with no scheme to their random arrangement. Portraits in formal style hung side by side with sketches done quickly and carelessly in charcoal on irregular scraps of hide. Naked figures jostled for space with landscapes and botanical studies. There were many self-portraits, T’kamen saw, as he looked from piece to piece. Dalka’s own face gazed out from at least a dozen pieces, as sharp and sensual in pencil or paints as in the flesh. Belatedly, he recognised that all of the nudes were self-portraits, too, though in most the focus was not on the face, but on the long, languid curves and deep shadows of the unclothed form. One exception caught his eye, not the most revealing, but somehow the most erotic. In it, Dalka was stretching out on a cushioned day-bed, covered inadequately with a twist of cloth that concealed nothing and served instead to accentuate her nakedness, but the expression in her half-lidded eyes, and the position of the hand she had draped over her own thigh, revealed a deep sultry hunger for an implied, unseen lover – a lover, T’kamen realised suddenly, whose long dark shadow had spilled across Dalka’s lounging form from his position out of frame.

“Do you like it?”

T’kamen resolved to banish any hint of embarrassment at being caught looking at the nude from his face. He accepted the wine-glass Dalka put in his hand. “You have a real gift.”

She neither denied it nor thanked him for the compliment, instead studying his face with, if not that same sensuous hunger, then some lazy relation of it. “Are you interested in art, T’kamen?”

The wine wasn’t what he’d have called well-watered. He sipped cautiously, tasting the quality of the vintage and the strength he hadn’t asked for. “I don’t know that I’ve ever had the opportunity to be,” he replied. “I was going to have my Weyrleader’s portrait painted just before I left the Interval.” The thought made him notice the obvious omission on Dalka’s walls. “There are no dragons.”

“I don’t do dragons,” she replied. She raised an eyebrow a fraction, as if to acknowledge her lack of explanation. “There are four portraits of your predecessor, yet none of you as Madellon’s Weyrleader. Nor of any of your successors until the last quarter of the Interval.”

“My predecessor had time and marks to spend on portraits,” said T’kamen. L’dro was one rider he wasn’t sorry to think of as long dead. “He left me a Weyr impoverished by such indulgences.” He lifted his glass slightly. “Good wine, abundant food beasts, plentiful harness hide – these are luxuries we didn’t have in the Interval.”

Dalka looked surprised. “Whyever not? The Holds must have been many times more productive than they are now without Fall to worry about.”

“And many times less interested in supporting a population of dragons with no Thread to fight for a hundred Turns.”

“How very short-sighted of them,” Dalka murmured.

“It was what it was.” T’kamen smiled without warmth. “Evidently Madellon managed to hatch enough dragons by the Pass to meet the threat, mid-Interval shortages or not.”

“Hatching dragons isn’t the problem,” said Dalka. “Which brings us back to Little Madellon.”

He didn’t entirely follow her logic. “This former queen rider…”

“Alanne.” Dalka’s lips described the same grimace – sympathy, pity, revulsion – that T’kamen imagined his own had at the mention of a dragonless rider.

“M’ric mentioned she was elderly. I thought she might remember someone from my time, maybe one of the younger weyrlings from Epherineth’s first clutch. Perhaps her queen was a great-granddaughter of his –”

“No.” Dalka cut across him, an unequivocal negative. “She won’t see you, T’kamen.”

“Because I’m a dragonrider?”

“Because you’re a bronze rider.”

There it was again – the colour prejudice that still, despite everything, seemed topsy-turvy. “Have we been out of favour for so long?”

“You’ve been out of favour for that long,” said Dalka, “and Alanne has better reason to think that way than most.”

“What’s her story?”

“A sad one,” she said, “as you would expect the story of any rider without a dragon to be.” She drank from her own wine-glass, looking contemplative. “She was a sensitive. Did you ever meet one of those?”

T’kamen shook his head. “She could hear other dragons?”

“Dragons. Fire-lizards. She’d even talk to watch-whers, would you believe.” Dalka smiled thinly. “She was more popular with them than she was with people. For some reason, folk were ill at ease around a woman who could pick a thought out of any dragon’s mind from half a territory away.”

“I can see how that would be unsettling.”

“Some would have said she was as unsettled by it as anyone,” Dalka said, “if you take my meaning.” She paused. “Alanne was forceful even for a queen rider, and Weyrwoman in all but name for Turns before her predecessor died. Once the mantle did pass to her, she turned her attention to the Weyrleader’s seat.”

“The title was still in use, then.”

“It’s era was coming to an end at Madellon,” Dalka said, “although no one knew just how quickly the change would come. The Peninsula had been selecting its Weyrleader by ballot for Turns, but Madellon, and all the other southern Weyrs, still respected the senior queen’s choice.”

“Alanne’s choice.”

“Of course. She had a lover, D’midder; a brown rider. His Kolkorroth had flown Ryth in every one of her flights. In those days, only browns were allowed to chase junior queens, but Madellon had never had a brown rider for a Weyrleader.”

“So bronzes were still beating browns,” T’kamen said. “Who would have imagined.”

Dalka’s eyes flashed. “But Alanne had become so accustomed to getting her own way that she didn’t see that as any bar to D’midder becoming Weyrleader – by fair means or foul. By all accounts, Kolkorroth wasn’t an exceptional dragon, so clearly Alanne had helped him along in Ryth’s junior flights. She must have been so confident in her ability to help Kolkorroth, and in the inability of the bronze riders to agree with each other long enough to plot against her, that she didn’t consider Madellon’s bronzes a credible threat.”

“She was mistaken?”

“Tragically. The bronze riders had plotted against her – or more correctly, against Kolkorroth. They’d taken pains to do it while their dragons were asleep, and to guard their own thoughts during the day, so Alanne didn’t get wind of the plan. On the basis that any bronze rider was the preferable choice for Weyrleader to any brown rider, they agreed to work together to make sure that no brown – and especially not Kolkorroth – flew Ryth.”

T’kamen could see where the story was going. He remembered vividly how close Epherineth had come to being sabotaged by another bronze before flying Shimpath, and that had involved only a single dragon with an alternative agenda. The thought of dirty tactics on a grand scale made him feel faintly sick. “What happened?”

“It was as rough as I can see you’re imagining,” said Dalka. “Forty or fifty dragons in the air and the Weyrleadership at stake. The bronzes pushed hard after Ryth. Half the browns couldn’t go with the pace at all, and those who did found themselves getting barged and shoved out of the way. They left a trail of bloody, battered dragons halfway to Kellad before the flight was done. Kolkorroth was still there until the end. Maybe if he’d dropped out earlier, it would have turned out differently. But he was there to see when one of the bronzes, Ligarth, finally got hold of Ryth.

“Alanne should have accepted the outcome. She should have trusted her queen. She didn’t. She had a particular disliking for Ligarth’s rider L’vorn, and as Ligarth’s talons closed on Ryth, she struck out at him with her mind. Maybe she thought he’d let Ryth go and clear the way for Kolkorroth, but that isn’t what happened. The force of Alanne’s blow, through her queen, stunned Ligarth like a poleaxed steer, but he was already locked with Ryth. Ryth couldn’t get loose; her wings were fouled; and by the time the other dragons still in the air nearby grasped what was happening, it was too late to catch them.”

“And they couldn’t go between,” said T’kamen.

“No,” said Dalka. “They couldn’t.”

“They both died.” It didn’t seem worth phrasing it as a question.

“Eventually.” Dalka’s eyes had gone distant towards the end of the grim tale, but now she refocused on T’kamen. “Ligarth lived a few days longer than Ryth. Alanne never forgave him for that. She never forgave bronze dragons or bronze riders in general. It wasn’t for her sake that bronzes were barred from queen flights soon after – or that Madellon eventually adopted the Peninsula convention for electing Weyrleaders – but she wouldn’t have taken any satisfaction from those things anyway. And if she knows how her story has become a cautionary tale against the evils of arrogance, selfishness, and the abuse of power, I doubt she cares about that, either.”

T’kamen studied Dalka’s expression. For all the harshness of her words, there was sympathy in her voice. “You don’t agree with that assessment.”

“Oh, I agree, T’kamen. Alanne was arrogant and selfish. For all her talent, she neglected the first duty of any queen rider: to separate the affairs of the Weyr from the affairs of her weyr.” Dalka’s gaze flickered over her office as she spoke; over a couch which T’kamen suddenly recognised as the opulent day-bed from the nude drawing that had caught his eye. “But she paid a terrible price for her faults. She’s still paying it now, more than forty Turns later.” She sighed. “Sometimes I think sending her supplies every sevenday is more a cruelty than a kindness, but then I think she’d find a way to survive without them. It would just make a sad, hard sentence that much sadder and harder.”

“Then she’s a prisoner at Little Madellon?”

Dalka shook her head. “There weren’t many tears shed over the loss of her as Weyrwoman, but not even Alanne’s bitterest enemies would have devised such a cruel punishment. That fell to Alanne herself. She’s a hostage to her own guilt, T’kamen, and however the weyrlings will gossip about the mad old crone of Little Madellon, you can be sure that she has just enough sanity left to know exactly what she lost and exactly who was to blame.”

T’kamen raised his wine-glass, and realised he’d already drained it dry. He lowered it again. “I’d still like to visit her,” he said. “I have few enough ways to learn about the missing Turns between my time and now.”

Dalka studied him with unreadable eyes. “Go, if you must,” she said. “I’ll not stop you. But don’t take Epherineth into that Thread-blighted crater. Don’t wear anything that will give his colour away. You can’t disguise that you’re a dragonrider, not from her, but perhaps if you keep him out of sight, and guard your thoughts with care, you’ll keep her from uncovering the truth.”

“Thank you, Weyrwoman.” T’kamen set his glass down on the sideboard. “For the wine and the permission.”

Dalka seated herself unhurriedly on her day-bed as he started towards the door. “You should come back, when you’ve seen Alanne.”

T’kamen halted. He looked at her uncertainly. “Weyrwoman?” Then he noticed the shirt lying untidily across the cushions of her couch: too large, and the sleeves much too long, to be one of hers.

Dalka noticed him noticing, and a sly smile curved the hard line of her mouth. “To sit for me,” she said, after an interval just long enough that T’kamen had begun to believe something else entirely.

“You want to draw my picture?”

“Don’t worry, T’kamen,” she replied. “You won’t have to take your clothes off.” Then she added, as he started again to leave, “Not unless you want to.”

T’kamen thought he did a good job of keeping his conflicting feelings of horror and fascination in check long enough to make an orderly withdrawal from Dalka’s office, but he couldn’t hide his discomfiture from Epherineth. Don’t even say it, he warned his dragon, as he beat a hasty retreat from Command.

It is no bad thing to attract the interest of a queen’s rider.

A fat lot of good that would do you, T’kamen pointed out. And I’m the one who’d be eaten alive.

Donauth would not eat you.

It’s not Donauth I’m worried about.

The encounter had left T’kamen feeling disconcerted on more than one level, and he almost forgot his appointment with the Weyrlingmaster in his distraction. He crossed to the lake’s well-worn running track to cut back towards the training grounds. It wasn’t just Dalka’s thinly-veiled flirtation that had rattled him, although that had certainly contributed to his agitated state. The story of Alanne, smacking though it did of a harper’s morality tale embellished for effect over the Turns, left him with deep misgivings about what awaited him at Little Madellon. Until T’kamen understood Dalka’s angle – and the ambiguity of her attitude towards him, respectful of his historical significance and mocking of his present situation by turns, seemed calculated to keep him guessing in that respect – he wouldn’t trust her. He still believed that the letter of introduction she’d sent with him to Kellad had cautioned the Masterharper against disclosing too much to him. He still suspected that Dalka knew more about him than she had yet seen fit to reveal. And it struck him suddenly, as he approached the weyrling barracks, that she hadn’t pressed him for a credible reason for wanting to visit Alanne and Little Madellon before giving him her permission to go. It made him even more mistrustful of her agenda. He didn’t appreciate being led around by the nose. Or by any other part of his anatomy.

The Weyrlingmaster, C’rastro, was standing amidst his assistants and all their dragons on the training grounds when T’kamen reached the barracks. He was a short and stocky rider in his fifth decade with a shaven head and virtually no neck. Prerth, his blue, had an uncannily similar build. Every one of C’rastro’s four assistant Weyrlingmasters was taller than him, but there could be no mistaking the man in charge. “Roust those lazy brats of yours out of the barracks, R’nie,” he was telling one of his seconds. “They’ve had enough time to get their stations clean. K’lem, your gang’s on elevator duty for the day. Split them up however you want to give them all some free time, but I don’t want to hear that anyone’s had to wait. Audette, yours are at liberty but have them all back in the Weyr by evening watch. S’hayn, there’ll be more new faces in the candidate dorms by tonight; make sure there are bunks free. Everyone clear? Good.” He waited only an instant before pivoting to face T’kamen. “Bronze rider.”

As C’rastro’s assistants headed off towards their dragons on their separate assignments, T’kamen said, “M’ric said you wanted to see me.”

“Yes I did.” C’rastro looked T’kamen up and down a few times. “Need to talk to you about a boy to be your new tailman once M’ric’s new position is settled.”

The tail system was perhaps the one innovation of Pass Madellon that T’kamen did appreciate. M’ric’s importance aside, having a weyrling on hand to carry messages, run errands, and help with menial tasks was undeniably useful, and it made sense for the older weyrlings to be paired up with adult riders as mentors. “That’ll be the end of the month, won’t it?”

“There’s a brown rider in Audette’s class and another in K’lem’s, both ready to step in for you. J’reo and I’rill. Thought I’d give you the choice of the pair. You’ve only had to put up with M’ric for a month; this next one could be tailing you for half a Turn or more.”

T’kamen nodded. “Tell me about them.”

“I’ll have their records run up to your weyr for you to read,” C’rastro said. “It may come down to how you feel about taking on a younger boy who might be tailing for a couple of Turns, versus one the other end of his teens. They’re both level-headed kids. Unlikely to give you the sort of trouble M’ric has.”

“M’ric hasn’t been trouble,” said T’kamen. It was so outrageous a lie that Epherineth gave a mental snort almost loud enough to be audible.

C’rastro held up his hands. “You’ll not tell me anything I don’t already know about the boy by being straight with me,” he said. “He’s been a pain in my arse since the day he Impressed.”

“He’s eighteen Turns old,” said T’kamen. “We were all a pain in someone’s arse at that age.”

“I don’t mean the usual teenage whershit. Oh, the thing with his Harper girlfriend; do you know how many letters I’ve had from this Master or that Holder asking me to pull randy weyrlings off their sons and daughters? I’d be worried if he wasn’t out there, helping to get the next generation of dragonspawn on Madellon’s female population.” When T’kamen looked critically at him, C’rastro said, “What, you think we’d have the choice of candidates we do if riders didn’t spread their seed outside the Weyr? As long as he keeps it within Madellon borders, I don’t care who he humps. It’s not his sex life that’s the problem.”

T’kamen didn’t like the implication. “What, then?”

No rider became Weyrlingmaster without a high degree of shrewdness. The astute look C’rastro directed at T’kamen demonstrated he was no exception. “Look, bronze rider, you’re from a time when things were different,” he said. “And M’ric’s behaviour isn’t your fault, Faranth knows. I’ve had him two Turns, and I haven’t been able to stamp out his attitude. Maybe you weren’t the best rider to reinforce the message I’ve been trying to drill into him.”

“Which is?”

“You need me to spell it out for you?”

“Humour me,” T’kamen said flatly.

C’rastro pointed his chin at T’kamen in the way some short men did when they expected a fight. “It doesn’t matter how small or fast Trebruth is. A brown is not and never will be a blue. M’ric’s a brown rider, and it’s long past time he accepted that.”

“Then you’re saying that, however well he performs in the assessment, you’re going to wash him out anyway?”

“He’s going to wash out because he’s a brown rider, T’kamen, and he needs to shaffing well know his place!”

“Where I come from, blue riders know their place,” T’kamen said coolly, flicking his eyes to the rank cord on C’rastro’s shoulder.

The Weyrlingmaster smiled. “You’re not there now, bronze rider,” he said, with dangerous evenness. “Small men can’t hide behind big dragons anymore.”

T’kamen knew he shouldn’t rise to the bait, but he was already too riled to stop himself. “A blue or green hide doesn’t make you a big man now any more than a brown or bronze did when I was Weyrleader.”

“When you were Weyrleader.” C’rastro’s voice was thick with scorn. “M’ric might be impressed by your self-important Interval titles. I’m not. I’m Threadstruck if I’m sending you another boy to ruin. You just keep feeding M’ric that archaic whershit. He was already a lost cause, but when he finally realises he’s amounted to nothing, I’ll be just as happy to watch you take the fall for fanning the flames of his unrealistic ambitions.”

“You have no idea what M’ric will amount to,” said T’kamen, softly. “No idea at all, you bigoted little shit.”

Prerth, who had been shifting warily behind C’rastro until now, reacted sharply to the insult to his rider. The muscular blue reared up, mantling his wings and baring his teeth at T’kamen. Without stopping to consider the wisdom of it, T’kamen snapped, Epherineth! – and C’rastro’s dragon reacted instantly, recoiling as if physically struck, before folding in on himself with a startled cry.

C’rastro himself was hardly less thunderstruck. “You brought your dragon down on mine?”

“I won’t be threatened,” T’kamen said flatly. “We’re done here.”

As he walked away, nearly shaking with anger, he realised that half a dozen weyrlings had witnessed the exchange and were watching him now, wide-eyed. T’kamen swore silently. Having Epherineth shove Prerth was bad enough; doing it where weyrlings could see their Weyrlingmaster’s dragon cringe was an even more egregious offence. “Blight it,” he muttered under his breath. Is Ch’fil home?

Stratomath is on his ledge, Epherineth replied, and then asked puzzledly, Should I not have stepped on Prerth?

I shouldn’t have asked you to. Tell Stratomath I need to speak with his rider as soon as possible. I want him to hear about this from me.

He says he’ll meet you at our weyr shortly.

Ch’fil wasn’t there by the time T’kamen got back to the weyr, but M’ric, having harnessed Epherineth as directed, was leaning against Trebruth’s elbow with his arms folded. “What is it?” he asked, uncrossing his arms anxiously.

T’kamen realised his face must have betrayed him. “Nothing,” he said. “Are they both ready?”

“Ready and waiting,” said M’ric, but he clearly wasn’t satisfied. “Did something happen with Dalka?”

“Dalka was fine.”

“Then you had an argument with C’rastro?”

T’kamen made a show of checking the buckles on Epherineth’s fore-strap. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Did he say something to you about me?”

“The whole world doesn’t revolve around you, M’ric,” T’kamen said sharply.

“I didn’t say it did.” M’ric paused. “Why’s Stratomath coming this way?”

T’kamen looked; Ch’fil’s brown was gliding across the Bowl. “Take Trebruth and go up to the Rim. We’ll be there in a moment.”

“But –”

“There isn’t enough room for three dragons on this ledge. Now.”

“All right, all right!” M’ric vaulted to his brown’s neck with youthful agility, and Trebruth was up and away in moments.

Stratomath replaced him a minute later. “Problem?” Ch’fil asked, dismounting with a wince, and limping over to T’kamen.

“Something wrong with your leg?” T’kamen asked.

“Not my leg. Six-Turn-old kicked me in the crotch. Think maybe she doesn’t want any siblings.” Ch’fil leaned familiarly on Epherineth’s forearm. “What is it?”

“I just had a disagreement of opinions with the Weyrlingmaster.”

“Did you.” Ch’fil didn’t sound surprised. He motioned upwards with his eyes. “About the boy?”

“Mostly,” said T’kamen. “We exchanged some more personal remarks, too.”

“Did you.”

T’kamen sighed. “And Epherineth leaned on Prerth.”

Ch’fil’s eyebrows lifted at that. He brought his hand up to scratch his beard. A cynic might have thought he was covering a smile, but by the time he lowered his hand, he was deadpan again. “What did Prerth do to warrant that?”

“Not enough,” T’kamen admitted. “I lost my temper and had Epherineth push him. Not hard, but there were weyrlings watching.”

“Ah, Faranth,” Ch’fil said softly.

“He only did it because I told him to,” T’kamen said. “This is on me, not him.”

“You, him; it’s all the same.” Ch’fil looked weary. “The personal remarks wouldn’t have mattered. Whatever you said, he’ll have heard worse, and C’rastro’s a thick-skinned old bastard. But bronze-on-blue intimidation…that’s going to bring trouble down on all of us.”

“What can I do to fix this, Ch’fil?” T’kamen asked unhappily.

“Not much. Truth be told, Kamen, the Commander’s been itching for a reason to rain shit on the Seventh for a while. We’ve all been keeping our heads down and our noses clean, but it was just a matter of time before someone slipped up. You being the guilty party does take the heat off a little. You’ve not been here five minutes to know any better. But it gives S’leondes a stick to beat us with. See how it was in the bad old days when bronze riders ruled the Weyr by fear and intimidation.”

T’kamen wished he could refute the slur outright. “Not all bronze riders,” he said instead. “And it feels like the tyranny’s the same now as it was then. Only inverted.”

“That it may be,” said Ch’fil. He cocked his head. “That’s what you disagreed about, wasn’t it? Your tail and his dreams of flying in the fighting Wings.”

“C’rastro as much as admitted that they’ll wash M’ric out no matter how well he performs in his assessment,” said T’kamen. “For no reason but the colour of Trebruth’s hide. It’s ridiculous.”

“I know it seems that way,” said Ch’fil. “And I know it’s an injustice to a boy with a dragon who’s as suited to flying Threadfall as any I’ve ever seen. But they tried it with the smallest browns back at the beginning of the Pass, when S’leondes first became Commander. Blues and greens will take orders from each other, but throw a brown in the mix and dragon hierarchy starts to take precedence. There’s a big step up in authority from blue to brown. Once Trebruth’s mature he’ll find it hard to obey smaller dragons, and that could kill him. Or them.”

“If it were that simple, they’d be upfront about it,” said T’kamen. “And M’ric’s talented. He’d rise to rank quickly enough anyway.”

“You’re right,” said Ch’fil. “It’s not that simple. But there’s not a fighting rider in this Weyr who wants to be taking orders from a brown rider. S’leondes fought hard for blue and green rider autonomy. You’ll pry it back out of his cold dead hands. That’s why this business with C’rastro is going to be ugly. The Commander’s going to want to make an example of you.”

“The Commander barely accepts I exist,” said T’kamen, thinking of how S’leondes had brushed him aside without a second glance.

“Oh, he accepts,” said Ch’fil, ominously. “You’d better believe that.”

“Call me old-fashioned, but I won’t be intimidated by a man who rides a blue dragon.”

“What was that you were saying about not judging someone based on the colour of his dragon?” Ch’fil said it without accusation. “Like it or not, T’kamen, S’leondes is in a position to make your life really sharding miserable.”

T’kamen laughed. “He’s welcome to try.”

“You’ve been dealt a bum hand, T’kamen,” said Ch’fil. “Anyone who says they understand what you’re going through is a blighted liar. But you don’t want someone else’s idea of misery adding to your own. I’ll talk to C’rastro. He won’t want word that Epherineth made Prerth shit himself getting any further round the Weyr than it has to. With some luck, he’ll whine to me and be done with it.”

“I can take my own lumps, Ch’fil.”

“If I think you need a lump, I’ll give it you myself,” Ch’fil replied. “While you report to me, anyway.” He thumped T’kamen’s shoulder in solidarity. “You taking the boy out somewhere?”

He nodded. “Little Madellon.”

“Well, shards.” Ch’fil looked as incredulous as Dalka had. “What in the name of Faranth do you want to go there for?”

T’kamen hesitated for a moment before replying. He didn’t like lying to Ch’fil. The Crewleader was one of the few people who’d been completely open and honest with him since he’d arrived in the Pass, and T’kamen would have liked to return the courtesy. But he was just as reluctant to entangle another rider in the timing loop that had trapped him and M’ric and their dragons. It had already ruined their lives; he wouldn’t have it afflict Ch’fil’s by making him a party to the knowledge that M’ric would be making his own journey through time. So he settled for a piece of the truth. “M’ric said there are fire-lizards there.”

“Oh, aye, there’s fire-lizards,” Ch’fil agreed. “And wherries, and whers, and Faranth knows what other nasties that’ve made that blighted place their home.”

“You mean like dragonless former queen riders?”

“Her and all,” said Ch’fil. He frowned. “What do you want with Alanne and her fire-lizards?”

“I have a theory,” T’kamen said. “About between. I think fire-lizards might be the key to understanding what happened.”

“Understanding?” Ch’fil asked. “Or do you think there’s a solution to be found?” When T’kamen hesitated, the brown rider went on, “Because it seems to me, that way lies trouble for you. Even if there is a way to make between safe again, it’s not a route you’ll be using to return to the Interval. You already know you don’t make it back. I’d not have you throw your life and your dragon’s away going after something that can’t be.”

T’kamen was oddly moved that Ch’fil’s first thought was for his and Epherineth’s well-being. “I know we’re not going back,” he said slowly. “But maybe since we’re here we can do something to help that doesn’t just involve carrying firestone. Maybe that’s why we’re here.”

It was perilously close to the truth that T’kamen didn’t want Ch’fil to grasp, but if he made the connection, he didn’t show it. “Fire-lizards,” he said slowly. “Do you know what a nest of tunnel-snakes that would stir up if you’re right?”

“Because fire-lizards aren’t in fashion as companions in the Eighth Pass?”

“Given their habits, why would they be?”

T’kamen shook his head. “I don’t know what fire-lizards do these days that’s so distasteful. M’ric keeps avoiding the subject.”

“You don’t know?” Ch’fil asked, and then added more softly, “You really don’t, do you.” He exhaled a long breath. “M’ric was right to point you to Little Madellon. There can’t be many left now with the way they’ve been stamped out in most places. Shells, for all I’ve seen them in recent Turns, Alanne’s fair could be the only one still breeding.” He met T’kamen’s baffled gaze squarely, and went on, “It’s not that they’re out of fashion, T’kamen. They’re dirty little cannibals that remind every rider what lies in store for his dragon if he has the fortune to live longer than seven or eight Turns.”

T’kamen was lost. “I still don’t understand.”

“Think about it,” said Ch’fil. “I know. You haven’t. Faranth knows we all try not to. When most of the fighting population is so sharding young it’s easy to ignore the fact there are older dragons in the Wings – aye, and plenty of us in the Seventh, too. We don’t die so often or so hard, but they do. And when they do, when a dragon of eight or ten or older gets hit, and can’t go between…”

“Like Sprilth,” said T’kamen, thinking of the green who’d perished so horribly in his and Epherineth first Fall: still the worst fatality he’d witnessed. “Recranth and Salionth…ended her suffering.” It was difficult to say the words; instinctively he shied away from even thinking about the awful truth.

“That’s right,” said Ch’fil. “They gave her mercy.” He paused. “But you haven’t thought about what happened after Fall was done.”

“Oh, Faranth,” said T’kamen. Comprehension hit him hard, and he felt his stomach turn queasily over. “The bodies. Blight it all, Ch’fil. What happens to the bodies?”

Chapter thirty-seven: Sh’zon

Haeith’s breeding days are done. Everyone knows it – and still Larvenia refuses to step down. “Older queens slow down,” she keeps saying, as if anyone believes her.

Well, I don’t. Soon it’ll have been five Turns since Haeith’s last flight, and then she’ll have to cede precedence to whichever of Ranquiath and Ipith rises next – and Ranquiath’s due first.

K’sorren doesn’t think the Peninsula would accept him as Weyrleader. I told him that the Peninsula’s tired of weary old leaders, and new blood is exactly what it needs. He wouldn’t be the first nineteen-Turn-old Weyrleader in history; not even the first nineteen-Turn-old Peninsula Weyrleader!

And what’s the alternative, if Ipith becomes senior? That oaf Sh’zon as Weyrleader? Ugh! Perish the thought!

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of weyrwoman Sirtis

100.03.25 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

LONG BAY HOLD

“I’ll take him from here,” said Sh’zon, seizing C’dessa’s arm in a firm grip and heaving him to his feet.

“You’re hurting my arm!” C’dessa complained, but neither Sh’zon nor the grim-faced Gather steward who’d had previous custody of him paid any attention to that.

“I’ll have to write this up, Wingleader,” said the steward, frowning from beneath the bristling beetles of his eyebrows. “My Lady Coffleby made it very clear that all offences should be recorded, no matter the identity of the culprit.”

“There’s no call for that,” Sh’zon said. “You’ve had back what he took, and no harm done. The Weyr’ll deal with him.”

“I’m sorry, but as I said I’m required –”

Sh’zon cut smartly across him. “That truly won’t be necessary. Now.” He grasped the steward’s hand, pumped it vigorously so the man could feel the shape of the mark piece in his palm, then released hand and coin at the same moment. “Will it?”

The steward looked perplexedly at the marker in his hand. “What’s this?”

Gah, Sh’zon said to Kawanth, has the man never seen a sharding bribe before? “Just a token of the Weyr’s appreciation for your services,” he said. “Chasing down mischief-makers like this one’s thirsty work on a hot night. You might like a cold cup of wine or two at the end of it.”

Comprehension dawned in the steward’s eyes. Sh’zon waited, hoping he wouldn’t need to add a second coin to overcome some misplaced sense of morality. But then the steward blinked. “I, ah, well, um…yes, yes, Wingleader, perhaps that would be pleasant.”

“Good man,” Sh’zon said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Much obliged to you, sir. You enjoy that drink, now.”

He propelled the reluctant C’dessa rapidly away from the small lock-up where he’d been detained, keen to remove the blue rider from the steward’s vicinity before anyone else saw him there.

“Want me to double back and lift that mark off him for you?” C’dessa enquired hopefully.

Sh’zon gave him a shove between the shoulder-blades that nearly took the blue rider off his feet. “I’ll be having it back out of your pocket,” he told him. “Now keep your flapping mouth shut. And your sticky fingers to yourself.”

Kawanth was waiting nearby with C’dessa’s Murroveth and the lean brown Inorath. S’rannis, Inorath’s rider, stepped out from the shadow of his dragon as they approached. “What did I fardling tell you not six hours ago, C’dessa?” he growled.

C’dessa held up his hands. “All right, all right!”

“‘Don’t sharding nick anything’! And do you take a blind bit of notice?”

“I’m sorry, Wingsecond,” C’dessa said, with nothing resembling contrition. “I didn’t think he’d even notice. It was only a poxy little necklace.”

“And to get caught at it? At a Gather?”

C’dessa shrugged, though this time he did look ashamed. “I got distracted. Sloppy. I’m out of practice.”

“You’re a sharding disgrace, is what you are!” S’rannis barked. “Get on your dragon!”

“Are we going to be grounded again?”

“Grounded’ll be the least of your worries by the time we’re done with you!”

C’dessa sighed bitterly, as though reconciling himself to a tremendous injustice, and trudged over towards his dragon. Murroveth, Sh’zon noticed, wore the long-suffering expression of a dragon who was no stranger to his rider being in trouble with their superiors.

“Thanks for pulling him out,” S’rannis said to Sh’zon. “I swear, I took my eyes off him for two minutes, and he slipped me.”

“Aye, well, no harm done,” said Sh’zon. “Maybe cooling his heels in his weyr for a month or so’ll make him think twice about doing it again.”

“Doubt it,” said S’rannis. “Don’t think he can help himself. He’d steal anything not nailed down, and come back with a pry-bar for what is. We do a sweep of his weyr once a sevenday to get back everything he’s pinched. Fair do, he never sells on his wingmates’ stuff.”

“Can you not control him?” Sh’zon asked. “Have Inorath or Izath sit on his dragon till he stops doing it?”

“Doesn’t seem fair to the blue,” S’rannis replied. “The wretched beast gets it in the neck all the time. It doesn’t change C’dessa’s ways.”

Sh’zon shook his head. “Take him home. H’ned’s probably on his way here now, but you let him know he’s in disgrace.”

“I always do,” S’rannis replied forbearingly. “Thanks, Wingleader.”

Sh’zon went over to Kawanth as S’rannis climbed aboard his brown. “Is Izath coming?”

Kawanth tracked Inorath and Murroveth with his eyes as the two dragons bore their riders upwards, towards a safe between altitude. Soon.

Some of the other bronze riders had argued that the ongoing requirement for them to stay on high alert at Madellon was no longer necessary. That was their natural sloth talking, Sh’zon thought derisively; that, and a wilful refusal to consider that P’raima and Tezonth were still a danger. They hadn’t been there when the Southern Weyrleader had made his threats, scarcely veiled at all. This isn’t over.

But L’mis had argued, in that pompous way of his, that Southern was queenless, isolated, impotent. P’raima’s angry refusal to accept a Peninsula queen was simple obstinacy from a man whose long tenure as the leader of Southern was limping to an end. The other bronze riders of Southern would overrule him as soon as the emptiness at the centre of their Weyr’s society became unbearable to their dragons. When the new queen rider arrived – whether the Peninsula’s Sirtis, or a northern weyrwoman if Sirtis proved unacceptable – the bronzes of Southern would quickly fragment into factions vying for her favour. P’raima had outlived two Weyrwoman, but his bronze was surely too old to outfly the younger dragons of Southern. He was finished, done, spent.

Sh’zon disagreed. Until Southern had some other controlling influence, P’raima was the only leader it had – the only leader half its riders had ever known. And no bronze rider held onto a Weyrleadership for the best part of three decades without having a formidable talent for overcoming most any obstacle in his path.

Fortunately, H’ned was in agreement with him. Sh’zon had to give the man some credit for that. A different bronze rider might have used the opportunity to create a conflict between him and his chief rival in a play for political capital. Sh’zon wanted to hold off that inevitability as long as possible. He didn’t covet Madellon’s Weyrleader Regency like H’ned did, but he didn’t want to come out on the wrong side of the fight for it, either. When you didn’t want to win and you couldn’t let yourself lose, the only alternative was to stall.

Still: as long as he was Madellon’s Deputy Weyrleader, Sh’zon intended to do his duty. Including bailing out idiot blue riders with light fingers. The thought of C’dessa’s casual larceny irritated him. Riders drinking too much, riders getting into fights, riders tumbling the wrong Holder’s daughter: those were to be expected; but a rider wilfully pilfering from Gather-goers left Sh’zon disgusted. There’d been a dearth of the more traditional offences so far, at least, which he put down to the presence of twenty or so Wingseconds, all stone cold sober and bad tempered enough with it to be vindictively unforgiving of any infractions. Not many riders wanted to run afoul of a Wingsecond whose day had already been ruined. The fact that C’dessa had managed to elude their scrutiny spoke less of their watchfulness than it did of his ability to perform his petty thieving unseen.

But the real reason for putting the Wingseconds on duty at the Gather had, thank Faranth, failed to manifest. Madellon’s common riders knew even less about the quarrel between Madellon and Southern than the Council did, but no dragon of any colour would lightly forget the trespass of Southern’s bronzes on the night Madellon had liberated the weyrlings. Dragonriders were as quick as any other men to hold a grudge, and if Madellon and Southern riders clashed on Peninsula soil it would damage the standing of all three Weyrs. Perhaps P’raima had reached the same conclusion. The Wingseconds Sh’zon had questioned were reporting that there were very few Southern riders at Long Bay at all, and those who had been seen had kept themselves to themselves. They might yet get through the Gather without incident.

Of course, it wasn’t just a Gather. Lady Coffleby had ruled Long Bay for forty Turns – the longest tenure of any ruler in the south – and marking the occasion with any less than gala extravagance would have diminished the Hold’s prestige. The public dancing squares had been swarming with people since sundown, but a more select celebration was taking place in a pavilion in the courtyard of the Hold proper: a celebration involving better food, better wine, and better music than any of the commoners’ squares could boast. Word had quickly got round that entry was at the discretion of the Long Bay stewards manning the entrance to the marquee. Any rider with a Wingsecond knot or better could expect to be allowed in; anyone with less would need to be exceptionally beautiful or exceptionally glib to achieve the same. Sh’zon had already come across one young blue rider trying to tie a Wingsecond’s knot in his rank braid in an attempt to get in. If it had been a brown rider Sh’zon would have admired his gall, but just the thought of a blue rider trying to pass himself off as a Wingsecond had made him laugh hard enough to get a bellyache.

Izath comes, Kawanth reported, lifting his head.

Above, a patch of the star-jewelled sky was abruptly blotted out by Izath’s dark shape. Several of the dragons clustered on the Long Bay fire-heights bugled a greeting, and Izath bugled back as he descended sharply to land beside Kawanth.

“Thought you weren’t coming,” Sh’zon shouted up to H’ned.

H’ned released his safety and jumped down. “Nearly couldn’t sharding get away,” he said. “B’mon came back three sheets to the wind. Had to get a couple of buckets of klah down him before he could even form a sentence, let alone go up on watch. I thought we’d have to stand in for him, but L’mis volunteered to take the post.”

“Don’t envy B’mon the bollocking he’s going to catch tomorrow,” said Sh’zon.

“Nor me. Say what you like about L’mis, but he takes responsibility for his riders,” said H’ned. “All’s been quiet here, I gather.”

“Aye, save your C’dessa’s brush with the stewards.”

H’ned shook his head. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”

“Kept it off the record, and that was my chief worry,” Sh’zon said. “Valonna decided not to come?”

“Never thought she would,” H’ned replied. He took off his gloves and shoved them under his belt. “She’s asked me to escort her to the luncheon tomorrow.”

Sh’zon exhaled through his nostrils. “Suppose it’s for the best,” he said at last.

H’ned looked surprised that he wasn’t arguing. “She just thinks I’d make her less a target for H’pold’s barbs,” he said, almost apologetically. “And you’re the first to admit that you and H’pold aren’t exactly bosom pals. This luncheon needs to go off smoothly, and Valonna doesn’t have a chance if you’re thumping skulls with him.”

“I resent your implication!”

H’ned looked dubiously at him, and Sh’zon wondered if he’d gone too far. “Look, it’s not exactly going to be a fun day out, isn’t it? Faranth knows Valonna would rather she didn’t have to go.”

“She said that?”

“Of course not.”

She wouldn’t have needed to, Sh’zon conceded. Valonna had far too stiff an upper lip to dream of making such a remark, but she was easy enough to read. “You probably are the best man for the job,” he said, grudgingly. Then, he added, “On this occasion, anyway.”

“Thanks for that ringing endorsement.” H’ned loosened the buckles on Izath’s harness. “Now, where’s this vaunted party? I’ve not had a bite all day and I’m famished.”

They walked around the edge of the Long Bay garrison towards the courtyard and the pavilion. As they approached the marquee the sound of music, and the buzz of voices, grew louder. The two stewards in Long Bay brown and blue standing before the tented entrance glanced only momentarily at Sh’zon and H’ned’s insignia before stepping aside to let them pass. “Good evening, Wingleaders,” one of them murmured.

“Aye, it’d better be,” Sh’zon replied.

He and H’ned moved for the entrance at the same time, and there was a disagreeable moment when it seemed they’d both get wedged in the narrow doorway. H’ned extracted himself deftly. “After you, Wingleader.”

“No, by all means, Wingleader, after you,” Sh’zon said, with forced magnanimity.

“If you insist.”

Sh’zon glared at H’ned’s back as the other Deputy preceded him inside. Well, he’s got his tail up and no mistake, he remarked to Kawanth.

Then H’ned stopped abruptly, and Sh’zon almost collided with him. “For the love of –”

“Sorry, Sh’zon,” H’ned apologised, gazing around. “Faranth’s teeth, but look at this place.”

Sh’zon stepped up beside him and looked about. The pavilion was bigger than he’d thought, a full three dragonlengths long and nearly two and a half wide, fashioned of billowing cream fabric and accented with Coffleby’s brown and blue. The poles supporting the tented ceiling had been wound fussily round with leafy vines and studded with individual glow-grains that glimmered amidst the foliage. More glows had been threaded along the swooping strings of blue-and-brown bunting that draped the ceiling, but most of the light came from dozens of carved wooden sconces, each festooned with candles burning in blown glass bubbles. Small tables lined the long sides of the pavilion, each bearing a dish of dimly-shining glows surrounded by yet more leaves and flowers, and in the centre of the marquee an expensive planked wooden dance floor had been laid down. No one was dancing yet. A raised platform at the far end accommodated a Harper orchestra with fiddles and harps and horns and other instruments Sh’zon couldn’t have named, all sawing and plinking and honking away, but the noise they were producing didn’t match any dance he knew. Most of the people thronging the ostentatiously-appointed pavilion clustered around tables, or lined the vintners’ counter four-deep in search of refreshments. Dragonriders in dress wherhides were much in evidence: Madellon, Peninsula and even one or two from Southern; but they were far outnumbered by men in gaudy Peranvo brocades, and by the many lovely ladies of Hold, Hall, and Weyr.

Well: the ones that caught Sh’zon eye first were lovely, anyway. There were plenty whose charms were better hidden, ladies of middle Turns and worse, and plenty of those had clearly ambushed unaccompanied and unsuspecting dragonriders. Sh’zon saw N’gair – a Wingsecond whose weyrmate rode a blue in Sh’zon’s own Wing – trapped in the betaloned clutches of a vast lady in scarlet, looking as dumbly petrified for his life as a herdbeast snared by a dragon.

“Blight it,” he muttered, as several more single and ageing females began to drift in his and H’ned’s direction, obviously scenting fresh prey. Then, making a split-second decision, he pushed past H’ned. “Ladies!” he exclaimed, seizing the hands of the two front-runners: one whose elaborate coiffure might charitably have been called ash-blonde, the other suspiciously dark of hair for her apparent Turns. “Thank Faranth we got here before you’d been claimed!”

“Why, Wingleader,” the blonde said, putting her free hand simperingly to her mouth, “aren’t you just a sweetling!”

“Oh, the pleasure’s all mine,” said Sh’zon. “I only wish I could stop a spell and escort you both myself, but my lady-love might have a word or two to say in my ear about that.” He jerked his head vaguely in the direction of the densest group of people.

“Oh,” said the other woman, visibly crestfallen.

“Have no fear, my lovely missies,” Sh’zon cried. “I’d sooner lose an arm than leave you to spend the evening alone!” He wheeled, sweeping the two Hold ladies with him. “My very fine friend H’ned is all alone here tonight, and you’re just the company he needs!”

H’ned, who had still been admiring the handsomely-appointed pavilion, was utterly unprepared for the two hands Sh’zon delivered firmly into his grasp. “I…wait, what?”

“Now I want you to behave yourself, sir!” Sh’zon told him. He gave the two delighted Hold ladies a broad wink. “And you girls be gentle with the Wingleader here! Don’t be breaking his heart!”

The blonde tittered girlishly, and her friend, who looked like a tunnel-snake who’d got into the larder, cried, “Oh, we won’t, Wingleader!”

“That’s my girls,” Sh’zon said. He planted a kiss on each cheek. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you in H’ned’s very capable hands.”

He flashed H’ned a grin even as the two ladies closed in on their victim. H’ned shot him a look of utter betrayal before finding a sickly smile. Sh’zon swallowed the hoot that threatened to burst free and turned quickly away in search of a refuge from further advances, wiping the stale, chalky taste of face powder from his mouth as he did.

Izath says his rider’s going to kill you.

Sh’zon grinned. Tell Izath I thought his rider would like some practice at Hold diplomacy before tomorrow.

He says he’s going to kill you until you’re dead.

Sh’zon moved as quickly through the pavilion as the press would permit, sweeping the faces for an unaccompanied female he knew to give him sanctuary. That was the problem with a Wingsecond-and-above entry requirement, he thought sourly: any female rider who’d made it inside would be either on an officer’s arm already, or pretty enough to have been snapped up by some rich Holder.

Then his eyes did single out a familiar face, although it took him an instant to realise that the slender, elegantly-gowned brunette sitting at one of the little round tables was M’ric’s Beastcrafter girlfriend. Good enough, Sh’zon thought. He made his way over, realising as he did that her name had gone right out of his head. “Journeyman!” he greeted her instead.

She looked up, then rose to meet him. “Well, good evening, Wingleader,” she replied.

Sh’zon gripped her hands and kissed her on both cheeks to discourage any Hold ladies who might have been creeping up behind him. “You’ll call me Sh’zon, I insist,” he told her, sitting down at the table.

“Of course, Sh’zon,” she said, then added, “and please, call me Saren.”

Sarenya, that was it. “And aren’t you just far too beautiful tonight, Saren!”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “It’s nice to have the opportunity to wear something new and pretty.”

It was a nice dress, Sh’zon thought, but his flattery wasn’t empty. M’ric’s girl did look pretty. Her hair had been caught up at the sides and left long at the back, the rich blue fabric of her outfit contrasting rather attractively with her tanned complexion. And there was a sparkle in her eyes that he was sure owed more than a little to a glass or two of decent wine “It’s a lovely frock, Saren, but a nice frock can’t turn a watch-wher into a dragon.”

“This one would have a pretty good try,” she replied good-naturedly.

“And where’s that good-for-nothing brown rider of yours?” Sh’zon asked. “Surely he’s not abandoned you here by yourself?”

“He’s getting more drinks,” she explained, glancing in the direction of the vintners’ bar. “He’s been a while. I think there’s a queue.”

“Well, he can get me a beer while he’s about it.” Hear that, Kawanth? Tell Trebruth to tell his rider to get me a beer while he’s about it.

I heard. I will tell him.

“He can afford to stand you a drink or two, that’s for sure,” Sarenya said, shaking her head. “He had quite an afternoon on the runners.”

That made Sh’zon pay attention. “Oh, aye, he did, did he?”

“He puts down silly money on a sixteen-to-one outsider in the first race, with a Beastcraft wagerman, no less. The colt turns the race into a procession –”

“It won?”

“Bolted up,” she agreed. “So I have to take M’ric back to the wagerman to relieve one of my Craft colleagues of – well, a lot of marks – which I’m never going to live down. And at that point, you’d think he’d consider he’d had his share of luck for the afternoon and stop.” She sighed, clearly exasperated. “He goes and sticks twice the stake he had on his winner on a twenty-to-one shot in the second.”

“Did it win too?”

Sarenya laughed. “It came dead last. Four marks he may as well have fed to his fire-lizard!”

“That’s a shame,” Sh’zon commiserated.

“He’s a terrible judge of race-runners,” Sarenya said. “I had a couple of runners placed for each-way money, and the winner in the last at nine-to-four, but over the afternoon I think he lost about half of what he won on that first ridiculous winner.”

“Still puts him up about sixteen marks or so, though, eh?” Sh’zon asked.

Sarenya looked askance at him, wariness suddenly overriding her wine-fuelled loquaciousness.

“Oh, don’t worry, missy,” Sh’zon told her, patting her hand. “What the man does with his own marks is his own business. So long as he doesn’t grudge his Wingleader a cup of wine to toast his fortune.”

“So long as it’s not sherry!” Sarenya said, as if suddenly remembering something.

“Sherry?”

“M’ric said you’re to keep off the sherry!” She laughed at the absurdity of it. “He says sweet wine doesn’t agree with you!”

Sh’zon shook his head, mystified, but Sarenya’s laughter was infectious. “He’s been telling tales!” he declared. “He promised to take the secret of my passion for sherry to his grave!”

The Harper ensemble came to the end of the tedious air they’d been tootling out, and struck up a more lively number. From the cries of delight, it was a popular tune, and the dancing square quickly filled up as men and ladies led – or dragged – their partners onto the floor. Sh’zon glimpsed H’ned in the melee, clinched to the formidable bosom of the ageing blonde, and allowed himself a single guffaw.

“What’s funny?” Sarenya asked him.

“H’ned,” Sh’zon replied. “He’s not been so besotted since the day he met his dragon.” He leaned to the left to watch as the other Deputy trod gingerly through the steps of the dance, but in the crush of bodies it was hard to keep him in view. It was too delicious a sight not to savour at closer range. He leapt up and put his hand out to Sarenya. “Come on, Sarenya, come and have a dance with me.”

“Me?” she asked.

She looked surprised and, Sh’zon thought, flattered. And, why shouldn’t she be? “Aye, you,” he said. “Pretty girl, lovely new dress; that waste-of-space Wingsecond of mine’s wrong in the head to be leaving you to sit alone here where any dirty old man could come and bother you.”

“You’re not that old, Sh’zon,” she replied archly.

“Ha, and you’re not as tipsy as I thought you were, missy!”

She made a face. “Tipsier than I should be.”

“Ah, and where’s the harm in that?” He crooked a finger at her peremptorily. “Come and dance with old Sh’zon.”

“Do you know this one?” she asked.

“Nah,” he said, “but that doesn’t matter. I’m a great dancer. You just follow my lead!”

Sarenya half rose and then, visibly reconsidering, sat down again. “I’d love to, Sh’zon,” she told him, “but I did promise M’ric I wouldn’t dance with anyone else tonight.”

“Oh, you did?” Sh’zon exclaimed, outraged. “That mean, miserly watch-wher of a –”

He broke off. The throng on the floor had parted, the dancing momentarily suspended to allow someone to pass through. Sh’zon could only think of one couple that would rate such deference in a crowd of this calibre, and he felt his good humour drain away as H’pold and Rallai, both half a head taller than most of the other guests, made their stately way through the crowd.

Sh’zon had seldom seen Rallai looking less than exquisite – in Gather gown, riding wherhides, or nothing at all – but she’d surpassed her own high standards tonight. Rallai was a vision in sea green, a colour that had always set off the muted fire of her glorious hair; her gown was long and elegant and would probably have left her incapable of movement if not for the dramatic slit all the way to mid-thigh, through which her equally long and elegant leg showed as she walked. She wore gloves that reached nearly to her elbows, and over them a pair of jewelled bracelets that were clearly of a set with the gold-and-emerald choker that clasped her lovely throat.

Sh’zon wanted to be able to scoff at H’pold’s inadequacy beside Rallai’s majesty, but he was denied even that satisfaction. He settled instead for scorning the foppish vanity of a bronze rider who clearly sought to outshine his Weyrwoman. H’pold wore a tunic in some shimmering black fabric, embroidered richly across the shoulders with copper thread whose hue matched almost perfectly the colour of Rallai’s hair. His belt-buckle was an elaborately crafted dragon, and even his boots, high and polished, were studded and buckled with copper. He wore no jewellery except the heavy signet of Peninsula, drawing the eye as it flashed gold on a finger of the hand he’d placed proprietorially on Rallai’s arm.

Blight him, Sh’zon thought, as H’pold responded to some holder’s compliment with a gracious smile and a squeeze of Rallai’s elbow. Blight him, blight him, blight him.

As though attuned to being the focus of unfettered hostility, H’pold turned his head to meet Sh’zon’s glare. A tiny smirk curled the Peninsula Weyrleader’s lip for an instant. It vanished as he dismissed Sh’zon with a flick of his icy eyes; then H’pold leaned closer to Rallai for a moment to speak in her ear with an easy intimacy that made Sh’zon’s teeth grind painfully together.

That was what she would have seen, Sh’zon realised, when the Peninsula Weyrleaders had swept past. Rallai’s gaze had settled on him only for a moment, but in that moment he knew his face had been frozen in a snarl, his hands balled into fists, his shoulders hunched like a mantling dragon’s. Faranth, what he’d give for a chance to wipe that odious smirk off H’pold’s face!

The elbow that knocked into his ribs broke him out of his fixation. “What, what is it?” he exclaimed, turning on his heel to face M’ric.

“I said, your beer’s apt to go warm if you don’t take it off me now,” M’ric said, proffering a mug so full it was almost overflowing.

“Took you long enough to get it,” Sh’zon said. He snatched the beer stein from his Wingsecond and took a couple of good gulps, wondering as he did if M’ric had seen his exchange with H’pold and Rallai. Probably. The thrice-seared brown rider saw everything. “And it’s already warm.”

“Overpriced, too,” said M’ric, “but that’s Gather beer for you. Especially in a place like this.”

“The Benden’s cold,” said Sarenya, holding up her cup of white wine.

“Benden?”

M’ric shrugged, taking a tellingly restrained sip of his own drink.

Sh’zon set his beer down. “You mind if I just have a few words with him?” he asked Sarenya, dropping his hand meaningfully on M’ric’s shoulder. “Wing business, wouldn’t want to bore you with it.”

“Wing business, it’s always Wing business,” Sarenya replied, with an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. Take him. But you bring him back.” She gave M’ric an affectionately gentle push in the chest. “You didn’t buy me this dress to see me just sit around in it, and I’ve already turned down one dance on your say so.”

M’ric caught her hand, raising it to his mouth to kiss her fingers. “I won’t let him keep me,” he promised.

“She’s a good girl,” Sh’zon said, as they moved to a quieter spot at the edge of the pavilion, near one of the leaf-twined pillars. “Good for you.”

“Yes she is,” M’ric agreed, with a melancholy half-smile.

“Has a sparkle when she’s this side of a glass of three of Benden white, too.” Sh’zon went on. He stopped, and halted M’ric with a forearm across his chest. “You shouldn’t have pulled the ignorant punter act in front of her. If you slip up, she knows too much about racing not to notice.”

M’ric nodded, accepting the rebuke. “I know.”

“Don’t know why you couldn’t have used one of your go-betweens like usual,” Sh’zon went on. “Or did you think you’d impress her?” He snorted derisively. “That’s not a woman who’ll get her head turned by your beginner’s fortune routine.”

“I know that, too.”

Sh’zon waited expectantly, and with a resigned sigh, M’ric stuck his hand in his pocket. “That’s all?” Sh’zon asked, looking with disappointment at the three worn bullmarks he handed over. “The way I heard it, my end should be the fat end of six!”

“Did you really want to shake me down here?” M’ric asked, without rancour.

Sh’zon grumbled, but he pocketed the coins. “Just don’t get sloppy. There’s too much up in the air.”

“No one knows that better than me. Why else do you think Saren’s the only one on the Benden?”

“I thought you looked unenthusiastic. Watered beer?”

“Water,” said M’ric, “and just enough whisky rubbed around the rim to make me smell like I’m having a good time.”

“Well, since you’re probably the soberest man this end of the territory, why don’t you tell me what you’ve seen and heard today?”

“Nothing we hadn’t already predicted. Most of the indignation I’ve overheard has been in response to Southern rejecting the offer of Sirtis and Ranquiath.”

“Not from dragonriders, I’d wager,” Sh’zon said. “There was a sharding good reason Larvenia waited till after Ranquiath’s flight to step down in 94.”

“Several, as I recall,” said M’ric. “Not least that, on all known form, we’d have ended up with a Weyrleader still in his teens. But there’s nothing wrong with Ranquiath, and a lot of outrage that P’raima called a Peninsula queen inferior.”

“P’raima calls any dragon not hatched at Southern inferior,” said Sh’zon, with derision. “You’d think the man would have noticed that it took Margone being at death’s door for Grizbath to squeeze out a queen egg.”

“There’s none so blind,” M’ric agreed.

“What about Madellon’s part in it?” Sh’zon asked. “Any mutters that we did wrong letting the two Southern kids stay?”

“Not wrong, exactly. Peninsula opinion is that Madellon’s being greedy, hoarding weyrling queens when Southern has none. The Madellon folk I’ve spoken to are more concerned that the extra queen will be used as a stick to beat them with come tithing time.”

“They have that right enough,” said Sh’zon. “Especially if Megrith’s still at Madellon when she and Berzunth get to clutching age. And what about Southern?”

“The holders are anxious,” said M’ric. “Unsurprisingly. But not as angry as you might have thought they would be. There’s not much more interaction between Southern Weyr and its holds than there is between Southern Weyr and anyone else. And I’ve scarcely seen half a dozen Southern riders today to form an opinion of how they’re feeling. It’s been a quiet day.”

“And tomorrow?”

M’ric smiled humourlessly at the insinuation in Sh’zon’s voice. “Don’t know.”

“You might have made it worth the risk of an excursion,” Sh’zon complained.

“Still could,” M’ric replied. “I haven’t done it yet. But if there’d been anything startling I’d have passed the word back along with the name of that winner.”

Sh’zon found that only partially reassuring. “Still don’t know if I’m happy to let the weyrlings come tomorrow,” he said. “Tarshe’s never been to a Gather, but… I don’t know.”

M’ric considered it. “I wouldn’t let the two Southerners out,” he said. “But I can’t see why Madellon’s kids shouldn’t come. Those dragonets are old enough to be left alone for an hour or two. Ferry the weyrlings over with chaperones, and if their dragonets start getting upset it won’t take much to get them home again.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Sh’zon said. “I’d dearly love to see my cousin’s face when she lays eyes on a Gather square for the first time.” He made a disgruntled sound. “Though I’ll have other fish to fry tomorrow.”

M’ric looked at him. “Coffleby’s luncheon?”

“Valonna wants H’ned to go with her,” Sh’zon said. “Says I’d antagonise H’pold too much.”

“She has a point.”

“Oh, don’t you start in on me.”

“So we need to deal with H’ned,” said M’ric.

“Already set in motion,” said Sh’zon. “Though if you can keep the wheels oiled I’d be obliged to you.”

“You have other plans?”

Sh’zon didn’t reply for a moment. “You saw Rallai tonight.” He didn’t phrase it as a question.

“I saw you did. Though by my reckoning you looked harder at H’pold than you did at her.”

“H’pold,” Sh’zon said, spitting out the name. “Strutting in like a sharding wherry-cock with his arse-feathers up. I don’t know how she can stomach him.”

“Looks like mostly she isn’t.”

Sh’zon followed his gaze. Across the pavilion, H’pold and Rallai still stood out in the crowd, but while the Weyrleader was taking gleeful advantage of being surrounded by well-dressed holders eager for their piece of his time, Rallai wore the distant, polite expression that Sh’zon knew to be a mask for her loathing of public occasions. “Can’t exactly swoop in and snatch her out from under his nose, can I?”

“Why not?” M’ric asked. “It’ll be good practice for when you do it for real.”

“H’pold’ll make a scene.”

“Not if he doesn’t see you.”

“I’d be pretty hard to miss, M’ric, especially with a Weyrwoman in hand.”

M’ric regarded him with infinite resigned patience – the do I have to think of everything for you expression that always raised Sh’zon’s hackles. “Then get her out of here and to someplace where no one’s expecting a Weyrwoman to be.”

“Like where?”

M’ric rattled off a list. “Public square, Harper tent, fried wherry stand.” He raised an eyebrow. “Under the stands at the racecourse.”

Sh’zon laughed. “You’re a sight more optimistic about my chances of getting lucky with her tonight than I am, M’ric. Last time I tried it on with her she sent me home with blue balls.”

“And the promise of a kiss,” M’ric noted, “which just goes to show she still cares.”

Sh’zon had to give him that point. After nearly three Turns of cool indifference, the kiss Rallai had almost allowed him when he’d sneaked into her Weyr in the dead of night had been the first hint of a thaw. He’d come away with a swollen jaw instead, from H’pold’s angry fists, but it had been worth it.

“Blight it all,” he muttered. He stabbed a finger at M’ric. “You’d better have my back if this goes badly.”

“I always have your back, boss,” M’ric said amiably.

Sh’zon left him to find his own way back to his Beastcrafter girlfriend. He formulated his plan as he shoved through the press of people. Physically grabbing Rallai wouldn’t do; even if H’pold didn’t notice, someone else would remark on the Wingleader in Madellon knots who’d spirited his Weyrwoman away. Rallai wouldn’t thank him for the ripple that would cause. Instead, as he approached the knot of people clustered around the Peninsula Weyrleaders, Sh’zon called on Kawanth. Is Suffath close to Ipith?

No. Suffath is behind the Hold; Ipith is on the heights.

That was telling enough in itself, Sh’zon thought. He knew H’pold hadn’t shared Rallai’s weyr since the early days of his Weyrleadership, but a queen wouldn’t tolerate the company of a bronze she didn’t like no matter how good a show of cordiality their riders put on.

The timing was crucial: Rallai had to notice him, but H’pold absolutely could not. Sh’zon stepped behind a pillar for a moment as the Weyrleader turned in his direction to talk to a Master in Vintner purple.

“Oh-ho, Wingleader, good evening to you!”

Sh’zon swore under his breath and turned, plastering a fixed and possibly deranged grin onto his face. “P’keo,” he said, “how are you enjoying the Gather?”

The fat old Wingleader had a cup of wine in one hand, a plate of food in the other, and stains hailing from both on the front of his tunic. “Very much indeed, oh, yes,” he said, “but not quite so much as H’ned seems to be.” He chortled delightedly. “The fellow is incandescent with you!”

“I’ll buy him a beer,” Sh’zon said. He felt painfully exposed: there were plenty of senior Peninsula riders around who knew him, most of them on good enough terms with H’pold to remark on his presence so close to Rallai. “Now, P’keo,” he said, suddenly inspired, “I was meaning to ask you about the Wingleadership of North High in T’kamen’s absence –”

P’keo looked as horrified as Sh’zon had hoped he would. “Dear man, you can’t be meaning to talk business at a Gather?”

“I couldn’t be more serious,” Sh’zon replied, fixing P’keo with his most penetrating stare. “If you could give me your thoughts on the comparative merits of the senior Wingseconds in North Flight, and then I thought we might discuss some of the other officers across Madellon who might be ready for a step up to Acting Wingleader –”

“Oh, you’ll not trap me into this, Wingleader, no, you won’t!” P’keo declared, backing away. “Good evening to you!”

Sh’zon chuckled, and turned his attention back to the Peninsula Weyrleaders. H’pold was talking to a new admirer, his back to the pillar where Sh’zon loitered. From that angle, Sh’zon noticed how the Weyrleader’s glossy dark hair was thinning noticeably at the crown of his head. Reflexively, he ran a hand through his own thick blond hair. Then, moving with purpose, he stepped out from behind his concealment, heading for Rallai.

She was speaking courteously, if without enthusiasm, to the bevy of Hold ladies who’d attached themselves to her almost as tightly as H’ned’s dance partners had to him. Sh’zon didn’t stop; he barely even slowed down, but as he passed, he caught and held Rallai’s eye. “Kawanth sends his best to Ipith, Weyrwoman,” he said, with a polite nod, and continued on, as if making his way towards the vintners’ counter.

He kept going, resisting the urge to look back for Rallai’s reaction. He wasn’t sure she’d even properly heard what he’d said. That might be even more effective. And a moment later, Kawanth confirmed the success of his ploy. Ipith says her rider wants to know what in the Void was that about.

Tell her if she’ll shake off these sharding wherry-hens and meet me out the back of this snobby party, I’ll explain.

I’m not saying that.

Just give her the gist.

Kawanth was right: Ipith was quite a touchy queen. She would have been irritated to have a bronze speak to her uninvited, even the bronze who’d caught her in two of her junior flights. Sh’zon trusted his dragon to rephrase his invitation with suitable deference. He’d always been good with females.

Well? he asked, when Kawanth didn’t respond.

She has passed the message on.

Sh’zon worked his way to the closest doorway and ducked out of the pavilion. After the oppressive heat of hundreds of bodies crammed into the space, the night air was pleasantly cool. He only wished he’d brought his lukewarm beer with him.

She made him wait. He’d expected that. He’d have thought less of her if she’d come out before he’d been there long enough to wonder if she’d come at all. He paced up and down a bit, then made himself stop. When she did come, he didn’t want her thinking he’d had any doubt.

So he waited. The odd guest still came and went from the pavilion, but no one he knew, at least not as moving shapes in the dark. Up above, the rustle of wings and scrape of claws on masonry gave away the presence of the dragons clustered on Long Bay’s fire-heights. Sh’zon craned his neck, but he could only see a few tail-tips dangling past the highest windows of the Hold.

“There’s no room for him up there.”

Sh’zon let himself grin. Then he composed himself and turned. “Who?”

Rallai walked slowly from the pavilion doorway. “Kawanth. The queens up there would eat him alive.”

“He’s been sweet-talking them?”

“More than you know, evidently.” She crossed her arms. “Did you have a good reason for luring me out here in the cold?”

“I had a reason,” said Sh’zon. “Might not have been a good one.”

Rallai regarded him with that inscrutable look she wore so well. Then she sighed, “Faranth, Shai, I’m too grateful to be out of that ghastly tent to pretend otherwise. Take me somewhere else before H’pold sends one of his lackeys to find me.”

The weariness in her voice troubled Sh’zon. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

“You’d better.”

That sounded more like the Rallai he knew. Sh’zon took her arm. “Come this way.”

It felt just as good as he’d imagined to be by her side again, to have her arm linked with his, to catch the faint spicy scent of her perfume. Sh’zon matched his pace to hers, solicitous of the long gown restricting her movements, and walked her as briskly as he thought he could from the vicinity of the pavilion.

Rallai’s silence made him realise he hadn’t given any thought to what to say to her. He hadn’t expected her to capitulate so quickly to his scheme; there should have been an argument first, an exchange of blows – verbal, not physical – a moment where he genuinely thought she’d turn him down once and for all, and then the sweet segue from loaded half-jests into the old familiar familiarity. It was a routine they’d danced together, on and off, for fifteen Turns; off much more than on in the five since she’d been Weyrwoman, but no less heart-stopping for the infrequency.

Then she did speak. “I know what you’re trying to do.”

“Oh,” he replied. “Well. That’s going to save me a heap of explaining.”

“You don’t change,” she said. Then she stopped, arresting his momentum, and looked hard at him. “And that’s the problem, Shai. You don’t change.”

“And he has?” Sh’zon demanded, jerking his chin towards the pavilion.

“He doesn’t know any better,” Rallai retorted. “And I don’t expect him to learn. Not the way I’ve been expecting you to all these Turns.”

“So we’ve jumped straight to this part of the conversation?” Sh’zon asked. “Faranth, Rallai, you usually let us have a little fun first.”

“Fun?” she asked, shaking her head. “You’re even worse than I thought.”

“You know what I mean –”

“I know exactly what you mean,” she retorted. In the darkness, silhouetted as she was against the bright lights of the public Gather squares, Sh’zon couldn’t see her eyes, but he knew they’d be snapping with anger. “And it won’t work. You should know by now that I won’t choose a Weyrleader based on his ability in the furs.”

“Aye, I know that,” Sh’zon replied, “or you’d never have chosen H’pold!”

“And that’s what I mean,” she said. “That inability to stop yourself coming out with whatever ill-judged retort enters your head first. You did it twenty Turns ago and I hated it then. You did it five Turns ago, and yes, for better or worse, I chose H’pold. And blight it, Shaizon, you were still doing it not a sevenday ago, with all that’s at stake for every dragonrider in the south!”

“I was defending my Weyrwoman!”

“You were being a hothead! Trying to score points off P’raima just as you have off every other bronze rider who’s ever made himself your enemy! Faranth, Sh’zon, Southern and Madellon are at each other’s throats, and you’re still acting like this is all a game you can win by shouting the loudest!”

Sh’zon felt his cheeks burning with anger, and he was glad it was too dark for Rallai to see the flush. “You saw P’raima! Reasoning with him doesn’t work.”

“Neither does provoking him,” Rallai snapped. “As poor Margone would attest, if it hadn’t taken her to her death.”

He blinked, momentarily unable to comprehend the implication. “What are you saying, Ral? Margone was sick before we ever laid a finger on a Southern weyrling.”

“Sick,” Rallai agreed, “not dying. Not that fast. Not that conveniently.”

“You think P’raima had a hand in her death?” Sh’zon asked, hearing the disbelief he felt reflected in his voice. “His own Weyrwoman? Are you out of your ever-loving mind?”

Rallai didn’t react to his incredulous rudeness. “I just wish she’d come to me,” she said softly. “Larvenia never trusted her; always said Margone was a sorry excuse for a queen rider, let alone a Weyrwoman. I suppose Madellon must have seemed like the only possible place she could turn. And even then it took the deaths of half her weyrlings to give her the courage to go behind P’raima’s back. She knew him better than anyone. She would have known what it would mean for her.”

“Faranth’s teeth,” Sh’zon swore. “We have to get the murdering watch-wher. We have to make him confess. We have to –”

“You’re doing it again, Sh’zon,” Rallai said, though the crackle of irritation had left her tone. “Charging at the problem like a herdbeast at a gate. P’raima will never confess, and we’ll never prove he was involved. He’s far too clever for that. Even under a queen’s compulsion, Tezonth can only confess to what he knew about, and you can bet P’raima wouldn’t have shared a plan to get rid of Grizbath’s rider with him.”

“Then how can you be sure he did it?”

“I can’t,” she replied. “But it was convenient, don’t you think, how Margone contrived to perish not a month after defying P’raima for the first and only time in twenty Turns? Convenient how her death suddenly made P’raima’s demand to have his queen weyrling returned sound completely reasonable. You’ll have heard the buzz. Most of the Peninsula thinks Madellon should have sent the girl back.”

“But not you,” Sh’zon surmised.

“And put a twelve-Turn-old child in the power of a Weyrleader who’s been crushing his Weyrwomen’s spirits for the last three decades?” Rallai dismissed the notion. “You may not like H’pold, Shai, but even he saw the folly in that.”

“Then your plan was always to offer him Sirtis?”

“Yes,” she replied, “and not just because I’d sooner have her out of my hair, although I’ll admit that would be an agreeable side-effect. Sirtis is many things, but she’s not weak. She’d never let a bronze fly Ranquiath whose rider she didn’t want in her bed, and she’s as repulsed by P’raima as the rest of us. She gets the seniority she always felt she was cheated out of at the Peninsula; Southern gets a new Weyrleader for the first time in thirty Turns.”

Sh’zon shook his head. “You must have known P’raima would turn her down.”

“Of course. He’s not an idiot. Tezonth’s big, and he’s wily, but he has too many Turns behind him to start winning new queens on merit alone. P’raima knows his only chance of clinging to the Weyrleadership is a Weyrwoman he can dominate into choosing him, and a barely-adolescent girl fits the bill nicely.”

“‘Nicely’?” Sh’zon asked, revolted. “He has designs on that little girl?”

“It’s hardly unprecedented,” Rallai said grimly.

“Well, I think he underestimated that one,” said Sh’zon. “She’s a firebrand, twelve or not. She wouldn’t have him if he was the last bronze rider on Pern.”

“And yet she’s stood up to considerable pressure to return,” said Rallai. “As if she doesn’t have faith in her own capacity to resist him placed back in his domain.” She hesitated, then added thoughtfully, “Or as if he’s holding something over her there that he can’t at Madellon.”

Sh’zon frowned. “Whatever it is, she’s not talking. But if you knew he’d refuse Sirtis, why’d you offer her? What’s the end game?”

“Sooner or later, the other bronze riders will mutiny,” Rallai replied. “Southern might have been trumpeting their superior bloodlines since dragons first set foot on this continent, but that’s hollow comfort when a Weyr has no queen.” She pointed upwards. “Ranquiath’s been on the heights all day. There may not have been many Southern riders here, but those who came won’t have missed her. Every Peninsula rider’s been talking about how ridiculous it was for P’raima to reject a dragon who’s already clutched a gold egg.” She laughed shortly. “I even let Sirtis make free with Peninsula marks to decorate herself.”

“Fertile queen, pretty rider: yours, for the insignificant price of disobeying your increasingly irrational Weyrleader,” said Sh’zon. “And H’pold benefits from the prestige of installing a Peninsula queen as senior at Southern.”

“He’s not the only one who benefits,” Rallai said quietly. She paused, tilting her head slightly, as though considering whether to go on. At last she said, “D’pantha met with H’pold.”

“P’raima’s Deputy?”

“P’raima didn’t sanction the meeting. Of that I’m quite certain.”

“Then D’pantha’s turning on P’raima?” Sh’zon shook his head. “They must be desperate at Southern. That man’s had his tongue wedged up P’raima’s arse since we were weyrlings.”

“The bronzes want a queen,” said Rallai. “And Sirtis is ready, willing and…well, she’s ready and willing.”

Sh’zon snorted. “D’pantha likes himself as Weyrleader in P’raima’s place, then? How does Sirtis fancy the match?”

“She fancies a Weyrwoman’s knots,” Rallai said. “But D’pantha’s no great prize, so she’ll need to see he’s her route to them. Tomorrow, at Gianna’s luncheon.”

“Is that wise?” Sh’zon asked. “Playing this out in front of Gianna?”

“She wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Rallai. “You know she’s always relished a good plot. And it’ll unruffle H’pold’s feathers, to have brokered a solution to the Southern problem.”

Sh’zon stared at her with disbelief. “You’d let him take credit?”

“If there’s one thing I learned from Larvenia, it’s that working with one’s Weyrleader is more effective than working against him,” she replied. “Even at the cost of personal pride.”

“How can you bear it? You always despised him.” Sh’zon paused. “That’s what hurt the most. Both times.”

“You didn’t leave me an alternative, Shai.” The anger was back in her voice, low and controlled. “You know what was at stake when I became Weyrwoman. You know I had to make the right choice in Ipith’s seniority flight, or I’d have been no better than Sirtis.”

“I was the right choice, Ral! I was then, and blight it, I still am!”

“I wish I could believe that. Faranth, I wish I could! But from everything I’ve seen, even half a Turn at another Weyr hasn’t made that explosive young man you’ve been since your teens grow up.”

“But –”

“I thought you had changed,” Rallai went on, not letting him finish. “Last time, I thought you’d finally learned the lesson I meant to teach when I let H’pold become Weyrleader over you. And then you let him get wind of who you were.”

“I didn’t let him,” Sh’zon protested. “I don’t know how he found out about that!”

“But he did,” said Rallai, “and once he had that, you blundered straight into his hands. Faranth, Shai! You knew that just association with kin as notorious as yours would be bad enough. What on Pern possessed you to try to justify what they did fourteen Turns after the fact?”

“Because they’re my kin!” he shouted. “My own flesh and blood! And half the rumours H’pold spread weren’t even true! What would you have had me do?”

“Think before you reacted,” said Rallai. “Think about how it would sound, how it would be taken, how it would affect your reputation. Think about how it would look for the Weyrwoman to be sharing her weyr with an apologist for mass-murder.”

“I never defended what they did!”

“You spoke for them. It’s a mark of how much credit you had with the rest of the Weyr that you didn’t lose your Wing. But how could I have let you become Weyrleader with that hanging over you?”

“H’pold set out to sabotage me!”

“As you should have known he would,” said Rallai. “The connection alone wouldn’t have been enough to destroy your credibility. How you handled the situation was. If you could have bitten your tongue –”

“And let H’pold smear my family’s name even more?”

“Yes,” Rallai said. “If you really knew what it would take to be a good Weyrleader, you’d have distanced yourself from their crimes and held your peace. Whatever it cost you personally.”

Sh’zon broke off from her, storming several strides away: furious, stung, shamed. He spun back to face her in the darkness. “If you knew how many times I have,” he began. “If you knew… Why’d you think I took the transfer to Madellon? Why’d you think I gave up everything I’d built at the Peninsula? I can walk away, Ral! I already have!”

“Then prove it to me!” she told him. “Prove you can think before you act”

“How in the Void am I meant to do that?”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Gianna’s luncheon. D’pantha, H’pold, Sirtis – they’ll all be there. You want to show you could be a good Weyrleader to me? Be a good Weyrleader to Valonna. And if a single slight or slur or insult so much as passes your lips –”

“It won’t,” Sh’zon said. “I’ll show you. You’ll see!”

“Don’t think I don’t want to.” She’d lowered her voice. She stepped closer to him, and suddenly her gloved hand was on his face, her fingertips soft against his cheek. “Shai. Don’t make me have to choose H’pold a third time.”

Sh’zon raised his hand to cover hers, suddenly afire with hope. “I won’t let you down this time. I promise.”

He would have kissed her, but she got there first, overwhelming his senses: sweet and strong and demanding.

“I never stopped, you know,” she said, when they broke apart.

“Neither did I,” Sh’zon replied.

Rallai leaned her head against his for a moment. Then, briskly, she straightened, taking a step back. “I’d better go back to that sharding tent,” she said. “H’pold’s wondering where I am. And you should make yourself scarce before he makes the connection.”

“That’s all I get?” he asked. “One kiss?”

“Sacrifices have to be made, bronze rider,” she told him. “Walk me back.” She laughed, the low, throaty chuckle that few people ever heard. “If you can still walk, that is.”

Chapter thirty-eight: T’kamen

In the early days of the Seventh Interval, when the inhabitants of southern Pern expanded voraciously west in the aftermath of fifty Turns of Threadfall, the dragonriders of the time agreed to found two new Weyrs to protect the fledgling settlements when the Red Star next passed near Pern again.

There was no debate over the site of the second southern Weyr. A giant coastal crater, almost precisely due south of Tillek, had long been spoken of as a Weyr location. It took its name not only from the massive peninsula that jabbed north-west into the great southern ocean, but from the smaller promontory on whose tip it perched, and before long it became home to some of the brightest young dragonriders from the overpopulated northern Weyrs, keen to make their mark on a Thread-free Pern.

The establishment of the third southern Weyr proved less straightforward. The mountain chain that dominated the western portion of the continent was home to a great number of volcanic craters – extinct, dormant, and active – and surveyors suggested three potential locations, each with advantages and disadvantages, advocates and opponents.

The first was centrally placed within the proposed territory, but the caldera was too small to have housed more than two hundred and fifty dragons. The second, somewhat north and east, was nearly as large as the Peninsula, but lacked either ground access or sufficient lower cavern space. The last, and most westerly, remained the leading contender throughout the selection process, at least until all three members of the survey team that had been exploring the site more thoroughly were found dead in their bedrolls. Watch-whers, brought in later, confirmed that the otherwise attractive crater was riddled with fissures venting invisible noxious fumes, and that had put a definitive end to that site as the home for the new Western Weyr.

The second location was confirmed instead, along with an expensive deal with the Minecraft to supply sufficient black powder and skilled labour to blast out the tunnels and caverns the Weyr needed to function as intended.

– Masterharper Gaffry, Chronicle of the Seventh Interval

26.06.02 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

LITTLE MADELLON CALDERA

Little Madellon was one of the first places weyrlings visited when they were building up their endurance. It was one of the first visuals they learned when going between. It was a place of respite, of leisure and liberty, where weyrlings and adult riders alike went for a break from training and routine, away from the permanent bustle of the Weyr. The weather was better, the hunting abundant, and the lake crystal clear.

Every memory T’kamen had of Madellon’s sister crater was one he treasured. The first time L’stev had allowed his weyrling class, the Highflyers, a two-day furlough at Little Madellon, he and C’mine and C’los had stayed up late into the early hours, sitting around a campfire, getting drunk on stolen beer and making grandiose plans for the future. Another time, late in their training, when C’los and C’mine had been very much involved with each other, T’kamen had managed to persuade their classmate Ishane to sleep with him. She’d ended up more enthusiastic about it than him, but he recalled the encounter – and Ishane’s subsequent, if short-lived, hankering for him – with a wry amusement for his younger self. And T’kamen had taken Sarenya there once, in the brief and blissful period of her candidacy; they’d bathed in the hot springs, made love in the soft grass, and slept in the protective curl of Epherineth’s forearm. He’d always meant to take her back there, but the demands of the Weyrleadership had prevented it. The very name Little Madellon was flavoured with regret, with poignancy, with nostalgia: each memory bitter-sweet, precious, priceless.

And now Little Madellon was a tomb.

The puzzle pieces of life in this post-between Pern had fallen into place with frustrating unpredictability since T’kamen’s arrival in the Pass. It wasn’t all his fault. Between the initial suspicions levelled at him, the lack of information on the period between his native time and the middle of the Eighth Pass, and the low regard accorded a bronze rider in the polarised hierarchy of the Weyr, putting together a clear picture of what had changed and why had not been easy. He’d had to overcome, or at least reassess, virtually every assumption he possessed about dragons and dragonriders. Under the circumstances – and his argument with C’rastro notwithstanding – he thought he’d done well to grasp as much as he had about this radically different Pern and adapt his behaviour accordingly.

Yet this horrible truth had still eluded him.

It was yet another privilege that only an Interval dragonrider could enjoy: the benefit of not having to think about death too hard or too often. An Interval dragonpair that made it through weyrling training could anticipate living to a good age together, with lifespans into the sixties, seventies, and even eighties not uncommon. Deaths through accident or illness still happened, but at no higher a rate than holders or crafters could expect, and often lower, given the dragonrider’s relative isolation from the close quarters of Hold residence and the hazards of labour in fields or mines or mills. Interval riders were even insulated from the distress of their older fellows’ passing: most riders who retired from the Wings moved to the quiet, respectfully-tended community at South on the Peninsula-Southern border, there to live out their days in the sun and pass peacefully from the world without causing undue anguish to the younger generation.

Such luxury was no longer feasible. More dragonriders had lost their lives in the scant six sevendays that T’kamen had been in the Pass than had died in his last three Turns in the Interval, and none of them kindly or easily, none of them through the rigours of age or even illness. Madellon’s fighting dragonpairs died hard and suddenly and bloody, and most of them died young. No one – not M’ric, nor even Ch’fil – had ever explicitly mentioned the average life expectancy for a fighting dragon in Madellon’s Wings, but they didn’t need to. If the testimony of T’kamen’s own eyes weren’t enough – he’d seen for himself how riders in their late teens and early twenties made up the bulk of the Wings – then the evidence on the Hatching sands made it explicit. A single moderately-productive queen could still lay thirty or forty eggs across two clutches per Turn; each additional laying dragon would tend to push the clutch sizes of all a Weyr’s queens downwards, but Madellon’s present understrength roster of two were probably still clutching fifty new dragonets per Turn. The modest contributions of the seven fertile green dragons, also clutching twice Turnly, might add another fifty or so hatchlings to the pool. A hundred new dragons per Turn: even if one in five failed to make it through weyrlinghood, that meant around eighty new riders were entering the Wings each Turn. Madellon’s headcount was roughly seven hundred; if it was steady, then basic mathematics suggested that the entire population would be renewed in eight or nine Turns. Factoring in the longer-lived browns and bronzes, and the fighting pairs who had demonstrably survived into their thirties and beyond, the attrition rate for young dragonriders became even more brutal.

Perhaps that was why T’kamen hadn’t followed the logic through to its conclusion. Most of the dragonpairs that had died in the Threadfalls he and Epherineth had flown had been typical of the fighting Wings: young, inexperienced, and grossly unlucky. Four of them had been less than a Turn out from weyrlinghood. But Sprilth, the green who’d been eaten alive in that first harrowing Fall, had been an outlier: an experienced dragon who had trumped the odds by surviving to her eleventh Turn of life. She was the exception to the rule. And yet, she, too, was evidence that beating the odds for ten or fifteen Turns didn’t grant immunity. The physical and mental stresses of fighting Thread, and the loss of the crisp vigour of youth, would eventually, inevitably combine to even the luckiest dragon’s detriment. And while the young dragons that dominated Madellon could escape to a clean death between, those who survived past the age at which even the capacity to jump withered away could enjoy no such boon. T’kamen had witnessed Sprilth’s horrible end, her mercy killing under the swift strike of Recranth’s talons, and he still hadn’t grasped the ultimate implication. A dying dragon too old to go between didn’t just have to be euthanised. It had to be disposed of.

T’kamen had only once seen a dragon’s corpse. Gommeshath, a clutchmate of Epherineth’s, had collided with the wall of the Bowl in a badly-misjudged training manoeuvre. The impact had broken his back, paralysing him behind the wings; the other weyrlings of his trio had arrested his fall, got him to the ground, and lifted his rider down from his neck, but Gommeshath had died there on the floor of the Bowl a few minutes later, too shocked and traumatised even to go between. T’kamen remembered in vivid detail how that luckless blue dragon had looked in death. The colour had leached instantly from his hide, as if the vital energy that had inhabited his body had, in fleeing his form, stolen it away. He’d seemed suddenly smaller, as though the loss of breath and life had diminished his physical form, and his wings had fallen open like bolts of cloth, unsupported by muscles left slack and powerless by death. His eyes had gone colourless and motionless, staring blindly, like empty windows in a building. The grim scene had been short-lived. Cherganth and Staamath had taken Gommeshath’s body between before half an hour had passed, sparing the other weyrlings the sight of the blue dragonet’s broken and lifeless form for any length of time.

Now, T’kamen had been steeling himself for a much worse scene all the way south from Madellon proper.

It was an incongruously pleasant morning for a flight. On almost any other occasion T’kamen would have enjoyed being aboard his dragon on such a clear and sunny autumn day. The sky was full of other dragons out on their own errands, some of them only distant specks against the pale blue heavens, some of them much closer. They passed a group of riderless dragons travelling back towards Madellon, a brown and two blues; the three of them bumping and jostling each other playfully. Shortly after that, they came across the green the trio had evidently been chasing, entwined with the blue who had won her atop a flat mountain peak.

But before long, the distinctive shape of Little Madellon loomed ahead, rising as majestically as any inhabited Weyr. Habit made T’kamen compare the view to his memorised visualisation, looking for any obvious changes. The crater was highest to the south, but its rim dipped gradually in both directions until, in the north-western quadrant, it fell away entirely to blend with the sloping alpine meadows of the range. The unusual open shape of the Bowl let in a remarkable amount of light, particularly in the afternoons, when the entire crater would flood with sunshine. T’kamen had often regretted the drive of Madellon’s founders to find a place large enough to compete with the Peninsula’s population. Little Madellon was nearly the size of Ista in the north, and under different circumstances it would have made an ideal Weyr. Madellon proper’s more towering crater wall made much of the Bowl dark all day, especially in the winter. From this angle, with the highest part of Little Madellon’s curtain wall blocking their view down into the caldera, nothing seemed to have changed. But as the relentless stroke of Epherineth’s wings carried them closer and closer to the shell of the ancient volcano, T’kamen noticed the dark shapes of wherries, wheeling lazily above the crater.

Tell Trebruth we’ll land down there in the meadow to the west, he told Epherineth. Well out of sight.

M’ric raised his arm in acknowledgement. Trebruth banked right, leading the way, and Epherineth followed him down, catching air in his wings to arrest his speed as he descended towards the high plateau that stretched away from the base of the old volcano.

Epherineth touched down gingerly, backwinging hard to maintain his position as he raked the ground below with his hind paws to test for stability. When he was satisfied that the unfamiliar surface was sound, he settled down, the disturbance of his wings stirring up little whirlwinds of the grass and dust scraped up by his claws.

Trebruth had landed with the careless confidence of youth – although, given that Epherineth was three times his weight, he could probably afford to be less cautious. “Jump down, M’ric.”

M’ric looked at him, implacable behind his goggles until he pushed them up. “Why? Alanne’s only got a grudge against bronzes, not browns.”

“It’s not for Alanne’s sake,” said T’kamen. “There are some things a dragon shouldn’t have to see. Trebruth stays here with Epherineth.”

“You mean you want to walk the rest of the way?”

“Is there something wrong with your legs?”

M’ric sighed. “Fine.”

They both dismounted into the grass of the meadow, somewhat flattened where the two dragons had landed, but almost waist-high beyond the landing zone. T’kamen loosened the buckles of Epherineth’s harness, then untied his waterskin, and the short-shafted wherry spear Ch’fil had insisted he take along, from where he’d lashed them to the aft neck-strap.

Epherineth had noticed the wherries, too. He was watching them with clear green eyes, his position alert, and the end of his tail flicking restlessly back and forth. You ate yesterday, T’kamen told him as he stowed his helmet and jacket in the carry-sack on his dragon’s near side. Three bullocks, remember?

That was yesterday.

T’kamen glanced down Epherineth’s side. Flying straight everywhere and carrying heavy loads of firestone had already begun to change his conformation, bulking out his frame with muscle mass he hadn’t had before coming to the Pass. Epherineth had never been a dragon to complain of physical discomfort, but T’kamen was concerned about the damage that the rapid muscle growth was doing to his hide. The evidence of insufficient skin care on many other dragons – hide striations, stretch marks, harness sores – angered him. Perhaps hide integrity wasn’t so important to dragons who would never go between, but it was still the mark of sloppy husbandry. Trebruth bore no such signs of neglect. M’ric had his faults, but T’kamen wouldn’t have allowed him to work on Epherineth if there’d been any indication that he couldn’t keep his own dragon in perfect condition. Take a couple if you must once we’re gone, he said at last. But only a couple.

“Is Epherineth eyeing up those wherries, too?” asked M’ric, ducking under Trebruth’s chin and shifting his own waterskin where he’d slung its loop over his shoulder.

“I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to him eating so often,” said T’kamen. “Or having to tell him to hold back on wherries.” At M’ric’s quizzical look, he explained, “Wild wherries are free. Two or three of those, and that’s a tithed herdbeast he hasn’t had to take from the Weyr’s paddocks. We used to let our dragons hunt their fill if we came across a unclipped flock. Now, I’m concerned he’ll burst out of his skin if he eats too many.”

“At least it’ll keep them occupied.”

T’kamen couldn’t deny that. “Come on. Let’s get this done. I’d rather not be away from Madellon long enough for C’rastro to think I’m avoiding him.”

“What did you actually say to him?” M’ric asked. “Is that why you wanted to talk to Ch’fil? Did you get in trouble?”

“Probably,” T’kamen said. He didn’t want to elaborate; neither C’rastro’s remarks about M’ric’s chances of ever flying in the fighting Wings, nor Ch’fil’s, would do his mood any good. “I may not get another tail. The Weyrlingmaster mentioned a couple of names, but he doesn’t care for how I’m mentoring you.”

“He doesn’t like me, so he’s not going to like you,” said M’ric. “But he has to give you a tail. R’lony still has that much say. What were the names?”

T’kamen had to think about it. “I’rill,” he said, after a moment, “and J’reo.”

“Oh, Faranth. J’reo still wets the bed!”

“What about the other one?”

“I’rill? Complete deadglow.” M’ric shook his head. “You need to hold out for better than either of them, T’kamen.”

“You almost sound appalled on my behalf, M’ric.”

“I am appalled. I suppose he’s only going to offer you brown riders, but he could at least give you D’kestry.” M’ric looked thoughtful. “Unless R’lony’s already lined him up to replace B’nam when he and Yaigath graduate. But you’d be better off without a tail than with either of J’reo or I’rill.”

“You’ll certainly be a difficult act to follow,” T’kamen said dryly. “Speaking of which, why don’t you lead on?”

M’ric sighed. “I really have to?”

“You’re the one who suggested Little Madellon in the first place, M’ric. We could have been on a beach in Blue Shale by now if not for that.”

They started up the incline that sloped to the base of Little Madellon’s crater. The meadow they were tramping through now would have been laid to road long ago had this become Madellon Weyr, but there wasn’t so much as a track through the thigh-high grass. T’kamen placed his feet carefully, scanning the ground for potholes and false patches as much as for any basking snakes that might be lurking in the camouflage of the grasses. M’ric seemed even less at ease, frequently kicking at particularly thick tufts, and swearing under his breath.

“Something the matter?” T’kamen asked at last.

“It’s just all this sharding greenery,” M’ric said. “It makes me nervous.” He ground his toe into an offending alpine weed. “It doesn’t bother you, does it?”

“The walking?”

“The grass.”

T’kamen thought about it. “Not really.”

“Well, it wouldn’t, would it? Where you’re from, it doesn’t matter if there’s grass or not.”

“You’re right. Most of Madellon’s Bowl is pasture in the Interval. You'll hate it.”

M’ric shuddered. “That’s what comes of only having the idea of Thread to worry about and not the reality.”

T’kamen paused, looking around. “You say that,” he said slowly, “but I don’t see a single burned-out Thread burrow up here.” When M’ric didn’t respond, he turned to look at him. “Why is that?”

M’ric still looked reluctant to talk about the reality of what awaited them within the bowl of Little Madellon, but eventually he said, “They take special care, flying Fall over here. They double up the Wings to make sure nothing gets through, so Thread can’t get at the…remains.”

“They’re out in the open?”

“They’d filled all the caves long before the end of the Interval,” M’ric said. “They tried building cairns for a while, but they didn’t last long enough to make the effort worthwhile. The scavengers just pull them apart.”

“Couldn’t they have buried them? Or burned them?”

“Burial takes too long, and burning too much fuel.”

“But why here?”

“Because they have to put them somewhere, and it’s better than just leaving them lying around the territory, isn’t it?”

“Then that’s why Salionth and Recranth didn’t come back to Madellon with the rest of us after my first Fall,” T’kamen said. “They were bringing Sprilth here.”

M’ric made a face. “Can we talk about something else? This is depressing enough already.”

“All right,” T’kamen said. He started after the boy again, thinking of another subject. “Why don’t you tell me about the missing queen?”

That made M’ric pause and look back. “The missing queen?”

“The one that Geninth sired on Donauth a few Turns back.”

“Oh. Chrelith.” M’ric looked surprised. “R’lony told you about her?”

“Barely.”

M’ric halted to let T’kamen catch back up to him. “I’m amazed he mentioned her at all.”

“We were talking about queens,” T’kamen said. “Or the lack of them, given how afraid every rider seems to be of his dragon siring anything bigger than a brown. What happened to Chrelith?”

“What do you think?” M’ric kicked away a stone lying in his path. “She defected.”

“To the north?”

“And not alone. A lot of bronze and brown riders went too. It was pretty humiliating for R’lony. That’s why I’m surprised he told you about Chrelith.”

“I suppose having Geninth’s ability to sire queens questioned was worse than the alternative.” T’kamen thought about it. “So that was the beginning of the rift between the continents?”

“Not the beginning,” said M’ric. “Things had been unfriendly for Turns. The north’s never been as forward-thinking as the south.”

“Forward-thinking?”

“They were still letting bronzes catch their queens right up until the beginning of the Pass. I think they still choose their Weyrleaders that way, too, and they don’t promote green or blue riders.”

“How backwards of them.”

“It is backwards. Their Wings are led by bronze and brown riders with dragons so big they can’t even fight properly. They fly in the safe bottom levels and direct Fall from there. They’d be better off sitting at home and letting the proper fighting dragons do the work.” M’ric jerked a thumb back over his shoulder towards Epherineth. “Why do you think everyone assumed you were a northerner when you showed up on him?”

T’kamen looked back at his dragon. Epherineth hadn’t yet gone after a wherry; he and Trebruth were sitting up, watching them hike to Little Madellon. Every rider considered his own dragon to be the perfect specimen, but exposure to the much smaller Pass dragons had forced T’kamen to re-examine the parameters against which he judged draconic conformation. Epherineth was still a handsome fellow, though. “If northern dragons are more Epherineth’s size than Trebruth’s, how are they fighting Thread at all?”

“Badly, I would think,” said M’ric. “That’s why they wanted Chrelith and the dragons that went with her, to breed smaller stock.”

“Why didn’t they just ask one of the southern Weyrs to trade dragons with them?”

“Because no northern brown or bronze rider would want to come south,” said M’ric. “And what would we do with a load of their oversized dragons, anyway?”

“Madellon’s hardly well-off for queens,” said T’kamen. “R’lony can protest as much as he likes, but you’re halfway through the Pass, and Donauth and Levierth between them have only produced one gold egg. If anything happens to either of them, you’re going to have a problem before the next Interval comes around.”

“Technically, I’m not.”

“Now who’s not being forward-thinking?”

For once, M’ric didn’t have a retort. “Well, what would you do?”

“Open flights back up to bronzes,” T’kamen replied. “The smaller ones at least,” he amended, when M’ric gave him a sceptical look. He allowed himself a humourless smile. “Although Epherineth does have a perfect record of throwing gold eggs.”

He knew he deserved M’ric’s snort of disdain. “I wouldn’t want to be in your boots if you ever let Epherineth go after Donauth.”

“Careful, M’ric. That sounded dangerously like a vote of confidence in R’lony’s ability to take me in a fight.”

“It’s not R’lony I’d be worried about,” said M’ric. “I’ve heard things about what Dalka does to the riders whose dragons beat Geninth.”

T’kamen contemplated the prospect in the light of his encounter with Dalka in her workroom. “You might have a point.”

A gust of wind swirled around them as they climbed the ramp of massive rocks and boulders that led up to the breach in the Little Madellon crater, debris blown out by the last eruption of the volcanic peak. The wind carried with it a powerful stench of decay, much stronger than T’kamen would normally have associated with mere wherry dens. He noticed M’ric turning his head against the smell. “Put your scarf up,” he said, pulling his own up to cover the lower half of his face. “It’s only going to get worse.” He paused. “Do you know how to keep your thoughts private from Trebruth?”

“Yes,” said M’ric, as he wrapped his scarf around his face, “of course I do.”

“Then I suggest you do it.”

M’ric shrugged. “All right. Are you going to block Epherineth?”

“No,” said T’kamen.

“You’re not very good at it, are you?”

T’kamen ignored the accusation. “He’s older than Trebruth. He’ll cope.”

In truth, he knew of no way to keep Epherineth out of his thoughts. There were exercises a rider could use to minimise the bleed-through of thoughts and emotions, but T’kamen had never really grasped them. L’stev had used all kinds of analogies to describe the process of excluding a dragon from the conscious mind – drawing a curtain, building a wall, closing a door – but T’kamen had found that those concepts presupposed a certain division of self that he and Epherineth lacked. Perhaps some dragon-rider bonds did form that way, with their boundaries explicitly drawn, each consciousness confined in some fashion with a single point of connection. Theirs wasn’t. There was no one place where Epherineth’s thoughts joined with T’kamen’s, no demarcation between draconic awareness and human, no seam where dragon ended and rider began. Their minds were intertwined like the roots of two trees grown so close and so long together that there was no differentiating one from the other. They overlapped, like a tide on the shore, with no way to define which was sea and which sand. T’kamen had only ever been able to rely on his thoughts being his and his alone when Epherineth was asleep or distracted.

Instead, he asked, Can you make yourself small and quiet?

Quiet, yes. Small, never.

You know what I mean.

I always do.

T’kamen smiled behind his scarf as Epherineth’s love and understanding flared brighter for a moment, and then the immediacy of his presence waned. He was still there, still present, still conscious of everything T’kamen did and saw and felt, but at a slight remove, a lesser degree of intensity.

“T’kamen?”

M’ric’s voice wavered slightly, making him sound even more like the boy he still was. T’kamen considered, and immediately discarded, the idea of telling him to stay behind. “Come on, brown rider,” he said, “let’s get this done.”

Together, they climbed the last few yards of the rock-strewn ramp into Little Madellon.

And looked down into a graveyard.

If any effort had been made to preserve the dignity of the dragons that had been interred at Little Madellon, it had been defeated by the elements, and the scavengers, and the ruthless process of decomposition. The mortal remains of hundreds of dragons dotted the bowl of the caldera as far as T’kamen could see, each its own silent monument to the living creature it had once been. Some were little more than piles of gnawed bones, scattered out of any natural configuration. Those must be the oldest of all: sixty or seventy Turns dead, the first Madellon dragons interred here, after the last dragons who could still go between had themselves died out. Other skeletons were nearly intact for all their nakedness, only the small bones absent from the whole. Some still bore scraps of hide fluttering forlornly from empty chest-cages and bleached white wingspars. Ridged backbones snaked like immense sinuous tree trunks, the fused segments still whole, other vertebrae missing or displaced. The enormous skulls stared blindly from the gaping hollows of their eye sockets, yellowed fangs jutting from their upper jaws, the lowers long since fallen away, but the skulls themselves too heavy for even the largest predators to carry off.

But sad and grim and shocking though the sight of a long-dead dragon stripped down to its bones was, it couldn’t compare to the horror of a newer carcass.

They hulked there, hillocks of bloated and stinking corruption, the flesh putrefying on the bones, the hide sloughing off as decomposition took hold. The ravages of Fall were still visible in the grotesquely deformed limbs partially eaten by Thread, and the blackened evidence of the dragonfire that had posthumously cleansed the infestation. Some of the bodies were fresh enough for the original hue to be identifiable beneath the discoloured bloom of death and the writhing colonies of maggots. None were fresh enough to still have eyes, or tongues, or untouched bellies.

Wherries crouched atop all but the most badly decayed, tearing loose gobbets of grey-green flesh with beaks and claws. One carcass, close to the ramp where T’kamen and M’ric stood, was almost hidden beneath a shifting blanket of scavengers. Another’s underside was a seething nest of snakes, nearly indistinguishable from the thick loops of exposed intestines they’d ripped out to feast upon. Flies swarmed and buzzed from body to body in foul black clouds. The stench was indescribable; the sound of wherries cawing harshly at each other even as they gobbled down the carrion appalling.

It was so harrowing a scene, so breathtakingly repellent in its every detail, that T’kamen knew he would never wipe it from his mind, and yet the sheer magnitude of it made him feel oddly removed from the horror. This shouldn’t be, Epherineth. Dragons were never meant to end this way.

But there are no dragons here, said Epherineth. He sounded puzzled, as though he couldn’t wholly grasp the reason for T’kamen’s reaction. The dragons are gone.

Their bodies aren’t.

A body is not a dragon, T’kamen.

Then it doesn’t offend you that they’re being torn apart by wherries and snakes?

They no longer need the flesh that they wore. The wherries and snakes are welcome to it.

T’kamen wondered if all dragons were as untroubled by the desecration of the dead, or if Epherineth’s lack of concern was unique to him. His composure in the face of the gruesome evidence of dragon mortality was beyond T’kamen’s capacity to understand. “How are you doing, M’ric?”

“I knew it would be bad, but…” M’ric sounded physically nauseated.

“Let Trebruth back in,” T’kamen said. “Epherineth’s quite calm. I don’t think dragons have the same issues with death as we do.”

After a moment, M’ric nodded, though he still looked pale behind his scarf. “Faranth, T’kamen,” he said. “Now I understand why weyrlings aren’t meant to come here.”

T’kamen looked at the wherries crawling over the cadavers, then unslung the spear from his shoulder. “It wouldn’t be my first choice for a pleasant day out, either.”

“Do you think they’ll attack us?” M’ric asked.

“I doubt it. They have enough to keep them occupied. But it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

M’ric drew the long-bladed hunting knife from his belt. “Where now?” He sounded a bit less shaky.

T’kamen looked across the bowl, trying not to let himself be distracted by the corpses. “Ch’fil said that Alanne’s supplies are delivered to the cavern in the south-west. That seems like a good place to start.”

“We’re going to have to walk through them to get there,” said M’ric. “Through the bodies.”

“Just don’t look too closely,” said T’kamen, resettling the scarf around his face. He kept his tone matter-of-fact. “And watch out for snakes.”

It was a strange, sad journey, crossing the bowl of Little Madellon. T’kamen took a careful course, giving each dragon’s corpse as wide a berth as possible as much out of respect as to forestall any possibility of disturbing the scavengers feeding on the bodies, yet even so the occasional small bone crunched beneath his boots, a knuckle or toe, long separated from its rightful place. They passed one body fresh enough that most of the sail remained, causing the tattered wings to flutter in the intermittent breeze. It had been a bronze, and despite Epherineth’s calm, T’kamen’s own stomach turned over anew at the thought of his dragon ending up here.

Even as he thought it, M’ric said, “T’kamen, look.”

“What is it?”

He pointed. “There.”

M’ric had exceptionally sharp eyes. T’kamen wouldn’t have picked out the shapes of the fire-lizards perching above the entrance to the cavern that was their destination. They were better camouflaged than he’d thought they would be: browns of a hue with the stone, blues blending into the mottled shadows, greens like mossy rocks.

Then, as he watched, the bright form of a queen came darting out of the cave, and the whole fair took off. The mob of fire-lizards pinwheeled across Little Madellon in a ragged honour guard around its queen, protecting her even as she directed their course, until the entire flock descended rapidly towards the hulk of a corpse. The solitary cock-wherry that had been pecking at the dragon’s tail raised its wings, shrieking, but one wherry was no match for a whole fair. Individual lizards dived at the bird, slashing with their talons before veering sharply off to evade retaliation. The onslaught drove the wherry back, and at last it surrendered to the fire-lizard horde, beating its wings hard to take flight in search of a different meal. As it did, it made one defiant lunge at its assailants. Most of the fire-lizards simply tumbled out of the way, but a pair of blues squarely in the wherry’s path squalled with fright – and vanished between.

Moments later, the two blues reappeared. T’kamen felt a surge of excitement. “So they can still use between!”

“Yeah,” said M’ric. He was watching with revulsion as the fire-lizard fair fell upon the carcass. “They can.”

The sight of the creatures tearing at the half-rotten flesh of a dead dragon wasn’t the most appealing, but then T’kamen had never had any affection for fire-lizards in the first place. He’d always found their resemblance to dragons distasteful rather than endearing; an indiscriminate, foolish distortion of draconic dignity and splendour; a piece of dragonkind that any Holder with enough marks could flaunt, like gaudy jewellery. They were barely a step up from the grotesquery of watch-whers, which at least could be employed usefully in mines or as night-time guards. And perhaps that was why, despite the shock of seeing the dragons’ graveyard and its scavengers, T’kamen could detach himself from his revulsion when it came to fire-lizards. If they could be turned to a practical purpose, he didn’t care if their reputation as expensive pets had been blackened by their new-found penchant for carrion. And if even dragons didn’t regard the bodies of their fellows as anything more than discarded meat, he supposed that fire-lizards could hardly be expected to accord them any greater reverence.

A space had been left in front of the cave mouth; a broad semi-circular clearing, edged with the bleached bone piles of decades-dead dragons. As T’kamen and M’ric approached, a brown fire-lizard appeared from between. It held its position in front of the cave mouth, looking down at them with brightly-gleaming eyes. An instant later, half a dozen more winked in, blue and green. T’kamen realised that he hadn’t seen a single bronze. The fire-lizards chattered excitedly amongst themselves, and then, as one, they all vanished again.

T’kamen looked at M’ric. His brows were drawn above the scarf covering his face. “What do you think?”

“I think Alanne knows we’re coming.”

T’kamen re-shouldered his spear. “Then we’d better not keep her waiting.”

After the brightness of the day, he expected the cave to be blindingly dark. But the handful of glows he fumbled out of his belt pouch proved unnecessary as they stepped inside the cavern. The floor was mostly sandy, warm underfoot, with steam rising gently from the hottest places. Shafts of sunshine stabbed down from openings high above, punctuating the darkness with puddles of light. With a larger entrance it would have made an admirable Hatching cavern.

But in the centre of one of those pools of illumination lay a single huge skeleton, the remains of a dragon bigger than any of those they had seen outside. It lay curled there almost as if in life, the bones clean of any remnants of flesh or hide, but virtually intact, with no evidence that scavengers had dragged them out of their natural configuration. The skull, its jaws easily large enough to swallow a man, grinned toothily where it was turned back on the neck. The entire skeleton must have been staged – posed, even – to emulate life. T’kamen wondered who’d done it. But no amount of arrangement could have corrected the unnatural bend in the spine where vertebrae had been crushed and twisted; no sympathetic placement could have repaired the fractured keel or the staved-in plates of the ribcage; and only clever work with wire and mortar held together the massive limb-bones that had been shattered by a terrible impact.

A woman was squatting in the sand beside the immense skull, huddled over something, her back to them. T’kamen thought at first she was a hunchback, and then he realised that fire-lizards crowded her shoulders, five or six of them clinging to her. Her hair was yellow – discoloured white rather than blonde – and seemed to have been hacked off with a knife. Beneath the shifting mob of fire-lizards, she wore a shapeless brown robe, stained and tattered. Her feet were bare, the ankles protruding from the ragged hem of the sack-like robe as gaunt and thin as sticks.

Behind T’kamen, M’ric muttered, “Faranth.”

“That’s not Faranth,” T’kamen replied softly. He darted a thought to Epherineth, Stay small, and then, clearing his throat to broadcast his presence, approached the crouching woman, pulling the scarf down from his face. “Weyrwoman,” he said, for want of another title to call her by. “Weyrwoman Alanne.”

“Early,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you they were early? Isn’t that what I said?” She batted a hand over her shoulder in T’kamen’s direction, dislodging a couple of fire-lizards. “Early! Go away! Come back tomorrow!” Then she cocked her head to one side, and added, “Did you bring sweetener? Is there sweetener?”

“I’m not the supply rider, Weyrwoman,” T’kamen said. “I’m –”

“No sweetener!” Alanne raged. She reared to her feet, lifting her arms, scattering screeching fire-lizards every which way. “Nothing sweet, nothing sweet, nothing sweet, do you hear me?”

An external force struck T’kamen suddenly, a push not at his body, but at his mind. He shook his head: dazed, unprepared. Epherineth had occasionally given him a mental shove, but he’d never felt one come from somewhere else. “Weyrwoman,” he said thickly, “I…”

As Alanne turned to face him, the words dried in T’kamen’s throat, and he heard M’ric breathe, “Sweet mother of dragons!”

Her face was striped with livid scars, jagged lines that ran from hairline to chin. Where they crossed her eyes the lids were sunken, shrunken; empty. If her face had ever been beautiful it was impossible to tell beneath the awful evidence of her self-mutilation. But sightless, eyeless though she was, she still moved her head as though she could see him as clearly as he could see her, and when she spoke again her voice was suddenly perfectly calm. “What’s this to-do, hmm?” she asked, in a reasonable tone. “You’ll forgive an old woman her routine. I wasn’t expecting anyone today, you see, or I’d have made more of an effort.” Her thin hand drifted out to touch the enormous skull, caressing the bony eye-ridge tenderly. “Ryth would have that I’m a vision no matter what, but dragons will flatter, won’t they?”

T’kamen forced enough saliva back into his mouth to reply. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. “You both look…well,” he managed.

Alanne beamed a sudden smile, a horror of broken and blackened teeth in her ruined face. “Yes, yes, Ryth wouldn’t lie, would you, my dear girl?” The expression drained away as quickly as it had appeared. “Well, who are you? What do you want? Where are your dragons?”

The jabbing came again: not a shove, but subtler, probing, seeking. T’kamen had no idea how to resist it without Epherineth’s help. Instead, he tried to screen off his dragon’s small, listening presence in his own mind. “I’m T’kamen, and this is my tailman M’ric.”

“Yes,” Alanne said, turning her ravaged face from one to the other. “Yes, he favours you, this son of yours.”

“Your pardon, Weyrwoman,” T’kamen said. “M’ric isn’t my son.”

“Don’t contradict me,” Alanne said, with another of those painful mental thrusts, and the fire-lizards on both her shoulders mantled their wings in reaction. T’kamen realised that she was using their eyes to see. “Ryth doesn’t like it when you contradict me.” Then the faint smile that played on her lips as she spoke to the skeleton of her dragon faded. “Forgive me,” she said fretfully. “It’s so hard to know what’s real and what isn’t these days. Are you another phantom?” She reached out towards him with frail hands. “Please, I must know if you’re real or not.”

T’kamen braced himself, then extended his hand. “I’m no phantom,” he said.

Alanne’s fingers closed on his, first lightly, and then with a sudden steely grip. “You lie,” she cried, and thrust his hand away from her. “You are a phantom! You’re dead! You shouldn’t be here! Go away, go away, go away!”

More fire-lizards materialised from between in the air around the dragonless woman, at least a dozen of them, their piping voices full of sympathy. Alanne, sobbing, stretched out her emaciated arms, and the fair swarmed over her, clinging wherever they could find purchase, winding their tails about her limbs, pressing their little bodies against hers. Startling though the sight was, it seemed to soothe Alanne’s manic distress. She gave herself a shake, and most of the fair took off, though they didn’t go far. Instead, the mob of fire-lizards found new perches along the bony spinal ridges of Ryth’s skeletal form, and lined up there, like macabre ornaments, watching their mistress with avid, adoring eyes.

That was when T’kamen saw their clutch. It was almost hidden, covered completely over with sand, but the tell-tale domed rises of hidden shells in a circular pattern gave it away. It lay in the curve of Ryth’s skeletal form, as if even if death the queen could protect it. But when he took an involuntary step towards it, Alanne stepped back, and the one remaining fire-lizard on her shoulder, a brown, shrieked a clear warning for him to keep his distance.

“Not you,” she said. She pointed at M’ric. “You. Come here.”

M’ric shot T’kamen a look of purest supplication. T’kamen couldn’t blame him. Alanne’s volatility, bouncing as she did from calm to agitated, lucid to raving, would have been unnerving in a woman without her appearance – or the terrifying mental strength which even losing her queen seemingly hadn’t stripped from her. But with the fire-lizard eggs almost close enough to touch, T’kamen couldn’t afford M’ric the luxury of staying uninvolved. “Go on,” he said, motioning towards Alanne with his head.

Reluctantly, dragging his feet, M’ric approached the dragonless queen rider.

“Oh, stop dithering, Daliddal!” Alanne cried. “Why that blasted foster-mother of yours hasn’t thrashed this sloth out of you by now I’ll never know! Now come here and be smart about it!”

Stung – by the sharpness of the words rather than any accompanying push, T’kamen thought – M’ric lengthened his stride. “Yes, Weyrwoman,” he said, having the sense to humour her.

“That’s more like it,” said Alanne. She gripped him by the shoulders – M’ric almost flinched, but controlled himself in time to suppress the reaction – then patted briskly at his hair. “This will stick up, won’t it,” she said, half to herself. She licked her palm and flattened down the offending locks. M’ric did well not to cringe away. “This is your fault, D’midder,” she said, wagging her finger in T’kamen’s direction. “I always said he favoured you. Well, we’ll see soon enough, won’t we, when the eggs hatch?” She turned with another horrifying smile. “I know you want to touch them. Why else would you be here?”

“Uh,” M’ric said, flicking a look down at the clutch, “yes…yes, that’s why I’m here. You, ah, know me too well…ah…mother?”

“Mother, mother,” Alanne chortled. “Oh, you’ll do anything to butter me up, won’t you?” She gave him a little nudge with her elbow. “Well, you make sure you make your bows to Ryth, and maybe she’ll let you closer.”

It made the oddest scene: the immense skeleton, the tiny clutch, the watching gallery of fire-lizards, and M’ric, obliged to play along with the whole harper’s farce. Or harper’s tragedy. Alanne’s grip on sanity was clearly tenuous, yet there was a tenderness in the expression on her ruined face that T’kamen found heartbreaking. He didn’t know if the wretched dragonless rider truly believed that M’ric was her son, or if so how long the delusion would last, but if it gave her some measure of comfort to play out the pretence then he wouldn’t have begrudged her it.

Moving stiffly – no doubt conscious, with a teenager’s fragile pride, of how ridiculous he looked – M’ric turned to face Ryth’s inanimate form. He executed a short bow, muttering, “My duty to you, Ryth.”

“Go on, go on, ask her if you can come closer,” Alanne prompted him.

M’ric cleared his throat. “May I see your eggs?”

The single queen fire-lizard of Alanne’s fair mantled her wings from her perch atop a bony knob of Ryth’s spine, emitting a shriek of protest. “Now, don’t be that way,” Alanne told her. “You know he won’t hurt them. Let him see.”

M’ric stepped up to the clutch, then sank down to a crouch to examine it. “Can I touch them?”

Alanne squatted beside him. “Here,” she said, brushing away sand to uncover the shells.

Whatever process that sometimes distinguished dragon eggs with vivid markings didn’t seem to occur with fire-lizard clutches. They were much more uniform, a sandy-beige in colour – the better to blend in with their surroundings. T’kamen had never handled a queen egg to know if they looked much different, but one of the eggs M’ric was looking at right now contained the fire-lizard queen that would become his companion and – if T’kamen’s hunch was correct – the means of enabling Trebruth to travel between to the Interval.

“They’re hard,” M’ric said to Alanne. “Will they hatch soon?”

“In days,” she said. “Not sevendays. Some of them are singing to me already.” She stroked a shell lightly with her dirty fingers. “This one will be brown. This one’s green. And this one…”

Alanne faltered as she touched another egg. M’ric looked questioningly at her, and T’kamen wondered if the old woman’s state of mind was going to shift again. She dug under the shell, excavating it from its sandy hollow. “This one,” said Alanne, holding the egg up to her face. It was on the large side, perhaps half the size of a wherry egg. Her eyeless sockets flickered and she inhaled sharply. “This one’s no good at all.”

“Don’t!” M’ric exclaimed, sensing her intent even as T’kamen did.

But it was too late. Alanne tightened her fist around the shell. There was a wet popping sound, and then she tossed the crushed remains aside with a negligent flick of her fingers.

“Faranth, what did you have to do that for?” cried M’ric.

Alanne wiped egg fluid and fragments of shell on the front of her filthy smock. “It was bronze,” she said, with chilling callousness. “I have no use for bronzes.”

M’ric seemed almost paralysed by shock. T’kamen, sickened, stepped over to the discarded clot of shell and the small body it had contained. Beneath the sand and fluid and greenish ichor, the unhatched fire-lizard clearly was a bronze. It was the length of T’kamen’s hand, and almost fully-formed, though its wings were hopelessly mangled, its limbs twisted by the violent compression of Alanne’s fist. But the broken thing was still alive. It quivered there where it had been discarded, the tiny head twitching blindly, the mouth open in a scream it had no breath to project, the soft claws clenching and releasing futilely.

T’kamen went to his knees beside the tiny body. He scooped it up with both hands, letting sand fall away between his fingers. It made a pitifully scant handful. “Epherineth,” he said aloud, and his dragon surged back into his consciousness in full force. “Is there anything we can do?”

He is dying, Epherineth replied. His voice reflected his instinctive revulsion at the sight, the brutality, the murder of this helpless scrap of life.

As the fire-lizard shivered in his hands, T’kamen readied himself to end its suffering. It was so tiny; just a pinch of his fingers would have done it. But before he could act, the broken lizard gave a final choking, convulsive shudder and lay still.

He’s gone, Epherineth said softly.

T’kamen looked at the little body, as sad in its own way as the terrible sight of the dragon corpses outside. He set it down carefully, brushing sand from his hands. Only then did he trust himself to look at Alanne. She had turned her eyeless head in his direction, and the brown fire-lizard on her shoulder was staring at him. The fact that neither it, nor any of the other fire-lizards lined up along Ryth’s backbone, had objected to Alanne’s destruction of the offending egg was frightening. If she could control an entire fair of fire-lizards even half mad and dragonless, it was no wonder she’d been so feared and despised as Madellon’s Weyrwoman. He rose, preparing himself.

“You stink of bronze,” she said, with loathing. “I see him.”

The push that T’kamen felt was harder and sharper than any of her earlier probes, a vicious stab with baleful intent behind it, but he and Epherineth were ready for it. They resisted, and Alanne’s attack glanced only bruisingly off their united will.

Alanne’s cry of surprise was almost lost in the outraged shrieks of a score of fire-lizards. She seemed almost dumbstruck that anyone would dare repel a push, and for an instant T’kamen thought they might escape without further incident, but then she jabbed a finger wordlessly at him, and the fair attacked.

He heard M’ric shout his name, and Epherineth’s distant roar. He had a split second to shrug the wherry spear off his shoulder into his hands, and then Alanne’s lizards were upon him.

T’kamen caught a glimpse of talons aimed directly at his eyes, and threw himself sideways. They snagged his hair instead, ripping out clumps. More lizards descended, diving on him as they had the cock-wherry outside, and their claws slashed at his head, his shoulders, his arms, slicing through wherhide and skin with equal ease.

Swearing, T’kamen swung the shaft of the wherry spear two-handed over his head. One lizard alone would have evaded the crude strike easily, but while half the attacking creatures vanished abruptly between, there were so many that he couldn’t help but get a few. The screams of anger turned to squalls of pain. One little body hit the ground with a sickening thud, and several more tumbled away with damaged wings. T’kamen lashed out again, trying to clear himself some space, and this time the whole mob of fire-lizards eddied back out of reach, their survival instincts overriding even Alanne’s formidable will. He rolled away, trying to get his feet back under him. Epherineth!

We come!

M’ric was suddenly there, helping him scramble upright. He was holding himself strangely, one arm folded across his stomach. “We have to get out of here, T’kamen!”

“You don’t shaffing say!” T’kamen snapped. Blood from a freely-streaming scalp wound ran into his mouth as he spoke. He begrudged even the moment it took to spit it out. Behind them, Alanne was laughing or crying, or maybe both; he glimpsed her cradling the body of the fire-lizard he’d struck fatally in her arms. He could no longer care. “Move, now!”

They made for the exit of the cavern at a dash, crossing through intermittent patches of brightness as they ran. T’kamen kept the wherry spear handy, but no fire-lizards pursued them. The strengthening reek of rotting flesh as they neared daylight couldn’t have been more incongruously welcome.

And then a pair of whers slouched out of the shadows near the entrance. Both were a drab olive colour that could have been green or brown. Their malformed eyes were squeezed tightly shut against the light, but the ugly heads turned unerringly on the thick muscular necks, guided as surely as blind Alanne herself by their mutual connection to the fire-lizards. They lurched towards T’kamen and M’ric on bowed limbs, their misshapen wings waving obscenely, heavy tails swinging for counter-balance, jaws dripping with slaver as they lumbered to engage the interlopers on their territory.

“Shaffing Faranth!” M’ric shouted.

T’kamen gripped the wherry spear two-handed, but he knew with bleak certainty that it was no defence against one angry watch-wher, let alone two. “M’ric, circle around to the left,” he said, not taking his eyes off the creatures.

“But –”

“You’re younger and faster than me. If you can make it outside I don’t think they’ll follow.”

“I’m not leaving you here, T’kamen!”

T’kamen took one hand off the spear to cuff the boy savagely on the back of the head. “For once in your life, do as you’re sharding well told! You’re the one who has to get out of this alive! Move it! Now!”

After another instant’s indecision, M’ric obeyed. As the boy sprinted wide of the whers, the closer of the pair tracked him. “Hey!” T’kamen shouted. “Over here! It’s me your crazy mistress wants!”

The brutish head swung back towards him. T’kamen took one step backwards, then another, keeping the spear braced in front of him. The pair of whers continued their advance; clumsy, ungraceful, but inexorable. They knew, or Alanne did, that he had nowhere else to go. “That’s it, you ugly bastards,” he said softly. He didn’t dare take his eyes off them to see if M’ric had got away. “Come on. Come and get me.”

Then something locked onto his right calf, and T’kamen cried out as a fire-lizard’s fangs sank viciously into the back of his knee. The leg crumpled beneath him, and he dropped the spear, groping down with both hands at the lizard savaging his leg. He got hold of it for an instant before, with a final scissoring twist of its jaws that made something in his knee give way with an agonising, audible pop, the fire-lizard escaped between.

Alanne’s hooting gales of laughter made an awful counterpoint to the eager slobbering of the advancing watch-whers. She pushed him, not to control, but to hurt. “Filthy bronze rider,” she said. Another painful shove. She was taunting him, playing with him, like a feline toying with a captive snake. “You won’t have Ryth. You won’t.”

Blood welled out from between T’kamen’s fingers where he clutched his mauled, screaming, suddenly unresponsive leg. He turned his head away from the stalking whers to look at their deranged mistress. “Ryth’s dead, Alanne,” he ground out through teeth gritted against the pain. “You can play make-believe with your fire-lizards and your whers until the next Interval, but it won’t change that. Your queen is dead, and you killed her.”

“No,” said Alanne. “No. You’re lying.” She pushed him yet again, so hard this time that it sent him sprawling onto his back. T’kamen struggled to get himself upright, leaving bloody handprints in the sand. “You’re lying. You plotted and you lied and you schemed and you killed my queen!” she howled. “You and Ligarth! He would have raped my Ryth! You would have raped me! I had to stop you, L’vorn! I’ll stop you again!” She raised her hands to her face, as if to repeat the tearing with her nails that had scarred her so hideously, and then she pointed at the two watch-whers. “Kill him, kill him, kill him!”

The whers leapt obediently forwards, drooling maws agape and baying, their foetid reek washing over T’kamen, and he braced himself, flinging a final desperate thought to Epherineth. I’m sorry. I love you.

NO!

The light from outside was blotted abruptly out by Epherineth’s head and shoulders, filling the too-small cavern entrance. The closest wher, on the verge of springing at T’kamen, jerked spasmodically backwards, its tail snagged in Epherineth’s forepaw. Epherineth, his eyes scarlet with fury, smashed it once, twice, three times on the ground before hurling it almost casually against the wall of the cavern. The wher struck the rock face with a horrible crack, and when it hit the ground, it didn’t move again.

The second wher howled, enraged, and leapt at Epherineth. It latched onto the side of his neck, flailing and biting. Epherineth roared with pain, clawed it frantically loose, then snatched the thrashing wher up in his mouth. Even then the creature wouldn’t surrender, slashing viciously at Epherineth’s face. He flipped it upwards, then caught it again, squarely in his jaws, its head writhing one side and its tail lashing frantically on the other. He crunched down with his teeth, pulverising bone and rending flesh, until the screams stopped, and then he spat out the bloody remains in a ragged heap.

Then Epherineth, his face streaming green ichor, his bared teeth snaggled with bits of watch-wher hide and splinters of bone and shreds of flesh, turned his murderous crimson gaze on Alanne.

All the fire-lizards had fled, and Alanne was completely alone. She was crawling on her hands and knees in the sand, totally blind with no creature to see for her, and though she had no eyes to weep, she was sobbing broken-heartedly as she fumbled pathetically around. “Ryth…Ryth…I’m sorry…forgive me…”

No, T’kamen told him, grasping Epherineth’s intent. He reached for the wherry spear and drove its butt into the sand, using it to pull himself upright. His knee buckled, and he had to lean hard on the spear shaft. The pain was so bad he thought he might faint. Leave her!

She tried to kill you!

She didn’t succeed. Leave her! T’kamen took a halting step, but his knee wouldn’t bend, and the leg collapsed under him. He lay gasping in the sand, struggling to stay conscious. Just get us out of here.

Epherineth flattened himself nearly to the ground, eeling deeper into the cavern on his belly, until he could reach T’kamen with his forepaws. Carefully, with a gentleness that belied his brutal attack on the two watch-whers, he clasped his claws around T’kamen. He lifted him easily in that taloned, ichor-stained grip and then wriggled backwards like an immense tunnel-snake.

As they emerged into the sunlight, M’ric rushed to Epherineth’s side. Trebruth was behind him. “Faranth, T’kamen, you’re all right!”

Epherineth set T’kamen down, though he kept his forepaw close, ready to catch him again if he staggered. “Are you hurt?” T’kamen asked M’ric dazedly.

“No,” said M’ric, “not a scratch. You’re bleeding all over, and Epherineth…”

T’kamen looked up, and nausea gripped him. “Oh, Faranth, Epherineth!” The marks of the wher’s terrible claws tracked deep and ragged all the way down Epherineth’s muzzle, bisecting his upper lip and laying hide and flesh open all the way to the bone. Epherineth had screwed the lids of his right eye tightly shut, and green ichor was welling up around it. “Your eye!”

Painfully, Epherineth opened his eye just a slit. The facets behind it were still bright red with anger, but they whirled intact and undamaged. I can see. I can see! But it hurts, T’kamen!

T’kamen had numbweed in his belt pouch, but not much, and nothing to clean Epherineth’s wounds, nothing to stitch them. His own injuries were sucking the strength from him. His leg felt awash with fire, and bending it even slightly made sickening waves of pain ripple through his entire body. “I can’t treat you here. We have to get home before Alanne pulls herself together and sends her lizards after us again.” And then it struck him: fire-lizards. “Blight it all between! The shaffing clutch is still in there with her.”

You’re not going back!

“T’kamen –”

“I have to!”

She tried to kill you!

“But T’kamen –”

“Those shaffing eggs are the whole reason we came to this blighted place!”

“T’kamen!”

“M’ric, would you just…” T’kamen began, and then he blinked and looked at the hands the boy had thrust towards him.

Two fire-lizard eggs lay in his cupped palms.

“I just swiped the two from the top,” M’ric said. “Did we need more?”

Chapter thirty-nine: Valonna

All goods and services required by the Weyr must be obtained via the Holds and Halls of its own territory. The Weyr may not undermine extant inter-territory trading agreements by brokering its own purchases, nor interfere with the supply lines of the Weyrs of other territories. Any goods or services that its own territory cannot provide must be bartered for through Hold or Hall intermediaries whether such goods and services form part of the agreed tithe, or if they represent needs over and above those already pledged in support of the Weyr.

– Excerpt from the Western Territory Charter

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

The riders of Madellon Weyr were feeling delicate on the morning of the second day of Long Bay’s Gather. Everywhere Valonna went, people were nursing hangovers. There was a glazed sort of hush in the dining cavern, where even the softest clink of mug against klah pitcher caused visible pain to the riders slumping at the tables with their heads in their hands, and the inadvertent scraping back of a bench elicited moans of abject misery.

When Valonna made her pass through the kitchens, Galyann, one of Crauva’s section leaders, reassured her that everything was in hand. “There’s double sweetening in the klah, a pinch extra salt in the cereal, and all the booze is locked up tight,” she said, casting a withering look out at the wretched residents of Madellon. “And Master Isnan has provided a restorative tonic, although since we started serving it we’ve been going through buckets and rags like you wouldn’t believe.”

The suffering wasn’t confined to the dragonriding population. The apprentice who came with a message from Master Arrense looked barely half alive, and when Valonna arrived at the Beastcraft paddocks it became clear to her that the sickly-looking lad wasn’t the only member of his craft feeling the effects of Gather overindulgence.

“I’m catching a lift over to Long Bay myself in a bit, but I thought you’d like to hear Sarenya’s preliminary report,” Arrense said, clapping his journeyman a bit too heartily on the back.

Sarenya winced. She didn’t look quite so green as the riders in the dining hall, but she was paler than usual under her tan, and there were dark rings beneath her eyes. “Master Arrense asked me to have a look at the stock pens,” she said. Her voice was faint and hoarse. She coughed, and added, “Sorry. Lost my voice.”

“All in a good cause,” said Arrense. “I knew I should have given you more than one miserable mark. Not that I’m condoning wagering, you understand, Weyrwoman.”

“You had a good day on the runners, then?” Valonna asked.

“Not bad,” Sarenya replied, “and then far too much Benden white celebrating in the evening. Fortunately not before I walked the paddocks. I saw lots of Peninsula-bred bullocks from the local holds. Very good beef. Not like the bags of bones we’ve been getting in the drives from Kellad and Jessaf recently.” She glanced at Arrense, and he motioned for her to continue. “In fairness, no one’s going to take inferior stock to a big Gather, so I didn’t expect to see animals of the standard Madellon gets in tithe.”

Valonna could sense the qualifier. “But?”

Sarenya looked at Arrense again. “Carry on, Saren,” he told her.

“I did some asking around for prices on the good stock. Not the prime beasts, but animals probably a third to a half as heavy again as these things.” She gestured at the handful of bullocks grazing in the paddock. “The going rate seems to be about seven marks a head; a little less for wholesale purchases. And there was a sense of…” She hesitated, searching for a word. “Desperation, amongst the herders I spoke to. They really wanted to sell at seven a head.”

“Herdbeasts like Saren’s describing should be closer to nine marks than seven,” said Arrense. “From the herders, anyway; before the Hall buys any in and marks them up.”

“What’s driven the price down so in Peninsula territory?”

“Surplus, almost certainly. If there’s a glut of animals of a certain grade, it depresses the market. There are only so many buyers.”

“But we’ve been having to pay just under six marks a head for supplementary animals from Jessaf and Kellad,” said Valonna. “Are you saying we’ve been gouged?”

Arrense and Sarenya exchanged a glance, mirroring each other so uncannily that, under different circumstances, Valonna would have been amused. “There’s more to it than that,” Arrense said at last. “What we’re getting is what there is. It seems you have to go a long way in Madellon territory to find a herdbeast you might call acceptable. Unless you know where to look.”

“What do you mean?”

“Gartner Hold,” said Sarenya.

Valonna visualised the territory map. “On the border with the Peninsula? In the mountains?”

“Right. Which is why I couldn’t understand why one of the beef steers I saw at Long Bay yesterday had a Gartner transit tattoo when it supposedly came from Birndes Hold. You’d never drive beasts from Birndes to Long Bay via Gartner. And there’s something else. I had a good look at a lot of Peninsula-bred Keroon Reds yesterday. The breed as a whole is susceptible to river itch – it’s a skin condition caused by a reaction to the bites of certain types of midge. We’ve seen a lot of it in Madellon territory this Turn with the dry weather we’ve been having. Midges thrive on stagnant water, so when there’s drought, and the rivers run low, they multiply and our steers get bitten. It doesn’t really affect their condition, but you’d be hard pressed to find a Keroon in Madellon territory without river itch scars. On the other hand, I didn’t see any Peninsula-bred Keroons with river itch – except that one with the Gartner ear mark.”

Valonna looked at her. Then she looked at Arrense. “You think that herdbeast came from somewhere in Madellon, not Birndes?”

“Yes,” said Arrense. “And where there’s one, I’d wager there’ll be more.” He folded his brawny arms. “Peninsula territory is awash with quality livestock, Weyrwoman, while the herds being driven here to Madellon are made up of the third-rate and the half-dead.”

It was becoming unsettlingly clear to Valonna. “Then Madellon’s quality animals are being sold to the Peninsula through Gartner Hold? And low-grade Peninsula herdbeasts are being passed off as Madellon animals?”

“That seems to be about it,” Arrense replied.

Something in his tone told Valonna that he wasn’t telling her everything. “There’s more?”

Arrense sighed. “Weyrwoman, I appreciate how serious this is, and how much you’ll want to address it –”

“We’re being cheated out of our rightful tithe by our own holders!”

“And there’s more even than that at stake here,” said Arrense. “Yes, someone’s lining their pockets to Madellon’s detriment, and yes, that’s a grave crime in itself. But if someone is perpetuating a deliberate fraud against Madellon Weyr, and worse, falsifying the origins of livestock that’s being moved around the continent, then I can’t express how serious this is. If we had an outbreak of disease, like the red-hoof epidemic in Southern ten Turns ago…”

“Shards, Master,” said Sarenya, sounding sick.

Valonna looked uncertainly at the two Beastcrafters. “Red-hoof?”

“A disease,” said Arrense. “Infectious, and often fatal. It affects beasts with cloven hoofs. Weyrwoman, it could be catastrophic. We wouldn’t be able to trace back the genuine origins of infected animals, so any quarantine we imposed wouldn’t be effective. Best case, it could lead to mass slaughters to contain the outbreak. Worst, if the sickness got out into the wild population…Pern wouldn’t be able to feed its dragons.”

Valonna licked her lips. Her throat had gone dry. “I see,” she said, trying to maintain a calm she didn’t feel. “What do you propose we do, Master?”

“For now, nothing,” said Arrense. “We’re still theorising based on a single suspicious bullock at the moment.”

“But you’re sure it’s more than that.”

“Too many things add up for me to dismiss it.” He sounded fearsome despite the carefully neutral words. “I’m Gather-bound shortly, and I’d like to verify Saren’s findings myself. Not that I have any doubts about her judgement, but there may be more clues that will help us follow this back to its source, now that we suspect what’s happening. If I’m to take this to the Hall I need all the evidence in hand.”

“You’ll take it to the Beastcrafthall?”

“This contravenes Beastcraft rules as well as Weyr law. The Craft needs to know what’s been going on.”

“What recourse do we have if the Holds have been falsifying their supply?”

Arrense looked grim. “That depends on the wording of the tithe agreement,” he said. “You may need to consult Madellon’s charter for the specifics of the responsibilities the Holds have regarding supplying the Weyr. And much depends on how far and how deep the fraud goes.” He paused, then added portentously, “There are a lot of marks at stake here.”

Valonna noticed how sharply Sarenya looked at her Master, but the significance escaped her. “I don’t want this to go any farther than us, Master,” she said. “Not to your other crafters. Not even to the Deputy Weyrleaders. Until we know more, this mustn’t get out.”

“Of course. This won’t go beyond Sarenya and me.” Arrense paused. “I may need to be able to call on a rider for conveyance. Someone you can trust to be discreet.”

Valonna was reminded of Rallai’s parting advice to her. Find riders you can trust and keep them around you. She hadn’t made much progress in that direction yet, but she nodded. “I’ll assign someone reliable. Do you have transportation to Long Bay?”

“I was just going to scrounge a lift with someone,” said Arrense, “unless…” He looked at Sarenya.

“I don’t know where M’ric is,” she said, glancing up at the northern face of the Bowl. “I haven’t seen Trebruth this morning. I wasn’t expecting to go back today.”

“I’ll have the watchpair assign you a lift,” said Valonna. “Are you ready to go now?”

“I have a few things to do first,” said Arrense. “Saren, do you still have duties with Vhion?”

“No, Sejanth’s all done for the morning,” she replied. “I’m ready when you are.”

Arrense nodded. “If you could give us half an hour, Weyrwoman, that would be perfect.”

“I’ll set it up,” Valonna promised, passing the request through to Shimpath to put to the dragon on watch.

Arrense took his leave with a nod. Sarenya remained, leaning on the split-bough fence of the paddock, staring at the bullocks with tired eyes. Valonna knew she should go – her own appointment at Long Bay Hold was fast approaching – but she lingered. “Is everything all right with you, Saren?”

Sarenya quirked the corner of her mouth into a smile. “You mean other than this business with the herdbeasts? And the stinking hangover that’s no one’s fault but my own?”

“It must have been a good night,” Valonna said, hearing the wistful note in her own voice.

“The main thing I remember from it is that matching drinks with dragonriders isn’t prudent when you have to get up the next morning.” Sarenya pressed her fingertips to her temples with a shudder. “It was the sharding dancing. It was such a hot night, and it was heaving in the pavilion, and M’ric kept buying me drinks, and by the time I realised I’d been having a cup of wine after every dance…well, I couldn’t undrink it, could I?”

“I suppose you couldn’t,” Valonna agreed sympathetically.

“It’s a sharding marvel any of us could climb on a dragon to get home,” Sarenya went on. “Thank Faranth Trebruth’s so small. It took three strong men to hoist H’ned back onto his bronze.”

Valonna blinked, not sure if she’d heard Sarenya correctly. “H’ned?” she asked. “H’ned got drunk last night?”

“Just a bit. It’s not like he was the only one. There were Wingleaders and all sorts reeling all over the place. We did make sure he got back to his weyr safely.”

Shimpath, ask Izath if his rider is awake. “But he wasn’t supposed to drink too much,” Valonna said anxiously. “He’s meant to be representing Madellon with me at this fardling luncheon with Lady Coffleby.”

Sarenya looked slightly taken aback at Valonna’s oath. “I’m not sure he’ll be up to that,” she said. “Unless he has a dragon’s constitution. He was in quite a bad way last I saw him.”

Izath says no, but would I like him to wake him?

No. Tell him I’m coming up. “I’d better go and see what state he’s in now,” said Valonna. Then she added, “They’re serving a tonic in the dining hall to help with the hangovers. That might make you feel better.”

“Thank you, Weyrwoman,” Sarenya said, “but I’ve already had half a pint of the Beastcraft’s remedy. It’s very effective. I was much worse than this about two hours ago.”

“What’s in it?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Valonna left Sarenya queasily contemplating the bullocks. As she crossed the Bowl towards H’ned’s weyr, she tried not to let this latest crisis panic her. In one sense it was a relief to know that the food beast shortfall wasn’t an issue of Weyr mismanagement – and that someone could be held accountable for deceiving Madellon out of its rightful portion. In another, it was shocking to think that anyone would hatch such a plot against the Weyr. And Valonna couldn’t even take advantage of the low price of beef animals in Peninsula territory. The charter that codified Madellon’s commitments to its holders made it clear that any wholesale purchases of supplies over and above the tithe must be sourced internally. Of course, the same charter also forbade precisely the sort of profiteering that had left Madellon’s herds in such a desperate state, but until she knew more about who was behind it, Valonna couldn’t start reneging on the Weyr’s obligations.

She made herself put it out of her mind. The long-dreaded luncheon at Long Bay was the more pressing concern. It had been looming as a vaguely unpleasant duty ever since the invitation had arrived, but between the loss of their weyrlings, T’kamen’s disappearance, and the crisis with Southern, the prospect of dining with the other Weyrleaders of the south filled Valonna with trepidation. She couldn’t imagine that P’raima would be any less than openly hostile towards her, and she shuddered at the thought of contact with H’pold. He, at least, might be more concerned with maintaining civility in the presence of his Weyr’s most powerful Lady Holder, but that was assuming Valonna could rely on her escort not to provoke him. And if H’ned was half as worse for wear as Sarenya had implied…

She hurried up the steps to H’ned’s weyr. Izath was lying on the ledge, blocking entry to the inner chambers, and looking rather subdued. “May I go inside?” Valonna asked him.

H’ned’s bronze shifted unhappily.  He says you might not want to, Shimpath conveyed.

“Is your rider unwell?” Valonna asked. “Does he need to see a healer?”

You don’t have time for this, said Shimpath, reflecting as impatience the anxiety Valonna felt about her appointment at Long Bay. I will tell him to move.

Before Valonna could dissuade her, Izath gave a start that shifted his significant bulk far enough to the right to clear the way into his rider’s weyr. “Sorry, Izath,” she apologised, as she moved past him and inside.

The reek of vomit hit her before she was even halfway through Izath’s sleeping chamber. Valonna recoiled, lifting her sleeve to cover her nose. It struck her that she might step in something without seeing it, and she snatched down the glow-basket hanging outside the archway into H’ned’s living quarters, opening the aperture to spill light on the floor. Mercifully, it was clean. But the smell only intensified as Valonna pushed through the half-drawn curtain into H’ned’s weyr.

M’ric, or whomever had seen H’ned safely home, had only hefted him as far as the couch. He lay snoring in the limp, boneless sprawl of deep unconsciousness, one arm flung over the edge of the seat, the hand bent awkwardly back on itself against the floor. There was a puddle of sick not a handspan away from his fingers. Both his dress jacket and his shirt had been unbuttoned, revealing an alarming quantity of bright red chest hair.

Valonna didn’t want to get any closer than she had to. “Wingleader,” she tried, and when that didn’t elicit a response, she raised her voice. “Wingleader H’ned!”

H’ned stirred, his snores interrupted. He muttered something unintelligible, then turned over on the couch, mashing his face against the seat cushions, and collapsed back into insensibility.

Would you like me to have Izath wake him up? Shimpath enquired.

I don’t think there’s any point. Valonna dithered for a moment. She didn’t like to leave him so obviously sodden – he might choke – but nor did she want to be the one to clean him up. Is Kawanth in the Weyr?

He is on watch duty.

Ask him to send his rider to Izath’s weyr.

Valonna met Sh’zon out on Izath’s ledge. He hadn’t taken long to respond to her summons, but she had no desire to stay in H’ned’s noxious weyr any longer than necessary. He bounced up the steps, looking relaxed and alert. “What can I do for you, Weyrwoman?”

“It’s H’ned.”

“Oh?”

“Go and see.”

Sh’zon obligingly strode into the weyr. A few moments later, he emerged again, looking amused. “See what you mean. I thought the man could take his liquor!”

“Did you know he was drinking at the Gather last night?” Valonna asked.

“Me? No. Knew Kawanth had watch to stand this morning, so we turned in early.”

“I can’t believe he let himself get in this state,” Valonna fretted.

I’ll sober him up for you,” Sh’zon offered brightly. “Dunk his head in the lake, lots of strong klah…”

“There’s no time,” said Valonna. “We’re supposed to be at Long Bay in an hour. You’ll have to come with me, Sh’zon.”

“Are you certain that’s what you want?” he asked. “Sure you wouldn’t sooner take D’sion or P’keo?”

Given how stridently Sh’zon had argued to be Valonna’s first choice for the Long Bay banquet, she thought he was being a little disingenuous in suggesting other candidates now. “Will you come, Sh’zon?”

“Aye, course I will, if that’s what you want,” he said. “I’ll need to find another bronze to relieve Kawanth. Can’t have the vigil left under-strength, especially with Shimpath out of the Weyr.”

“Then there weren’t any incidents with Southern riders at Long Bay?” Valonna asked.

“Most of ’em stayed away,” he told her. “Don’t think P’raima’s too happy with the Peninsula.”

“Do you think he’ll make a scene at the luncheon?” Valonna asked.

Sh’zon’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Between me and you, Valonna, I don’t think he’ll come.”

Valonna looked at him, taken aback. “But Lady Coffleby…”

“P’raima’s not going to give a trader’s cuss for what she thinks of him. Not his territory, not his problem. But that’s not to say that Southern won’t be represented.”

“Then you heard something at the Gather yesterday?”

Sh’zon nodded sagely. “Word is that D’pantha’s making a play. He’ll represent Southern at the luncheon. The Peninsula will send him home with Sirtis. Cuts P’raima right off at the knees.” He joshed Valonna with an elbow. “There you go, Weyrwoman, that’s cheered you up already, hasn’t it?”

Valonna couldn’t deny that it sounded hopeful, but Sh’zon’s bumptiousness was a little overfamiliar. “Will you find someone to clean up H’ned? I don’t want him to choke if he’s sick again.”

“I’ll send somebody up,” Sh’zon assured her. “There’s plenty of sick being shovelled around the Weyr today, I’ll tell you. Oh. Reminds me. I was keen for my cousin to see the Gather.”

“Do you think it’s safe for them?” Valonna asked.

“Don’t see why it shouldn’t be,” said Sh’zon. “Not for Karika or the other one, maybe. That might be rubbing Southern’s face in it. But where’s the harm in letting ours amuse themselves?”

“It’s really L’stev’s decision,” Valonna said. “And they’ll need conveyance.”

“I’m sure I can scare up ten or twelve riders to take ’em over,” said Sh’zon.

“Sober ones?”

He chuckled. “Aye, sober ones. Wouldn’t put my cousin in anything less than safe hands!”

“Find those riders,” Valonna told him. “I’ll see if L’stev will let the weyrlings go.”

“Right away, Weyrwoman,” Sh’zon agreed, starting off in the direction of the steps.

“And don’t forget someone to see to H’ned!” Valonna called after him.

Sh’zon waved a hand in acknowledgement as he strolled cheerfully away.

At least one of us is happy about going to that luncheon, Valonna remarked to Shimpath.

The weyrlings were breaking their fast when she arrived at the barracks. They rose from their benches when she entered the dining hall – some of them more quickly than others – looking at her with varying degrees of hope and expectation. Automatically, Valonna looked for Tarshe and Karika, and found the two queen riders sitting together. The sight was unexpected – and heartening. She hadn’t asked them to become friends, but both young women had been making a concerted effort to get along, even if their dragons still didn’t much care for each other’s company.

“Please, do sit down,” she told them. “Could I have a word, Weyrlingmaster?”

“Tell me there’ve been fistfights and orgies galore, and sending my weyrlings over is completely out of the question,” said L’stev, when they’d stepped outside.

“The opposite, by all accounts,” said Valonna. “It’s been well-managed and well-mannered. And hardly a Southern rider to be seen. Sh’zon’s all for letting the weyrlings go.”

L’stev sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“The decision’s still yours,” said Valonna. “You know them best. Are their dragonets ready to be left alone for an afternoon?”

“They should be, by now,” L’stev said. “At this age, a little geographical distance shouldn’t trouble them. I’m more concerned about how the riders behave. They’ve been trapped here now well past the point at which they should have started going between regularly across the territory, practising their social skills. Let them loose at a Gather, and who knows what nonsense they’ll get up to.”

“If you don’t think it’s appropriate…”

“No. No. They should go. And not only because they need to start learning to conduct themselves outside the Weyr. They’ve been through so much in the last few months, and they’re still mostly children. They deserve a couple of hours of fun.” He grimaced. “Much as you know how I disapprove of that.”

“Sh’zon felt that Karika and T’gala should stay behind,” Valonna said.

“Did he?” L’stev sounded surprised. “Caution, from that one? Well, he’s not wrong. With everything you’ve done to make sure Southern can’t snatch them back from here, it would be farcical to let them parade around Long Bay.” He grinned nastily. “Not that they’ll like it.” Then he sobered. “There’ll be rules for the others, and if you could have Shimpath pass it to the rest of the Weyr that the weyrlings are to be watched…”

“Of course,” Valonna replied.

“What about transportation?” L’stev asked. “Atath aside, they can’t get to Long Bay themselves.”

“Sh’zon said he could find enough reliable dragonpairs to convey them.”

L’stev snorted. “I’d like to know who he considers reliable. Vanzanth will speak to Kawanth.”

“Do they have enough spending marks?”

“I’ll let them have a few quarters and eighths from their stipends. Not so much that they can get themselves in trouble.”

“Sh’zon and I will be there most of the afternoon,” Valonna said. “So if there is a problem, we’ll be close by.”

L’stev’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Then H’ned’s in charge back here?”

Valonna hadn’t thought of the onward chain of command. “Oh…oh dear.”

“Unconscious in a pool of his own puke, is he?”

“How did you know?”

“I’ve known him since he was a boy. He has no stomach for hard liquor.”

“He was supposed to come with me to Lady Coffleby’s luncheon today,” Valonna said miserably. “Sh’zon’s stepping in, but I’m afraid he’ll cause friction. He and Weyrleader H’pold have an old rivalry.”

“An old rivalry? Between two senior bronze riders?” L’stev laughed. “Inconceivable!”

“I’m not sure who’s next in seniority,” Valonna went on. “Who is in charge once Sh’zon and I leave Madellon. Especially with half the Wingleaders out at the Gather themselves.”

“P’keo, F’yan, D’sion, L’mis, R’yeno, T’gat, V’stan, A’keret, E’dor,” L’stev replied, rattling off the names without hesitation. “That’s the order of seniority. So, in theory, the first one of those who’s actually here.”

Valonna mentally reviewed the watch roster, and made a face. “That makes Vidrilleth the most senior bronze on duty.”

“Better hope that nothing comes up while you’re in Peninsula territory, then,” said L’stev. “F’yan wouldn’t know what to do with a crisis if it bit him. You’d better let him know he’s in command, though.”

For the second time that morning, Valonna thought of Rallai’s advice about surrounding herself with riders she trusted. She’d never asked T’kamen his opinion of the two Wingleaders he’d installed as his deputies. Now, having read through T’kamen’s notes on his senior bronze riders, she thought she understood. He hadn’t truly trusted any of them: either as ineffective relics of Fianine’s era, or men who had been far too keen to reap the benefits of being prominent members of L’dro’s Council – or both. Valonna supposed that it was only natural for bronze riders to distrust each other, but even in her limited experience, she found it hard to disagree with T’kamen’s low opinion of his fellow riders. The thought of leaving F’yan in charge of Madellon, even for a short time, filled her with anxiety.

“Couldn’t you…” she began.

L’stev cut her off. “Absolutely not.”

“But the Weyrlingmaster is ranked equal to a Wingleader,” Valonna protested.

“As the most junior Wingleader,” he corrected her, “and even that’s a courtesy. I’m only actually a Wingsecond. Never even got round to taking a third stripe when T’kamen changed the insignia. You can’t leave me in charge.” Then he muttered, “Thank Faranth.”

“I have more confidence in you than I do in F’yan,” Valonna said.

“Not how it works, Weyrwoman,” he replied, with finality. Then he relented. “I wouldn’t worry. You’re not far if anything does happen. And it won’t. The dragonets will be asleep, the queens are behaving themselves, and the watch bronzes won’t let anyone in.”

Valonna nodded reluctant assent. “You don’t think Berzunth will be upset that Megrith’s rider is here and hers isn’t?”

“No. It’s time they started spending some time apart anyway. It’s not as if they won’t be able to talk to them from Long Bay.” Then L’stev frowned. “While you’re here, Weyrwoman. Have you heard anything from Jenavally?”

“Not recently,” Valonna said, feeling guilty for the oversight. “She’s still rostered out to Teller Hold.”

L’stev grumbled. “I was hoping she’d be well enough now to consider coming back. I know she took N’jen’s loss hard, but the others need her. C’mine isn’t working out.”

“Oh,” said Valonna. She wasn’t sure what to say. “Do the weyrlings…not like him?”

“They like him,” L’stev replied. “He’s just not as stable as he needs to be. I’m keeping him on for now, but it’s only a matter of time before something sets him off again.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

L’stev shrugged. “Not unless you can bring the dead back to life. Losing C’los crushed him. That green rider was his whole world long before Darshanth ever came into the picture.”

“I didn’t know they knew each other before they were Searched,” said Valonna.

“Oh, yes. I remember thinking Alyss was pranking me when she presented them to me as candidates. Those two and T’kamen, whatever they called themselves then; I misremember. Three kids with black eyes and busted mouths and the lot. They said they’d been in a fight, but it wasn’t until later that I found out what it was about. Some of the other lads at Kellad had found out about C’mine and C’los. They sharding near beat C’mine to death.”

“Faranth,” Valonna said softly.

“It was C’los they’d really been after, but he was attached to the Harperhall,” L’stev went on. “Harder for those thugs to get at him there. But C’mine was vulnerable. In more ways than one.”

“Were they ever caught?”

L’stev made a dismissive sound. “You know how the Holds can be. No one at Kellad would have been interested in defending a lad who’d been outed as a deviant.” He looked distant. “I’d just been made Weyrlingmaster, and Search was difficult around that time. Not many kids the right age, in the Weyr or out, and nowhere much interested in giving up the able-bodied youngsters they did have. Except the rogues. Kellad was happy enough for us to take them. So we wound up with a dozen problem cases. Malingerers and malcontents, mostly. A couple of deviants like C’los. And one hot-headed trader boy who’d supposedly led them in separating several right-thinking Kellad youths from all their front teeth. The most motley band of candidates I’ve ever had to wrangle.” He paused. “Faranth help us, most of them Impressed. It’s no wonder Madellon’s in the state it is.”

“T’kamen was the trader?” Valonna asked.

“He was quite the specimen,” L’stev agreed dryly. “Outlandishly dressed, barely half civilised, and furious with the world in the way that only directionless young men can be.”

Valonna couldn’t quite picture her grim and self-possessed Weyrleader as an angry young man. “But you saw something in him.”

“Vanzanth did,” L’stev replied. “Apparently T’kamen reminded him of me.” He shrugged. “I liked how quick he was to defend his friends. C’mine was a gentle sort, and C’los – well, C’los was as irritating as a youth as he was fully grown – so even at the Weyr, they were always going to get themselves in trouble. T’kamen wouldn’t have it. He was never big, but he was the kind of nasty, dirty fighter no one in their right mind wants to take on. After he’d bloodied a few noses, the other kids lost interest in tormenting C’los and C’mine. It’s a good thing they did. I was this close to kicking him out of the Weyr. Lads with short tempers don’t generally make good dragonriders. As it was, I dreaded him Impressing a green or blue. Even a brown would have frustrated him. Lucky for him, Epherineth never looked like choosing anyone else. Impressing a dragon can’t change who you are, but T’kamen was sorely in need of a focus for his intensity. Becoming a bronze rider gave him that. Brought out his best qualities, and taught him to control his outbursts. And pull his punches.”

L’stev fell silent, looking morose. Then he went on, “He was a good one, Valonna. But he was wrong to appoint C’mine as my assistant. We were both wrong. He has the compassion, but not the resilience. The weyrlings need someone with both.”

Valonna tried not to let his dismay for C’mine colour her tone. “Do you have someone else in mind?”

“I wasn’t overflowing with candidates the first time, or I wouldn’t have gone with C’mine. I’ll think of somebody. I don’t want to push Jena if she isn’t ready yet, but she’s a difficult rider to replace, and I don’t want to make another mistake. The kids could do without the disruption.” He shook his head. “Faranth knows what we’ll do when those two queens mature. Even accounting for how their cycles will lengthen, there’ll be more than one clutch every three or four Turns like we’ve been used to, and I’m not getting any younger.”

Valonna looked at him in horror. “You want to retire?”

“Never,” he replied, glowering at her. “But I’m nearly sixty, Valonna, and I’m starting to feel it. It’s only a matter of time. Having more than one class of weyrlings in training at the same time will be hard work, especially if we don’t find a solution to whatever’s gone wrong with between. It’s past time I had a viable successor, not just a competent assistant, and the two aren’t necessarily the same thing.”

The thought of any rider but L’stev as Madellon’s Weyrlingmaster was disconcerting. He loomed so large in Valonna’s consciousness that the notion of someone else filling his shoes seemed ludicrous. But he was right. With three mature queens, Madellon would be producing more frequent classes of weyrlings, and while Valonna had already started to worry about feeding a bigger juvenile population, she hadn’t considered the additional call that multiple weyrling groups would have on L’stev’s time and energy. “I…see.”

“I know you do,” L’stev said. “Don’t let it worry you too much. I’m not going anywhere yet. But better to own the problem now than hitting your head on it in five Turns’ time when you’re overrun with dragonets and I’m a drooling senile.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I’d best let the kids know the good news. They can feed their dragons early, and that will keep them sleepy while the riders are away this afternoon. One less thing for acting Weyrleader F’yan to worry about.”

Valonna gave him a stricken look.

“Look on the bright side,” he told her. “At least Sh’zon’s sober. If he wasn’t, F’yan wouldn’t be in charge here – he’d be escorting you to Long Bay.”

“L’stev!”

He chuckled darkly as he let himself back into the weyrlings’ dining hall.

Valonna took a moment to compose herself. As if she didn’t already have enough to worry about, with the luncheon, and Southern, and tithe requests…everyone she spoke to seemed to have a new issue to bring to her. Had T’kamen been so inundated with problems?

He was the Weyrleader, said Shimpath. Of course he was.

Valonna sighed. I’m coming back to the weyr now. Would you ask Vidrilleth to have his rider meet me there?

It only occurred to her when she was halfway across the Bowl that L’stev and Shimpath’s remarks on the Weyrleader had had something chillingly in common.

He was a good one, Valonna.

He was the Weyrleader.

They’d both referred to him in the past tense.

You know he’s not coming back, don’t you?

T’kamen hadn’t been missing a sevenday before H’ned had put that blunt question to her. Now he’d been gone for a month, gone without trace, gone without any explanation whatsoever for his whereabouts, and for the first time Valonna wondered if she was the only one left who still believed he would come back.

And then she wondered if she even still believed it herself.

Chapter forty: T’kamen

R’lony’s convinced that S’leondes will want to bring a Justice against T’kamen, not just a Discipline. And he’s right, of course. S’leondes would like nothing better than to send T’kamen off to Westisle in disgrace and put this whole episode behind him. The fact of T’kamen’s existence has been chafing him like a badly-fitting harness ever since he and Epherineth arrived: the living, breathing evidence of a time S’leondes would rather everyone forgot.

In his heart of hearts, R’lony wouldn’t mind. He doesn’t like T’kamen much more than S’leondes does. I think he’d forgotten what a bronze rider could be like. A real bronze rider; not a bitter old wher like R’ganff, or a blunt instrument like N’hager, or even an awkward young naïf like O’sten or H’juke. A bronze rider who hasn’t been ground down by Turns of scorn and dismissal. A bronze rider who’s wielded power, whose hands still itch to wield it again. R’lony wouldn’t shed many tears to see T’kamen banished.

I told him he couldn’t let it happen. Because what would the rest of the Seventh think of a Marshal who allowed one of his own to be exiled on such jumped-up charges? It’s not long until the next election, and Ch’fil likes our Interval bronze rider. Does R’lony really want to go into a ballot having thrown a Seventh rider to the snakes, and risk T’kamen being the spur for Ch’fil to finally stop dithering and take him on?

But R’lony understands the consequences of that, too. He’ll have to bring an Arbitration against S’leondes to oppose the Justice. And the last thing he ever wants is another Arbitration that he can’t and won’t win.

So I’ve told him to leave it to me. He knows I’ll never use my vote in anger. He knows I can’t. And he knows there’s always more than one way to skin a snake. He might not like it, but he likes the alternatives even less.

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Weyrwoman Dalka

26.06.07 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

The apprentice had just finished changing T’kamen’s bandages when the tread of booted footfalls, and the low growl of a voice in conversation with the duty journeyman, alerted them both to R’lony’s arrival.

The young Healer quickly gathered up the blood-stained wrappings he’d removed, sweeping them all into a bowl, and dropping his scissors on top. “Thank you,” T’kamen said softly, but the apprentice neither replied nor met his gaze, hurrying away through a gap in the curtains surrounding the bed without a word.

T’kamen laid his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes to slits. He’d learned more over the last couple of days by feigning sleep and listening than he had by asking questions. A moment later, R’lony shouldered through the curtains, trailing an agitated Ondiar. “He shouldn’t be walking yet,” Ondiar was protesting. “The infection… He almost lost the leg –”

“You said you had that under control,” R’lony interrupted.

“We do now,” said Ondiar. “But we had to delay repairing the damage until we were sure we’d drawn all the foulness from the wounds. The stitches mustn’t be disturbed if he’s to have any chance of regaining meaningful use of that leg.”

“I want him awake, alert, and on his feet,” said R’lony. “How much fellis has he had today?”

“He’s refused more than he’s taken,” said Ondiar, with obvious reluctance. “When he wakes up he shouldn’t be…excessively…disorientated.”

T’kamen could sense R’lony scrutinising him more distinctly than he could actually see through his narrowed eyes. He kept his face carefully unresponsive. After several moments, R’lony said, “Wake him up.”

“But –”

“Wake him up, journeyman. The longer this is drawn out, the worse it’ll go for everyone.”

T’kamen heard Ondiar sigh. He would have been touched by the Healer’s unwillingness to wake him, if he’d thought it were motivated by personal concern. “T’kamen,” Ondiar said, in a quiet voice, and then, more firmly, “T’kamen.” The journeyman gave his shoulder a light shake. “Can you hear me, T’kamen? It’s time to wake up.”

“I should have his dragon rouse him,” R’lony muttered.

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” said Ondiar. “T’kamen.”

That seemed like enough stimulus to abandon the pretence of sleep. T’kamen took a deep breath, turned his head towards the sound of Ondiar’s voice, and opened his eyes, blinking slowly.

“Do you know where you are, T’kamen?” Ondiar asked.

“Yes,” T’kamen replied. He didn’t have to feign the roughness of his voice. He lifted his gaze to R’lony’s, meeting the pale, deep-set eyes. “Marshal.”

R’lony looked down at him. “How are you feeling?”

T’kamen considered the question. He’d been in the infirmary for five days: injured, immobilised, and isolated – again. The main difference from his last sojourn in the care of the Weyr Healers was that, this time, he was entirely to blame for his predicament. “Great.”

R’lony’s furrowed brow creased even more deeply. “Well you look shaffing terrible.” He prodded at one of the closure strips on T’kamen’s temple; T’kamen flinched away from the uninvited touch. “That’s good. That’s going to help.”

“Help with what?” T’kamen asked.

R’lony withdrew his hand. “Give us a minute, journeyman,” he said to Ondiar. When the Healer had withdrawn, he turned back to T’kamen. “You’re to be Disciplined,” he said. “For your actions here and at Little Madellon.”

T’kamen let his eyes slide away from the Marshal. He’d known this was coming. The only surprise was that it had taken so long. “Do I get to defend myself?”

“A defence has been put forward on your behalf,” said R’lony. “Those responsible for dictating your punishment have already taken those arguments into account.”

T’kamen wondered who’d spoken for him. He hoped it was Ch’fil. Stratomath’s rider had been one of the first on the scene when he and M’ric had returned from Little Madellon, barking out orders for a Dragon Healer to see to Epherineth, for a regular Healer to treat T’kamen, and for everyone else to get out of the shaffing way. There were few other riders, Pass or Interval, T’kamen would have entrusted with his dragon’s care. But once the immediate crisis was over – Epherineth’s ugly facial and neck wounds cleaned and numbed and stitched, T’kamen’s superficial cuts dismissed, and the Healers conferring over the damage to his right leg that he’d been trying not to think about – Ch’fil seated himself by T’kamen’s bedside and asked a succession of terse, blunt questions about what had happened at Little Madellon. T’kamen answered with as much honesty as he could afford without implicating M’ric. If Ch’fil sensed that he was omitting pieces of the truth, he didn’t accuse him of it, but either way, he didn’t like T’kamen’s answers. He’d called him a no-good shaffing shit-for-brains, and stalked away. T’kamen hadn’t seen him since.

He hadn’t seen M’ric, either. That, at least, he knew was a situation not of the boy’s making. Epherineth had tried to bespeak Trebruth, but Trebruth replied only that he wasn’t allowed to talk to him. Epherineth thought another senior dragon had been eavesdropping, so T’kamen had told him not to press the issue. M’ric didn’t need any more trouble on his account. He hoped he’d been able to conceal their two hard-won fire-lizard eggs somewhere safe and warm, but of all the worries weighing on T’kamen’s mind, that was one of the least. M’ric was resourceful enough to preserve what had cost them so much to obtain. Still, T’kamen found he’d missed him, especially in the periods of uncomfortable wakefulness between sparing fellis doses, when he’d have given much for some company to distract him from the sick dread that all the Healers’ efforts wouldn’t drain the poison from his knee, and then, when they had declared the worst risk of amputation over, the lesser but still bleak fear that he would never walk normally again.

“What about M’ric?” he asked. “I told Ch’fil he had nothing to do with what happened at Little Madellon. He didn’t want to go there in the first place.

“M’ric’s not your concern,” R’lony told him.

“He shouldn’t be punished for obeying my orders,” T’kamen said. “He’s my tail. He was only doing what he was told.”

“Your report on the role he played in the incident has been noted, for all the good it’ll do him,” said R’lony. “You should be more worried about yourself. S’leondes wants you sentenced in public.”

T’kamen suspected the distaste in R’lony’s voice had rather more to do with his loathing for the Commander than for any outrage he felt on his behalf. “When?”

“After the evening meal tonight,” said R’lony. “In the dining hall. Where everyone can see you.”

T’kamen felt himself smile, and wished he hadn’t. The expression pulled painfully at several of the incidental cuts and slashes on his face. “There’s nothing like a little public humiliation to aid the digestion.”

R’lony actually laughed, a short, harsh bark. He sat down without ceremony in the chair beside T’kamen’s bed. “I see your sense of humour hasn’t abandoned you.”

“That fled long ago,” said T’kamen. “My sense for the ridiculous, though…” He shook his head. “S’leondes really hates you, doesn’t he?”

“What makes you think this is founded in that?”

“Because I’ve never done anything to him personally to deserve that kind of vindictiveness.”

R’lony snorted. “S’leondes takes insult to any fighting-colour dragon personally. Your fate was sealed the moment you let Epherineth put that uppity blue of C’rastro’s on his ass. The Little Madellon business; well, that’s just a bonus.”

“You sound much less angry with me than I would be in your position.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to do something stupid since you gave me your service record. You’re clearly not a rider with any sense of self-preservation. Or who can be warned against imprudence.” R’lony shrugged. “But you’re still one of mine, so you’ll go into that dining cavern tonight and take your punishment on the chin as befits a rider of the Seventh Flight. And you’ll not be rolled in on your backside in some invalid chair, either. You’ll do it on your own two feet even if it cripples you.”

The affable way R’lony said it sent a chill down T’kamen’s back. “That Thread may already have burrowed.”

“So I understand.” R’lony looked at T’kamen’s freshly-bandaged knee. “Don’t have much luck with leg injuries, do you?”

“Not recently, no.”

“Well, you can’t say you don’t have experience of getting around on crutches.” R’lony peered again at the dressings on T’kamen’s face and head. “Those might earn you some sort of sympathy, though. Or at least they’ll show that you didn’t get your dragon maimed and escape scot-free yourself.”

“What do you mean, maimed?” T’kamen asked sharply, sitting up. “Epherineth’s not maimed. Master Hundarly said his wounds will heal –”

“Don’t get your underfurs in a knot, T’kamen,” R’lony told him, pushing him back down. “They’ll heal. He’ll not die of them, anyway. But he’ll never be the handsome fellow he was.” He rose from his seat. “You have a couple of hours before dinner. You might spend them practising a contrite expression. Or a tearful one, if you prefer; it’s really all the same to me.”

T’kamen didn’t follow R’lony’s advice. He did agonise over the implication that Epherineth had been permanently damaged by his encounter with Alanne’s watch-wher. He was still in the care of Madellon’s Dragon Healers, and Master Hundarly himself had come to the infirmary twice to update T’kamen on his condition. He’d barely concealed his scathing opinion of the slapdash first aid T’kamen had administered at the scene. T’kamen had no defence for that, nor any wish to fabricate one. He and M’ric had pasted over the gash in Epherineth’s neck where the wher had bitten a chunk out of his flesh with all the numbweed and salve they had, gluing the torn hide back together as best they could. They’d gingerly daubed a bit on the long slash down his face, too. But all their efforts hadn’t stopped the bleeding, and Epherineth had been streaked and spattered gorily green with his own ichor by the time they’d returned to Madellon. But for all Hundarly’s criticism, he hadn’t mentioned mutilation. He’d talked about the hundreds of stitches that he had personally put into the wounds, inside and out; he’d stressed the dumb luck that had spared Epherineth injury to a major artery by a matter of inches; he’d even conceded that Epherineth’s fundamentally robust constitution seemed to have shrugged off any infection far quicker than T’kamen’s had; but he’d offered no prognosis of long-term disfigurement. Had Epherineth been awake, T’kamen would have asked him. But he was asleep, still under light sedation in the dragon infirmary to help him recover from the ichor loss, and T’kamen was entirely alone.

By the time the infirmary bell rang for the start of second evening watch, he was dressed – albeit with his right trouser leg slit down the out-seam to accommodate his bandaged and unbending knee – and upright. He found he hadn’t forgotten the knack of moving around on crutches, keeping his weight completely off the injured leg, though it was just as hard on the shoulders and arms as he remembered. Ondiar watched unhappily as T’kamen crutched about the infirmary to demonstrate his mobility, and sent him out with a couple of the bigger apprentices to pick him up if he fell, and the instruction to return immediately once his sentencing was over.

The darkened Bowl was eerily quiet, with few folk about, though the presence of dragons on almost every weyr ledge indicated that most of Madellon’s dragonriding population was at home. T’kamen only had to wonder about that incongruity for the length of time it took him to make his slow way from the infirmary to the entrance of the lower caverns, where the buzz of hundreds of voices coming from within made the situation unhappily clear.

R’lony was waiting outside the big double doors with his tailman, B’nam, and a tall green rider T’kamen knew as G’reyan, S’leondes’ right-hand man. “Here he is, G’reyan,” said R’lony. “I told you he was on his way.”

“Why’s he on his feet?” G’reyan asked, assessing T’kamen with a frown. “I thought he was supposed to be in a chair.”

“What can I say,” said R’lony, with a toothy grin. “Seventh riders are made of stern stuff.” He turned an equally insincere smile on T’kamen. “Bronze rider. Are you ready?”

T’kamen eyed the Marshal uncertainly, wondering what he was up to. “Yes.”

“You boys can wait here,” R’lony told the apprentices who’d escorted T’kamen from the infirmary. “B’nam and I will walk him in.” He gestured to G’reyan. “After you, Wingleader.”

R’lony and B’nam flanked T’kamen as he followed G’reyan into the dining cavern. G’reyan walked at a much faster pace than T’kamen could match, and after only a few strides he had to pause to let him catch up, looking irritated by the delay. The clamour of conversation began to hush as they proceeded down the long aisle between tables to the raised dais at the front of the hall, riders and non-riders craning their necks to look at the unusual procession. T’kamen kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, concentrating on staying upright, and letting the succession of faces turned towards him merge into an anonymous blur. As silence descended across the entire cavern, his escorts’ footsteps, and the dull thunk of his crutches against the floor, were left as the only sounds.

Climbing the couple of steps onto the platform under the avid gaze of a thousand pairs of eyes was the hardest part. T’kamen was glad for B’nam’s steadying presence on his right as he crutched awkwardly up the steps. R’lony’s tail was a husky lad with a powerful grip; it seemed as if the Marshal had no intention of letting T’kamen be physically demeaned by this reckoning, at least. The stairs negotiated, T’kamen resettled his crutches under his arms, and moved to the place on the dais G’reyan indicated. There was no chair. He hoped that meant this ordeal would be brief.

As R’lony and B’nam took up places behind him, T’kamen allowed himself to look out at the assembled throng. Farthest back, seated as always at the rearmost tables, the faces of his Seventh Flight colleagues were indistinct, their expressions impossible to discern. The fighting riders in the middle and front parts of the hall were less inscrutable. The young men and women who comprised the greater part of Madellon’s rider population regarded him with varying degrees of suspicion, mistrust, and outright contempt. T’kamen searched the weyrling tables, segregated on the left side of the hall, and glimpsed M’ric watching him with bowed shoulders and a pained expression. Finally, he looked down at the top table, directly before the dais, with its complement of Flightleaders and senior Wingleaders; the queen riders Dalka and Lirelle; C’rastro and his staff; and in the centre, S’leondes, staring at him stone-faced and unforgiving.

T’kamen was no stranger to a Discipline. He’d handed down punishments to his own riders as Weyrleader, Wingleader, and Wingsecond, and taken demotions, demerits, and debasement in his turn, largely at the whim of L’dro, who’d never tired of inventing new ways to make his life miserable. But even L’dro had never had T’kamen denounced in public. Discipline was a private matter, a Wing matter, kept between the offender and his Wingleader or Wingsecond, depending on the nature of the transgression. An errant rider might be rebuked before his wingmates, but only where the Wing as a unit could learn from one man’s mistake. It was enough for a rider to be recognised as being in disgrace without every man and dragon in the Weyr needing to know the details of both misdeed and penance. This public excoriation was as small-minded and spiteful, in its own way, as anything L’dro had ever dreamed up, and now, as then, T’kamen was prepared to look his enemy in the eye and accept his punishment without flinching.

Yet S’leondes didn’t look like he intended to rise from his place. He sipped from a glass of wine, toyed with the knife lying beside his plate, even tilted his head slightly to listen to some remark from the rider seated on his left. He never took his eyes off T’kamen. But he gave no indication that he planned to move to the lectern set up on the other end of the dais to pass judgement on him.

Instead, G’reyan walked over to the podium. T’kamen mentally added that to the list of snubs S’leondes had dealt him. He turned to face G’reyan, and spared a moment to be grateful that Epherineth wasn’t awake to experience this along with him.

“Your attention,” said G’reyan, and immediately the faint expectant hum that had sprung up to fill the silence died away again. He glanced down at the slate resting on the lectern, then up at the room. “Every dragonrider in this Weyr has a role to play,” he said. “Every dragon, no matter how large, has a place in the defence of Pern and the continuing battle against Thread. Every dragon, no matter his colour, has value and worth and importance, whether in the fighting Wings, the Seventh Flight, or on the Hatching sands.” He looked around, and a murmur of agreement rippled through the hall. Behind T’kamen, R’lony made a strangled coughing sound.

“But it hasn’t always been this way,” G’reyan went on, and immediately, the people nearest the front of the hall began to sit up in their seats. “The meritocracy that we enjoy…”

Somebody two tables back began to stamp his feet.

“…as Madellon riders is a relatively recent innovation…”

The foot-stamping was joined by the pounding of fists on table-tops, quietly at first, then growing in volume as more riders joined in.

“…fought for and won by…”

“S’leondes!” somebody bellowed.

In the bedlam that followed – the whooping and cheering, the chants of S’leondes! S’leondes! and Com-man-der, Com-man-der; the banging of plates and mugs on the tables – it struck T’kamen that most of the yelling, stamping riders bawling out their allegiance to their leader were too young to remember S’leondes’ revolution. Half of them hadn’t even been born. Their only knowledge of what he had done in the cause of meritocracy was what they’d been told. Yet there S’leondes sat, accepting their frenzied adulation, and if he didn’t take any obvious satisfaction in it, he wasn’t quick to end it, either. At last, when the clamour had gone on for several minutes, he raised his arm, and the din cut off abruptly as though sliced through with a knife.

G’reyan didn’t look perturbed by the interruption of his speech. Being S’leondes’ man, he must be used to it, T’kamen thought; and then, with a flash of insight, he grasped that G’reyan’s opening remarks had been calculated to provoke the response they had.

“But the rider who stands before you here has not known the benefit of growing up in our enlightened era,” G’reyan went on. “Bronze rider T’kamen is a man out of his own era, stranded in a time he is completely unsuited to occupy. Whatever mistake he made, whatever mishap occurred to send him here to us, we can be confident that he didn’t come with the premeditated intent to scorn our values or violate our laws. T’kamen is simply a product of less rational times; he cannot help the way he is. It would take a great man indeed to recognise the innate wrongness of morals and ethics he was raised to believe in and live by; greater than most of us here in this hall.

“T’kamen and his dragon are scions of a time when it was thought acceptable to bully and belittle dragonpairs of the smaller colours, and bronzes and bronze riders believed that imposing their will upon the Weyr was not just their right, but their duty. We can all see from observing him just how poorly such an attitude serves any rider in the Eighth Pass. T’kamen is not a figure to be hated. Learned from, perhaps. Pitied, certainly. But not hated.”

T’kamen found that he’d gritted his teeth so hard that his jaw was aching; with difficulty, he forced himself to relax. He darted a glance sideways at R’lony, but the Marshal’s face was completely impassive.

“But ignorance of Weyr law is not and never has been an excuse,” continued G’reyan. “T’kamen may have been born in an era when certain behaviour was tolerated, but he wears the insignia of a rider of this Pass now, and he is subject to the same rules, regulations, and penalties as any other Madellon rider.”

G’reyan paused, and T’kamen braced himself to hear, for the first time, exactly what crimes he was to answer for.

Then G’reyan turned to his right, and said, “Crewleader?”

T’kamen couldn’t have been more staggered had G’reyan literally swept his crutches out from under him as Ch’fil appeared from the shadows and marched, heavy-footed, up the steps of the dais. Numbly, he realised he should have wondered where the brown rider was, but it hadn’t occurred to him for so much as an instant that Ch’fil – decent, even-handed, fair-minded Ch’fil, whom he liked and admired and trusted so much – would be the one to flame him before all of Madellon.

Shame and betrayal made T’kamen’s guts harden, as though he’d been punched in the belly. He didn’t think he actually swayed, but R’lony’s hand caught his upper arm in a hard grip. T’kamen looked blankly at him; not the source of solidarity he’d have expected. “Just hold your peace and take it,” R’lony muttered, hardly moving his lips. “It’ll all be over soon.”

G’reyan ceded the lectern without ceremony. Ch’fil had his own slate; he set it down with such a bang that the small portion of T’kamen’s mind still concerned with such trivialities was surprised it didn’t break. Ch’fil’s face was set in hard lines, his eyes flat and grim and as angry as they’d been when he’d cursed at T’kamen in the infirmary five days previously, and when he spoke his Peninsula accent was more pronounced than ever. “Bronze rider. You’ve been deemed guilty of the following transgressions and allotted penalties accordingly.” Ch’fil took a breath. “For the crime of colour intimidation, bronze-on-blue, you and your dragon will place yourselves in the service of the wronged party for not less than one full watch per day for a period of not less than twelve sevendays. Do you acknowledge your responsibility and accept the punishment?”

T’kamen was surprised that Ch’fil even asked. Perhaps it was a formality that couldn’t be skipped. The prospect of three months at C’rastro’s beck and call was grim, but he couldn’t deny that Epherineth had intimidated Prerth. “I do,” he said slowly.

“For insolence to a superior officer,” Ch’fil went on, “you and your dragon will stand three additional middle or morning watches per sevenday, for a period of not less than eight sevendays. Do you acknowledge your responsibility and accept the punishment?”

For a moment, T’kamen was baffled as to which superior officer he’d supposedly disrespected, and then he realised that C’rastro had gone for the double: intimidation and insolence. That was just malicious. He risked a glance at the top table, and found the Weyrlingmaster leaning back in his chair, burly arms folded, smirking. A rebellious part of him wanted to dispute the superior part of the charge, but he bit it back. Cold watches were nothing. He’d done a Turn of them under L’dro. “I do.”

Ch’fil turned his slate over. “For the harassment of a dragonless rider, a fine of ten marks and a formal apology, written or in person.”

T’kamen almost laughed aloud. He didn’t have two marks, let alone ten, and if the thought of issuing Alanne with an apology in person wasn’t blackly hilarious enough, the notion of giving the eyeless Weyrwoman one that had to be read was even more so. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

Ch’fil fixed him with a withering glare, and R’lony hissed, “Don’t get cute, bronze rider,” out of the corner of his mouth.

But if their disapproval couldn’t make T’kamen’s sudden attack of mirth subside, the next charge did. “For the reckless endangerment of yourself and your dragon.” For the first time, condemnation crept into Ch’fil’s voice, quenching the flames of T’kamen’s defiance. “Resulting in bodily harm precluding you from active duty and denying the Weyr use of a strategic asset. Suspension of all stipend for a period of not less than twice the length of convalescence plus sixteen sevendays. Confinement to the Weyr except with the express permission of a superior officer until further notice.”

It sent a whisper of accusatory commentary around the hall, but T’kamen couldn’t break Ch’fil’s censorious stare to look. He felt shame rise in a slow flush to the skin of his cheeks, and the constant low-level pulse of the gashes to his face and scalp intensified to an insistent throb. Half the Weyr had seen Epherineth come in, streaming ichor from his face and neck. R’lony had been wrong, T’kamen thought. No one would see his injuries as any kind of penance for Epherineth’s. He didn’t himself. The penalty seemed absurdly lenient. “Yes,” he said, dully.

“Finally,” said Ch’fil. “For the reckless endangerment of a weyrling and his dragon. Confinement to quarters during all off-duty hours until further notice. Revocation of all extant tailing privileges with immediate effect. Prohibition from taking any weyrling as a tailman. Indefinitely.” Ch’fil’s eyes bored into him. “Do you understand and accept?”

T’kamen had suspected he would lose M’ric. It hardly mattered anyway, given how close he was to graduation. But T’kamen didn’t have to look in the direction of the weyrling table to know that the boy would be squirming, mortified, under a hundred judgemental stares, disapproving or disparaging or just pitying. He wished he could tell him that he’d tried to exonerate him, but it wouldn’t have helped. As dubious a reputation as M’ric had made for himself prior to T’kamen’s arrival, his name would be forever tainted now by association. Any vestigial loyalty he might still feel towards T’kamen would last only until his inevitable posting to the Seventh Flight. “I understand,” T’kamen said. His voice sounded almost as self-loathing as he felt. “I accept.”

“Then we’re done here,” said Ch’fil. “You’re dismissed, bronze rider.”

He snatched up his slate and left the dais without a further word. The room broke out in a thrill of interested conversation. R’lony clapped T’kamen on the shoulder. “You did well,” he said. “Proud of you.”

The praise did nothing to lift T’kamen’s spirits. “Can I just get out of here?” he asked, shifting his weight on his crutches.

“Best you do,” R’lony replied. “B’nam, help the bronze rider back to the infirmary. I’ve some business to see to, T’kamen. I’ll look in on you tomorrow and we’ll talk about when you’ll be fit to start your punishment detail.”

It was a long, unpleasant walk back through the crowded dining hall. Even with B’nam to assist, T’kamen stumbled often, wearied by the exertion and by his public shaming. The watching faces that had merely been curious on his inbound journey were harder now, more judgemental. One blue rider, his youth made plain by the rash of livid pimples decorating his cheeks, stepped deliberately out in front of him, as if to bar his passage, before some older and wiser wingmate yanked him out of the way. Still, T’kamen felt the young man’s hot and angry eyes on his back long after he’d left him, and the hostile dining cavern, behind.

Ch’fil was waiting outside. “You can go and get your dinner, B’nam; I’ve got him from here” he told R’lony’s tailman. B’nam hesitated, and Ch’fil gave him an irate glare. “You deaf, boy? Piss off.”

“He was just doing what R’lony told him to,” T’kamen said wearily, as B’nam beat a smart retreat.

“Of course he shaffing was,” said Ch’fil. “It’s all we ever shaffing do.” When T’kamen looked askance at him, Ch’fil asked, “What, you think I wanted to be the one standing there telling the whole shaffing Weyr how you messed up?”

“You have every right to be angry with me,” T’kamen said. “I thought –”

“You think I’d throw you into that pit of snakes just for being angry with you? Faranth, T’kamen, I’ve been running myself ragged for the last three days trying to find a way not to.”

That made T’kamen felt a little better. The thought that Ch’fil had turned on him had cut him deeply. “You didn’t need to do that,” he said. “I deserve everything I’ve got.”

Ch’fil laughed. “So you’d rather I hadn’t got you off the other charges S’leondes wanted to bring against you?”

“What other charges?”

“Desecration of the dead. Reckless endangerment of a weyrling leading to bodily harm –”

“M’ric didn’t have a scratch on him!”

Ch’fil glared at him and continued. “Abuse of a dragonless rider. Gross negligence in your duty of care to your dragon, your tailman, and your tailman’s dragon. Intentional sabotage of a Weyr asset.”

“What?” T’kamen demanded, outraged. “They think I got Epherineth hurt deliberately?”

“That one was the easiest to have thrown out,” Ch’fil said. “But mitigating the rest didn’t come for cheap. Not for you, and not for me.”

That made T’kamen feel as small and worthless as he had yet. He crutched along in silence for a minute. “I never asked you to do that for me, Ch’fil.”

“Don’t be a shaffing martyr. You’re my rider. My responsibility. You don’t get to decide how I manage you.”

“Being sentenced in public was the cost to me,” T’kamen said. “What was the cost to you?”

“Being the one to sentence you,” Ch’fil said. “S’leondes insisted the judgement should come from within the Seventh Flight. He’s not a fool. If he’d passed sentence himself, or even had G’reyan do it, he’d have made you a rallying point for discontent in the Seventh.”

“And given me a significance that so far he’s been careful to avoid,” said T’kamen.

Ch’fil looked at him sharply. “Aye. That too.”

“Then why not R’lony?” T’kamen asked. “He doesn’t like me any more than S’leondes does. Why would he damage his reputation by standing with me?”

Ch’fil didn’t reply for a bit. “R’lony doesn’t give a trader’s cuss what the fighting riders think of him,” he said finally. “He was the Weyrleader, and they threw him out. He wouldn’t piss on a one of them if they were Threadscored. Anyway, their opinion of him has no bearing on his position. As far as R’lony’s concerned, the only riders who matter are in the Seventh Flight, and come the next ballot, every Strategic rider will remember who showed solidarity with you for answering back to a blue rider, and who stood there denouncing you to the whole of Madellon.”

“Faranth,” said T’kamen. “It was a move against you. Why didn’t you refuse?”

“Because if I had, G’bral would have been the one reciting your transgressions to the Weyr,” said Ch’fil. “And you wouldn’t have liked his version. At least I could limit the damage.”

“G’bral?” T’kamen echoed. “What have I ever done to him?”

“You make him feel insecure,” Ch’fil said. “Barinth’s a nervous dragon, and Epherineth frightens him. The pair of them are terrified of anyone who might eventually pose a threat to their position.”

“Is there anyone in this Weyr who doesn’t have a hidden agenda?”

“Was there ever?” Ch’fil asked. “Politics. Always the same old whershit.”

“Is that why you don’t want R’lony’s job?”

“I don’t want R’lony’s job because I’m not out of my Thread-blown mind. Weyrmarshal’s a cup of poison, right down to the dregs. R’lony’s welcome to it.”

T’kamen was weary indeed by the time they finally got back to the infirmary. Ondiar, hovering anxiously near the entrance, looked relieved to see him. “Back inside, bronze rider, and I want to look at your knee again,” he said. “You didn’t put any weight on that leg at all?”

“No,” T’kamen replied. He let Ondiar herd him back to his bed, thankful to get off the blighted crutches.

Ch’fil watched as Ondiar peeled back the dressings on T’kamen’s leg. “Thread take it, T’kamen,” he said. “You really got yourself shredded, didn’t you?”

T’kamen glanced down at his knee, then away again. He didn’t want to dwell on the unpleasant sight. “How bad is Epherineth?”

“Lots of stitches. Nothing that won’t heal.” Ch’fil’s matter-of-fact report was more comforting than R’lony’s had been. “The ichor loss looked worse than it was. He’ll be out of his sickbed before you’re out of yours.”

“But the scars will be permanent?”

Ch’fil smiled, deliberately making his own facial disfigurement more conspicuous. He rubbed the deep seams either side of his mouth with thumb and forefinger. “All the best scars are permanent, Kamen. They remind you not to be so shaffing stupid the next time.”

T’kamen winced. “I’m going to need help looking after him until I’m more mobile.”

“It’s a kick in the pants, losing M’ric right when you really need a tail,” Ch’fil said. “But it had to be done. You understand that.”

“I understand.”

“At least one of you does.” Ch’fil looked exasperated. “M’ric’s got himself confined to quarters for trying to get in to see you, and C’rastro had to ask for a bronze to stop Trebruth talking to Epherineth. Haggerth’s been sitting on him.”

T’kamen was touched. “Isn’t that colour intimidation?”

“Not while he’s still a weyrling,” said Ch’fil. “Which he won’t be for much longer, and then he’ll be at liberty to talk to you as much as he likes. And help with Epherineth if that’s what he wants to do and it doesn’t interfere with his own duties. But that’s another couple of sevendays off. He has his assessment to get through first, and Epherineth will be out of the infirmary long before then.” He looked pensive for a moment. “You can borrow Jukey.”

“I thought I wasn’t meant to have a tailman again.”

“He won’t be your tail,” said Ch’fil. “He’ll be on secondment to help with Epherineth’s care until you’re fit. Just don’t be seen getting too chummy with him.”

“Thank you,” said T’kamen. The loan of a tailman was no small favour. Then he added, “For everything you’ve done.”

Ch’fil’s expression was difficult to read. He clouted T’kamen roughly on the shoulder. “Get some rest. Epherineth should talk to Stratomath if you need me. And try not to get yourself any deeper in the shit.”

After Ch’fil left, an apprentice brought T’kamen some dinner. He wasn’t hungry, but he made himself eat. By the time he’d cleared his plate he realised he felt better than he had since returning from Little Madellon. He faced several more days at least in the infirmary, probably sevendays of recuperation after that, and then months of detention and punishment detail, but knowing what lay ahead was better than imagining the worst. He wouldn’t be properly at ease until he’d seen Epherineth and assessed his injuries for himself, but he did trust Ch’fil’s judgement. And he took his advice. When the duty journeyman came, T’kamen accepted the weak cup of fellis she offered him to kill the persistent pain of his mangled leg and help him sleep.

It worked almost too well.

“Kamen. Kamen. Kamen! Wake up, blight you!”

It wasn’t the determined hissing of his name that woke him, but the violent shaking of his shoulder, interspersed with slaps to the face that rattled his teeth in his head. Weakly, groaning and groggy, he fended off his attacker, rasping, “What, what is it?”

“Thank Faranth! I thought you were dead!”

The shaking and slapping stopped, but then the light from a fully-opened glow-basket spilled over T’kamen’s face. He groaned again and covered his eyes, but not before he’d glimpsed his assailant. “M’ric?” he asked thickly. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here.”

“There’s no sharding time, T’kamen,” M’ric said. “You need to wake up and pull yourself together. The shaffing eggs are shaffing – oh, shit, they’re hatching right now! Here!”

T’kamen took his hand away from his face just in time for M’ric to dump a double fistful of hot sand on his chest. He grabbed reflexively at it, and his fingers closed around the hard, round shape of a fire-lizard egg – an egg that twitched and shuddered in his grasp. Comprehension wiped some of the fog from his brain. “Faranth, M’ric, have you got something to feed them with?”

M’ric flipped half a dead tunnel-snake onto T’kamen’s bedfur. “It’s the best I could do,” he said, holding his own violently-quivering egg against himself. “Trebruth’s been using it as a chew-toy. I didn’t have time to get anything else. I didn’t know the sharding things would hatch tonight!”

“You can’t give a whole snake to a new-born fire-lizard!” Torturously, T’kamen hauled himself a bit more upright, and fumbled on the table by his bed for his belt knife. One-handed, still holding the egg, he managed to hack some thumbnail-sized gobs of flesh off the carcass, getting greenish-black blood and bits of snake guts all over himself in the process. “Here,” he said, shoving a handful of meat at M’ric. “Use this.”

He was barely in time. As M’ric took the snake-meat off him, the egg jumped in T’kamen’s grip, and he dropped it in his lap. The shell, already webbed with hairline cracks, began to fracture outward in two places as its determined inhabitant fought its way out. A glistening set of talons ripped free of the lower curve, flexed for an instant, then withdrew again. Then, as if shattered by a single determined heave, the brittle eggshell burst into splinters.

The hatchling fire-lizard left amidst the wreckage of its shell blinked rapidly three times, as though startled, and then opened its jaws wide and squealed with hunger.

Instinct took over. There was no one else in the infirmary for the lizard’s cries to wake, but the weyrling reflex to silence a dragonet’s shrieks by any means necessary ran deep. T’kamen scooped up a ragged chunk of snake-meat and shoved it into the fire-lizard’s mouth. It nearly cost him a finger. The tiny creature snapped its maw shut, leaving him with a torn and bleeding fingernail. The fire-lizard gulped the offering whole, and barely paused before opening wide for more, its amber gaze fixed wide-eyed upon him.

By the imperious squalling coming from M’ric’s direction, his egg had hatched, too, but T’kamen didn’t dare spare him a glance. He was no expert on fire-lizards, but he did know that the window of opportunity for Impressing them was narrow. After all the trouble he and M’ric had taken to obtain the two eggs, they didn’t need to mishandle Impressing their occupants. He fed his lizard another bit of snake, then another. It didn’t seem to mind the dubious provenance of the meat. Nor did it resist when he picked it up, supporting its little body in his hand. The almost negligible weight of it reminded him of the tiny bronze whose life Alanne had so callously snuffed out. T’kamen kept the thought distant, not wanting to frighten the hatchling, and it wasn’t nearly as difficult or unnatural as he’d thought it would be to project welcoming feelings towards the helpless little creature.

Epherineth roused from his deep sleep as the small and tentative presence of the fire-lizard’s infant mind wormed its way lightly into their shared consciousness. T’kamen found himself holding his breath, wondering suddenly if his dragon would object to his invitation of this new being into their established partnership. But Epherineth merely inspected the fragile thread of the fire-lizard’s presence, nudged it in benign welcome, and went back to sleep.

The hatchling inhaled a deep breath that inflated its chest to twice its previous volume, let it out with a great sigh, and snuggled itself down in T’kamen’s palm. Within moments, as if following Epherineth’s example, it was asleep.

M’ric had seated himself on the floor, his back against T’kamen’s bedside table, knees drawn up. He was cradling a handful of sleeping gold fire-lizard to his chest. He raised his eyes baffledly to T’kamen’s. “It wasn’t like Impressing Trebruth, but…she is really cute, isn’t she?”

T’kamen sympathised with M’ric’s ambivalence. He’d never had any time for fire-lizards, and his encounter with Alanne’s vicious fair would have been enough to put anyone off them. Impressing one was supposed to have been just a means to an end. But it was hard not to feel a pang of affection for the tiny creature sleeping curled up in his hand. “What will you call her?”

“Faranth, I don’t know,” M’ric said. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” He craned his neck to look at T’kamen’s fire-lizard. “What about your brown?”

It was a brown, T’kamen realised, wiping bits of shell off the lizard’s folded wings. Under the layer of egg fluid the colour of the hide had been difficult to discern. “I’ll think of something.” Then he made a face. “Faranth. There are bits of snake everywhere.”

M’ric went to get a bucket and shovel. When he came back, his queen was riding against his chest, her head poking out from the front of his shirt. “Had to put her somewhere,” he replied, to T’kamen’s raised eyebrow.

“I’ll clean this up,” T’kamen told him. “You should go back to bed before you’re caught down here.”

M’ric snorted. “Don’t care if I am. After what C’rastro put you through tonight I don’t see why I should do as he tells me.”

“You thought that was C’rastro’s doing?” T’kamen asked.

M’ric glanced at him, sweeping snake guts into the bucket. “Who else?”

“I think it came from a little higher up the chain.”

“You mean the Commander? Why would he do that? He doesn’t have anything against you.”

For all M’ric’s perspicacity, T’kamen thought, he had a serious blind spot when it came to S’leondes. He decided not to make an issue of it. “Look. If you want to have a chance of getting posted to Tactical when you graduate, you need to keep your head down for the next couple of sevendays. It’ll be different once you have your stripes, but until then, you’re best off doing as you’re told and staying away from me.”

“But C’rastro –”

“Between with C’rastro,” T’kamen said. “I’m telling you.”

M’ric looked at him. Then he thrust his hand into his pocket. “They tried to take this away from me.”

It was the rank cord in which he’d so proudly tied the tailman’s knot. T’kamen reached out and closed M’ric’s fist around it. “Don’t let them. Keep it somewhere safe. Now go back to bed, and stay away from me.”

“But –”

“Don’t argue with me, weyrling,” T’kamen said. He glared at M’ric. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re still my tailman. Go to bed. Keep your head down. Keep feeding that fire-lizard. When you have your stripes, we’ll talk. As equals.” He smiled. It hurt his face. “And then we’ll figure out between together. Us and our dragons and these two little bastards. But until then, you can shaffing well stay away.” He extended his hand. “All right? You promise?”

M’ric face was nearly unreadable. He gripped T’kamen’s wrist roughly. “I promise.”

Chapter forty-one: Sarenya

Regarding your query about staffing, I suffer from an embarrassment of riches in that sense; each time I lose one competent crafter to another assignment, the Hall has five more lined up to take his place. I have nothing but praise for your journeyman, and should further references be required you must not hesitate to ask, but regrettably I have no vacancies at the present time, nor the likelihood of any arising unclaimed in the foreseeable future.

– Letter from Master Beastcrafter Kaddyston to Weyr Beastcrafter Arrense

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

LONG BAY HOLD

Climbing aboard Hushith, a rather small green dragon, had been the easy part; dismounting from her, wedged as Sarenya was between Hushith’s rider in front and her Master behind, proved somewhat more of a challenge.

In the end, Garlan extricated herself first, clambering over her dragon’s fore-ridge to give her passengers room to move. “Faranth,” Arrense swore, “I’m getting too old for this.”

“It’s not you, Master,” Garlan apologised, slithering nimbly off her green’s neck. “Hush isn’t the biggest. We can usually jam a couple of candidates in behind me, but…” She made a face. “Sorry.”

“Not at all, green rider,” said Arrense. “We appreciate the lift. Saren, do you want to get down?”

Sarenya swung her leg forward to dismount to avoid kicking her Master in the belly. It was only a short distance to the ground, not even as far to slide as when she dismounted Trebruth, but she steadied herself with a hand on Hushith’s smooth neck as she touched down.

The green dragon turned her head sharply to regard Sarenya with one bright blue eye as Arrense jumped down. He landed lightly in spite of Hushith’s sudden twist, with a runner rider’s instinctive balance, but Garlan looked mortified. “Oh,” she said, pushing her dragon’s nose away, “Hush, stop being a nuisance. I’m so sorry, Master.”

“You really don’t have to be,” said Arrense. “We’ll get out of your hair. Thank you for the courtesy.”

“We’ll be here waiting for you at the beginning of evening watch,” said Garlan. “Or pass a message through to Hushith if you get a lift back with someone else.”

“Thanks, Garlan,” Sarenya added. “Thank you, too, Hushith.”

You’re welcome.

Sarenya had already begun to walk away. The unexpected response made her miss her stride. She looked uncertainly back at Hushith, but the green was preparing to take off again, clearing the landing space for another dragon.

“Something up?” Arrense asked.

“No, just…” Sarenya shook her head. “Nothing.”

Arrense raked her with the glance that could assess a herdbeast in half a second flat, but he either didn’t discern the reason for her distraction, or chose not to mention it. Either way, Sarenya was grateful. She and Garlan had bunked together as candidates – at least on the few nights when Sarenya hadn’t been in T’kamen’s weyr. But Garlan was also one of the Wingseconds in M’ric’s Ops Wing, and in the handful of times they’d encountered each other Garlan hadn’t made any reference to their brief earlier acquaintance. Sarenya had no desire to drag up ancient history in her Master’s presence. Arrense knew about her failed candidacy – Sarenya’s Craft record noted that she’d been Searched as an apprentice – but he’d never brought it up, and neither had she.

Instead, Arrense asked, “Did you happen to notice where the Craft enclave was when you were here yesterday?”

“Far side, I think,” said Sarenya. “Do you want to go there first?”

“No. We’ll walk the paddocks, and you can point out these Gartner-branded steers before they’re all sold. Then we’ll see who’s in from the Hall.”

Long Bay’s Gather meadow was looking worn and dusty. The buzz of excitement that had permeated the first day of the Gather seemed more muted. Though it was almost noon, a fair number of people still looked rumpled and dazed from the previous night’s drinking. Sarenya herself was feeling almost normal again, but she was glad she’d visited the Gather while everything was still fresh.  The stalls had a jumbled, picked-over look; the Harpers playing at the corner platforms didn’t sound as accomplished as they had yesterday; and when the wind blew from the direction of the latrines, the smell suggested that the temporary facilities weren’t coping with the demand. Even the society of fire-lizards seemed to have lost its allure: Sleek, who had flown off in search of company again the instant Hushith had brought them into the sky over Long Bay, came hurtling back down as Sarenya and Arrense approached the stock pens, opening his wings at the last moment to effect a hurried landing on Sarenya’s shoulder.

“Ouch, not so tight,” she said, as his talons dug uncomfortably hard into her skin.

Sleek hummed contritely, shifting his grip on her arm, and bumped his nose against her cheek in apology.

“I’d have thought you’d be with Agusta,” Sarenya said, disentangling his tail from around her neck and flipping it down her back instead. “Are she and Trebruth here?”

Sleek merely echoed back the image of M’ric’s queen and dragon that Sarenya offered without contributing anything. That meant they weren’t at Long Bay. It was puzzling. They certainly hadn’t been at Madellon. Sarenya wondered where M’ric was. Probably off on some errand for Sh’zon. He’d been on boisterous good form last night, but Sarenya had still been rather glad when he’d left the party.

The beast pens were looking depleted. Some of the closest paddocks had notices affixed to them, declaring that their occupants had won this prize or that in the show ring, but many enclosures stood empty but for heaps of dung. The Beastcraft paddocks, though, were full of bawling stock. “Looks like they’ve done all their buying early,” Sarenya remarked to Arrense as they paused by a packed enclosure. “There weren’t anything like this many animals in the Hall’s pens yesterday.”

“New acquisitions, then,” said Arrense. “Not even Craft-stamped yet.” He walked slowly along the fence-line, scrutinising the origin tattoos on each left ear. “Plenty of Birndes stock, Saren, but I don’t see any with Gartner marks.”

“You don’t think I’m reading more into this than there is, Master?” she asked. “I mean, there could be a perfectly good explanation for the steer I saw yesterday having come here via Gartner.”

“Such as?”

Sarenya tried and failed to think of a reason. “Maybe it was just a mistake? Some dozy apprentice putting the wrong tattoo on.”

“And what would a dozy apprentice at Birndes Hold be doing with the tattoo imprint for Gartner?” Arrense asked. “Those stamps don’t leave their home Holds. I suspect you’re right in principle, though. It probably was a mistake. A Gartner transit mark is as clear a sign that a beast’s crossed the border as a Kellad or Jessaf origin tatt. If you were moving livestock cross-territory illicitly, the last thing you’d want to do is shout about it.”

“But it was definitely marked with Birndes as the origin,” Sarenya said. “If it really came from Madellon, it can’t have been tattooed correctly when it left its home holding. The herders all know their own marks. If animals were being moving around Madellon territory with Birndes tattoos in their ears, everyone would know about it.”

Arrense frowned: a forbidding expression rather than a puzzled one. “Have a walk along the fence. See if you can spot any other Gartner marks.”

They moved in opposite directions to look at the bullocks. Sarenya was struck again by the quality of the livestock. They were prime steers – the Craft wouldn’t put its own mark to anything less – but it made her realise how accustomed she’d grown to handling lame food animals, bad-tempered wherries, and broken-down runnerbeasts at Madellon.

“Saren!”

Arrense’s summons interrupted her contemplation. Sarenya walked back down the fence to him. “Have you found a Gartner mark?”

“No,” he said, “but that big Keroon has as nice a case of river itch as I’ve ever seen.”

Sarenya followed his gaze to the beast in question, a substantial white-faced bullock grazing half a dragonlength from the fence. Even at that distance, the pockmarks on its flanks and neck were clearly visible. “What about its tattoo?”

Arrense put his foot up on the lower horizontal of the fence. “Let’s have a look.”

Sarenya followed him into the corral. Some of the closest herdbeasts scattered as they passed, but the big Keroon just raised its head to look at them, chewing unconcernedly. “It’s not a stranger to handling,” she remarked, as they walked up to the bullock.

“No.” Arrense approached the Keroon carefully and quietly, taking care to keep his shoulder turned to it. The steer blinked as he touched its scarred flank, but it didn’t shy away. “Definitely river itch.”

“And a Birndes mark on the ear,” said Sarenya. “No sign of a Gartner transit. But…” She frowned, studying the tattoo. The Birndes Hold tattoo had been stamped there, a pattern of dots in black ink that showed green through the skin on the inside of the herdbeast’s ear, but the short, fine white hair was an odd colour, too.

“What?”

“It’s green,” she said.

Arrense came up beside her. “What’s green?”

“The hair on the inside of its ear.” Sarenya checked the unmarked right ear. “Just the left one. Pale green. That’s not grass stain.”

Arrense inspected the ear for himself. “No it’s not,” he said. He put his hand lightly on the bullock’s broad forehead. It didn’t flinch, continuing to chew the cud in its placid way. He scratched the beast between the eyes, then moved his hand casually up to its left ear. He rubbed the steer’s ear rim between thumb and forefinger, and then looked at his hand. A faint greenish stain had come away on his fingertips.

They looked at each other.

“If you were going to falsify a beast’s origin,” Sarenya said, “you’d need to mark it in a way that looks genuine, but that you could remove later.”

“Like a vegetable dye,” said Arrense, “that would wash off when you were ready to stamp a beast with a real tattoo.”

“We must be getting this wrong. If the tattoos are actually being faked…” Sarenya trailed off, unwilling to even say it out loud.

Arrense was less reluctant. “Then Beastcrafters are doing the faking,” he said, with the resigned air of someone who’d already come to that conclusion and sought only confirmation. “Here and in Madellon territory.”

“Shards, Master,” Sarenya said helplessly. “They can’t be!”

He gave her a look. “We both knew that this was the most likely thing. The Hall’s always overseen the tattooing of beasts. Any falsification had to come from there, too.” He paused, then added, “Not that it’ll stop there. Madellon’s holders are making marks by selling good stock instead of tithing it; the Peninsula holders sending poor steers back are getting a market for their spare sub-standard animals. Gartner’s making an eighth on every extra steer that passes through.”

“Bovey,” Sarenya said suddenly. “That gelding of Gadman’s I’ve been riding,” she said, when Arrense frowned. “I don’t know why it hasn’t occurred to me sooner. He’s much too good a runner for a mountain herder to be riding. Gadman implied he had temperament issues, but he’s been perfectly well-mannered for me. That must have been his way of covering for having such an expensive runner. Shards.”

“This scheme’s making marks for everyone,” said Arrense. “All at the Weyr’s expense.”

“But if drovers like Gadman are involved, then it’s probably just a few rogue journeymen from the Craft itself, isn’t it?” Sarenya asked.

Arrense looked at the peacefully-cropping bullocks all around. “The Hall is doing very well out of the glut of good beef in the Peninsula,” he said quietly.

Sarenya didn’t like the implications of that at all. “What are we going to do?”

Her Master stared at the white-faced Keroon bullock for a long time, his jaw set. “Well,” he said at last, “we’re going to go to the Craft  enclave.”

“What are we going to say?”

“We aren’t saying anything,” said Arrense. “And I mean that, Sarenya,” he added, with more than the usual authority in his voice. “From now on you don’t know anything about this herdbeast business, do you hear?”

“You’re just going to let it drop?”

Arrense shot her a searing look. “Of course not.” He clapped her on the shoulder with a display of heartiness that she knew wasn’t genuine. “Come on. We’ll check in with the Craft.”

As they walked back towards the Gather, Sarenya fretted over Arrense’s sudden decision to exclude her from the matter. Perhaps he wanted to protect her from any censure that uncovering profiteering in the Craft would attract. But as uncomfortable as she felt about being involved personally, she liked the thought of Arrense investigating alone even less. She knew he had enemies in the Hall. He’d never spoken about the circumstances of his assignment to Madellon, but Sarenya had heard enough about it from Jarrisam to know that it had been unexpected. Arrense had been due to take over the important Mastery at Hoffen Hold in Southern territory before being rerouted to Madellon – a much less prestigious posting – at the last minute. Jarrisam, who’d served under the last three Weyr Beastcrafters, claimed that every Master assigned to Madellon had been sent there in punishment for some slight against the Masterherder. If that held true for Arrense, Sarenya worried about what exposing corruption in the Beastcrafthall would mean for her uncle’s career.

But a Master’s knot still carried weight. The Long Bay stewards manning the entrance to the Craft enclave greeted Arrense courteously by rank, and directed them to the Beastcraft. “Turn left, and it’s just past the Farmcraft,” one of the stewards said. “If you get as far as the Miners, you’ve gone too far.”

Most Gathers offered some sort of private area for crafters to congregate away from the clamour of the public squares. That usually just meant a pavilion reserved for Hall personnel only. This being the largest Gather of the Turn, though, each Craft had a tent in a fenced compound equipped with firepits, facilities, and even its own Harper platform – and the area was heaving. Journeyman knots like Sarenya’s predominated, but there were plenty of Masters in their Gather best, with the jewelled pins of their rank on display.

The Beastcraft’s pavilion was easy enough to find, flying the bull’s-head banner. Within, they found a gathering of crafters such as Sarenya had rarely seen outside the Hall itself. As she and Arrense made their way through the crush, she caught snatches of conversation on subjects as diverse as the milk yield of Hogener hill-stock, the relative merits of shoeing runners versus leaving them barefoot, and a new wonder-herb from Southern’s rainforest that had supposedly all but wiped out mud fever in the Peninsula lowlands. They passed a Smith journeyman showing off a contraption he claimed would reduce the mortality rate of breech-delivered calves, and two Masters having a loud and vehement argument about the best techniques for wing-clipping wherries. Sarenya even spotted Kaddyston, her former Master, through the throng, with his queen fire-lizard Bacca on his shoulder, but Sleek didn’t react. He’d been a faithful member of Bacca’s adoptive fair at Blue Shale, but evidently his loyalty now belonged to Agusta.

Arrense led the way to where a message board had been nailed to a couple of the pavilion’s supporting posts. Several Beastcrafters were scanning the notices written in chalk on the board, and one journeyman was busily scribbling his own in a spare space. Terrier pups for sale, one of the messages went. Proven snaking bloodlines, dogs and bitches, enquire Cafford Hold Canines, square two. Hall discount applies. Another read, Position sought for hard-working lad, 12, with knack for runners (apprenticeship not feasible owing to simple-mindedness). But most of the notices were social in nature: FRENKO!! come and join us in the Hall beer tent when you get off shift – Penny & Parditon. And then Sarenya noticed the message her Master had obviously come to find. Arrense. Will be at Pen. West stables before racing begins. Benallen.

“Friend of yours?” Sarenya asked.

“A very old one,” said Arrense. “We apprenticed in the same intake. He beat me to journeyman, but I made Master first.” He casually wiped the message off the board. “If he’s only going to be around until the start of racing, best I go over and see him now.”

“But what about the herdbeasts?”

He gave her a look. “What herdbeasts?”

“Master…”

“I do have other business while I’m here,” Arrense went on, ignoring her protest. “Benallen being part of that. You don’t have to tail me. You may as well go and enjoy the Gather.”

Sarenya was less interested in enjoying the Gather than she was in getting to the bottom of the livestock scam that she felt responsible for uncovering, but she knew how stubborn Arrense could be. “I spent all the marks I’d like to yesterday.” It wasn’t strictly true, but she’d only brought a couple of eighths with her, which wouldn’t go far.

Arrense regarded her with that direct blue stare of his, scratching his beard with his thumb. “Then you may as well come and meet Benallen. You can talk racing with him, anyway.”

The afternoon’s racing was still hours away, and the tiered stands at the racecourse were almost deserted. The detritus of the previous day’s spectators – discarded food, empty wineskins, and hundreds of losing wager slips – had been cleared away. Cleaners armed with brushes and buckets were sweeping in a desultory fashion at the paved paths just this side of the track, where dust and clods from the galloping runners had been flung over the running rail.

Behind the stands stretched the racecourse stables. The runnerbeasts competing at a Gather of this size and stature would have come from all over Peninsula territory – and from even farther afield, if the jockeys’ colours Sarenya had seen yesterday were any indication. Long Bay’s coastal location made it easy for runner-trainers with designs on Lady Coffleby’s generous prize purses to transport their charges by ship. Most of the animals would have been brought up from their home holds by road, though, and any hailing from holds more than a few hours away would have come in days before. Long Bay boasted an impressive rank of permanent stables – fifty or so stone-built boxes – and at least a hundred more temporary structures constructed of wooden uprights and stout canvas sheeting that would be taken down and stored away when the last runners left at the end of the Gather.

The maroon-and-white banner of Peninsula West drooped in the still air above a run of four canvas stalls. Three were occupied by runners, each animal shifting about with the restless energy of the racing breed. The door of the fourth stood open, and its occupant, a hulking bay, was being trotted up in hand by a stable lad for the benefit of a short, barrel-chested man with the Peninsula West badge on his sleeve and a lightweight racing plate in his hand.

“It won’t do,” the short man said, holding up his free hand to halt the sweating lad’s progress. “Put him back in his box, and run down to the farrier. If he can fit in a re-plating in the next half an hour, fine; if not, I’ll do it myself.”

“Faranth forbid it should come to that, Ben,” said Arrense. “As I recall your farriery, the poor beast will be lucky to have a foot left once you’ve finished nailing a shoe to it.”

The stocky man swivelled on his heel. “Arrense, you old bastard!”

The two Masters greeted each other with much thumping of backs and pounding of shoulders that made Sarenya wince. She knew how strong her own Master was, and Benallen didn’t look any less muscular, for all that he was nearly a head the shorter.

“So this is your journeyman,” Benallen said, looking at Sarenya. “She looks like you. The breeding tells, hmm?”

“Saren prefers not to acknowledge that we’re related,” said Arrense.

“Don’t shaffing blame you, girl,” said Benallen. “Suppose I shouldn’t call you that, should I? Journeyman. Or are you one of those who prefers journeywoman?”

He said the last with a touch of scorn. “Journeyman has always suited me fine, Master,” Sarenya replied.

“Did you breed any of these, Ben?” Arrense asked, walking along the line of stables.

“Those two,” Benallen replied, nodding at the first two stables. “Not the dark bay, or the one who spread a plate.” He snorted. “And that’s the one with the best chance, not that you heard it from me.”

“Saren’s the racing enthusiast,” said Arrense.

“You never did develop a taste for the track, did you, Arrense?” Benallen asked. “Too busy beating the ever-living snot out of Hold lads who fancied themselves in the ring.”

Sarenya looked at her Master, mystified. “You were a boxer?”

Arrense shook his head, looking pained, but Benallen chuckled dirtily. “Boxing’s a gentleman’s sport, girl,” he said, “and you don’t need me to tell you that your uncle’s no gentleman. He wasn’t a boxer. He’d take all his Hall knots off and go looking for fights in the bare-knuckle pits.”

“Shards, Master,” Sarenya said, torn between admiration and horror. She’d heard stories about the unofficial fighting pits that operated on the fringes of big Gathers –  illegal for both organisers and participants. “Don’t people get killed in those?”

“I never did,” Arrense said. He gave Benallen a dark look. “It was a long time ago.”

“Don’t know why you’re so ashamed of it,” said Benallen. “You made more marks fighting than I ever did riding. And you didn’t break many more bones doing it.”

“Flat or jumps?” Sarenya asked, tactfully steering the conversation away from the past that Arrense clearly preferred not to discuss.

“Mostly flat,” Benallen replied. He slapped both hands against his belly. “Too fat for that now. Don’t suppose you get to many race meetings, being at the Weyr.”

“Not many,” said Sarenya. “I was spoilt for a couple of Turns when I was assigned to Blue Shale.”

“Now, that’s a racecourse. Takes a proper runner to come up that hill with something still in hand.” Benallen narrowed his eyes. “A Weyr’s a step down from a plum post like Blue Shale. Who’d you piss off?”

The sudden change of direction threw Sarenya for a moment. She glanced towards Arrense in a mute appeal for support, but he was inspecting the stabled runnerbeasts. “No one, I don’t think.” She didn’t imagine Benallen would be impressed with the real reason for her unexpected reassignment to the Weyr, so she said, not untruthfully, “Madellon’s starting to breed its own food beasts. Master Arrense needed another journeyman to help.”

“And what did you breed at Blue Shale to recommend you?” Benallen nodded at Sleek, quiescent on Sarenya’s shoulder. “Those?”

“We never talked about breeding fire-lizards so much as trying to influence them. They’re not very cooperative in that sense.” Sarenya paused. The conversation had turned unexpectedly interrogative, but she didn’t want to embarrass Arrense by objecting to it. If he meant to show her off, Sarenya intended to do him credit. “Woolbeasts, mostly, though for meat and milk more than for the fleece. Some mountain-type herdbeasts. Blue Shale’s too craggy for the quality breeds. Herding hounds, too.”

“And runnerbeasts?”

“Heavy draft types and hill ponies.” Sarenya looked at the athletic racing runners poking their noses out from the temporary stalls, and heard her tone turn wistful. “Nothing like these.”

“Carters or ponies, you have to have an eye for the standard,” said Benallen. He took a halter down from a peg on the closest stable door as he spoke. “Here. Take a look at this colt and tell me what you think.”

It was more a challenge than an invitation, Sarenya thought, as Benallen led the race-runner out of its stall. She stole another glance at Arrense. Her Master had quit the pretence of indifference and was watching, his thumbs tucked into the loops of his belt, from a short distance away. She wondered how adversarial his relationship with Benallen had been. She didn’t really want to get in the middle of a pissing contest. She took a deep breath. She’d spent plenty of time looking at the conformation of food beasts in the last Turn – picking out likely cows and ewes to be bred – but runners were a different thing altogether.

The colt was a dark bay with a narrow white stripe running crookedly the length of its nose. Sarenya took a step back to look at it, then moved to its head to inspect its teeth. She ran her hand briefly down each leg and picked up each foot to examine the hoofs. “Will you walk him up?” she asked Benallen, standing back again.

Benallen regarded her shrewdly, then shook his head. “No. Tell me about him from what you’ve seen of him standing there.”

“All right.” Sarenya hesitated, ordering her thoughts. “He’s four or four and a half Turns old. He’s been well-handled and he’s well-mannered for an entire. He has decent bone in front and behind, and his feet are good, so he’s likely to be sound –”

“A first-Turn apprentice could tell me all that,” Benallen interrupted. “Tell me about the animal. Sprinter, stayer, or middle-distance? Would you buy him? Would you breed from him?”

Stung, Sarenya started to answer the three questions in curt succession, and then she hesitated. “I’d say he started out as a sprinting prospect,” she said. She pointed at the runner’s near foreleg. “The rounded profile of the forearm muscle, the upright pasterns, the short shoulder-blade. I’d guess he was a decent two-Turn-old. But then he grew, didn’t he? Between his two and three-Turn-old seasons. He put on length in the cannons, his neck lengthened out, but his back didn’t…all the growing went up, not out. So you have a runner with the musculature of a six-furlong sprinter, but a short back and a shoulder that slopes more like a mile-and-a-quarter runner. He can’t go with the fast runners any more, but he doesn’t have the muscular flexibility or the depth of chest to step up to a mile and a half, or even ten furlongs. I wouldn’t like him over more than eight, and that division is fiercely competitive for a runner who should have been sprinting.”

She paused for a breath, not looking for Benallen’s reaction, then went on, “Would I buy him? No. If I wanted a sprinter I’d buy a sprinter, and if I wanted a middle-distance runner I’d buy something built to stay twelve. He’s good-looking, but physically he’s neither one thing nor another. Some Lord with no knowledge of bloodstock would bid him up to more than he’s worth because he takes the eye, and I’d save my marks for something else. Would I breed from him? Based on his conformation, no; I’d be concerned he’d get more like him that were useful at two and tripless at three. He’s slightly toed out, although I’d always rather that than toed in, and I’d need to see him move to know if it’s a problem. But I’d look at the form book, because Faranth knows there’ve been champion racers with cow-hocks and goose-rumps and worse, and if conformation were everything in a racing runner then you could pick your stakes winners just by following the colts who’ve gone for top mark as Turnlings.” Something else occurred to her then, and she added, “But maybe this fellow is more talented than his physique suggests. Otherwise you’d have gelded him at three.”

She fell silent. Benallen just looked at her. The colt, unconcerned by her scathing assessment of his quality, tugged on his lead rope.

“He won a stakes sprint as a two-Turn-old and came third against older runners the same season,” Benallen said at last. “He’s been finishing mid-field in sprints and tailed off over eight-to-ten furlongs since. And he’s owned by Lady Justine of Peninsula West, who won’t hear of having him cut because he was the last runner her late husband bred before he died.”

Arrense chuckled. “Told you she knew her runners,” he said to Benallen, coming closer to inspect the bay colt for himself.

Benallen didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “Pen-West has been breeding moderate racers since the Pass. They brought one good stallion from Nerat when the territory was settled, and every Studmaster has been stubbornly back-crossing to that line ever since. It’s played out. That’s why I’ve been stuck training the likes of this one, these last ten Turns.”

“When do you take over at Kirken?” asked Arrense.

“Not for a couple of months yet. Though I can put down Lord Essoric’s bid on any decent broodmares I see at the sales before then. He’s starting from nothing with the racing side of the operation. Suits me. I’ll have control over the lines I’m breeding instead of having things like this foisted on me.”

The stable lad trotted back then. “Farrier says he can re-shoe Merry Trip now,” he reported. “And I passed Krondin on my way back. He said he wants to talk to you about the ride on Whetstone later.”

“I’ll wager he does, after he unshipped last time,” said Benallen. He shook his head. “Precious shaffing jockey. I’ll be as glad not to have to work with him as to be free of training Justine’s nags. I’d best see to this, Arrense. Will you be here all day?”

“Until evening,” Arrense said. “Our dragon home won’t be ready before then.”

“Then I’ll see you in the Hall enclave after racing.” Benallen cast a sideways glance at Sarenya as he spoke. “And we’ll speak of affairs then, hmm?”

That look made a sudden suspicion dawn on Sarenya – a suspicion she could barely credit herself until, as she and Arrense walked back towards the Gather proper, her Master said, “He’s a contrary old cove, is Ben, but there’s not a better runner-man on the continent. He’s always been sceptical of female Beastcrafters, but there aren’t many I’d trust more than him, either.”

Sarenya stopped and turned incredulously to him. “Are you saying what I think you are?”

“I don’t know,” Arrense replied. “What do you think I’m saying?”

“Was that a job interview?”

“I wouldn’t call it that exactly.”

She stared at him, so astounded that words failed her completely for a long span of moments. “You’re dismissing me?”

“No one’s being dismissed,” said Arrense. “Not if I can help it.”

“I don’t believe this,” Sarenya said, half to herself. On her shoulder, Sleek stirred, disturbed by her outrage, and mantled his wings. She waved him away irritably, and he took flight. “You said extending my contract wasn’t a problem –”

Arrense’s expression wasn’t contrite in the least. “It’s no position for a journeyman to be in, never more than a month away from getting sent back to the Hall.”

“Sent back to the Hall?” Sarenya was horrified. “Master, if you haven’t been happy with my work –”

“Sarenya,” Arrense barked, with a force that made her take a step back. “Pull yourself together and listen to me.” He glared at her with the contained blackness he usually reserved for reprimanding apprentices. “I have to reduce my staff. I have to cut one journeyman and at least one more apprentice.”

“But we’re already short-handed!” Sarenya protested. “You can’t possibly run Madellon’s livestock with only six apprentices!”

“Why do you think I’ve been foisting those kids from the Weyr on you? Ollen and Ingany and the rest? I don’t need apprentices to milk the dairy herd or escort the drives.” The tone of his voice betrayed nonetheless how he felt about the substitute of unskilled labour for trained Beastcrafters. “But how I’ll manage with fewer apprentices is my problem, not yours. The hard fact is, I have to lose a journeyman. I’m blighted if I’m going to just turn someone out, so that means finding one of you a good berth somewhere else. And you tell me, Saren: if you were in my position, which one out of you, Jarrisam and Tebis do you think has the best chance of a soft landing, coming out of a Weyr contract?”

“You can’t make Tebis leave,” Sarenya said. She felt more outraged at that notion than at the prospect of her own dismissal from the Weyr. “You can’t. Madellon’s not his post; it’s his home.”

“And he would be lost anywhere else,” Arrense replied. He sounded dry. “What about Sam?”

“He has seniority. And he’s been at Madellon longer. On that alone he has the right to stay over me.” She knew how bitter she sounded. “Last in, first out, right?”

“The sharding place only keeps running because he’s holding it together with spit and baling twine,” said Arrense. “No one else wrangles the apprentices more productively. And that’s not a slight on you or Tebis, Saren. If I’m honest, Jarrisam’s better with people than he is with animals. The fact he let that evil old milkbeast boot him across the shed is proof enough of that.” Arrense shook his head. “He’s never going to make his Mastery, Saren. Not Sam, nor Teb. I’d be amazed if either of them ever expressed a wish to pursue it.”

“But you think I should.”

“I think you shouldn’t be at Madellon.”

“It wasn’t my choice!”

“It wasn’t mine, either,” Arrense said, “and if I’d had the least say in the matter, it wouldn’t have happened. You should never have been posted to any Weyr, and least of all Madellon.”

That was the closest he’d ever come to mentioning Sarenya’s past. She was too upset and angry to be circumspect. “Because I was a candidate?” she asked. “A candidate who failed to Impress?”

“For that reason,” Arrense agreed, “among a number of others.” His intense blue eyes bored into her as he went on, holding her gaze, though Sarenya would have liked to look away. “Weyrs are where Beastcrafters’ careers go to die. You can trust me on that. Wing-clipping wherry hatchlings, driving half-dead cattle through the passes, nursing along broken-down plug runners – that’s not work for a crafter with a future. You’ve learnt nothing under me that you didn’t already know.”

“That’s not true –”

“You know it’s true. Why else do you think I ceded so much of your time to Vhion? At least what he has to teach has held your attention. But I think that’s been a mistake, too. Mine, not yours. It’s time I corrected my errors.”

“By sending me away?” Sarenya heard her voice break on the words.

“By doing better by you than I have.” Arrense took her shoulders in his hands. “Saren. I know you’ve never wanted me to treat you differently because of our relationship. I have anyway, or I’d have done the right thing and got you out of your dead-end post with me long before now. I’ve kept you with me for selfish reasons, not for your benefit. And that’s why I want to get you out of Madellon, away from the sharding dragons and dragonriders, away from all the reminders of what you went through on Hatching night last winter. And yes, away from having what might have been if you’d Impressed eight Turns ago rubbed in your face every time you turn around.” He shook her, not hard, but emphatically. “There’s nothing for you at Madellon but bad animals and worse memories.”

“What about my friends?” Sarenya cried. “What about M’ric?”

“What about him? He’s a dragonrider, Sarenya. You’ll never be a tenth part as important to him as his dragon is. You don’t deserve to be second in someone’s affections. Nobody does.”

She shrugged off her Master’s grip and turned away, distraught. Her eyes burned as she stared out across the racecourse, not seeing anything.

“Of all my journeymen, you’re the one who’d be best served by leaving,” Arrense went on, behind her. Sarenya wished she could ignore him – wished she could walk away – but she couldn’t not hear what he had to say. “And the one with the most to offer. Benallen isn’t the only Master I’m seeing today about a place for you.”

That made her angry enough to turn on her heel. “So now you’re selling me off to the highest bidder?”

“I’m trying to give you a choice,” Arrense told her. “I’d return you to Blue Shale if I could. Kaddyston was the first Master I contacted. He’d have had you back in a moment, but he won’t have a place for another Turn. There might be a position opening up at Southern Hold, and one at Rosken, but they’d be less specialised roles. Benallen’s starting a racing stud operation from the ground up, Saren – breeding and training. There are enough cows and sheep at Kirken for you to keep your hand in, but you’d be spending most of your time planning matings and working with youngstock and designing training regimes. You couldn’t ask for a better post for a journeyman in your position.”

“And what if I don’t want to go to Kirken?” Sarenya asked, though it was a weak protest. The outfit Arrense described would have tempted anyone. “Or Southern, or Rosken?”

“Then the Craft will reassign you somewhere,” said Arrense. “But you’ll go to the end of the list for postings. You could end up back at the Hall for months before they find you a place back out in the field.”

“And what about this business with the herdbeasts?”

Arrense looked at her ominously. “Why do you think I want you safely posted somewhere else before that Thread hits the ground?”

“But you’ve been planning this for a long time.” Sarenya said it quietly, but the thought made her feel sick. She lifted her eyes to his. “You really want me out of Madellon.”

“You’re a big girl, Sarenya,” he told her. “You think about it with this –” he tapped the side of his head, “– rather than this –” he thumped his fist over his heart, “– and you’ll draw the same conclusions I did.”

There wasn’t much else to say. Stiffly and in silence, Sarenya walked beside her Master back to the main Gather square. When they reached the edge of the racecourse enclosure, Arrense stopped. “Do you need some marks?” he asked, putting his hand in his pocket.

“No,” Sarenya said shortly.

“Suit yourself. If you’re going to get a lift back to Madellon with someone else, leave me a message at the enclave.”

With that, he left her.

The Gather that had been so lively and exciting yesterday had lost most of its allure. Sarenya found a klah stall close to the racecourse, full of Gather-goers discussing the form of the previous day’s races. Some of the runners who’d competed yesterday would run again today. It seemed as good a place as any to sit and think undisturbed.

She spent a sixteenth on a strong cup of klah and a spiced pastry, and took a place at the end of one of the long trestle tables, feeling numb. As often as she’d complained to M’ric about the limited nature of her work with Madellon’s livestock, she hadn’t thought she’d be forced out by her own Master. For all Arrense’s justifications, his decision to evict her from her post felt like a complete betrayal of the trust she thought they’d developed since she’d come to Madellon. He might at least have told her!

She sat there unhappily, nursing her drink, and picking without interest at crumbs of the greasy pastry. The worst part was that Arrense was right. He had to get rid of a journeyman, and she was the logical choice on every front: the one with the briefest tenure, the one with the shortest contract, the one with the fewest ties. But she did have ties at Madellon. What was she to say to M’ric? To C’mine and Valonna? To Sejanth?

Yet Arrense’s assessment of M’ric, bluntly and brutally stated, replayed in her mind. He’s a dragonrider. You’ll never be a tenth part as important to him as his dragon is. And she found it hard to dispute the truth of it. Her closest friends at Madellon were dragonriders. The people she valued the most all enjoyed the companionship of their dragons – a companionship that, for a brief time, Sarenya had dared hope would be hers, too. That hope had died when the infant Shimpath had looked at her, locked eyes with her, and then turned away to choose Valonna. Sarenya wasn’t the first candidate to have been left standing on the hatching sands of Madellon Weyr. But now, she wondered if the pull she felt towards dragonriders wasn’t to the riders themselves, but to the reflected brilliance of the Impression bond that had been denied her. Why else would she still feel such a thrill, such an unearned sense of importance, whenever a dragon spoke directly to her? Why, if not because, deep down, she still felt she’d been cheated of the dragon that should have been hers?

And Arrense recognised it in her. You should never have been posted to a Weyr. Any Weyr, least of all Madellon. Not just because a Weyr was a dead-end post for a Beastcrafter, but because she was still unhealthily fascinated by dragons; fascinated by them like a moth was fascinated by flame, heedless of the damage caused by the heat and brightness. Arrense had never approved of her relationship with T’kamen, but Sarenya had always thought he was concerned with the consequences of her entanglement with the Weyrleader, not the dragonrider. His disapproval of M’ric was less apparent, but now Sarenya thought on it, Arrense’s cordiality towards him had always fallen on the cool side of friendly.

Sarenya had never asked for any special treatment from Arrense. She’d gone out of her way to avoid any suggestion that he favoured her over his other journeymen. And yet by his own admission he had treated her differently. Anger overtook her desolation. How dare he judge her for her choice of friends and lovers! How dare he presume to know what was best for her! How dare he take it upon himself to tout her around to other Masters behind her back!

“Oh, it is you! I wasn’t sure it was!”

Sarenya started out of her dark thoughts at the unsolicited address, and looked blankly at the man who’d just seated himself opposite her. His face was familiar, but it took the green-and-ochre knots on his shoulder to remind her of who he was. “Ah,” she said, trying to recall the name, “green rider, ah…”

“S’rebren,” he replied, evidently unconcerned by her misremembering of his name. “And you’re journeyman – wait, don’t tell me, I never forget a name – journeyman Sarenya.” He looked pleased with himself. “M’ric introduced us yesterday.”

“Yes, I remember,” Sarenya said. She managed a smile that she didn’t feel. “I’m sorry. I met a lot of his Peninsula friends yesterday, and I’m terrible with names.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said S’rebren. “I was looking at you for an age trying to decide if you were the same girl. You look different today.”

“I was off-duty yesterday,” she said. “I came with my Master today.”

“M’ric’s not here, then? I didn’t spot Trebruth, but there are so many dragons it’s hard to say.”

“I haven’t seen him,” said Sarenya. “But I would think he’ll be somewhere. Most of the Madellon Wingseconds are about.”

“Not as many as there were,” said S’rebren. “You couldn’t take a dump yesterday for having a Madellon brown rider glaring at you, making sure you washed your hands afterwards.”

“I know he’d want to thank you if he were here,” said Sarenya.

“Oh?” asked S’rebren, sipping from his mug of klah. “Why’s that?”

“The colt you tipped him yesterday. He did quite well, backing it.” When S’rebren looked confused, Sarenya went on, “The one that hacked up at silly odds in the first. M’ric made a fistful of marks.”

“I’m glad he did,” said S’rebren, “but I can’t take the credit for it, more’s the pity. I had a calamitous day. Couldn’t have picked the winner of a one-runner-race. Still, here I am, back again, to make the wagermen even richer.”

“I’m sure he said the tip came from you,” Sarenya said, baffled.

“He probably just picked it up from somewhere,” said S’rebren. “Sharp enough to cut himself, that one. Not much gets past him.”

Thinking about M’ric, and the prospect of leaving him behind at Madellon, made Sarenya miserable, but she could hardly spill her preoccupations to a strange green rider, however friendly S’rebren seemed. Instead, she mustered her manners, and asked, “You said you’ve know M’ric a long time?”

S’rebren laughed. “The longest time,” he said. “If there’s anyone on Pern who’s known him longer, I’d like to meet them.”

“Then you were Seahold-bred, too?”

“Me?” He shook his head. “No, I’m Weyrbred through and through. Seahold-bred, is that what he told you?”

“Isn’t he?”

“Search me. He’s always been cagey about where he was from, and –” S’rebren stopped himself, eyeing her charily. “Well, if you’re his weyrmate, maybe you know more than I do.”

Sarenya returned the look blankly. “I don’t think I understand.”

“What’s he told you?” S’rebren asked. “Did he say where he Impressed?”

“The Peninsula, of course.”

“Ah, but did he say that, or did you assume it?”

Sarenya blinked. “He –” She stopped. “I suppose I just assumed, him being a Peninsula rider…”

“You see, you can’t assume anything, when it comes to M’ric’s past,” S’rebren told her, joshing her elbow cheerfully. “I’ll tell you now: he didn’t Impress at the Peninsula.”

“But he’s always said he was a Peninsula rider,” Sarenya protested.

“He is. Or was, before he transferred out, but wherever he Impressed that funny little brown of his, it wasn’t from a Peninsula clutch.” S’rebren tapped his own chest with a finger. “We found him, my green and me. I mean, we’re going back twenty-odd Turns, here – he and Trebruth weren’t much more than weyrlings. Lost, in distress, and very confused. It was days before he’d speak to anyone.”

Sarenya was taken aback. “He’s never said anything about this to me!”

“It was a long time ago,” said S’rebren. “And it can’t have been a happy time for him, being displaced like that.”

“Then where did he come from?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” He shrugged. “Best guess is he made a bad jump between. It wouldn’t be the first time a weyrling’s got his wits addled from being between too long. The cold does funny things to a man’s brains. But as for where he’s from – that’s anybody’s guess. If he knows, he’s not telling. Perhaps you can pry the secret out of him, hmm?”

“Perhaps,” Sarenya said weakly. She looked at her half-finished klah and the oily pastry, and found she had no appetite left for either. “I should go…my Master’s going to be waiting…”

“Of course,” said S’rebren. If he detected the lie in her words, he was too courteous to allude to it. But he caught Sarenya’s wrist as she rose to go. “And, journeyman, don’t be too hard on M’ric, for what he may not have told you. Losing your past to a weyrling error – that’s not a feat any man would like to dwell upon, twenty Turns after the fact.” He patted her hand comfortingly. “Don’t worry. If you know M’ric at all, you know he’s a good man, and whatever his deep, dark secret really is, it’s ancient, ancient history.”

Chapter forty-two: T’kamen

Just when I thought T’kamen couldn’t do any more to alienate the rest of the Weyr.

Fire-lizards. He brought back fire-lizards.

It’s as if he’s deliberately trying to make everyone hate him and that cocky little shit of a brown weyrling.

Maybe he wants to be exiled? Maybe he fancies that Westisle would be more fun for him than Madellon Weyr?

Well, at the rate he’s going, he might not actually be wrong.

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Weyrmarshal R’lony

26.06.21-22 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

M’ric broke his promise to stay away from T’kamen only once, on the last night of his weyrlinghood.

T’kamen had just handed over to V’lerk, the green rider assigned to the morning watch. The lonely and tedious dark watches seemed to be manned almost exclusively by dragonpairs on punishment detail – certainly, V’lerk was up there far too often not to be in disgrace himself – but any mutual commiseration T’kamen might have hoped for was sadly not forthcoming. Whatever offence V’lerk had committed, it wasn’t bad enough to incline him to solidarity with a real pariah like T’kamen.

He and Epherineth returned to their weyr in the total quiet of the pre-dawn hour to find M’ric sitting outside, dangling his legs over the edge of the ledge. “What are you doing here?” T’kamen asked, as Epherineth crouched low to let him dismount clumsily. “You should be in bed.”

M’ric shrugged his left shoulder so as not to disturb his fire-lizard, who was coiled up with her eyes closed, on the right. “Couldn’t sleep.”

T’kamen pulled out his cane from where he’d thrust it through the fore-strap of Epherineth’s harness. “It’s the big day tomorrow, isn’t it?”

“Today, technically,” said M’ric. He glanced up towards the Star Stones, where V’lerk’s Caliburth had taken Epherineth’s post. “We start at the beginning of forenoon.”

“You’re going to be a wreck by then if you don’t get some rest,” T’kamen said. He unbuckled Epherineth’s harness. “And C’rastro would kill you if he knew you were here.”

“I know,” M’ric admitted.

T’kamen sighed. “Why don’t you come in and have some klah before you’re spotted?”

M’ric paused to greet Epherineth. “Your face isn’t looking nearly as bad as it was,” he observed. “Not as swollen. When are they taking the last stitches out?”

“Another few days. They tried taking some of them out yesterday but the wound started pulling apart again, so they put them back in. The neck ones are out already, though he’s still covered in ging sap under that dressing.”

M’ric poked gently at Epherineth’s lip. Epherineth accepted it with the peculiar tolerance he’d always shown for the boy. “His teeth are always going to show like this?”

It still made T’kamen’s guts freeze when he thought about it. The right side of Epherineth’s face was never going to look as it had before. The slash running from beneath his eye down through his top lip was slowly healing, but it would leave a seam, and the damage had drawn the split flesh permanently upwards, partly exposing the teeth and gumline. It made him look like he was perpetually snarling, and it interfered with his eating. He slobbered and dribbled helplessly over his food now. Epherineth, once one of the handsomest bronzes on Pern, now made people recoil from his ruined face. The only comfort T’kamen could take was that his eye had escaped serious injury. “So they tell me,” he said, without any inflection.

“He’s going to look fierce when it’s all healed,” said M’ric. “No one’s going to argue with him on the feeding grounds.” He paused. “And he’s still good-looking on the left side.”

It was small comfort, and T’kamen didn’t have the heart to respond to it. He released the last buckle on Epherineth’s harness. The rig slithered to the ground.

He would have left it there, but as he limped slowly and painfully towards the interior of his weyr, he heard M’ric pick it up. “You don’t –”

“I’m just going to hang it up,” M’ric said. He heaved the heavy leather onto the rack in Epherineth’s chamber. “See?”

T’kamen pushed through the leather drape into his weyr. “Thank you.”

M’ric followed him in. “You’ve changed everything around in here,” he said, looking around.

“I don’t have much else to do with my free time.”

“El’yan brought the chessboard?” M’ric asked, nodding towards the table, where a match was in progress.

“He thrashes me three times a day,” T’kamen said. “Which he calls schooling me.” He nearly smiled at the thought of the old man, one of the few riders of any colour who didn’t seem to care about T’kamen’s disgrace.

“Suppose he knows all about having a limp,” said M’ric.

There’d been a time when T’kamen would have given him a hard look for the glib remark. Now, though, he knew M’ric well enough to know he was trying to cheer him up. It wasn’t working, but T’kamen appreciated the effort. “Suppose he does.”

As he approached the hearth, Fetch opened one sleepy blue eye from where he was curled up in his basket. He acknowledged T’kamen with a yawn before shaking out his wings and humming at M’ric’s queen. Agusta lifted her head from M’ric’s shoulder, regarding Fetch imperiously. “Let me make it, Kamen,” M’ric offered, moving quickly to intercept. “You should sit down.”

T’kamen didn’t stop him. He lowered himself tiredly to sit in one of the chairs by the banked fire, lifting his stiffly unbending leg  onto the footstool. Fetch, unfazed by Agusta’s cool scepticism, fluttered up to perch on T’kamen’s good knee. He knew to avoid the other one. T’kamen stroked his fire-lizard’s head idly as M’ric took the kettle off its hook and went into the bathing room to fill it with water. “Do you know who’s going to be assessing you tomorrow?”

“It’ll be a panel of eight,” M’ric replied, poking at the banked embers to wake the flames. He replaced the kettle on its hook and swung it over the heat. “The Commander, five of his officers, R’lony, and either Ch’fil or G’bral.”

“I think it’ll be Ch’fil,” said T’kamen. “He said he’s been neck-deep in weyrling files all sevenday.”

M’ric shook dried klahbark into two cups, then sat back on his heels to wait for the water to boil. “How’s H’juke been working out?”

T’kamen noticed the hint of defensiveness in his tone. “Any rider who’s tailed for Ch’fil isn’t going to be anything but excellent.” He paused just long enough to give M’ric an instant’s resentment, and then added, “But he’s not you.”

“Am I that transparent?” M’ric asked ruefully.

“Yes.”

M’ric sighed. “Your hair’s growing back in white. You’re going to have a stripe.”

T’kamen lifted his hand reflexively to the stubbly patch on the left side of his head where Alanne’s fire-lizard had ripped a strip out of his scalp. “They said that might happen.”

“You look like you’re walking a little better, though.”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far. I still can’t bend my leg.” The stiff leather brace on T’kamen’s right knee saw to that. “But I’m mobile enough to hobble about at C’rastro’s beck and call. Slowly.”

“Faranth,” said M’ric. “What does he have you doing?”

“Every demeaning job he can think of,” said T’kamen. He decided not to go into the graphic details of brimming chamber pots and dirty bedfurs. “Epherineth’s not enjoying it much, either. He’s meant to offer everything he hunts to Prerth first. Which means Prerth mauls it around, eats the best bits, and then gives it back to Epherineth half-chewed.”

“Every weyrling brown and bronze goes through that,” said M’ric. “It’s supposed to teach them respect for the smaller colours.”

T’kamen gave him a look. “It’s making Epherineth murderous.”

M’ric grinned. “C’rastro’s such a tail-fork. If I were in your position, I’d piss in his bathing pool.”

“What makes you think I haven’t?” T’kamen motioned at the hearth with a jerk of his head. “Water’s boiling.”

M’ric wadded up a cloth to protect his hands from the hot handle of the kettle, and poured water into the two mugs. He picked up the sweetener jar, looking around. “Have you got a spoon somewhere?”

“It’ll be in my bathing room,” T’kamen said, and then, as M’ric began to rise from the hearth, “Don’t get up.” He put his hand under Fetch’s chin, looking him in the eye. “Go to the bathing pool and find the spoon, Fetch. Bring it back here.” He visualised the item he wanted clearly, and felt Epherineth reinforce the instruction. “Go on, Fetch. Go and get it for me.”

Fetch chuffed obligingly and took off from T’kamen’s knee, swooping towards the archway to the bathing area in a flutter of wings. A few moments later M’ric watched, openly impressed, as Fetch returned with a spoon clutched tightly in his forepaws. “Faranth. Now I understand the name. You have him trained already!”

“Something else to fill the time between watch duty and shovelling dragonet shit,” said T’kamen. “And Epherineth’s been very involved in the process. That’s a good boy, Fetch; bring it to me. That’s right.”

Fetch deposited the spoon obediently in T’kamen’s lap, and accepted a fragment of meatroll in return, which he ate with relish, staring at M’ric’s queen as he did. “I didn’t realise they’d be so trainable,” said M’ric. “I haven’t really done anything with Agusta.” He looked at Fetch speculatively. “Has he gone between yet?”

T’kamen handed over the spoon. “I’ve been careful not to ask him. You shouldn’t push her, either.”

“I won’t,” said M’ric. “I wouldn’t. Shards, I get enough dirty looks just having a fire-lizard on my shoulder, without having her disappearing and reappearing all over the Weyr.”

“Has she got you into trouble?”

M’ric shrugged. “C’rastro wasn’t impressed. Excusing the pun. But there’s not actually a rule against having fire-lizards. It’s just that no one does.” He shrugged. “She’s still sleeping a lot, so I leave her with Trebruth. I’ve only just got her to start riding on my shoulder. I’m getting called all sorts of names, but I’m used to that.” He put his hand absently up to Agusta. “But they will be able to, won’t they? Go between?”

“Alanne’s could, so I don’t see why ours shouldn’t, when they’re older.”

“They must have tripled in length already and they’re only a couple of sevendays old,” M’ric said. “How big will they get?”

T’kamen studied Fetch. “Saren’s bronze was about two-thirds the length of her arm, so yours a little bigger than that, mine a little smaller.”

M’ric passed him up a cup of klah, then seated himself in the second armchair. He looked pensively into the fire, curling his fingers around his own mug. “How did they assign you to Wings when you were a weyrling? I mean…” He trailed off, the lines between his brows deepening in a frown. “What difference did it make, how fast your dragon could turn or how far he could flame, in the Interval?”

T’kamen thought about it. “None, I suppose,” he replied, after a moment. “Not in the life-or-death way that it matters now. Although there was always that one weyrling no Wingleader really wanted. There was always as much negotiation over who’d take the worst dragonpairs as there was squabbling over the best.”

“But you didn’t have to fight Thread,” said M’ric. “Best or worst, what did it matter?”

“We still flew hot drills,” said T’kamen. “Between or not, catching a wingful of live flame will kill you just as dead as a Threadscore.” He thought briefly of Sejanth, wondering what had happened to him and D’feng. “But fighting ability was only one of the things that made a rider desirable, or not, as a wingman. Search sensitivity, a dragon with a knack for assessing firestone, a background in certain Crafts – even being related to an influential Holder could spark a fight over a rider.”

M’ric gave him a disapproving look. “I thought you said a good Wingleader had to consider all the factors carefully before placing a new rider in a Wing. What you’re describing sounds like runner trading.”

“It was,” said T’kamen, “or it could be. It depended on who was Weyrleader when a newly-graduated class was ready to be posted out. I was only involved as a Wingleader myself once, and I was a very junior Wingleader then, so I didn’t have many favours to call in.”

“Did you get stuck with someone useless?”

T’kamen laughed. “Actually, I got a brown rider no one wanted.”

M’ric sat up a bit. “Why did no one want him?”

“There was nothing much to recommend him,” T’kamen said. “His dragon, Hishovath, was the smallest brown in the group, and they’d never distinguished themselves at anything. B’ward was about your age, but he looked five Turns younger; you’ve never seen such a weedy dragonrider. He’d been sickly all the way through training. Even the Weyrlingmaster didn’t think much of him.”

M’ric made a dismissive sound. “Weyrlingmasters.”

“L’stev wasn’t like C’rastro,” said T’kamen. “L’stev cared about every single weyrling he ever trained. He’s the one who urged me to take on B’ward, not because he saw hidden potential, but because the kid had to go somewhere, and the alternative would have made him miserable.”

“What happened to him?”

“He limped through half a Turn of sub-par performance, constant sick days, and me on his back about it all the time. Eventually I got tired of it and sent him to the Healer Hall at Southern Hold with orders not to come back until he was healthy. My Flightleader thought I’d lost my mind, but the kid wasn’t any good to anyone carrying on the way he had. He was there three months. They did every kind of test on him to try to figure out what was wrong with him. And then some clever Healer did. It turned out he had some sort of reaction to grain – wheat and barley, mostly. As soon as they tried him on a diet without any bread or cereal, he stopped feeling sick all the time and started putting on weight.” T’kamen smiled, remembering. “He came back a completely different rider and started making up for all the time he’d lost puking his guts out. Eventually he became my Wingsecond. I’ve never known anyone with a better sense for matching flying patterns to weather conditions.”

“He was lucky to have you for a Wingleader,” said M’ric.

T’kamen shrugged. “He probably didn’t think that at the time. I rode him pretty hard.”

“But you took him seriously,” said M’ric. “You didn’t just assume he was being lazy.”

“I’ve known lazy riders,” T’kamen said. “None of them loved idleness more than they hated being on my shit-list.”

M’ric gave him a sidelong look, and then laughed. “I bet you were a real bastard.”

“I had to be,” T’kamen said. “I was very young when I was made up to Wingleader. Epherineth was only six. Most of my wingmen had been riding their dragons longer than I’d been alive. Being taken seriously was more important than making friends.”

“They made you a Wingleader when you were only four Turns out of weyrling training?”

“Four and a half,” T’kamen said. “But yes. That was the path bronze riders took in my day. Straight into the first available Wingsecond position to get us used to command and into Wingleader stripes as soon as you’d proved you weren’t completely inept. It depended on who was retiring, and every time the Weyrleader changed there’d be a shuffle of the Wings, but you really had to be a deadglow to ride a bronze and not rate at least a Wingsecond knot.” He thought about it, then added, “Though some of the bronze riders I knew almost put the lie to that. There were a couple of Wings that wouldn’t have held together at all if not for the efforts of hyper-competent Wingseconds.”

“So why weren’t they promoted over the useless bronzes?” M’ric asked.

“It just wasn’t done,” said T’kamen. “I know. From where you’re sitting it seems ridiculous. But that was the accepted wisdom. Any boy who Impressed a bronze must be suited for command, because a bronze wouldn’t choose a rider who wasn’t.”

“That’s putting far too much trust in the judgement of a newborn dragonet.”

“It is,” T’kamen agreed. “I’m not so rigid in the beliefs I was brought up with that I can’t see that, M’ric. But I still think that the way Madellon is divided along colour lines is at cross-purposes with dragon hierarchy. It might be feasible for a man who rides a blue to be a good leader, but a blue doesn’t have the authority to match. How much more effective would a man likes S’leondes be if he’d Impressed a bronze?”

“Not very, in the fighting Wings,” M’ric pointed out.

“But only because dragons can’t go between.” T’kamen looked down at Fetch, snugged in his lap. “Which brings us back to them.”

“Not soon enough to help me tomorrow.”

T’kamen studied him for a moment, unsure of the best way to respond. Perhaps it would have been kinder to prepare M’ric for the inevitability of a Seventh Flight posting, but he hated to crush the small, hopeful part of him that still dreamed of being a fighting dragonrider of Madellon. “Trebruth’s exceptional and you’re more than competent, M’ric. You don’t need help.”

“Not help,” he said. “But a miracle would have been nice.” He sighed. “What would you do, in my position?”

T’kamen laughed. “In your position, and at your age, anything at all.”

“Anything?”

“Sucked up to every senior rider, elbowed every potential rival out of the way… I’d probably have traded Epherineth’s tail for a chance to fight Thread.”

“And you wouldn’t think less of me for doing that?”

“I know what you’re up against, M’ric,” T’kamen said. “If you really want to be posted to Tactical, and you really think kissing some ass will get you there…”

“We both know it won’t,” M’ric said glumly.

It was almost a relief to hear him so morosely resigned to the reality of it; still, T’kamen felt a wrench. He drained his klah. “Go to bed, M’ric.”

“I’m not going to be able to sleep.”

“You might not. I, on the other hand, am too sharding old to stay up all night like I used to when I was a weyrling.”

“Being a hundred and fifty Turns old will do that to you,” said M’ric.

“Go between,” T’kamen said automatically. Then he winced. “Not literally.”

M’ric snorted. “Good night, T’kamen.”

“Good night, M’ric. And good luck for tomorrow.”

It was a while before T’kamen actually worked up the energy to move from his chair to his bed. Even when he did, and as tired as he was, he still lay awake for a long time, listening to the disturbed rasp of Epherineth’s breathing, and to the restless turning of his own thoughts, before sleep finally claimed him.

He was up again less than a watch later, breaking his fast – and feeding Fetch on the scraps – in the relative peace of early morning before going to the infirmary for his check-up. Once Ondiar had poked at his healing wounds and proclaimed them marginally improved upon yesterday, T’kamen made the long, slow trip across the Bowl to Command for the morning’s Flight briefing with R’ganff, Ch’fil being tied up with the weyrling assessments.

The fact that C’rastro was also out, overseeing the process, didn’t exempt T’kamen from his daily penance, but it did at least mean that the Weyrlingmaster wouldn’t be breathing down his neck. It made him feel slightly less dismal about the whole business. S’hayn, one of C’rastro’s assistants, was drilling younger weyrlings out on the training grounds, and curtly told T’kamen that C’rastro had left instructions for him to clean his weyr, empty the night-soil bins in the barracks, and dump the outside midden bunkers. It was pure drudgery, or at best the tedious and dirty scutwork that weyrlings ought to have done themselves, and he couldn’t even do it efficiently with his braced leg slowing him down, but T’kamen was blighted if he’d be seen to complain.

He set the Weyrlingmaster’s weyr to order first. C’rastro was both ostentatiously untidy – to the point where T’kamen assumed he left his quarters in a state on purpose – and excessively fussy about everything having its place. T’kamen had learned to pay attention to how C’rastro liked his shirts folded, and which drawer the socks went into, and the exact way he wanted the furs on his bed arranged. The mud-caked boots that T’kamen found awaiting his attention must have been deliberately fouled, given that it hadn’t rained in three days, and C’rastro had apparently done nothing but walk back and forth around his weyr in them for hours by the amount of dirt tracked into the rushes on the floor. T’kamen cleaned and spit-shined the boots, replaced the muddy rushes, made the bed, folded and put away the scattered clothes, and tidied the bathing room. M’ric’s remark about pissing in the pool came back to him as he changed the water in the washbasin. T’kamen wondered how he and Trebruth were getting on.

Stratomath says most creditably, Epherineth volunteered. The other assessors are contorting themselves into knots trying to find fault with Trebruth’s flying.

Then they haven’t been eliminated from the formation flaming exercises yet?

No. Epherineth sounded pleased. Though one blue has already been stood down.

Tetketh?

Yes.

T’kamen felt a pang of sympathy for Tetketh’s rider. As little respect as the brown and bronze riders of the Seventh enjoyed from the rest of the Weyr, the blue riders assigned to Strategic because they’d failed to make the cut for the fighting Wings were even less well regarded.

Once C’rastro’s weyr was clean and neat, T’kamen started in on the really dirty work. Fetch, who was content to ride his shoulder unobtrusively most of the time, fled his perch in disgust as soon as T’kamen opened the door to the utility shed where the wheelbarrows were kept. For all his obliging nature, Fetch’s nose was easily offended. Even Epherineth didn’t complain as much as Fetch did when T’kamen was mucking out the weyrling middens.

Shovelling dragonet dung was a noxious necessity of early weyrlinghood that T’kamen hadn’t thought he’d ever have to endure again. Like all young animals, dragons didn’t develop control over their bodily functions straightaway. It was one of the reasons L’stev had never liked weyrlings sleeping with their dragonets: dragon crap was nearly impossible to wash out of bedfurs. Most weyrlings got their dragonets barracks-trained within the first couple of months, but it wasn’t unusual for juvenile dragons to leave night-time deposits long after the point at which they’d learned to go outside in the midden pits. Clearing out the night-soil bins, where sleepy weyrlings dumped their dragonets’ dung in the middle of the night, was an especially distasteful task that the weyrlings normally had to do themselves. Naturally, C’rastro had assigned it to T’kamen every day since he’d begun to work his sentence.

As he limped into the barracks, pushing a creaky wheelbarrow in front of him, the thin, hopeless wail of a dragonet in distress rose to greet him.

They’re still keeping her in? he asked Epherineth.

So it would seem.

T’kamen winced. He pushed his barrow as far as the first night-soil bin, and pulled up the sliding front panel. Dragon dung tumbled out in an unlovely heap, and he began pitching the mess into the barrow with quick, economic motions, trying to filter the smell out of his nostrils with the same concentration he applied to ignoring the crying of the lone hatchling green dragonet curled up in a coil of perfect misery on her couch nearby.

Both of the green-laid clutches on the Sands had Hatched a sevenday ago: Ceduth’s slightly late, and Ferrelth’s somewhat early. The synchronisation apparently wasn’t unusual in clutches laid around the same time. Ceduth’s eggs had yielded two blues and a green; Ferrelth’s, three greens and two unhatched duds. They, T’kamen gathered, had been considered an ominous portent for the vigour of the surviving hatchlings, even before it became clear that Sabbith, the smallest of Ferrelth’s already undersized brood, wasn’t right at all.

T’kamen hadn’t gone to the Hatching. Even if he’d been off-duty when Epherineth had mentioned that the green-laid eggs were cracking, which he wasn’t; even if he’d had the freedom of the Weyr, which he didn’t; he doubted he’d have been able to get across the Bowl in time. Green clutches, C’rastro had remarked, hatched with much less warning and much less ceremony than their queen-laid counterparts, and you had to act quickly just to get your candidates there on time. T’kamen could get around with just his cane now, but he wasn’t quick, and he likely never would be again.

The weyrlings had already started calling him names – mostly behind his back, though T’kamen thought that was more to avoid retribution from one of the Weyrlingmaster’s assistants than out of any fear for him. The age-old taunt of mocking an injured man’s impairment didn’t seem to have lost any of its appeal. Given that T’kamen had been walking with difficulty ever since he’d arrived in the Pass, he supposed he couldn’t complain of slander. Lame Kamen was as accurate a moniker as any. It even had a certain irresistibly alliterative ring.

He shovelled up the bulk of the dung, brushed the last few bits of reed and straw into a pile, and scooped that up too. He closed the sliding door of the bunker, laid brush and shovel over the top of his barrow, and wheeled it outside. Epherineth was waiting by the smelly tarpaulin that was used to transport the dragonets’ dung out of the Weyr. The rope threaded around the edges of the big piece of waxed canvas allowed a load to be carried in a dragon’s talons, although dumping out the resulting package wasn’t an easy or clean process. Epherineth had worked out a way to do it without making too much mess, but after several loads he invariably came back filthy and stinking. The bronze always swam immediately after finishing the job, and H’juke came every afternoon to help bathe him properly, but it still wasn’t satisfactory to T’kamen’s mind that he had to leave his dragon dirty all day.

He went back into the barracks to empty the next bunker. He was barely through the door when Sabbith’s wail started up again. It was a harrowing sound, cutting through him like a knife, and reminding him of nothing so much as the heartsick moan of a unmatched hatchling wandering the Hatching Sands. T’kamen had never known a dragonet to fail to find a rider, and Sabbith was no exception. She’d chosen a Weyrbred candidate, a boy called Glarnon, and all had seemed well at first. Then the newly-dubbed Gl’non had left Sabbith’s sight for the first time, at which point the dragonet had screamed bloody murder until he was restored to her.

The Dragon Healers had declared there was nothing materially wrong with the hatchling green. Prerth could find nothing lacking in her link with Gl’non. Still Sabbith cried and cried when separated from him. No young dragon ever liked being apart from its rider, but physical separation was something they quickly came to accept. Sabbith just seemed to lack any capacity to cope without line of sight to her rider.

“She’ll learn or she won’t,” C’rastro had said, with the lack of compassion T’kamen had come to expect from him. “Better to see which it’s to be now than six months down the line.” And that was the brusque basis on which Sabbith was being left in the barracks, deliberately isolated not just from Gl’non, but from the other dragonets of her group.

T’kamen looked at the wretched green for a long time. He wasn’t supposed to talk to any of C’rastro’s weyrlings, dragon or human, and given their mockery of him that suited him fine, but Sabbith’s pain was a tangible thing. Finally, he left his wheelbarrow and walked slowly and carefully across the barracks to the dragonet’s couch. “Hey,” he said aloud. “Sabbith. It’s all right. You don’t have to cry.”

The dragonet lifted her head off her forearms to look at him with yellow-flecked eyes. She didn’t seem afraid of him, but she didn’t stop whining, either. Her throat must have been raw with the effort. Epherineth, can you console her?

Sabbith twitched, as if startled, and blinked her mournful eyes at him, but kept on crying. Not easily, said Epherineth.

What’s wrong with her?

She misses her rider.

But surely she can sense him wherever he is?

That seems not to be enough. Epherineth paused. She has never spoken to a bronze.

She’s a sevenday old, from a green-laid clutch. She’s probably never seen a bronze. Can you stop her crying?

I could make her stop, said Epherineth. But she wouldn’t be any happier for it.

T’kamen looked down at Sabbith. You poor pitiful thing. He smoothed his hand over the dragonet’s tiny head.

“What are you doing?”

Audette stood at the entrance to the barracks. T’kamen resisted the urge to jump back from Sabbith, though the crisp authority in Audette’s voice certainly demanded obedience. Audette, one of the Assistant Weyrlingmasters, was a striking rider in her forties: dark-skinned, dark-haired, and slightly mannish of feature, although there was a calm wisdom in her eyes that softened the harder lines of her face. T’kamen let his hand drop from the dragonet’s headknob. “She’s alone and in distress,” he said. “I wouldn’t be much of a dragonrider if I didn’t try to comfort her.”

The sceptical look on Audette’s face said quite plainly that she didn’t think him much of a dragonrider regardless. Still, of all C’rastro’s assistants, she was the one who treated T’kamen with the most courtesy. “It’s for her own good,” she said. “She has to learn to be apart from her rider.”

“What if she doesn’t?”

Audette inhaled a breath through her nostrils, and then let it slowly out. She walked across the barracks to Sabbith’s couch. “You must think us very cruel.”

“My Weyrlingmaster would never have left a dragonet suffering alone,” said T’kamen. “At the least she should be out with her clutchmates.”

“She can reach out to them for companionship from here,” said Audette. “It’s the best way to teach a pining dragonet to rely on what she can sense, not just what she can see.”

“This has happened before,” said T’kamen, and when Audette’s gaze flickered, he knew he’d hit the mark. “How often?”

“Not often,” Audette said. Then she admitted, “But yes. Other dragonets have…struggled to find their place.”

“Always green-laid dragonets?”

She looked at him sharply. “You’ll add disparaging our dragons to your list of crimes, bronze rider?”

T’kamen smiled without a drop of mirth. “I might as well. You must be running out of ways to punish me by now.” He let the expression fade. “I don’t mean it as an insult, Weyrlingmaster. But if there is a link between a dragonet’s parentage and its inability to thrive…”

“Sukerath won’t be allowed to fly Ferrelth again.”

Sukerath was one of the fast fliers in G’bral’s Watch section. “Then you’re blaming the sire?”

“We can scarcely give up a fertile female,” Audette said. She sounded resigned. “However…flawed…her offspring.”

T’kamen wondered what word Audette would have used to describe Sabbith had she not been addressing a bronze rider. Imperfect? Damaged? Defective? He decided to see how far he could push her. “How long did you and your green fly in the Fighting Wings before you were appointed a Weyrlingmaster?”

Audette eyed him searchingly. “Fourteen Turns, eleven months.”

“That’s an impressive service record,” said T’kamen. He meant it. Given the average life expectancy of a fighting dragonpair, Audette and her dragon must have been both very competent and very lucky.

“What of it?” Audette asked, with a hint of impatience; perhaps assuming he sought to flatter her. “C’rastro flew nearly sixteen Turns, S’hayn and R’nie not far short of twelve each, and even K’lem had nearly reached his decade before Manskith’s injury.”

“Then all Weyrlingmasters are chosen from the most experienced riders?”

Audette’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a rather facile question from a man who led a Weyr, even in an Interval. Of course we have to be experienced. You wouldn’t put a novice in charge of training your weyrlings, and we were all Wingleaders or Wingseconds at least. Where are you going with this, bronze rider?”

It was a clumsy segue, T’kamen conceded, so he took a more direct line with his next question. “Who was your green’s dam?”

“Levierth.”

“And Prerth’s? Manskith’s?”

“Prerth, I haven’t the least idea,” she said. “He Hatched ten Turns before my time. Manskith I believe was out of Donauth. I don’t recall the sire, though she’s certainly not Geninth’s get; you only need glance at her to know that.”

“And what about S’hayn and R’nie’s blues?” T’kamen pressed.

“I see where you’re leading now, T’kamen,” said Audette. She shook her head. “Vendrelth is one of Donauth’s, too, but R’nie’s Gardoth is a son of Ceduth. A son of a green.”

“Ceduth,” said T’kamen, thoughtfully. “Trebruth’s mother.”

“Not everyone considers that an accomplishment.”

T’kamen looked at Audette carefully. “But you do.”

Audette sighed. “Much as some fighting riders would hate to admit it, we’d be lost without brown dragons. Blues have never met with a great deal of success as sires. Much has been said about young M’ric’s attitude to dragonriding, but no one can suggest that there’s anything lacking in that brown of his. You might keep that in mind when you insinuate a deficiency in the quality of green-laid dragonets.”

“But there is a deficiency,” T’kamen said. “Isn’t there?”

Audette pressed her lips disapprovingly together, but her frown lacked conviction. The almost fanatical colour prejudice common to most of Madellon’s fighting riders was muted in her. She was, T’kamen sensed, too fundamentally fair to obfuscate the truth, even when that truth might be considered heretical. “If the queens would only consent to care for the eggs!”

“Then you think the problem is on the Sands?” T’kamen asked.

Audette made a frustrated gesture. “We can only guess at how they should be turned. Have you ever watched a queen tending her eggs?”

“Yes,” T’kamen said, and found himself surprised by the amount of emotion his voice betrayed. “I have.”

She paused, her discerning gaze sweeping over him. “Of course you have.” There was almost sympathy in her tone. Then she continued, “So you know how unfathomable it is. Some eggs they move constantly, some they hardly touch at all, but it’s rare for a queen-laid clutch to turn up a dud or a…or a Sabbith. There’s no pattern or system we can detect from watching them to apply to green-laid eggs.”

“The queens can’t be persuaded at all?”

“Even if they could, we couldn’t trust them to hold to the promise,” said Audette. “A queen would sooner eat a rival’s eggs than brood over them.”

“If you had more queens…”

“If,” said Audette, stressing the one word. “Queens aren’t conjured from thin air. And even if they were…” She shook her head. “You’ll make no friends, scorning the contribution of our fertile greens.”

“I don’t have any friends now,” T’kamen said. “I didn’t know popularity was such a vital part of being a dragonrider in the Eighth Pass.”

“You were a Weyrleader,” said Audette. “You must have understood the importance of having your riders on your side. We’re proud of those seven fertile greens. If you were Weyrleader now, if such a position existed, you’d be mindful of that pride.”

“If I were Weyrleader now,” said T’kamen, “I’d expect my riders to be more interested in a breeding programme that produces consistently healthy dragonets than one that throws damaged and short-lived hatchlings in the name of green rider self-esteem.”

It came out harder than he’d intended, and Audette’s nostrils flared. “You are a relic, bronze rider.”

“Perhaps I am. But if so, then I’m a relic from a time when riders of all colours had reason to be proud of their place in the scheme of things. Green riders might not have been hailed as heroes then quite the way they are now, but at least they could hope for a life expectancy of more than five paltry Turns.”

Audette was more than capable of snapping back a retort. The fact that she didn’t spoke more to her honesty than to the brilliance of T’kamen’s argument. He knew that there were reasons for all the things that he hated about the Pass; some good, some not. But it gave him the faintest glimmer of hope that one green rider, at least, was fair-minded enough to see the merit in his position. Audette clearly wished she could dismiss him completely as an anachronism with nothing of any relevance to contribute to the modern Madellon, but she couldn’t. It was mildly gratifying to know that some of what he had to say still had resonance. He left Audette with Sabbith and resumed his slow and unpleasant work.

It was late afternoon, and T’kamen was halfway through Epherineth’s bath, when the weyrlings returned. Every dragonpair looked pale and spent from the day’s exertions – the unfortunate Tetketh most off-colour of all, glumly grey and downcast – but even the smallest greens looked as tired as if they’d flown a full Fall. T’kamen paused in soaping down Epherineth’s near-side hind leg, watching the weary young dragons alight on the other side of the lake. “Do they always push them to exhaustion on an assessment day?” he asked H’juke.

Ch’fil’s tailman was up on Epherineth’s back, scrubbing dutifully along the shortened ridges between his wings. He looked over at the line of weyrlings, rubbing a stray streak of soapsand lather from his face. “Not to exhaustion,” he said. “Those dragons look much more tired that they usually do.”

T’kamen wondered if something had happened during the assessment flights. “So what happens now?”

H’juke hesitated before replying in the way that T’kamen had discovered was his habit. He was about the same age as M’ric, but there the similarities ended. H’juke was shorter and slighter, with fair curly hair and an earnest manner. He answered every question as if being asked to report to a superior, carefully relaying the facts and omitting any personal speculation of his own. “The Commander decides which dragonpairs will be posted to Tactical and which to Strategic,” he said. “Then he and his Wingleaders will decide on the placement of the new fighting pairs. It’s announced at dinner – tonight, if all the assignments have been finalised.”

“And the weyrlings who don’t make the fighting Wings?”

“Anyone who’s left over once the Wingleaders have finished tapping fighting riders joins the Seventh’s table.”

T’kamen frowned. “That’s all? They just join the Seventh? R’lony doesn’t go and tap them?”

“No,” said H’juke. “But most of the weyrlings who join the Seventh know that’s where they’re going. Like Bularth and me will be in about six months’ time.”

T’kamen supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that a Seventh Flight assignment should merit so little fanfare. H’juke was certainly phlegmatic enough about his prospects, though as the rider of a bronze dragon, and not a particularly small one by Pass standards, he would have known from the moment of Impression that his future lay in Strategic. M’ric’s determination to be recognised as a prospect for Tactical was, after all, his own personal crusade, unshared by his fellow brown weyrlings. It just seemed unnecessarily crass to treat any weyrling who didn’t get a fighting assignment as an afterthought.

While the terms of T’kamen’s sentence didn’t ban him from the dining hall during mealtimes, he’d nonetheless taken to avoiding the place during its busiest hours. He found the ever-present stares and muttered insults of the fighting riders more tiresome than distressing, but the negative attention made him an undesirable tablemate for his Seventh Flight colleagues, too. He usually went down at the beginning of first watch, when the caverns staff were clearing up, and made himself a plate from whatever was available. Given the size of the Weyr, and the abundance of supplies it enjoyed, he never went hungry. The kitchen staff let him help himself from what was left on the big serving platters, although occasionally one of the cooks would offer him an untouched loaf, or a fresh slice off a joint that hadn’t made it out to the hall, and once even a whole stickleberry pie that had been left in the oven only slightly too long. Fetch, curiously, had gone mad for that.

But in the light of H’juke’s remarks, T’kamen decided to make an exception. M’ric might not be his tailman any longer, but he owed it to him to be there, if only to commiserate his assignment to the Seventh. He was unlikely to get much of a welcome otherwise. R’lony had never made a secret of the fact that he didn’t care for M’ric or his dragon, and T’kamen suspected that many of the other Seventh riders would take issue with a weyrling who’d tried so hard to avoid being posted with them.

There was already enough of an anticipatory buzz in the dining hall when he made his way there at first evening watch that his presence didn’t make much of a ripple. T’kamen took a seat at the end of a bench on one of the Seventh Flight’s tables, far back in a corner, as much to give himself the space to stretch out his leg as to spare his wingmates his company, but as the tables filled up the spaces around him were soon taken. A brown rider he knew only vaguely, one of G’bral’s reports, sat next to him, and immediately turned his back on T’kamen in favour of talking loudly to the rider on his right, but the two riders who sat down opposite made his heart sink just a fraction.

“Well look who’s showing his face,” R’ganff said, staring across the table at T’kamen. “It’s the Weyrleader, come down from on high to shower us in his reflected shaffing glory.”

“Where’s your shoulder-snake, T’kamen?” asked Br’lom. “Or is the carrion stink too much even for your esteemed nostrils?”

“Someone ought to wring the verminous little bastard’s neck before it gets a taste for living flesh as well as dead and starts chewing on our bloody dragons,” said R’ganff.

“Someone should have wiped them out Turns ago,” Br’lom added.

“Nothing that Haggerth and a belly full of firestone couldn’t solve,” said R’ganff. “It’d be a service to Pern.”

“Proper service,” added Br’lom.

T’kamen didn’t react to the barbs, though he was tempted. Fetch attracted a lot of negative attention around the Weyr – almost more than T’kamen did himself – and bringing him into the dining hall would have been pointlessly inflammatory. Seeing what he’d seen, T’kamen understood the visceral objection that most dragonriders had to fire-lizards, but Fetch had never touched a dead dragon and – Faranth willing – never would.

So he just ignored the two old bronze riders, denying them the satisfaction of getting a rise out of him, though he couldn’t entirely tune out their conversation. When the nineteen riders of M’ric’s class filtered into the dining hall to assigned places near the front, clad in full dress blacks to distinguish them from the more junior weyrlings, Br’lom craned his neck to look, and R’ganff leaned back on his bench, remarking, “Here comes the Thread-bait.”

T’kamen recalled his own acceptance into the Wings vividly, though much of the evening that followed was lost in an alcoholic haze. There hadn’t been final tests or a single day of graduation when he’d been a weyrling; just a period of a sevenday or so during which the senior weyrlings lived in tortured suspense at every dinnertime, waiting for one Wingleader or other to approach with the stripes and knots of a full wingrider in his hand. T’kamen had been lucky to be among the first of his class to be tapped, and by the Weyrleader of the time. R’hren had not, perhaps, been the most competent bronze rider ever to govern Madellon, but he’d always been highly respected as a Wingleader, and T’kamen had learned much about leadership while under his command. By contrast, he remembered how C’los had agonised over being left unchosen almost till last before he’d been claimed by F’yan’s Wing – a respectable posting, if not exactly one that a weyrling would dream of. Turns later, when T’kamen had found himself on the other side of the assignment process, he’d realised that being tapped early was no particular mark of esteem, and being left hanging until late was sometimes just a consequence of Wingleaders being unable to come to an agreement on a particularly sought-after weyrling.

Dinner had been served before anything noteworthy happened, although the meal itself – roasted fowl, a delicacy T’kamen hadn’t had in decades – was lavish enough to mark the occasion. The first Wingleader to rise from the Commander’s table almost went unseen amidst the enthusiastic gnawing of drumsticks and licking of greasy fingers, but then an expectant silence rippled outwards from where nineteen weyrlings sat in tormented anticipation of their fates.

The Wingleader – a green rider T’kamen didn’t know on sight – walked at a leisurely pace down one side of the weyrling table, slapping a rank braid casually against the palm of her hand as she went. T’kamen was too far away to see the colour of the secondary cord, but all the blue weyrlings suddenly looked more desperate than their green and brown classmates. The Wingleader stopped between two lads, both of whom were almost hovering above their seats with barely-contained expectation. Then she put her hand down firmly on the shoulder of the younger weyrling. “D’roven, the Commander has allowed you and Boskoth to fly with me. Come and join your Wing.”

As D’roven sprang delightedly from his place, and the hall erupted into applause and cheers for the newly-dubbed wingrider, T’kamen mused that the ritual hadn’t changed so much from his day. The wording was different – the emphasis went on how the new wingman would be serving at S’leondes’ pleasure, rather than on the connection between rider and Wingleader – but the theatrical build-up, the suspense, and the relief and release of the announcement, were much the same. D’roven left his classmates to sit with his new Wing, and from the round of toasts that rang out shortly after he’d taken his seat, T’kamen suspected that the excessive drinking that traditionally accompanied graduation was still a fixture, too.

After that, a new wingrider was made every few minutes. Some Wingleaders were crueller than others, keeping the weyrlings guessing as to who would be called next; one especially unkind blue rider even passed by one drooping weyrling only to backtrack moments later. As the group of weyrlings dwindled, T’kamen got his first clear look at M’ric. He was sitting alone, the spaces either side of him widening as more and more of his classmates left the bench. He looked perfectly miserable. The three other brown riders – B’nam, P’levan, and N’krie – were sitting together at one end of the table, laughing and joking, obviously unperturbed by their lot. Even F’sta, Tetketh’s rider, looked more resigned to his situation than distressed by it.

T’kamen felt his shoulders start to ache with indignant tension. This process of honouring the riders who made it to the fighting Wings and leaving the rejects to slink away uncelebrated to the Seventh was nothing more than a ritual humiliation. From every report Epherineth had received from Stratomath, M’ric and Trebruth had performed at least as well as most of their fellows in his assessments today, and better than many. T’kamen knew how hard M’ric had worked to match and surpass his classmates; he’d seen him practising manoeuvres over and over again, in his free time, of his own volition. The sheer prejudice of S’leondes, and of every other fighting officer in the Weyr, in discriminating against a passionate and talented young rider whose only fault was the colour of his dragon’s hide, made T’kamen seethe.

Epherineth, he said, abandoning caution, tell Trebruth to tell M’ric to straighten his shoulders. This isn’t his fault.

As Epherineth relayed the message, T’kamen saw M’ric lift his head and scan the Seventh’s tables, the wan hint of a smile touching his mouth. T’kamen realised that the boy hadn’t even realised he was there, in his distant corner of the hall. Trebruth said they tried very hard, Epherineth reported back.

Tell him we know they did, and we’re sharding proud of them both, and when this harper’s farce is done I’m going to get him so puking drunk he won’t even remember this whershit graduation.

“Here, T’kamen,” said R’ganff suddenly, from across the table, “Haggerth says you’re talking to that tail of yours. You’ll stop that right now or he’ll make that runt of a brown cower for a sevenday.”

T’kamen had forgotten that R’ganff’s bronze was still listening in on M’ric’s brown. “Take your dragon off Trebruth.”

“I’ll do no such blighted thing!”

T’kamen slid his eyes unblinkingly from weyrling to bronze rider, and had the satisfaction of seeing R’ganff recoil slightly. “Take him off,” he repeated. “He’s not a weyrling any more.”

R’ganff composed himself quickly, probably remembering that T’kamen was too slow and crippled to do him any harm. “He is till he’s sat his arse down at this table. Though that one probably thinks his precious buttocks are too good for a Seventh Flight berth, the arrogant little spawn.”

“Speaking of precious buttocks,” Br’lom chipped in, staring across the hall at the latest girl to make wingrider. “I’d tap that, by the Egg, see if I wouldn’t!”

“Best get to it fast,” said R’ganff. “They’ve been dying like flies in the Third all winter. What’s his name, G’sol, is a total incompetent, and the other two aren’t much better. Two marks says that piece of tail will be cold between before you ever get a turn at it.”

They continued in that vein, ignoring T’kamen, for the next couple of minutes. He distracted himself by hacking with more than necessary force at the remnants of the fowl carcass on his plate. Aggravation didn’t make for the best accompaniment to such a rare treat, but he found he’d lost his appetite anyway.

There were only a few weyrlings left when S’leondes rose from his place at the head table. T’kamen wondered if the Commander would announce that the remaining riders had failed to make the fighting Wings – it seemed just the vindictive sort of thing he would do – but instead he walked over to the weyrling table, pulling a shoulder-knot from his pocket. “Oh, here we go,” R’ganff said, over the expectant hush. “Which favoured little turd gets to fly with his nose shoved up Karzith’s tail-fork?”

Surveying the depleted weyrling table, T’kamen guessed that the turd in question would be Fraza, S’leondes’ tail. M’ric spoke – grudgingly – of her Spalinoth as the nimblest dragon in the class, and for all his complaining, T’kamen suspected that he nurtured a fearsome crush on Fraza. She’d been starting to look rather fraught, as any weyrling might when left in the company of one hopeless classmate and a clutch of brown riders bound for the Seventh. S’leondes, at least, didn’t prolong her agony. His massive hand dropped onto the girl’s shoulder. “Fraza, come and join my Wing.”

Fraza’s squeal of delight broke the tension in the room, and whatever response she made to the Commander was drowned out by laughter. She put her hands to her cheeks in blushing embarrassment, and when S’leondes gave her a gentle push towards his Wing’s table she almost ran to the cover of her new wingmates.

But the Commander didn’t follow her there. He paused, looming tall above the seated riders all around him, and put his hand in his other pocket. As he withdrew a second shoulder-knot, T’kamen saw F’sta sit bolt upright, his eyes so wide with hope that the whites showed all the way across the dining hall.

“The greedy bastard’s double-dipping,” Br’lom said to R’ganff. “Querenne hasn’t had one weyrling, nor K’bell, and the Commander’s taking two?”

“I can’t believe he’s tapping that blue rider,” T’kamen said aloud, too incensed to be circumspect. I thought you said Tetketh washed out, Epherineth!

He did.

“Oh, is that the blue that G’bral said he’d be getting?” asked Br’lom, at the same moment. “The one who couldn’t turn without needing half a Bowl’s width to do it? Because I heard…”

And then Br’lom, along with everyone else in the dining hall, fell silent, as S’leondes walked past F’sta to stand beside M’ric.

M’ric stared down at the wingrider’s knot that the Commander flipped onto the table in front of him.

“You, too, M’ric,” said S’leondes, into the stunned silence. “Welcome to the fighting Wings.”

Chapter forty-three: Carleah

In retrospect, it’s hard to say what could have been done differently. Long Bay was amply stewarded. Perhaps too amply. There were so many extra men brought up from lesser Holds of the territory to keep order that it would have been impossible for every man to know every one of his fellows. Nobody would have questioned the right of any individual wearing a blue-and-brown armband to be there – or his authority to deal swiftly with apparent troublemakers.

– Excerpt from an incident report on the Long Bay Gather of I7/100

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

LONG BAY HOLD

This feels wrong, Carleah thought, and then wished she could take back the traitorous notion that had leapt uninvited into her mind.

But Darshanth didn’t react – didn’t flinch, didn’t reply – and neither did C’mine, on the blue’s neck behind her, as they spiralled up on the Bowl’s thermals towards between altitude. And Jagunth had already succumbed to the soporific influence of warm sunshine and a full belly, and didn’t rouse in response to Carleah’s unease either.

Carleah craned her neck as Darshanth banked, seeking the familiar pale green shape of her own dragon amongst the dozing forms of the dragonets on the training grounds, and –

Between swallowed them like dark water.

Frozen moments later, it spat them out again. Carleah found she’d clutched C’mine’s arm around her waist, unfelt in the absence of sensation, and quickly released it, ashamed of herself. She’d been going between all her life, on Darshanth and on her da’s Indioth. But they had always forewarned her, always spoken to reassure her the instant before jumping between. Darshanth’s unresponsive silence made riding a dragon who, however familiar, was not Carleah’s own, even more unsettling.

“Are you all right?” C’mine asked, once Darshanth had landed and they’d both slipped down from his neck-ridges. Carleah found that weird, too. Darshanth was quite a bit taller than Jagunth. “I’ve never felt you cling on like that before.”

“I’m fine,” Carleah said quickly. “Only…is Darshanth upset with me?”

“Of course he’s not. Why would he be upset with you?”

“He didn’t say when we were about to go between. He always used to. It just took me by surprise.” The nasty instant of shock was fading, replaced instead by a sense of injury. “He never speaks to me anymore,” Carleah finished, feeling offended.

“Well, no,” said C’mine. He clapped his blue on the shoulder, and Darshanth sprang aloft. “You have Jagunth now.”

“So he just ignores me?”

“He’s not ignoring you,” said C’mine. “But he doesn’t hear you as well now that you’re a rider.”

“But he’s a Search dragon. They’re supposed to be good at hearing other people.”

“Only before they have dragons of their own,” said C’mine. “Your thoughts channel privately to Jagunth now. Darshanth would have to concentrate to listen in, and that would be rude of him. Like eavesdropping.”

“Oh,” said Carleah. She wasn’t completely satisfied by the explanation. “He still could have warned me, though.”

“You probably wouldn’t have liked it if he had,” said C’mine. “It’s an uncomfortable feeling, having someone else’s dragon talk to you.”

Like this.

Carleah nearly yelped at the alien voice that spoke in her mind. “Was that him?”

C’mine gave her a sympathetic look. “I did warn you.”

The other Wildfires were congregating as they dismounted from the dragons who had conveyed them to Long Bay. M’touf still looked disgruntled. He’d been insisting all morning that Atath was more than capable of transporting him between. It hadn’t made him popular with any of the rest of the class. L’stev had finally told him to either wind his neck in or stay behind with Karika and T’gala and, sullenly, he’d quit complaining. Still, he didn’t seem any closer to making up with K’dam and K’ralthe, who’d taken it personally that M’touf’s dragon could go between when theirs couldn’t. Carleah almost felt sorry for him..

L’stev was taking a headcount of weyrlings. “Eighteen, nineteen…who’s still missing?”

“Derthauth’s just landing now,” said C’mine. “He’s the last one.”

The blue in question was backwinging towards the landing zone; a moment later J’kovu and P’lian jogged over to join the group. “All right,” said L’stev. “You kids have the liberty of the Gather for the afternoon.” He raised his voice over the chorus of whoops. “But only for as long as you sharding well behave yourselves. If even one of you gets in trouble, I’ll recall the whole class, so you’d better make sure you’re all minding your manners and keeping your noses spotlessly clean. This Gather is crawling with Madellon Wingseconds, and if any of them reports that there’s been the slightest infraction I’ll pull you out of here so fast your heads will spin.” He glared at them all. Carleah wondered if he had any idea how little attention most of the others were paying, with the sights and sounds and smells of the Gather so tantalisingly close. “No going off by yourselves. I want you in pairs at least at all times, or with an adult rider escorting you. No fighting. No gambling. No drinking. No stealing. No spitting. No swearing.”

“No shaffing chance of that,” someone said – Carleah thought it was R’von trying to sound like K’ralthe – and everyone else snickered.

“Don’t try me,” L’stev said, with infinite disgust. “Now get lost.”

Most of the Wildfires needed no further bidding. B’joro, W’lenze, and C’seon sprinted off, yelling; K’ralthe and K’dam headed away at a purposeful jog that suggested they had a destination in mind. Chenda and Adzai, having been fussing over each other’s hair to repair the effects of flight and helmets, linked arms, hitched up their overlong skirts, and made for the main square with all possible haste.

L’stev walked over to C’mine, looking weary already. “I swear it ages me a decade whenever I let them out of my sight.”

“They’ll be fine, L’stev,” C’mine replied.

“You say that. I remember letting your lot loose for the first time at a Blue Shale Gather not half the size of this one, and I was dragging stragglers out of the beer tents until the early hours.” L’stev gave Carleah a hard look. “Not going with your pals?”

“We’re meeting my mama in the main square,” she said. “She’s singing with one of the Harper ensembles today.”

“Well, give her my best,” L’stev said. “And make sure this one behaves.” He gave C’mine a withering look. “I won’t be happy if it’s you I’m having to drag out of the beer tents.”

“Of course not, L’stev,” said C’mine, rather less good-humouredly than Carleah would have expected. “Come on, Leah.”

“Carleah.”

Some of the other weyrlings had been looking forward to Long Bay as if they’d never been to a Gather in their lives. Some of them probably hadn’t. But Carleah had been raised at the Kellad Harperhall, and Kellad held Gathers every other restday in the summertime. There were only so many ways you could make a quarter of a mark stretch to cover an afternoon’s entertainment, and the coins rattling in Carleah’s belt pouch, handed stingily out by L’stev before they’d left Madellon, hardly added up to more than that. Given how she knew vendors inflated their prices in direct proportion to the size of the Gather – and the warmth of the weather – her four thirty-seconds, two sixteenths, and solitary miserable eighth weren’t like to go far here. There was only one good way to do a Gather like Long Bay, and that was in the company of someone with proper money.

C’los hadn’t always been reliably cajoled into parting with his marks. He’d usually been good for any Gather sweetmeat that he liked, unless he’d been having one of his periodic mopes about his waistline, but the chances of him springing for anything costing more than a mark had never been better than evens, and he’d never given Carleah so much as a sliver for any sort of sideshow game. “They’re all scams, girl,” he’d told her every single time she’d implored him for a thirty-second to try her luck at the ring-toss or the whack-a-snake or the find-the-Weyrleader. “No daughter of mine is ever going to be outwitted by some half-literate holder. You’re smarter than that.”

She had always sighed, and agreed, and accepted, squirming, the big ostentatious kiss that C’los had planted on the top of her head. And then she’d waited until her father was distracted, and gone wheedling to C’mine, whose ability to say no to Carleah’s pleading entreaties had always been unfailingly non-existent. “Don’t tell your da,” he’d always warned her, as he slipped the marker surreptitiously into her hand, and Carleah had always asked, “But what if I win the fire-lizard?” and C’mine had looked at her seriously and told her that they’d flame that Thread when it fell on them.

Carleah never had won the fire-lizard, but it wasn’t winning the fire-lizard that counted, she’d always told herself, to counteract the vague feeling of foolishness that had always come over her when she hadn’t landed the ring or whacked the right snake or found the Weyrleader; it was the idea of winning the fire-lizard that counted. And more than that, it was the thrill of colluding with C’mine behind her da’s back, and the secret wink that they’d share, with C’los oblivious to the whole business, that made it fun and exciting and conspiratorial, even though she never won anything.

Perhaps it was her age, or perhaps it was the glaring, painful absence of C’los in his role as their unwitting mark, but somehow Carleah found she wasn’t nearly as eager to hand C’mine’s money to any of the many Long Bay hustlers who begged their patronage as she once would have been.

Resisting the sweet sellers was still beyond her, though. “I got your peppermints,” she told C’mine, passing him one of the little cheesecloth bags into which the fat man behind the sweetmeat stall scooped his wares.

C’mine took one of the candies out of the bag and popped it in his mouth. “Mm,” he said, sucking appreciatively. “What have you got?”

“Pecan brittle,” Carleah said, showing him. “Do you want some?”

He shook his head. “But don’t forget to save the last piece for Darshanth.”

That was another of their Gather traditions. Carleah wasn’t sure if dragons normally liked sweets, but Darshanth seemed to. “I’ll save two,” Carleah said. “One for him and one for Jagunth. She’s never had sweets before.”

“Is she all right?” C’mine asked. “Not worrying that you’re out of her sight?”

Carleah brushed gently against her green’s drowsing mind, sensing Jagunth’s satiated contentment. “She’s still asleep,” she said. “I don’t think she even knows I’m not there.” She looked anxiously at C’mine. “What if she panics when she wakes up?”

“Vanzanth’s back by now,” C’mine assured her. “He’ll be keeping an eye on them. And when she does wake up, you just tell her that you’ll be home soon.”

Carleah nodded. “Phew,” she said, “it’s boiling here.”

As she began to shrug off her jacket, C’mine frowned. “You’re meant to be showing your insignia at all times, Leah,” he reminded her. “Is the knot on your jacket transferable?”

“Nope,” she said. “L’stev makes us sew them on so we don’t lose them.”

C’mine sighed. “Of course he does.”

“It’s all right,” she insisted. “Look, I’ll just carry my jacket so it’s showing. My badge, too.” She folded the garment so that Madellon’s emblem, and the green bar embroidered with the legend WEYRLING, were both clearly displayed.

“Make sure you keep it visible,” he said. “It’s important that everyone can see where you’re from.”

“Do you think the Southerners will be here?” she asked. “The weyrlings who went home, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” C’mine said. “Why, are you missing them?”

“Missing them?” Carleah demanded, outraged that he could suggest such a thing, even as a joke. “Faranth, no!”

“Language, Leah.”

“Carleah,” she told him, “and since when was saying ‘Faranth’ bad language?”

“Since you said it in that tone of voice,” said C’mine. “It’s not polite to swear.”

“L’stev swears all the time.”

“You’re better brought up than he was.”

Mutinously, Carleah muttered, “Da swore all the time, too. You never told him off for it.”

She regretted saying it even before the anguished expression crossed C’mine’s face. “Maybe I should have,” he said, softly.

Carleah wished she knew a way to take words back. Occasionally – just occasionally – she found herself saying things before she’d completely thought them through. In the month or so since C’mine had become L’stev’s assistant, she’d realised that talking about C’los to him was a really bad idea. It was wretched. And annoying. Carleah liked talking about her father. It made her feel closer to him when she passed on any of the million clever bits of information he’d imparted to her over fourteen Turns. K’dam had once made a spiteful remark about Carleah’s habit of starting sentences with My da says, but Carleah didn’t give a wherry’s tail for what K’dam thought. C’los had been the funniest, smartest, best dragonrider on Pern, and Carleah didn’t want anyone to ever forget that she was his daughter.

It still baffled her that C’mine got so upset when anyone mentioned C’los’ name, as if he didn’t want to think about him. It made no sense. Carleah got sad, too, when she thought about what had happened; sad, and angry – but she couldn’t imagine not thinking about her da every day. It was almost like C’mine was trying to forget him. Da would have hated that. The fact that she’d hardly seen C’mine for the first ten months of Jagunth’s life only reinforced the notion that C’mine had been avoiding her to avoid being reminded of C’los. Even now, she sometimes caught him gazing at her with his sad brown eyes, as if he could hardly stand to look at her. She’d tried talking to him about Da and Indioth at first, but the grief-stricken expression that always came over him – the expression he wore now – was too heart-breaking to bear, so she’d stopped trying. It was easier that way.

So she was glad when they reached the large, busy main square – bigger, Carleah admittedly privately, than Kellad’s had ever been – and the familiar sound of trained singers trading off the vocal parts of one of the long ballads. It was The Peninsula Song, Carleah thought, recognising one of the endless litanies of names that made up the middle section. When she and the other Craftbred kids had had to sing it in class back  at the Harperhall, they’d always made fun of the boring roll call of Peninsula Weyr’s founding dragonpairs, putting on silly deep voices for the bronze riders and squeaky high ones for the greens. She supposed the Harpers couldn’t exactly do the funny version in public, though.

Carleah’s mother was only second from the centre of the half-circle of singers, elegant as always in a flowingly draped robe of Craft blue. She was singing with the sopranos in the ensemble sections, but using her natural warm mezzo voice for her role as weyrwoman Sofinda. As she traded off lines with the lyric tenor who was singing D’worne’s part – adequately enough, though he seemed about five Turns too old to be playing the young bronze rider who’d become the first Weyrleader of the Peninsula – Carleah thought she’d never heard her mother’s voice sounding so rich and fine.

She knew better than to try to catch any performer’s eye during a show, so she contained herself through the latter part of the ballad, with its extended duet between the Peninsula Weyrleaders. But as soon as the final notes rang triumphantly out, and the fifteen-strong ensemble took their bows, Carleah applauded loudly along with the rest of the crowd in the square.

She was still clapping her hands together enthusiastically when the other applause died politely away. She broke off. “Well, clearly there aren’t any real music lovers here,” she said to C’mine. “I’ve heard D’worne sung better, but Mama’s Sofinda was brilliant!”

“Founding ballads aren’t everybody’s cup of klah,” he told her, with typical neutrality. “Let’s go and catch Robyn before her next set.”

Carleah went ahead of him, weaving nimbly through the crowds that were thinning out now that the ballad had ended. Mama was standing with the too-old tenor who’d sung D’worne, talking to a Peninsula rider, but she must have seen her coming because she made her excuses rather more quickly than was polite to turn in Carleah’s direction. “Oh, Leah,” she cried, holding out her arms, “you’ve grown so!”

She flung herself into the familiar embrace, smelling the familiar perfume, hearing her mother’s familiar soothing hum of pleasure; unaccountably emotional. “I’ve missed you so much, Mama!”

Robyn clasped her tight, and then released her, holding her at arm’s length to look her over. “You must have put on half a hand,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “And your hair’s nearly all grown back!”

Carleah put a self-conscious hand to her head. “Will you braid it for me?” she asked. “It won’t all fit under a flying helmet. L’stev will threaten me with his shears again!”

“You just send him to me if he tries,” Mama said. “Of course I’ll braid it, Leah darling.”

“It’s Carleah,” said C’mine, with the ghost of a smile.

Mama was the one person in the world whom Carleah didn’t dare correct, but when she turned to greet C’mine, the expression on her beautiful, animated face stilled dramatically. “Oh, Mine,” she murmured. Her eyes roved over his features, and then she caught his hands and lifted them to her lips. “Mine, Mine. What have you been doing to yourself, my sweet sad boy?”

C’mine smiled, but it was a tenuous thing. “Looking after weyrlings,” he said, tapping the chevron on his left-hand epaulette with two fingers.

Mama clearly wasn’t satisfied with the answer. “You never could sell me a story to save your life,” she said, studying him worriedly. Then she put one arm around Carleah’s shoulders, and linked the other firmly with C’mine’s. “Come. I have a little time before I’m needed again. Let’s have something to eat, and you’ll both tell me how you and Jagunth and Darshanth are.”

There was a cookstall serving a spicy river grain dish that had always been one of Carleah’s favourites, not far from the Harper platform. It was doing a brisk trade, but Carleah spied three people getting up from their seats outside, and hurried over to claim the table.

“So, my darling,” Mama said, when she and C’mine had brought over the food and three tall glasses of juice, “tell me all about your Jagunth. How big is she now? Is she still the prettiest green in the class?”

So much had happened since Mama had last seen Jagunth that Carleah hardly knew where to start. She resisted the urge to plunge directly into an account of the Wildfires who’d died trying to go between, or the dramatic arrival of the Southern weyrlings, or the upheaval they’d caused during their brief stay, and began instead with a measured report of her and Jagunth’s progress in training.

But her mother interrupted partway through Carleah’s account of the endurance flying that had made up much of the last several months. “Leah, darling, why don’t you tell me what’s happened with between?” She glanced at C’mine. “We’ve heard all kinds of reports, and even the Hall doesn’t seem to have a clear line on the truth.”

“Nobody does,” Carleah said. She felt faintly aggrieved at being cut off mid-stream. “It’s just not working for any of us.”

“Any of you?” Mama echoed.

“Any of the weyrlings,” said C’mine. “Ours and Southern’s, anyway.”

“Except Atath,” Carleah said quickly.

Mama looked questioningly at C’mine, and he shook his head. “Atath’s one of Jagunth’s clutchmates,” he said. “She took a premature trip between about two sevendays before the others were due to start their first jumps. L’stev thinks there’s something preventing dragons who haven’t gone between before from navigating properly.”

Carleah’s mother looked troubled. “Can’t they be taken between by adult dragons to show them the way?”

“We’ve tried that,” said C’mine. “It didn’t change anything. They still wouldn’t jump by themselves.”

“Wouldn’t? Not couldn’t?”

C’mine hesitated. “About half of our dragonets were willing to try, although they were nervous about it. But the other half – and all the Southerners – refused outright.”

“Jagunth said she would have tried,” said Carleah. “Vanzanth asked her if she would like to, and she said she would. She’s not a coward.”

A look passed between Robyn and C’mine, and then Mama reached across the table to grip Carleah’s hand tightly. “Of course she isn’t.”

The overt show of concern made Carleah squirm. Not because she was embarrassed by it, but because, obviously, it was as clear to her mother as it had been to everyone else what would have happened if she and Jagunth had been among the Wildfires to try going between on that awful morning. She pulled her hand back. “And I’m not stupid,” she said, in a low voice. “I won’t let her try.”

“Vanzanth has them locked down tight,” said C’mine, when Robyn’s stricken expression didn’t relax.

Mama still didn’t look any happier. With a visible effort, she tore her eyes away from Carleah’s face. “What’s happened to Kamen?”

C’mine’s expression, not cheerful to start with, turned even more doleful. “We don’t know.”

“How can you not know?”

He lifted his hands. “He just went missing.”

“Epherineth’s not…”

“No,” C’mine answered quickly. “No. The dragons would know. But…” He shrugged.

“We think we know,” said Carleah.

“Who’s ‘we’?” asked Mama.

“Oh, me and…” Carleah paused. She’d told Kessirke and Jardesse, but it wasn’t as if either of them had contributed to the theory. “Well, just me, actually.” She paused again, to build their suspense. She had grown up at the Harperhall. “I think he’s timed it to find an answer to the problem with between.”

She’d barely finished the sentence before C’mine hissed, “Leah!” in an uncharacteristically hard tone, and then, “keep your voice down!”

“But Mama knows –” she protested.

“Your mother isn’t the only non-rider at this Gather,” C’mine told her. He looked genuinely angry. “You know better than to talk about Weyr secrets in public!”

“He’s right,” Mama said sternly, when Carleah turned to her in supplication.

“But everyone knows about ti– about it,” Carleah said defensively.

“As a myth,” said C’mine. “As a legend for Harper songs. Not as something dragons can actually do. Shells, Leah! L’stev’s warned you about loose talk when you’re out of Madellon!”

Carleah found she couldn’t meet either C’mine’s accusing gaze, or her mother’s look of disappointment. She stared at her hands instead. “Am I right, though?” she asked hopefully, without looking up.

“We’re not talking about this,” said C’mine. “And T’kamen is your Weyrleader. You shouldn’t even be speculating. It’s disrespectful.”

Carleah nearly scoffed at that. She’d known T’kamen all her life; didn’t that give her the right to speculate? But in the face of censure from Mama and C’mine, she decided that discretion was the better part of valour. “I’m sorry.”

Her mother moved the conversation tactfully on to more neutral subjects – the weather, the Gather, the latest news from Kellad – until C’mine raised his hand suddenly to stop her. “Just a moment, Robyn,” he said, with the slight distance that meant he was talking to Darshanth. Then he sighed. “I’m really sorry. A’len says there’s a problem with one of the other weyrlings. I need to go and sort this out.”

“Who is it?” Carleah asked, half interested, half anxious. “Are we all going to have to go home?”

“A’len’s called me and not L’stev, so let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” said C’mine. “Robyn…?”

“I have another song to prepare for,” Mama said, rising from her place. “I’ll be free after that to take you shopping, though, Leah.”

That was more like it. Carleah brightened. “Can we look at the instruments?” she begged. “I haven’t played so much as a pipe for ages!”

“Of course we can,” Mama said. “Have you been writing?”

“I’ve been trying, but it’s hard without an instrument. Do you think…maybe there might be a second-hand gitar…?”

“We’ll see what we can find,” Mama promised.

“I can go and have a look now,” Carleah offered, “and see if there’s anything I like…”

“I can’t let you loose on your own,” said C’mine. “L’stev would have my neck. You’d better stay with me for now.”

“Then let’s meet back here later,” said Robyn. “I won’t be far from the Harper platform for most of the day.” She embraced Carleah, and said quietly, “And don’t give C’mine cause to worry about you any more than he already does. You’re a big girl now, a grown-up dragonrider, and he’s looking ragged around the edges. You need to look after him the same as he’s always looked after you.”

“I will,” Carleah promised.

“I’m not sure how long this is going to take.” said C’mine, as they left the food stall to find the Wingsecond who’d summoned him.

Carleah asked, innocently, “Who’s in trouble?”

“Don’t be nosey,” said C’mine. Then he relented. “K’dam and K’ralthe,” he said, with a sigh.

“I could have told you it would be them,” Carleah said. “What have they done?”

“I don’t know. Chyilth wasn’t specific.” C’mine’s stride hesitated for a moment as he peered through the Gather crowds. “Is that Maris over there by that Tanner stall?”

Carleah’s eyes were much sharper than C’mine’s. “Yes,” she said, “so Soleigh can’t be far away.”

“Come on,” said C’mine, changing direction to cut across towards the other weyrlings. “I’ll leave you with them.”

“But C’mine!”

“You’ll hear about whatever disgrace K’ralthe and K’dam have got themselves into soon enough. You don’t have to make it worse by being a witness to it.”

Soleigh was with Maris at the Tannercraft stall, and so was Tarshe. The three of them were poring over a range of leather dyes and spools of coloured gut. When C’mine asked if they minded Carleah joining them, Soleigh shook her head. “Of course not, Weyrlingmaster,” she said, with a dimpled grin. “It’s our pleasure.”

“Thank you,” said C’mine, rummaging in his belt pouch. “Here, Leah. This should keep you going for a bit.”

The treemarks he handed over – two eighths and three sixteenths – didn’t exactly make her wealthy, but every sliver helped. “Thanks, Mine,” she said, adding the coins to her own pouch.

“Make sure you buy a round of drinks or something,” he said. “Not alcoholic ones!”

As he hurried off, Carleah said knowingly, “He’s got trouble with some of the boys.”

“We heard,” said Maris, solemnly.

That deflated Carleah a bit. “Did you?”

Maris nodded at Tarshe. “Berzunth’s been getting a running commentary from Djeth.”

“Something about being caught at a unauthorised wher fight,” Tarshe said. She looked perplexed. “Is there such a thing as an authorised wher fight?”

“Oh, yes,” Carleah said immediately. “The Minecraft runs the legitimate wher pits. The whers are de-clawed and their fangs are filed down, so they can’t do so much damage to each other.”

“That’s horrible,” said Maris, with a shudder.

“Wher fights are very popular in mineholds,” said Carleah. “My da said that it started out as a way to make use of the ones that are too aggressive to work the mines. No one’s supposed to breed whers just for fighting…” She let the sentence trail off meaningfully.

“But they do anyway?” asked Tarshe.

She nodded. “A wher has to have been registered with the Minerhall to fight in a Craft pit, so the ones bred illicitly can’t be entered in licensed fights. That doesn’t stop their handlers from setting up unlicensed fights. And because they’re outside the control of the Minecraft, they ignore all the other rules too. The whers that fight outside the Craft’s jurisdiction aren’t de-clawed or de-fanged.”

Maris looked sickened. “Faranth.”

“Have you been to one, Carleah?” asked Soleigh. “A wher fight?”

“Only a licensed one, and not for long,” she said. “But my da used to say that you hear holders talking about it all the time, if you’re picking up firestone or coal or whatever from the mineholds. There’s a lot of rivalry between neighbouring holds over whose fighting whers are the best – Hall-approved or otherwise.”

“K’ralthe was a mineholder, wasn’t he?” Maris asked. “Before he Impressed Djeth?”

“From Buckmore Minehold,” said Carleah. “Where Madellon gets most of its firestone.”

Then Tarshe said, “He was a wher handler.”

That was something Carleah hadn’t known. “Really?” she asked. “Bonded?”

Tarshe shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“He can’t have been,” said Soleigh. “He’d never have been Searched.”

“Not necessarily,” said Maris. “Does anyone know who Searched him?”

Soleigh shook her head, and Carleah, reluctantly, did the same. “But being bonded to a wher wouldn’t stop you Impressing a dragon,” she put in instead. “It’s not much different to a fire-lizard.”

“It’s not that a wher handler couldn’t Impress,” said Soleigh. “It’s just – well, you know how dragonriders are about watch-whers.”

“We’re dragonriders, Sol,” Maris reminded her.

“And whers don’t skeeve you out?” Soleigh asked. “Just a bit? Because they do me. They’re like dragons that went wrong.”

“You have a point,” Maris conceded.

“I wouldn’t want to bond with one,” said Carleah. “But if Jagunth turned out to be sensitive, and we found a wher handler on Search, I wouldn’t not bring him in.”

“Do you think she’s going to be sensitive?” Soleigh asked interestedly.

Carleah hesitated over her answer. “No,” she said, deciding to be honest. “I don’t think so, really. She’s nothing like Darshanth.”

“No dragon is like Darshanth,” said Maris. “But if any rider from our class ends up a Search rider, it’ll be P’lian.”

Soleigh nodded. “Definitely.”

“P’lian?” Carleah asked, puzzled. “Browns don’t usually make good Search dragons.”

“Indrahath and I were on elevator detail with him and Sparth the day before yesterday,” said Maris. “They gave Arina a lift up to someone’s weyr, and Sparth nearly jumped out of his hide when she got on him.”

Arina had been a candidate, left standing at the Hatching when they’d all Impressed their dragons. “P’lian was always a bit sweet on Arina, though,” said Carleah.

“I’m not sure he is now,” said Maris. “But Sparth couldn’t leave her alone. We went and got her when she was ready to come down again, and she was relieved not to have to ride him again. I think she found it all a bit uncomfortable.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Soleigh asked. “Having P’lian’s dragonet perving at you?”

“That’s being harsh on P’lian,” Maris chided her. “He’s not so hard on the eye.”

Soleigh exaggerated a gasp of outrage. “Well, if I knew you felt that way about him…!”

“I’m not allowed to have an opinion of a man, now?” Maris asked, with matching faux-indignation.

“No you are not,” Soleigh told her briskly. “Not unless I like him too. You know the rules.”

Maris sighed. “You’re so possessive.”

It was fun to walk the Gather with the older Wildfire girls. None of them had much money, so the things they bought were small and modest. Maris, after visiting two more Tannercraft stalls, drove a keen bargain on the scarlet dye she wanted to colour the name tags on Indrahath’s harness (“She won’t have it that red clashes with her hide,” Maris explained fondly, when Carleah queried the hue). Soleigh bought enough yarn from a Hoffen trader, spun from the exceptionally soft and warm fleece of the famous woolbeasts of that Hold, to knit winter flying scarves for herself and Maris. Carleah admired her shrewdness: it was hot indeed at Long Bay, and the vendors selling wares more suited to the winter months were almost pathetically eager to part with their stock. Inspired, she hunted through a furrier’s booth, and came out with several offcuts of feline fur that would be perfect to trim the collar and cuffs of a winter coat for only a quarter mark.

Tarshe didn’t buy anything. She examined the goods on offer with fierce interest, but not even the promise of the most outrageous discount could tempt her to put her hand in her belt pouch. “We’ve been missing a trick,” Soleigh commented to Carleah as they watched a Minercraft journeyman fawn and scrape in his efforts to get Tarshe to buy something from his collection of jewellery. “Everyone wants to have a queen rider as a customer.”

It hadn’t escaped Carleah’s notice that the gold cord in Tarshe’s rank knot was attracting attention, and when Tarshe finally extricated herself from the Minercraft stall, it became obvious that she wasn’t blind to it herself. “It’s awkward,” she said, when Carleah repeated Soleigh’s observation to her. “They won’t let me just look.”

“You do ride a queen,” said Carleah. “You’re always going to get extra attention.”

“It’s not as much fun as you’d think it would be,” Tarshe said. “Being watched all the time. People nudging each other and pointing.”

“You might as well take advantage of it,” said Carleah. At Maris’ censorious look, she protested, “What?”

“This is Peninsula territory,” Maris reminded her. “You know the rules about accepting gifts in another Weyr’s jurisdiction.”

“Gifts,” Carleah insisted. “There’s nothing in the rules that says you can’t accept a discount.”

“There’s nothing I want to buy,” said Tarshe, with a shrug.

“You keep saying that, Tarshe,” said Soleigh. “I don’t understand you. It’s your first Gather. You have to buy something!”

“What could I buy that Madellon doesn’t already provide?” Tarshe asked. “I have clothes, food, everything I need to take care of Berzunth…”

“And marks burning a hole in your pocket!”

Tarshe shook her head. “There are other uses for marks.”

“Drop it, Sol,” Maris said, gently chiding. “Tarshe doesn’t have to spend money if she doesn’t want to.”

“I just –” Soleigh began, and then stopped herself. She sighed. “All right. I’m sorry, Tarshe.”

It was an odd exchange, one that smacked of an argument that had been made before. Carleah filed it away in her mind for future reference. “Well, I’m going to spend some of C’mine’s money,” she declared, as much to gloss over the awkward moment as because the afternoon was wearing on. “Who wants a drink?”

They stopped at a refreshment stall for iced klah and fried kettle cakes – overpriced, but still the best Carleah had tasted in Turns – and wandered on through the Gather. They paused to watch a puppet show on the corner of a row, and Carleah bought a bagful of ceramic beads in five different shades of green to string into a necklace and pair of bracelets.

As they walked on from the jewellery stall, Carleah felt Jagunth’s mind groping sleepily for her. She sent a gently inquisitive thought out to her dragon. Jagunth?

After a moment, the reply came back, Yes, Leah?

You’re awake, then?

Sort of. Jagunth sounded dozy. Where are you?

We’re all at the Gather, Carleah said. Remember this morning I told you I’d be going somewhere else for a few hours?

Vanzanth says we’re not to be concerned, Jagunth replied. Why would we be concerned?

Carleah decided it was probably best not to explain that she was a good half-continent distant from Madellon. You shouldn’t be, she assured her. I’m fine and I’ll be back by dinnertime. Why don’t you go back to sleep?

“Jagunth’s awake?” Maris asked, noticing Carleah’s distraction.

“Not really,” she replied. “But she doesn’t seem to be upset that I’m not there.”

Maris made a mournful face. “They’re growing up, aren’t they?”

A stall on the fringe of the Gather was doing a brisk trade in tattoos. Carleah and the other Wildfires weren’t the only ones to stop and watch, fascinated, as the extensively-decorated tattoo artist – a journeyman Healer, by the insignia on his shoulder, on his stall, and on both forearms – inked an intricate pattern on one customer’s calf using needlethorn and different coloured pigments. Soleigh was taken enough to go and inspect closely the board full of example designs that the journeyman had on display, and even to exchange words with his assistant, an equally ornamented Harper journeyman. When she returned, looking pensive, Carleah asked, “Are you going to get one done?”

“Senyer, the journeyman there, said they won’t put serious ink on weyrlings or apprentices,” Soleigh said regretfully.

“Thank Faranth for that,” said Maris. “Can you imagine L’stev’s face if you came back looking like either of them?”

“They are Hall-approved,” said Soleigh. “And there’s a really lovely dragon design they can do. He said they’ve done half a dozen today like it today in all the colours, but the most they’d do for me would be Bristath’s name in fancy script.”

“Everyone will think you’re from the Peninsula,” said Maris, shaking her head.

Soleigh ignored her. “I was thinking of having it done here,” she said, touching her left upper arm. “And then when we graduate, I could have the full design done above it.”

“How much?” asked Maris.

“Half a mark,” Soleigh replied. “He said I should go away and think about it, and come back if I decide I want it done.”

“Do they use numbweed?” asked Carleah. “It looks like it would hurt.”

“Senyer says it’s best not to when it’s first done,” said Soleigh. “It makes the ink blurry. You’re supposed to just keep it clean with redwort and let it heal by itself.”

Carleah grimaced. She wasn’t squeamish about many things, but the thought of being poked with something sharp over and over made her feel a bit sick. “Ouch.”

“I still think L’stev’ll lay an egg if you come back with a tattoo,” said Maris.

“Let him. It’s not his arm.”

They continued on from the tattoo booth, browsing through another row of stalls, but it wasn’t long before Soleigh said, “Between with it. I’m having it done. Bristath likes the idea…” She paused, then made a face, “…And wants to know if she can have my name drawn on her somewhere.”

“That really would put L’stev in clutch,” said Maris. “I suppose you’ll want me to hold your hand while you have it done.”

Carleah hesitated as the two green riders turned to head back to the tattoo artist’s booth. “I might just, um,” she said. “Go and find C’mine again.” She felt foolish even as she said it.

Tarshe rescued her. “I don’t really want to watch you getting stabbed with a needlethorn, either, Sol,” she said. “Why don’t we take a walk back up to the main square, Carleah? We seem to be miles away from everything now.”

It was true: they were on the periphery of the Gather, and the crowds had thinned out. “I wanted to look at gitars,” Carleah said. “We passed a few stalls a little way back...”

“Let’s do that, then,” said Tarshe. She nodded to Soleigh and Maris. “See you both later?”

“Do you actually want to look at gitars?” Carleah asked, as they parted company.

“Not really,” said Tarshe. “But you were looking a bit green. Excusing the expression.”

“I don’t like needlethorns,” Carleah said, with a little shiver.

“Nor me. And I think anyone who’d pay to have some stranger draw on them permanently with a sharp object is out of their mind.”

“But your cousin has a tattoo…”

“Aye, and my cousin is a bronze rider,” said Tarshe, with half a smile. “They’re all insane.”

“My da used to say that.”

“Your da was right.”

The first instrument stall they stopped at wasn’t Hall-approved. Carleah glanced at several of the gitars hanging behind the counter, then moved on without stopping. “Fourth-rate apprentice work,” she said, to Tarshe’s inquiring look.

“You know just from a glance?”

“My da was a brilliant gitar player,” said Carleah. “He could make almost any gitar sound good, but even he would have had trouble with one of those things.”

“You were Harper-bred, weren’t you?” asked Tarshe. “Why’d you not apprentice?”

“My mama never did. Nor my da. Being a Harper’s about more than just music, and that was the part they liked. Da always said he’d have hated being a Hold Harper, or even an itinerant. But there’s always been plenty of work at the Hall for talented musicians who never wanted to take apprenticeship.” Another instrument stall caught her eye. “Wait a moment, let’s try over here.”

“Good afternoon, green rider,” the stallholder said, smiling at her. “What can I interest you in today?”

Carleah studied a gitar lying on the counter-top. Then she dismissed it and narrowed her eyes to examine the row of instruments hanging on the back wall of the stall. “Gitars,” she said offhandedly. “Do you have anything with a Hall stamp on it?”

The stallholder’s smile turned indulgent. “A few in the back,” he said, “but they might be a bit dear for your purse.”

Carleah fixed him with an indignant look. “Oh, really?”

“Cheapest Hall-stamp I have starts at twelve marks. But if you wanted something more reasonable, the spruce here is only seven.”

Carleah glanced with deliberate scorn at the gitar he began to take down from its peg. “Well,” she said, with all the ice she could muster, “if you think this is worth seven, then I rather doubt your Hall-mark is worth more than nine.” She flicked her head to Tarshe. “Come on, weyrwoman.”

Tarshe was laughing as they walked away. “That told him,” she said. “Was that gitar really overpriced?”

“Criminally,” Carleah said, with a snort. “The neck wasn’t even straight. And his so-called Hall-mark was probably a fake.” Then she sighed. “But everything at this Gather’s too expensive. I doubt I’ll find anything half-decent in my price range. And no one ever takes a green rider seriously.”

They walked on for a few steps, and then Tarshe stopped. She began to shrug off her riding jacket. “Here.”

Carleah looked quizzically at her. “What…?”

“Trade jackets with me,” said Tarshe. “If they think you’re a queen rider, at least they won’t patronise you.”

“Really?” Carleah asked, astonished, and then, “Really?”

Tarshe grinned. “Someone might as well get some use out of it.”

Quickly, they exchanged jackets. Tarshe’s was a bit big on Carleah – she wasn’t as tall as the queen rider – but it wasn’t too bad a fit when she put it on. “We’d better watch out for Wingseconds,” she said. “L’stev’ll have my hide if he hears I was pretending to be you.”

“I haven’t seen a Wingsecond for a while,” said Tarshe. “I think everyone’s gone off to see the racing.”

“We probably shouldn’t go back into the main avenues, though,” said Carleah. “We could walk into C’mine or anyone.”

They walked on down the row of booths at the edge of the Gather. Tarshe, Carleah noticed, studied everything closely. “Is this really your first Gather?” she asked, after a time.

“What, you think we don’t have Gathers on exile islands?”

“I didn’t mean –”

Tarshe laughed. “I’m not serious, Carleah. Aye. It’s my first Gather. I’d never even left our island until I was Searched.”

Carleah knew as much about the circumstances of Tarshe’s family’s exile as anyone – which was to say, not much. “Were you born there?”

“No. But I wasn’t even a Turn old when we moved there.” Tarshe’s face gave away little emotion, but her eyes had gone distant. “So it was the only home I ever knew, before Madellon.”

Carleah looked down at her feet, placing them carefully on the dusty ground. “Do you miss it?”

“Not the island. But I miss my family.” Tarshe’s Peninsula accent thickened on the word. “I’d hoped I’d be able to visit by now, on Berzunth. I really wish I could show her off to my da. I wish that – oof!”

As they turned down a new row, a boy of ten or so ran straight into Tarshe, staggering her, and sending him sprawling flat out on the ground.

“Faranth, look where you’re going!” Tarshe cried, catching herself against the upright of a booth.

“Are you all right?” Carleah asked.

“I’m fine, but – hey!” Tarshe made a grab for the boy who’d run into her, but the kid was already up on his feet and running back down a side row. Her hand flew to her belt, an expression somewhere between panic and outrage crossing her face. “The thieving snake took my purse! Come back here, you little bastard!”

Before Carleah could stop her, Tarshe was off, running after the boy who’d lifted her belt pouch. She dithered for a moment, not sure what to do. “Thief!” she exclaimed after a moment, to the closest vendors and passers-by. “That boy’s a thief!” And she set off in pursuit of Tarshe.

Tarshe was already halfway down the narrow side row, and not far behind the young pickpocket. Carleah spared a thought for the kid as she sprinted after them both. It wasn’t just that Tarshe was a good runner – she was also the best of all the Wildfire girls at the self-defence exercises that L’stev put them all through. When she caught up to the boy, he wouldn’t know what had hit him.

Ahead, the pickpocket darted down another side turn. Tarshe, only a few strides behind him, followed him out of sight. Carleah put on a little more speed. She was blowing a bit when she reached the intersection down which they’d disappeared. It wasn’t a row after all – only the gap between the backs of booths on different avenues of the Gather, crisscrossed with the guylines of canvas tenting. Neither Tarshe nor the thief were anywhere in sight.

“What are you doing down here?”

Carleah jumped a bit, startled. The tall bald man who’d spoken was frowning, but he wore the blue-and-brown striped armband of a Gather steward, and a bronze fire-lizard perched on his shoulder. “My friend,” she said. “Her purse was stolen. There was a boy…”

As she spoke, a second steward stepped out from behind a booth, scowling and rubbing his arm. “Bloody Threadscores, Gorty, they never said the dragon-bitch would fight back…” He trailed off when he saw Carleah. “Wait. Who the shaff is this?”

Both stewards’ eyes dropped to the rank braid on Carleah’s shoulder. Tarshe’s rank braid. The second man grabbed her by the sleeve, twisting it to expose the gold thread in the knot. “Did we snatch the wrong shaffing weyrling?”

In the fraction of an instant that followed that chilling question, Carleah should have bolted.

She was too slow.

Chapter forty-four: Valonna

If you’ve trapped a snake, best not forget where you left it.

– Beastcraft saying

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

LONG BAY HOLD

There were no other queens on the fire-heights when Shimpath brought Valonna out of between above Long Bay, and Suffath wasn’t among the bronzes in attendance around the coastal Hold. Nor, Valonna was grateful to notice, was Tezonth.

“Thank Faranth we’re on time,” she said to Sh’zon, as he assisted her deftly to the ground from her high seat between Shimpath’s ridges.

“A wee bit early, even,” he replied, shrugging the skin of wine – a vintage Jessaf red, procured at no small cost – into place over his shoulder. “Rallai and H’pold won’t be late, that’s for sure; not for Gianna.”

Valonna untied the scarf that had protected her hair beneath her flying helmet, patting nervously at the pinned braids. “Am I respectable?”

Sh’zon looked her over, then smoothed a single errant lock of her hair with a touch as gentle as it was surprising. “There,” he said. “You look lovely, Weyrwoman. Will you take my arm?”

She did, slightly taken aback by the small display of familiarity. Valonna had her suspicions about H’ned’s indisposal, particularly in the light of the rather handsome new outfit Sh’zon seemed conveniently to have had on hand to wear, but she couldn’t fault Sh’zon’s attentiveness as he laid his fingers lightly on her wrist to walk her to the double doors of Long Bay’s main entrance.

They were met there by a steward in Coffleby’s immaculate livery of brown and blue. “Weyrwoman,” he greeted Valonna, with a deep bow, and, turning to Sh’zon, “Deputy Weyrleader. Please be welcome to Long Bay Hold. Lady Coffleby is waiting in her private dining room, if you would be so kind as to follow me.”

Valonna was impressed that the steward had named Sh’zon’s rank accurately, and commented as much as they followed Coffleby’s man up the grand staircase that dominated Long Bay’s entrance hall. They’d retrieved the pair of starred-and-barred epaulettes that had been sewn up for the occasion from H’ned’s weyr, but Madellon’s unique internal insignia of stripes and stars weren’t always recognised at the best of times, and there was no universally-accepted shoulder knot for the position of Deputy Weyrleader.

Sh’zon just shrugged. “Gianna’s nothing if not well-informed,” he said. “She can hardly walk these days and she’s older than dirt, but nothing gets past her.”

That gave Valonna a little thrill of apprehension. “Is she a friend to the Weyr?”

“That she is, and every Peninsula Weyrleader for the last four decades has gone to great lengths to keep it that way.” Sh’zon laughed. “Sometimes not successfully. We had a son or grandson of Long Bay standing for every clutch for about twenty Turns before one actually Impressed. You know how it is. There’s no making a dragonet pick a candidate, however politically expedient it would be. G’kalte did well though – Impressed himself a brown. He’s been a Wingsecond for a few Turns now, and not just because of who his grandmother is. Archidath’s up on the heights, so you’ll likely meet him. He always was Gianna’s favourite.”

As they proceeded deeper into Long Bay, Valonna noted all the signs of the Hold’s wealth – the intricate tiled floors, the expensive wooden panelling on the walls, the weight and quality of the fabric drapes and furnishings. She was no stranger to Hold affluence. She’d walked the well-to-do corridors of Jessaf and Peranvo Holds as a child, before she’d been Searched for Shimpath. But Long Bay’s casual opulence put even Madellon’s richest Holds to shame, and when they passed the ornate archway, guarded by a pair of sharp-eyed men-at-arms wearing mail beneath their brown-and-blue surcoats, that led to Lady Coffleby’s private apartments, the furnishings all around became even more lavish.

The steward showed the way to a pair of doors made of a light wood inlaid on both sides with the Long Bay crest. The room beyond wasn’t huge – less than a dragonlength long – but one wall was almost completely made of glass, each of the upper narrow arched windowpanes set with patterns of vibrant stained glass in red and blue and green. The clear lower panes looked out over the Hold’s eponymous bay, sun-spangled beneath the clear blue sky, and full of vessels of all sizes riding at anchor in the shelter of the inlet. The bright sunlight pouring through the spectacular glass wall threw streaks of colour across the deep-pile cream and blue carpeting, the oval dining table and matched chairs, and the fine china and silver cutlery. The part of Valonna that had been dragonrider for the last eight Turns wondered how that magnificent glass wall would ever be shuttered safely against Thread; the Hold daughter she had been for the fourteen Turns before that sighed at the thought of living amidst this sort of comfort and beauty.

Lady Coffleby stood behind the heavy carved seat at the head of the table, one gnarled hand gripping the chair with knuckly strength. Time had bent her back and wasted the flesh of her face and turned her hair white, but the grey eyes set in their deep sockets were keen and alert, and her bearing regally assured.

The much younger man standing at her side wore the insignia of a Peninsula Wingsecond on his shoulder, and even had Sh’zon not already told Valonna that Coffleby’s grandson was a brown rider, she would have recognised him as her descendant. His eyes were a warmer blue-grey than his grandmother’s; his hair, and the rakish scruff of stubble on his jaw, was brown instead of silver; and the curve to the corner of his mouth was good-humoured rather than imperious; still, something in the set of his shoulders mirrored Lady Coffleby’s natural poise.

“Welcome, Weyrwoman,” Coffleby said. “Welcome to my humble Hold.”

There was enough irony in her tone to leave Valonna in no doubt as to the sincerity of the remark. “Thank you, my Lady Coffleby,” she replied, approaching to offer her hand to the Lady of Long Bay; Coffleby gripped her wrist lightly but not feebly. “You’re very gracious to invite Madellon to celebrate this occasion with you in such beautiful surroundings.”

Lady Coffleby swept her with an unapologetically appraising look – taking her measure, Valonna thought – and then turned her attention to Sh’zon. “And Deputy Weyrleader Sh’zon, as I believe you are styled now.”

“I am, my Lady,” Sh’zon replied, with creditable humility. He bent his head over Coffleby’s fragile wrist. “I’m honoured as always to be a guest of your fine Hold.”

“Of that I have no doubt,” Coffleby replied. She gestured towards the Peninsula rider at her side. “Weyrwoman Valonna, may I present my grandson, Wingsecond G’kalte.”

“Weyrwoman,” said G’kalte, and looked for permission before raising Valonna hand to his lips.

Sh’zon and G’kalte, who obviously knew each other, engaged in a contest to see which of them could crush the other’s wrist more painfully. The grin they traded belied the apparent intensity of their competition.

Then Sh’zon presented Coffleby with the Jessaf red, which the Lady of Long Bay declared would pair most excellently with the main course. As a wine steward poured glasses of a straw-pale white for them all, Valonna stole a closer glance at the oval dining table. It was set for ten. H’pold and Rallai, plus the Peninsula’s Weyrwoman Second, Sirtis, and her partner, made eight. Valonna wondered if D’pantha of Southern would come alone or with an escort.

Another footman appeared, unobtrusively murmuring a report to Lady Coffleby, even as Shimpath remarked, Ipith and Ranquiath have just arrived.

The mention of the pair of Peninsula queens made Valonna think anxiously of the two juveniles back at Madellon. Berzunth and Megrith…?

Are fine, Vanzanth assures me, Shimpath replied.

“Our own Weyrleaders will be joining us shortly,” said Coffleby, at the same time. “I’m afraid you’ll be somewhat outnumbered by Peninsula riders, Valonna.”

“Madellon and the Peninsula have always enjoyed close ties,” she lied politely. “Closer now than ever.”

“So I understand,” Coffleby replied. Her sharp gaze slid back to Sh’zon. “And do you find that the recent exchange of talent has been to your liking, Weyrleader?”

Sh’zon blinked, evidently thrown by being called by that title as much as by the question. “I do, my Lady,” he said, recovering his poise. “Madellon has been more than warm in its welcome, and I gladly serve at Weyrwoman Valonna’s pleasure. But my roots still run deep into Peninsula soil. I was born here and my dragon was Hatched of a Peninsula egg. A dragonrider can owe a Weyr no deeper debt.”

“Indeed not,” said Coffleby, throwing a glance at her grandson, “as I’m sure G’kalte would agree.”

“I would,” G’kalte replied agreeably.

“And this business with the weyrlings,” Coffleby began, and then left the question hanging.

Valonna took a careful breath before replying. She didn’t like to discuss Madellon affairs with a foreign Lady Holder, much less when the subject was so contentious. Coffleby must know that Weyrleaders of another territory would be reluctant to speak openly of such things. But the fact that she had left the question so ambiguous – did she mean the problem with between, or the controversy of Madellon’s recent dealings with Southern? – put Valonna even more on edge. Clearly, Lady Coffleby would draw conclusions as to her chief preoccupation whichever way she replied. “Our Weyrlingmaster is very experienced,” she said instead, answering vagueness with vagueness. “I defer to his judgement in all matters concerning the weyrlings in Madellon’s barracks, and I have no doubt that he will find the solution that the situation requires.”

She was saved from the more probing follow-up that she sensed was inevitable by the arrival of the delegation from Peninsula Weyr. Relieved, she turned to greet them, grateful that in Rallai she would at least have an ally besides Sh’zon in the room.

And then her relief turned to ashes.

H’pold and Rallai looked every bit the tall and handsome couple they always did: he statesmanlike in ochre-trimmed black, she elegant in lustrous gold. But it was the couple immediately behind them that made Valonna’s stomach lurch: not because Sirtis was so beautiful that she took the breath away, although she was, but because the bronze rider on whose arm her slender hand rested so effortlessly, so gracefully, and so proprietorially was L’dro.

Valonna’s head spun.

It had been more than a Turn since L’dro had lost the Weyrleadership; more than a Turn since he’d left Madellon; more than a Turn since Valonna had last seen him. It felt, in retrospect, like that Turn had been the longest of her life. But L’dro had hardly changed. He wore the shoulder-knot of a Peninsula Wingleader, and his dark auburn hair was longer and smoothed neatly back in a tail at the nape of his neck, but he still held himself with all the assurance and authority of a senior bronze rider, still favoured the exquisite tailoring, in sapphire blue, that emphasised the breadth of his shoulders and narrowness of his waist, still had that slight smile, that assertive manner, that conspiratorial glint in his eye; in short, he remained the confident, rugged, sexy dragonrider who had been her first lover, her first Weyrleader, and the first and only man she’d ever loved.

Who’d been unfaithful to her. Used her. Disrespected her.

Whom she’d always invited back into her weyr regardless.

He never loved you, she told herself, as she’d told herself a hundred times, a thousand times.

But I loved him, she answered, as she always did.

And even though she laboured beneath the legacy of his failures as a Weyrleader – his negligence, his profligacy, his nepotism – the frustration and resentment Valonna felt for the man whose actions had made her life so difficult melted helplessly away in the face of the physical effect he still had on her, and the broken-glass stab of his presence there as the companion of another woman, and not just another woman, but another queen rider, and not just a queen rider, but the most perfectly lovely queen rider Valonna had ever seen.

Sirtis was precisely L’dro’s type, Valonna thought hopelessly, although the Peninsula queen rider was so appealing it was hard to imagine anyone not being drawn to her. Her face was heart-shaped, her skin creamy-pale and flawless. Her laughing eyes matched almost precisely the deep chestnut of her hair, which cascaded in artless curls down the perfect column of her neck. She was just the right height for a rider of L’dro’s stature, somehow making Rallai look awkwardly tall and Valonna feel childishly short. She wore flowing white, embroidered with ging blooms in silver thread, and more silver, set with aquamarine, glinted at her wrists, her throat, and her ears. Valonna envied and resented her so powerfully that it was a wonder Shimpath didn’t take a swipe at Ranquiath in reaction.

Don’t be absurd, Shimpath said, jolting Valonna out of her agonised reverie. She is no threat whatsoever to me.

Valonna swallowed hard, feeling shaky on her feet. You might have warned me that Pierdeth was here.

Many bronzes are here. I would not give him undue importance by mentioning him, and nor should you his rider. Shimpath gave her a little push. Be my Weyrwoman. Show no weakness.

Even with Shimpath’s prompting, and her iron support, Valonna found the prospect of having to speak to L’dro – and his new partner – horrifying. It made greeting H’pold almost seem pleasant by comparison. “Weyrleader,” she said, letting him kiss her hand.

“Weyrwoman Valonna,” he replied, looking up at her with those cool eyes even as he bent his head over her fingers. “I see you declined to take my advice on the choice of your escort.”

“H’ned was feeling unwell.”

“You look a trace pale yourself, if you don’t mind my saying so,” H’pold replied. “I do hope you’re feeling yourself. Today promises to be quite the ordeal. For all of us.”

The sidelong look H’pold shot in L’dro’s direction revealed an antipathy Valonna hadn’t expected. The thought that she might share an opinion with the slimy Peninsula Weyrleader was slightly startling.

Sh’zon, she noticed, had lingered rather longer over Rallai’s hand than most people would have considered seemly. Valonna gave him the tiniest of nudges, then exchanged greetings with Rallai. “You look well, Weyrwoman.”

“And you,” Rallai replied. As they embraced, Rallai murmured, “I’m sorry about L’dro. I know how uncomfortable this must be for you, but Sirtis wouldn’t be dissuaded.”

“It’s fine,” Valonna assured her.

It wasn’t, of course. She didn’t know quite where to look, or even how to begin a conversation with Sirtis. She was almost pitifully grateful when Sh’zon touched her elbow for attention before addressing the Peninsula queen rider. “Sirtis. It’s good to see you. Have you met Weyrwoman Valonna?”

“I haven’t had the pleasure, Sh’zon,” Sirtis replied.

Valonna was surprised by the high and girlish quality of her voice. Sirtis was certainly older than her, but she sounded almost childlike. She braced herself, and managed a smile. “Weyrwoman Sirtis. How lovely to finally meet you.”

Sirtis responded with a wide white smile that was as glossy as her hair. “Well, thank you Valonna; I’ve heard so much about you!”

Valonna couldn’t think of anything that the new weyrmate of her former Weyrleader might have said that would have been more unsettling, but there didn’t seem to be a trace of irony in Sirtis’ words. “I…I’m glad,” she said, thrown, and then, because there was no way of avoiding it any longer, she transferred her gaze to L’dro.

It was a mistake. She knew it the instant her eyes met his. The Turn she’d spent without him, in the full knowledge of how poorly he’d served Madellon, and the Turns before that, when his interest had waned and his respect for her with it, might as well never have happened. She was fourteen again, her father’s daughter again, and he was the handsome young bronze rider who had chosen her, of all her sisters, as a candidate for the golden egg on Madellon’s sands. She owed her dragon, her position, everything she was now, to this man. He was –

Stop it, Shimpath told her.

The rebuke actually made Valonna start. She dragged her eyes away from L’dro. “Weyr–” she began, and then corrected herself, “Wingleader.”

L’dro didn’t miss the slip. The corner of his mouth curved in that familiar half-smile. “Hello, Valonna,” he said, taking her hand.

Valonna had to school herself not to flinch at the feel of his big powerful fingers on hers, and Shimpath’s disapproving presence in the back of her mind compelled her to tug her hand out of his grip before he could kiss it. “This is Sh’zon,” she said quickly, to cover the awkward moment, “my –”

“I know who he is,” said L’dro. “Deputy Weyrleader.”

The emphasis he put on the qualifying prefix, bare though it was, was sufficient to raise Sh’zon’s hackles. The whiteness of both bronze riders’ knuckles when they shook hands, and the lack of anything resembling a smile on either face, was silent indication of the instant tension between them. “I trust you’re keeping my old wingriders in line in my absence,” said Sh’zon, flicking his eyes towards the insignia on L’dro’s shoulder.

“Certainly I am,” L’dro replied heartily. “As I trust you are my old Weyr, in my successor’s absence.”

L’dro’s dig at T’kamen was predictable; Sh’zon’s reaction to it, less so. He looked for a moment as if he would defend T’kamen, but then he just cocked his head slightly, as though thinking better of it. “Madellon is in safe hands, you can be assured of that.”

“I’d heard otherwise,” said L’dro.

Sh’zon did smile at that. “Then you heard wrong.”

Any further exchange between the two bronze riders was forestalled by the arrival of Coffleby’s wine steward with drinks for the Peninsula couple. Valonna took the opportunity to step away from L’dro and Sirtis, pretending an interest in the stained glass window.

Rallai moved to join her there. “Exquisite, isn’t it?” she asked, looking up at the intricate patterning of leaded panes.

“Yes,” Valonna agreed. “The Peninsula’s Glasscrafters are very talented.”

“And cripplingly expensive,” said Rallai, with the hint of a smile. She nodded out at the calm waters of Long Bay. “All paid for by that, of course.”

Valonna looked at the immense bay with its flotilla of ships. Every coastal Hold in the South was represented, but a great many craft flew the scarlet-and-white chevrons of Boll. “The trade route has done well for Long Bay, hasn’t it?”

“It has,” said Rallai. “As has the situation in Southern, these last thirty Turns.” When Valonna looked enquiringly at her, she went on, “Peninsula dragons have never been averse to carrying cargo for money. Southern Hold has by far the shorter crossing to the North, but onwards transportation has always been a problem. You won’t catch a Southern dragon freighting trade goods.”

The Peninsula’s willingness to barter dragonstrength for marks was well documented, though none of Valonna’s Weyrleaders had ever countenanced the policy. “Your riders don’t mind?”

“I have nearly four hundred dragonpairs to keep fed,” Rallai replied. “They can’t afford to mind.”

That made Valonna think again of the herdbeast racket that Arrense and Sarenya had uncovered. She wondered if she should say anything, but prudence stayed her tongue. One way or another, Rallai’s Weyr would be benefitting from the glut of quality food beasts in Peninsula territory. Valonna didn’t think the other Weyrwoman could possibly know what had been going on at Madellon’s expense, but she wasn’t willing to take the chance.

Instead, she asked quietly, “Is D’pantha definitely coming?”

Rallai’s eyes tightened. “He should be here by now. I don’t know why he isn’t. I don’t dare have Ipith reach out to Cyniath. It’s too delicate at Southern right now.”

That made Valonna even more anxious. “You don’t think P’raima will come after all?”

“I think we should be prepared for anything,” said Rallai. She paused. “How are your two Southern refugees? Did you ever discover why the lad wanted to stay?”

“The lad?” Valonna queried.

“There was a blue rider, wasn’t there? As well as the young queen?”

“Oh, yes, T’gala,” Valonna said. She hadn’t been able to think of T’gala as anything but her actual gender since L’stev had first told her, regardless of her dragonet’s colour. “I, ah, I understand he’d struck up a friendship with one of our green weyrlings.”

“Of course,” Rallai said. “And how are the two queen dragonets getting along?”

“Their riders are trying very hard,” Valonna told her. “Though I confess I’m nervous to have brought Shimpath here. If they were to quarrel while we’re away, I fear my Weyrlingmaster would have an unpleasant time breaking them up.”

“That,” said Rallai, with a smile, “is what you pay him his stipend for.”

Lady Coffleby cleared her throat then, and raised her voice over the polite conversation in the room. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “As I believe everyone is here who intends to be, would you all be so kind as to take your seats for luncheon.”

Valonna exchanged a glance with Rallai. There’s no sign of D’pantha’s bronze?

No, Shimpath replied.

A steward showed her to her seat, and Sh’zon held the chair for her. Coffleby’s staff had unobtrusively removed the two place settings reserved for P’raima and his escort and reorganised the remaining eight spaces evenly to fill the gap. It had been slickly done, but Valonna doubted that anyone there was oblivious to the fact that Southern had completely snubbed Coffleby’s luncheon.

H’pold was evidently all too pleased to call attention to what they were all thinking. “My Lady Coffleby,” he said, from his place on her right, “I fear as the only Weyrleader present it falls to me to propose a toast to you on this august occasion.” He signalled to one of the wine stewards, and immediately the servants began moving around the table, filling tall flutes with a sparkling white wine. “Rallai and I took the liberty of securing a case of Benden bubbly. Your own vineyards produce the best whites of the South, but we thought you’d enjoy something more exotic.”

“An interesting gesture, Weyrleader,” Coffleby replied. “We must be tithing too generously, for the Weyr to afford such an extravagance.”

“Have no fear, my Lady,” said Rallai, “an entire Wing will be going hungry for a month to keep our books balanced.”

“So long as it’s not my Wing,” said L’dro.

“It’ll be mine,” said G’kalte self-deprecatingly. He had been seated on Valonna’s right. “Though Archidath has been getting a bit fat lately. It might do him good.”

“You’ll feed him up into a bronze yet,” Sh’zon told him, leaning behind Valonna to clout G’kalte on the shoulder with a grin.

H’pold coughed, looked to see that everyone had a glass of the sparkling Benden, then raised his own goblet. “To Lady Coffleby’s forty Turns governing Long Bay. May the next forty be as prosperous.”

“Lady Coffleby,” Rallai repeated, raising her glass, and everyone else followed suit.

The wine was special, Valonna thought. She could count the number of times she’d had Benden bubbly on the fingers of one hand, even before Madellon’s current troubles with supply. Benden’s good white vintages were traded all over Pern, but the limited supply of sparkling wine was much harder to come by.

As the stewards began to bring in the first course, a colourful salad of leaves garnished with smoked packtail and a pungent dressing, G’kalte turned to Valonna. “Can I pour you some water, Weyrwoman?”

“Thank you,” she replied, and watched as he deftly filled her water glass, then his own, from the iced carafe. She noticed that he had pushed his wine flute slightly away, the sparkling white virtually untouched. “Are you not drinking, Wingsecond?”

“G’kalte, please,” he replied. “And I’m afraid I have an unfortunate reaction to wine. It seems to compel me with the irresistible urge to climb on the nearest chair and sing badly. My wingmates tell me it’s worth seeing, but I’m not certain my grandmother or my Weyrleader would concur, so I’m obliged to refrain.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, the Benden won’t go to waste. Grandmother’s wine steward will whisk it off in a moment. He loves a sparkling white.” He set the water carafe down. “Have you visited Long Bay before, Weyrwoman?”

“Only once, when I was a weyrling,” Valonna replied. “I’m sorry I haven’t had the opportunity to come here since. It’s a very handsome Hold. Did you grow up here, or were you fostered out?”

“Oh, I was fostered all over from when I was eight or so,” G’kalte said. “We all are. Grandmother’s keen on us knowing about more of the world than just this place, fine though it is. So I did a spell at Peninsula North, and six months at Grayden in Southern territory. Then a couple of Turns at Fort Hold.”

“So far from home?”

“Yes,” G’kalte replied, “and I apprenticed to the Healercraft while I was there.”

“Truly?” Valonna asked, surprised.

“I wasn’t the first of us to take a Craft,” G’kalte replied. “My cousin Nahlia made journeyman in the Harpercraft before she was named as Grandmother’s heir.”

Valonna picked up her fork, belatedly realising that everyone else was eating. “Did you like the Healercraft?”

“I did,” said G’kalte. “Very much; but I had a standing invitation to Peninsula’s next clutch once I was fifteen. Not that I thought it would interfere. I have half a dozen cousins and uncles who’d been left on the Peninsula sands. I had no reason to think I’d be any different.” He looked rueful. “Archidath disagreed.”

Valonna smiled. “Were you very disappointed?”

“Devastated,” G’kalte said cheerfully. “How’s your salad?”

The salad, like the wine, was delicious. Valonna found the tension that had frozen in her neck and shoulders lessening as she divided her concentration between her plate and G’kalte’s fund of easy conversation. He had obviously been well trained in the social niceties that befitted a highborn Holder, and if he felt any conflict between his role as a dragonrider and the fact that he was the grandson of a powerful Lady, it didn’t come through in his manner.

Valonna risked a glance around the table. Sh’zon was talking animatedly with Lady Coffleby, a picture of genial conviviality. H’pold looked like he wanted to interject, but Sh’zon had successfully captured the elderly Lady’s full attention. Rallai was eating quietly, and L’dro had called the wine steward over for a refill. Sirtis, though, looked bored, toying half-heartedly with the remains of her salad. Valonna almost felt sorry for her, but L’dro’s presence made her reluctant to begin a conversation, and besides, it was difficult to know quite what to say to the new woman in her own former Weyrleader’s life.

The servants began to remove the empty salad plates, and the rich aroma of roasted herdbeast accompanied the main course into the room. Two stewards carried between them a platter bearing an entire fillet of beef sliced into thick steaks, the outermost cooked nearly through, the inner still pinkly rare. Other servers brought dishes of crisp roast tubers, spiced and buttered finger-roots, kale mixed with raisins and chopped nuts; a hotroot relish, and a brandied cream sauce. After the plain, functional food that had been the staple at Madellon for so long, the lavish fare made Valonna’s mouth water.

Sh’zon directed the wine steward to pour cups of the Jessaf red that was Madellon’s contribution to the luncheon. “If I could be so bold as to propose a toast, my Lady Gianna,” he said to Coffleby, and when she nodded assent, Sh’zon raised his glass. “To the Weyrwomen of the South.” He tipped his goblet to each of them in turn. “Beautiful Sirtis. Gracious Rallai. And my own lovely Valonna.”

“For shame, Sh’zon, you’ve left out our weyrlings,” said H’pold, before anyone could drink, clearly keen to muscle in on Sh’zon’s toast. He raised his glass. “To Britt, Tarshe, and Karika, the queens of our future.”

“There’s one name you’ve both omitted,” Rallai cut in, interrupting the toast for a second time. She lifted her wine cup, and looked at Valonna as she spoke. “To Margone, whose sacrifice must not be forgotten.”

Valonna heard herself speak. “The Weyrwomen of the South.”

“The Weyrwomen of the South.”

The toast echoed around the table, oddly sombre, and they all drank.

Then a footman hurried in to whisper a message in Coffleby’s ear. The old Lady looked surprised. She waved the servant away and rose to her feet, putting her napkin down on her side plate, as the double doors to the dining room swung open to admit P’raima.

For an instant of mutual, frozen dismay, no one spoke.

Then, with a great scraping of chairs, all the male riders stood up in the instinctive courtesy that the arrival of a Weyrleader – even a Weyrleader none of them had wanted to see – merited.

Valonna couldn’t speak for anyone else, but her alarm at seeing the Southern Weyrleader was as much to do with his physical appearance as with the fact that he’d turned up at all. P’raima looked dreadful. All excess flesh seemed to have sloughed off the bones of his face; his visage was a graven death-mask, his eyes bloodshot in the black pits of his eye sockets. He looked like he hadn’t slept – or washed – since Valonna had last seen him, and while he wore the sort of tunic that any Weyrleader might on a formal occasion, it was creased and soiled. Beneath it, his shoulders were rounded, his entire posture stooped. The consuming energy that had defined his demeanour in the conclave at Madellon seemed diminished to a last few embers. The transformation was shocking.

“Weyrleader P’raima,” said Lady Coffleby, crisply formal. “Forgive us for starting without you; we’d assumed you’d decided not to join us.”

“The fault is mine, Lady Coffleby,” said P’raima. His voice was a rattle. “I beg your forgiveness and bear my Weyr’s…my Weyr’s regards.”

Lady Coffleby stared at the broken-down Southern Weyrleader, her expression betraying the disquiet that Valonna was sure they all felt. Then she made a decisive gesture to a hovering steward. “Set the Weyrleader a place. My lords and ladies, if you’d be so kind…”

Having reconfigured the table once to exclude two guests, the stewards set efficiently to the task of rearranging it again to accommodate one of them, but it was an awkward business with the meal already in progress. Everyone had to stand to allow Coffleby’s servants to move plates and cutlery and chairs closer together, and P’raima’s lack of an escort upset the balance of the table. When he finally took the place they laid for him, between G’kalte and Sirtis, neither party looked thrilled with the new arrangement. At least, Valonna reflected, there was no question of having to go through the usual social courtesies. She thought she might have had to plead illness had she been required to let P’raima kiss her hand.

P’raima, like all of them, had brought a gift of wine – one of the sweet dessert vintages that Southern was famous for – but it didn’t compensate for his otherwise haphazard adherence to protocol. He sat looking glassily at his plate until a steward discreetly laid a napkin over his lap, and when brought the platter of herdbeast from which to select his preferred cut, simply raised his sunken red eyes to the steward in blank incomprehension.

His presence at the table cast a shadow over all of them. The civilised atmosphere that had characterised the luncheon before P’raima’s arrival had evaporated. Valonna could sense everyone else casting about for a suitable topic of conversation. None of the polite, anodyne matters that would normally have filled the silence pleasantly were suitable in the company of a Weyrleader with no Weyrwoman, no queens, no clutch on the sands, and a class of weyrlings slashed in half by death and defection. And the enmity that had developed between Southern and Madellon was a presence all of its own, seated at the table like an uninvited guest. Valonna didn’t dare look too long in P’raima’s direction, but continuing her conversation with G’kalte seemed inappropriate. She concentrated on her steak, and noticed without needing to look around that everyone else was doing the same.

At last, Lady Coffleby set her steak knife irritably down, gestured at a steward to clear the course away, and said, “This problem with between. Just how serious is it?”

Valonna felt most of the eyes in the room move to her; most of them, because P’raima, mercifully, didn’t lift his from his plate. But before she could reply, Sh’zon spoke. “My Lady. Until another Weyr has dragonets of an age to begin between training, we can’t possibly say.”

“And when will that be?” Coffleby asked.

“Telgar Weyr’s latest group will be reaching that stage in a few sevendays,” said Sh’zon. “Our Weyrlingmaster has already been in conference with his Telgarese counterpart. The aim is to test if Telgar’s dragonets are able to go between safely without risking their lives in the attempt –”

“And if they aren’t?” Coffleby interjected. “If Telgar’s dragonets are as afflicted as Madellon’s and Southern’s, what then?”

“Igen would be the next –”

“Weyrleader Sh’zon,” said Coffleby, and any honour she did Sh’zon with the title was undermined by her continued refusal to let him finish. “I’m an old woman. Old enough not to need worry unduly about anything for my own sake. My time will be done soon, and when the end comes I’ll face it knowing that this Hold and the people of it will be in good hands in the generations to come. I’ve made it my business to make sure that any scion of this Blood would be competent to wear this shoulder-knot of mine.” Her sharp grey gaze moved briefly to G’kalte. “The future doesn’t belong to us, but we bequeath it nonetheless to our children, and our children’s children, and it befits us as the stewards of our respective domains to think long and hard about the harvest they will reap from the seeds we sow now.” She leaned forward in her chair, looking around at all the Weyrleaders now: Rallai and H’pold and P’raima as well as Valonna and Sh’zon. “What form will that harvest take in ten Turns, or fifty, or a hundred, if dragons can no longer go between?”

Sh’zon shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It was H’pold who mustered an answer. “Dragonmen will fly, Lady Gianna,” he said. “We’ll always fly, between or not.”

“What plans are you making?” Coffleby pressed. “How will you fulfil your duties without instantaneous travel? What will Pern look like when no dragon can go between?”

“Lady Coffleby,” Rallai began.

“I’ve seen the future of Pern.”

P’raima’s interruption was neither loud nor strident, but it was arresting. Everyone looked at him. “Go on, Weyrleader,” Lady Coffleby prompted.

“Nothing will be as it is now,,” P’raima said, in his soft rasp. “Our world will close in upon us. Our dragons’ wings will stretch to snapping point across the continents. And when the Red Star comes, dragons will die and die and die, and Thread will roil unchecked in every field and every meadow, and my Weyr won’t be able to stop it.” Horribly, tears began to trickle from his red-rimmed eyes.

Valonna heard Sh’zon mutter, “Shards, he’s completely lost it.” No one seemed to want to look at P’raima. He was so far removed from the forceful, venomous Weyrleader who’d threatened Valonna directly a sevenday ago that it was hard to grasp that he was the same man. But he wasn’t the same man, Valonna realised; he was a bronze rider under devastating pressure not just from his Weyr, but from his own dragon, to rectify the unnatural situation Southern found itself in: without a queen, without a focus, without a future. The weight of his Weyr’s distress was crushing him.

“P’raima,” Rallai said, gently, “it’s time you let us help you. Your dragons are suffering. Southern can’t function without a queen. No Weyr can. It doesn’t have to be this way –”

“Then you’ll return my queen?” P’raima asked. He looked straight at Valonna, and the hope that lit his eyes was a feverish thing. “She’s all I have. All I have left of Margone and Grizbath. Please. Please.”

“Karika and Megrith are under Madellon’s protection,” Valonna heard herself say. “Under Shimpath’s protection.”

P’raima pressed his fists into his gaunt eye sockets with anguish. “Please. If you could just let me talk to her – ”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you, Weyrleader,” said Sh’zon. “We won’t make her.”

“Do you think I hurt her?” P’raima demanded, looking wildly between them. “Threatened her? I love that girl like my own child! Her dragon is my dragon’s daughter!”

So was Grizbath, Valonna thought, and while she didn’t say the words aloud, she met Rallai’s glance and knew she was thinking exactly the same thing.

“Weyrleader,” said H’pold, in a firm and reasonable tone. “Megrith won’t even be mature for another Turn, and Karika is a very young woman. They’ll be young and immature at their second mating flight, let alone their first.”

“Southern needs a Southern queen,” P’raima insisted.

“Southern needs a Weyrwoman, not a little girl who should still be in Harper classes,” H’pold replied. “The solution is sitting on your right, P’raima. The Peninsula’s offer stands.”

P’raima turned to look at Sirtis, as if seeing her for the first time. “A Peninsula Weyrwoman,” he said slowly. Then he transferred his gaze beyond her, to L’dro. “And the former Weyrleader of Madellon.” The pause he left was uncomfortably pregnant with implication.

“It’s not a coup, P’raima,” said H’pold, into the awkward silence.

At the head of the table, Coffleby, who had been listening intently to the exchange, laughed. “You must admit, it does sound like a coup.”

“Riders transfer Weyr to Weyr all the time,” said Sh’zon. “Doesn’t mean there are strings being pulled.” He waved a hand curtly at L’dro. “Look at me and him.”

It was an unfortunate parallel to draw, given how one of them had risen rapidly to Deputy Weyrleader, and the other had caught the eye of a junior weyrwoman with ambitions. H’pold shot Sh’zon a withering look, and leaned forwards. “Wingleader L’dro wouldn’t be part of the deal, P’raima,” he said. “And Ranquiath’s flight would be closed, like any senior flight. There’d be no chance of a foreign bronze becoming Weyrleader.”

Valonna thought Sirtis looked rather unsettled at that – as any queen rider whose future was being negotiated over a dinner table might – but she held her peace. P’raima, though, shook his head. “It won’t do. Southern’s bronzes wouldn’t accept a queen of a foreign bloodline.”

“You may feel that way about a non-Southern queen, P’raima,” said H’pold, “but I wonder how many of your bronzes are as squeamish. We don’t need to stage a coup. Your own riders will remove you if you can’t deliver them a queen.”

“Yes,” P’raima said. “I know.”

“Do you want that to be how history remembers your Weyrleadership?” H’pold pressed. “You’ve served Southern for thirty Turns. Do it this one last service.”

“You speak to me of service, H’pold?” P’raima asked. “And how have you served your Weyr?” He looked around at them, his bloodshot eyes lingering on each of the Weyrleaders. “What have any of you sacrificed in the name of your Weyrs?”

“Not as much, or for as long, as you have,” said Sh’zon. “But it doesn’t have to end this way, P’raima. You just need to see sense.”

P’raima’s gaze went distant for a moment. Then he looked at Valonna. “You really won’t give back my queen?” His voice was actually plaintive.

“She’s not mine to give, Weyrleader,” Valonna replied. “I’m sorry.”

In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Coffleby waved for her stewards, who had been waiting patiently, to serve the dessert course. For that, Valonna was grateful. The sooner the meal was over, the sooner she could get back to Madellon. As one server placed a dish containing a delicate pinkstem tart and thick cream in front of her, and another filled her wine glass with the Southern sherry, Valonna spoke to Shimpath. Would you just check in with Vanzanth? Make sure that Megrith is all right, and that Vidrilleth and the other bronzes are still on watch?

After a moment, Shimpath replied, Vanzanth says all is well. His rider wants to know what has happened. Kawanth and I both asked him for the same report.

Valonna wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or worried that Sh’zon was mirroring her anxiety. Tell him I’m concerned P’raima could still make an attempt on Megrith.

The matter-of-fact response Shimpath relayed was oddly heart-warming. Vanzanth says Tezonth will touch Megrith over his dead cold corpse.

When it became apparent that P’raima wasn’t going to propose the toast that protocol required of him, Rallai cleared her throat meaningfully and picked up her sherry glass. “Perhaps you’d all like to raise a glass with me to the hundredth Turn of this Interval. May the next hundred Turns bring Southern Pern as much prosperity as the last.”

It was a comfortingly innocuous toast to which even P’raima couldn’t have objected too strenuously, although it seemed to Valonna that he picked up his glass out of habit rather than courtesy or sincerity. “To Southern Pern,” Rallai said.

The salute went around the table as before, and they all drank. The dessert wine was more dry than Valonna would have expected, but the pinkstem tart made up for it: fragrantly sweet, the pastry crisp and flaky. She kept her eyes down, feeling a little closer to liberation with each bite she took.

The clash of a fork dropped on a plate gave her a start. “Sorry, sorry,” Sh’zon said quickly, when every eye went to him. “Clumsy of me.”

He picked up the fork, but didn’t resume eating his dessert. Given how enthusiastically he had been tackling the food, Valonna found that strange. “Is everything all right, Sh’zon,” she asked him quietly.

Sh’zon didn’t seem to hear her at first. Then, as if snapping out of a reverie, he turned to her. “Everything’s just…absolutely…”

He trailed off. Valonna noticed suddenly that his big hand was clenched tight around the delicate silver dessert fork, white-knuckled and trembling. She scanned his face, feeling alarm rising. Sh’zon had gone pale, and his eyes were moving in tiny, unfocused arcs, as though he were looking for something in a vague middle distance. “Sh’zon,” she whispered, “what is it? Are you unwell?” She put her hand on his arm, but he didn’t even seem to notice it. Shimpath, please ask Kawanth what’s wrong with his rider. He’s taken a funny turn.

But Shimpath didn’t reply.

Shimpath? Valonna asked, and then, more urgently, Shimpath? Shimpath?

The sound of her own fork falling from her hand was a deafening clatter against the sudden and hideous silence in her head.

“Ranquiath,” Sirtis said suddenly, across the table. Her girlish voice heightened the fear in her tone. “Ranquiath, why won’t you talk to me? Ranquiath?”

“I can’t hear Pierdeth,” L’dro said. The stark terror in his voice was even more frightening than that in Sirtis’.

Valonna reached desperately for her dragon. Where are you? Why can’t I hear you? The question seemed to bounce back off the inside of her head, echoing back dully rather than ringing out to her dragon.

H’pold suddenly pushed his chair back from the table. “What’s happening?” he asked, panic rising in his voice.

“Can anyone hear their dragon?” Rallai asked.

“Weyrleaders?” Coffleby asked, looking sharply from one rider to another.

“He won’t hear me!” Sh’zon cried heartbrokenly.

“Can anyone hear their dragon?” Rallai repeated. “G’kalte? Valonna?”

“I want Ranquiath!” Sirtis shrieked, and leapt up from her chair, making as if to dash for the door.

“Don’t take another step, weyrwoman.”

It was P’raima.

He rose from his seat, his ashen eyes alight, a little smile playing around the corner of his mouth. The demeanour of a broken man had fallen from him like a discarded cloak. “Sit down,” he told the frozen Sirtis, and gave her a shove towards her seat. “All of you. Sit down.”

“In Faranth’s name, P’raima, what do you think you’re doing?” Coffleby cried from her seat at the head of the table. “Ervaughn, call the guards –”

“No one moves,” P’raima said, cutting across her. “No one screams.” He raked everyone in the room, stewards and servers as well as guests, with a bloodshot glare. “If anyone disobeys me, if anyone screams or runs for the door, a dragon will die.”

Everyone froze where they were.

“What have you done to our dragons?” Valonna begged. “Please, P’raima! What have you done to them?”

“Your dragons are fine,” P’raima said. “If any of you were half the dragonriders you ought to be you’d know they’re still there. If they weren’t you’d sharding know about it.”

H’pold looked almost broken. “But I can’t hear Suffath!”

“No,” P’raima said. “You can’t.”

“Our queens will know you’re behind this,” said Rallai. “They’ll seize Tezonth, and –”

P’raima cut across her. “Tezonth isn’t here. Your queens couldn’t reach him even if you could ask them to. If you ever want to hear your dragons again, you’ll do exactly as I say.”

“What do you want?” L’dro bellowed.

“You always were the biggest imbecile ever to have Impressed a bronze dragon, L’dro,” P’raima said, with perfect scorn. “You all know what I want. I want my queen back. I want Megrith.”

“Have you completely lost your mind, P’raima?” Rallai asked shakily. “You can’t hold us to ransom like this!”

“I believe I already am,” P’raima replied. He smiled coldly at Sh’zon, and echoed back his words. “But it doesn’t have to end this way, Sh’zon. You just need to see sense. As soon as you agree to my terms, I’ll let you all go to your dragons.”

Sh’zon swept glasses and plates off the table in front of him with a furious sweep of his arm. “What’s shaffing stopping us going to them right now?”

“Just a small thing,” said P’raima. “But I believe it’ll concentrate your mind. What’s your cousin’s name, bronze rider?”

And the malevolent enormity of it struck Valonna all at once, even as Sh’zon’s face went slack with horror. “Tarshe,” he said numbly.

“Tarshe. That’s right.” P’raima smiled. “I have her.”

“No,” Valonna whispered.

“It’s a simple transaction, Weyrwoman,” said P’raima. “My queen for yours. Decide quickly. You’ll give Karika and Megrith back to Southern, or your Berzunth will never see her rider again.”

Chapter forty-five: L’stev, Sh’zon, C’mine

When timing, there is no act more dangerous than encountering yourself. The risk that you will become entangled with the thoughts and emotions of your other self – and your other self’s dragon – increases exponentially with physical proximity. In such situations a rider can lose his sense of self, his orientation in time, and ultimately, his very sanity.

– Excerpt from the personal writings of Weyrlingmaster L’stev

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

L’stev was writing the conclusion of his sevendaily report when Vanzanth suddenly said, Shimpath asks if Megrith is well, and wants to know if the bronzes are still on watch.

Tell her Megrith’s fine, and the bronzes –

Kawanth has just asked for a report too, Vanzanth interrupted.

L’stev put down his pen. The weyrlings had been squeaking all morning, tussling and play-fighting with each other as dragonets left at leisure were apt to do, and he’d been ignoring the noise accordingly. Is everything in order out there?

Berzunth and Megrith are quiet. Vidrilleth is on watch with Redmyth, Kidbeth, and Santinoth. None of them are asleep.

Then tell Shimpath and Kawanth that all is well. L’stev paused, then added, And ask Shimpath what’s happened to worry them.

Her rider is still worried that Tezonth’s rider could try to take back Megrith.

L’stev snorted aloud. He’ll touch her over my cold dead corpse.

I have told her so.

You told Shimpath that? L’stev shook his head. You daft old wher.

She seemed glad to hear it.

L’stev picked up his pen again and scowled down at his report. It was already six pages long, and he didn’t want to start a new sheet for the sake of a few lines. He’d already made his writing smaller, trying to squeeze in the last couple of sentences before he ran out of space. He turned the page sideways and began to write up the edge of the hide.

He still hadn’t finished when the blood-curdling shriek of an angry queen sliced through his selective deafness.

Megrith? he asked sharply.

Berzunth, Vanzanth replied, even as the rest of the dragonets’ voices rose in response to their queen’s cry.

L’stev pushed his fingertips against his temples, looking down at the report he’d so nearly completed. Then, decisively, he shoved back his chair. Is it Megrith who’s set her off?

No. It’s her rider.

“Her rider?” L’stev asked, surprised enough to say it aloud as he stepped out onto the ledge. Vanzanth was up on his feet, angled intently at the training grounds below. Berzunth was on her hind legs, trumpeting her agitation to the world, and the other Wildfire dragonets had surrounded her in a protective circle. Megrith and Heppeth were on the fringe, looking only slightly less distressed. “What the shaff could Tarshe be up to that would bother her?”

Even as he said it, he thought of several things that would upset an eleven-month-old dragonet, but none that he could imagine Tarshe doing. She was more level-headed than any Weyrlingmaster could hope a queen weyrling to be. Vanzanth turned his head briefly to him, his eye whirling with heightened tension. She says she can’t hear her. Vidrilleth wants to know what the commotion is about. Izath too.

“Vidrilleth and Izath can shaff off,” said L’stev. “What does Berzunth mean, she can’t hear her? As if Tarshe’s blocking her, or she’s unconscious, or what?”

She won’t answer me, said Vanzanth. She’s too upset to listen.

“Then make her listen. And for Faranth’s sake, tell the others to wind their shaffing necks in. One kicking off is bad enough without the whole lot joining in.”

The dragonets’ cries began to cut off as Vanzanth exerted his authority over them, though not with the abruptness L’stev would have expected. It worried him. As the cacophony dwindled to just a couple of counterpoints to Berzunth’s squalling, Vanzanth said, Berzunth’s demanding to see her rider.

“I knew I shouldn’t have let them out to that shaffing Gather,” L’stev growled, annoyed with himself. “See if you can get Darshanth’s attention at Long Bay. Tell him to find Tarshe, report on her status, and then get her back here. I’m not having this.” Then he noticed that only one other weyrling was still wailing. “Is that Jagunth?”

The green dragonet couldn’t compete with Berzunth for volume or effect, but there was no mistaking the sincerity in her voice. Yes, Vanzanth replied, sounding increasingly troubled. Jagunth can’t hear her rider either.

“Faranth’s tits and arse!” L’stev snapped. “What the shaff have those two girls got themselves into?”

Vanzanth didn’t reply – L’stev could feel how his mental agility was being tested, split as it was between reaching to Darshanth at Long Bay and attempting to calm the pair of frantic dragonets. It was almost a relief when Vidrilleth, standing watch up on the Rim, suddenly abandoned his post to head towards the barracks. L’stev didn’t have much time for F’yan, but the authority of his bronze would be welcome in helping to settle Berzunth.

F’yan was shouting before he’d even dismounted from his dragon. “What in the name of the First Egg is going on with the queen?” he bellowed from Vidrilleth’s neck, fumbling to release his safety. “She’s broadcasting to the whole Weyr that she can’t hear her rider!”

“There’s some overreaction going on,” L’stev said aridly, reflecting that the whole Weyr comprised only a couple of dozen dragons besides the weyrlings themselves; almost everyone was out at Long Bay.

F’yan frowned. “Well, have you recalled her rider?”

“C’mine’s on the ground at Long Bay,” L’stev replied, and after pausing to let Vanzanth pass along Darshanth’s report, he added, “He’s looking for the two girls now.”

“Two?”

“One of the greens is upset too,” L’stev said, pointing out Jagunth.

“Faranth,” F’yan swore. “Sharding ash-brained teenage girls. I suppose they’ve decided to mimic the rest of the dragonriders in this Weyr and take the opportunity to pour as much booze down their throats as they can at the Gather.”

It was the most likely explanation – even adult dragons could be distressed by that kind of overindulgence – but it still didn’t ring true. “I don’t think so,” L’stev said. “There are kids in that group I could believe would misbehave, but not Tarshe, and not Carleah.”

“Perhaps you don’t know your weyrlings as well as you think you do,” said F’yan. “Carleah – she’s C’los’ brat, isn’t she? Her father wasn’t exactly known for the soundness of his judgement. The egg doesn’t roll far from the clutch.”

L’stev said, coolly, “And it’s bad luck to speak ill of the dead.”

F’yan ignored that. “Can’t Vanzanth shut her up? That noise is going right through my skull.”

“Have Vidrilleth ask her.”

“Don’t give me orders, L’stev,” F’yan told him. “In case you’d forgotten, I’m in charge here.”

“How could I forget,” said L’stev. “I’m going to have Vanzanth check in with Kawanth, and then I’m bringing the rest of the weyrlings home.”

“Did you not hear what I just said?” F’yan asked, incredulous. “I’ll decide what’s to be done! I’m the ranking rider here!”

L’stev was running out of patience. F’yan had always been an idiot, right back as far as when they’d been weyrlings together. “And I’m the sharding Weyrlingmaster. When weyrlings become the responsibility of a Wingleader who’s only minding the Weyr because everyone else is away, you’ll be welcome to make decisions about them. Until then, if you want to make yourself useful, have your dragon control that queen.”

F’yan drew himself up to deliver a retort, but then Vanzanth and Vidrilleth, in uncanny unison, adopted a listening pose of such urgency that the words never came. What is it? L’stev demanded of Vanzanth.

And as the Bowl began to echo with the cries of alarmed dragons, Vanzanth said, Something has happened at Long Bay.

“What?” L’stev barked.

Something has happened. The queens cannot hear their riders.

“What do you mean, ‘the queens can’t hear their riders’?” F’yan snapped at Vidrilleth, almost at the same moment.

“Can you reach Kawanth?” L’stev asked Vanzanth.

After a moment, Vanzanth replied, Kawanth cannot hear his rider, either. There is uproar. They – He paused, listening, and then continued. They have been told to do nothing, to stay calm and quiet.

“Told? Told by whom?”

By Tezonth’s rider. He has taken the Weyrleaders hostage. He has taken Berzunth’s rider, too. Vanzanth shifted his attention back to the training grounds; automatically, L’stev followed his gaze to Berzunth, frozen now in horror.

“He wants to trade them for Megrith,” F’yan breathed. He’d blanched to a deathly pale hue, and Vidrilleth was whining, his eyes gone yellow and white with distress. He almost staggered, catching himself against his dragon’s leg. “Faranth, he has our queens. What can we do? What can we do?” He looked up at L’stev, his eyes glazed. “We have to hand her over, L’stev.”

“What are you…?” L’stev began, and then broke off as he realised why F’yan and Vidrilleth seemed so poleaxed. It was a colour thing, a manifestation of the bond between a Weyr’s queens and bronzes. A glance up at the Rim confirmed his theory: the three bronzes on watch there looked just as stunned and dismayed as Vidrilleth. L’stev had never seen the phenomenon so clearly illustrated outside a mating flight. “Pull yourself together, man,” he said roughly. “No one’s handing anyone –”

And then behind him, Karika’s tremulous voice blurted, “We’ll go.”

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

LONG BAY HOLD

Outside, dragons roared.

More than one glass on the table toppled over as every rider in the room started at the furious vocalisation. Sh’zon thought he heard Kawanth among the chorus of bellows, but without direct contact he couldn’t be certain. The realisation horrified him.

P’raima looked only mildly irritated at the commotion. “You,” he said, pointing at the wine steward. “You’ll go and tell the servants and guards outside this room that no one is to try to come in and no one is to try to leave.”

The steward looked uncertainly at Coffleby. Gianna’s face was a mask of contained fury. “And what power do you think you have over me, P’raima? I have no dragon for you to hold to ransom.”

“Your grandson does,” said P’raima.

Coffleby looked sharply at G’kalte. Her nostrils flared. “Ervaughn,” she said to the wine steward, “do as you’re bid.”

“L’dro,” said P’raima. “If you ever want to be able to hear your dragon again, you’ll make it your personal responsibility that neither Lady Coffleby nor her servants do anything reckless.”

L’dro blinked stupidly for a moment. Then he stood up so quickly that he tipped over his chair. “You and you,” he said, gesturing at the two servers who were standing by the wine cabinet. “Get over there by the window.”

“This is ridiculous, P’raima,” said Rallai. “What do you think you can possibly gain?”

P’raima ignored her. “Sh’zon,” he said instead. “You can tell every dragon at Long Bay to be silent if they want this to go smoothly.”

“What?” Sh’zon exclaimed.

“You’ll then return to Madellon, where you’ll personally arrange for the transportation of Karika and Megrith back to Southern.”

“I’ll do no such blighted –”

“Once my queen has been returned, I’ll reunite Berzunth with her rider,” P’raima went on. “And once each of you has signed a treaty swearing that no dragon of either of your Weyrs will spread wings over Southern Weyr’s territory ever again, I’ll also provide you with the cure for your dragon-deafness.”

“You can’t possibly think that Pern will let you do this, P’raima,” Valonna said faintly.

“You’re in no position to be worrying about me.” P’raima gestured peremptorily at Sh’zon. “Go. The sooner you facilitate Megrith’s return, the sooner this will be over for all of us.”

Sh’zon wanted to go – more than anything, he wanted to get to Kawanth – but the notion of leaving Valonna and Rallai as P’raima’s hostages was unthinkable. “I’m not going anywhere, you miserable piece of shit!”

P’raima looked at him with unveiled contempt. “I must have misjudged your love for your cousin. You must know I put no value on a Madellon queen.”

“Aye, no value except as a bargaining piece!” Sh’zon roared. “Kill Tarshe and you have nothing to trade to us for Megrith!”

“Who said I needed to kill her?” P’raima asked. “A queen only requires her rider to be alive.”

The threat hit Sh’zon like a punch in the gut. He found himself groping futilely for Kawanth again, seeking his reassurance. His absence was like a missing tooth that the tongue couldn’t help but probe. “You wouldn’t hurt her,” he said, barely able to muster more than a whisper. “She’s just a girl. You wouldn’t.”

“Do as you’re told, and I won’t need to,” said P’raima.

“Sh’zon,” Valonna said, grasping his arm. Her face was pinched and white. “Sh’zon, please, go. At least you can tell our dragons we’re all right.”

“You shaffing go,” L’dro said roughly, from across the table, “and you shaffing well send that girl back where she shaffing came from! You should never have taken her in the first place!”

“I don’t take orders from you!” Sh’zon snarled.

“Enough!” Rallai said, her voice cutting across both of them. “L’dro! Be silent!” She met Sh’zon gaze squarely. “Sh’zon. You need to act for both our Weyrs in this. Go to K’ken.”

“Rallai –” H’pold protested.

“No, H’pold,” she told him. “Give him your Weyrleader’s knot so K’ken knows he’s acting in our stead.”

It was a token of just how desperate the situation was that H’pold only hesitated a moment before untying the rank cord from his shoulder. He flung it angrily across the table at Sh’zon. “Don’t scorch this up,” he said, his icy eyes boring into his.

“I’ve got more reasons than anyone else here not to,” Sh’zon said, picking up the knot and thrusting his arm through it. He looked down at Valonna. She looked back at him with mute entreaty. Sh’zon didn’t need her to say anything to know what she was asking of him. He only hoped he’d be able to deliver it. “G’kalte,” he snapped at the brown rider sitting beside her. “You’re responsible for the Weyrwoman’s safety in my absence.”

“Yes sir,” G’kalte replied immediately.

“Enough of this posturing,” said P’raima. “I’ll expect Megrith back at Southern within the hour, Sh’zon. And just remember, when you and your riders are trying to think of a way around my demands. I have your cousin. Play games with me, and you won’t be getting her back in one piece.”

Sh’zon fixed his stare on P’raima, feeling rage boiling up inside him. Only the painful knowledge that Kawanth would have tamped it down stopped him from expressing it. “I’m not like to forget, P’raima,” he said instead, and with a final glance around the table, he left the room.

Ervaughn was among the cluster of guards and stewards engaged in an urgent conference directly outside. “Wingleader!” the guard captain said, moving as if to stop him.

“Out of my way!” Sh’zon jostled past him, and barely felt the impact of his shoulder against the captain’s mail-clad torso. “I’m under orders, same as you!”

“But, sir,” the guardsman said, trailing after him, “the Gather’s in disarray. The dragons are frantic –”

“You think I need telling that, you shaffing deadglow?”

“But what should we do?”

“You guard that Thread-blighted room and you don’t let anyone in or out until further notice! Faranth’s shaffing teeth, man, out of my way!”

As he took the stairs down from the upper level of the Hold two and three at a time, he heard raised voices from below. More guards and stewards had congregated in Long Bay’s foyer, surrounding a smaller knot of dragonriders from Madellon and the Peninsula. Both sides were shouting at each other, and whatever they were saying was lost in the general cacophony, but Sh’zon could guess. Every dragon on the continent would have picked up on the queens’ distress by now.

L’mis was one of the Madellon riders arguing with Lady Coffleby’s men, but the old Wingleader broke off his angry tirade when he saw Sh’zon. “You!” he shouted. “What in the Void is going on? Where’s Valonna? What’s happened?”

“P’raima’s taken leave of his senses,” Sh’zon snapped. “L’mis, this is important. Tell Pelranth to tell Kawanth to come here, to the main courtyard.”

“But why –”

“Tell him now!”

L’mis, normally the argumentative type, recoiled, visibly taken aback. Then he nodded. “Pelranth’s passed it on,” he said. “Kawanth’s on his way. Sh’zon –”

“Have him find Trebruth, too, and have him and his rider get here this minute,” Sh’zon said. He stabbed a finger at a Peninsula bronze rider – a Wingsecond – who was the highest-ranking representative of his Weyr amongst the group. “J’gorra, is K’ken at the Gather?”

“Y-yes,” the bronze rider said, with creditable promptness, his eyes flicking to the Weyrleader’s rank cord looped over Sh’zon’s shoulder.

“Get him here,” Sh’zon ordered. Then another thought occurred to him. “Where’s Britt?”

“Back at the Weyr,” said J’gorra. “Do you want her to come here too?”

“No,” Sh’zon said sharply. “She’s to stay there. And make sure any bronzes there too are on the highest alert.”

“Is she in danger?” J’gorra asked.

“Yes,” said Sh’zon. “Pass it on!”

The great double-doors of Long Bay Hold were massive and substantial things, but Sh’zon shoved through them as if they were barely there. The bright sunshine hurt his eyes, but the sight of his own dragon gliding over the heights made his heart leap in his breast. Kawanth called out as he backwinged to land, a weird, low, ululating cry that made the hair on the back of Sh’zon’s neck stand up. He reached instinctively towards his dragon to reassure him, but the unnatural barrier that had come down between them thwarted him. “Kawanth!” he shouted instead, and barely waited for him to touch down completely before barging up to him and pressing his hands hard against his neck. “Kawanth, my boy, what’s been done to us?”

Kawanth’s forepaws came around Sh’zon in a cage, almost too hard; he turned his head down, whining anxiously. There was, Sh’zon realised abruptly, no way for him to reply. Even as the thought occurred to him, L’mis – who had trailed Sh’zon out of the Hold – uttered a surprised yelp. “Faranth, Sh’zon,” he said, “your dragon just spoke to me!”

Sh’zon thumped Kawanth’s forepaw encouragingly, proud of his initiative. “Aye, and what did he say?”

“He said he…” L’mis cleared his throat, evidently embarrassed as well as discomfited by the imposition of another man’s dragon on his mind. “He says he doesn’t want you to ever leave his sight again.”

“It’s all right,” Sh’zon said, turning back to face his bronze. “I’m here, Kawanth, I’m with you, I’m not going anywhere.” He screwed up his stinging eyes, trying to organise his thoughts. P’raima, the queens, Tarshe, Karika…it was all too much.

“Sh’zon,” L’mis said, sounding baffled, “what happened? The queens started screaming that they couldn’t talk to their riders. Can you…not hear him?”

“Get Pelranth to soothe the queens,” Sh’zon said, ignoring the question. “Tell them their riders are fine, but they have to stay calm. Get the other bronzes to reinforce if you have to. The queens have to stay calm and quiet.”

L’mis’ face, gradually draining of colour, betrayed his alarm, but to his credit he didn’t query the order. As he communicated with his bronze, wearing an expression of intense concentration, Trebruth arrowed in. Kawanth was already taking up most of the room in Long Bay’s inner courtyard, but the little brown turned nearly on a wingtip before squeezing himself into the small amount of space left. As M’ric dismounted, Sh’zon saw Essienth, K’ken’s distinctive bronze, settle just outside the courtyard.

“Kawanth,” he said, pushing at the forepaws his dragon had linked around him. “I need you to let me go. I won’t leave your sight, I promise, but I have to talk to these riders.” He put his hands on his bronze’s muzzle, looking up into his nearside eye, spinning agitatedly orange-red. “Do you understand?”

“He says he does,” L’mis said, behind Sh’zon, even as Kawanth grudgingly unclasped his grip. Having Kawanth’s remarks filtered through another rider was a deeply unsettling thing.

K’ken strode over from his dragon at a long-legged lope that belied his usual steady temperament. “What in the Void is going on?”

Sh’zon held up a hand. “Let me talk,” he told the Peninsula’s Deputy Weyrleader. He glanced around the group: L’mis, J’gorra, K’ken, the captain of Long Bay’s guards, and finally at M’ric, whose expression gave nothing away. He took a deep breath. “P’raima of Southern has taken Lady Coffleby and the Weyrleaders of Madellon and the Peninsula hostage. They’re unharmed,” he went on, cutting across the round of oaths that greeted his statement. “They’re all fine. But P’raima must have put something in the wine he brought.” He hesitated, glancing back at Kawanth, hating to say it out loud. “Now none of us can hear our own dragons. That’s why the queens have been going mad.”

“What –” K’ken tried again.

“Questions later,” Sh’zon snapped. “Listen to me. P’raima said he’s also had Tarshe taken captive here at the Gather. Madellon’s weyrling queen rider.”

“Faranth!” L’mis swore. “He wants to exchange her for Megrith?”

“Aye,” said Sh’zon, grimly. “He says he’ll hand Tarshe over if we send Karika and Megrith back to Southern. And he’ll give us an antidote to whatever he gave us that’s made us dragon-deaf if we pledge never to interfere with Southern Weyr again.”

L’mis shook his head incredulously. “Blight it, Sh’zon, I said nothing good would ever come of taking those weyrlings from Southern!”

“Be that as it may, we can’t change it,” Sh’zon said. “P’raima has us by the balls. He has Tarshe, and he has our Weyrleaders. And your Lady,” he added, glancing at the guard captain.

“But he has to be bluffing,” L’mis objected. “He’s a dragonrider. He wouldn’t hurt a weyrling. That…that would mean Exile. It would mean…Separation.”

The word made every rider present flinch. “I don’t reckon he cares,” said Sh’zon. “He seems to think he has nothing left to lose. Or at least, a lot shaffing less than we do.”

“Why did he let you out?” K’ken asked.

“To arrange Megrith’s return to Southern,” said Sh’zon. Even saying the words made him bristle. “That’s what I’m meant to be doing right now.”

L’mis looked at him incredulously. “You’re not going to comply?”

For the first time in the months Sh’zon had known L’mis, he felt a jolt of respect for him. L’mis had voted against bringing the Southern weyrlings to Madellon in the first place, and he’d been an antagonistic voice on the bronze rider Council ever since Sh’zon had joined Madellon. But the man knew when to show solidarity, and that gave Sh’zon heart. “Do what that murderous bastard of a Southern watch-wher tells me to? You’re shaffing right I’m not!”

“Shards,” K’ken murmured.

Sh’zon grabbed the Weyrleader’s shoulder-knot H’pold had given him. “See this?” he asked. “H’pold and Rallai authorised me to act for the Peninsula. Can I trust you to respect their appointment?”

K’ken paused only for a moment before nodding. “You can.”

“Good man,” Sh’zon said. “Everything I need from the Peninsula will go through you.”

“What do you need?” K’ken asked. “What are you going to do?”

Sh’zon risked a glance at M’ric, hoping he knew what he was thinking. Faranth, but it was frustrating not being able to communicate via their dragons! “We have to get to Tezonth,” he said. “If we can get him, we have P’raima.”

“Essienth says he’s not here,” said K’ken.

“Of course he’s not here,” Sh’zon said. “P’raima’s mad, not stupid. He knows Tezonth’s his weakness, same as we do, so he’s stashed him away somewhere we won’t easily find him.”

“Someone else at Southern has to know where he is,” said K’ken. “He can’t possibly be acting alone.”

“On the contrary,” said L’mis, shaking his head, “I’d be amazed if he weren’t. He’s always run Southern tighter than a watch-wher’s tailfork. Never liked to delegate anything important to anyone. It may have been a few Turns since I was Madellon’s Weyrleader, but I doubt P’raima’s leadership style has become more inclusive since then.”

“Then who’s spirited away your queen weyrling?” asked K’ken. “You’re not telling me she’s still here at the Gather? No. Someone at Southern knows something.”

“D’pantha,” Sh’zon spat. “He was meant to be here in P’raima’s place. We get over to Southern now, we put the squeeze on him –”

“And who’s going to do the squeezing?” L’mis demanded. “Bronze against bronze is a stalemate, and all the queens are out of commission!”

“Not all of them,” K’ken contradicted him. “Tynerith’s at the Peninsula.”

L’mis snorted. “She’s still a weyrling! No juvenile queen can exert an influence over the bronzes of another Weyr until she’s risen for the first time.”

K’ken frowned, obviously unable to counter the validity of L’mis point. “Then we petition the North’s queens to intervene.”

“The North won’t get involved,” L’mis said dismissively.

“P’raima’s completely out of line –”

“And some argued that Madellon was in taking Southern’s weyrlings in the first place,” L’mis cut across him. “They’re not going to send a queen to wade into this Thread-storm.”

“But –”

“Stop flapping your gums at each other!” Sh’zon barked, losing patience with the debate. “Queen or not, we can’t be rolling up at Southern empty-handed. We try to put any pressure on a Southern dragon, you can bet P’raima’ll be the first to know. I’m not having him getting twitchy with Tarshe’s well-being!”

K’ken and L’mis both looked askance at him, and then K’ken winced. “Faranth,” he said, “she’s your cousin, isn’t she?”

“My cousin,” said Sh’zon. “My Weyr. My responsibility.” He took a deep breath, then looked between L’mis and K’ken. “Can you both get your Weyr’s dragons calm? Queens included?”

L’mis nodded, and a moment later, so did K’ken, adding, “What about the Southern dragons?”

“Leave them alone,” Sh’zon said. “I don’t want to give P’raima any excuse to claim we’ve been threatening his riders. K’ken, I need Britt and Tynerith briefed on the situation. She doesn’t have the authority of a mature queen, but she’s the closest thing we have. If it comes to a face-off with Tezonth we’re going to need her.” He turned to L’mis. “I need you on point here, L’mis. Get hold of C’mine and find out what in the Void happened with Tarshe. And –”

“It’s not just Tarshe,” L’mis said suddenly. “There are two weyrlings missing.”

“Two?” Sh’zon demanded. “P’raima didn’t say anything about there being two!”

“Vanzanth’s reporting that one of the green dragonets can’t hear her rider, either,” said L’mis. “Jagunth’s rider, Carleah.”

“Find out what happened to them,” Sh’zon said. He pointed at Coffleby’s guard captain. “You, bring in your stewards. Two weyrlings can’t just have disappeared in the middle of a Gather. Someone must have seen something.”

“Straightaway, Weyrleader,” the captain replied. He looked grateful to have an order to follow.

“You report to L’mis, here, you understand?” Sh’zon told him.

“Where are you going?” asked K’ken.

“Where I’m supposed to be going,” said Sh’zon. “Madellon. Now go. Go!”

The other men scattered to their tasks. Sh’zon gave them a count of ten to disappear around Kawanth’s bulk before turning to squint at M’ric. “Where, M’ric?”

M’ric returned his gaze. “Where what?”

“Where is she?” Sh’zon asked. He ground the words out. “Tarshe. Where does P’raima have her?”

“I don’t know, Sh’zon.”

“Then where’s Tezonth? Where is he, blight it?”

“I don’t know that, either –”

Sh’zon raised his hands in an involuntarily motion, itching to grab M’ric by the front of his shirt and rattle the truth out of him. He thought better of it, and clenched his fists instead. “Tarshe’s been kidnapped,” he said, through teeth gritted so hard his jaw hurt. “Rallai and Valonna are P’raima’s hostages. I can’t hear my own dragon. This isn’t the time for you to be shaffing coy.”

“I’m not being coy, Sh’zon,” M’ric insisted.

“Then tell me what to do!”

It was the appeal Sh’zon had never spoken, the plea he’d always refused to voice; the entreaty his pride had never allowed him to make. He’d always listened to his Wingsecond’s advice. He’d often acted on the unnaturally privileged insights M’ric shared with him. He’d certainly profited from them. And perhaps he’d never thanked the brown rider as sincerely as he ought. Perhaps he’d not rewarded him adequately for his services over the Turns. Perhaps he’d taken him too much for granted. Because even as Sh’zon begged him for guidance, as he’d never begged him before, the implacable look in M’ric’s sharp dark eyes didn’t flicker. “Please. M’ric, please.”

“I can’t help you this time, Sh’zon,” said M’ric. “Not the way you want me to.”

“What do you mean, you can’t? Between with can’t! Get on your dragon, jump forward a couple of days, and –”

“Don’t be a shaffing idiot,” M’ric said, in a tone he’d never taken with Sh’zon before. For the first time ever, Sh’zon saw something dark and frightening in M’ric’s eyes. It shook him. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“What are you talking about? You’ve been going between times your whole life!”

“Not by choice,” M’ric said curtly. “Never by choice. I’ve done it because I’ve had to, because I already have. Not because I want to. Faranth knows there are times I’ve wished I hadn’t. Time isn’t my servant, Sh’zon. I dance to its tune.”

It was the most Sh’zon had ever heard M’ric say about his timing, and among the most impassioned sentiments he’d ever heard his calm and unshakeable second express, but he still didn’t understand. “I’m not asking you to interfere,” he said. “I just need a hint. A clue to where I can find Tarshe. Faranth, M’ric, after all we went through to get her on Berzunth, why would you do this to her?”

“I’m not doing anything to her –”

“But P’raima will!” Sh’zon cried. “You didn’t see him, Malric; he’s lost his mind! He’ll hurt her! I know he will!”

“Then send Megrith back,” said M’ric, with brutal bluntness. “Or don’t, and find another way. I’ve already done more than I should have. The rest is on you.”

Sh’zon stared at him, incredulous, but M’ric’s face was like stone. “You treacherous sack of shit,” he said, and grabbed the rank cord that looped M’ric’s shoulder. He ripped it off, threw it at his feet, and spat on it. “You’re no Wingsecond of mine!”

It felt like his brain was on fire with fury as he turned back to Kawanth. If the bronze had grasped the ferocity of their exchange, it didn’t show; his eyes were agitated orange-red, but no more so than they had been already. “Shaffit!” Sh’zon swore. He grabbed his dragon’s jaw. “Kawanth, I need you to take us to Madellon!”

Kawanth rumbled with what Sh’zon hoped was assent. It occurred to him, as he vaulted to his place between the ridges, that he would have to trust his dragon’s courage and intelligence as he’d never had to trust it before. And his own. Because with Kawanth cut off, M’ric turned traitor, and the weight of Pern upon his shoulders, Sh’zon had never felt so lost, or so alone, or so afraid.

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

LONG BAY HOLD

The daze had come over C’mine even before the queens started screaming. His heart began to thump painfully hard in his chest; Darshanth’s increasingly panicky reports resounded in his brain; everything he’d eaten roiled queasily in his belly. He felt himself take one staggering step, and then the ground rushed up to meet him.

It was only as he lay there, staring at the worn stubble that had once been grass, with people converging on him like wherries on a carcass, that he comprehended what was happening.

C’mine crawled to his feet, striking away the helping hands that grasped at him. Weyrlings. He saw their pale faces as if through a fog, hazy, distorted, as K’dam and K’ralthe helped to heave him upright. J’kovu looked white-faced, shocked. There were others. He knew he should gather them. He was surprised to find that part of his brain was still capable of counting and tallying, but that part seemed far removed from the small, tight kernel of focus at his centre. So did the portion that comforted the distraught Maris as she stammered a bewildered account of where they’d last seen Tarshe and Carleah; the portion that noticed the five letters, freshly tattooed and still bleeding, on Soleigh’s bare arm, B-R-I-S-T – her dragon’s name, incomplete; the portion that felt Darshanth’s distress at being interrogated by Pelranth.

But the voices still echoed in his head, and overlapping images still shifted and eddied confusingly in front of his eyes.

More weyrlings arrived, escorted by adult riders. Someone was talking excitedly about a Southern rider who’d been found and detained and questioned. Someone else said that Shimpath had landed in the main Gather square, scattering people and destroying stalls. One of the youngest weyrlings was crying for his dragon.

He is coming, said Darshanth.

He is close, said Darshanth.

Darshanth’s voice reverberated queerly, as though coming from two directions simultaneously, and a fresh wave of nausea turned C’mine’s stomach inside out. He clutched at his belly, fighting to keep everything contained, in his head as well as in his gut. Darshanth – both of him – whined unhappily.

And then C’mine saw himself. Not his double, but himself, surrounded by frightened weyrlings, holding his stomach as though it were about to rip open. As he looked around to find the source of the vision, struggling to discern his own reality from his other self’s, his eyes fell upon a figure wearing  an unseasonable foul-weather cape, a cape whose hood had been pulled down to shadow its wearer’s face. C’mine looked at himself looking at himself, like an image bounced endlessly between two mirrors, and the sheer unnatural wrongness of it pressed down with implacable weight on his mind.

He walked towards himself, helpless to resist. Each step that closed the distance made the unspeakable pressure intensify, as if there were only sanity enough in the world for one C’mine to exist at a time. Both Darshanths were groaning now in an infinite loop of misery. And C’mine wondered, as he teetered on the brink of a metaphysical abyss, if to touch his other self would be an offence against the natural order of things so egregious that it would at a stroke obliterate them both from existence, or else tear the universe itself apart.

He stopped an arm’s length from the second him. He saw, beneath the shadow of the hood, a dim, sickly light reflected in his eyes. “Is she alive?” he croaked, with a throat gone dry.

“Giskara Basin,” said his future self, in a voice that echoed weirdly.

“Is she alive?”

The hooded figure shook his head. “I can’t tell you what I didn’t tell you. I wish I could say more. He never meant for this to happen.”

“Who?” C’mine pleaded. “Please! For Leah’s sake! Who?”

“I’m sorry,” the other C’mine said. “I can’t.”

“Please!” C’mine cried, and grabbed at his double.

Both Darshanths screamed.

When consciousness returned, the other C’mine was gone.

Chapter forty-six: L’stev, Carleah, Valonna

The rainforests of Southern territory have yielded hundreds of species of heretofore unknown herbs, roots, and fungi with extraordinary properties. The advances we have been able to make in the development of medicines since the Southern Continent was first settled have transformed the work of the Healerhall beyond all recognition. We must, therefore, continue to invest resources and personnel into the exploration of Southern’s botanical riches – whatever political capital must be expended to guarantee our crafters unrestricted access.

– Letter from Southern Masterhealer Tuvender to Northern Masterhealer Knoriam

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Kawanth incoming, Vanzanth reported, and a moment later Sh’zon’s bronze appeared in the sky above Madellon, his eyes glowing an unsettling shade of purple-red even at that distance.

Call him down, L’stev told Vanzanth, and held up a hand to Karika and T’gala, who had joined her Weyrmate. “Give Sh’zon a moment to get here,” he told them. “You shouldn’t have to do this twice.”

Karika looked sick, having already been asked to hold her peace once, to allow H’ned to stagger his way over to the barracks. Even stinking of booze and looking like shit, Izath’s rider engendered slightly more trust in L’stev than F’yan did, but neither man was his idea of a safe pair of hands. At least Sh’zon wasn’t hungover or hysterical. If he’d had more time, L’stev would have been ashamed of the calibre of Madellon’s bronze riders, that a foreigner should be their most viable leader in a crisis.

But Sh’zon looked shaken, a shadow of his overbearing self. Berzunth, her hide gone an almost chalky shade of its normal pale gold, reared over him as he approached, shrieking accusations, and Sh’zon cringed back, holding up his hands. “I’ll get her back, Berzunth! I swear, I’ll get her back!”

“Berzunth!” L’stev snapped at the young queen, and felt Vanzanth reinforce the command. “Let him by!”

Berzunth subsided just enough to let Sh’zon pass. Between his own distress and the intimidation of a queen dragon’s rancour, Sh’zon looked barely capable of locomotion, let alone leadership. L’stev abandoned protocol, pulling the three bronze riders a little way apart from Karika. “Report!”

Sh’zon almost looked grateful for a command to follow. “It’s P’raima,” he said. “He’ll do anything to get Megrith back.”

“The facts, Sh’zon,” L’stev told him crisply.

To Sh’zon’s credit, he seemed to pull himself somewhat together. He outlined the state of affairs in concise, staccato sentences: the kidnap of the weyrlings, the hostage situation in Lady Coffleby’s dining room, the terrifying disconnection P’raima had somehow engineered between riders and dragons. And the P’raima’s demands: the immediate return of Karika and Megrith, and the binding oath of the other Weyrs that Southern would henceforth be exempt from all outside interference.

“P’raima’s lost his mind,” said H’ned. “He can’t hold Karika or any of us to an oath sworn at the point of a knife.”

“The point of a knife positioned over our queen weyrling’s heart!” said F’yan. “No one’s denying that P’raima’s lost his grip on sanity, but that’s all the more reason not to call his bluff!”

“So we give in to the demands of a rider who doesn’t scruple to kidnap weyrlings or forcibly separate dragons from their riders?” asked H’ned. “What message does that send to Pern, that Madellon will roll over to a madman?”

“The message that we place our queens’ welfare above everything else!” F’yan snapped. “We can’t play games with Berzunth’s life! Sh’zon, the girl’s your cousin; won’t you at least see sense?”

Sh’zon’s face was an agony of conflict. He glanced at Karika. “If we don’t send Megrith back to Southern within the hour…I don’t know what P’raima will do to Tarshe.”

“He can’t kill her,” said H’ned. “If he does that he has no hand left to play.”

“He threatened to harm her!”

H’ned recoiled at the implication. “He couldn’t,” he said, though he sounded less certain. “If he hurt her, Berzunth would find Tezonth and tear him into wherry-bait, oath be scorched.”

“He doesn’t have to hurt Tarshe,” L’stev said. He pointed at Jagunth, huddled in misery between Berzunth and Megrith. “He has Carleah. And if he’ll threaten a queen rider, he sure as shaff won’t hesitate to harm a girl who rides a green.”

“Shaffing Faranth,” Sh’zon groaned. “I didn’t realise he had another girl too.”

“What about his own riders?” H’ned asked. “Do they even know what P’raima’s doing? Would they really tolerate a Weyrleader who’s kidnapped and threatened to hurt weyrlings?”

“Southern’s riders have become a queer lot in the last ten or fifteen Turns,” said F’yan. “Suspicious, clannish. And Tezonth’s been outflying the other bronzes long past the point where physical prowess alone would guarantee him victory. We have to assume that P’raima’s riders support his actions. If he’s promised them their queen back…” He glanced between Sh’zon and H’ned. “We all know the sort of pressure a desperate bronze can put on his rider.”

“You’d just have us hand Karika over, F’yan?” H’ned asked with disgust.

“I’d do a great deal to preserve the health of our queen weyrling,” F’yan said, bristling. “And P’raima’s not so unreasonable in wanting Megrith back. She’s Southern’s only queen!”

“Karika begged Valonna not to send her back!” Sh’zon shouted. “Megrith threw herself on Shimpath’s mercy!”

“And did she ever say why she was so afraid to go home?” F’yan asked.

“I think it’s time we found out,” L’stev said. He looked over towards the two Southern weyrlings. “Karika. T’gala.”

The two girls came to join them, both looking stricken. Karika repeated her earlier statement. “We’ll go, Weyrleader.”

“We both will,” T’gala added.

“No one’s going anywhere,” L’stev told them.

“I said we’ll go,” Karika insisted. Her voice was resolute, but it shook beneath the determination. She wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. “Don’t make this harder!”

“But why –” H’ned began.

“Because he has Tarshe and Carleah, and they shouldn’t have to suffer because I’m a coward!”

H’ned looked taken aback; F’yan, whose eyes had lit at Karika’s sudden acquiescence, crestfallen. Sh’zon, though, still looked grim. “Why?” he asked, moving closer to Karika. He put his fingers under her chin, lifting her face to make her look at him. “Why did you want so desperately not to go back to Southern?”

Karika looked aside from him, her eyes angry and ashamed, though she didn’t pull away.

“Is it P’raima?” Sh’zon asked. “Has he threatened you?”

She shook herself angrily free of him. “You don’t understand.”

“Has he threatened you?” Sh’zon asked again, more urgently. “Or said he will? Karika, please. You have to tell us.”

“Karika,” L’stev said. “Is it to do with Megrith’s mating flight?”

She turned her head sharply; confirmation, then. L’stev forced his instinctive anger back down, and kept his voice level. “Has he told you that Tezonth will fly Megrith when the times comes?” He steeled himself, feeling the strain emanating from the other three adult riders. “Has he done anything to you?”

“No,” Karika said, and then more fiercely, “No! I know what you’re asking, Weyrlingmaster, but he hasn’t touched me!”

A little of that awful tension loosened. L’stev felt his shoulders begin to relax. Then Karika went on, barely in a whisper, “He doesn’t need to. When Megrith rises, Tezonth will fly her.”

“It’s not likely, Karika,” L’stev told her. “Tezonth’s not a young dragon any more. He’ll be even older in a Turn or two when Megrith’s ready to rise, and Southern’s full of stronger, younger bronzes. He doesn’t have a chance against them –”

“They don’t have a chance against him!” Karika shouted. “You don’t know anything about Southern! About P’raima!”

And then T’gala asked her Weyrmate, sounding baffled, “But he takes it like they all do, Karika; we’ve seen him!”

Karika shook her head. Tears had come to her eyes. “He has a way around it,” she said, in scarcely more than a whisper. “That’s how Tezonth kept flying Grizbath. Not because he’s the best bronze, like we’ve been told for Turns and Turns and Turns. P’raima found a way around it.”

“But…” said T’gala, and then trailed off. “How could he have?”

“Weyrlingmaster?” Sh’zon asked doubtfully.

L’stev gave the tiniest shake of his head, as confused as any of them. “Karika, T’gala,” he said, interrupting the furious conference between the two. “What is it you’re talking about?”

Both girls looked at him with an expression he knew well: the look of weyrlings who’d revealed a confidence they ought not. Then Karika swallowed hard, and said, “Felah.”

“Karika!” T’gala hissed at her.

“Felah?” asked Sh’zon.

“We swore we’d never talk about it,” T’gala said, looking even more distressed. “It’s Southern business!”

“Between with what we swore,” said Karika, though the colour that had come suddenly to her cheeks suggested that she was breaching some terrible taboo.

“What’s felah, Karika?” L’stev asked.

“It’s a…a drink,” she said, darting a look at T’gala, who looked horrified by her confession. “That all the adult riders have.”

“And what does this…drink…do?” Sh’zon asked. His voice had taken on a sort of sick comprehension.

“It makes it so that when dragons rise to mate, their riders aren’t so…” Karika hesitated, her eyes flicking from L’stev to Sh’zon, and over to H’ned and F’yan. “So…out of control.”

“Out of control how?” L’stev asked.

“It’s so green riders don’t get hurt,” T’gala blurted out. She, too, was flushing scarlet.

“It makes the – the flight-merge – less strong,” Karika said. “So that when the riders in a flight, when they…you know…do what the dragons are doing…they don’t hurt each other. They have more control over themselves, because they’re not so deeply linked. It helps them remember who they are instead of just…being their dragons.”

“It’s because of what happened with B’nain,” said T’gala, clearly feeling she was as committed now to telling the story as Karika. “The other blue rider who was…like me.”

“What do you mean, like you?” asked Sh’zon.

T’gala took a deep breath, and raised her head defiantly. “A girl,” she said. Her voice broke on the word. “I’m a blue rider and a girl.”

“Faranth alive,” L’stev heard F’yan breathe.

Sh’zon looked only momentarily perplexed. “Well, what’s that go to do with anything?” he asked T’gala. “What happened to B’nain?”

“Her blue won a mating flight,” T’gala said. “And then he and the green dragon both went between and died. Because their riders were both girls.”

H’ned had looked startled by T’gala’s confession, but now he just looked baffled. “Why should that matter?” he asked, glancing at L’stev.

“Happens with two lads together if they’re not ready for it,” L’stev said. “If they’ve not been prepared for the possibility, if they can’t figure out how to make it work, if it breaks them out of the merge…”

“But how in the…” H’ned began, until Sh’zon cut him off with a curt gesture.

“This felah,” he said, looking from Karika to T’gala and back. “It interferes with the connection between a dragon and rider?”

Karika nodded. “So the dragon’s feelings can’t overwhelm the rider’s.”

“Can it stop a rider talking to his dragon completely?” Sh’zon asked.

“I…” Karika said uncertainly. She glanced at T’gala,  but she shook her head, just as unsure. “I…suppose it could. If it was strong enough.”

“Faranth,” Sh’zon said, half to himself. “Faranth.”

“Felah,” said H’ned. “It sounds like a derivative of fellis.”

“It was in the sharding wine,” Sh’zon said. “That shaffing sherry P’raima brought to the luncheon. I thought it was bitter for a Southern sticky. It was the Thread-blighted fellis I could taste!”

“So that’s why you can’t hear Kawanth,” said H’ned. “P’raima must have put a massive dose in your wine to block him off completely.”

“Not completely,” Sh’zon said. He looked towards his dragon, shading his eyes with his hand, and put his fist to his chest. “I can still feel him here.”

“Is there an antidote?” L’stev asked Karika.

“I think P’raima has one,” she said. She swallowed, and said faintly, “Margone warned me, the night we left Southern…I think he must.”

“Which would be why Tezonth kept winning Grizbath’s mating flights all these Turns,” said H’ned. “If P’raima’s in full flight-merge and all the other bronze riders are partly blocked by this felah stuff, it’s no wonder Tezonth has an edge.”

“How long does the effect last?” Sh’zon asked. “It must wear off eventually?”

“Our riders – Southern’s riders – take it every day,” Karika said. “But I don’t know if that’s just because they get upset without it.”

“Upset?” asked H’ned.

“Sort of…jumpy,” said Karika. “Jumpy and bad-tempered.”

“Of course they get upset,” L’stev said disgustedly. “It’s made with fellis. Fellis is a narcotic.”

“Faranth’s teeth,” said H’ned. The last vestiges of his hangover seemed to have evaporated. “That’s how P’raima’s been controlling Southern all these Turns. He’s got them all addicted.”

For a moment they all stood there in silence, each struggling to absorb the magnitude of the revelation. “Weyrlings,” L’stev said at last, “go back to your dragons. We need to discuss what’s to be done next.”

As Karika and T’gala crossed the training ground back to their dragonets, F’yan said, “None of this helps us get Tarshe back.”

“Well I’m blighted between if I’m sending either of these girls back to Southern now,” H’ned said hotly. “Something has to be done about P’raima.”

“No question, but he has us by the balls,” said L’stev. “And if we don’t –”

Darshanth’s on his way in, Vanzanth reported. His rider has news.

Darshanth’s broadcast must have reached Vidrilleth and Izath as well; F’yan and H’ned both looked up expectantly. Only Sh’zon didn’t react. It was a nasty reminder of his current condition.

Then Darshanth came out of between in the Bowl itself, barely two dragonlengths above the ground: too low, too erratic, and much too fast. “Vanzanth!” L’stev bellowed, but he was already in motion, and Kawanth not much more than half a length behind him. As Darshanth veered crazily towards the ground, his profile all wrong for his speed and altitude, brown and bronze leapt to meet him. Vanzanth sprinted with quick, short wingbeats to get below the careening blue, but Darshanth was dropping too fast for a catch. Instead, Vanzanth ducked his head between his forearms and thrust up towards the blue’s underside. L’stev felt as much as heard the impact as his brown rammed Darshanth from below with his shoulders, checking his fall without arresting it completely. An instant later, Kawanth was there. Vanzanth dipped a wing and rolled away, and Sh’zon’s bronze lunged down to grab Darshanth from above as if catching a green in flight.

“Shaff!” Sh’zon bellowed, as Kawanth backwinged ponderously to deposit Darshanth safely on the ground.

L’stev could feel how shaken and bruised Vanzanth was. Well flown, he told him. Get a hold of Darshanth. He’s a wraith.

H’ned and F’yan hauled C’mine down from his shuddering dragon. “What in the Void were you thinking, C’mine?” H’ned shouted.  “You know better than to come in that low!”

“Giskara Basin,” C’mine muttered. “Giskara Basin. That’s where they are.”

Sh’zon grabbed his arm. “What?”

“That’s where he has them,” C’mine said weakly.

“What are you talking about? How do you know that?”

“It doesn’t matter how I know,” C’mine said. His face was drawn with more than just anguish: he looked sick. “Just please believe me. Carleah and Tarshe are somewhere in Giskara Basin.”

Sh’zon exchanged glances with H’ned, then turned to L’stev. “Weyrlingmaster?”

But L’stev was scanning C’mine’s face, recognising a certain disturbance in his expression, a febrile mania in his eyes. “C’mine,” he snapped. “Did you time it? Is that how you know?” He pushed Sh’zon roughly out of the way to seize C’mine by his shoulders, staring down into his face. “Faranth’s shaffing tailfork, man, did you meet yourself?” When C’mine nodded jerkily, L’stev shoved him hard, enraged. “You shaffing Thread-struck idiot!”

“Doesn’t matter,” C’mine said. His voice was a rasping whisper. “I don’t matter. Giskara Basin. Please. We have to get her back.”

Ordinarily, a rider caught going between times would have been a serious disciplinary matter, but the three bronze riders barely seemed to blink at the provenance of C’mine’s intelligence. “Can’t you be any more specific?” Sh’zon asked him brusquely. “Giskara Basin’s twenty miles across.”

“It’s thick jungle, besides,” F’yan added.

“And the sun’s going to start going down soon in Southern territory,” H’ned said. “Fast, this time of Turn, and that far north.”

“Do we even know what we’re looking for?” asked Sh’zon. “He’ll hardly have them out in the open.”

C’mine just shook his head. “Giskara is all I know,” he said. “It must be enough or he…I…wouldn’t have… Please, we’ll go; Darshanth’s night vision is –”

“You’re not going anywhere,” L’stev told him. “You’re grounded until I say otherwise.” He stabbed a finger into C’mine’s chest. “And we’re going to have a conversation when this is over.”

“F’yan,” said H’ned, “have Vidrilleth get Darshanth a herdbeast, and take C’mine to the infirmary. Isnan needs to check him over.”

“Wait a moment!” F’yan objected, looking outraged. “The Weyrwoman left me in command!”

“And now I’m relieving you of it!” Sh’zon snapped. “Do as you’re shaffing well told!”

F’yan threw a mulish look at both Deputy Weyrleaders. He grabbed C’mine’s arm and yanked him into motion. “Come along, blue rider!”

“We need to get the Ops Wing in the air,” H’ned said, as F’yan half led, half dragged C’mine away. “Sh’zon, how quickly –”

Sh’zon cut him off. “No.”

H’ned looked at him as if he were crazy. “What? Aerial survey of difficult terrain is exactly what Ops was created to do!”

“I don’t care!” Sh’zon’s face had darkened. “I said no and I mean it!”

“Did you have a row with your sharding Wingsecond?” H’ned asked. “Thread blight it, Sh’zon, you pick your moment!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about! I am not authorising that Wing’s deployment!”

“Well, I sharding well am.”

“You’re still drunk!” Sh’zon shouted, turning on him. “You’re a Thread-blighted disgrace!”

“And you can’t hear your shaffing dragon!” H’ned shouted back. “Faranth knows how that concoction P’raima’s fed you is affecting your judgement!”

“There’s nothing wrong with my judgement!”

“You left Valonna in that snake’s den!” H’ned roared, and suddenly his voice rang with rancour. “You left her there, you sharding coward!”

Sh’zon looked dumbstruck by the accusation. “I didn’t have a choice!” he protested, suddenly on the back foot.

“You always have a choice! Faranth, Sh’zon! She’s still half a girl!”

“I didn’t –”

“Why don’t both of you shut your shaffing mouths,” L’stev suggested, in the rasping growl that had cut through a hundred weyrling quarrels. “You can cross-examine each other’s fitness to lead after this business is resolved. Squabbling over who’s more at fault isn’t getting me my shaffing weyrlings back. Faranth alive, that Madellon’s in the hands of you two tail-forks!” He aimed a finger at Sh’zon. “You’ve clearly had a falling-out with your Wingsecond. That doesn’t excuse him from his duties.” He moved the finger to point at H’ned. “Have Izath order Trebruth to muster the Ops Wing.”

“Blight it all, L’stev, P’raima’s threatened to hurt Tarshe if we try anything,” Sh’zon protested. “If he finds out we have dragons surveying Giskara…”

“All the more reason to use Ops,” said H’ned. “They’ve been drilled in stealth and silent manoeuvres. Or haven’t you read your own man’s training reports?”

Sh’zon looked trapped. “But we’re running out of time,” he said. “P’raima wanted Megrith back within the hour. There’s no...no time!”

“Don’t either of you even say it,” L’stev barked, as both bronze riders glanced in C’mine’s direction. “Nothing good ever came of timing!”

“What, then?” H’ned asked. “We can’t send Megrith back to Southern. Not now.”

We can’t send a queen anywhere she doesn’t want to go, said Vanzanth.

Not for the first time in his life, L’stev thanked the serendipity that had brought him a brilliant, pragmatic, and humble brown dragon, rather than a hysterical bronze.

“No,” he said, feeling a dragonish grin stretch his face. “We can’t.”

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

GISKARA BASIN, SOUTHERN TERRITORY

She didn’t think she’d ever actually lost consciousness, not completely, but there was still a moment of awakening, a passing from vagueness into clarity, when the indistinct fog in her head thinned, and the world began to come back into some manner of focus.

But it was a while longer, as Carleah lay there, aware mostly of a thick sour taste in her mouth, and a buzzing roar in her ears, and a jabbing discomfort between her ribs and the straw-scratchy floor, before brain and body clicked fully together, and the recollection of what had happened flooded back into her mind in a rush.

“Jagunth!” she half-gasped, half-screamed, aware all at once that her hands were bound behind her, and that her eyes were covered, but most painfully of all that the place where her green dragon’s gentle presence should have met hers, where their thoughts leaned up against each other’s, was inexplicably, terrifyingly silent. “Oh Faranth, Jagunth, Jagunth, where are you, why can’t I feel you?”

“Carleah!” a voice hissed.

She turned her head blindly in the direction of the whisper, feeling tears wetting the strip of fabric tied over her face. “T-Tarshe?”

“Be quiet. I’m trying to listen.”

“Listen to what?” Carleah asked tremulously. “Where are we? Why can’t I hear Jagunth?”

“We’ve been drugged,” said Tarshe. She sounded more matter-of-fact about it than Carleah felt. “Whatever they stuck us with to knock us out seems to be blocking us from hearing our dragons.”

Carleah had a suddenly mental flash of a sharp pain in her arm, followed by an almost instant numb weakness spreading through her body. “Then you can’t hear Berzunth, either?”

“I can’t hear any dragons,” Tarshe said. “That’s why I’m trying to listen to what they’re saying out there.”

“Who’s they?”

“The men who’ve kidnapped us. The ones who are still here, anyway. The dragon left a few minutes ago. I think the ones who are left only have a fire-lizard.” Then she modulated the irritation in her voice. “Can you move?”

“I – I don’t know…” Carleah tried to sit up. Her muscles still felt weak and feeble, but she struggled to a sitting position. The rope binding her wrists behind her back had been tied firmly but not cruelly. She shuffled awkward on her bottom in the direction Tarshe’s voice had come from until she bumped into something softer and more yielding than the hard floor.

“Ouch,” Tarshe hissed. “Careful.”

“Are your hands tied behind you too?” Carleah asked. “Turn around. Maybe we can untie each other.”

Tarshe sighed, but then Carleah felt and heard her shifting around. “They’ve stopped talking now anyway,” Tarshe said.

Carleah flexed her fingers, trying to make some slack in the rope. “Who’s taken us? Where are we? I remember…a boy took your purse…and two Gather stewards…”

“I don’t think they were Gather stewards,” Tarshe said. She sounded grim. “And I don’t have the faintest idea where we are.”

Carleah’s mind raced. She might be tied and blindfolded, but her senses didn’t stop with her eyes. She took in the heat of their location, brushed her fingers against the floor, listened to the sounds she could hear from outside, considered the faint musty odour she could smell.

And then the significance of something Tarshe had said struck her. “What do you mean, you can’t hear any dragons?”

Tarshe said nothing, manoeuvring around so that they sat back to back.

“Tarshe?” Carleah asked, astonished despite herself. “Can you hear dragons other than Berzunth?”

It was a long time before Tarshe replied, “Suppose so.”

“You’re a sensitive? You can hear all dragons?”

“Not all dragons,” Tarshe said. “And not all the time.”

The revelation was enough to make Carleah forget their predicament temporarily. She’d heard of sensitives, but she didn’t think there’d been one in Turns. “Has it always been like that?”

“Don’t know. It’s not like I met many dragons, growing up.” Tarshe’s tone was ironic. “I could always hear my cousin’s bronze if I concentrated. When I was Searched to Madellon I was more interested in keeping all the voices out than tuning in to them.”

“And when you Impressed?”

Tarshe was silent for a moment. “It’s easier, with Berzunth,” she said. “Listening in and blocking out. It’s like she filters out the background noise, but if I want to hear a particular dragon, it’s much sharper and clearer than it used to be.”

“But not all dragons?” Carleah asked.

“Some I can’t hear at all. Other queens. I could never hear the Weyrleader’s bronze, either.”

Carleah felt, and resisted, the urge to ask Tarshe if she’d ever eavesdropped on Jagunth. “Is it just the senior colours you can’t hear?”

“No. I can listen in on most of Madellon’s bronzes, but there are blues and greens I can’t hear. Lovanth’s silent even if I’m touching him, and that usually amplifies it. And Vanzanth’s totally inscrutable. Even Berzunth can’t eavesdrop on him.” Carleah felt Tarshe shrug. “There’s no pattern to it that I can tell.”

“Does your cousin know?” Carleah ask. “Is that why he had you Searched to Madellon?”

“If you had a big angry cousin who rode a bronze, would you want to tell him you could overhear every dirty little joke he and his dragon exchanged?” Tarshe sounded resigned. “I never asked for it. And you get enough sideways looks, riding a queen, without every dragonrider in the Weyr thinking I’m spying on them.” She paused. “Which I’m not.”

“I wish you were, if it meant it would help us now.” The dire situation they’d found themselves in reasserted itself as the priority issue in Carleah’s mind. “We’re somewhere in Southern territory, I think.”

“Must be,” said Tarshe. “They want their weyrlings back, don’t they? T’gala and Karika, in exchange for you and me.”

Carleah started to agree, and then something the bogus Gather steward had said came into her mind. Did we snatch the wrong shaffing weyrling? “I don’t think they meant to take us both,” she said. “Just you.”

“Then why –”

“I was wearing your jacket,” said Carleah. “They weren’t sure they had the right weyrling, so they grabbed me, too, to be certain.” She thought about it. “Have you ever met P’raima? The Southern Weyrleader?”

“Don’t think I’ve ever met a Southern rider at all, apart from the weyrlings,” said Tarshe. “Suppose I would have, after the Hatching, but then given what happened –” She stopped herself abruptly. “See if you can get at my rope. My fingers are numb.”

It was too late for the change of subject – Carleah had already completed Tarshe’s sentence mentally – but she was touched at the consideration. She stretched her fingers out to feel at Tarshe’s bonds. They seemed tighter than hers. “It’s all right,” she said, starting to pick at the knots, and hoping she sounded brisk. “You don’t have to tiptoe around it.”

“Must have been hard for you,” Tarshe said. “Losing your dad the day you Impressed your dragon. The Weyrbred weyrlings, I don’t think they get it sometimes; what it’s like, to be part of a family.”

There was a strange edge to her voice; a brittle defensiveness. Carleah shifted a bit, trying to get a better position to get at Tarshe’s bonds. The silence was horrible. She didn’t want to think about the awful situation they were in. “What happened?” she blurted, almost despite herself. “I mean…that is…what really happened?”

“What really happened?” Tarshe echoed.

“With your family,” said Carleah. “That they were exiled to the islands. Did they really…kill all those cotholders?”

“Oh, aye, they did,” Tarshe said, with chilling nonchalance.

It jolted Carleah that Tarshe could be so blasé about it. “But…everyone? Even…even the children?”

“There weren’t any children; at least, none that my folk ever hurt. That’s a Harper’s tale, invented to make my father and his brother sound like mad killers.”

“But you said they did kill them.”

“It wasn’t that simple,” Tarshe said. “It didn’t happen like people say it did.”

Carleah burned to ask more questions, but Da had once told her that silence was sometimes the best prompt of all. She kept picking at the tough fibres of the rope, and eventually, Tarshe said, “Klauverte’s place wasn’t even a proper cotholding. Just a mining camp. Not even a dozen men…and one woman.”

Carleah kept quiet, though her mind was automatically turning over every fact to glean Tarshe’s meaning from it.

“My father’s cothold had been in that valley thirty Turns,” Tarshe went on. “My grandfather founded it, and even called it after him, because he was the first of his children to be born there. My dad Shevran, my uncle Shondan, and my aunt Shofia – they all took over the cot when Grandfather died. The whole of Shevran was just them and three other families.

“When Klauverte turned up with his men to prospect the western end of the valley, my dad wasn’t happy. It was his holding, granted to Grandfather by Holder Erric, and he was worried about the miners being so close. Well, Erric was more interested in that copper, but he promised that if Klauverte’s prospectors turned up enough ore to make the mine viable, then a fifth of its yield would belong to Shevran, it being partly on our land. So Shevran could hardly complain that they were there after that.

“But Klauverte’s men were…ruffians. Father thought some of them might even have been Holdless. They’d come up to the cothold sometimes to trade for food, but…things would go missing. They’d stare at the women, and even the girls. I was just a babe in arms, but my cousins were ten and twelve Turns, and it frightened them, when these rough men would turn up, all dirty and stinking of sweat, and leering at them as they did their chores. Shevran and Shondan rode down to the mining camp to ask Klauverte to keep his men in check, but he laughed at them and said it was just high spirits because their…the woman who was with them in the camp…was indisposed.” Tarshe paused. “Then one day, not long after that…my aunt Shofia went missing.”

Carleah felt Tarshe give a little shiver. She was hard pushed not to shudder herself at the implication. “What happened?”

“She’d gone to empty the fish traps at the riverbend, near the mining camp,” said Tarshe. “When Merigen, her husband, realised she was missing, they went out looking for her. They found her baskets and her shawl on the river bank, but no sign of her.

“It was hours before they found her. She was stumbling back towards the cothold. Her clothes all torn, her face swollen and dirty, her…” Tarshe broke off, and then she said, “She’d been raped. Not just once, not just by one man. They’d broken her jaw, and she could hardly talk, but she said enough. Two of Klauverte’s men had found her alone by the river. They’d propositioned her, and when she refused them, they forced her. Then they’d taken her back to their camp.”

Carleah’s stomach turned a horrible somersault. “Oh, no.”

“Merigen took the fastest runner up to the Hold,” Tarshe went on relentlessly. “For a Healer, and to report what had happened to his wife. The Healer came straightaway, but Holder Erric’s constable was away and wouldn’t be back for a sevenday. So my father, and Merigen and Shondan, rode down to the camp to confront Klauverte.

“Klauverte denied everything. He said they had no way to prove that his men had anything to do with the rape. He even said that he’d heard there was a band of Holdless men at large in the region, and perhaps they were the culprits. And all the time his men were lined up, smirking and sniggering behind their hands.

“Merigen went mad. He flew at them, even knocked one of them down with his fists, though Merigen wasn’t a big man. Then they mobbed him. They broke his arm and his ribs, and spat on him while he lay there. And all Dad and Shondan could do was carry him away before they killed him.”

Tarshe paused again. When she resumed speaking, her normally steady voice trembled almost imperceptibly. “So that night, Dad, and Shondan, and the other men of the cothold, strapped on their knives, and their hunting bows, and their wherry-spears,” she said. “And they went back to the mining camp in the blackest part of the night, when all the men were dead drunk, and the sentry on watch was half asleep, and half a boy besides.” There was a rhythm to her voice now, as if she was reciting a part of the story she’d heard a hundred times. “When they took the boy, and put a knife to his throat, he said he hadn’t touched her. He said he’d only watched, that it had been the others who’d forced themselves on Shofia, one after another after another.

“So they left the boy alive, so he could watch, while they went from tent to tent in the camp, and dragged each man out of his sleeping furs. There were nine of them, and only five of ours, and they didn’t all come out quietly. My uncle Shondan was stabbed in the shoulder. Later he lost that arm. But the man who stabbed him lost more than that. And so did all the others.”

“They killed them all,” Carleah whispered.

“They had no choice,” said Tarshe. “They were outnumbered. The prospectors would have killed them.”

“But…” Carleah’s head whirled. “Shouldn’t they have waited for help? The constable? What about…what about your cousin?”

“Sh’zon was estranged from my uncle,” said Tarshe. “He’d left the cothold to answer Search when he was thirteen, Turns before, when Shondan thought he should have stayed to support his family. And the constable wasn’t coming, and Holder Erric didn’t care. A copper mine was worth more to him than my father’s cothold anyway.” Her tone was full of ancient familial rancour. “Reckon you know the rest.”

Carleah did. All the weyrlings knew the lurid end of the story, the part where the dead prospectors had been found in a circle around their fire-pit, all their throats slit from one ear to the other. The boy who’d been their sentry had been found dead some distance away, at the end of a trail of blood; his eyes had been cut out. And the stewards of Taive Hold had found three other bodies, too. “What about the woman and…and her babies?”

“Why do you think my father and uncle didn’t leave anyone alive?” Tarshe asked, fiercely. Her voice shook with anger. “They found her first. Dead already. The babes dead beside her. And those…men, those filthy snakes…they’d left her to bleed to death. Her and her children. Their children. They just let her die.”

That part wasn’t in the version Carleah had heard. She closed her eyes beneath the blindfold, as though that could blot out the hideous images playing out in her mind. She was glad, briefly, that Jagunth couldn’t share them with her.

“They never denied taking the lives they took,” Tarshe went on, into her silence. “The men and the boy. But the constable judged them guilty of thirteen murders. It should only have been ten. The woman and her children; they never harmed them. They never would have.”

Thirteen murders or ten, it made little difference; exile was the only possible sentence for Tarshe’s father and uncle and the other men of Shevran’s cothold. But Carleah didn’t say that that. Instead, she asked, “What happened to your aunt, Shofia? Did she…”

“No,” said Tarshe. “She didn’t die. She came to the island with Merigen and my father and uncle, and my mother and me and everyone else from the cothold. And my cousin Zonan was born just before my second birthday.”

Carleah really couldn’t think of any reply to that. She just kept scratching at the rope with her fingernails, pretending not to notice that the knots weren’t giving way at all.

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

LONG BAY HOLD

The table linen was stained and sticky with spilled wine, but P’raima didn’t seem to care as he placed a heavy piece of vellum in front of Valonna, and a second, somewhat longer, document before H’pold and Rallai.

H’pold glanced only briefly at his document before raising his gaze back to P’raima. Any last trace of warmth had left his cold, cold eyes. “What is this?”

“Read it,” said P’raima. “You’ll find it covers everything.”

Valonna was almost grateful for something to distract her from the dreadful silence in her mind where Shimpath should have been. She set her eyes to the hide. It was already affixed with a heavy waxen seal in Southern Weyr’s dark green. The paragraphs inscribed there in stark black ink were brief, to the point, and unambiguously hostile. In return for provision of an antidote for their dragon-deafness, Madellon would agree that its dragons would not visit Southern Weyr, nor overfly Southern’s territory. Madellon’s riders would not socialise with Southern’s at Gathers or on any other neutral ground. Madellon would not convey any passengers, paying or otherwise, to Holds in Southern’s protectorate. There would be fines, in marks or goods, for non-compliance. The only locales excepted from the sanction were the Weaver and Tailorhalls at Flaxlea Hold, and the Fishercraft at Noone Seahold. Valonna wondered distractedly if P’raima had consulted the Holds and Halls of Southern territory before drafting the sanctions that would so punishingly restrict the movements of foreign dragonpairs. She doubted it. P’raima seemed to have taken leave of all reason.

“Even if this had any semblance of sanity,” H’pold said, slapping the document he’d been given with angry contempt, “the signing of a treaty such as this would have to be notarised by Hold and Craft to have any kind of legitimacy.”

“Indeed it would,” P’raima replied. “Fortunately we have both a Lady Holder –” he waved a hand at Coffleby, “– and an apprentice of the Healerhall –” he gestured at G’kalte, “– to witness your signatures.”

“Witnesses are irrelevant, P’raima,” said Rallai. Her face, usually so composed, was strained and angry. “Any agreements you wring from us under duress are by definition unlawful. You can no more hold us or our Weyrs to them than you can expect our queens not to tear Tezonth to shreds the instant he shows himself!”

P’raima fixed Rallai with a balefully bloodshot stare. “Do you take me for an idiot, Weyrwoman?” he asked. “Do you think a single dose of my cure will reverse your condition indefinitely?”

The implication made Valonna’s stomach lurch. Rallai’s face went, if possible, even paler, and across the table Sirtis’ eyes bulged nearly out of her head.

But it was L’dro who reacted the most dramatically. “Sign the shelling treaty, H’pold,” he said roughly. “Sign it, or on Pierdeth’s egg, I’ll make you sign it.”

H’pold shot a look of perfect hatred at the other bronze rider. “Whose sharding side are you on, L’dro?”

“I’m on the side of getting my dragon back.” L’dro picked up the pen and slammed it down on top of the vellum. “I don’t give a trader’s cuss about Madellon’s Thread-blighted queen. I don’t care about staying out of Southern’s territory. And neither should you. Sign the shaffing treaty.” Then he thrust a finger across the table at Valonna. “And you should too, if you know what’s good for you.”

“You are an insidious one, aren’t you, P’raima?” Lady Coffleby asked, ignoring L’dro’s outburst. She almost sounded impressed. “You’re enjoying this.”

P’raima made a dismissive sound. “Gratifying though it is to see how right I was about the character of Madellon and Peninsula’s Weyrleaders,” he said, “I’m not here to be entertained. I want true autonomy for my Weyr, and I want my queen. That’s all.”

“You want to keep Southern under your incontestable dictatorship,” said Rallai. “You repugnant little despot. You made Margone’s life a misery, and now you want to force yourself on that poor child who rides Megrith. It’s obscene.”

“I won’t be forcing myself on anyone,” said P’raima. “The dragons decide, and I take no pleasure in the necessary consequences of bowing to dragon choice.”

“Don’t give me that pious bilge, P’raima,” Rallai said, and the ice in her voice put H’pold’s mere chill to shame. “You forget who you’re talking to. Karika and Megrith won’t have a choice. Just as Margone and Grizbath never did, against you and your revolting dragon.”

P’raima actually smiled, though the expression was far from benign. “It’s not my fault that Tezonth is as exceptional as he is.”

“Exceptional?” Rallai asked incredulously. “He’s Megrith’s sire and grandsire. He’s as vile as you.”

The smile faltered on P’raima’s face. “Say what you like,” he said. “About me or my dragon. He’s been proving his superiority for three decades, and when Megrith rises, the purity of his breeding will tell again.”

“When Megrith rises,” said Rallai, with towering contempt, “I hope Tezonth ruptures both hearts failing to catch her.”

And that did break through P’raima’s poise. He curled his lip at her. “Just sign the treaty, woman,” he said. “I don’t relish your company any more than you do mine.”

“No.” Rallai thrust document and pen away. “I’m not signing anything.”

“Rallai!” H’pold exclaimed, and both L’dro and Sirtis looked horrified.

She ignored them all. “I won’t pander to the whims of a degenerate madman.” Her narrowed eyes met Valonna’s as she spoke.

“It’s not just your decision to make, Rallai!” H’pold objected.

As the Peninsula Weyrleaders argued, and P’raima watched their back-and-forth with a mixture of impatience and grim satisfaction, Valonna looked down at the hide on the table before her. She pretended to read it, but silently she was thinking, thinking, thinking. She wished Sh’zon were still there; no, she wished T’kamen were there. T’kamen would have done something. T’kamen would have known what to do. She had no idea if Sh’zon was capable of coming up with a plan to thwart P’raima. Perhaps he hadn’t even grasped the meaning of the pleading look she’d given him before he left, imploring him to find a third way. She hoped that his natural contrariness would stop him from merely acceding to P’raima’s demands, but she feared that his connection to Tarshe would compel him to sacrifice Karika to get his cousin back. She feared what would happen to Karika if she was delivered back into P’raima’s iniquitous custody, and she feared what P’raima would do to Tarshe if they defied him. But most of all she feared never hearing Shimpath again. She feared a future without her queen’s wisdom and insight and encouragement, the constant flow of thoughts and emotions and opinions they shared reduced to the barest  and most nebulous link.

Then, beside her, G’kalte reached for a cup on the table, and knocked it clumsily over. “Shard it!” he exclaimed, quickly righting the cup, but not before water had spilled partially over the treaty document. “Sorry, sorry, sorry!”

“For Faranth’s sake, G’kalte!” H’pold snapped at him, interrupting his argument with Rallai.

“I’m so sorry, Weyrleader,” G’kalte apologised. “I’m sorry, Weyrwoman. Let me wipe that up…”

But as he leaned over Valonna to blot at the puddle of water with a napkin, he contrived to put his mouth close to her ear. “Don’t react,” he breathed, covering his words by noisily moving glasses and side plates around to mop beneath them. “I need you to pretend to faint.”

“What?” Valonna whispered.

“Pretend to faint,” G’kalte repeated. “Trust me!”

He sat back in his seat. Valonna darted a perplexed look sideways at him. And then she noticed that the tablecloth around G’kalte’s dessert wine glass – the small crystal goblet that had held his share of the strange-tasting Southern sherry P’raima had brought – was stained with more than merely spilled water.

Valonna was no actress, but she did know what a faint looked like. One of her weyrlinghood classmates, a green rider named Demmy, had fallen into a swoon every time she’d been faced with blood in the first month after their dragonets had Hatched – several times a day during the first sevenday. They’d all learned to spot the tell-tale signs that she was about to go over. So, hoping she was right to follow G’kalte’s instructions, Valonna dropped her head into her hand, rubbing her temple. She blinked slowly, and began to deliberately reduce the speed of her breathing. Then she rose unsteadily to her feet and stood there for a moment. “I think I need…I need some air…”

As Valonna stood swaying slightly on the spot, G’kalte said, with believable alarm, “Weyrwoman, are you all right?”

“I feel…” Valonna said, making her voice breathy and weak. And then she closed her eyes and let her legs buckle.

G’kalte caught her before she got far. Valonna let herself droop completely, recalling how Demmy had collapsed like a floppy doll during her faints. “Good Faranth, Valonna!” she heard Lady Coffleby cry; Rallai exclaimed in concern, and H’pold or L’dro swore.

“I have her,” said G’kalte, and the next thing Valonna knew, he’d lifted her into his arms. “No, let her alone, she needs space and air. Is there a cushion, something for her head…”

Valonna found it difficult to stay silent and limp as G’kalte laid her carefully down on the floor. A moment later he tucked something, a folded jacket perhaps, under her head. “Stand back, please,” he said. “She needs space. Don’t crowd her.”

“Well, what’s wrong with her?” P’raima’s voice demanded from directly above where Valonna lay.

“What do you think’s wrong with her, P’raima?” Rallai asked angrily. She sounded like she was standing over Valonna, too. “You’ve separated her from her queen!”

“She’s putting it on!”

“I assure you, Weyrleader, she’s not,” G’kalte said, sounding very much like a Healer. Valonna felt his fingers on the pulse at her throat, and then the back of his hand on her brow. “Sir, please!” he said, with a crackle of authority in his voice that belied his modest rank. “The Weyrwoman has fainted. You need to stand back and give her time to recover.”

After a moment, Valonna heard P’raima swear under his breath, and the angry report of his boots on the floor as he strode away.

“Weyrwoman, would you please loosen her clothes?” G’kalte asked.

Valonna felt someone undoing the top lacing of her bodice. She opened one eye a slit, and saw both Rallai and G’kalte bending close, blocking any view of her from the rest of the room. “I’m fine,” she mouthed soundlessly to Rallai, and flicked her eyes meaningfully at G’kalte.

Rallai’s eyes widened for an instant, but she didn’t give either of them away. “Can you keep them all distracted?” G’kalte murmured, and Rallai nodded minutely.

She rose with a sweeping flourish from Valonna, turning back to the room. “This has gone too far, P’raima,” she said. “We don’t have any proof that you’ve taken Madellon’s weyrling as you say you have.”

“You think I’m bluffing, Rallai?” P’raima asked.

“I think you’re desperate,” Rallai said. “I think you’d say anything to make us fall into line with your ridiculous demands.”

“Valonna, my dragon’s trying to get through to me,” G’kalte said, still pitching his voice for her ears only, as Rallai diverted attention to herself.

“You didn’t drink the wine…” Valonna breathed.

“I only had a sip. Archie’s distant and hazy but I can just make him out if I concentrate.”

A dim ember of hope sprang to life in Valonna’s chest. If they had a link to the outside world, that was an advantage P’raima didn’t know about. “Please, have him bespeak Shimpath!”

“I don’t think he should,” G’kalte said. “I think P’raima will be watching the queens. If she suddenly reacts differently because she’s heard from you he’ll know something’s afoot. But I don’t think he’ll care about Archie; he’s only a brown. Who should he contact at Madellon?”

Valonna thought furiously. There was no point in G’kalte’s dragon bespeaking Kawanth; Sh’zon wouldn’t be able to hear him. H’ned was probably still unconscious, and Valonna had no faith in F’yan. “Vanzanth,” she said. “Our Weyrlingmaster’s brown.”

“All right.” G’kalte’s face went intent with concentration, his eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance.

Incongruously, Valonna noticed how striking his grey eyes were in his tanned face. Rallai was still arguing loudly – uncharacteristically loudly – with P’raima, their exchange punctuated occasionally by Lady Coffleby’s acerbic remarks.

Then G’kalte’s gaze came back into focus. “Play for time,” he murmured. “We’re to play for time.” He paused, his eyes lighting. “Help is on the way.”

Chapter forty-seven: Sh’zon, Carleah, L’stev

Q: What does a Southern rider call his mother’s brother’s weyrmate’s son?

A: …Dad?

– Peninsula joke

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

SOUTHERN WEYR

Sh’zon didn’t like leaving Madellon in F’yan’s hands. He didn’t like going between without being able to guide his dragon. But he liked less still the thought of entrusting H’ned – who was still hungover, even if he wasn’t actually slurring any more – with a mission to Southern Weyr alone.

His relief when Kawanth brought them safely out of between over Southern was short-lived. Izath was a wingspan ahead of them, exactly where he’d been when they’d left Madellon, but they weren’t alone. Southern dragons reared up out of the undergrowth from all sides, their heads swivelling, red-eyed, to challenge them. Sh’zon felt Kawanth’s grumble of displeasure at the reception, but it was Izath who called out, his bugle uncharacteristically respectful to the Weyr full of hostile dragons.

As H’ned’s dragon asked for leave to land, Sh’zon made a quick reckoning of Southern’s complement. He counted twenty-five bronzes, two short of the twenty-seven who had come to Madellon the night they’d removed Southern’s weyrlings. Tezonth was one of the absentees, but Sh’zon wasn’t familiar enough with Southern’s roster to identify the other. Southern dragons were difficult to tell apart at the best of times: every single one under the age of thirty was Tezonth’s get, out of either Grizbath or her predecessor Brodavanth, and almost every bronze favoured their mutual sire in build and coloration. If P’raima did have an accomplice among his senior riders, identifying him wouldn’t be as simple as noting the absence of his dragon.

At last, a bronze that could have been a younger, marginally smaller Tezonth barked out permission for Kawanth and Izath to approach. Sh’zon tried not to seethe as Kawanth gave way to Izath. He’d never have advocated ceding such prominence to another dragon had he been able to direct Kawanth. It would give Southern’s riders the impression that H’ned, not Sh’zon, was senior. He was the one P’raima had drugged; he was the one who’d been charged with resolving the situation; he was the one with a family member in jeopardy! It was insult added to the many injuries Sh’zon had already suffered, and the irritation was almost more than he could stomach. With more effort than it should have taken, he asserted control over his frustration. H’ned wasn’t the enemy here, and their rivalry could wait until this was all over.

Kawanth had barely landed, and Sh’zon hadn’t dismounted, when the Southern bronze’s rider challenged them. “We were told you’d be bringing Megrith. What are you doing here without her?”

“Wingleader,” Sh’zon said, reading the man’s shoulder-knots as he swung down from Kawanth’s neck. “I’m Deputy Weyrleader Sh’zon, Kawanth’s rider, and this is Deputy Weyrleader H’ned –”

The Southern rider cut him off. “We know who you are.” He was perhaps thirty-five, sandy-haired and slender; Sh’zon could have taken him in a fight with one hand – both hands! – behind his back.  “I’m Wingleader R’maro. Maibauth’s rider. Where’s Megrith?”

“She’s safe and well at Madellon,” H’ned said, before Sh’zon could reply. He walked towards R’maro, his hands spread as if to show he was unarmed. “Wingleader, please hear us out; we’re not here to try anything on with you. Your Weyrleader has our weyrlings and our Weyrwoman. We’re not stupid enough to want to risk them.”

R’maro looked from Sh’zon to H’ned, then back at Sh’zon. Sh’zon realised that he still had his hand on Kawanth’s neck. Relinquishing the physical contact gave him more of a wrench than he liked to admit. His mind groped futilely for Kawanth’s, unable to stop itself. “All right,” R’maro said, after a moment. “What do you –”

He was interrupted by the arrival of another bronze overhead. Sh’zon looked up, daring to hope it might be Tezonth, but while the dragon in the sky was yet another simulacrum of P’raima’s bronze, he was neither as grey nor quite as big. R’maro’s eyes narrowed nearly imperceptibly as the newcomer landed, and Sh’zon risked the briefest exchanged glance with H’ned to see if Izath’s rider was thinking the same as him.

“R’maro!” the new rider snapped down from atop his dragon’s neck, and Sh’zon recognised D’pantha, Southern’s Deputy Weyrleader. “What in Faranth’s name are you doing, letting these two land?”

“I had the watch, D’pantha,” R’maro said, straightening defiantly.

“And I have seniority.” D’pantha jumped ponderously down from his bronze. He was too substantial a man to do anything with grace. “You should have reported to me straightaway so Cyniath could speak to Tezonth about this.”

“Two bronzes are no risk to Southern –”

“That’s not the point.” D’pantha looked at Sh’zon and H’ned. “Why haven’t you brought Megrith?”

“We were just explaining to R’maro,” Sh’zon said quickly. He fixed D’pantha with his most guileless stare. “She won’t come.”

D’pantha blinked, as though not understanding. “What do you mean, she won’t come?”

“Karika refuses to leave Madellon,” said Sh’zon. “Megrith won’t bring her back to Southern.”

“She’s a weyrling,” said R’maro, looking as baffled as D’pantha. “Make her come. “

“She’s a queen,” Sh’zon said. “We can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to!”

“How in the Void do you run your Weyr if you can’t tell a weyrling what to do?” R’maro demanded.

“We’re not telling her she has to go to bed early!” Sh’zon shouted. “We’re asking her to come back here, the last place in all of Pern she wants to be, and Megrith won’t have it!”

D’pantha and R’maro both looked taken aback. H’ned grabbed at the slender advantage. “Don’t you see?” he implored them. “We just want our weyrlings back. We won’t stand in the way of returning Karika and Megrith to Southern if that’s what it’s going to take. But we don’t have any leverage over Karika. You must know what a wilful girl she is.”

“She should never have been allowed to stand,” said D’pantha.

“But you’ve told her what’ll happen to your weyrling if she refuses?” R’maro asked perplexedly. “Do you think P’raima’s bluffing?”

D’pantha looked sharply at his Weyrmate, even as R’maro’s implication made Sh’zon’s blood go cold. He pressed on regardless. “Karika doesn’t give a trader’s cuss what happens to Tarshe. They’ve been at each other’s throats since the minute she arrived at Madellon. Go on, ask any of your weyrlings! They’ll tell you!”

The two Southern bronze riders looked uncertainly at each other. “What are you saying?” D’pantha asked, at last. “What is it that you want?”

“Time,” said H’ned. “Our bronzes can’t force Megrith out. Nor can yours. Only a mature queen can exert that sort of authority over her. And Shimpath, Ipith, and Ranquiath are all out of play while P’raima has their Weyrwomen.”

“We need time to petition the northern Weyrs for help,” said Sh’zon, taking up the thread. “They didn’t want to get involved the first time, and they sure as shards aren’t going to be happy about it now, but without a queen to put pressure on Megrith, we can’t deliver her.” He spread his hands helplessly. “P’raima wanted Megrith back within the hour. That hour’s nearly up. We’re doing everything we can, but we’re not going to make that deadline. Please. Tarshe’s not just a queen weyrling; she’s my cousin. I knew her as a tiny baby. I promised her da when she came to Madellon that I’d look out for her. You can’t let P’raima hurt her. You have to get a message to him that we’re working on returning Megrith, but we need more time.” He didn’t have to feign the desperation in  his voice. “Please. I’m begging you.”

R’maro shook his head slowly. “What P’raima’s doing…” He trailed off, his voice exuding doubt.

“It’s not your place to question the Weyrleader, R’maro,” D’pantha snapped.

Sh’zon couldn’t help himself. “When your Weyrleader’s taking women and children hostages, and feeding riders drugs to separate them from their dragons, I’d say he merits more than questioning!”

“Sh’zon!” H’ned hissed at him urgently.

But Sh’zon ignored him. “That’s right,” he said, flicking his gaze between R’maro and D’pantha. Both Southern riders had gone still and wary. “This felah, or whatever in Faranth’s name you call it. Do you even know what it’s doing to you? What it’s done to me? I can’t hear my own blighted dragon!” His voice broke on the last part.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” said D’pantha.

“If you maniacs want to mess around with how your dragons talk to you, that’s your business!” Sh’zon shouted. “Doesn’t give you the right to poison anyone else! Faranth! How can either of you support P’raima after all he’s done?”

D’pantha cut across him. “After all he’s done?” He laughed incredulously. “You took Megrith. The shock of it killed our Weyrwoman. Madellon drove P’raima to this, bronze rider. Southern only ever asked to be left alone!”

“Southern’s been rotten for Turns,” said Sh’zon. “You mark my words, Pern won’t stand for this. You’re crazy to think the other Weyrs will tolerate him if he hurts so much as a hair on Tarshe’s head!”

“Look,” R’maro said, in a more conciliatory tone, “for all our sakes, let’s not let it come to that. P’raima’s done some…desperate things, but if you return Karika and Megrith, your weyrlings won’t be harmed.” He glanced at D’pantha. “And then you can let us worry about our Weyrleader.”

Hurriedly, H’ned said, “That’s what we mean to do. But you have to persuade P’raima to give us a little more time.” He moved his gaze onto R’maro. “Please.”

“I…” R’maro looked briefly wretched. “Maibauth can’t actually contact Tezonth…”

“No, he can’t,” said D’pantha. The look he’d fixed on R’maro couldn’t have been more scathing, but he dragged his dark eyes away from his Weyrmate. “Only Cyniath is in contact with Tezonth today.” He shifted his look back to H’ned. “But I will speak to the Weyrleader on your behalf. Cyniath will be in touch with his decision.” He held up a warning finger. “P’raima is not a patient man, and Southern has already been without a queen for too long. I suggest you set in motion whatever negotiations you require with the north straightaway.”

“Thank you, Wingleader,” said H’ned, with too-convincing humility. “We will. Thank you.”

Sh’zon stole one last gauging look at both Southern bronze riders before he turned to remount Kawanth. Neither man looked as confident in the fanatical devotion to their Weyrleader that had been the norm amongst Southern Weyr’s riders ever since Sh’zon could remember. It gave him hope. “Follow Izath again,” he said softly to Kawanth, as he passed his dragon’s head. Kawanth gave a rumble of assent that should have been reassuring, but Sh’zon found it only increased his anger and despair at their inability to communicate naturally.

It was more unsettling still to go between on his own dragon without knowing their destination, to trust H’ned and Izath to guide all of them safely through. As they hung in the bitter darkness, Sh’zon caught himself wondering grimly if he was a fool to put his faith in a man he’d contrived to get roaring drunk the night before. But even if H’ned’s judgement was still impaired, Izath’s wasn’t, and his endpoint featured a sight to gladden the heart and stiffen the spine of any bronze: the shining presence of a queen.

Tynerith had grown since the last time Sh’zon had seen her, and if the Peninsula’s weyrling queen didn’t quite yet match Essienth, standing vigilantly guard beside her, for length, she certainly outdid K’ken’s bronze for beauty. Not, he reflected, as Kawanth circled downwards, that Essienth’s long-ago damaged left wing had ever stopped him being a fine Wingleader’s dragon. But there was no avoiding the fact that the missing final joint of his left mid-spar had always given him a ragged, uneven appearance.

Kawanth and Izath landed close to the two Peninsula dragons on the ridge where the last rays of evening sun could still fall on their hides. There was no need for physical concealment – they were ten miles within Peninsula territory – but Sh’zon hoped that Tynerith had grown in subtlety as well as size since he’d transferred out of his native Weyr. She looked intent, barely reacting to the new arrivals, even when both Kawanth and Izath rumbled respectfully to her in greeting.

“Well?” K’ken asked, walking around Tynerith, as H’ned and Sh’zon dismounted.

“D’pantha seems to be in charge at Southern,” said H’ned. “He’s promised to talk to P’raima about getting an extension.

“D’pantha’s a lickspittle,” said K’ken, “but he’s been P’raima’s right arm for a long time. He’s as likely as any to be doing the dirty work.”

“He sounded pretty prickly when it came to any criticism of P’raima,” said H’ned. He glanced at Sh’zon. “What about the other bronze rider? R’maro? He sounded more moderate.”

K’ken frowned. “R’maro’s one of Margone’s sons.”

“P’raima’s?”

“I don’t think so. He’s a fairly junior Wingleader; what was he doing there?”

“He was on watch,” said Sh’zon. “He didn’t seem as in love with P’raima as D’pantha plainly is.”

“Maybe he blames P’raima for his mother’s death?” H’ned speculated.

“Well he might,” said Sh’zon.

“It could be,” said K’ken. “But he doesn’t have the seniority to pose a credible threat to P’raima.” He turned his head to look at the young woman hunkered down next to the juvenile queen. “Britt, kindly have Tynerith focus on D’pantha’s Cyniath.”

Britt waved a hand at him distractedly. “Shush, please, K’ken; we’re concentrating.”

“You’re sure Tynerith’s going to be able to eavesdrop from this distance?” H’ned asked K’ken dubiously.

K’ken nodded. “She can’t break into dragon-rider conversation, but if Cyniath reaches out to Tezonth, she’ll catch it. Whether or not that’ll give us any clues as to where P’raima’s hidden him…” He spread his hands.

“Is there any word from Long Bay?” Sh’zon asked. Not being able to have Kawanth check in for him was almost the most frustrating thing about their affliction.

“There’s nothing new from Archidath,” said K’ken. “Essienth says he reports he was still finding it difficult to understand his rider. L’mis’ Pelranth seems to be keeping the queens and Suffath contained. You did well putting him in charge there, Sh’zon. No bronze who’s flown a senior queen ever loses that ring of authority.”

There was a tinge of sadness in K’ken’s voice as he said it. Essienth had never flown a queen, senior or otherwise: his damaged wing put him at too great a manoeuvrability disadvantage against his rivals. Still, the fact that K’ken could never be a threat to a standing Weyrleader had put him in a consistently favourable position throughout his career. Few bronze riders would ever become Weyrleader anyway; being a trusted, well-liked, and highly competent deputy had advantages all of its own. Sh’zon dared to let himself think ahead to Ipith’s next flight. K’ken had always maintained a strict apolitical stance when it came to the Peninsula’s leadership contests. When Sh’zon ousted H’pold from the Weyrleader’s weyr, he’d want to keep K’ken on as his own Deputy.

But the musing turned his thoughts, inevitably, to M’ric. The anger flared up yet again, so raw and uncontrolled that for a moment Sh’zon couldn’t think at all. He curled his hands into fists, digging his fingernails into his palms until the rage faded back to a manageable level. Master Isnan had wanted to examine him before he’d left Madellon, to investigate the physiological changes the felah had caused besides blocking him from his dragon, but there hadn’t been time. As Sh’zon struggled to quell his temper, he wondered if the drug itself was influencing his emotions. It would go a long way towards explaining the increasingly insular and hostile behaviour that Southern Weyr’s dragonriders had been demonstrating in recent Turns.

None of that could diminish Sh’zon’s shock or rage at M’ric’s treachery. M’ric, who had stood there – with Tarshe’s life in jeopardy, and Rallai and Valonna hostages, and Sh’zon’s own bond with his dragon damaged, maybe irreparably – and refused to use his Thread-blighted knack for timing to help them. He’d used the same knack a hundred times, a thousand times, for personal gain, and self-satisfaction, and convenience. And, yes, occasionally, to provide Sh’zon with intelligence at crucial moments – but only ever for their mutual benefit. A brown rider could only go so far on his own merit; one with loftier ambitions must of necessity hitch his wagon to another man’s team. For Turns, Sh’zon had been that man. But M’ric’s progressively more precipitous actions had been a source of concern for some time. Now, Sh’zon was beginning to believe with increasing certainty that the Wingsecond he’d trusted for so long had found himself a new coat-tail to ride. The knowledge that M’ric was out there now with his Wing, supposedly looking for Tarshe in Giskara Basin, should have reassured him; in the light of M’ric’s unflinching refusal to employ his most salient skill to help Tarshe, Sh’zon feared that his perfidious Wingsecond would hinder the operation more than he helped it.

But he couldn’t tell anyone about his misgivings. He had no one to confide in. Even Kawanth was helpless to alleviate his fears. Sh’zon’s reputation and M’ric’s were inextricably linked; he couldn’t expose the brown rider without making himself look a buffoon at best, a co-conspirator at worst. And Sh’zon didn’t know what game M’ric was playing, except that, whatever his agenda, he was holding more cards than any one man ought.

“Has –” he began, intending to enquire after the Ops Wing’s progress, but then Britt stood abruptly up, her eyes darting this way and that. “What is it, Britt?”

Britt’s hands grasped vaguely at the air, as though she were trying to seize something. “Cyniath’s reaching out to Tezonth!”

“What’s he saying?”

“Where?”

Sh’zon and H’ned’s questions went unanswered as Britt concentrated. “Let her listen!” K’ken told them, stopping them both from crowding her with a hand on each shoulder.

“He’s saying that Megrith isn’t cooperating,” said Britt. “And that Madellon’s asking for more time.”

“What does Tezonth say?” H’ned asked urgently.

“Quiet, man!” Sh’zon snapped.

“He says…he says his rider says that Madellon can take as much time as it pleases,” Britt reported. “But – oh!” Her face blanched, and Tynerith gave a little moan of despair.

“But what?” Sh’zon urged her, feeling dread strike the pit of his stomach.

Britt swallowed hard. “But…he says…it’s going to cost them.”

“Cost us what?” H’ned shouted.

Britt’s eyes came back into focus. She looked from one bronze rider to another, her gaze finally meeting Sh’zon’s. “The green weyrling,” she said, her voice choked with horror. “It’s going to cost you the green weyrling.”

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

GISKARA BASIN, SOUTHERN TERRITORY

Carleah was certain she’d worked one of the knots binding Tarshe’s hands nearly loose when Tarshe, who’d been leaning with her head against the wall of the wooden shack they were in, stiffened urgently behind her. “Something’s happening!”

Abandoning her work on the knots, Carleah heaved herself sideways to press her ear against the splintery planks, listening to the muffled sound of arguing voices beyond.

“…said we wouldn’t have to,” one man said unhappily.

The second voice was less hesitant. “…knew there was the chance…want the marks or not…?”

“…not paying us enough for this!”

“Faranth, you Void-spawned weakling…I’ll shaffing do it if you don’t have the stomach!”

The voices got louder and clearer as their owners approached the shed. “Wait a moment, Crent, just wait a moment!”

“I said I’ll shaffing do it!” A fist striking the outside of the shack just above where Carleah and Tarshe were listening made them both flinch instinctively away. “Get out of my way, Gorty!”

“Just wait!” Gorty insisted. “Shaffit, Crent, thanks to you we don’t even know which one is which!”

“That wasn’t my fault!”

“Well it sure as shards wasn’t mine!”

“It was the blonde one Harket’s boy was watching, wasn’t it?”

“Harket’s boy is even more of a drooling idiot than his father. Do you want to take the chance of getting the wrong one?”

“The message said to do the green rider –”

“And if we get it wrong and do the shaffing queen by mistake? There wouldn’t be enough of us left to fill a bucket once that bronze rider and his dragon got done with us!”

Crent didn’t reply, but Carleah could only hear his last words anyway, repeating over and over again in her head.

The message said to do the green rider.

She found herself suddenly unable to breathe.

Do the green rider.

Panic welled up as it hadn’t before, as she’d never experienced it before.

The green rider.

“Oh, Faranth,” she whispered, hearing her own voice as a strangled croak. “Oh Faranth, oh Faranth, oh Faranth…”

Tarshe elbowed her clumsily in the back, jolting her out of her motionless horror. “Pretend to be me!” she hissed.

And then they both almost toppled sideways as the door they’d been leaning against was yanked abruptly open from the outside. “Get up!” Crent’s voice ordered them, and Carleah felt rough hands seize her, dragging her to her feet.

“Get off me!” Tarshe shouted.

Carleah felt Tarshe struggling behind her, and she fought too, trying to get free of the man who’d grabbed her. “Get your hands off me!” she cried, turning her head futilely from side to side, trying to sound defiant despite the bonds and blindfold.

“You girls want to lose all your teeth, you just keep on struggling like that,” said Crent. “Nothing said we have to keep you in one piece. Now stay still!”

All the air went out of Carleah’s lungs as she was slammed face-first against the wall of the wooden shack and held there, gasping. A moment later, she felt and heard Tarshe similarly pinned beside her.

“Now which one of you’s the Thread-blighted queen rider?” Crent demanded.

Carleah didn’t know what to say. Do the green rider, Crent had said. Pretend to be me, Tarshe had insisted. Their captors meant to kill one of them. The expendable one. The green rider. They meant to kill her. Carleah wasn’t yet fifteen. She’d been a dragonrider less than a Turn. She didn’t want to die.

But how could she lie to save her own skin when doing so would push Tarshe into the path of that Thread-strike? No. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She was a dragonrider of Madellon, and she knew her duty to her Weyr and her Weyr’s queens. She wasn’t a coward.

In the instant before she spoke up and sealed her fate, she wondered if her da had experienced a moment, just before the end, when he knew he was going to die. But then C’los’ words, from that long-ago Gather, burst into her mind as clearly as though he were standing right next to her. No daughter of mine is ever going to be outwitted by some half-literate holder. You’re smarter than that.

“Answer me!” Crent yelled, so close to them that Carleah felt a fine spray of spittle hit her cheek below the blindfold. “Shelling answer me or I’ll smash both your mouths in for you!”

Tarshe staggered beside her, her elbow catching Carleah’s urgently, and they couldn’t have been more perfectly in harmony had they rehearsed it as they both cried, “She is!”

Crent’s roar of frustration was deafening at such close range. His fist caught the side of Carleah’s head a glancing blow, and she crumpled, as much out of nervous terror as from the force of the strike.

“Shaffit, Crent, leave them alone!” Gorty shouted, and for a moment Carleah lay there, half dazed, as their two captors scuffled over her, stamping and swearing.

She felt Tarshe crouch protectively over her as the two men grappled with each other. “Are you all right?”

Behind the blindfold, Carleah didn’t know if her vision was blurred; she felt dizzy, but Crent must have pulled his punch at the last moment. “I think so,” she whispered.

“Score you to the Void, Gorty!” Crent bellowed, panting. “They’ll never pay us if we don’t get the job done!”

“And we’re both dead if we foul it all up!” Gorty shouted. “Just calm the shaff down!”

Crent huffed and puffed, but the sounds of conflict quieted down. “Well what are we going to do?” he demanded. “These little dragon-bitches are lying!”

“All right,” Gorty said. “Just calm down. I’m going to send Pogo back to that bronze rider. If he wants to keep the right one alive, he can come and tell us which girl’s which. And then if we kill the wrong one, it’s on his head, not ours.”

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

“You’ll take this one,” L’stev told H’lamin, stabbing his finger at one of the unclaimed squares on the rough chart of Giskara Basin on his chalk board.

H’lamin nodded curtly, his eyes darting over the hastily scrawled instructions. Track and crawl search pattern, the first one read, with an urgent underline, and ABSOLUTE SILENCE! the second, underlined three times, and capitalised for good measure. Then he ran back to his waiting dragon, cramming his helmet back onto his head as he did.

Do we have any more incoming? L’stev asked Vanzanth.

Derthauth and Grissenth aren’t reporting in.

Then let Trebruth know that they’re still short of coverage in the north-west quadrant. And that we have volunteers willing to help out –

Trebruth says no volunteers.

L’stev paused. Well, it’s his operation. M’ric had barely spent five minutes on the ground between coming in from Long Bay and taking off again for Southern territory, but the riders of Ops Wing had been reporting in to get their hurriedly-assigned orders for the last quarter-hour. B’frea and G’pellas were the only absentees, two riders out of sixteen.

The weyrlings had come home, too, bundled two and three onto the first available Madellon dragon. The sight of so many of them clinging to their dragonets for reassurance made Berzunth and Jagunth’s frightened misery even more affecting. Megrith, curiously, had moved closer to Berzunth, her demeanour an odd mixture of conciliatory and protective. Give them a common enemy, L’stev thought sourly. On balance, he’d rather have had the queens still despising each other.

Vanzanth tilted his muzzle skywards an instant before Kawanth and Izath burst back into the air above the Bowl. L’stev took in their agitated demeanour with a glance. Trouble?

Trouble, Vanzanth confirmed.

“That tunnel-snake P’raima’s going to do it!” H’ned shouted down from Izath. “He’s going to –”

He caught himself before he could finish the sentence, but that didn’t stop Sh’zon from roaring, “Shut your mouth, for Faranth’s sake!”

L’stev briefly considered knocking the two riders’ heads together as they climbed down from their dragons. Then he put the tempting thought out of his mind. “He’s threatened Carleah?” he asked in a low voice. “He’s said so directly?”

“Tynerith overheard Tezonth give the message to Cyniath,” said H’ned. “And Cyniath told Izath. All in language a dragon wouldn’t grasp to mean they were passing on a kill order, but…”

“He means to show us he’s serious,” said L’stev.

“M’ric’s Wing…?” Sh’zon asked.

L’stev shook his head. “Over Giskara now, but M’ric said it would take hours to fly the most cursory search pattern, and with no guarantee of finding anything.”

Sh’zon’s face darkened, and L’stev wondered what had transpired between the Deputy Weyrleader and his Wingsecond; the pair had always been just as thick as thieves. “He has to be bluffing,” H’ned said, sounding desperate. “He can’t mean to kill another dragonrider. Even if Tezonth’s insulated from it, surely, surely Southern wouldn’t tolerate measures like that!”

“Faranth knows what Thread-ridden morality Southern’s riders subscribe to with this felah poison running in their veins!” Sh’zon spat.

For a moment the two Deputies just stood there, staring hopelessly at nothing, visibly paralysed by the awful decision they were obliged to make, and while a small part of L’stev was grateful that the responsibility for that decision didn’t fall on him, the larger part knew that there was only one correct course of action.

Sh’zon’s eyes refocused first. He raised his head slightly, and H’ned met his gaze. Consensus passed between the two Deputy Weyrleaders without the need for words, and L’stev was relieved that even in their bronze rider arrogance, both men recognised the lesser evil. “Izath will take her,” H’ned said. He sounded defeated.

“Kawanth should –” Sh’zon began, and then he pulled himself up. He nodded dully. “Yeah. Fine.”

L’stev looked over to where Karika and T’gala were still sitting, looking pinched and woebegone, on one of the long benches. “What about the blue rider?”

“P’raima never said anything about hi…her,” said Sh’zon. “She doesn’t want to go, we’ll not make her. That much we can do.”

But T’gala wasn’t to be deterred. While Karika just nodded, her eyes downcast but resolute, T’gala lifted her head. “If Karika has to go, so do I,” she said. “I’m a dragonrider of…” She almost said Southern, her lips forming the first syllable, and then she shook her head. “I’m a dragonrider of Pern. I’m not afraid.”

“When this is over,” Sh’zon said, “when Tarshe and Carleah are safe, we’ll come back for you. We’ll get you out again –”

“No,” said Karika. Her voice was haunted, her little smile wan. “Thank you, Sh’zon, but you won’t.”

Sh’zon’s expression betrayed his fury, but he didn’t voice it. Instead, he turned to H’ned. “Have Izath tell Cyniath we’re bringing Megrith and Heppeth through now. Tell him to call off the – tell him to call it off.”

H’ned’s eyes shifted in Izath’s direction, as many riders’ did when communicating an urgent message, but the lines between his brows deepened suddenly. “He’s…not there,” he said. “Cyniath’s not at Southern any more.”

“What?” Sh’zon demanded, so curtly that his teeth snapped together on the word.

“Izath can’t find him there,” said H’ned. “He doesn’t know where he is.”

Sh’zon blinked stupidly. “But Cyniath’s the only conduit to Tezonth,” he said. “If we can’t reach him…Faranth! What in the Void does D’pantha think he’s doing, going incommunicado now? Is he stupid?”

H’ned swallowed hard. The colour, L’stev noticed, was leaching from his face. “What if he isn’t stupid?” he asked, sickly, and from Sh’zon’s sudden stricken expression, L’stev thought that the same notion had occurred to him at the same instant. “D’pantha’s P’raima’s right-hand man. What if he’s who P’raima has sent to do it? What if he’s the one who’s gone to kill Carleah?”

Chapter forty-eight: Carleah, Valonna, Sh’zon

Delegation is only a wise course of action when you can trust in your subordinates to perform a task at least close to as competently as you would have done it yourself.

– From Hold and Hall Management, by Headwoman Hakera

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

GISKARA BASIN, SOUTHERN TERRITORY

Gorty had barely shoved them both back into the shack and slammed the door when the nausea that had been brewing in Carleah’s guts ever since she’d come round finally overwhelmed her. She collapsed to her knees, bringing up a vile mess of everything she’d eaten at the Gather, and when her stomach was empty, retching vainly for several more moments.

She could hear Tarshe asking urgently if she was all right, but she couldn’t answer, too preoccupied with trying to spit the last few half-digested river grains out of her mouth. Finally, she shuffled away from where she’d thrown up, finding a wall and leaning against it, shaking.

“I don’t think I can do this much longer,” she heard a voice say, and realised it was her own.

“Yes you can,” said Tarshe. “You’ve been amazing. You just have to keep going. Keep up the pretence –”

“But what’s the point?” Carleah cried. “When this Southern rider arrives…”

“Exactly,” said Tarshe. “He’s a dragonrider. However big a monster he is, he’s going to have a hard time looking one of us in the eye and ordering us to be killed.”

“We’re blindfolded!” Carleah wailed. “He can’t look us in the eye!”

“You nearly had my hands free before they pulled us out,” said Tarshe. “Come on. Get me untied. Then maybe we can find a way out of here.”

It seemed a wan hope, but Carleah squirmed around until she could once again work at the ropes around Tarshe’s wrists. There was comfort in leaning against her back, at least. It didn’t compare to the companionship of Jagunth’s thoughts, but Carleah couldn’t imagine sharing her current state of mind with her dragon. Jagunth would have been terrified, panicked. If there was any solace to be had in their situation, it was that at least her green wasn’t having to experience it.

“You know L’stev’s going to ground us until we graduate once we get back to Madellon,” said Tarshe.

There was too much forced cheer in her voice, but Carleah made herself play along. “We didn’t ask to be kidnapped.”

Tarshe shrugged one shoulder. “He’ll find a way to make it our fault anyway. You know how he loves to do that.”

Their conversation lapsed for a moment, even Tarshe apparently at the limit of her ability to make reassuring small-talk. Then Carleah said, “They can’t have sent Karika back, can they? That’s why they want to get rid of…get rid of the green rider. To prove they’re not bluffing.”

Tarshe didn’t reply for a bit. Then she said, “Karika’s terrified of P’raima. She couldn’t tell any of the other Southerners. They all idolised him.”

“He’s been Weyrleader at Southern forever,” said Carleah. “I don’t think the Weyrwoman who died was his first.”

“She wasn’t,” said Tarshe. “And Margone was afraid of him, too.”

“But why?” Carleah asked. “She was the queen rider. Why didn’t she just make sure some other bronze flew her dragon?”

“I think that was why Karika was so afraid,” said Tarshe.

Carleah absorbed that. Then she said, softly, “But they’ve still put her before us.”

“You don’t know that – ah!”

Tarshe’s exclamation as the knot Carleah had been working on finally yielded briefly superseded the feeling of betrayal. Encouraged, Carleah started on the second knot. “This one’s much easier,” she said, and a moment later, she had it undone.

“I think that’s it,” said Tarshe. “Let me just… Yes!”

Carleah heard the soft thud as the length of rope tying Tarshe’s wrists fell to the floor, and then the blindfold over her eyes was pulled abruptly away. “Faranth!”

The light filtering in between the cracks in the walls was still enough to sting her eyes. Their prison was a dilapidated drying shed, the ceiling crisscrossed with rails from which a few desiccated bunches of herbs still hung, the walls of rotting planks roughly nailed together. “Give me your hands, I’ll untie you,” Tarshe said urgently.

Carleah’s bonds gave way easily to Tarshe’s fingers. But she’d barely had a chance to rub her chafed wrists, and wipe the last clinging remnants of what she’d puked up from around her mouth, when the impact of a dragon landing nearby shivered through the ground. Tarshe’s expression of horror must have matched her own. “Shards,” Carleah whispered, and then, in the next breath, “the back wall!”

They both flew to the rear wall of the shack, pushing on the splintery wood with all their might. For all that the boards were old and poorly seasoned, flexing in places, the rusty nails fastening them together were still sound. Hastily, they tested the wall from one end of the shed to the other, but none of the planks yielded to their frantic pressure.

Finally, Tarshe cried out in frustration. “Shaffit!” she shouting, kicking out angrily.

And knocking the rotten lower portion of a plank right out of the wall.

They didn’t even look at each other. Tarshe went to work on the broken board, shaking it loose, while Carleah kicked at the adjacent planks with all her might, and in less than a minute they’d made a low, shallow gap that maybe, just maybe, two slender girls might be able to escape through.

“You first!” Tarshe told her.

“But…”

“Don’t shaffing argue with me!” Tarshe told her, with all the authority of the queen rider she was. “Go!”

Carleah dropped to the floor and crawled towards the hole they’d made in the wall. At close range it looked impossibly small, the edges of the planks surrounding it dauntingly jagged. She brushed away the detritus of straw and dust on the floor, making another precious quarter-inch of space. “It’s not big enough!”

“It’s going to have to be!” Tarshe told her. “Go on, I can hear them coming!”

Fear overcame Carleah’s doubt. Thrusting her arms ahead of her, she dived through the hole, propelling herself with her feet. Her head went through, but her shoulders scraped painfully against the sides. For a moment of perfect despair, she knew she wasn’t going to fit. Those two brutes, and the evil Weyrleader of Southern, were going to burst in, drag her out, and kill her. She was never going to see Jagunth again…

Then Tarshe started shoving her from behind, shouting, “Breathe out, you fat shaffing wherry!”

Carleah obeyed, and as she expelled all the air from her lungs, she felt the pressure on her shoulders ease the tiniest bit. She squirmed and wriggled and pushed, and suddenly she was free, head and shoulders out into the fading light. She groped forwards with both hands, pulling now more than pushing; for a horrible instant, she thought her hips would get stuck just as her shoulders had; but then she was through, scrambling to her feet, and looking dazedly around.

The sun was low in the sky and sinking rapidly towards a ridge that rose above the horizon in the west. The shack they’d been imprisoned in was one of a handful of similar buildings, constructed with equal carelessness, in a clearing that had been cut from the dense surrounding forest. The back and wings of a massive bronze dragon rose above the roof of the shed; instinctively, Carleah crouched down to avoid being seen.

“Tarshe!” she hissed, through the gap in the wall.

She heard a thump, and a muffled exclamation, from inside, and then, not muffled at all, Crent’s voice, roaring. “Where’s the other one?”

Then Tarshe’s voice rose, raw and commanding. “Carleah, RUN!”

Carleah obeyed.

The bronze dragon filled most of the clearing, but the undergrowth behind the shed was too thick to penetrate. Carleah dodged between buildings, working her way around the clearing, searching for another way out, but it was only moments before the shout went up from behind her, and the bronze reared up onto his hind legs to get a sight of her over the roofs. It was that very action that revealed the exit Carleah so desperately needed: a broad track leading eastwards out of the clearing. But she would have to get past the dragon to reach it.

Dragons had been a symbol of all that was good and noble in the world for Carleah’s entire life. Her da’s Indioth; C’mine’s Darshanth; her own Jagunth. A dragon had always been a sight to lift the spirits and gladden the heart. Now, the Southern bronze dragon who stood between Carleah and a chance of life and freedom couldn’t have been a more potent symbol of oppression.

She ran straight at him.

The bronze took a moment to get sight of her – a dragon’s eyes were better over distance than at close range – and by the time he did, Carleah was already in his shadow. She sprinted with all her strength, head down, arms pumping, legs straining, and the clumsy swipe of his forepaw passed an inch over her head, the draught of its passing ruffling her hair. She dashed beneath his belly, threw herself between his braced tree-thick back legs, vaulted the end of his tail, and landed still running, with the track ahead of her.

The Southern dragon’s bellow of surprise and annoyance was deafeningly loud, but Carleah was more afraid of the angry shouts of her captors. She hit the track at speed, almost tripping on the deep hard ruts of the ground, scored there by who-knew how many Turns of wagon wheels and runner hoofs. She hardly dared lift her eyes from the treacherous going, though she knew she was exposed, knew she needed to get off the trail and into the undergrowth, knew that, as scared and as desperate as she was, she couldn’t keep up the pace forever. Each time she did risk a glance, to the left, to the right, all she could see was jungle, thick and dense, encroaching on the edges of the track, and offering no prospect of a refuge. It wasn’t long before she could hear the pounding of running feet behind her, and then the heavy pant of her pursuers’ breathing. Do the green rider, rang in her head. Do the green rider, do the green rider. She ran, chasing her own shadow, thrown before her long and thin by the setting sun at her back. She ran, thinking desperately of Jagunth. Do the green rider. She ran. But though she wasn’t brave enough to look back, she didn’t need to. The tread of heavy feet behind her grew steadily closer, the laboured breathing louder. When the tips of her hunters’ own shadows overlapped her feet for the first time, she cried out, redoubling her efforts, stumbling over the uneven ground, putting distance between herself and the encroaching darkness, but in vain. The shadows of the men who meant to kill her overtook her again, slowly, inexorably, first one, then both. Do the green rider. The fire-lizard flashed past her, screaming, its fast-moving shadow intersecting hers.

Then the whole world went black, the sunlight blotted out by an immense dragon overhead, and in the recognition of a hunter she couldn’t ever hope to outrun, Carleah’s resolve faltered. She staggered helplessly to a halt, feeling tears scald her cheeks, and in one final act of defiance she spun to face her fate. “Well, come and get me then, you coward!” she screamed up at the hateful bronze, squeezing her eyes nearly shut as the downdraft of his descent lashed her face with dust and leaves and the trailing curls of her own hair. “I’m not afraid of you! Come and get me!”

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

LONG BAY HOLD

The sun had moved around to the west, filling the dining room with long spills of red and blue light that hurt the eyes, and an almost unbearable stuffy heat that had them all sweating and thirsty. All the water on the table had gone; of the alcohol, only the half-full bottle of drugged dessert wine remained, and no one had any interest in that. Even P’raima looked flushed and clammy, Valonna thought, watching the Southern Weyrleader covertly as he paced a restless route up and down the room, but she didn’t believe his agitation sprang merely from the uncomfortable temperature. Rather, she thought, P’raima had expected the situation to have been resolved by now; the prolonged wait for his demands to be met was clearly wearing on him.

Dabbing at her own brow, as much to maintain the fiction of her faint as to wipe away the film of perspiration, she cast a glance towards G’kalte, but his almost imperceptible head-shake deflated Valonna’s hope for more news from outside. The tangle of fear that had been roiling in her stomach had subsided to a sullen mass, but as the time stretched on with no further intelligence, she feared that G’kalte’s secret, tenuous connection with Archidath would provide little advantage after all.

Then she saw P’raima’s stride falter mid-step. He set his foot down slowly, then turned abruptly to the table, his teeth partly bared in the parody of a smile. “Your Sh’zon is playing games, Valonna,” he said, sounding almost as if he relished the development. “I think he’s calling my bluff.”

On the other side of the table, H’pold rose abruptly, his face hardening. “Void take him –”

“Sit down,” Rallai told him sharply, seizing his arm.

Valonna didn’t dare look at G’kalte for insight, though she badly wanted to. “Sh’zon wouldn’t take any chances with Tarshe’s well-being,” she insisted, hoping her voice was level.

“Perhaps he wouldn’t,” said P’raima. “But perhaps he thinks it’s worth risking a green to try my resolve.”

The coil of tunnel-snakes in Valonna’s stomach began to writhe again. “What green?”

“It seems my men picked up two of your weyrlings,” P’raima replied. He turned his head slightly, his eyes going distant, and the light through the stained-glass window bathed his face in a bloody glow. “I wonder if seeing one of Madellon’s own dragonets disappear screaming between will concentrate Sh’zon’s mind on the task he’s been given.”

Valonna couldn’t even speak, feeling choked, strangled, with horror. “Dear Faranth, P’raima!” Rallai cried.

But it was Lady Coffleby who spoke with the most measure. “Don’t cross this line, Weyrleader,” she said. There was no rancour in her voice; only a slow, grave weariness. “All of Pern will turn on you: dragonriders, Holders and Crafters alike. Stop this now, and perhaps something of your legacy might endure untainted by the murder of children.”

“My legacy will endure, Coffleby,” said P’raima, turning on the old Lady Holder. “It will endure in the flesh and blood I leave behind. In a hundred Turns’ time the blood that runs in the veins of every Southern dragon who rises to fight Thread over Pern will be that of a bronze who outflew every rival for thirty-one Turns. Every rider of Southern will be born of the Weyr, born into the traditions, as a dragonrider ought to be. That’s my legacy. History may remember me as it will.”

“History will remember you as a monster!” said Rallai.

“Better a monster who made a difference than a weakling too afraid to make a stand,” said P’raima.

“P’raima, please!” Valonna begged. “What possible good could killing a weyrling do? Please!”

P’raima cut her off. “Be silent, Valonna. Responsibility for this rests with your Sh’zon. If he’d done as he was told this wouldn’t be necessary.”

But though Valonna braced herself for the keen from the dragons outside that would signal the awful deed had been done, the minutes passed, and nothing happened. She looked again to G’kalte. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he struggled to communicate with his dragon. Across the table, H’pold shifted his weight in his chair, and even Sirtis, who had been clinging to L’dro for comfort, was beginning to look uncertain. Valonna braved a longer glance at P’raima. His expression betrayed little, but something like impatience had narrowed his bloodshot eyes.

And then a commotion outside made everyone sit up: voices raised in anger, the scuffling of feet, and at last a jingling thud, like the sound of an armoured body being pushed aside. An instant later, the door flew open, and Sh’zon came bellowing in. “Call off your shaffing murderer, P’raima! Call him off; you can have your shaffing queen!”

P’raima had turned sharply at the intrusion, but now his hooded eyes lit with a wild glitter of triumph. “Megrith –”

“H’ned and Izath are transporting her right now,” Sh’zon said. “Void take you, call D’pantha off!”

“When I have confirmation,” said P’raima, raising a finger, though he was visibly struggling to contain his glee. “When I have…”

He trailed off, his eyes moving back and forth. Valonna rose quickly and clutched Sh’zon’s arm; he was breathing hard, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl. “Sh’zon, what have you done?” she breathed, stricken.

“I’m sorry, Valonna,” he said. He sounded sick. “He was going to kill the other girl.”

“You’d best not have botched this, Sh’zon,” H’pold hissed through his teeth. He stood up. “Well, P’raima? Are you satisfied?”

P’raima’s gaze suddenly snapped back into focus. “Sign the treaty,” he said roughly. He stepped up to the table and slammed his hand down on the Peninsula document. “Sign it! And you too, Valonna, or by Faranth that weyrling’s blood will be on your hands!”

Desperate, Valonna met Rallai’s gaze across the table. However little weight a treaty held if signed under coercion, conceding to P’raima’s demands seemed an unthinkable submission for them both to make. History, certainly, would note that both of them had in the end yielded to him.

Valonna would far rather be remembered for yielding than for putting her pride before a weyrling’s life.

She tore her eyes away from Rallai’s. Her hand was shaking as she dipped the pen in the inkwell, scattering black blots over the surface of the vellum, like a pestilent rash. She set the nib to the space left blank above the listing of her name and titles.

And then G’kalte’s elbow bumped roughly into hers, sending her first downstroke wildly askew. “Weyrwoman, don’t sign it! Your weyrlings are safe!”

For an instant, dumbstruck silence ruled; every face in the room stunned by the cry.

P’raima’s face changed. His mouth fell open slackly, his jaw working, as he stared incredulously at G’kalte, and then his strangled cry rent the hush like a knife, fury and defiance and disbelief united in a sound almost more animal than human. “NO!”

“For Faranth’s sake, someone get the bastard, then!” said Coffleby.

But before Sh’zon could vault across the table to seize P’raima, or L’dro could extricate himself from Sirtis’ death-grip, or H’pold could push back his chair to engage, P’raima ripped the knife from the sheath on his own belt and jabbed its point, two-handed against his own chest. “Keep back,” he warned them. “Keep back. I’ll do it. I’ll do it, and none of you will ever hear your dragons again.”

It was a testament to the broken mania in P’raima’s eyes that no one questioned the sincerity of his threat. Fear tightened in Valonna’s breast like a fist; a visceral, primal terror not for another’s life, but for the permanent disabling of her own, as though she faced the removal of her hand, her arm, her heart. She was distantly aware of the impact that shuddered through the room, rocking every glass and cup on the table, but it was nothing to the thought of P’raima taking his own life and with it the knowledge of the cure to the poison that was separating all of them from their dragons.

“P’raima,” Rallai pleaded. “It’s over. What do you gain by killing yourself?”

“What do I gain by not?” he rasped. L’dro, having shoved Sirtis away, took an involuntary step closer, and P’raima took one warning hand off the knife, putting his back to the window. Multihued light streamed around him, but P’raima was a dark shape against the coloured panes, black and malevolent as a cancer. “I said keep back!”

“This doesn’t have to be the end for you, P’raima,” said H’pold. His voice was desperate. “We won’t push for Separation. Just Exile. You and Tezonth will go to the islands. Together. No one will bother you –”

“To the islands? Knowing that everything I’ve worked for is to be despoiled and polluted? Knowing that everything I’ve sacrificed in the service of Pern has been for nothing?” P’raima was pressing the tip of his knife so hard against his chest now that blood was seeping up beneath the point of contact, darkening the fabric of his shirt with a spreading stain. “Judged and sentenced and suffered to live by the likes of you? You, who allow your dragons to be used as beasts of burden, crawling and scraping to the Holds for the crumbs from their tables, persisting in your petty political disputes with one another when any dragonrider’s duty should be to the future of Pern?”

“What about Tezonth?” Valonna cried, desperate for anything to sway P’raima from his course. “How can you do this to him? Don’t you love him?”

A shadow was falling outside, a silhouette beyond the window, robbing light from the room, but P’raima didn’t seem to notice. “Love,” P’raima mocked her, his lip curling. “Silly little girl, to still think that what binds a dragon and his rider is love. It’s need, Valonna. Dependency. Dragon to rider, rider to dragon. Their will forced upon us. Our will forced upon them. That isn’t love. It’s tyranny. We’re each other’s master, and each other’s slave. I don’t love my dragon.” He replaced his other hand on the hilt of the knife, falling to his knees, a terrible smile stretching his lips. “I merely need him.”

“No!” Valonna screamed.

But her voice was drowned out by the howl from without; a dragon’s voice. Tezonth’s voice. The shadow outside the stained glass window shifted, becoming darker, blacker. And then G’kalte barged into Valonna, knocking her from her chair, even as he shouted, “Everyone get down!”

The glass exploded.

Shards of glass in every shade burst inwards, flicking points of light from their every jagged facet in a whirling storm of jewels, as a monstrous bronze forepaw smashed through the window. Valonna could hear screaming as she hit the floor, cups and plates and cutlery showering down all around as her momentum yanked the tablecloth loose. From beneath the table, she saw the massive paw sweep left, then right, making a gaping hole in the glass. The huge talons closed around P’raima, and then, abruptly, he was gone, snatched backwards through the shattered window.

For a moment Valonna just lay there, struck dumb, as thousands of tinkling splinters of coloured glass rained down.

Then another impact shuddered through the room, and all at once the light pouring through the ragged hole where the window had been was blocked by a great golden head. “Shimpath,” Valonna heard herself say, and scrambled upright. She flew across the room, ignoring the broken glass that crunched beneath her feet, and Shimpath pushed her nose through the skeleton of lead flashing that had held the stained glass panes together, heedless of the sharp fragments that remained, crooning loud enough to shiver the room. “Shimpath, Shimpath,” Valonna wept, flinging herself against her dragon’s muzzle. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!”

“Faranth’s teeth!” Sh’zon swore, from somewhere behind her. “Is everyone whole?”

Valonna half turned from her queen, though she didn’t relinquish her fierce grip on Shimpath’s jaw. Lady Coffleby seemed to have escaped the hail of glass entirely; she looked shaken but unharmed. Sirtis was sobbing in L’dro’s arms; they, and almost everyone else, were bleeding from small cuts. Sh’zon was streaming blood freely from his arm, his sleeve hanging in ribbons, but he seemed not to have noticed the wound. H’pold hadn’t moved from his seat at the table, while Rallai –

And then Valonna looked again at H’pold. He sat stiffly, his eyes wide and staring, making a strangled gurgling sound, and with a jolt of horror Valonna saw the long piece of crimson glass embedded in his neck, and blood of the exact same hue spurting in regular jets from the sliced arteries of his throat.

“Is everyone –” Sh’zon began again.

“Oh sweet Faranth, H’pold!” Rallai cried, clutching her Weyrleader’s arm. “G’kalte, G’kalte!”

G’kalte was already moving. “Stay still, Weyrleader!”

“Faranth, it’s right in his neck!” L’dro shouted.

G’kalte pressed his hands either side of the shard of glass in H’pold’s neck. Blood continued to squirt out from between his fingers, turning his hands slick and red in moments. “Someone get a Healer!” he shouted, over his shoulder. “I need help here!”

But H’pold made a dreadful sound, and the stiffness of his stricken posture left him all at once. He toppled limply sideways, out of G’kalte’s slippery grasp, the spray of blood from his lacerated throat weakening and stopping as his heart ceased its beating.

For a long, hideous instant no one spoke, as they all stared in horror at H’pold’s slumped and lifeless form. Valonna pressed her face against Shimpath’s cheek, unable to bear it. What if P’raima’s poison had damaged H’pold’s bond with his dragon beyond Suffath’s ability to realise that his rider was gone?

The cry of a riderless dragon, as at last Suffath screamed his grief to the world, had never been more tragically welcome.

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Much as he hated timing – and even more so now, in the light of M’ric’s treachery – Sh’zon wished he could in good conscience have put himself in several places at once. They’d left Long Bay in an uproar, and while Lady Coffleby wasn’t so crass as to demand that the dragonriders stay, she made it plain that she expected someone to answer for the events of the day in due course. L’mis was there still, representing Madellon, but almost all riders and Weyrfolk were home now. Sh’zon had been torn between going to Southern in pursuit of P’raima and his accomplices, and to the Peninsula to comfort Rallai, but in the end the news that Tarshe was on her way back to Madellon on an Ops Wing blue decided matters. Sh’zon was there to see his cousin restored to her dragonet, though Berzunth was reluctant to let him close enough to talk to her.

After that, events took on a momentum of their own. H’ned, fortuitously, had not yet delivered Karika and Megrith back to their native Weyr, but after a hasty conference they agreed he and P’keo should go directly to Southern to demand the whereabouts of P’raima. Sh’zon wanted to go with them, but Valonna forbade him. “We’re half useless not being able to talk to our dragons,” she told him, away from where H’ned could hear. “I’ve never been so frightened –” She stopped herself before completing the sentence, but Sh’zon grasped her meaning: a rider’s faith in his dragon’s ability to go between without guidance shouldn’t be put to the test more often than was absolutely necessary. He grudgingly consented to her insistence that he present himself to Master Isnan to have his arm sewn up.

As it transpired, nothing happened with the speed Sh’zon would have liked anyway. H’ned and P’keo returned with reports that Southern was in chaos, with no sign of Tezonth or P’raima, and the bronze riders there split into two roughly equal factions: one united behind D’pantha and the status quo, the other supporting R’maro’s call for change. It was precisely the internal conflict that everyone had been expecting to break out at Southern since Margone’s death, and under different circumstances Sh’zon would have been glad to see the Weyr’s riders throwing off P’raima’s stifling harness. But while he, and Valonna, and every other rider whom P’raima had poisoned with felah at Long Bay still couldn’t speak to their dragons, Sh’zon seethed at how the power struggle at Southern had superseded the Weyr’s responsibility to answer for its former Weyrleader’s wrongs.

“There’s no point barging in and demanding answers now,” L’stev said, during one of the half-dozen hasty conferences Madellon’s senior riders converged over the course of the afternoon. “Do that before the two sides have had a chance to entrench their differences, and you’ll just unite them against Madellon as a common enemy again. We still hold the trump card. We have their queen. When they’re ready to talk sense, they’ll come to us.”

“That’s fine for you to say, L’stev,” Sh’zon retorted. “You can hear your shaffing dragon.”

L’stev’s dramatic brows knit together over his nose. “I’m not insensitive to that.”

“The Weyrlingmaster’s right,” said Valonna. She still had the same lost, baffled look in her eyes that Tarshe and Carleah wore. Sh’zon supposed a vigilant observer would see it in him, too. There’d been no weakening of the barrier that separated him from Kawanth in the hours that had passed since he’d drunk P’raima’s poisoned sherry. He’d hoped the drug might just wear off, but it showed no sign of doing so. Sh’zon tried not to let his insides knot at the implication. “The dragon-deafness isn’t any worse than it was, and Isnan’s already gone to the Hall to consult with his colleagues. The Healers are more likely to find a cure for P’raima’s drug than Southern’s riders.” Then she lifted her chin, and spoke with a steel that Sh’zon had never heard in her voice before. “Better that we root out P’raima’s accomplice. He didn’t act alone.”

“D’pantha,” Sh’zon said, hearing how his revulsion twisted the name into a slur. He felt his fingers curl, of their own volition, into fists.

“We don’t know that,” insisted H’ned, though his voice lacked conviction.

“Where else did he go but to murder that poor green weyrling?” Sh’zon demanded.

L’stev snorted. “That poor green weyrling might have given D’pantha more trouble that he’d bargained for,” he said, in an admiring growl. “Carleah near ripped Santinoth’s snout clean off when he came to rescue her before she recognised him.”

The reminder that M’ric’s Ops Wing had actually hit lucky and found Tarshe and Carleah before P’raima’s order could be carried out made Sh’zon’s teeth grind. “Would’ve been better if they’d caught D’pantha at it, or at least one of the bastards who had the girls.”

“There’s no sign of them at all?” asked H’ned.

L’stev shook his head. “T’rello said they caught a glimpse of the bronze escaping between, but the two kidnappers were long gone by the time Santinoth was able to land. We have names to follow up, and one of them had a fire-lizard, but Carleah described them as having Southern accents, so good luck shaking them back out of the shadows.”

“Is there any word from Rallai?” Sh’zon asked. “From the Peninsula, that is?”

If anyone noticed his slip, they didn’t remark on it. “K’ken’s keeping a lid on things,” said H’ned. “I think the place is in shock. Losing H’pold like that…Faranth.”

“It could have been any of us,” Valonna said softly. Then, as if rousing herself from distraction, she looked at Sh’zon. “Did the Healers say if your arm would be all right, Sh’zon?”

It twinged, actually – the journeyman who’d stitched it up had remarked chidingly that Sh’zon shouldn’t have gone between with an untreated wound – and the skin around the slash was itching as the first coat of numbweed began to wear off, but Sh’zon wasn’t about to admit any of that. “It’s a scratch,” he said dismissively, which also left unsaid the fact that his injury, relocated not eight inches higher, could have killed him just as dead as H’pold.

“Well, if there’s nothing else new I need to get back to my weyrlings,” said L’stev. “I don’t like leaving A’len in charge.”

“Why’s A’len in charge?” asked Valonna. “Where’s C’mine?”

L’stev paused, halfway to his feet. “I’ve dismissed him,” he said shortly. “His judgement is impaired. Had we not thicker Thread to burn today, I’d ask you to have Shimpath restrain Darshanth. As it is, the self-destruction of one blue rider is the least of our worries. You know where I am if you need me.”

They all watched him go, H’ned with an expression of regret, Valonna looking outright distressed. “What did C’mine do?” she asked, once L’stev’s stumping footsteps had faded.

“Timed it to report where the weyrlings were being held,” said H’ned. He shrugged. “He met himself coming. Or maybe going. I’m not sure which. He’s a mess.”

Sh’zon saw Valonna’s hand fly up to cover her mouth. “Oh, poor C’mine!” He hadn’t known that the Weyrwoman had a personal relationship with L’stev’s assistant. Her brow wrinkled in the frustrated expression that suggested she’d tried to bespeak Shimpath and failed. “He must have been beside himself with worry about Carleah.”

“Well, yes,” said H’ned, “literally.”

“That was in bad taste, H’ned,” Sh’zon rebuked him, although – privately – he thought the remark was pretty funny.

H’ned met Valonna’s reproachful look ruefully. “I’m sorry, Weyrwoman. I –” He paused mid-sentence, his eyes going distant.

“What?” Sh’zon asked, recognising the hungry note in his own voice, even as Valonna echoed his question.

H’ned listened for several long moments, and then his pale eyes snapped back into focus. “Southern. They seem to be at a stalemate. The two factions are asking to meet with us.”

“So we can hand Megrith over to the one we like better?” Sh’zon asked, outraged. “What makes them think we’ll be inclined to do that?”

H’ned shook his head slowly. “I don’t know,” he said. “But they’re both saying that have something we want.”

“They can shove it up their –”

Valonna interrupted him. “Let them come,” she said. “We’ll hear them out, at least. Maybe they can help. H’ned, please contact Essienth at the Peninsula.”

H’ned nodded. He stood to leave. Then he paused. “They’re not coming to help, though,” he said. The sympathy in his voice as he looked at Valonna was nearly more than Sh’zon could stand. He knew he couldn’t have borne it at all had H’ned turned that pitying gaze on him.

“No,” Sh’zon said, roughly. “They’re coming for Megrith.”

Chapter forty-nine: Valonna, Carleah

In the immediate aftermath of the Long Bay Incident in I7/100, southern Pern was for a time devoid of a single traditional Weyrleader in any of its three Weyrs.

Not for no reason was that period of upheaval considered the start of many of the changes that would come to define the politics of Pern in the late Seventh Interval and Eighth Pass.

– Masterharper Hennidge, Chronicle of the Seventh Interval

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Cyniath and Maibauth descended towards the Bowl, two bronzes so alike they might have hatched from the same egg, and close enough to their mutual sire Tezonth in colour and conformation that it gave Valonna a reflexive chill to see them.

“Well?” Sh’zon asked T’rello, where they all stood on Shimpath’s weyr ledge. “Is that the bronze you saw going between in Southern territory?”

“Which one?” T’rello asked. “They both look the same.”

Sh’zon growled, “For Faranth’s sake…!”

“Be reasonable, Sh’zon,” said H’ned, on T’rello’s other side. “Do you even know which of them is Maibauth and which Cyniath?”

Sh’zon didn’t reply for a long moment, his gaze moving between the two Southern dragons. “Cyniath’s on the left,” he said, pointing, though he didn’t sound certain.

Even side by side, the differences between the two bronzes were difficult to make out. Valonna thought perhaps that Maibauth was a fraction taller than Cyniath. T’rello looked hard at the Southern bronze, his brow furrowing in concentration. “I can’t say for certain,” he said at last. “It could have been. We never got a clear sight.”

Sh’zon’s teeth flashed briefly in an expression of annoyance, but H’ned clapped T’rello on the shoulder. “Never mind. If anything comes back to you, have Santinoth bespeak Izath.” He glanced at Sh’zon. “Best I greet them.”

As H’ned started forward to receive D’pantha and R’maro, Valonna noted how Sh’zon clenched his jaw when he looked at the Southern riders. Sh’zon had always been direct, even overbearing, in his manner, but his temper was visibly close to boiling over. Valonna wondered if it was the felah. It seemed to be affecting each of them differently, beyond its main effect of blocking their communication with their dragons. Tarshe was nearly as angry as her cousin, while Carleah had been so overwrought, launching into an emotive account of their ordeal without even pausing for breath between sentences, that the Healers had recommended she be sedated for her own good. Valonna had asked the Weyr Healer’s staff to mix both girls something to soothe them without actually putting them to sleep, and they were resting now under the fierce and vigilant watch of their respective dragonets.

She, herself, felt almost paralysed with fear and dread; indignation, even anger, ran beneath her fright, but secondary to it. Shimpath was much angrier than she, and if Madellon hadn’t already been fraught with tensions in the wake of the dreadful day, the waves of fury emanating from its senior queen would soon have made it so.

Rallai wasn’t coming. H’ned had gone to invite her to the table with the two Southern riders, but he’d returned alone, reporting that the Peninsula was in nearly as much uproar as Southern. “Rallai said she can’t leave her riders right now,” he’d said. “She said she trusts in you to negotiate with Southern, and that Sh’zon will speak for Peninsula if necessary.”

H’ned had given Sh’zon a hard look with that, his gaze lingering on the Weyrleader’s knot still looped over his shoulder. Sh’zon had made no effort to take it off. It would have to be returned soon, Valonna thought, for H’pold’s interment, but she was too wary of Sh’zon’s temper to point it out. She knew Shimpath would have been irate with her had she been party to that reasoning. The notion that her queen might never again have free access to her thoughts made grasping tendrils of panic and despair begin to rise from the pit of her stomach.

She fended them off only with the hope that the two Southerners come to treat with Madellon had a cure for the poison P’raima had put in the sherry – the cure Karika believed must exist. The thought of Karika gave Valonna another queasy pang of fear. Shimpath had promised Megrith sanctuary. Sh’zon had almost been forced into breaking the queens’ covenant. Yet now, Valonna dreaded the likelihood that she would be the one obliged to use Karika as a bargaining chip. The fact that Karika had already offered to return to Southern for Tarshe and Carleah’s sakes in no way mitigated the revulsion Valonna felt at the idea of trading the girl for the cure.

“Weyrwoman,” said Sh’zon, touching her arm. He jerked his head towards the interior of the weyr. “We need to go inside.”

Under most other circumstances it would have been a dreadful snub of representatives of another Weyr. Envoys should be received by the Weyrleaders and escorted with all civility and courtesy to the council chamber. Shimpath wouldn’t have it. Valonna didn’t need to be able to hear her queen to grasp that she would not tolerate her leaving her sight. Even as Valonna let Sh’zon accompany her within, Shimpath rose from her ledge and followed them. Arranged just so, with her head put somewhat awkwardly through the archway between her chamber and Valonna’s quarters, she would be able to keep watch over her. Valonna suspected that Kawanth felt much the same anxiety about having Sh’zon out of visual range, but a queen’s demands would always outrank a bronze’s.

There had been little time to prepare a welcome for the two Southern riders – not that they felt inclined to cordiality anyway. Valonna only wished they’d had more opportunity to form a strategy. It was clear that D’pantha and R’maro came as rivals rather than allies. It was clear that the struggle between them hinged on one of them securing the restoration of Southern’s sole living queen to her home Weyr. It was clear they would each offer Madellon something in trade for Megrith’s return. Beyond those bare facts, neither Valonna nor Sh’zon nor H’ned knew what to expect.

They’d set a table in Valonna’s office with water and klah. No wine. That was a courtesy too far for two riders from the Weyr whose leader had kidnapped and poisoned and murdered in the pursuit of his frenzied ends. Sh’zon, Valonna knew, had already convicted D’pantha as P’raima’s accomplice; she had taken care to see that the two were not seated next to each other, for fear that Sh’zon’s rage would boil over into violence. Nor would the two Southerners sit together. Valonna had placed them at either end of the table to discourage them from setting their differences aside in the face of Madellon’s censure. That was as much preparation as they’d had time to agree.

Valonna took the central seat on one side of the table. Sh’zon sat on her right. “Water?” he asked, curtly, and when Valonna nodded, he poured for both of them.

He had barely set down the two cups when H’ned brought R’maro and D’pantha into the chamber. As soon as the three bronze riders were inside, Shimpath’s enormous head thrust through the archway. Her eyes were turbulently blue, more storm than sky, flecked red with her displeasure. Still, Valonna found her watchful presence comforting.

It was not easy to resist the reflex to rise, a courtesy drilled into her over Turns as Hold scion and Weyrwoman. Valonna managed it only by hooking her fingers painfully tight together where they lay in her lap. Standing, she told herself, would undo even the hurried weave of their planning. The Southern riders must be made to know their place as petitioners, not equals. She saw, from the corner of her eye, Sh’zon shift restlessly beside her, and hoped he would not leap to his feet.

“Weyrwoman Valonna,” H’ned said formally, inclining his head to her. “R’maro and D’pantha, from Southern Weyr.”

Valonna took a breath, permitted herself the briefest glance at Shimpath, and then nodded with a briskness she didn’t feel. “Be seated.”

She wondered, as H’ned gestured R’maro to Sh’zon’s end of the table, and D’pantha to the opposite seat, if the two Southerners would believe her front. Recent events had forced her to develop, if nothing so substantial as an armour, then at least a veneer of gravity, a thin shell of composure. Still, she knew, she was young, and inexperienced, and looked even more so of both than she was. She was no formidable Fianine, nor effortless Rallai, nor even distracting Sirtis. No, Valonna thought. I am none of them. And then she thought what she knew Shimpath would have said, had she been able to hear her. I am the Weyrwoman of Madellon Weyr. I am Shimpath’s rider. And then at last she added, I am Valonna.

She had never met either rider before, and H’ned’s briefing on them both had been terse, but R’maro reminded her so powerfully of the last Southern rider Valonna had received in her office that she had to will away the lump in her throat. He was lean and rangy where Margone had been gaunt, and his hair was sandy-light to her grey, but his brilliant green eyes, flecked with gold, were as startling as Margone’s had been. She only wished they were less guarded, less wary. R’maro was a junior Wingleader, H’ned had told her; not heretofore prominent among Southern’s bronze riders. But he was still a Southerner, Margone’s son or not. And even Margone had come to Madellon not to offer aid but to seek help. It was just difficult not to see the shadow of the Weyrwoman’s desperate plea in her son’s petition.

D’pantha might have been R’maro’s opposite in every way: older, swarthier of complexion, with blunt pockmarked features and grey-shot black hair. He was burly, brawny, solid. His expression yielded no hint to Valonna’s searching gaze that he was a man to compromise. Nor did his coal-black, coal-hard eyes offer her any reassurance that he was a man who would balk at a task he was given. He had been Southern’s second-in-command for long Turns, as intrinsic a part of the former Weyrleader’s regime as P’raima himself, as senior as R’maro was junior.

But the two Southern men were alike in one way, at least. Both were users of felah. The Weyr Healer Isnan, before leaving to consult with his colleagues at the Hall, had examined all the Madellon riders who had been poisoned – Valonna, Sh’zon, Tarshe, and Carleah – and pointed out a tell-tale dilation of the pupils of their eyes. It explained why all of them had been finding themselves unusually sensitive to the light since their poisoning. The dilation was less dramatic in R’maro’s and D’pantha’s eyes, but now Valonna knew to look for it, it was there. “I would welcome you to Madellon,” she said. Her voice, she was surprised to hear, was perfectly even, without a trace of a quiver. “But this is not a day for welcomes. Where is your Weyrleader?”

“He hasn’t –”

“He isn’t our –”

Both Southern riders spoke at once; they both stopped and looked at each other balefully for the interruption.

“Faranth’s sake,” Sh’zon said impatiently. “D’pantha, you’re P’raima’s deputy. Where in the Void is he?”

“I don’t know,” D’pantha replied shortly. “He hasn’t returned to Southern, and there’s been no word from him. Cyniath can’t reach him. No one can reach him.”

“No one wants to reach him,” said R’maro. “After all he’s done, better he makes himself unreachable for good.”

“Then he’s not dead?” asked Valonna.

“No.” D’pantha said it too quickly. Every eye turned to him, not least R’maro’s, but he seemed unconcerned by the accusation. “Cyniath would know.”

“Cyniath’s close to Tezonth, is he?” Sh’zon said, barely hiding the implication in his voice.

D’pantha returned Sh’zon blazing blue gaze without flinching. “None of you are such simpletons that I’d profess otherwise. It’s common knowledge that I’ve been the Weyrleader’s right hand at Southern these last ten Turns.”

Valonna sensed that Sh’zon was on the verge of shouting out the accusation they’d agreed to leave unsaid at the first. She grasped his forearm beneath the table and felt him twist slightly towards her. He was trembling with barely-contained rage. She wished she could ask Shimpath to have Kawanth calm him. “You know what P’raima did to us today,” she said, skirting carefully the issue of blame, and then added, “Both of you,” looking from D’pantha to R’maro.

The Southern riders had the grace to look uncomfortable. “Your weyrlings are unharmed?” asked D’pantha, stiffly.

“Bruised and shaken,” H’ned said, giving Valonna the chance to dig her fingernails hard into Sh’zon’s arm. “Likely to suffer nightmares for Turns.”

“And poisoned into dragon-deafness,” Sh’zon said, despite Valonna’s convulsive grip on his forearm. “As are we all!”

“You haven’t been poisoned,” D’pantha insisted. “It won’t harm –”

“It’s already harmed us!” Sh’zon bellowed.

“Wingleader!” Valonna said to him, as sharply as she could manage. Amazingly, Sh’zon subsided. She took breath. “Drugged, then,” she said to D’pantha. She swapped her gaze to R’maro. “With this…felah.”

“Few at Southern would deny that P’raima was wrong to give you felah,” said R’maro.

“None would,” D’pantha interjected. “What P’raima did cannot be laid at the feet of the other riders of Southern.”

“But P’raima acted in what he believed to be Southern’s interests,” said H’ned.

“P’raima acted in P’raima’s interests,” said R’maro. “As he has for Turns.”

D’pantha turned an excoriating glare on the younger rider. “Southern has always been P’raima’s only interest, R’maro,” he said. “He’s devoted every instant, every breath to the Weyr since before you were born.”

“Well do I know that.”

“I’ll wager you do,” D’pantha said, sitting back.

“But P’raima isn’t here to answer for his crimes,” H’ned cut in, before the two Southerners could bicker any further. “In his absence, what the Southern Weyrleader has damaged, Southern Weyr must put right.”

D’pantha was fastest to compose himself. He nodded guardedly. “As best we can.”

“What do you mean, as best you can?” Sh’zon demanded. “You can give us the shaffing cure, for starters!”

“The cure,” D’pantha repeated. Slowly, he shook his head. “What cure?”

Fear snatched anew at Valonna’s stomach, and Sh’zon recoiled beside her. She couldn’t speak with her mouth gone suddenly dry. H’ned stepped in. “P’raima promised an antidote to the felah, in return for a treaty of non-intervention.”

D’pantha frowned. “Then he…misled you,” he said. He sounded reluctant to indict P’raima in any way. “Felah isn’t a poison. It has no antidote.”

Sh’zon shook Valonna’s hand off his arm, and rose to his full considerable height. He was visibly shaking as he slammed both hands down on the table and loomed over D’pantha like a mantling dragon. “Then how in Faranth’s Thread-struck name are you going to fix us, you worthless piece of shit?”

D’pantha, for all his unflappable demeanour, pushed his chair back slightly from the table. H’ned caught the back of Sh’zon shirt. “Easy, Wingleader.”

“Get your hands off me!” Sh’zon roared, turning on H’ned.

“Wingleaders!” Valonna cried, and Shimpath, who could hear well enough to follow the conference, added an irate bark to her exclamation. Sh’zon dropped back into his seat, with a thump like a dropped sack of flour, and sat there, crimson with fury.

“P’raima must have given you a massive dose of felah to block you completely from your dragons,” said D’pantha, in the moment of stillness that followed. “It was never intended to cause dragon-deafness.”

“Then what is it?” Valonna asked desperately.

D’pantha looked to be struggling for an answer. “It’s Southern business,” he said. “It always has been. It’s not for outsiders.”

“Look there, Wingleader,” said Valonna, in a chilly tone she hadn’t know she could project. She pointed at Shimpath. “My queen doesn’t care if you think it’s Southern’s business. P’raima has made it Madellon’s business. What is it?”

“It’s what makes us better than the other Weyrs,” D’pantha said at last, without a shred of humility. “More controlled. Less in thrall to our dragons’ baser instincts. It makes us civilised.”

“Civilised?” H’ned asked, incredulous. “You drug yourselves to block out your dragons, and call it civilised?”

“Is it civilised that dragonriders should rut indiscriminately when their dragons do?” D’pantha asked. “Breeding unwanted children, spreading disease, grappling crudely with partners not of our choosing? Is that civilised, is that seemly, is that right?”

It was such a staggering statement, so fundamentally contrary to everything Valonna – everything every dragonrider – had been taught – that she had no words. H’ned looked as shocked as she felt, and even Sh’zon seemed jolted out of his rage. “It’s part of being a dragonrider,” H’ned managed, at length. “It’s part of what we accept. ‘The dragon decides –’”

“‘– and the rider complies’,” D’pantha completed the adage, with a curl of his lip. “Yes. We comply. And riders are harmed, and riders are traumatised. Sometimes riders die. But not at Southern. Not any more.”

Sh’zon shook his head, bewildered. “By excluding your dragons from your minds? By addicting yourselves to a drug?”

“Felah doesn’t exclude them,” said D’pantha. “It takes only a little to blur the link, to resist the merge enough to stay more in control. It’s a price worth paying.”

They were dumbfounded, all of them, for a long moment in the aftermath of that revelation. It seemed a dreadful assault on the purity of the dragon-rider bond. And yet…and yet… Valonna remembered a boy who had Impressed a green from Shimpath’s first clutch: M’lare, his dragon Narvinth. He had never completed weyrling training, not through a mishap in flying or flaming, but because breaking flight-merge during his green’s maiden mating had sent his dragon fleeing, terrified, between. Afterwards, L’stev had blamed himself, insisting he hadn’t done enough to prepare a Holdbred lad for the realities of being a green rider. But Valonna had read many accounts in Madellon’s records of how green riders sometimes struggled with the difficult demands of their lusty dragons, male and female both; how greens were lost, not often, but sometimes, in their first or second matings; how, more rarely, they took their mates between with them to their deaths. And she wondered, though it appalled her, if D’pantha had a point: if there was some truth in his words, some virtue in Southern’s vice.

“If you’re so very civilised, then,” said H’ned, “why haven’t you shared this miracle potion with the other Weyrs?”

D’pantha looked at him. “Why should we?” Then he went on, though his explanation didn’t diminish the breath-taking arrogance of his first response. “Do you think the ingredients of felah are easily obtained? Common herbs, perhaps, to be picked by the side of a road? That the formula could be mixed by any apprentice Healer?” He snorted with disdain at the notion. “Our herbalists can produce barely enough to meet our own needs. So perhaps you’ll better understand, now, the value of my offer to you.”

“Which is what?” asked H’ned.

D’pantha paused, his black eyes moving from H’ned’s face to Sh’zon’s and then onto Valonna’s. “You’ve had a strong dose,” he said, perhaps seeing some nuance in their eyes that only one familiar with felah would discern. “Its effects may wear off eventually, to a degree. A few of the riders who volunteered to try our early attempts at formulating felah regained some communication with their dragons after powerful doses.” He paused. “Though none of them ever lost their longing for the draught.”

“Faranth,” Valonna whispered.

“You’ll begin to feel the cravings late tonight,” D’pantha went on. “Perhaps they won’t begin until the morning, but certainly by noon tomorrow. You’ll find yourselves restless, agitated, unable to settle or to concentrate. You’ll be short-tempered and snappish with everyone around you. Later, you’ll find yourself sweating, though your hands will seem ice cold. Nothing you drink will quench your thirst. Then the itching will begin –”

“Stop!” Sh’zon exclaimed, nearly shouting. Sweat was already glistening on his brow. “Stop, you blighted snake,” he went on, more softly.

D’pantha nodded slowly. “Our supply of felah is limited,” he said. “But I will provide you with enough for each of the Madellon and Peninsula riders affected by P’raima’s dose. You may continue to take it indefinitely, or try to wean yourselves off it, as you like.”

“This is your offer?” Valonna asked hollowly.

“Not all of it,” D’pantha replied. “Southern will also reimburse Madellon for…fostering…our weyrlings, in goods or marks. We will make a gift to each rider directly affected by P’raima’s actions today in compensation for his behaviour.”

“And what compensation do you intend to give to Weyrleader H’pold?” H’ned asked.

D’pantha raised his head. “H’pold’s death was a tragic accident,” he said. “But Southern will recognise the gravity of the damage done to the Peninsula.” He glanced at Sh’zon. “There has been some dispute over the territorial status of Hoffen Hold. Southern will cede all rights and responsibilities over Hoffen, to the Peninsula, in perpetuity.”

Sh’zon frowned in reaction to that. “And in return for all these concessions, you want Megrith,” he said, with disgust.

D’pantha’s nearly black eyes glittered. “I want Southern Weyr, and myself as Southern’s Weyrleader Regent, exonerated hereafter of all wrongdoings, perceived and actual, committed by P’raima or at P’raima’s command. Madellon’s written pledge, and Peninsula’s, that no action will be taken against Southern or Southern’s riders, nor any further reparations sought.” He paused. His eyes moved to the Weyrleader’s braid on Sh’zon’s shoulder. “And I want Ranquiath as Southern’s senior queen.”

There was an instant of startled silence, as D’pantha’s unexpected final demand sank in, and then Sh’zon burst out, “You want Ranquiath?”

“Please,” R’maro interrupted. He had been listening to his compatriot’s list of demands with a sceptical expression. “Don’t think my Weyrmate is acting out of anything but the purest self-interest. D’pantha here has every reason not to want Megrith restored to Southern. After all, you can’t become Weyrleader to a Weyrwoman who’s your own daughter, can you?”

Valonna looked in astonishment at D’pantha. “You’re Karika’s father?”

D’pantha shot a glowering look at R’maro, and then nodded curtly. “I sired her, yes. And it’s true I’d have there be no risk that Cyniath could ever fly Megrith. Felah can go only so far. R’maro would condemn me for wanting to avert an abomination.”

“No, D’pantha,” R’maro replied, “only for putting your ambitions ahead of Southern’s right to its own queen, and Karika’s right to take her place as our Weyrwoman. If you fear an inability to control Cyniath, then you should step aside, not expect a queen to do so for you.”

“Then you are asking for Megrith back, R’maro?” H’ned asked, before D’pantha could reply.

“Yes,” said R’maro. “And I make no apology for it. Megrith is a Southern queen. Southern’s only queen.” He met and held Valonna’s gaze squarely. “I respect the pact between your queens, Weyrwoman, as I respected Weyrwoman Margone’s decision to have our weyrlings brought to Madellon for sanctuary. P’raima’s actions these last months have not been supported as whole-heartedly as D’pantha would have you believe.” He ignored the look of disgust that D’pantha sent his way. “But P’raima is gone now, in disgrace. Were he ever to return, he would be handed straight over to Madellon and the Peninsula to answer for what he did.”

“Your treacherous snake,” D’pantha said, under his breath.

R’maro still ignored him. “It’s no disparagement of Ranquiath that we would rather have Megrith back. You would do Ranquiath’s rider no favours to install her as our Weyrwoman. Southern is not a Weyr that takes well to strangers. Perhaps we’re too proud of our history and our bloodlines, but it is how we are. Weyrwoman Sirtis would find herself judged unfavourably to her predecessor – my late mother – no matter how unfair the comparison. She would find our ways and habits very different to those of the Peninsula, and our riders not as welcoming as she might hope. Karika, though, would be adored and cherished as the daughter of Southern she truly is.” He flung a look at D’pantha. “Regardless of her father’s opinion of her. Whatever Karika feared would happen to her under P’raima, I guarantee would not in a Southern free of him. A Southern with me as its Weyrleader Regent.”

He fell silent. H’ned stirred. “And what do we get?” he asked. “Madellon and the Peninsula?”

R’maro smiled. “Everything D’pantha’s offered.”

“As if that were in your power, R’maro,” D’pantha said derisively. He looked at H’ned. “He promises concessions he has not the authority to give. Southern won’t accept a junior Wingleader as its Weyrleader. Nor will Southern’s Lords treat with a novice bronze rider they don’t know. And he cannot supply you with felah. He has no access to, nor knowledge of, the production facility.”

“That is true,” R’maro admitted. He was still smiling. “I don’t have access to the felah makers. But you won’t need it.” He leaned forwards. “There is an antidote.”

“What?” D’pantha asked, so sharply that a burst of spittle escaped his mouth as he said it.

R’maro smirked at him, but any satisfaction he took at spiting his rival was cut short by Sh’zon, who slammed his fist down on the table before R’maro with a bang. “Is this true?”

“Yes,” R’maro said hastily, and then, “at least, I believe it is.” He held his hands up. “Let me explain.”

“Sh’zon,” Valonna said urgently, tugging his arm. “Sit down. Please!” Sh’zon grudgingly resumed his seat, and Valonna addressed R’maro. “Wingleader, please go on,” she said, not caring that the desperate hope she felt was plain in her voice.

“I’ve already had people going over P’raima’s quarters and offices,” said R’maro. He didn’t flinch at D’pantha’s outraged intake of breath. “He wasn’t just taking felah. There were vials of something else, too. I don’t have the formula – yet – but I’m willing to bet everything that he was using a drug to counteract felah’s effects. Not an antidote, exactly. A counter-agent.”

“That’s preposterous,” D’pantha objected.

“Is it? How else do you think Tezonth kept beating every other bronze to catch Grizbath even after he started to slow down? Because my mother loved P’raima so?”

D’pantha curled his lip at him. “You were never loyal to him. It’s no wonder he was always so disappointed in you.”

“It wasn’t my fault that he could only sire daughters,” R’maro shot back.

“Faranth alive, would you two stop flapping your gums at each other!” Sh’zon barked.

Both Southerners glared at Sh’zon. Valonna spoke quickly, to avert any possibility of an alliance between them, unlikely though it seemed. “Wingleader,” she said to R’maro. “We would need more than the possibility of an antidote to consider your offer seriously.”

R’maro nodded. “I understand, Weyrwoman. But I will need more than the promise of Megrith to fulfil my side of the bargain.”

“Antidote first,” Sh’zon growled. “Then Megrith.”

R’maro was already shaking his head. “Forgive me, Wingleader. D’pantha’s right. I was a relatively minor figure on P’raima’s Council. If I’m to command my riders’ respect as Weyrleader, I must deliver on my promise to them, as well as my pledge to you.”

“Then what do you suggest?” asked H’ned.

“Megrith returns to Southern,” R’maro replied. “If I fail to procure a counter-agent for your felah overdose within two sevendays, then Megrith is free to return to Madellon, and I’ll step down in favour of…someone else.” He didn’t look at D’pantha as he said it.

“That’s ridiculous,” D’pantha objected. He looked sharply at Valonna. “Return Megrith to Southern as sole and senior queen, and she won’t leave again. Especially to cede precedence to another. She will not have it. No queen would.” He placed both hands on the table, leaning emphatically forwards. “This boy would have you surrender the queen you have protected so fiercely in return for promises. And promises I’d wager he will not keep. Once he has Megrith, and Southern indebted to him, he’ll have no need to honour any agreement with you.”

“And you would?” Valonna pressed. “You would vow to find this counter-agent for us?”

“I…” D’pantha looked harried. “I know of no counter-agent, Weyrwoman. I question that there even is such a thing. And I have been involved with the formulation of felah since its earliest days. I cannot promise to give you something I do not have. Only to honestly seek it out.”

“You won’t find it, D’pantha,” said R’maro. “I’m too far ahead of you.”

The two Southern riders stared at each other from either end of the table.

“Do either of you have anything else to add?” H’ned asked quietly, into the silent impasse, and when neither man replied, went on, “We’ll need to discuss your respective offers amongst ourselves and with the Peninsula. Perhaps you’ll visit our dining hall while we confer.”

It wasn’t a request, a fact to whose significance neither D’pantha nor R’maro could have been oblivious once H’ned called a pair of brown riders to escort them to the dining cavern. S’rannis, H’ned’s senior Wingsecond, and F’halig, who was serving as interim Wingleader of T’kamen’s Wing, were burly, level-headed, no-nonsense types, whose dragons wouldn’t be intimidated by a couple of foreign bronzes. More pertinently, the two Wingseconds wouldn’t permit any of Madellon’s folk to interfere with their Southern visitors. Many riders had returned from Long Bay upset and angry. Many riders had come home drunk. It made a volatile combination, but F’halig and S’rannis would be deterrent enough for even the most soddenly outraged to mind their own business.

Once D’pantha and R’maro and their minders had left Shimpath’s weyr, Valonna looked towards the doorway between her office and her personal quarters. “Karika, T’gala. You can come out now.”

The two weyrlings came through the leather curtain that had hidden them from view. T’gala looked uncomfortable, and impossibly young; Karika’s youth had always been unhappily plain, but her face was set in hard lines that belied her tender Turns.

“You never said D’pantha was your father,” Sh’zon said, throwing an accusing look at the queen weyrling.

Karika lifted her head. “D’pantha may have sired me,” she said, coolly, “but that doesn’t make him my father. He tried to have me barred from the Hatching Sands.”

“Well, of course he did,” said H’ned. “A bronze rider’s options are rather limited if he’s closely related to a queen rider.”

He looked at Sh’zon as he spoke, and so did Valonna. Sh’zon met one gaze stoutly after another. “Don’t make this about me,” he warned them peevishly, and then jabbed a finger at Karika. “But you might have said you were personally connected to D’pantha.”

“Oh, give over, Sh’zon; everyone’s personally connected to someone at Southern,” said H’ned.

“The son of one Weyrwoman,” Valonna said. “And the father of the next.” Karika’s eyes flashed to hers at the implication she hadn’t fully intended, and Valonna went on, “Which do we trust?”

Even Sh’zon, short-tempered though he was, had no instant retort for that. “Neither of them,” said H’ned, at last.

“R’maro promised the cure,” Sh’zon countered. “Promised it –”

“A promise D’pantha believed he wouldn’t keep.”

“D’pantha,” Sh’zon spat, as though the name were distasteful on his tongue. “P’raima’s lickspittle. He didn’t even trouble to hide his loyalty to that snake bastard!”

“He’s not so loyal that  he won’t disagree with P’raima where Southern’s next Weyrwoman is concerned,” said H’ned.

“If he’d only done that when Sirtis was first on the table as a candidate for Southern’s seniority, we wouldn’t be where we are now,” said Sh’zon. “R’maro’s right. D’pantha’s acting solely in self-interest now P’raima’s out of the picture.”

“Self-interest that would make Sirtis Southern’s Weyrwoman, and spare Karika from having to go back at all,” Valonna pointed out. “Which is what we wanted all along.”

Sh’zon’s eyes had moved to Karika, and he said, “Is it, though?” He stood up. “You heard what R’maro said. P’raima’s gone. You have nothing to fear at Southern any more, Karika.”

“Sh’zon!” Valonna exclaimed, indignation colouring her voice. “Don’t you dare pressure her! She and Megrith are still under my protection!”

He looked taken aback. “I was just –”

“No,” Valonna said firmly. She put her hand on Karika’s arm. “Karika. You heard everything that was said in here. You know your Weyrmates better than we do. Tell us about them.”

Karika took a breath. “D’pantha has always been loyal to P’raima,” she said. “Completely loyal. P’raima’s always trusted him with everything. I never saw them disagree about anything.”

“But D’pantha had no idea that a counter-agent to felah could exist,” Valonna pressed her. “Why wouldn’t P’raima tell his trusted man about it?”

“Unless it doesn’t exist,” H’ned said, “and R’maro is blowing sunshine up our tails.”

Karika looked doubtful. “I don’t know R’maro so well,” she said. “He only made Wingleader this Turn. I don’t think the other bronze riders think much of him.”

“D’pantha said P’raima was disappointed in R’maro,” said H’ned. “Why would that be?”

“Maybe because he was Margone’s son. I don’t know.”

Then T’gala spoke up in a very small voice. “He blames him for B’nain being dragonless.”

Sh’zon seemed about to bear down on T’gala for more information. Valonna put her hand to his chest to forestall him. “B’nain was the other female blue rider?”

“Yes.” T’gala looked wretched under the scrutiny, but bravely, she continued. “B’nain’s P’raima’s daughter.”

“Faranth,” Sh’zon swore. “Is there anyone not related to every other dragonrider at Southern?”

“Please go on,” Valonna urged T’gala.

“Her Sevrieth flew R’maro’s weyrmate’s green Andranth, and they both went between,” T’gala said. “P’raima always said it was R’maro’s fault because Maibauth should have caught Andranth.”

“That’s hardly fair,” H’ned remarked. “We’ve all been outflown by blues before.”

“When was this?” Sh’zon asked.

T’gala looked uncertainly at Karika. “Seven or eight Turns ago?” she hazarded.

Karika looked no more sure. “I don’t remember it at all. I’d still have been in the crèche.”

The stark reminder of how young these two girls were – just twelve and thirteen Turns – hardened Valonna’s resolve not to sacrifice them for her own sake. “Southern riders have been peculiar for the last five Turns or so,” Sh’zon said, frowning. “Oh, they were never the friendliest, but I’d say it was 93 or 94 when Southern territory Gathers stopped being worth going to unless you wanted to get in an argument with a Southern rider.”

“Then felah came about as a direct response to B’nain losing her dragon,” said H’ned. “And it took them a couple of Turns to invent it.”

“How many times did Grizbath rise to mate in the last five Turns?” Valonna asked.

“Twice,” Karika replied. “Our dragonets are a Turn old, and there was a weyrling class not long graduated when we Impressed.”

“So if there is an antidote, and P’raima’s been keeping it to himself to give Tezonth an edge against younger bronzes, he’s only used it in the last two leadership flights,” said H’ned. He shook his head. “Tezonth has to be getting on for fifty, but he’s always been utterly dominant at Southern. You only need to look at how all the bronzes of his get are nearly identical to each other to see that.”

“P’raima was talking about his legacy,” Valonna said. “The legacy of Tezonth’s bloodline, before he…” The vivid image of the huge bronze dragon’s claws smashing through the stained glass window to snatch P’raima away made her shudder. “He didn’t seem to care about anything more than that.”

“Course not,” said Sh’zon. “That’s why he was so desperate to get Megrith back. It’s not so unreasonable.”

“Sh’zon,” H’ned said, warningly.

“Well, it’s not!” Sh’zon protested. “No southern continent Weyr has given up a queen of its own blood since it was founded. I’m not saying P’raima was justified to do what he did – furthest from it – but any Weyr would rather have its own queen than a foreigner.”

Valonna glanced at Karika, but if she had an opinion on the way Sh’zon’s reasoning was going, she kept it to herself. “Then you think we should deal with R’maro. Send Megrith back.”

Sh’zon held his hands up. “I wouldn’t send anyone back anywhere they didn’t want to go. But we’re caught between a clump and a tangle. I don’t know R’maro to know if we can trust him, but at least he wasn’t one of P’raima’s acolytes. He’s promising us a cure for what we’ve been poisoned with. D’pantha didn’t even know that one exists. D’pantha, who’s had his tongue rammed up P’raima’s tail-fork for Turns.” He looked around at them all, his eyes blazing. “D’pantha, who would have killed a weyrling to do his master’s bidding.”

“We don’t know that’s true,” said H’ned.

“Don’t we? P’raima had a bronze rider accomplice. There’s no doubting that. We know Cyniath was the only dragon in contact with Tezonth. We know he’s the one Tezonth passed the kill order along to when we asked for more time. We know he left Southern straight afterwards. If you’ve dirty work to be done, you ask the man you trust most to do it, and that’s what D’pantha’s always been to P’raima. He’s a lying, murdering tunnel-snake, and I’m scored if I’ll smile to his face and hand him Sirtis and Southern on a plate when he won’t even give me my Thread-blighted dragon back!”

No one spoke into the uncomfortable silence that followed Sh’zon outburst for a long while. Then Karika said, “I want to go back to Southern.”

“Karika,” Valonna said, “you don’t have to –”

“No,” she insisted. Her mouth was set in a determined line. “I never wanted to leave Southern, not until Margone told me that P’raima wanted Tezonth to fly Megrith.... You all keep saying bad things about Southern, how it’s unfriendly, how it’s arrogant. And maybe it is. But it’s my home. It’s my home.” She took a breath, then went on. “I don’t know R’maro, either. I don’t know if he has the cure for what P’raima did to you. I don’t even know if he’d be a good Weyrleader for Southern. Maybe someone new is what Southern needs. Someone who wasn’t close to P’raima.” She lifted her head. “I know I’m only a weyrling. I know I’m only twelve. But I won’t be a weyrling, or twelve, forever. In a Turn or a Turn and a half, Megrith will rise and I’ll be Weyrwoman. I’m not ashamed to say that P’raima frightens me. Tezonth frightens Megrith. But R’maro doesn’t frighten me, and Maibauth is just a bronze. Megrith’s a queen, Southern’s queen, and I’m her rider.” She paused, and then said, “And I know I have friends at other Weyrs.”

Valonna looked away, unable to meet the young woman’s fierce gaze, uncomfortably reminded of how she, herself, had been thrust into a position of responsibility too soon and too young, and how deficient she had been to shoulder its burdens. What a Weyrwoman Karika will make. The thought went nowhere, blocked from its natural path to Shimpath, and Valonna looked at her dragon, her eyes whirling softly blue. “You’re quite sure.” She was hardly aware of making the decision to ask the question.

“Yes, Weyrwoman.”

“I’ll go too,” said T’gala.

Karika turned to her. “No.” She spoke with complete authority. “You won’t.”

“But –”

“You’re happier here,” said Karika. “The way the others treated you…” She shook her head. “You and Heppeth are staying at Madellon. This is where you belong.”

Valonna raised her eyes to H’ned, and he stood up. “I’ll go and get them myself, Valonna.”

“What about D’pantha?” Sh’zon asked.

H’ned raised his eyebrows. “What about him?”

“He would have killed a weyrling! We can’t just let the bastard off!”

“We don’t have any proof,” H’ned pointed out. “Even T’rello couldn’t identify Cyniath as the bronze he saw going between when he picked up Carleah.”

Sh’zon scowled. “Well, what about Tarshe and the other girl?”

H’ned shook his head. “Tarshe never got a look at him, and as for Carleah – well, she thought Santinoth was the Southern bronze when he turned up to rescue her.”

“If Shimpath put pressure on Cyniath –”

“Do you seriously think any dragon would willingly be a party to the murder of a weyrling? Cyniath wouldn’t know anything.”

“Blight it all, H’ned, he’s guilty and we all know it!” Sh’zon snapped.

“We couldn’t prove it,” H’ned said. “Sh’zon, I know you’re angry.” It might have been the most unnecessary thing he could have said. “But we can’t throw around accusations without proof. Maybe if we brought in P’raima…”

“D’pantha will be dealt with,” Karika said, in a tone that sounded all the more sinister for coming from a twelve-Turn-old.

“She’s right, you know,” said H’ned. “Southern’s riders will be as horrified as any of us when they learn the truth of what P’raima tried to do. Even without linking D’pantha explicitly to the kidnapping, he’s too closely connected to P’raima. His only hope of redemption was Sirtis. If he’d brought a queen back to Southern with him, the taint of association with P’raima might have mattered less.”

“He can’t stay at Southern anyway,” said Valonna. “Not once Megrith’s mature. He didn’t sound confident of being able to control Cyniath.”

“Well, we’re not having him,” Sh’zon said, glowering. “And I’m blighted between if I’ll have him stinking up Madellon when Berzunth’s grown, either!”

It took Valonna a moment to grasp that Sh’zon’s first identification had been with the Peninsula Weyr. It was a disconcerting thought that she put aside for later.

“He can go north,” said Karika, still in that unsettlingly matter-of-fact tone. “Maybe Telgar or the High Reaches. Somewhere cold. He’ll hate it.”

Karika’s steely self-possession should have heartened Valonna that they were making the right decision – or allowing her to make the right decision for them. But even as H’ned went to fetch R’maro and D’pantha back, Valonna felt a discomfiture that went deeper than the constant unhappy absence of Shimpath’s presence. They were missing something. She wished she could ask her queen’s advice. The felah had done more than simply cut her off from talking to her dragon. It seemed to have undermined the entire foundation of confidence and assurance that riding a dragon had given her. She realised suddenly that she had reverted in many ways to the girl she had been before Impressing Shimpath: nervous, uncertain, indecisive. Not that she’d ever left those crippling insecurities behind. But it was terrifying to grasp just how much Shimpath had changed her; just how reliant she’d become on her queen’s conviction in her; just how alone, and afraid, she was without her.

100.03.26 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

“Carleah. Are you awake?”

She heard the woman’s voice distantly, as though from within a dream: too gentle, too calm, to induce her to rouse from her muzzy-soft indistinctness. She pillowed her cheek, her uninjured cheek, more comfortably against Jagunth’s velvet-smooth hide.

“Carleah?”

“She’s not asleep.” That voice belonged to L’stev, though it, too, lacked urgency. L’stev’s voice could crack like a whip, jerking the most sleep-deprived weyrling into wakefulness; now, it was more a low growl. “But I’d sooner you let her rest if it’s not important.”

“I’m sorry, Weyrlingmaster, Master Isnan’s asked me to take another blood sample for testing,” the first voice said regretfully. “From Tarshe, too. Better that they’re awake while I do it.”

L’stev grumbled. Then Carleah felt a big hand envelop her shoulder lightly. “Open your eyes, Leah,” he said. “Journeyman Lante’s here to see you.”

Carleah lifted her head from Jagunth’s soft, soft arm. She opened her eyes. Her dragon was coiled around her, a reassuring expanse of pale green. L’stev had had to duck his head beneath Jagunth’s neck to approach. “Weyrlingmaster,” she said. The word seemed to take a long, long time to say.

“Will you let the journeyman examine you?” L’stev asked.

She was so sleepy and peaceful; she just wanted to sit and rest with her dragon, but arguing seemed like far too much work. “All right.”

L’stev retreated from beneath the graceful arch of Jagunth’s neck, and the Healer, Lante, replaced him. Carleah let her take her arm and push up her sleeve. The brief swipe of something cool against the inside of her elbow was momentarily distracting. Then Lante said, “I’m going to use a needlethorn to draw a bit more of your blood, Carleah, just like we did before. You’ll feel a sharp scratch, but it shouldn’t hurt very much.”

“All right,” said Carleah.

But the prick of the needlethorn did jolt Carleah out of her comfortable blur. “Ouch,” she said, blinking until she could focus her eyes on the Healer’s face.

Lante looked briefly up from what she was doing with a wry smile, then concentrated once more on her work. “I’m sorry, Carleah. This won’t take long. How are you feeling?”

“Sleepy,” Carleah said. “My face feels funny.” She put her hand up unthinkingly to her cheek; immediately her fingertips went slightly numb. “Oh.”

“Keep your hand away from that, if you can,” Lante recommended. “The numbweed’s still fresh.”

Carleah’s fingers snagged against the edge of a bandage; she followed its line where it had been wrapped around her head. “Did I hurt my head?”

“You have a nasty bump,” Lante told her. “Nothing too serious.”

“Is that why I’m so sleepy?” Carleah asked.

“Well. No, not exactly.” Lante eased the needlethorn out of Carleah’s arm, and pressed a little square of gauze against the place where it had punctured her skin. “We gave you a drink to help you relax. It’s all right if you feel strange.”

“I can’t hear Jagunth,” Carleah told her seriously.

Lante looked over her shoulder to L’stev. The Weyrlingmaster moved closer again. “The Weyrleaders are working on that right now,” he said. “You shouldn’t worry. You’re home, Jagunth’s here, and you’re safe.”

Carleah stroked Jagunth’s arm slowly. It was strange, not feeling her green’s response; as if she were touching someone else’s dragon. “We were kidnapped,” she explained. The word sounded curiously dramatic. “Tarshe and me. They said, ‘Do the green rider’. That was me, I’m the green rider. But Tarshe said to pretend to be her. They weren’t very clever.” She frowned. “I saved Jagunth a mint. I put it in my jacket to keep for her. Where’s my jacket?” L’stev frowned down at her and, fretfully, Carleah said, “I didn’t mean to lose it. I’m sorry, Weyrlingmaster. I didn’t mean to.”

L’stev’s frown deepened, but his voice was still kind. It was strange to hear him so kind. “Your jacket doesn’t matter, Carleah. Don’t trouble yourself about it.” He cast a look sideways at Lante. “What was in the sedative you gave her?”

“Chamomile. Hops. Bay. A few other things.” Lante shook her head. “Nothing strong.”

“She wasn’t vague like this when she reported earlier,” L’stev complained. “Hysterical, but not vague. She didn’t mention some of these details, either. Could she be inventing them?”

“It’s possible,” said Lante. “But she’s been through a dreadful ordeal today. The sedative is keeping her from feeling it too strongly. She may come out with things that she’d suppress if she were feeling more clear-headed. She should talk to journeyman Benner.” She stood up. “I’m sorry, Weyrlingmaster; I should get this sample back to my Master.”

L’stev made a non-committal sound, but he was still looking at Carleah. When Lante had gone, taking the tube of blood with her, the Weyrlingmaster sat down next to Carleah. He absently patted Jagunth’s neck. “Do you remember anything else, Carleah?”

She considered it. Her thoughts felt oddly still and blank, like a smooth, flat pool. Then something surfaced. “Mama said she’d braid my hair once my head’s better.” She touched the bandage lapping her head again.

“That was after you came home,” said L’stev. “Can you remember anything from before that? Anything about the men who kidnapped you?”

“Crent was the angry one,” she told him. “Gorty had the fire-lizard. I don’t think a fire-lizard would like to stay with someone as angry as Crent.”

Almost casually, L’stev leaned over to the table beside Jagunth’s couch for a slate and chalk. “A fire-lizard,” he repeated, scratching down a sequence of terse marks. “Did you notice what colour it was?”

Carleah thought. “Brown.”

“Dark brown, or light?”

“Light,” she decided. “Lighter than Sparth, even, but more like klah with too much milk in it.”

L’stev wrote that down. “What about the bronze dragon?” he asked. “What shade was he?”

“I thought Santinoth was the Southern bronze.” The thought was somehow mortifying. “T’rello will think I’m stupid.”

“He’ll think nothing of the sort,” L’stev said, in a soft growl, and then prompted her again, “The Southern bronze. Dark like Oaxuth or light like Ellendunth and Djeth?”

“Neither,” Carleah said, shaking her head. “More copper-ish.”

“Would you feel up to walking to the door with me and looking at a dragon?”

Carleah shifted uneasily. “I don’t want to leave Jagunth. I can’t hear her.”

“I know you can’t, but Vanzanth will explain, and we won’t leave her sight.”

“I suppose that would be all right, then.”

L’stev took her arm and steered her towards the shriek-hinged door of the barracks. Carleah wasn’t sure why she was so unsteady on her feet, but she was glad for L’stev’s support when he pointed up at two bronzes on the Rim by the Star Stones. “Was the bronze you saw like that?”

Even in the fading light, the colour of the bronzes’ hides was instantly familiar. Dread fell over Carleah like a shroud, and she pulled back into the barracks doorway, afraid that they might see her. “Why are there two?” she asked fearfully. “There was only one. Why are there two the same?”

“Southern dragons all look alike,” L’stev told her. He squeezed her arm. “It’s all right. They can’t hurt you. But it was a bronze of that colour you saw?”

Carleah just nodded. Her throat had gone tight. She raised her hand again to her face, remembering the backhand blow that had split the skin of her cheek.

Gently, L’stev pulled her fingers away. “I know this is difficult for you, Carleah,” he said. “But it’s important. Can you tell if the bronze you saw is one of those up there?”

Unhappily, Carleah peered out and up. The two bronzes weren’t looking in her direction. Their attention was on the four Madellon bronzes standing vigilant guard over them. Still, she drew back again, shaking her head. “Not from here. They’re too far away.”

L’stev’s brows scrunched. “Could you tell if we got closer?”

“I don’t want to,” said Carleah. “Please. I don’t want to.”

L’stev looked conflicted, but then the deep lines of his face softened out. “I’ll not be the one to make you,” he told her. “Let’s get you back to Jagunth.”

Jagunth had been watching them from the comfortable dimness of the barracks, her gem-like eyes tracking Carleah’s every movement. Carleah pressed herself against the soft neck with relief. The sensation of trying to reach her mind and failing was an uncomfortable one, like trying to stand in a cramped space and hitting your head on the ceiling, so she had stopped trying. It was enough, for now, that they were physically together. She settled back down onto the couch in the curl of Jagunth’s forearm, tucking her knees up under her, and extricating L’stev’s slate from where he had left it on the throw fur.

She let her gaze fall on the Weyrlingmaster’s notes. The densely scribed notations filled every last corner of the slate, even curling back on themselves when he’d run out of room. Carleah followed the chalked words with her eyes without reading them. The way they curved was almost hypnotic, like a spiral, its inexorably tightening loops compelling the eye to follow them.

It took Carleah a moment to realise what the coiling lines called to mind. She sat up. She turned the slate over to its blank side and picked up the chalk hanging from the string on its top corner. Then, her hand moving with a brisk competence that her hazy mind lacked, she drew what her memory had recalled.

When she’d finished, she said, “Weyrlingmaster?”

L’stev had been leaning against the doorframe, looking distant. He turned. “What is it, Carleah?”

She proffered the slate. “Will this help?”

He took it, squinting at it in the low light. “What’s –” he began, and then stopped. “This is from the bronze at Southern? You’re certain it’s accurate?”

“I had to run right under his belly to escape,” Carleah explained. “I got a good look.”

“Faranth’s tits,” L’stev swore, and then hurried out of the barracks, bellowing for Vanzanth.

Jagunth cocked her head, her eyes whirling faster with concern at the Weyrlingmaster’s sudden shouting. “It’s all right, “ Carleah told her. Then she reached back along Jagunth’s underside to scratch the distinctive swirl in her hide – the place where the yolk sac had connected when she was still in the egg – the belly whorl that was completely unique to her, as the one Carleah had drawn on L’stev’s slate was completely unique to the bronze dragon whom she’d fled in the unfamiliar jungle of Southern territory.

Chapter fifty: Sh’zon, Valonna

An infant dragon of any colour knows nothing of morality, nothing of decency, nothing of truth or fairness or honour.

Why, then, do we continue to peddle the myth that the boy who Impresses a bronze dragon must inevitably become a man of strong will, of upright character, of impeccable integrity?

To preserve the Weyr, of course. To preserve Pern.

And, perhaps, to reassure ourselves, however falsely, that the men in whose hands chance has placed the reins of power are, in fact, worthy of them.

– Excerpt from Weyrwoman Fianine’s personal diaries

100.03.27 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

SOUTHERN WEYR

Megrith had grown. Sh’zon didn’t need to hear Kawanth to know it: the way his dragon held himself against Megrith’s weight, and her uncomfortable proximity to Sh’zon himself, her breath hot on his back where he sat astride Kawanth’s neck, made it plain. They were, he thought, all three of them relieved when Megrith disengaged her claws from the catching harness and tilted gently sideways off Kawanth’s back, reverting to independent flight now that their trip between was behind them. Sh’zon glanced at the sweep of her wings as she matched Kawanth’s vector. She was going to be a big dragon, like her dam before her. And like her sire. The thought made Sh’zon clench his jaw, and his hands tightened against Kawanth’s neck.

It was past midday at Southern, and sunlight blazed painfully bright off the hides of three hundred dragons. Each head had been lifted stiff and alert to the return of their queen, as avid in their regard of her as though every one were bronze. Yet among them all, only Maibauth, planted at the middle of Southern’s central plaza, called out a welcome to Megrith. R’maro’s bronze almost quivered with pride and vindication. See what I’ve done, his out-thrust chest and mantled wings seemed to say, see how I’ve brought back our queen. Sh’zon imagined that Kawanth must find the Southern dragon’s conceit as grating as he did. But R’maro’s successful reacquisition of Megrith had, it appeared, settled the brief internal struggle for power that P’raima’s abrupt disappearance had prompted. No other dragon had put himself forward in opposition to R’maro’s bronze. Cyniath had retreated into the anonymity of his many identical brothers. Even R’maro’s relative youth and inexperience hadn’t dented his credibility as the man who had brought Megrith home. Southern, it seemed to Sh’zon, had been under P’raima’s boot for too long to like being leaderless. The emergence of a leader – any leader – to fill the Weyrleader’s shoes had clearly been seized upon with relief. It struck him, as Kawanth descended to the flagged stones of the plaza, that the bronze riders of the Peninsula, divested of their Weyrleader with equal abruptness, would be less quick to cede power to the first candidate who presented himself. The notion upturned the corner of Sh’zon’s mouth.

He made himself concentrate. There was work to be done today before he could contemplate tomorrow. He looked over at Izath, alighting beyond Megrith. Relying on H’ned sat poorly with him, but while Sh’zon remained deaf and dumb to Kawanth, there was nothing to be done about it. He counselled himself to calm. H’ned had remarked that he seemed quicker to anger without Kawanth’s soothing presence in his mind, and Sh’zon had turned on him irritably for a moment. Didn’t he have reason to be angry? Then he’d recognised the truth of the observation. There was a raw edge to his anger that took him back to his youth, to the impatient and hot-blooded lad he’d been, chafing against the expectations and limitations of his humble cothold background. It made him aware of how much of his adult character had been shaped and defined by his dragon. Without Kawanth to steady him, he fell too easily back into the habits of that impulsive and easily-provoked cothold boy. It was a tendency he knew he must consciously resist, if all were to go as they hoped.

Karika shinned down from her queen – a long slide for a small girl from a tall dragon – and then stood a moment, her hand on Megrith’s neck, looking around with an expression Sh’zon couldn’t read. He stepped protectively closer to her. “Do you need a minute, Karika?”

She lifted her dark eyes to his. “No, Weyrleader.” She took a long inward breath, then let it out with a sigh. “It’s only I’d forgotten how the rainforest smells.”

It smelled like rotting vegetation to Sh’zon, but the wistful note in Karika’s voice plucked unexpectedly at his heart. “Sometimes the road that takes you away from your home is the same one that leads you back,” he said, and then wondered at himself for saying it.

Karika looked at him with a directness that Sh’zon found unsettling. Then she gave him a smile that curved her mouth without ever coming near her eyes. It broke his heart. In ten Turns Karika would be the most exquisite woman. It gave him a pang of guilt to consider the child in such a way. He turned his head sharply towards Kawanth, hopeful that the instant of admiration was rooted in his dragon’s instinctive regard for a queen, and indicative that the barrier between them was weakening at last, but Kawanth was looking at Maibauth. Sh’zon glanced again at Karika and, following her example, resolved himself to the business ahead.

He offered his left arm to the Southern queen rider before H’ned could. The small hand that slipped into the crook of his elbow made him feel still more protective. He exchanged only eye contact with H’ned, and then, as one, they turned to face R’maro.

The plaza was ringed with riders of all colours, but R’maro had a small group of bronze riders at his back – the riders who had thrown their support to him before his successful negotiations, Sh’zon assumed. D’pantha certainly wasn’t among them. They were all young men, and he almost laughed to see Southern, so fiercely convinced of its superiority, following the same tried-and-true formula as every other Weyr that had ever replaced an old regime with a new one.

R’maro already wore a pair of new tassels on his shoulder-knot. Clearly, he’d wasted no time in proclaiming his new authority. He strode forward to meet them, a picture of confidence. “Wingleaders,” he said, in a perfunctory way, to Sh’zon and H’ned. Then he greeted Karika with a bow. “Welcome home, Weyrwoman. Welcome back to Southern.”

“Weyrleader,” Karika replied, rather stiffly. She offered R’maro her left hand to kiss, though she kept her right tucked into Sh’zon’s elbow. The protocol was not quite correct, but then, Sh’zon thought, neither were the titles they had bestowed upon each other.

“I’ll have your belongings taken to your quarters and unpacked for you immediately,” R’maro said.

“I don’t want them unpacked,” Karika said. “Please just put them in the barracks for me.”

“You won’t be lodging in the barracks now, Weyrwoman,” R’maro said, still smiling. “Your new weyr has been made ready for you.”

Karika’s tone betrayed her discomfiture. “Margone’s weyr?”

“The Weyrwoman’s weyr. I hope you’ll find it comfortable.”

From the tension in Karika’s hand, Sh’zon doubted she would. “So here she is, R’maro,” he said. He wouldn’t do him the courtesy of calling him Weyrleader. “Safe and sound. Now it’s your turn to deliver on your promise.”

“Of course,” R’maro replied pleasantly. “Let’s first just get the Weyrwoman settled.”

“There’s no sense getting her too settled, R’maro,” H’ned said, with matching pleasantness.

R’maro’s green eyes flashed to the death-grip Karika still had on Sh’zon’s arm. “That being so, everyone’s so pleased to see you, Karika.” He looked over his shoulder to the watching dragonriders of Southern. “Sekara…?”

“Mother?” Karika asked, her voice suddenly a child’s again, and her hand slipped from Sh’zon’s arm as a green rider stepped hesitantly from the throng. “Oh, Mother,” Karika breathed, and while she didn’t fling herself into the woman’s arms, she stepped quickly away from Sh’zon to clutch her hands.

Sh’zon traded a quick glance with H’ned, a little dismayed. H’ned’s expression gave away no such consternation. His complacency was aggravating, but Sh’zon forced down the flare of rage. “The cure, R’maro,” he said, in a low, insistent voice.

“You’ll have it, Sh’zon,” R’maro replied. “All Southern’s resources have been put to finding it.”

“When?” Sh’zon grated.

R’maro took a breath, perhaps to forestall a more precipitous pledge. “Sooner rather than later,” he said. “I can assure you, it’s in Southern’s interests as much as yours, that Karika be confirmed as Weyrwoman as quickly as possible.”

Sh’zon bit back the retort that rose unasked to his lips, that Karika would be no true Weyrwoman until Megrith rose to mate – a Turn away at the earliest. “The sooner you hold up your end of the deal, the sooner we’ll leave you and your stinking Weyr to it,” he said. “Faranth knows, if I never have to come back here, it’ll be too soon.”

“Sh’zon,” H’ned said warningly.

“Have no fear, Weyrleader,” Karika said, from behind R’maro. She had regained her poise. “I’ll see to it that Southern delivers on its promises to Madellon and the Peninsula.” Then she raised her head. “Where is bronze rider D’pantha?”

R’maro’s eyes went almost imperceptibly wider. Sh’zon didn’t know if he was reacting to the hardness in Karika’s voice or to her deliberate omission of D’pantha’s title. He looked around the circle of dragonriders lining the plaza until his gaze lit upon the other bronze rider. “D’pantha! Attend the Weyrwoman!”

D’pantha stepped forward from the ranks of Southern men and women. His expression was wary, but he let no hint of uncertainty lend hesitance his gait. He approached square-shouldered and straight-backed, looking from Karika to R’maro and back. “So.” He pitched his voice too low for the Weyr at large to overhear. “You wish to be rid of me already, Karika.”

She ignored him. “Weyrleaders.” She addressed Sh’zon and H’ned. “As senior queen rider of the Southern Weyr, I turn this man and his dragon over into Madellon’s custody.”

“What?” D’pantha demanded.

“What?” R’maro asked, at the same moment.

“Thank you, Karika,” said Sh’zon. “Will you come quietly, D’pantha? He allowed himself a savage grin, taking a short length of cord from his belt. “Please say you won’t.”

D’pantha stared. “What is this?”

“You stand accused of the kidnap of two Madellon weyrlings,” said H’ned, loudly.

“Kidnap?” D’pantha seemed too startled to resist as Sh’zon seized his wrists and began to bind them.

“Of conspiring with former Weyrleader P’raima to murder one of those weyrlings,” H’ned continued, over D’pantha’s objection. “And –”

A bugle of distress that could only have been Cyniath’s rang out over D’pantha’s protest, and the sudden buzz of speculation from the watching riders. “I did no such thing!” D’pantha shook loose of Sh’zon’s grip. “Take your hands off me! This is an outrage!”

H’ned raised his voice to reach the ears of every Southern dragonrider. “And conspiring with P’raima to murder Weyrwoman Margone.”

Silence dropped instantly over Southern Weyr, hard and fast enough that R’maro’s sharp intake of breath was clearly audible against it. D’pantha opened his mouth. The colour had leached suddenly from his face. His black eyes locked incredulously with H’ned’s pale ones. “No,” he said. His voice seemed to have clotted in his throat. “No. I would never.” He turned a suddenly pleading gaze on R’maro. “Please, I would never –”

R’maro backhanded him across the face before H’ned could lunge to seize him. The sound of the blow echoed queerly across the unnaturally silent plaza. R’maro’s face had slackened into disbelief, and he hung in H’ned’s grasp like a man pole-axed, but his eyes shone with a bright, vehement fury. “You killed my mother,” he said, low and fervent, his smirking enjoyment of D’pantha’s disgrace wiped clean at a stroke.

A thin stream of blood trickled from D’pantha’s left nostril, but he seemed hardly to notice it. “Please, no,” he muttered. “Please. I didn’t do it!”

“Enough.” Karika’s voice sliced the tension, and Megrith’s strident cry muted the shifting, distressed dragons. “Weyrleaders. Remove this man to Madellon.”

D’pantha no longer seemed capable of fighting Sh’zon’s grasp. He barely seemed aware at all of the cord being bound tightly about his wrists. Across the plaza, dragons had shifted away from Cyniath, leaving D’pantha’s bronze an island of grey-toned misery.

R’maro suddenly collected his wits. “He should answer for Margone’s murder at Southern!”

“No.” Karika knew to anticipate the exclamation. “He is for Madellon. His crimes against that Weyr are the more immediate.”

Her face was completely expressionless as she regarded the man who had sired her. Sh’zon would have shuddered had he been less occupied with tying off his best knots. “He’ll answer for it, have no fear,” he grunted. He shoved D’pantha between the shoulder-blades, though the burly man was robust yet in spite of his shock, and did not stumble forwards. “You’ll ride with me. Izath will escort Cyniath.”

D’pantha complied dully as Sh’zon pushed him towards Kawanth. Sh’zon wondered, as he manhandled the Southern rider into place on his dragon’s neck, if part of the man’s heavy-limbed sluggishness was derived from the questions his own dragon must be demanding of him. Cyniath looked frightful, caught between anger and desperation, but when Izath landed beside him, shouldering into him bullishly, the larger Southern bronze did not snap back at him.

“The cure,” Sh’zon reminded R’maro, before he climbed up behind D’pantha.

R’maro still looked shocked. He nodded jerkily. “You’ll have it.”

“I’ll see to it,” Karika added.

It was a mark of Sh’zon’s opinion of R’maro that he thought the promise of a twelve-Turn-old girl more credible than that of her new Weyrleader. Nonetheless, leaving Karika to fend for herself in the snakes’ nest of Southern Weyr caused him a wrench of conscience as he bade her farewell. “If you need anything, Karika,” he told her.

Karika, to her credit, let no hint of concern escape her imperious mask as she thanked him in formal terms for Madellon’s hospitality. She also asked him to see personally to the well-being of her classmate T’gala. That, Sh’zon thought, was a jab at R’maro, who had not even asked after T’gala, but he doubted he would even notice.

Still, the uneasiness he felt as he turned to re-mount Kawanth could not be entirely assuaged by Karika’s precocious spirit. In returning Megrith to Southern, they had played their most powerful card in a game that was not yet won – a game, that, indeed, Southern must not realise Madellon still knew was being played. It made Sh’zon’s head throb with more than just the pain of the brilliant summer sunlight in his sensitive eyes, or the weary ache from a night spent awake and agitated and agonising.

It felt odd to bestride his dragon’s neck behind another man. D’pantha slumped between Kawanth’s ridges, his bound wrists tied in turn to the fore-strap. That, as much as the belt about his waist, kept him upright. Kawanth kicked away from the ground, and D’pantha swayed back against Sh’zon. “Control yourself, man!” Sh’zon bellowed beside his ear.

D’pantha seemed to stir himself. Perhaps it was the wind in his face, or the sight of his dragon, flying riderless, with Izath chivvying him along. “I didn’t do it,” he said. “I didn’t do any of it. You have to believe me. You’ve got the wrong man.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Sh’zon snapped. “We know it wasn’t you. Now stop your shaffing snivelling.”

With that, Kawanth took them between.

100.03.27 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

A three-part harmony of queenly bugles rent the air as the cluster of bronzes came out of between, and while Cyniath took the brunt, it was clear that Izath and Kawanth both caught some of its force. The two Madellon dragons shuddered away from the larger bronze between them, and even as they landed, one either side of Cyniath, they were still twitching disconcertedly from the withering blast.

Shimpath and Ipith converged on the Southern bronze, so he was ringed by senior dragons, but while neither Kawanth nor Izath matched Cyniath’s size, the angry stares of two adult queens froze him into cowed terror. As Valonna hurried with Rallai to meet the returning bronze riders, she heard Berzunth’s indignant squeal, and the deeper growl that could only have belonged to Vanzanth, remonstrating with the weyrling queen to keep her snout out of it. Berzunth’s spirit gave Valonna an instant of pleasure.

Sh’zon was heaving his passenger down from Kawanth’s neck-ridges. D’pantha hit the ground and stumbled, looking confused and disoriented. “I don’t understand,” he was saying. “What are you doing?”

“Cyniath’s muzzled?” Rallai asked her queen aloud. Ipith snorted an affirmative, and Rallai turned to D’pantha. “Listen well and speak quickly. Do you know where P’raima is?”

D’pantha’s coal-black eyes were clouded with confusion, but he gathered himself smartly. “No.”

Both queens loomed at Cyniath, and he uttered a strangulated bark, but Valonna knew the sound Shimpath made for a confirmation. D’pantha was not lying, at least not so far as his dragon knew. “Did you know what P’raima planned at the Gather yesterday?” Rallai pushed.

“No!” D’pantha insisted, and darted a look sideways at Cyniath. He collapsed in on himself a little more, whining, and D’pantha added quickly, “Not all of it. Only that he planned to take your queen weyrling in trade for Megrith. Not what he would do with her, or the other girl, or you!”

“So you’re merely complicit in the kidnap of a queen rider?” Sh’zon demanded.

“Complicit? I counselled P’raima against it! Faranth, I begged him not to go down that path! He wouldn’t listen!” D’pantha looked from face to face. “He wouldn’t listen.”

“Still you allowed him to proceed,” said H’ned. His accusation was all the more severe for the coolness of it.

D’pantha shook his head. “I could no more have stopped him than I could stop the sun rising in the east.”

“You could have warned us –”

“Warned you?” D’pantha interrupted Sh’zon with contempt shading his voice. “I disagreed with my Weyrleader. It doesn’t follow that I should inform on him to another Weyr.”

“And when he told you that giving us more time would cost us our green weyrling?” H’ned asked.

D’pantha looked sharply at him. “How do you know that?”

“We know more than you imagine,” said Rallai. She raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

D’pantha looked even more ill at ease. “We went to Tezonth,” he said dully. “Cyniath tried to reason with him. To make him understand what his rider was doing.” He hesitated. “He didn’t believe him. But why would he, when I didn’t believe it myself.”

“That P’raima would murder a weyrling?” Valonna asked. “Or that he would commit so heinous a crime that even his most loyal riders could not suffer him as their Weyrleader?”

D’pantha’s face rippled briefly with emotions – anger, doubt, a self-loathing, perhaps at his own ability to abhor P’raima’s actions and yet still defend him – and then his expression went blank, as though he felt too many disparate things to reconcile, and so could no longer show any. “I thought him desperate,” he said at last, starkly. His voice was that of a man from whose eyes the blinders had finally, painfully, fallen. “Megrith’s loss. Grizbath’s…death.” He paused a breath, as though such a neutral word for the passing of Southern’s senior queen no longer tasted true. “He wished only for his legacy to continue at Southern. Only that.”

“At whatever cost,” H’ned said softly. “Even another weyrling’s life.”

“And our dragons’ voices,” Sh’zon added, more fiercely.

“And your own daughter’s innocence.” Rallai added that last. She fixed D’pantha with a gaze that would have made any man quail. “Little as you may trouble yourself over any soul outside Southern, D’pantha, your lack of concern for Karika revolts me the most.”

He raised his eyes defiantly to Rallai’s. “She despises me. Her mother despises me. Still, I tried to protect her. I knew a queen couldn’t pass her over. I would have kept her off the Sands, away from being the focus of P’raima’s plans for that queen.”

“And away from your aspirations to the Weyrleadership,” said H’ned.

“Yes,” D’pantha said. “Of that charge you may find me as guilty as any bronze rider.”

The retort needled both H’ned and Sh’zon into momentary silence. Valonna pressed to fill it. “Then you believed that P’raima’s time as Weyrleader would be over when the new queen rose?”

D’pantha hesitated, visibly torn between his ingrained allegiance to P’raima and the need, for his dragon’s sake, to speak truthfully. “Yes. No.” He shook his head angrily. “A rider underestimates Tezonth at his peril. He has outflown or outwitted every other bronze of Southern for three decades. Would I dismiss him as incapable of outflying those same bronzes in the pursuit of a guileless young queen simply because of his Turns? No. Never.” The admiration in his voice for another man’s bronze struck Valonna as curiously disloyal. A rider’s belief in his own dragon’s unassailable calibre might be a vanity, but it was, at least, understandable. The implication, that P’raima’s long and iron-fisted premiership at Southern had bullied even the most assertive of his riders into accepting his dragon as superior to their own, chilled her. “But when Grizbath laid her gold egg, something eased in P’raima. He confided to me that he was comforted to know that Tezonth’s line would continue through another queen. It seemed to me that he was ready to…to let go. At last.”

Relief and chagrin mingled in D’pantha’s voice. H’ned spoke again. “With you as his picked successor.”

There was neither scepticism nor accusation in the statement, but D’pantha bridled at it nonetheless. “And why not? I’ve served Wing and Weyr faithfully for twenty-seven Turns. Cyniath is among the strongest of Southern’s bronzes, and a son of Tezonth. Why should P’raima not favour me to continue his work?”

Sh’zon laughed, a short, humourless bark. “And then your own daughter Impresses the queen, and suddenly all your careful plans are in the midden.” Then he added, as if inspired, “Aye, and your usefulness to P’raima as the custodian of his legacy, too. How bitter that must have been for you, D’pantha, to serve and scrape at P’raima’s whim for all those Turns, only to be cast aside at the last.”

D’pantha’s lips thinned and his nostrils whitened; Sh’zon’s dart had found its mark. “P’raima didn’t cast me aside.” The words grated out of him.

“Disregarding your counsel,” H’ned said thoughtfully, sticking out his thumb. “Planning kidnappings without you.” He extended his forefinger. “Hiding from you the existence of the felah counter-agent.” He raised his brows as he added his middle finger to the tally. “Perhaps you weren’t as trusted a confidante as you might like to believe, even before Karika Impressed Megrith.”

“He trusted me more than anyone,” D’pantha said stubbornly.

Valonna wondered if D’pantha grasped how poorly his pride in P’raima’s favour served him under the circumstances. “But no longer,” said Rallai. “You’ve been supplanted by another.”

D’pantha could not have been ignorant of his circumstantial fall from grace, yet confrontation with it clearly still stung him. He looked sullenly at Rallai. “Who?”

His belligerent incredulity must have taken Rallai as much aback as it did Valonna; she hesitated for a surprised breath. “R’maro,” she said, but the name had barely passed her lips before D’pantha had tossed back his head, cawing with cheerless mirth.

“R’maro!” he exclaimed, with a second snort of laughter. “That worthless boy?”

“A worthless boy who seemed to have the acceptance of Southern as its Weyrleader, when we left there just now,” said H’ned.

“R’maro has thought himself significant all his life, first for being Margone’s son, then for Impressing a bronze; as if either happy accident spoke to his merit. He might have made something of himself had he ever sought to earn the respect and credibility he believed was owed to him by right. He never did. He’s resented and resisted P’raima all his life. It’s only by attrition that he was made up to Wingleader last winter. And only by opportunism, as a known dissident on P’raima’s council, that he’s risen so precipitously above his station today. Opportunism, and Madellon’s eagerness to believe his absurd promises.” D’pantha paused in his scorn only for a moment, as if he had so many reasons to despise R’maro that he could hardly choose from among them. “No. P’raima wouldn’t trust R’maro to make a blaze in a firestone bunker, let alone lead a Weyr.”

“Then who would P’raima trust to lead Southern, in his own absence, and with you disqualified?” Valonna asked.

D’pantha’s brow furrowed in precisely the way that Karika’s had when Valonna had asked her the same question. “There are several possible candidates,” he said, after a moment. “O’digy, or K’felia.”

They were two names Karika had proffered; two senior bronze riders of similar middle Turns to D’pantha. Rallai pointed out what they had already discerned. “Neither of their bronzes are Tezonth’s get.”

D’pantha stiffened slightly. “G’nepi, then. Hondinth is by Tezonth.”

“And is Hondinth capable of flying a queen?” asked Rallai.

They knew, from Karika, that he was not. D’pantha’s eyes flicked sideways in the manner that showed he grudgingly agreed with Rallai’s inference. “But R’maro,” he said disgustedly. “R’maro! The least qualified bronze rider in Southern to be Weyrleader! Maibauth might be Tezonth’s, but he’s never even chased a queen!”

“All of which is what made them uniquely suited to P’raima’s needs,” said H’ned.

“His needs? His need for what?”

“A puppet,” said Valonna.

D’pantha turned his eyes wordlessly on her, and Valonna spoke on, outlining what they had deduced. “When P’raima first plotted to take Tarshe, he must have known his position as Weyrleader was untenable. Even if the exchange of Tarshe for Karika had gone smoothly, he would still have abducted a weyrling from another Weyr. He would still have poisoned the Weyrleaders of Madellon and the Peninsula. If it had gone no further than that, P’raima would still have committed crimes enough to be removed from power and exiled.”

She glanced to Rallai as she spoke, for confirmation. Rallai took up the thread. “At no point, once P’raima set events in motion, did he believe he would still be Southern’s Weyrleader by the end of the day. He sacrificed that to the cause of restoring Tezonth’s queen daughter to Southern. But Megrith is only half of Tezonth’s legacy. For P’raima’s obsession with his dragon’s superior bloodline to be satisfied, a son of Tezonth’s must be positioned as Megrith’s mate; and not just any son, but one of the largest and strongest of his get. One of his best.” Rallai barely quirked an eyebrow at D’pantha. “With any other rider on the queen, D’pantha, that son would have been Cyniath. But Karika is Megrith’s rider. It left P’raima only one choice.”

“Who better to bend to his schemes than Southern’s unlikeliest candidate for Weyrleader?” asked H’ned. “Who would have more to gain from P’raima’s help than R’maro – entitled, maligned, resentful R’maro? Who would have been quicker to leap at an opportunity to be recognised at last; not only by his mother’s Weyr, but by the Weyrleader who was so disappointed in him for so many Turns?”

Sh’zon completed the premise. “Who would be so easily controlled from afar, once P’raima had fled in disgrace? Whose claim to the Weyrleadership would be best served by exchanging the felah antidote for Megrith?” He paused, then finished, portentously, “And who would benefit more from that antidote – employed as P’raima himself had been employing it – to give his inexperienced dragon the edge in Megrith’s maiden flight?”

D’pantha looked from face to face. His mouth twisted down, as though he were on the verge of rebutting the picture that they had painted for him, yet no words came. Instead, he said, “You’re certain that it was R’maro.”

“Our green weyrling saw Maibauth, as she tried to escape,” said Valonna.

“He was on his way to kill her,” Sh’zon added.

D’pantha’s gaze went distant. “Perhaps P’raima was wise to recruit R’maro to that end,” he said. “He must have known that I’d never have shed innocent blood, not even for him.” It didn’t have the ring of a statement made to appease his captors. Almost, Valonna could feel sympathy for this man, who had pledged so much of his life and loyalty to P’raima, and been rewarded so poorly. Then, “What of Margone?” D’pantha asked. “You accused me of plotting her murder.” His voice vibrated with fresh outrage. “Do you, then, believe P’raima to be guilty of that, too?”

Valonna looked to Rallai. She exhaled a long breath. “Margone was ill.” Rallai spoke with careful neutrality, and watched D’pantha closely. “Yet the timing of her death seemed convenient.”

D’pantha’s face relaxed from its tense creases. “Conjecture, then. Whatever P’raima’s other crimes, he wouldn’t have harmed Margone.”

“R’maro seemed to disagree,” Sh’zon pointed out, with a hint of satisfaction.

“Perhaps you’re not as crude as you look,” said D’pantha. “If P’raima and R’maro are allied, as you suggest, it is an alliance only of mutual convenience. Accusing P’raima of hastening Margone’s end might shatter it. R’maro is wher enough to savage the hand that raised him up.” Then he shook his head. “How does it serve you, to drive a wedge between them, before R’maro has the felah antidote from P’raima to seal his bargain with Madellon?”

“It serves us,” said Valonna, “because Karika will convince R’maro of her gratitude to him, and her relief to be home, and her wish to be a good Weyrwoman to Southern. Of how keenly she misses Margone, who’d been like a mother to her since she Impressed Megrith. And of her fear that P’raima had a hand in Margone’s death.”

Understanding was dawning in D’pantha’s gaze. “Karika’s display. An act.” He nodded, visibly following the ploy through. “To make R’maro believe he is not reliant on P’raima’s antidote to win the queen’s favour after all. You seek to break their alliance.” Then, “No.” He contradicted himself as he followed the notion to its conclusion. “Not merely a breaking. You provoke a confrontation.”

“R’maro will lead us to P’raima,” said H’ned.

D’pantha cocked his head curiously. “And then what?”

“Then we’ll have both of the murderous bastards,” Sh’zon growled. “And the antidote, too, once the queens step on Tezonth to force it from P’raima.”

D’pantha did not reply, but his expression bled scepticism. “What?” Sh’zon demanded.

“Tezonth will know nothing of any antidote,” D’pantha said. “As he knew nothing of P’raima’s command to have the green weyrling killed.” He hesitated, as if wondering if he slighted P’raima to elaborate. “And P’raima cannot be controlled by a threat to Tezonth.”

For a moment, no one had an answer to that. H’ned merely looked baffled, but Valonna wondered sickly if Rallai and Sh’zon were recalling P’raima’s frenzied words from the moments before his dragon had smashed through the window at Long Bay and seized him away. I don’t love my dragon. I merely need him. The notion had repelled her then, and it did still. “He’s so bereft of all basic dragonrider decency?” Rallai asked, not quite with disbelief.

D’pantha squared his shoulders defensively. “He has gone farther than most dragonriders would in the service of Southern Weyr. Freeing himself from the bonds of…love…that chain him to his dragon…” He shook his head slightly. “Few men would have the courage.”

“Few men would have the perversity,” said Sh’zon, plainly revolted. “To abuse his dragon so…”

“Tezonth is dominant among bronzes,” D’pantha insisted, with the ring of misplaced pride in a dragon not his own that Valonna found so inexplicable. “He’s won every queen’s flight at Southern for thirty Turns. Whatever price P’raima’s path exacted from him was nothing beside that honour.”

“And would you have asked Cyniath to pay that price?” H’ned asked.

D’pantha’s gaze flickered. “No,” he admitted. “I would not.”

“You say that as if we’d judge you for admitting it,” said Valonna. “Why do you idolise P’raima so? Why such devotion to a man so harsh and unfeeling?”

“Southern has prospered under P’raima,” D’pantha said. “Far more so than your poor, thin Weyr, and undersized dragons.” He hesitated, then admitted, “I have prospered, too. He has always been good to me.”

“Until now,” Rallai pointed out. “When your last usefulness to him has been being the scapegoat for R’maro’s crimes.”

D’pantha’s face hardened. “You’re trying to make me turn on him.”

“D’pantha,” said Valonna. It was, she realised, the first time any of them had spoken his name. “You said you wouldn’t separate yourself from Cyniath as P’raima has separated himself from Tezonth. Yet that separation is what he’s forced upon us. I can’t hear my queen.” She let her true anguish break her voice, and had to hesitate a moment to compose herself. Then she continued, “Please. No one can question your loyalty to P’raima. But…” Suddenly inspired, she went on in a rush. “Just as P’raima chose to serve Southern’s greater good above even his own dragon’s, I’m begging you now. See how wretched we are, without our dragons. How poorly we can serve our Weyrs. Serve the greater good of Pern, even over your love for P’raima. Even though it wrenches you to do it.”

D’pantha stared at her for a long moment, and then tore his gaze away, casting  it sideways. Vaguely, Valonna wondered if he’d seen her hopelessness there. “What, then?” he asked thickly. “What would you have me do?”

“Help us,” Valonna pleaded. “Help us understand P’raima. Help us find the chink in him.”

D’pantha looked down at the ground. He remained silent for so long that Valonna began to fear he had changed his mind. But then, slowly, he raised his head. “A chink, you say,” he said. Slowly, he nodded. “Yes. I can give you that. I can give you that.”

Chapter fifty-one: Sh’zon

A dragon cannot make you a better person. But he can make you want to be.

– Unattributed

100.03.28 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

The hours passed in silence. Silence from the Weyr, for Madellon seemed collectively to be holding its breath; silence from Southern, where neither Megrith nor any other dragon reached out to make contact; silence from Kawanth, whose mind remained as veiled from Sh’zon’s as it had been for almost two full days now.

The Bowl was very still. The Wings that should have been drilling had been grounded. The dragonets lay curled and quiet on the training grounds. No greens strutted or preened in advance of a flight. The solitary watchdragon, a blue, was motionless as a statue up by the Star Stones. It was as if no rider nor dragon dared move or speak, lest they tear the fragile tissue of suspense that hung over Madellon, and bring untold calamity down upon them all.

Sh’zon felt anything but still.

It began in the night, when, in the absence of word from Karika, he and Valonna and H’ned finally agreed to seek what sleep they could. He didn’t undress, or even remove his boots, stretching out fully clothed instead on his bed, ready to leap up at a moment’s notice. Against the quiet of Madellon’s night-time, and the empty place in his mind where Kawanth should have been, his own preoccupations bumped noisily around his brain, like a man lurching blindly through a room, clattering into the furniture and bruising himself on the walls. His thoughts cycled endlessly through a contemplation of the three Southern bronze riders. As he turned each man’s character over and over in his head, his revulsion for all of them grew. P’raima, for his wilful descent into narcissism and evil. R’maro, for the treachery to which his resentful entitlement had driven him. D’pantha, for allowing his blind and stubborn trust to make him the tool of a cleverer man.

He despised them all. Thinking about them made him feel soiled by exposure to their degeneracy, their greed, their unworthiness to call themselves dragonriders. The notion that three dragons – three bronze dragons – had judged the boys that these men had once been fit to be their life-partners made bile rise in Sh’zon’s throat. Not because he doubted a dragon’s ability to choose his rider, but because in the intervening Turns, the riders of Southern had corrupted themselves so completely from what their dragons had judged good and decent.

What underpinned his abhorrence was the fear that, separated from the nobility of Kawanth’s thoughts, he would become like them.

The thought distressed him enough that he got off his bed and went immediately to Kawanth. It reassured him, a little, that his bronze lifted his head off his forepaws the moment he stepped into his sleeping chamber, his eyes verdantly alert. If Kawanth couldn’t sleep either, perhaps their division was not so comprehensive after all. Sh’zon went to the edge of his dragon’s couch. Kawanth? he tried. He pressed against the blankness where his bronze should have been. Kawanth, laddie, are you getting this at all? He closed his eyes, pushing harder, straining against the hateful limit of his own skull. Kawanth?

Kawanth made a small, sad noise. Sh’zon opened his eyes, the hope that he’d broken through a near-painful thing in his chest, but Kawanth merely turned his muzzle down to him. Sh’zon realised he had splayed his hands against the sleek brown-gold hide, and understood with a wrench that Kawanth was merely returning the contact as best he could. Dispirited, Sh’zon leaned his brow against Kawanth’s muzzle. “You wouldn’t let it happen, would you?” he asked aloud. “You wouldn’t let me become a cold-hearted villain like them.”

Kawanth’s soft rumble and softer nudge acknowledged the question without answering it. Sh’zon let out all of his breath. He hated this. Hated it, hated it, hated it.

He went back into his own chamber after a while. Sleeping beside Kawanth was always a sweaty business with the way a dragon radiated heat, and Sh’zon was already too hot. He undid a couple of buttons on his riding jacket before flinging himself back onto his bed.

Sleep still didn’t come. He stared at the ceiling of his sleeping chamber, though it was as featureless and unenlightening as the insides of his eyelids had been. His limbs felt restless, frustrated by the inactivity. He drummed his fingers on the furs to overcome it, and then realised his foot had already been kicking rhythmically against the air where it hung off the end of the mattress. He halted the fidgeting irritably, but stillness draw his attention too sharply to the internal rhythms of his own body. His breathing seemed unaccountably loud and harsh, dragging in and out of his lungs. He was intensely aware of the blood pumping through his veins and arteries. He thought he could hear the rush of it in his ears. He could certainly feel it throbbing against the points, at wrist and throat and temple, where it pulsed closest to the surface. What little he’d eaten, snatched in passing off the dinner tray the Headwoman had brought to Valonna’s office earlier, lay sullenly in his gut like a bellyful of undigested firestone. The light leaking from the glow-basket he’d turned to its dimmest, even with half the glows thrown out, stung his eyes. His jacket bound against his shoulders, and his trouser-legs twisted uncomfortably around his knees and ankles. The gash in his upper arm radiated a dull ache, and itched, both signs that the numbweed was wearing off again.

His face itched, too. He dragged a hand the wrong way against the beard he hadn’t shaved off since the morning of the Gather. The scruff of stubble was unpleasantly hard and prickly. It only took a couple of days’ neglect for his beard to grow in, fierce and wild, darker than his hair. He rolled off his bed again and snatched up the glow-basket, carrying it through to his bathing room. The bit of mirror propped there next to the basin flashed back glimmers of the greenish illumination. He angled it so it wouldn’t reflect into his eyes, so he wouldn’t have to look at his own eyes. He scooped up a basinful of water from the steaming pool and worked up a lather from the hard corner of shaving soap to spread on his face. He unfolded his razor, and in the dim gloom that was all the light he needed, he shaved away the stubble. The blade wasn’t as sharp as it might have been, dragging reluctantly against his whiskers, and as his fingers followed its path they came away wet from a nick at the corner of his jaw. He swore and muttered, and blotted the spot with a cloth until it stopped seeping. Then he splashed his face with clean hot water from the pool, followed by cold from the ewer. His skin was a little sore from the blunt razor, but it was smooth to the exploratory rub of his palm, and sore and smooth was better than itchy and rough. Satisfied, Sh’zon went back to bed.

He’d lain back down for barely a few minutes before he realised that the back of his hand itched.

It doesn’t itch; you’re imagining it, he told himself sternly, even as he turned his hand over to draw the back of it across the furs.

The itch he was imagining moved to his left calf.

Sh’zon shifted his right foot to scratch it, and succeeded only in kicking himself in the shin with his boot. “Shaffit!” he cursed, reaching down to rub his leg.

The itch jumped from his leg to his arm.

Except it didn’t jump, in the sense that it left one place to affect another; instead, Sh’zon realised that everywhere he had felt the itch he didn’t want to admit existed still itched; and even as he acknowledged, unhappily, that perhaps he wasn’t imagining it, the malevolent  prickle surged into maddening existence all over him. His back, his chest, his arms and legs; every part of his body crawled with it, as though his flesh were trying to slough off a skin suddenly shrunk too small. For a time he fought with the overwhelming desire to scratch the sensation away, to dig his fingernails deep into tender tissues to dislodge it, to scrub himself raw with coarse soapsand until the intolerable itch subsided, or at least was replaced with a pain he could stand.

Then, between one breath and the next, it was gone.

Sh’zon lay panting on his bedfurs. He was wringing with sweat, his shirt soaked through, his wherhides dark with rank moisture. His skin cringed away from the clinging clamminess, and yet, still, it was better than the unbearable, excruciating itch.

He lurched from his sleeping chamber for the third time, stripping off as he went, leaving his drenched and stinking clothes where they fell. He almost tumbled into his bathing pool, and the suddenly heat of the water knocked the breath briefly from his lungs. He was afraid to examine his skin, dreading the sight of livid welts, a bubbling rash of blisters, scarlet petechiae describing the path the fiendish burning had taken across his body, like a marching hive of crawlers. He put off the moment by plunging his whole head beneath the turbulent water, and keeping it there as long as he could hold his breath.

He came up, gasping, and shook his head to dash the water from his eyes. Beneath the surface, nothing seemed amiss with his lower limbs, but he still steeled himself before lifting his arms free of the water to examine the damage.

There was nothing. His forearms were unmarred by sores or rashes, even when he turned them over. He raised one leg out of the water to find it similarly unmarked. He poked at the mat of flattened-down hair on his chest to find nothing there, either, and when he snatched down the mirror fragment to examine his back, all he found there was the familiar, age-greened lettering that spelled out his dragon’s name across his shoulder-blades.

He sagged with relief, but the sense of reprieve was short lived. If there was no physical cause for the itching, then his first thought had been correct. He had been imagining it. The itch had been in his head, not under his skin. It was his body’s way of telling him, with manic urgency, that it needed something. That it needed felah.

His mind raced through the implications as he lay in the soothing water of his pool. They’d wrung some knowledge of the drug out of D’pantha. It had been developed to help riders of male dragons from being subsumed by their dragons during green flights, blurring the bond enough that they could maintain a degree of control over their own responses, and therefore make mating a gentler experience for green riders. Even Sh’zon struggled to condemn the good intention behind the initiative. Young green riders were vulnerable to injury during their dragons’ flights, especially male green riders, and those whose dragons hadn’t settled on a preferred suitor. A competent Wingleader had to keep track of his greens’ mating schedules, not only to be mindful of their emotional states, but to be prepared for their riders to beg off drills. A competent Wingleader also had to discern if a green rider was falsely pleading a sore arse when he just wanted to get out of some undesirable duty, but Sh’zon had always erred on the side of compassion. He’d had stern words with a few of his blue and brown wingmen, too, when they’d been accused of unnecessary roughness in the flight weyr. He didn’t envy green riders their lot in life, and it seemed only right that he should offer them what protection he could.

So it was difficult to argue with Southern’s motivations. They had listened along, Sh’zon and H’ned and Valonna, as D’pantha described the early efforts of Southern’s Healers to formulate a potion that would produce the desired effects. In that pursuit, Southern Weyr was better equipped than any. The dense rainforests of the territory had yielded many new medicinal leaves and roots since the resettlement of the southern continent, and Healers with an interest in the physiological effects of such herbs had naturally gravitated to postings there. H’ned and Valonna reacted with surprise to the mention of a Master Berro, evidently once of Madellon, who had recently taken a place amidst Southern’s herbalists.

The earliest ventures yielded limited success. The riders who volunteered to try the experimental preparations experienced symptoms ranging from nothing at all to the common effects of fellis to a complete separation from their dragons even more drastic than that Sh’zon and Valonna were suffering. But, undeterred, the herbalists continued with their trials, testing this concoction and that on their subjects. It was a Turn before they refined a potion that came close to the desired effect, and another before they began finally to master the unwanted side effects of its fellis-based origin. The rare herbs they at last discovered could counteract the normal sedative and analgesic properties of fellis, making their distillation practical for serving dragonriders, had an unfortunate secondary effect of their own. They made the fellis derivative, already a narcotic that incited dependence in its users, even more addictive.

But it worked. Further testing identified the dose and frequency of the potion required to elicit the intended result: a thin tissue of separation between a rider and his dragon’s emotions that gave a man the ability to resist falling completely under the thrall of his dragon’s flight lust, while cushioning the dragon from the panic-inducing fear of having lost his rider’s contact at the critical moment of flight merge. D’pantha spoke of a blurring of the contact, so a victorious male dragon’s rider could prevent himself from falling upon the female’s rider in mindless mimicry of his dragon’s lust, without fear of the abstention driving one or both between in terror at the loss of unity.

The popularity of the potion soon expanded beyond the blue, brown, and bronze riders who had been its intended recipients. While only the male dragons’ riders benefited from its moderating effects, rider intercourse during mating flights was still required, albeit performed less frantically – the green riders, consumed by mating passion, could not be satisfied with less than their dragons were experiencing. For a time, the tables turned on the male dragons’ riders: once the aggressors during flights, now the subject of aggression. Soon, though, green riders had begun to demand access to the concoction, citing a wish to be similarly free of enslavement to their randy dragons’ urges. It did not prevent the participants in a mating flight from mirroring their dragons’ ardour, D’pantha stressed; it merely put the decision as to whether both parties wished to partake in the riders’ hands, and if the intensity of the experience was somewhat reduced as a consequence, that was a small price to pay for consent. In a Weyr so criss-crossed by blood ties, the result of nearly twenty Turns without external Search, the value of such control was self-evident.

Yet even with the use of the fellis-based concoction widespread amongst Southern’s riders, there were still those who declined to use it, and over time it became apparent that those who did not take the drug had an advantage over those who did. Riders of all colours began to complain that the minority who abstained were winning more green flights than their share – distressing for the greens’ riders, who must endure grappling with a fully-merged partner while themselves in possession of self-control, and frustrating for the male dragons’ riders, who felt they were being penalised for their own considerate use of the drug. The debate over whether or not the potion’s use should be made compulsory amongst Southern’s riders raged this way and that for months, with advocates for both sides arguing with passion to rival that the subject of their dispute governed. At last, the issue came to a head when Grizbath’s reliable mating schedule made it clear that she would rise before the close of the Turn. Few of Southern’s bronze riders ever spoke openly of opposing P’raima’s premiership, D’pantha admitted, but that didn’t stop any of them, bar R’maro, from sending their dragons after her. It would have been an unthinkable insult to their queen not to muster a competitive field of suitors. It would have been equally unthinkable for that field to have been made uneven by the use, or not, of the fellis potion.

P’raima himself settled it. He had not partaken of the drug before, for Tezonth, Grizbath’s mate for so many Turns, had no interest in chasing greens. But when he announced that he, too, would begin using it, out of respect for Margone’s comfort, it shamed every other bronze rider who had until then abstained into pledging to do the same. From there, it was a short step for the remaining holdouts to bow to the pressure of their peers. It even became a sacrament, used to bind Wings and Weyr together; each morning, every Wingleader received a doled-out measure of the potion to mix with his Wing’s breakfast klah, to be drunk together in a ritual reinforcing of the ties of comradeship and fraternity. That had been when the drug became known by its current title. Felah.

Yet D’pantha’s knowledge of the drug stopped short of being useful in relation to Madellon’s situation. He knew little of the long-term effects of large doses, beyond the fact that most of the earliest test subjects who had lost all contact with their dragons had since died. He didn’t specify if their deaths had been related to their dragon-deafness, and neither Sh’zon nor anyone else dared ask. He knew nothing at all of the purported counter-agent, though it was plain than his new awareness of its existence coloured his account of P’raima’s apparently honourable participation in felah use. The only thing he had said that pertained to Sh’zon’s current suffering, and that most guardedly, was that his own habitual use of felah would not cause him any noticeable distress for a day or two longer, and then could be alleviated somewhat with a modest dose of plain fellis juice.

Sh’zon didn’t have any fellis juice. It wasn’t the sort of drug anyone had just lying around. The Weyr Healer kept it locked up tight, and it was far too strong in any case for a rider to self-administer. If the willowsalic and numbweed that every rider did have in their personal supplies wasn’t sufficient, then a more powerful medicine could only be obtained from the professionals. And fellis wasn’t a solution anyway, even to short-term discomfort; it would make him drowsy and dull when he needed to be at his sharpest and best. Though how he could hope for that when he was trapped into sleeplessness by his roiling thoughts and his miserable loneliness and now his Thread-blighted felah cravings, he didn’t know.

He wondered if the others were feeling the same. Tarshe, he hoped, would be fast asleep; the other weyrling, too. They had no need to stay alert or to worry about anything beyond themselves and their own dragonets. He doubted Valonna was getting any more rest than he was. For all the steel Madellon’s young Weyrwoman had shown, she was barely less a girl beneath the brittle façade than Tarshe was, and Tarshe still seemed half a child to Sh’zon.

His thoughts turned to Rallai. She at least had sufficient Turns behind her as Ipith’s rider that her dragon’s authority was woven inextricably into the fabric of her being. Rallai had been weyrwoman to a queen longer than she hadn’t. Still, Sh’zon knew her well enough to recognise the threads of fear stitched through the weave, snagging the smooth surface of her serene competence, and he thought he understood their source. Rallai, of all the weyrwomen P’raima had poisoned with his felah, was closest to her queen’s next flight. Ipith, uneven though her cycle could be, was due to rise any time; certainly within the next two or three months. If Rallai was still dragon-deaf when she did, what then? How could she control her queen in blooding if they couldn’t hear each other? How could they flight-merge at all, as a queen and her rider must, to ensure a safe flight? No dragon was ever more emotionally and mentally vulnerable than when consumed by their need to mate, when their rider’s love and loyalty was the anchor that kept them from spending themselves utterly in the pursuit of superiority. How could a queen who couldn’t hear her rider rise and mate and return at all?

How could a bronze whose rider was stricken hope to catch her?

Sh’zon’s thoughts had been orbiting that central terror, circling it without confronting it, ever since the reality of what had been done to him had sunk in. Being separated from Kawanth was miserable, it was lonely, it was inconvenient. That it hadn’t killed either of them, yet, was about the best that could be said of the situation. But it hadn’t killed them. They would puzzle it out, day by day, just as the weyrlings who couldn’t go between would puzzle out a way to be dragonriders. The thought of a time when that had been the most thorny issue Madellon was facing almost made Sh’zon smile at the quaintness of it. But beyond the day-to-day, beyond getting through tomorrow, or next sevenday, the consequences of Sh’zon’s affliction tangled into an increasingly hideous knot. He’d spent the balance of the last six Turns burning after one goal: the Weyrleadership of Peninsula. Kawanth longed to reclaim Ipith; Sh’zon longed to reclaim Rallai; they both longed to elevate themselves above all the other dragonpairs at their native Weyr. Twice they had been thwarted, twice failed to prove themselves equal to Rallai’s expectations – and she expected more of them, Sh’zon knew, than she did of any other pair. She’d made that plain on the first night of the Gather. So, too, had she made plain how he could prove himself, as Weyrleader to Valonna. And then P’raima had poisoned them both, and spun all their careful, measured dance wildly awry. The notion that Sh’zon might be denied the prize he’d struggled so long and hard to win, whose pursuit had forced him away from the Peninsula, and dragged his cousin into its clutches, and separated him from his own dragon, threatened to set his brain alight with rage.

And as he lay there in the steaming, turbulent water that so closely matched the state of his mind, Sh’zon grasped that his anger sprang from the same root as the short-tempered impulsiveness Rallai had accused him of indulging as a young man, and then a young rider, and still, now, as a Wingleader of his middle Turns. He had become less angry, less rash, and she had recognised that, but still he had not mastered his impetuosity to her satisfaction. Stripped, now, of Kawanth’s tempering influence, he had lapsed back into the unbecoming hot-headedness of his youth. Like the urge to scratch the itching that was also confined to his head, the only way he could overcome it was by force of will.

Sh’zon inhaled a deep breath of humid air through his nostrils. He held it in his chest for a long moment, then blew it out through his mouth. The anger receded, a bit. He bent his attention upon it, recognising the comfortable familiarity of it, the refuge from fear and doubt that submerging himself in wrath presented. He took another breath and let it out. Another. And another. With each breath he felt a little more of the anger leave him. It left him emptier inside than ever. It was a comfort, or at least a distraction. He thought about Rallai instead: Rallai’s keen and sparkling eyes meeting his; the twitch of her mouth when she was charmed by him in spite of herself; the firm press of her fingers on his wrist, on his face, on his chest. Rallai. Rallai.

M’ric.

The thought came into the hollowness of his mind uninvited – a thought he hadn’t wanted to have at all, while so much else weighed upon him – but come it did, and behind it, riding its heels like a feline kit with its claws snagged in a cloak-hem, the rage. Sh’zon tried to shrug them off, cloak and kit both, but the material fact of his Wingsecond’s treachery had already tangled itself through his thoughts, and Sh’zon’s anger at it could not be dislodged. He tried the breathing exercise again, but without success. How could he not be wroth with the brown rider, when M’ric had betrayed him at so critical a moment?

Sh’zon let himself feel the anger. He let it bunch itself in the muscles of his arms and chest, in the clench of his fists and jaw. Then he put it aside without putting it away, keeping it at an easy reach, while he freed himself from the burden of gripping it. M’ric. He spoke the name in his mind until redness no longer rippled from it. Then he set aside the glowing coal at the heart of his resentment, and focused on the man who had kindled it. He hadn’t seen M’ric since the moment in Long Bay’s courtyard when he’d torn the Wingsecond braid from his shoulder. H’ned and L’stev between them had coordinated the search and rescue Wing’s operations over Giskara, and Sh’zon had issued such orders as his own Wing required through J’tron. If anyone outside that circle had noticed him shunning M’ric, they hadn’t asked Sh’zon about it.

He thought about their confrontation at Long Bay. The memory was neither as sharp nor as complete as he would have liked, but three things he did recall in stark detail: the unprecedented anger in M’ric’s eyes when he’d called Sh’zon an imbecile; the flatness of his refusal to help in spite of Sh’zon sincerest plea; and the ominous words he had spoken: I’ve already done more than I should have.

What had M’ric done?

He didn’t have time to consider the question. His dragon’s echoing rumble made him sit up in the hot water, listening. “Kawanth?”

There came no reply, but Sh’zon hauled himself out of the bathing pool, swearing. A minute later, as he was drying himself roughly with a towel, H’ned’s shout through from the ledge confirmed Sh’zon’s suspicions. “Are you awake, Sh’zon? Sh’zon?” The timbre of the other bronze rider’s voice changed as he came through the chambers of Sh’zon’s weyr. At last, he popped his head through the bathing room archway. “Sh’zon?”

Sh’zon finished pulling his shirt over his still-damp head and stamped into his boots, embarrassed to have been caught off-guard. He sleeked his hair back from his brow with one hand, and turned to face H’ned, growling, “I heard you the first time. R’maro’s reached out?”

H’ned was fully dressed in wherhides, his hair combed and face clean-shaven. Either he’d slept well and refreshed himself, or else he was feeling the stresses of the last couple of days much less keenly than Sh’zon. He nodded. “Megrith’s said they’ll delay him from leaving as long as they can, but we need to be ready to move.” He eyed Sh’zon’s dripping hair and damply-clinging shirt critically. “You can’t go between like that.”

“Never mind that,” Sh’zon snapped. “Has someone woken Rallai?”

“It’s mid-forenoon at the Peninsula,” H’ned said. “Almost noon at Southern. Tynerith’s in place. Ipith and Ranquiath too. Valonna’s already aboard Shimpath.” He looked dubiously as Sh’zon again. “Are you ready to go?”

Sh’zon pushed past him, feeling his anger rising again, letting its heat fuel him. “Oh, I’m ready, all right.” he said, snatching up his riding jacket. “Ready to end this once and for all!”

Chapter fifty-two: Valonna

When a dragonrider is found guilty of crimes too heinous to allow him to remain within Weyr society, there are but two possible sentences: Exile and Separation.

Fewer than twenty dragonriders have been Exiled to Westisle in the last fifty Turns, and fewer still have lived long lives there. Their names are struck from the records of their home Weyrs, spoken only by the Weyrwomen whose queens must periodically reinforce the absolute prohibition on leaving that applies to any dragonpair exiled to that barren rock.

But as bleak a prospect as Exile may seem, it pales in comparison to the most severe punishment a dragonrider can face. Only two riders have ever been sentenced to Separation, both for capital crimes of such appalling magnitude that even the society of Westisle’s criminals will not accept them. It falls to the most senior Weyrwomen on Pern to impose the total isolation of dragon and rider from the world and from each other that comprises Separation: not only because such a sundering requires the full strength of a powerful queen, but because only the strongest and most resolute of Weyrwoman can bring themselves to live with being the instrument of such a dreadful punishment.

– Excerpt from A Weyrwoman’s Duty by Weyrwoman Nelaya

100.03.28 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

PENINSULA WEYR

The sun was almost at its zenith in the sky when they assembled there along the lip of the internal plateau of the Peninsula Weyr. The crater seemed almost to hang over the sea at the end of the headland for which it had been named, the line of the curtain wall that hugged two-thirds of its diameter falling dramatically away on the northerly, seaward side of the caldera to bathe the interior with light. And with wind, too – the powerful northerly blows that could lash the coastline pummelled the inner face of the Peninsula mercilessly in winter – but while the waves foamed and surged hungrily around the rock stacks at the foot of the Weyr, only the strongest storms could swirl sea-spray the twenty dragonlengths from the base of the cliffs to the lowest point of the Weyr’s perimeter.

No such tempest raged today. Valonna stood beside Shimpath with one hand on her queen’s cheek, shading her eyes with the other. As they both looked out across the gently heaving swell, over the small sunlight-tipped waves that rippled all the way to the horizon, she could almost believe that, in their mutual contemplation of the rolling ocean, they were still of one mind.

Shimpath’s slight shift alerted her to H’ned’s approach. Valonna started from her thoughts. “Is it time?”

H’ned shook his head. “R’maro’s been detained by a succession of his own riders, all after a piece of his time. Megrith reports he’s grown quite irritable with it already.” The smile that tweaked his mouth was wry. “The weight of a Weyrleader’s responsibilities on shoulders so ill-prepared must be very heavy.” He motioned with his head. “There’s food and klah.”

“I don’t think I could,” Valonna said, but H’ned shook his head.

“I know you barely ate last night, Weyrwoman.” He looked at her with a solicitousness Valonna was too weary to object to. “Come and eat something; for your strength’s sake, if not your appetite’s.”

Valonna let him guide her away, though she maintained her touch on Shimpath’s face as long as she could, and when finally she broke it, she felt the small wrench in her breast that was becoming mournfully familiar.

The other riders of the dragons waiting along the apron of the Peninsula had gathered about a small table, set with cups and plates, steaming pitchers of klah, and platters of food. There was bread and soft cheese to spread on it; meatrolls stacked in a neat pyramid; a bowl of the fat purple marsh-berries common to the Peninsula; spice-cake cut into slabs. Hand-food that could be consumed in a bite or two or, as Britt and T’rello were demonstrating, crammed into a jacket pocket without taking much harm.

Rallai looked about as rested as Valonna felt, the face unmarred with age lined instead with fatigue, the heartsickness of division from her dragon, and the grey tension of the nagging craving for felah they shared. Still, even dressed in practical wherhides, and with her guests standing around like herdsmen snatching a mid-morning snack, Rallai was every inch the gracious hostess. “Let me pour the klah for you, Valonna,” she insisted, and pressed into her fingers a moment later a steaming cup.

They didn’t speak. All the talking had been done, and now only the waiting remained. Valonna sipped her klah and let her gaze drift around the knot of riders. H’pold’s shoes had been filled by K’ken, the tall, rumpled, but very experienced older rider Valonna knew only slightly as H’pold’s former deputy. He did not, Valonna noted, wear the Weyrleader’s knot that Sh’zon had given back to Rallai, but he and his ragged-winged bronze Essienth would nonetheless be escorting Rallai and Ipith between while they remained unable to communicate with each other. H’ned and Izath were to serve the same role for Valonna and Shimpath. Sh’zon had chosen T’rello as his guide. That had surprised Valonna. She had expected he would call on his Wingsecond, M’ric, to serve. When questioned, Sh’zon had said that he wished only to have another sizeable bronze on hand, but while Valonna couldn’t fault his choice – Santinoth was indeed Madellon’s largest male dragon – she suspected from Sh’zon’s brittle tone that something was amiss. Valonna couldn’t devote any time to unravelling it; still, the undercurrent of discord tugged distractingly at her.

Sirtis and L’dro were not there – a fact for which Valonna was wearily grateful – having their own role to play in the work ahead. But Britt, the weyrling rider of Peninsula’s nearly-grown queen Tynerith, had joined them. Tynerith, with her exceptionally keen and long-range senses, could pick out best of all the queens the tiny secret thread of Megrith’s thought, arrowed out covertly enough to avoid any detection by Southern’s bronzes. Stealth was essential. Queen though she was, Megrith was still a juvenile, and the concerted will of a Weyrful of bronzes starved of a queen’s presence for so long could easily overpower hers.

Britt was a freckle-faced girl of about sixteen with clever, flashing eyes. Valonna caught herself thinking that it would be good for her and Tarshe and Karika to spend some time together, not only to reinforce the ties between the southern Weyrs that had worn so thin, but to bind them in the small and exclusive sorority of Pern’s queen dragons. Had there been more of a sisterhood between Margone and Rallai and Valonna herself, perhaps none of them would be where they were now.

The only other rider missing was G’kalte. Valonna had not realised how sorry she would be not to see him, and for an instant she’d been nearly grateful that Shimpath could not hear her thoughts. Her queen would have been fiercely interested in the development, and that would have forced Valonna to examine the source of her disappointment more closely than she wanted to. Still, she’d found herself asking Rallai, when she and Sh’zon and H’ned had first arrived, how G’kalte was faring. Rallai explained that he was at the Healerhall, serving as a pincushion for needlethorns; G’kalte having taken a smaller amount of felah, the herbalists there were most interested in studying how the lesser dose of the drug had only partially clouded his link to Archidath. If Rallai suspected any agenda behind Valonna’s inquiry, she was too courteous to show it. Still, Valonna was herself uncomfortable enough with her unasked-for preoccupation to want to put it out of her mind.

She took a piece of bread from the board, more to show gratitude for Rallai’s hospitality than to sate the appetite she didn’t have. The Peninsula was huge and beautiful, half again Madellon’s size. It was the largest Weyr on Pern, and surely one of the grandest. Valonna had seen its immense Hatching Cavern during each of the Impression ceremonies she had attended as Madellon’s Weyrwoman, but little of its magnificent exterior. More than four hundred dragons called it their home, three of them queens, almost fifty bronzes. A heavily-laden two-master was wallowing along the coast to the east, flying the tithe ensign from its jackstaff; it would tie up at the sea-caves that undercut the ocean side of the Weyr and unload there, sending its cargo up the sheer cliffs in great hoists raised with ropes and pulleys. The necessary business of Peninsula Weyr went inexorably on, just as it did back at Madellon, in spite of all that had befallen the Weyrleaders of both Weyrs over the past days. It would go on at both Weyrs – and at Southern – as it always had and as it always would, regardless of the outcome of their endeavours today, just as the sun would wheel through the sky, uncaring of what transpired in the light and shadows it cast. Just as the Red Star, eventually, inescapably, would follow its celestial circuit back to the skies of Pern, bringing with it Thread’s malevolent rain. The thought gave Valonna a preternatural chill despite the heat of the morning.

Then she heard Britt say, “Weyrwoman…” in an odd, distracted tone. Valonna put every other thought out of her mind, and turned, as they all did, to the young queen rider.

“Britt?” Rallai asked.

Britt’s eyes had gone to Tynerith, who herself had adopted an expression of extreme concentration. Then, “I have a visual!” she exclaimed.

“Where?” Sh’zon demanded.

Britt shook her head once, curtly. “No idea. Don’t recognise it.” Then she added, “I can’t hold this for long. Tynerith intercepted the communication between Maibauth and Tezonth and it was only a glimpse. The details are fraying already.”

“Have Tynerith pass it about,” K’ken commanded her. “Everyone mount up!”

The crackle of martial command in his voice was probably unnecessary. They were all already spreading out to their dragons, throwing aside – or stuffing into their mouths – whatever food they had been holding. “Down, Shimpath!” Valonna called out loud to her dragon as she rushed to her, and Shimpath obediently flattened herself to the ground. Valonna ran up her queen’s arm as though it were a ramp and flung herself up the handholds of the aft neck-strap. Her hands were shaking as she buckled in, and it took her two tries to fasten the safety. Then, as Shimpath watched her from one rapidly spinning eye, Valonna cried, “Up!”

Shimpath pushed off hard, unfurling her wings to carry them up and up. Around them, the other dragons were rising, and for a giddy instant Valonna wondered if such a Wing had even taken flight together: three queens and four bronzes from two different Weyrs, united in their quest to thwart the Weyrleader of a third.

Aloft, they peeled off into their pairs: Ipith and Essienth, Kawanth and Santinoth, Shimpath and Izath. Tynerith, their guide, flew above and ahead of them all, but Valonna fixed her attention on H’ned and Izath, holding station to Shimpath’s right. H’ned cupped his hands around his mouth; even so, Valonna was surprised at the volume of his shout, clearly audible even at a winglength’s distance. “Signal if you’re ready!”

Valonna had not often had reason to employ the formal arm signals of the fighting Wings, but L’stev’s old lessons had sunk into her muscles as well as her mind. She raised her right arm in the motion for affirmative.

Above, Tynerith vanished, and Essienth and Ipith a heartbeat after her. Shimpath gave the funny little quiver that was her way of warning Valonna that she was about to jump before she took them into the darkness of between.

And out again. The burst of brightness hurt Valonna’s eyes even behind her goggles. The sun had moved higher in the sky and glared down from an uninterrupted expanse of blue. Below, a sere plain unfolded to the horizons, almost as featureless as the sky, arid grasses punctuated only by dwarf shrubs, rocky outcrops, and parched wending streambeds.

And two bronze dragons.

Tezonth hulked there, massive, grey-bronze. Maibauth was less grey, but still massive. Their riders stood between them. In the moment before men and dragons looked up, they seemed to be arguing.

Then one of the shadows of the seven dragons aloft crossed Tezonth. The old bronze flung up his head. He did not even bugle. Before Shimpath, before any queen, could shrill out a command to him, he closed his talons around the small form of his rider. Without so much as leaving the ground, Tezonth went between.

It had all happened so quickly. Queens and bronzes screamed in frustration as their quarry slipped away. Male voices were roaring in snatches, carried off by the wind. On the ground, Maibauth and R’maro remained. Man and dragon seemed frozen in shock.

Ipith’s shriek of fury pierced them like speared wherries. Shimpath joined her voice to it, cheated of another target for her anger. Maibauth writhed miserably beneath the queens’ displeasure, and R’maro fell to his knees, wrapping his arms around his own head. Ipith and Essienth landed thunderously either side of the wretched Southern pair, their wings stirring up billows of dust that obscured all three of them.

Despair struck Valonna like a fist. Without P’raima and the antidote only he possessed, they were all ruined. She heard a woman’s voice shouting, and then she realised it was her own. “Tezonth! We have to get after Tezonth!”

A bronze veered across her line of sight. Kawanth. From his neck, Sh’zon was shouting something and gesticulating frantically. Kawanth and Shimpath barked at each other. Above, Tynerith called out, and both dragons jerked their heads upwards to the juvenile queen.

Shimpath’s shudder was the only notice Valonna had of her queen’s intention. They plunged between, and never had that dark void been so black or so cold. Without her queen to hear her, without Izath to guide them, with no connection, no control, Valonna felt her fear expand into a clawing apparition, silent and invisible, but no less terrifying for its formlessness.

They tore through oblivion into light. The sun had moved again, nearer to the horizon, blood-coloured in the death throes of the day. Below, the bare dead sands of an unfamiliar desert heaved in crescent-shaped hills. And Tezonth. The exit impact of his perilous jump between had been cushioned by impact with the yielding sand. He rose again from the crater of his own making. He still grasped P’raima tight to his chest in his immense forepaws. He turned scarlet eyes upon the slender form of the young queen hovering above him, and Tynerith’s defiant trumpeting turned sharp and shrill. A juvenile queen was no match for a bronze of Tezonth’s age and force. Valonna and Shimpath were too far away to intervene as the fearsome old dragon bulled up past Britt’s young queen, the impact of his titanic shoulder sending Tynerith spinning away.

Izath erupted into the sky, Kawanth half a wingbeat behind him, both males roaring. They were too late. Tezonth had hurled himself between. H’ned and Sh’zon’s bellows were drowned by their dragons’ voices, but Valonna wouldn’t have heeded them anyway. Tynerith was righting herself, but Tezonth’s contemptuous brushing aside had visibly shaken her. Shimpath snarled out a command to her bronzes.

Before they went between again, before Valonna even felt the pre-emptive shiver through her dragon’s skin that heralded a leap, she grasped her queen’s intent. And thrilled to it, with a heat in her blood she had never before felt. Separated though they were in mind, their hearts were still one, and Valonna’s soared to recognise it. She leaned hard forward, planting both hands on her queen’s neck, heedless of what was wise, heedless of what was safe. “Follow him!”

Shimpath thrust them between. This time the darkness did not fill Valonna with fear; only frustration, that even as they hung there Tezonth could be getting away. They must chase him, must tail him, tight and close, lest he jump again before they caught up to his new destination and shake them off entirely. Shimpath had not Tynerith’s singular talent. She could not stretch out from afar and pluck unerringly a single narrow line of thought from one distant dragon to another. But the presence that made Tezonth so formidable was also his weakness. Shimpath could reach after Tezonth now she had his trail, like a hunting hound put on a powerful scent. And she did.

They burst from between into a howl of snow, over white-blanketed fields and frozen lakes. Again Tezonth fled between, and again Shimpath followed. Blackness and cold, re-freezing the sleet that had spattered them. Out over a forest of green-black conifers and the smoke rising from woodcutters’ huts. Between. A lonely piece of sea-coast, fringed with floating ice. The rust-red desert basin of Igen. A grey-stone Hold whose flag Valonna had no time to see. Plains heaving with wild herdbeast. Between, between, between. From place to place Tezonth skipped, and from place to place Shimpath chased him, never lingering longer than the heartbeats it took for their riders to heave breath into their lungs. Valonna’s hands were frozen where she pressed them still to her dragon’s neck and her face throbbed with the chapped chill of between. Almost, she envied P’raima, clutched warm in his dragon’s grasp.

Shimpath no longer called out to Tezonth when she harried him out of between. All her strength, all her will, all her being was bent on chasing him down by sheer physical prowess. And if the gap between jumps between widened with each journey, if Tezonth’s physical stamina, and P’raima’s mental energy, were fading with every exhausting new location, then Shimpath’s strength was waning, too. She was a queen, unaccustomed to such exertions; the nagging frailties of Tezonth’s age were offset by Shimpath’s lack of fighting fitness. Had Valonna been able to speak to her dragon she would have begged her to summon their Weyrmates to her side to continue the pursuit, but though she cried the suggestion out to her queen, Shimpath either couldn’t hear it or would not surrender her pursuit. Valonna poured all her strength instead into the contact of her hands on her dragon’s hide, hoping Shimpath could derive encouragement from it. And as they pursued Tezonth across Pern, north and south, east and west, the distracted thought came to Valonna that it was both like and unlike a queen’s mating flight; like it, for the single-mindedness of the hunt, and for the riders taken along with it; unlike it, for the inversion of the natural order, that a bronze should be chased by a queen, and in the cause of justice, not joining.

Tezonth led them out into an evening sky, studded with stars like faintly twinkling jewels. Valonna had stopped trying to guess their location jumps and jumps ago, but even as she drew breath into her lungs in preparation for their next frigid lurch between, the landscape beneath them snagged her eyes. It was a Weyr. Or could have been a Weyr, had its incomplete walls been illuminated with glows, its caves and ledges occupied by dragons. But they were dark and empty, and no Weyr on Pern had a second, smaller crater rearing up from within the centre of the first. She dragged her eyes from it and back to Tezonth, his great form silhouetted against the fading light in the western sky. She knew Shimpath would follow Tezonth as soon as he leapt; the twitch of hide that had alerted Valonna to the first few jumps between had been subsumed by the stronger trembling of exhaustion. She waited for that moment, drawing air into her lungs, treasuring the extra instants until their next lurch into nothingness.

But Tezonth didn’t go between. He beat his wings, maintaining the couple of dragonlengths’ distance that separated them, but the action seemed to be faltering. With each wingstroke he lost some altitude, not in the gentle downward arc of a controlled descent, but in a series of jerky parabolas. Valonna felt Shimpath grasp the significance the same instant she did, and wild hope suddenly lifted the frozen exhaustion of her wings. Shimpath bugled a command, querulous with her own fatigue, and Tezonth shuddered with the force of it. His wings went suddenly slack, trailing edges fluttering pointlessly, no longer generating the lift he needed to defy gravity’s sucking draw.

“No!” Valonna cried, seeing suddenly the fatal consequence of Tezonth’s surrender. He would dash apart on the sharp-edged lip of the secondary crater, the vast weight of his own body hitting merciless rock smashing him to pieces, like a melon dropped on the ground, and P’raima, seized still in his talons, crushed beneath him. “Shimpath, you have to catch him! Command him!”

But Shimpath was too far away to catch him. Even had she mastered her weariness and blinked between to Tezonth’s side, it would not have been soon enough. And Tezonth could not have averted his stall now had he wished it, too deeply committed to his tumble from the sky.

Then the airspace around the falling bronze filled with dragons. Izath, Santinoth, Kawanth. They bore down upon him from above with claws outstretched. Tezonth roared as three sets of talons snagged onto him, though in pain or defiance or some mixture of both, Valonna couldn’t tell. Even the efforts of three big bronzes were scarcely enough to arrest Tezonth’s fall, but arrest it they did and, each dragon beating his wings awkwardly to avoid fouling with the others, brought him to a jolting but safe landing atop the central crater.

Valonna felt the desperate tension go out of Shimpath’s body. She had not realised how strung-tight her queen had been until the urgency had gone. “Well flown, Shimpath,” she whispered, stroking the fore neck-ridge. “Well flown, my darling.”

Shimpath glided tiredly down towards the crater top where Tezonth drooped at the centre of his three captors, the mighty bronze of Southern brought to bay at last. The smaller crater at the centre of the large caldera rose in a steep cone with a dished crown, lushly verdant. The smell of bruised vegetation where the dragons had flattened the undergrowth rose green and fragrant on air already tinged sulphurous by the steam venting from irregular cracks in the ground.

Valonna released her safety-strap and slid down from Shimpath. Her legs almost crumpled as she landed, the joints stiffened by the continual cold of between. H’ned was hurrying over to her, and in the starlight his face was pale. “Faranth’s sharding teeth, Valonna!” he swore, clutching her forearms. “We thought we’d lost you between! What were you thinking?”

She fended him off. “Shimpath knew what she was doing.” She was pleased to find her voice stayed strong and steady. “And we have him.” That fact, rather than any thought of the risk she and Shimpath had taken, nearly made her knees buckle again. “We have him,” she repeated.

“Almost,” H’ned said.

She followed his gaze. The three bronzes had Tezonth penned, and the old Southern dragon was spent: his sides heaving, his eyes and hide dulled to ochre by the exertions of the chase. But the clasp of his claws still caged P’raima, and the stoop of his head over his precious prize dared anyone to approach.

A queen’s cry announced Ipith’s arrival, and with her Essienth, Tynerith – and Maibauth. The younger Southern dragon looked near as depleted a shade as his sire, and when he landed, Valonna saw that he lacked his rider. R’maro rode instead with K’ken on Essienth’s broad neck, his hands tied before him.

It was with relief that Valonna ceded seniority to Rallai, but the Peninsula Weyrwoman caught her in a fierce embrace, gazing at her with a kind of wonder. “Valonna. Shimpath. What queens you are!”

Valonna had no answer to that. “Tezonth won’t release P’raima,” she said instead.

“Tezonth will do as he’s told,” said Rallai. “No,” she said, when Valonna glanced towards Shimpath. “She has spent more in the service of our cause than any dragon, queen or not, ought need to. This is for Ipith to accomplish.” She beckoned to Britt, who’d dismounted from her own queen. “Have Tynerith watch and listen,” she told her. “When she is grown and mated, this too will be hers.”

As she spoke, Ipith rose to her hind legs. With graceful economy, she lifted herself above their heads in a single wingstroke to settle softly before Tezonth. There, she lowered her head to look him in the eye. Tezonth avoided the contact at first, turning his head this way and that, but once Ipith had his gaze, he could not break it. Peninsula queen and Southern bronze locked silent stares. What passed between them Valonna did not know. The other dragons watched, intent but motionless, as though themselves afraid to interfere in the battle of wills between two of the most formidable leaders of their kind. Even Shimpath watched, her head angled in a pose of the profoundest respect. Rallai stood behind her queen, tall and straight as a spear, her eyes at once focused and very distant. A sound broke the hush: a whistling whine, like the thin creel of a dragonet stumbling riderless on the Sands. It was coming from Tezonth. Beneath Ipith’s relentless, imperious stare, and the devastating force of her personality, the Southern bronze who had dominated two queens and sought to subjugate a third first sagged, then slumped, and then, at last, broke.

Tezonth moaned, a low, guttural sound of despair, and opened the protective clasp of his talons. P’raima staggered from that clutch looking as ghastly as his dragon, his gait stiff and halting, spittle and worse crusted to his face from the desperate dashes in and out of between in his dragon’s grasp, but when Tezonth wobbled on his feet and then collapsed sideways his rider did not so much as startle. Instead, P’raima spread his arms wide, his eyes shining with a wild, careless gleam. “Come, then,” he croaked. “You have me at last. What do you think you can do to me?”

“H’ned, Sh’zon!” Valonna said urgently.

They strode quickly to either side of P’raima. H’ned seized the former Weyrleader’s arms, twisting them behind his back. P’raima did not struggle. But as Sh’zon rapidly patted him down, P’raima laughed. “You’ve won, haven’t you?” There seemed no capitulation in his voice. “And it only took three queens and four bronzes for you to bring me down.”

“Shut your mouth,” Sh’zon snapped. He yanked the beltknife from its sheath on P’raima’s hip and tossed it into the bushes. Then he felt inside his jacket. Valonna saw his eyes widen as he drew a handful of small glass vials from an inside pocket. “Is this it?” he demanded. “Blight you between, is this the antidote?”

“Maybe it is.” P’raima mocked. “Maybe it’s poison. Drink one down. I’d love to watch your dragon go between to die.”

Sh’zon backhanded him across the face. It was a mark of how far they had come that no one objected. “Ipith,” Rallai said softly.

Ipith cocked her head, and on the ground, Tezonth flinched. K’ken stepped up beside Rallai. “Essienth says Tezonth doesn’t know anything.”

“It’s the antidote.” The voice belonged to R’maro. The young Southern rider approached, his tied hands held awkwardly before him. K’ken moved quickly to restrain him, and R’maro resisted the older rider’s grip on his shoulders with a petulant shrug. “Unless he meant to double-cross me with it.”

“I should have,” P’raima said. His teeth were rimmed scarlet, and he spat a bloody mouthful. His eyes smouldered with loathing. “Better yet if I’d never trusted you in the first place. I was a fool to ever think you were intelligent enough to be circumspect. I’ve never been able to trust you not to botch even the simplest task.”

“I did everything you told me to do!” R’maro cried. He had to lift both of his bound hands to point a single accusing finger at P’raima. “He wanted me to kill that green weyrling, but I’d never have done it, I swear!”

“Idiot. You condemn yourself with every breath you draw.” The contempt in P’raima’s voice was a living thing. He spat another gobbet of bloody saliva. “Take the counter-agent. Use it. Bid your dragons farewell. It’ll be the last time you’ll ever hear them, or they you.” He bared his teeth in a ghastly grin. “One dose won’t undo what the felah did. And one dose is all you’ll ever get.”

Valonna heard herself speak: not angrily, not stridently, not with any projection of her fear or outrage behind it. “Give us the formula, P’raima.”

He transferred his bloodshot stare to her. It was like being the subject of a corpse’s regard, so hollow were his eyes, and so empty the soul that resided behind them. “You,” he said. “Your queen. I underestimated you.” There was a queer tinge of respect in his voice. Valonna wasn’t certain she liked being the object of P’raima’s approval, but then his tone hardened again. “You began this when you took my weyrlings.”

It seemed such a long time ago, that black night, when they’d transported the weyrlings from Southern. “What is it you’ve seen in Pern’s future, P’raima?” Valonna asked, ignoring his accusation. “What’s made you so afraid of letting go? Is it the loss of between?”

Something did change in P’raima’s eyes, then, and then he dropped them from hers. He struggled briefly in H’ned’s restraining grip as Valonna approached, then fell still, his chin sunk to his chest. “Pern will change, Valonna,” he said, and while the others had gathered closer, his words were pitched for her ears alone. There was an undertone of horror in his voice, the fear of something both nameless and formless. “All that we know and cherish will be torn apart and flung aside and trampled underfoot, like a beautiful toy too exquisite for the child who scorns it. And that same child will seize up a stick, and a rock, and smash them together, and say, this is the toy I choose, this is what’s needed. Crude function, blunt and brutal. And the intricate tooling of what they cast aside as irrelevant, discarded and broken in the dust.”

His words were gibberish, but Valonna did not confront them. Instead she brushed through them, as if through tangling jungle. “How can you hope to preserve the future’s beauty when you defile it in the present?” she asked him. “Your weyrlings were dying –”

“Sacrifices,” P’raima whispered. “The sacrifices we make today for the sake of tomorrow.” He lifted his eyes. “I gave up my dragon for Pern. For Pern.” His voice threatened to break on the words, as though some remaining fragment of the man he’d once been still disbelieved them, yet he did not so much as turn to glance at his wheezing, beaten dragon. “So Southern could be the last bastion of rightness. The last bastion of hope. Sacrifices had to be made.”

“And what right had you to sacrifice your weyrlings?” Valonna asked, and for the first time she heard her queen’s power ripple balefully through her voice.

“Dragons without between.” P’raima’s crusted red eyes pleaded with her. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see? A Pern without between. No place for beauty. No place for the way it should be. Only a stick, and a rock. And dragons ground to powder between them.”

Valonna tried to fit the ideas together. She couldn’t. “I don’t understand, P’raima.”

“If you had seen,” he rasped. “The Pern that will be. The future that awaits us. The Pass.” He paused, breathing loudly through his mouth, his eyes lost, and Valonna realised suddenly she had been wrong about the source of his fear. He didn’t dread the unknown; his fear had a shape and a name. Thread. Thread, and a Pern unequipped to fight it. “To stand to a clutch,” P’raima went on abruptly. “To accept the Impression bond. To partner a dragon. Such a privilege comes at a price. A dragonrider’s life does not belong to him. Nor to his dragon. It is merely loaned to him. It belongs to his Weyr. It belongs to Pern. And if his Weyr, and his world, demands that loan be repaid, he must honour it, in his blood, and his dragon’s. And we are not exempt, Valonna, for the fact that we were born to the Interval! We are no less the servants of Pern than dragonriders who are born and live and die beneath the Red Star! And when our debts are called in, we pay them not for the good of today, but for the sake of Pern’s tomorrow!” His face was twisted in a rictus of impassioned sincerity, and the spittle flecked on his lips, and the shine of near-madness in his eyes, made Valonna want to recoil from him…and yet she grasped how earnestly he meant his words. He genuinely believed himself to be the guardian of Pern’s future, and every terrible thing had had done justified in its name. “The darkness I have seen…the death…the destruction…everything I have suffered, everything you will sacrifice, is nothing beside the ghastly toll it will exact upon Pern!”

He hung there in H’ned’s grasp, his eyes staring with the horror of the future he beheld, his chest heaving for breath, and for a long moment Valonna did not know what to say. Then, at last, she did. “You say you have seen this future, P’raima.”

“I’ve been made to see it,” he said, and in his eyes, suddenly, shone a hope that she understood, that she had recognised the right in what he had done. “It is real. It is coming. It will devour us. Unless we stop it! Unless I stop it!”

“If you’re so sure of it,” said Valonna, “if it is set in stone, as you say, then how can anything you do now stop it? How do you know that what you’re doing now won’t cause it?”

The light died in P’raima’s eyes. “You don’t understand,” he said softly, and then, harder, “You don’t have the wit. You don’t have the vision. You can’t see anything beyond your own feeble, insignificant little troubles, your pathetic Interval problems, the luxury and indulgence that you take for granted! You stupid, blind, cosseted child! You don’t deserve your queen! You don’t deserve your queen!”

Valonna did recoil then, shaken by the venom of P’raima’s outburst; convinced now, if she hadn’t been before, that he was quite as mad as a dragonrider could be. “H’ned,” she said sharply, and he hoisted P’raima up from his mulish sag so he was at eye level with Valonna. “The antidote,” she said. “Give us the formula.”

P’raima shook his head, his eyes smouldering with sullen hatred.

“Shimpath,” Valonna said, and then to Rallai close by, “Weyrwoman, would you...?”

The two queens shifted closer. Tezonth, still panting on the ground, lifted his head. Then he dropped it again with a strangled bark. He lay there, flattened amongst the vegetation, looking as crushed as though an immense hand had pinned him hard to the earth, emitting a keening whine that cut through Valonna like the cruellest of knives. She couldn’t look at him; she could barely stop herself from putting her hands to her ears to muffle out the sound of his torment. H’ned’s face was twisted in an expression between pity and revulsion.

And P’raima was unmoved. No flicker of sympathy lit his eyes, no remorse moved his features, no hint of any kind that he cared at all about his dragon’s distress showed in his face. “Enough,” Valonna said at last, sickened, and Tezonth relaxed fractionally from his splay, his cry petering off into a whimper. She hadn’t expected the him to yield to their pressure on Tezonth; still, the graphic evidence of how little P’raima cared for his dragon’s misery made her stomach turn.

“What will you try next, woman?” he asked Valonna, in a low rasp. “You’ve brutalised my dragon. Is it my turn now?” He raised his chin defiantly, looking at Sh’zon, as though expecting – hoping, even – that he would strike him, a perverse spark of glee in his eyes. Even in abject defeat, his carefully-wrought plans for the offspring of his dragon in tatters, his legacy irrevocably tainted, P’raima was bloody-minded enough to take pleasure in denying the riders who’d thwarted him their dragons; and perhaps, too, in provoking them to the same base and self-serving behaviour, in anger and frustration, that he himself had come to embody.

If he sought to incite Sh’zon to more violence, he was disappointed. Valonna saw Sh’zon’s chest and arms bunch with the anger he’d been battling since the felah poisoning that had robbed him of his dragon’s gentling influence. And she saw Rallai step up beside him, placing one hand softly on his arm, the other more softly still on his face. With that firm and gentle touch, she turned his head towards her. She didn’t have to tell him no. Sh’zon blazing blue glare softened in contact with her calm gaze. Valonna looked away from them, wrenched beyond her ability to know why, and caught a glimpse of K’ken. His lined and lived-in face betrayed neither surprise nor dismay; merely a kind of resigned acceptance.

Yet while they could, at least, refrain from doing the physical harm to P’raima that he dared them to commit, he still forced them to emulate his methods in one final grim manner. Valonna took a breath. Then she met K’ken’s eyes. He nodded once, in clear acknowledgement of what she asked. His gaze went distant.

“Well?” P’raima demanded. There was manic glee in his voice. “No stomach for torturing a man, then?”

“No,” Valonna said. “You’ve done more harm to yourself than we ever could.” Impulsively, she stepped past P’raima and H’ned, approaching Tezonth. She heard the warning that hissed from between Sh’zon’s teeth but ignored it. Tezonth was quiescent under Shimpath and Ipith’s wrath, if no long crushed bonelessly beneath it. The highest point of Tezonth’s head still overtopped Valonna’s entire height, but his eye was of a level with hers. She looked into the dully whirling facets, yellow-grey flecked with white, and then she stretched out a hand and placed it on his eye-ridge. He twitched but did not flinch away. “Poor dragon,” she said, half to herself. “You didn’t ask for any of this.”

“You think you can win him away from me?” P’raima’s question was half incredulity, half mockery.

Tezonth’s hide felt smooth and soft beneath Valonna’s hand, greying though it was. “Would you care if I did?” she asked. “You haven’t been his rider for a long time.”

“He is my dragon,” said P’raima. “A soft touch and a kind word will never change that.”

“You say that as if he is a runnerbeast,” Valonna said, and then at last she grasped what she had been groping to understand. “You began to hate him long before the felah, didn’t you?”

P’raima looked at her. “A man cannot hate his own dragon, any more than he can hate the air he breathes or the food he eats.” He paused, and then spoke with complete coldness. “But he can despise the weakness that forces him to crave its sustenance, and the circumstances that made him so dependent, and the threat hanging over him should it ever be taken away.”

For an instant, Valonna felt a sharp pang of pity for P’raima – for the boy he had once been, for the man he had become, for all that had happened in between – and for what he must face now.

Then Pierdeth and Ranquiath burst out of between overhead. P’raima’s gaze tracked and then dismissed them. “Do you think another queen can do what your two couldn’t?”

The evidence that neither P’raima nor Tezonth possessed sight keen enough to discern that Pierdeth bore two riders, not one, upon his burly neck gave Valonna another pang. Despite P’raima’s white and thinning hair and Tezonth’s grizzled hide, they were such a formidable pair that the signs of age had seemed merely superficial.

Pierdeth landed behind the other dragons. Their bodies shielded him from P’raima’s sight. Valonna glanced quickly to H’ned and saw him redouble his grip on P’raima’s arms. Sh’zon and Rallai moved closer; R’maro, who had gone silent and sullen in K’ken’s custody, lifted his head, looking curiously from face to face.

“You’ve made it clear that Tezonth’s plight can’t move you,” Valonna said quietly. She knew the regret she felt at what they were about to do sounded in her voice. She knew, too, that P’raima could hear it; his brows furrowed as he tried to discern this new tactic. And as she and Sh’zon stepped aside to let L’dro into their circle, she finished softly, “But perhaps hers can.”

P’raima’s mouth dropped open in an expression of dumb disbelief. For an instant, his red-rimmed eyes went glassy with pain. “No,” he whispered, the word choked to near incomprehensibility. “You haven’t.”

The woman L’dro chivvied, not gently, into their company was beautiful. Her mother must have contributed the fine features: the small straight nose, the high cheekbones. The dark blonde of her hair, twined in two plaits on either side of her head, might have come from either parent. Only the deep set eyes were clearly her father’s, startlingly like his in their glazed unfocus. She was sucking her thumb. Valonna guessed her age at early-to-mid-twenties.

L’dro had the woman-child by her upper arm; he used the grip to push her roughly forwards. “You’ll give us the formula, P’raima,” he said. He didn’t need to add a threat, but he lacked the subtlety to refrain. “Or she’ll suffer for it.”

“Bernainne,” P’raima said, in a pleading voice. He struggled briefly against H’ned, but the strength seemed to have gone out of him. “Bernainne. I’m so sorry.”

The word sounded alien coming from his mouth, but Valonna hardened herself to it, as she hardened herself against the grimness of the hand she must play. “The formula, P’raima.”

“Daddy?” Bernainne removed her thumb from her mouth to speak, but while her voice had an adult’s timbre, her words did not. “Why did the dragon bring me, Daddy?” She pulled feebly against L’dro’s grasp. “I want to go home. Please, Daddy, I want to go home.”

“You’re not going anywhere until your daddy does as we say,” L’dro told her brusquely. He gave her a shake. “You tell him to give us the formula!”

“You leave her alone!” P’raima roared. “She’s just a little girl! She doesn’t understand!”

Bernainne began to cry. She sobbed like the infant her mind had convinced her she was in the aftermath of her dragon’s death, made more wrenching by the adult’s body that her broken soul inhabited. She stood there, a child in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by unfamiliar dragons, and by riders with hostile intent towards the man she called her daddy, and wept in great choking gulps. “I – want – to – go – home!”

It was more than Valonna could bear. She stepped alongside the weeping woman, taking her other arm in a gentle grasp. “It’ll be all right,” she told her. “You’ll be able to go home soon.”

Horribly, P’raima choked out something between a laugh and a sneer. “You can’t threaten me with her, Valonna! You don’t have the stomach to harm an innocent girl!”

It was true. She knew it, he knew it; they all knew it. Neither Valonna nor Rallai would have considered the life of a witless, dragonless, blameless child a price worth paying even for the restoration of their own dragons. The threat was worthless.

And then L’dro spoke. “She might not.” He drew his long-bladed belt-knife from its sheath and set it almost casually to Bernainne’s defenceless throat. “But I do.”

With that, L’dro pressed his blade into the skin beneath the dragonless woman’s chin. A thin mouth of scarlet gaped suddenly there. Blood ran in a swift stream. Valonna felt Bernainne’s arm tense spasmodically in her grip. She felt her draw breath to scream. And then P’raima’s frantic shriek deafened them all. “NO, don’t hurt her, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, please don’t hurt her!”

Rallai barked for L’dro to release the girl, but it seemed a long moment before he complied. Bernainne stumbled away from him, wailing, and into P’raima’s arms; H’ned, horrified and relieved as any of them, had let go his grip on his wrists.

“Blight you, L’dro, you were never meant to cut her!” K’ken roared.

L’dro stood there with blood still dripping from his knife, looking flushed but triumphant. “If I hadn’t, none of the rest of you would have had the balls to do what had to be done!”

They all looked away from him at that. The probable truth of it was something each of them would have to live with. L’dro’s extreme act had broken P’raima where threats to his dragon hadn’t. The old bronze rider rocked his weeping daughter in his arms, his fingers pressed tight over the narrow wound L’dro’s knife had bitten in her throat

Rallai separated them. “Come, Bernainne,” she told the shaking woman, “let’s dry these tears. See, the bleeding’s stop already. It was just a little scratch.” It was more than that, as the dried rivulet of blood that had soaked the collar of Bernainne’s simple dress attested, but the dragonless woman let Rallai draw her gently away from P’raima’s embrace. “Make yourself scarce,” she told L’dro, in an ominous tone, and K’ken stepped up instead to wrap a kerchief around Bernainne’s wound.

H’ned and Sh’zon between them dragged P’raima back to his feet. He stared after his daughter with hopelessness in his eyes. “How did you find her?”

“You made the wrong decision when you framed D’pantha as your accomplice,” said Sh’zon. “Betray a man who’s been that loyal that long, and he’ll turn on you soon enough. Well, then? The formula?”

“It’s not in my head, and I don’t have it on me,” P’raima said tiredly, and then went on, “I know. Bernainne will be a hostage to my cooperation.”

“She’ll be a hostage to your antidote working,” Sh’zon said, with renewed heat.

“It works.” He raised bloodshot eyes to Valonna’s. “And then what, for me?”

“You’ll be tried,” Valonna replied. She was suddenly incredibly tired.

“For all your many crimes,” Sh’zon added more severely.

“My many crimes.” P’raima barely sounded interested any longer. “And what would you have me bow my head to?”

“Kidnap, imprisonment, poisoning,” Sh’zon said. “Attempted murder of a weyrling. Actual murder of a dragonrider. Aye, and that one twice over, come to think of it, if we can get you for Margone as well. You’d best be grateful we’re in the Interval. We don’t have any Thread to stake you out for.”

“Everything I did, I did for Pern,” P’raima insisted. There was a dignity in his conviction, as if he still furled about him the tatters of the cloak of righteousness that he had once worn so proudly. The faintest spark of defiance still burned there. “Creating felah. Pushing my weyrlings as I did. Killing Margone. I’ll go to my grave knowing I did what I had to do. For Pern.”

His eyes slid sideways as he spoke. Too late, Valonna heard the sharp intake of breath behind her; too late, she remembered who had been left standing there; too late she turned desperately to forestall disaster.

But R’maro was already moving, his teeth bared in a snarl. His hands were not so tightly bound that he couldn’t use them to snatch the knife from K’ken’s belt. “You killed my mother!” he screamed. “You killed her, you snake bastard! Go between and die!”

It took hours for him to cross the space that separated him from P’raima. It took instants, and he could not be stopped. Valonna heard herself cry out; she saw H’ned and Sh’zon react, too slowly, to try to twist P’raima aside from R’maro’s thrust.

But P’raima was smiling as the belt-knife pierced the hollow at the base of his throat. He was smiling, his eyes stretched open, his arms spread wide as if to welcome the instrument of his death. R’maro’s momentum flung him backwards on top of his captors, toppling all four bronze riders in a thrashing heap.

In silence, Tezonth reared up behind the melee. In silence, the great patriarch of Southern shook his head, as though confused. In silence, he thrust his head down to the flailing knot of riders, blinking his eyes in baffled incomprehension.

Sound returned in a cacophony. Screaming. Shouting. The bubbling wheeze of a perforated windpipe. The spatter of hot blood spurting at pressure. Someone was bawling, “The formula, the formula!” Bronze riders struggled to rise from the fracas. H’ned. Sh’zon. They dragged R’maro with them. Blood everywhere. And P’raima, supine, staring up at his dragon, or at the sky, or into oblivion. P’raima, still alive, the smile on his lips painted crimson. P’raima, convulsing in a spasm that hacked a final gout of bright blood from his mouth.

And then P’raima went still and lifeless.

Tezonth screamed once, hideously, and was gone.

Valonna went to her knees on the ground, tasting fragrant crushed vegetation and metallic-rank blood in her mouth, and all around her, dragons and dragonriders howled.

ACT FOUR

Chapter fifty-three: T’kamen

Just as no two Threads ever fall the same, no two Thread-burrows are ever the same. When a tangle hits the ground it usually leaves plentiful evidence of itself, spreading quickly over the surrounding area in search of food. It will soon perish for want of sustenance if it chances to fall on barren ground, often leaving a stinking black shell before dragon or ground-crew can even reach it, but a clump that strikes fertile soil can multiply at a tremendous rate, expanding outwards in every viable direction until arrested by water, stone, or fire.

The worst ground-strikes are generally caused by Thread-bombs, a hallmark of Falls occurring in gusty conditions: many Threads, snarled with each other in dense clots. Being more resistant to the wind, they fall harder and faster than single filaments, and while fire might set a ball of Thread alight, it cannot always sear through to the strands in the centre. Worse still – as if a heavy, fast-falling mass of flaming Thread isn’t bad enough – they usually burst on impact. Thread-bombs hitting the ground and exploding into dozens of filaments have been responsible for some of the worst incursions, the ones that have forced dragons to cleanse entire fields with fire. Their only virtue is that they are easy for the fire-crews to find.

But other types of burrow can be just as dangerous, if not so catastrophically destructive. A dense ribbon of Thread dropping nearly perpendicular to the ground can bore a narrow shaft right through the top layers of vegetation and earth, deep into the subsoil beneath. Such burrows, creating relatively little surface disturbance, are hard to detect by aerial or ground surveillance in the short term. The Thread they harbour often expires for lack of air anyway, especially if the entry path collapses and suffocates them, or if the ground is sufficiently damp or nutrient-poor to inhibit its spread. Occasionally, though, the ground conditions foster a particularly insidious infestation. The right combination of aridity, aerated soil, and limited organic matter can allow a small strand of Thread to survive unseen for an extended period of time, growing slowly but steadily underground, consuming roots and rhizomes. One of two things will eventually happen: the Thread will either run out of food and die, or its patient spread will lead it to a richer source of nourishment. In the latter case, Thread can erupt from a trapdoor burrow without any warning hours or even days after a Fall, far from its original point of impact or – even more nightmarishly – the ground its slow infiltration has undercut might collapse under the weight of anything walking above, dropping man or beast into a writhing pit of Thread.

– Excerpt from Madellon Weyr’s fire-crew training manual by Crewleader Ch’fil

26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS

MADELLON WEYR AND FIVER HOLD

The deep snows of midwinter at Madellon had always been something to be endured in the Interval, but T’kamen soon learned that a sharp drop in temperature, a horizontal blizzard, and a thick coat of snow on the ground, were boons welcomed with relief and celebration in a Pass-time Weyr.

On the morning after the first serious snowfall of the winter – the first to yield more than a sprinkling of white and a thin rime of ice at the margins of the lakes and waterways – he made his halting way out onto the weyr ledge to find Epherineth watching the weyrlings, riders and dragonets alike, romping on the training grounds like the children they all were. Young riders shrieked as they hurled handfuls of snow at one another; dragonets who had never seen the white stuff before snorted plumes of sparkling powder at their siblings; even the Weyrlingmaster’s assistants accepted tolerantly the occasional glancing blow of a wayward snowball flung by a weyrling with either terrible aim or a thorough disregard for authority. T’kamen stood watching with Epherineth for several minutes, leaning against his forearm as much for the companionship as to take the weight off his knee, remembering a first snow of winter not unlike this one, and dragonets not much older than those gambolling on the snowy drilling grounds, and weyrlings with even fewer cares in all the world than the boys and girls laughing and screaming below.

No Fall today, Epherineth said, twitching his wings to dislodge the thin covering of snowflakes that had collected upon them. Kellad is snowbound.

It wasn’t the last time a Threadfall was rendered harmless by the weather that long winter. Falls striking the more temperate northern half of Madellon territory still required the Weyr’s attention, but the punishing schedule of two and sometimes three Falls a sevenday was much reduced by the cold that froze Thread to harmless dust. On warmer days, the Wings still rose to meet Fall, but even then the fighting dragons often found the rain of Thread weakened by the chill: clumps less unpredictable, tangles more resistant to wind-shear, and even some strikes made survivable with Thread left sluggish and brittle by the cold. Some sevendays, no new names at all were chiselled into the Wall.

The winter breather energised Madellon. Riders seemed to walk taller and laugh louder. Dragons made stringy by constant flying and fighting put on a layer of fat. The crushing toll, physical and mental, exacted by Thread’s relentless assault was so greatly reduced that Madellon seemed a different place entirely to the besieged Eighth Pass Weyr in which T’kamen had found himself not three months past.

Yet even as Madellon woke, day after day, to the welcome icy mantle of winter, T’kamen found the attitude of its folk thawing, slowly, towards him. He didn’t know if it was the respite from Thread’s full force, or Ch’fil’s unobtrusive efforts, or some combination of the two, that chipped away at the undesirability of his company, but as the sevendays of his disciplinary sentence slipped away, and his and Epherineth’s injuries grew so familiar as to be unremarkable, T’kamen realised that he was no longer the subject of universal derision. Weyrlings who had previously made jokes at his expense or aped his halting gait hailed him instead with cheerful greetings when he came to muck out the barracks, even bragging of their dragonets’ precocity on mornings when the night-soil bunkers were low. Audette, and eventually K’lem and R’nie, would speak to him, not as a rider in ignominy, but as a man bowing his head to a fair punishment with appropriate humility, though S’hayn, C’rastro’s most devoted acolyte, still treated T’kamen like the dragonet dung he shovelled each day. The other riders of the Seventh no longer snubbed him in the dining hall, and while T’kamen took pains not to foist himself on anyone, neither did he rebuff any offer of friendship extended to him. So it was that, once his confinement to quarters had been lifted, he started playing poker again; and found himself matched against all manner of players in the chess league old El’yan oversaw; and even, through the machinations of the Weyr Singer Tawgert, picked up a gitar in earnest for the first time in far too long. The fingertip blisters and hand cramps that had resulted from that first late-night session with Madellon’s Harper, trading chords that his brain knew but his fingers hadn’t stretched to reach at speed in over a Turn, seemed a small price to pay for Tawgert’s candid praise, much less the grudging respect that his rusty musicianship won him from a wider audience when the Harper coaxed him to play a set one evening in the dining hall. The battered gitar that hung on T’kamen’s wall was a small but agreeable symbol of his gradual integration into Pass Madellon.

Yet in spite of the positive progress T’kamen made with his Flightmates, and with the weyrlings too young to have fully absorbed the cultural biases of their elders, some prejudices remained resolutely unassailable. The segregation between fighting and support riders was as stark as ever, and perhaps more so. Thread or not, brown and bronze riders still went out daily: flying sweeps, hauling tithes, delivering post and passengers about the territory. Seventh riders required to fly long uncomfortable journeys in frigid conditions came back complaining of frostbitten extremities and chilblains, of harness leather perishing in the cold and frozen buckles leaving painful sores on their dragons’ hides. The sight of idle fighting riders, lounging around the warm hearths in the dining hall, playing dice and drinking, caused more grumbling among returning Seventh riders than T’kamen had ever heard.

The fighting Wings still drilled on the boon days when they should have been flying Thread, but there was a marked difference between a two-hour drill, with dragons and riders active and flaming, and an eight or ten-hour round trip to an outlying Hold: cold, bored, and burdened by half a dragonweight of firestone on the return leg. T’kamen and Epherineth escaped the first sevendays of such assignments, still confined by their injuries, but as soon as their respective physicians pronounced them both fit to resume active duty they were rostered in with the rest. R’lony, for all his coolness towards T’kamen, nonetheless eased them back into their work with the pragmatic care of a logistician interested in preserving his resources above all else. Even a relatively short flight stiffened T’kamen’s game knee into almost complete rigidity, and a longer one would make the entire leg numb. He made regular visits to the infirmary for warming salves, but took care never to complain openly of his discomfort to his Flightmates.

Fetch, too, remained a point of contention. The instinctive revulsion towards fire-lizards as carrion-eaters and grave-desecrators was too strong in Weyrbred dragonriders, at the least, to be easily overcome, even by Fetch’s naturally friendly nature. T’kamen had taught his fire-lizard to be respectful – wary, even – of other people, to avoid busy places and common rooms, and to keep close to him or Epherineth when they were about the Weyr. He was quietly surprised by how trainable the little brown was proving to be. Fetch came when he was called, stayed put when he was told, and heeded everything T’kamen said with an earnest attention that reminded him of a young Epherineth. T’kamen wondered if the fire-lizard had taken on some of his dragon’s characteristics through the Impression bond, or if simple proximity to a bronze of Epherineth’s temperament had shaped Fetch’s disposition. Either way, T’kamen was pleased with their small companion’s behaviour, though Fetch still divided the greater part of his time between eating, sleeping, and growing.

M’ric was having a much harder time managing his fire-lizard queen. He’d remarked once, with a touch of rancour, that they should have swapped eggs; Fetch’s dark shape made an unobtrusive addition to T’kamen’s shoulder, while Agusta’s bright golden hide invariably drew the eye whether she perched on M’ric’s shoulder or, as she’d come to prefer, on top of Trebruth’s head. T’kamen had suggested, mostly in jest, that M’ric should paint his queen a less striking hue if he didn’t want her to be noticed. But Agusta’s colour wasn’t the only problem. She was far more wilful than Fetch, far less obedient, and while at least his equal in intelligence, she had an anarchic streak that T’kamen’s brown lacked. M’ric had tried all the same training techniques on her that T’kamen had used to teach Fetch – rewarding her with food or praise, reprimanding her with a sharp word or the withholding of attention. All had failed. Agusta accepted rewards as though they were merely her due, showed no contrition when rebuked, and reacted with icy indifference to being ignored. She would learn a trick readily enough, retrieving an item or consenting to perch where directed, but her comprehension of what was asked had no bearing on her willingness to comply a second time. Sometimes she would merely stare at M’ric with a mutinous expression when he asked her to perform some task; more often, she would pick up what item he’d bade her fetch, and then fly off with it, chattering triumphantly to herself. On such occasions, if she ever brought the thing back at all, it would be chewed or broken; more often, having stashed the prize somewhere inaccessible, Agusta would fix M’ric with an unblinking look of purest insolence when he angrily told her to return it.

T’kamen would have found the whole business amusing, had all that he’d hoped and promised not rested solely upon the trustworthiness of the two fire-lizards. Fetch had started going between in his third sevenday. T’kamen, working on a piece of harness in the bright cold sunshine on Epherineth’s ledge, had asked his brown to get the edging knife he’d left inside the weyr, visualising the tool where he’d seen it amongst the rest of his leatherworking kit on his work table. With neither prompting nor fanfare, Fetch had vanished. Even Epherineth had made a funny little noise of surprise, and T’kamen had stared, blinking, at the space where Fetch had been until he returned the same way he’d left, the edging knife clasped tightly in his forepaws, and the tell-tale wash of between-cooled air surrounding him. T’kamen had made a special trip down to the kitchens to get a suitable reward for the achievement, returning with a slice of raisin-nut bread; to Epherineth’s tolerant disgust, Fetch’s enthusiasm for sweets hadn’t diminished at all.

Agusta was somewhat less precocious than her clutchmate – T’kamen suspected she was inhibited to some degree by Trebruth’s ingrained aversion to between – though M’ric burst into T’kamen’s weyr one night a month or so after the lizards had hatched, shouting that she’d done it, and demanding that T’kamen immediately teach him and Trebruth how to follow suit. Given Agusta’s defiant nature, T’kamen suggested they would be wise to wait for her to grow up and settle down a little before putting such pressure on her to behave herself. He had, though, begun to scour his memory for the lessons that had prepared his own mind for the mental effort of going between, and taught M’ric that first night the most basic exercises in detail recall and visualisation that L’stev had, long ago, taught him.

But for the snows, M’ric’s impatience to learn would have struck T’kamen as curious. His elevation to fighting rank – and to S’leondes’ own Wing – had commanded his attention away from any and every other diversion, T’kamen included. It would have been churlish for T’kamen to take offence; on the contrary, he was glad that M’ric had won what he had worked so hard to earn. He took pride in seeing him so correct in his behaviour, so immaculate in his turn-out, and so attentive in his manner, although, having no right to claim any responsibility for M’ric’s conduct, T’kamen mentioned this only to Epherineth. They had still been on the invalid list on the day when, a fortnight after their assignment to the Commander’s Wing, M’ric and Trebruth had fought Thread for the first time. T’kamen had asked Epherineth so often to enquire after their progress that at last even his own dragon had told him to stop being such a mother-queen. M’ric had returned, of course – queasy and exultant in roughly equal measure – and while he had sought T’kamen’s acknowledgement briefly across the dining hall, the young man had quickly been swallowed by the camaraderie of his own wingmates.

Then the cold had descended, slowing the momentum of M’ric’s fighting career to a crawl. The lighter Threadfalls required the attendance of fewer Wings, and in the sevendays since winter’s grip had tightened around Madellon the Commander’s Wing had flown only two partial Falls. The young riders most recently assigned to the Wings were the only fighting dragonriders in the Weyr resentful of the weather, but T’kamen understood, even if the older riders mocked their youthful keenness. So, too, he understood M’ric’s desire to occupy himself with something else perilous in the disappointing absence of Thread.

Still, understanding M’ric’s newfound attraction to danger didn’t mean he shared it. M’ric might crave excitement, but T’kamen had no intention of providing it before time. Between training had always been the subject of both eager anticipation and intense dread within a class of weyrlings. The knowledge haunting every weyrling that one in five of their number wouldn’t make it to the end of the sevenday had been offset by the promise of the liberty to travel Pern that came with success. But going between wasn’t an adventure, like flying your own dragonet for the first time. It wasn’t exciting, like feeling firestone gas ripple down his throat beneath you an instant before it rushed from his jaws in a bright burst of flame. It was cold between, colder than anyone who had never experienced it could imagine; it was black and empty, and it had to be faced alone. Even emerging intact into the light of day was less a pleasure than a relief, an exhausting, draining relief soon replaced by the dread of knowing that the ordeal must be endured again. And by the time going between became so familiar as to be unremarkable, the novelty of the freedom of Pern had long since decayed into banality.

T’kamen had told M’ric all this without any real hope that he would grasp it. To him, going between and living to tell the tale was the stuff of legend. It was T’kamen’s responsibility to stall him, to let the freshness of the notion go stale, even as it was his responsibility to wait for their fire-lizards to mature, and to withhold any insight that might prompt M’ric to try going between by himself. But now, with both their fire-lizards flitting between all the time, and M’ric showing no sign that he intended to take premature action, T’kamen was running out of reasons to delay; or, at least, reasons that he was willing to confess. As callous as it seemed when he admitted it to Epherineth, M’ric’s safety wasn’t his first concern. T’kamen was far more worried about himself.

Epherineth had forgotten the terror of the journey between that had brought them to the Pass. A dragon’s memory rejected fear as easily as it rejected pain and grief, disappointment and rancour. It was a trick T’kamen had often wished he could emulate, that ability to simply let go of the dark preoccupations that had always gnawed at him. It could not be. Without a rider to hold onto the past, to consider the future, a dragon would be lost. Just as T’kamen must trust Epherineth’s skill to bear him safely when they flew together, so Epherineth must rely on T’kamen’s experience to guide him. And while Epherineth had shed the fear of between that their nightmarish sojourn had instilled in them, T’kamen had not.

He had tried to tell himself that his fear was misplaced. Their last trip between had taken them more than a century through the Turns. They hadn’t been prepared for such a long journey. Here, now, they would be jumping only in the present timeframe. It was nothing they hadn’t done together twenty thousand times before. Yet the truth weighed hard on that tenuous thread of self-deception. Between was not, now, as it had been. Something had gone awry with the nebulous place that dragonriders had used without understanding for so many centuries. Dragons could no longer navigate between. And T’kamen’s reasoning that a fire-lizard could show them the way was a hypothesis whose testing might lead him and his dragon to their deaths.

So fear, and contempt for that fear, and wariness that his stung pride would overrule his caution, warred within him during those cold snowy sevendays, wrenching his resolve from one extreme to another.

One morning, T’kamen woke to the tinkling sound of breaking ice, and Epherineth’s surprised rumble. Wrapped in the thick fur mantle that he’d requisitioned from stores, he went outside to investigate. The icicles, Epherineth said, as T’kamen surveyed the debris of shattered ice. They fell off.

T’kamen craned his neck up. The fringe of icicles that had grown from the bottom of the ledge above Epherineth’s was lacking half its complement, like a dragon’s fang-lined upper jaw with half its teeth missing. Even as T’kamen looked, another shaft of ice detached and fell to smash into bits not two feet from Epherineth’s elbow. “You’d best break off the rest, before one of them falls on you.”

Epherineth rose up on his hind legs to comply, sweeping his forepaw along the uneven row of icicles to dislodge them, and T’kamen looked out over the Weyr. The ice had receded from around the edges of the closest stream. The snow that had blanketed the slates of every building in the Bowl was sliding in great sheets down the pitched roofs. And the parade of figures that the weyrlings had made on the training grounds had softened, losing the features that distinguished a snow-rider from a snow-dragonet, becoming no more than a row of formless melting hillocks.

The thaw didn’t wipe away the snow completely. The bitter cold snap that had descended so rapidly was less quick to relinquish its hold on Madellon territory. Yet the evidence that spring was marching closer prompted a renewed urgency in a Weyr made complacent by a month’s light duties. The Weyr Smith’s anvils rang with the sound of new harness rings and buckles being hammered out by sweating apprentices. Weyrfolk hurried to finish the winter projects of embroidery and knotwork and whittling that had occupied them in the long idle evenings. And riders lined up to have their hair trimmed by a journeyman Tailor with a flair for barbering, ready for the Wing inspections that everyone knew were coming.

T’kamen submitted himself to journeyman Wista’s ministrations along with the rest. The Seventh Flight was as subject to inspection as any of the fighting Wings, and his hair had grown shaggy and overlong. He had Wista neaten, too, the facial hair he had allowed to grow to avoid aggravating the scrapes on his face with a razor, and then kept to fend off the bitter winds at cruising altitude. The grey strands that threaded through his new beard and moustache did at least match the thicker streaks of white that now grew in his hair, the permanent mementos of his visit to Little Madellon. Ch’fil commented approvingly on the distinguished look T’kamen’s new facial adornments gave him, stroking his own for emphasis, and Dalka once stopped in passing to look speculatively at him before moving on without saying a word.

M’ric was less complimentary. “You’re keeping it, then?”

Epherineth commented that the buckle of his crupper was still pinching. “Keeping what?” T’kamen asked.

The brown rider gestured at his own clean-shaven chin. “The face fur.”

“You don’t like it?”

“Makes you look old.” M’ric’s grin flashed white for a moment. “Older.”

T’kamen let that one pass.

“Ch’fil said you’re rostered out to Redyen.”

T’kamen put his hand to his cane where he’d leaned it against Epherineth’s forearm. “The rest of the mutton we should have had a month ago, before the weather closed the passes. Though now it’s frozen solid in kegs instead of on the hoof.”

“Stay there, I’ll get it,” M’ric said, moving quickly towards Epherineth’s tail end. “The crupper, right?”

T’kamen leaned on his cane as M’ric loosened the offending buckle. “You’re not my tail any more, you know.”

“I know,” M’ric said, though his hand moved to touch the wingrider’s knot on his shoulder, as if to reassure himself that it was still there. “We’re headed that way ourselves.”

He let the statement hang there. T’kamen put his hand on Epherineth’s elbow. “So did you want me to ask you to fly with us, or are you inviting yourself?”

He regretted his tone as soon as the words were out. M’ric looked at him with an expression made half of reproach, half of contrition. “I didn’t mean – I wasn’t saying –” He stopped. “I just thought we might keep you in company, is all. I wasn’t trying to pull rank.”

“I was teasing.” T’kamen clouted his shoulder. “You’re welcome to come if you have liberty.”

“Oh. I do. Have liberty, that is, so long as I’m back in good time for Fall tomorrow. And Fiver Hold’s only an hour on from Redyen, as the dragon flies.”

T’kamen reckoned the distance in his head. “About that.” He frowned. “Visiting your family again? You were only there a sevenday ago, weren’t you?”

M’ric shrugged, looking embarrassed. “My mum’s always happy to see me. And now the weather’s broken I don’t know when I’ll next have time.” He paused. “I’ll put Trebruth’s cargo harness on –”

“No, you won’t,” said T’kamen. “You’re flying Fall tomorrow. He doesn’t need to be worn out. Light rig, and we’ll take it easy.”

As M’ric went to harness his dragon, T’kamen considered how grateful the boy seemed to fall back into the habit of following his orders. He supposed it was only natural. He’d struggled himself, as a young man, with giving commands to riders twice his age simply because he outranked them. And perhaps it was natural for a brown rider to look to a bronze for instruction. T’kamen kept that anachronistic thought to himself. Still, he needed neither rank nor seniority to recognise that M’ric had contrived to match his plans to his and Epherineth’s assignment. It wasn’t as if M’ric had been short of spare time to spend in T’kamen’s company over the last couple of sevendays, so he must have an alternate agenda. And when the boy returned on Trebruth, Agusta riding on his shoulder, T’kamen discerned what it was.

It was a fine day to fly. The sunshine that bore part of the responsibility for the thaw was cool but bright, limning the edges of everything it touched in pale gilt, and throwing deep black shadows where it could not reach. Snow still persisted in those dark places, trapped in crevices that never saw the light, and in gullies that would not know a sunbeam until Rukbat climbed higher into a summer sky. Meltwater flowed freely over the rocky inclines of the Madellon range in streams that would last only as long as the thaw, yet were no less sparkling and merry for their transience. Epherineth flew with easy efficiency, each steady wingbeat measured for maximum effect and minimum exertion, the consistent conditions at altitude allowing him to eschew the tiring trim of sail and spar in favour of effortless cruising. For all Trebruth’s sprinting speed and manoeuvrability, Epherineth could have outpaced him in minutes with the slightest increase in his rhythm.

T’kamen knew that his own discomfort was the one sour note spoiling Epherineth’s enjoyment of the day. He could no more conceal from his dragon how his bad leg first ached, then twinged, then throbbed with the cold than he could block out the pleasure Epherineth took in his mastery of the air. They had always occupied each other’s experiences, each other’s thoughts, too fully for that, the fabric of their common awareness woven as tightly as the warp and weft on a loom. Only when T’kamen’s thoughts were too exclusively human, Epherineth’s too wholly dragonish, could the natural comprehension of their bond stutter. This was not such a case. Epherineth understood T’kamen’s physical misery all too well. We could stop at Hardstand Hold, he offered, but T’kamen refused the proposition. Strategic dragons were not as universally welcome as fighting pairs at the smaller Holds. He would give the folk of Hardstand no cause to grumble at a bronze rider presuming unannounced on their hospitality.

Instead, they came in to Fiver Hold not much after the lunch hour, local time. The line of stone columns that had given the Hold its changing name was one short of the complement T’kamen recalled. He’d visited there perhaps twice in his day, when the place had still been called Sixer Hold, and fallen under the protection of the Peninsula, but the rock spires rising from the arid ridge that marked the settlement provided a distinctive reference that every weyrling learned. He was not oblivious to that significance as Epherineth landed beside Trebruth on the sandstone-flagged forecourt of the Hold.

The dragon banner flew beside the grey-edged green flag of Fiver, requesting assistance. T’kamen wondered how long it had been up there. Fiver looked to West Gully Hold – another former Peninsula outpost – but he doubted the elderly watchdragon stationed there would make it out to Fiver often. At least the folk who came out from the three-storey sandstone holding to meet them didn’t look disappointed to be visited only by a bronze and a brown. T’kamen put on a more stoic show of dismounting than he might have otherwise, but he was grateful not to have to move far on his crippled leg to greet Terihf, Fiver’s weather-beaten Holder, and Alisker, M’ric’s mother.

Alisker was a handsome woman: tall, lean, and sandy-haired like most of the other Fiver folk; M’ric’s dark hair and eyes, she confided to T’kamen as they ate a simple meal of flatbread and spiced goat skewers, had been bequeathed him by his dragonrider father. She apologised on behalf of her spouse, Jeffran, who was out working in one of the far quarries. M’ric didn’t remark on his stepfather’s absence, but he didn’t have to. T’kamen could see the relief in the boy’s eyes when he realised he wouldn’t have to see his mother’s husband.

For himself, T’kamen was pleasantly surprised to be treated with every courtesy, despite Epherineth’s colour and the lowly insignia of the Seventh Flight he wore. The folk of some of the holdings he’d visited were almost openly scornful of a Strategic rider, even as they fawned and scraped over anyone with a green or blue shoulder-knot. It was not hard to account for Fiver’s acceptance of his humble rank. By all indications, M’ric was the only dragonrider in recent memory to have been Searched from Fiver. Having Impressed only a brown, he would have been assumed to have a future in the Seventh Flight. His promotion to the fighting Wings must have come as an elevation beyond the wildest hopes of his Holdmates, but the residual expectation of a more modest assignment still showed in the way Fiver’s people treated T’kamen, an actual Strategic rider. No one remarked on Epherineth’s unusual size, accentuated though it was by proximity to Trebruth. No one asked how T’kamen had come to injure his leg, or Epherineth his face. And no one voiced any disapproval of Agusta or Fetch, or queried M’ric’s request for a plate for them, or even looked askance at the pair of fire-lizards when they set to squabbling over the platter of scraps that was put before them. Though the overt civility never quite tipped over into obsequiousness, T’kamen nonetheless found it disconcerting. He’d grown accustomed to being treated just barely better than a spit-canine in the Eighth Pass. The scrupulous politeness of Fiver’s residents made him ever-so-slightly uncomfortable.

Holder Terihf offered a wether-goat apiece for their dragons, a courtesy M’ric swiftly declined. T’kamen took his lead from the boy. “We’re bound for Redyen to collect tithe,” he explained, as Terihf refilled his cup with water and wine from the two common flagons. “They’ll have provisions prepared for our dragons.”

Terihf looked relieved at the refusal. His face was as lined and weathered as the arid country outside his Hold, every angle rounded off by the elements. “Forgive me, bronze rider. I’d hoped to presume on your kindness on a small matter.” When T’kamen gestured for him to continue, Terihf went on. “One of the burrows from Fall of four days ago has been giving my ground crews some concern.”

“Four days ago?” T’kamen asked. He hadn’t flown that Fall; G’bral had led a modest Seventh complement in support of a single fighting Flight. The snow hadn’t reached this far east, but the Threadfall had been a short one, falling harmlessly off into the barren badlands for most of its duration.

“It struck close to the bank of a creek on our northern border,” said Terihf. “It was burned out by dragons, of course, and attended by our crew when trailing edge had passed. All seemed as it should. But there has been a disturbance along that bank in the days since. The bushes along the creek dying off, withering and blackened, as though their roots were being attacked…”

“Which creek?” asked M’ric, from across the table.

“Drawdip, near the bend where the ironstone boulder overhangs the water,” said Terihf.

M’ric nodded. “I know it.” He looked at T’kamen. “We should take a look.” He transferred his gaze back to Terihf. “The firestone bunker’s still stocked?”

“Of course, wingrider,” said Terihf. He sounded relieved. “Untouched these last five Turns, but stocked, as it should be. If you could investigate – if it’s not too great an imposition on your time, that is…”

“It’s not,” M’ric assured him quickly.

“I don’t like to take advantage…”

M’ric looked even more uncomfortable. “You’re not, Terihf, truly. It’s no problem. Please. It’s our pleasure.”

T’kamen said nothing at all as M’ric led the way to Fiver’s firestone bunker with Terihf trailing them at a respectful distance. The emergency supply within was dusty but acceptable; they took half a sack each, and a few of the iron tools the ground crews used to probe deep burrows, all the while under Terihf’s polite scrutiny, and the intensely interested gaze of the people at every window of Fiver’s three storeys.

“I know,” M’ric said, as they walked back to their dragons. He glanced sideways at T’kamen. “I know.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

T’kamen was glad that his beard hid the crook of his mouth that would have betrayed his amusement. “I thought you lived for the fame and adulation of being a Tactical rider.”

“It’s different when it’s coming from people you’ve known your whole life,” said M’ric. “It’s weird.”

“The Weyr doesn’t Search many candidates out of here, does it?”

“The dragon-blood doesn’t flow in Fiver veins.” M’ric said it with the cadence of an old saw, often quoted. “I favour my father. In lots of ways.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

M’ric gave a short shake of his head. “No. Well. Once, when I was too small to remember. Not much call for a Starfall rider to come all the way out here.”

He said it defensively, as though he felt the need to shield his long-dead father from any accusation of disinterest in the son he’d sired. T’kamen found himself endeared by it. Dragonriders as a breed had always been guilty of insouciance regarding the children they so casually fathered, and that in an era when between had made visiting a Holdbred son or daughter a facile errand. But M’ric’s dragon-bred differences, stamped on him so plainly, must always have set him apart from his Holdmates, like a dragonet among wherries. It wasn’t hard to see how the proud, clever, insecure young man T’kamen had come to know had been shaped by his background even before Impression.

“They’re just proud of you,” he said.

“Proud.” M’ric made a disparaging sound. “Thank you for turning down the goat.”

“It wouldn’t have been fair. They weren’t expecting us.”

M’ric pulled a knot taut as he strapped a pick-axe to Trebruth’s harness. “I can never let them know I’m coming.” When T’kamen didn’t react immediately, the boy threw him a glare over his shoulder. “What do you think a dusty hole like Fiver produces?”

“You tell me.”

“Stone and goats. And you can’t eat stone.”

T’kamen let his eyes rove briefly over the Hold. The handsome sandstone façade, built against the bluff that protected Fiver’s back from Thread and weather, had given him a false first impression. The lean and weathered look of its people owed as much to thin rations as to the arid and dusty location. Stone and goats. “Fiver’s not a rich Hold.”

M’ric snorted. “It’s poor. And proud. Terihf would empty the storerooms in a dragonrider’s honour given half a chance. Which makes it fortunate that dragons don’t visit too often. And that Trebruth’s never hungry when we do.”

It gave T’kamen something to think about as he climbed back up to Epherineth’s neck. Fiver wasn’t the only poor Hold he’d visited in the Eighth Pass. The necessity of supporting the Weyr – and satisfying the vast appetites of dragons required to fly straight all over the territory – was taking a punishing toll on Pern’s population. Wealthy Holds like Kellad and Jessaf showed the strain less obviously, but he’d seen enough thin and ragged folk at Madellon’s lesser holdings to understand the price that the Pass was exacting upon the people of Pern.

The phenomenon Terihf had described was even more plain from above than it would have been to a ground crew. Epherineth and Trebruth circled to survey it from the air, both studying the riverbank as critically as T’kamen and M’ric were. Dragonflame had burned off a swathe of the scrubby bushes that grew along the waterway, leaving a long singe mark, but beyond the burned area the line of brushy shrubs looked shrivelled and sickly, and from above, the ground beneath them was visibly sunken.

Trapdoor burrow, Epherineth concluded, with a dragon’s keen sense for anything Thread-related, the peaceable green of his eyes betraying the occasional flash of scarlet. We must root it out and burn it.

The dragons landed well clear of the sunken ground that betrayed Thread’s underground presence. “We’re digging it out?” M’ric asked, dismounting Trebruth.

“If it hasn’t gone too deep.” T’kamen unlashed from Epherineth’s harness the bundle of iron stakes he’d taken from Fiver’s fire-bunker, and passed two of them to M’ric. “Take these, and be careful. If I lose you in a pit of Thread S’leondes will skin me for fighting straps.”

“I know how to probe a burrow, T’kamen,” said M’ric. “And you’re not responsible for me, anyway. If I fall into a pit of Thread it’s my own look-out.”

“All the same,” said T’kamen, “I’d sooner not need to have that conversation.”

They began to explore the probable boundaries of the burrow, sinking the metal rods into the earth and feeling for the tell-tale sponginess of Thread-saturation. The dragons were still too far back to help, but Fetch, rigid on T’kamen’s shoulder, took an active interest in the process. He leaned far over to scrutinise the ground, clinging to T’kamen’s collar with one forepaw for balance, his nostrils flaring. He became more agitated the closer T’kamen ventured to the edge of the collapse, whistling unhappily, until at last, when T’kamen drove in his stake and felt the resistance of dry earth give way to a soggy, yielding substance, Fetch hissed and seized his ear, attempting to pull him back out of the danger zone.

“All right, Fetch, stop that,” T’kamen told him, shaking his head to dislodge the tiny claws. “I get it.” He drew a line in the dust with his foot to delineate the margin of the burrow.

Agusta had shaken off her normal attitude in the presence of Thread, too. When T’kamen paused to rest his leg, leaning on a stake, he watched as M’ric marked the far edge of the burrow, talking good-naturedly to his queen as she chattered imperious instructions.

Then they both stood back to survey what they’d marked. The burrow was twenty feet long and three wide at its broadest point, following closely the line of scrub that grew along the bank of the creek, and sank perhaps five feet deep. One good blast of Epherineth’s flame would flood the area, but not before they’d stripped off the soil and exposed the infestation.

They’d brought picks and shovels from Fiver, but an excavation on this sort of scale was more than a two-man job. Epherineth and Trebruth conferred briefly between themselves, and Trebruth went off to find a good digging rock. Firestone, Epherineth requested, in a tone that brooked no argument.

“I never imagined Epherineth would destroy his first Thread like this,” T’kamen remarked to M’ric as the two dragons prepared to dig out the burrow.

“Suppose you must have thought he never would at all,” M’ric replied, watching as Epherineth, with much noisy slobbering, crunched stone. “R’lony’s never going to let you fly with a fire-crew, is he?”

T’kamen shrugged. “He has to marshal his forces as he thinks best. Epherineth’s always going to be more effective as a carrier than a burner.”

M’ric was silent for a moment. “G’reyan says a dragonrider isn’t a real dragonrider until he’s burned Thread out of the sky.”

It wasn’t an accusation, nor an apology, so T’kamen took it as neither. Instead, he said, “By that reckoning, you’re a real dragonrider, M’ric. What do you think?”

“I think,” M’ric said, and then stopped. His eyes flicked from Epherineth to Trebruth and back again. “I think G’reyan still doesn’t believe Trebruth is a proper fighting dragon.”

“Because he’s brown?”

“What other reason could there be?”

“You’re a new recruit, M’ric,” T’kamen pointed out. “You can’t expect trust and respect to come before you’ve flown more than a handful of Falls.”

“Respect, maybe,” M’ric said. “I have to win that. I know I do. But…” He took a breath. “But they don’t trust me. My wingmates. And that’s not because I’m new. Fraza’s just as new as me, and she’s friends with everyone. I don’t begrudge her it, but… They stop talking, sometimes, when I come into the ready-room. They still look at my shoulder-knot, as if they have to remind themselves I’m not an imposter. But it only reminds them of why they don’t trust me in the first place. Because Trebruth’s a brown dragon, and I’m a brown rider.”

T’kamen could have told M’ric he was being too sensitive to his wingmates’ wariness, or too impatient for an acceptance that could only grow slowly. He could have pointed out how he wore his conflicting pride and doubt like a badge, like a shining banner. He could have told him to be grateful for the stroke of luck, the special dispensation, the favourable whim that had seen his fervent wish for a place in the fighting Wings granted. T’kamen could have said all of those things and more. He said none of them. Instead, he said, “And what about S’leondes?”

M’ric’s eyes lit with the instinctive hero-worship that he felt for the Commander, but only for a moment. “I…never talk to him. I report to G’reyan. The Commander hasn’t spoken to me since he tapped me.” Then he added, in a flurry, “But why would he? I’m only a wingrider, one of thirty, and it’s like you said; I’m the newest recruit. The Commander has better things to do than talk to me. He has a Weyr to run.”

T’kamen considered pointing out that S’leondes ran only Tactical, not the entirety of the Weyr, but he decided against it. Nor did he think that criticising the Commander’s leadership style would have been constructive. “But you wish your service were better rewarded.”

M’ric looked at him with such palpable misery in his eyes that T’kamen almost couldn’t hold his gaze. Mercifully, the brown rider looked away first. “I thought we could make a difference. But nothing’s changed. How it is at Fiver isn’t how it is everywhere else. People don’t look at me hard enough to see I’m a fighting rider. They just see Trebruth’s hide, or the colour in my shoulder-knot. And even when we’re fighting, Trebruth’s flying anchor. Anchor, T’kamen! Like he’s some slow old blue who can’t turn!” M’ric pulled himself up, perhaps recognising the whingeing tone in his own voice. Then he went on, determinedly even, “And it’s like you said. Trebruth isn’t just a blue with a coat of paint. He fights differently to every other dragon in the Wings. He can fly like a blue, but it chafes him when he could be doing so much more. And if our wingmates don’t trust us – if we can’t be more useful to the Wings as a brown pair, not a brown pair pretending to be something else – then what’s the point of us even being there at all? We’ll never fit in as if Trebruth were blue, but how can we ever distinguish ourselves when no one’s interested in what makes us unique? Not in the fighting Wings, and certainly not in the Seventh!”

“Maybe you can’t,” said T’kamen. “Maybe you’ll always be caught between the two worlds.”

He realised the portentousness of his words even as he spoke them, and met M’ric’s eyes even as the boy sought his. “My dad was a hero, T’kamen. Ask Ch’fil; ask anyone. M’gral was one of Starfall’s first blue Wingleaders. No one’s ever going to forget him. But who’s ever going to remember me?”

M’ric’s voice broke on the last word, and this time T’kamen couldn’t look him in the eye at all, too painfully reminded of his own ignoble place in history. He hauled the young rider into a bruising hug instead, putting his hand to the back of M’ric’s neck to keep him there, so he could stare without seeing over his shoulder. They stood like that for a long span of moments, neither speaking. Even Epherineth was silent, though he looked in their direction with softly glowing blue eyes; the notion of legacy was one of those human conceits a dragon could never wholly grasp.

T’kamen gave M’ric a stout thump on the back, and released him. M’ric turned away, avoiding T’kamen’s gaze, embarrassed by the rough display of affection as only a teenage boy could be. Trebruth, the flat and sharp-edged piece of rock he’d found neglected in one forepaw, extended his head towards his rider in solidarity, and M’ric put his hand to the dark muzzle. Then M’ric visibly took command of himself, straightening his shoulders. “Come on, Trebruth. Let’s dig out this burrow.”

All stoked? T’kamen asked Epherineth, walking stiffly to his dragon to give M’ric a moment’s space.

Epherineth turned his head downwind and coughed. The brief flicker of flame that escaped his mouth was tinged with streaks of green, evidence of impurities in the firestone, but it set light quite satisfactorily to a thorny patch of scrub. Epherineth watched it burn for a moment, then crushed the blaze out with a forepaw. Yes.

“Should she be doing that?” M’ric asked from behind them.

T’kamen turned. Agusta had flown down to the remains of Epherineth’s firestone heap and was snatching up bits of leftover stone. As they watched, she chewed and then swallowed several small pieces. “Have you let her at Trebruth’s firestone before?” T’kamen asked.

“No, and I leave her behind when we fight Thread. I haven’t taught her this, I swear.”

“Instinct’s a powerful thing,” T’kamen murmured. He looked at Fetch, staring intently at Agusta’s behaviour from his perch on his shoulder. “Go on, if you want to,” he told him.

Fetch needed no further prompting. He launched himself towards the cache and began gulping down bits of firestone with gusto. “They’re proper little dragons, aren’t they?” M’ric asked, sounding grudgingly impressed.

“So it would seem.”

M’ric studied his queen. “Won’t the stone make her infertile?”

T’kamen hadn’t thought of that. After a moment, he shook his head. “I think that only applies to dragons. Fire-lizard queens have been chewing firestone against Thread for thousands of Turns. If it stopped them breeding they’d all have died out long ago.”

With Epherineth – and both fire-lizards – acceptably stoked for flame, Trebruth approached the area they’d marked out as infested. He gripped the flat piece of stone in both forepaws and pushed it along the surface, uprooting the moribund shrubs. He scraped off the upper layers of earth and stone, working carefully away from himself, and going deeper with each pass. Epherineth, waiting at the far end of the trench, watched intently as Trebruth’s efforts gradually uncovered the burrow. But it was the fire-lizards, both of them dripping half-controlled flames from their mouths with every eager breath, who reacted first when Trebruth’s digging finally exposed Thread to the light.

Heaving silver-grey filaments oozed up out of the earth like a grotesque mass of snakes. Eyeless, headless, tailless, they roiled over one another as if in eagerness to reach a new source of sustenance. “Get back!” M’ric shouted at his dragon, but before Trebruth could even move to give Epherineth space to unleash his flame, Agusta and Fetch had darted in, their jaws wide open. Plumes of fire erupted from their tiny mouths, and the tendrils of Thread squirming up out of the ground caught fire. Reeking smoke ribboned up from the burning Thread, and the filaments thrashed about in a grim facsimile of death throes. Fetch and Agusta shrieked in triumph, and Fetch nearly singed his own wing when a leftover gout of fire issued from his mouth along with his victory cry.

Then Epherineth made a rumble of warning deep in his chest. Trebruth shifted back out of his way, and both fire-lizards spiralled away from the burrow. Their efforts had scorched off the first few strings of Thread, but more was boiling up from underneath along the entire length of the trench Trebruth had dug, an oily silver-coloured pit of seething foulness. T’kamen took hold of M’ric’s arm, pulling him back, as Epherineth reared up over the burrow with red eyes.

Fire spilled from his mouth, almost too bright to behold: a searing lance of flames half a dragonlength long. The Thread that had writhed in silent senseless agonies beneath fire-lizard breath simply crisped and vanished under the onslaught of Epherineth’s fearsome exhalation. The intense waves of heat rolling off the burning burrow drove M’ric still farther back, but T’kamen couldn’t move: too wrapped up in the satisfaction of destroying, at last, their ancient enemy; too transfixed by the sight of the flames leaping from the burrow; too enmeshed in the fierce pleasure Epherineth took in destruction on its purest and most primal level.

Epherineth poured out his entire gutful of flame in that single massive breath, and then stood over the blazing trench, his wings half open, surveying the devastation he’d wrought. The choking stink of burnt Thread was sweet in his nostrils; the acrid smoke stung agreeably in his eyes; and the snarl on his lips made his scarred face symmetrical again. In the air or on the ground, he had met Thread and destroyed it, and in the instant of exultant victory he felt more a dragon than at any time before.

With an effort, T’kamen reasserted his identity in the storm of Epherineth’s emotion. He was sweating from his proximity to the burning burrow, and his eyes were dry and sore. He limped back several paces and found a rock to sit on. A moment later, Fetch came fluttering down to land excitedly on his shoulder. He stank of firestone, but it didn’t seem to matter.

That was good, said Epherineth. That was very good.

Yes, T’kamen agreed. Any more than that seemed unnecessary.

M’ric brought him a waterskin. As T’kamen drank, and then poured a stream of water over his sweaty face, the boy regarded him with an odd half-smile. “You feel it, don’t you?” he asked. “The rightness of a dragon doing what dragons are meant to do.”

It seemed even more redundant to reply to him than it had to Epherineth. T’kamen smiled instead.

The fire in the trench went out  soon enough, leaving a steaming mass of blackened Thread residue. They poked at it with their stakes, turning the odorous substance over in search of any surviving filaments, but Epherineth’s flame had done its work. “Why don’t you go back to the Hold and tell Terihf we’ve dealt with the burrow?” T’kamen suggested to M’ric.

“You’re not coming?” M’ric asked.

“In a bit. Epherineth has his ash to bring up. I’d sooner he didn’t do that in the middle of the courtyard.” T’kamen paused. “You should stay here with your family for a while. We’ll go and get the tithe from Redyen and pick you up on our way back.”

“Are you sure?”

T’kamen nodded. “Leave Agusta with me. She’ll need to sick up, too.”

Once Trebruth was almost out of sight on his way back to Fiver, T’kamen sat looking at Epherineth. He was wearing the uncomfortable expression of a dragon who knew his firestone ash was going to come up soon, but not exactly when. Agusta and Fetch had both done their puking – Agusta especially looked outraged at the indignity – and were scrubbing themselves furiously in the sand to get rid of the stink. “Will you do it?” he asked aloud.

Ash first.

That seemed fair enough. T’kamen held out his arm. “Here, Fetch,” he said softly, and the young fire-lizard obediently quit his dust bath to heed the recall. T’kamen scratched him under his chin, and Fetch made a happy little sound of contentment.

Then T’kamen began to construct a visual. He chose Harper’s Rock, imagining the distinctive shape of the mesa, its reddish hue differentiating it from the more yellow Fiver sandstone. He took care, as he’d always been taught, not to place any temporal references in the image. The shape of the rock was all that mattered, viewed from the angle that made it look so like a half-harp. “Fetch,” he said, when he had the visual firm in his mind. “I want you to go somewhere for me and bring me back a red stone. Do you understand?”

Fetch cocked his head onto one side.

“This is the where,” T’kamen told him. “See it in my mind. Do you see the big red rock?”

Fetch echoed the image back to him. He had never been to Harper’s Rock himself, so the visual was all T’kamen’s. He inspected it for integrity, and found it the same as the image he’d provided. “How is it, Epherineth? Would you go between on this?”

The visual is sound. But I cannot take you there. It isn’t safe.

He made the familiar conclusion without fear or concern in his voice; merely pragmatism about the feasibility of the jump. “It’s all right. I just want to be sure Fetch has a good visual to find.” T’kamen smoothed down the fire-lizard’s wings. “Fetch. I want you to go there and pick up a red stone from the ground, then bring it back to me here. Go there for me now.”

T’kamen launched Fetch off his forearm with a flick of his wrist. Fetch beat his wings a couple of times to get some altitude, and then he disappeared.

It wasn’t the first time T’kamen had sent him off to somewhere he’d never been before. Still, he felt a nagging anxiety for his safety. Fetch wasn’t even fully grown yet, not much longer from nose to tail than T’kamen’s forearm; still not much more than a hatchling. The memory of the tiny unborn bronze that Alanne had crushed in her hand still haunted T’kamen. He had never liked fire-lizards, but Fetch was a faithful and willing friend, and the notion of using him as a tool didn’t sit as comfortably with T’kamen as it once had.

“Epherineth, is he –” he began, and was interrupted by the sound of his dragon finally vomiting up his ash. There wasn’t much, but Epherineth hacked and spat in a most undignified way to get it all out of his mouth, before loping over to the creek to suck up water and wash the taste away.

Nothing – not dragonet dung, not burned dead Thread, not even boiling numbweed – smelled quite as bad as firestone puke. T’kamen limped over to kick sand over the eye-wateringly foetid heap. “Better?”

Epherineth spat out a mouthful of water and shook himself all over, from nose to tail-fork. Much.

And then Fetch reappeared, chattering happily to himself. He swooped down towards T’kamen, spreading his wings to arrest his descent. T’kamen barely got his arm up in time for him to land, and then caught, reflexively, the red stone Fetch dropped into his hand. He turned it over, seeing the trace of frost still on it. “Good boy, Fetch, this is exactly right,” he said, relieved and heartened in equal measure. “Very well done.” He felt in his belt pouch for some jerky to reward him. “Show me where you went.”

Fetch’s visual was different to the one T’kamen had provided, including as it did the position of the sun in the sky, and the shadows it cast, and the pockets of snow that still survived in the most sheltered parts, but the shape of Harper’s Rock was unmistakeable. Carefully, T’kamen stripped away the specifics, returning the image to its generic state. “Epherineth,” he said. “What would you say if I asked you to go between to Harper’s Rock?”

It’s not safe, Epherineth replied immediately.

“Why?”

I cannot see the way through. I might not find the way out to where you want to go.

T’kamen grappled with the notion. “Every time you go between, you know the…the route you’re going to take, before you even jump?”

Yes. I see it. Then I go between. If I cannot see it, I will not go between.

“Then you can…see into between from outside?”

It is not that simple, Epherineth replied, apologetically.

T’kamen tossed the red pebble from one hand to the other, trying to think of another approach. “In the Interval, the dragonets couldn’t navigate between, but you and all the other adults still could.”

We already knew our way between. They did not.

“But you can’t find your way between now.”

Between is different now. Now, I am like a dragonet who has never gone between. My old way is not there. I cannot see a new way.

“What about Fetch?” T’kamen put his hand on the fire-lizard’s back. “He can find his way between.”

He is a fire-lizard. I am a dragon.

“Does that matter?”

I’m bigger than him.

T’kamen almost answered that with a dry remark of his own, but Epherineth’s tone carried no hint of sarcasm. “That matters?” he asked, handling the new idea carefully. “In terms of you going between?”

Yes. No. Epherineth sounded apologetic again. It is difficult to explain. He hesitated, and T’kamen could feel him striving to communicate his understanding in a way that a mere human could comprehend. If we were in a forest, you would see paths through the trees that I would not, because you’re smaller than me.

“All right,” said T’kamen. “But a path big enough for me would be too small for you.”

Yes.

T’kamen considered it, with a sinking feeling. “So what you’re saying is that Fetch is using small paths to traverse between that a dragon would be too big to fit through.”

No, said Epherineth, shaking his head agitatedly. No. A dragon is not big between. A dragon is no bigger than a fire-lizard between.

“Then what’s the difference?”

Epherineth was as frustrated as him. It is a matter of perspective. Here, I am large, and Fetch is small. Between, everything is the same. Fetch jumps. He is between. He arrives. He knows the beginning and the end of his journey. I cannot see my way. I can see the beginning but not the end. If I went between I might discover a way. I might not. We would remain between forever. We would not arrive. It’s not safe.

It made T’kamen’s head hurt. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. Then something occurred to him. “Do all dragons plot their way before they go between, like you?”

Not all. Some dragons jump first and find their way once they are between. Then he added, rather stiffly, I would not like to do it that way.

“The dragonets,” T’kamen said slowly. “Our dragonets. The ones who didn’t go between at all were like you. They tried to see their way through and couldn’t, so they refused to try. The ones who did go between and didn’t come out…”

They jumped without first seeing their path, said Epherineth. They could not find a way out in time. Their riders ran out of breath.

The bald way he said it made T’kamen shudder. “L’stev should –” he began, and then broke the sentence off. “It was all so much simpler in the Interval when between just worked.”

I know.

T’kamen rubbed Fetch’s neck distractedly. “If I sent him between to Harper’s Rock again, would you be able to see the route he took?”

A pause. I don’t know.

“Well, let’s try it. Fetch.” T’kamen looked hard at the fire-lizard, offering him the generic visual of Harper’s Rock. “I want you to go between to here again, but this time I want you to show Epherineth the way you go.”

Fetch put his head on one side. He chirped quizzically, rustling his wings.

He doesn’t understand.

T’kamen sighed. “I’m not sure any of us do,” he said. “Do it anyway, Fetch. Epherineth, see if you can track him.”

When Fetch disappeared between, Epherineth moved his head to look intently at the place where he had been. The expression of concentration on his face was nearly comical. “Well?” T’kamen asked.

Epherineth heaved a great breath, still faintly rank with firestone. I cannot trace him.

“You’re sure?”

Yes.

T’kamen echoed his dragon’s sigh. “All right.” Slowly, he got to his feet, picking up his cane. “I guess we tried –”

I would have to jump with him and follow him from within between.

“You would…what?”

I cannot follow him from outside between. Only from inside.

It wasn’t the nature of Epherineth’s statement that threw T’kamen so much as the matter-of-fact way he made it. “You mean go between blind, and then follow Fetch out?”

Yes.

“But what if Fetch can’t find a way out?”

He is a fire-lizard. He wouldn’t go between if he couldn’t find his way out.

“Then fire-lizards are always see their way through before they jump, like you?”

No. They don’t need to see their way through. They are fire-lizards. They are… Epherineth struggled to fit words to concepts. He tried again. Between is theirs. Between was theirs long and long before dragons. Dragons are not fire-lizards. Fetch understands between as much more than I do as I understand it more than you do.

“Are you really saying that you would go between reliant entirely on Fetch to get you out?”

You rely on me.

“You’re my dragon, Epherineth. He’s a fire-lizard.”

He is our fire-lizard.

T’kamen looked at his dragon. He looked at the intricate cargo harness that criss-crossed his body, caging him in his role as a beast of burden. He looked at the muscular bulk that bearing weight long distances had added to the formerly lithe frame. He looked at the facial disfigurement that more prompt treatment might have prevented.

He thought about the dragonpairs who died and died and died in Threadfall, whose bodies lay rotting and desecrated at Little Madellon, whose names were carved into the Wall. He thought about the riders of Madellon, locked into their rigid colour-divisions, the complementary roles of bronze and brown and blue and green sundered into rivalry. He thought about the northern Weyrs, bitterly divided from their southern counterparts; the forests of Kellad, razed for want of protection from above. He thought about the poor, proud, hungry folk of Fiver.

“And all for the want of between,” he said aloud.

Yes.

T’kamen found himself moving; slowly, as he moved everywhere now, but with determination. His mind, he realised, was made up, though seemingly without his conscious permission. It was, perhaps, the only way he could have overcome his frozen terror at what he had resolved to do.

He shoved his cane through its loop on Epherineth’s harness and swung up to his place on the bronze’s neck. Fetch had returned and was perching on Epherineth’s fore-ridge. “Fetch,” T’kamen said. His own voice sounded oddly remote as though coming from far away. “You’re going to show Epherineth the way to Harper’s Rock.”

No. Let me.

As Epherineth heaved himself aloft, T’kamen felt him take the visual of Harper’s Rock from his mind and share it with Fetch. The sensation of his dragon and his fire-lizard communicating directly with each other was a peculiar one; they did not exclude him – they communicated through him – but their conference was completely abstract to his understanding. Instead of trying to comprehend, T’kamen looked around, fixing the location in his mind: the line of the creek, snaking around the outcrops of harder rock; the apparently precarious ironstone boulder balancing over the bend in the waterway; the distant landmark of Fiver’s rock spires, stabbing up into the sky on the horizon.

We are ready, Epherineth reported abruptly. You should take a deep breath.

T’kamen did. He put one hand on Epherineth’s neck. The red pebble was still in his other. If this doesn’t work…

I love you, too, said Epherineth.

He took them between.

And the bitter deep cold was a shock: as much a shock as it had been sixteen, and a hundred and forty, Turns ago when the youth who would become T’kamen had gone between for the first time on another man’s dragon. Then, he’d been required to place his trust entirely in another’s hands. Now, though, he invested that trust in a juvenile fire-lizard. Had he been able to breathe, he wouldn’t have dared. He couldn’t risk distracting Epherineth or Fetch, couldn’t divert them from their purpose, couldn’t seek their reassurance. And between was so very dark and so very cold. The mere bone-chill of winter seemed balmy by comparison; the frozen, lonely nothingness of between sank into the soul.

Yet it seemed no different to how it ever had to T’kamen’s limited human senses: impenetrably, homogenously hostile in every direction, if direction could even be said to exist in a place so far outside the world he lived in. However Fetch, or even Epherineth, perceived between was beyond T’kamen’s capacity to comprehend, and perhaps so strange, so confounding in its nature, that the blank blackness was simply the human mind’s way of protecting itself from the overwhelming alienness of between’s true form. There they hung, to T’kamen’s mind, though he knew they were not still and passive, that dragon and fire-lizard between them were navigating the unknowable waters of the void. Were there currents between? Were there reefs and rocks to steer through? Would they be flung up upon the shore of their destination, or dragged deep, deep and down, into the inky depths of oblivion? And as the moments passed – moments that might have been seconds, or hours, or lifetimes – T’kamen realised that he was no longer afraid, no longer fearful of all he had to lose, because what he stood to gain – what Pern stood to gain – so far exceeded it.

And then the wind rushed in his ears and peppered his cheeks with hard spits of snow. The stone was a hard, sharp lump in the clench of his left hand. Epherineth’s neck was warm and smooth beneath his right.

T’kamen opened his eyes.

Chapter fifty-four: Valonna

There’s a common misconception that the moment of injury itself is the most terrible, that afterwards the worst must surely be over, and that things can only improve from that point on.

But wounds fester. Left untreated they can hurt much more than the original blow. Treatment can be torture. Healing can be agony. An injury half-mended can break open again. And scars are the ugly reminder of all the pain that was, and all the pain still to come.

Sometimes – often – things will get much worse before they can begin to get better.

100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL

MADELLON WEYR

A Turn or so after Valonna became Weyrwoman, one of her former classmates, a rider named M’shen, lost his right hand in an accident.

He was Seahold-bred, and so proud of the small hold of his origin that he’d taken its name as his own when he Impressed. He begged permission from his Wingleader for leave to help man the family trawler during the crucial spring redfin runs, the success or failure of which would decide if his folk would prosper that Turn or else scrape grimly by. One spring morning, there was an accident with one of the heavy winches that hauled the laden trawling nets up into the back of the boat. M’shen was standing nearby when the winch failed, and one of the cables suddenly released from its tension lashed around his wrist, taking half the forearm off so quickly and cleanly that M’shen simply stood staring at the gushing place where his hand had been for several moments without any understanding of what he was seeing.

He survived, thanks to the quick-thinking actions of his crewmates, who tied off his stump, and the rare presence of mind of his green Zattenth, who managed to convey a clear enough visual of their location far out to sea back to the Weyr to bring help. Healers stopped the bleeding and sewed up the sliced veins and arteries and stitched a flap of skin over the raw end of the place where M’shen’s right forearm stopped. They kept the stump clean with redwort and insensate with numbweed, and dosed M’shen into unconsciousness with fellis. Shimpath spent long days in close contact with the frightened Zattenth, reassuring her that her rider would be fine, that he’d been hurt and he was sleeping, but that he’d heal and would be all right. No one knew if that was true or not. M’shen had lost a lot of blood, and while the slice that had taken off his hand had been clean, the wound had been fouled with scales and fish blood from his shipmates’ desperate efforts to clamp off the bleeding. He burned with fever for three nights before the youth and strength of his body threw the infection off. He woke, disorientated but alive, took food and water and herbs to rebuild his strength and aid the healing, and slept again. He woke and slept, woke and slept, and the puffy inflammation of his stump gradually subsided, and they’d been able to give him less and less fellis, and the Weyr let out the collective breath it had been holding, relieved that a dragonrider’s life had been saved against all the odds.

Then one morning, Valonna went into the infirmary to see how M’shen was doing. She’d never been close to her classmates – too segregated from their easy camaraderie by the colour of Shimpath’s hide – but she’d spent hours sitting by the green rider’s bedside, holding his one remaining hand, both while he slept and in the times when he’d been partially conscious. She found him awake, with his face turned to the wall. He’d been crying. For the first time since the accident, he’d been lucid enough to grasp what had happened to him. His hand was gone, his dominant right hand. He would never again be able to rig Zattenth’s harness without help. He’d never be of use to his family during the redfin runs. He had played a tin fisherman’s pipe, not well but cheerfully; that was lost to him too. He could barely write his own name or cut his own meat or unbutton his own fly. He was eighteen Turns old.

Valonna, two Turns his junior, didn’t know what to say to comfort him. Eventually, she asked him what he would do, and M’shen replied, “I don’t care. My life is over.”

“But life goes on,” Valonna implored him. “It has to.”

And it had.

M’shen’s stump healed. He learned to use his left hand to write and cut and unbutton. His aunt, a clever rigger, invented a type of buckle for Zattenth’s harness that could be fastened and released one-handed. He returned to his Wing. And if he never played the pipe again, then it was only a small bit of sweetness lost to him, and not a reason to stop.

Valonna’s life, too, went on. Because it had to. She might wish, fervently some days, that she could merely turn her face to the wall in despair, but she could not. Madellon’s affairs could coast unassisted only for a day or two; after that, like a dragon gliding on unpowered wings, they would inevitably stall. Crauva and her section leaders kept the Weyr’s basic services running – the cooking and cleaning, mending and maintenance, gathering and gardening – but there were matters that could not be decided without the Weyrwoman’s approval. They had gathered in a pile on Valonna’s desk so orderly that whoever had been adding to it must have squared off the corners every time. Valonna almost felt guilty when her first act was to up-end it. The oldest jobs were at the bottom of the stack, some of them going back to the first day of the Long Bay Gather, and it didn’t seem right to give priority to the more recent additions when others that had been awaiting her attention for days might be more urgent. So each morning, she chipped away at the backlog that had built up, and each morning she found something to add to her burden.

Five days after P’raima’s death, a lengthy report from Weyr Mason Gerlaven found its way to the top of Valonna’s pile. His plan for beginning work on weyrs in the south-eastern quadrant of Madellon was footnoted with a chit requesting payment for powder and labour. Valonna knew that the strongbox locked away in her cabinet didn’t have enough marks to honour all the bills. That meant a trip to the Woodcraft at Kellad to draw on Madellon’s funds. A trip to the Woodcraft meant asking someone to escort her; H’ned, probably. Or she could send H’ned by himself. Valonna dismissed the notion. H’ned had not the proper authority to make a withdrawal. He was not Madellon’s Weyrleader.

Madellon had no Weyrleader.

The south of Pern had no Weyrleaders.

The thought often shouldered into the mundane distractions with which Valonna had been filling her head. Even had Madellon not been full of speculation on what would shake down in the aftermath of Long Bay, Valonna was involved in too many events that threw southern Pern’s leadership – or rather, its conspicuous lack of it – into stark relief.

H’pold’s memorial service was a more affecting occasion than she had thought it would be. Valonna had not cared for the Peninsula Weyrleader, and the overall atmosphere amongst the Peninsula’s riders had been one of sober reflection on H’pold’s life rather than heartfelt grief for its loss, but she was certain that she was not the only one to find the sight of his four smallest children, weeping inconsolably, distressing.

She would not have broached the subject of Peninsula’s leadership had Rallai not done so first, when they met in her ocean-facing sitting room after the funeral. “K’ken’s keeping things running,” Rallai said. “Which is much as it’s always been, and unlikely to change no matter who moves into the Weyrleader’s weyr.”

“Will that be –” The question came out of Valonna’s mouth before she could stop it. She did turn its course, though. “Will it be K’ken?”

The tiny smile that upturned Rallai’s mouth signalled that she knew who Valonna’s question had originally concerned. “Essienth can’t keep up with Ipith.” Then she said, after a pause that separated one remark from another, “It’s for the best, in a way.”

Valonna knew Rallai wasn’t talking about Essienth. “Do you know who would be suitable?”

“I know who wouldn’t,” said Rallai. “But that hasn’t stopped L’dro demanding access to the antidote. He claims Pierdeth’s life is at risk if Ipith should rise while he’s still dragon-deaf.”

The idea gave Valonna a little jolt: L’dro, competing for the Peninsula Weyrleadership. “We can’t spare any more.”

“Even if we could, I wouldn’t give it to him,” said Rallai. “After the way he behaved, K’ken doesn’t even trust him as a Wingleader.”

“I see.” Valonna let another moment lapse before she went on, “I wouldn’t wish L’dro on you, anyway. He was not a good Weyrleader to me.”

Rallai met her eyes. “Is that the first time you’ve said that aloud?”

Valonna realised it was. “I did love him,” she said. “I think part of me still does.”

“Part of you always will,” Rallai told her. “It isn’t –”

She stopped. They were punctuating their conversation, Valonna realised, with little gaps and spaces that neither needed the other to fill. Still, she did complete Rallai’s sentence. “It isn’t enough.”

It was bittersweet, for both of them. Valonna saw the regret in Rallai’s eyes. They clasped wrists: as Weyrwomen, as queen riders. As friends. “Will it be Izath, when Shimpath rises?” Rallai asked gravely.

Valonna lifted her shoulders. “It’s Turns away.” She sighed. “I’m not sure.”

“I didn’t know T’kamen well,” Rallai said. “H’pold was quick to judge him last Turn’s End, but that was H’pold.” She left another space for Valonna to fill.

“I didn’t either,” she replied. “I think he had…a plan. A vision for Madellon. I just don’t think he had the time, before he left.” Softly she added, “They all leave, sooner or later.”

She’d never said that before, either: not aloud, nor even in her mind, where Shimpath would once have heard it. Shimpath would have briskly rejected the notion, for while Fianine and L’dro and T’kamen had all abandoned Valonna in their different ways, it was absurd that her own queen would ever have done so.

“Yet here you are,” Rallai said. Her eyes were still sad, but her smile had a glow to it. “If you could see what I’ve seen over these sevendays, Valonna. How you’ve unfurled, out from under all those shadows. Yes,” she added, when Valonna began to object, “even Shimpath’s. And if she could, she’d tell you how proud she was of you. A queen rider should be more than just a woman whose dragon can win every fight for her.” Rallai shook her head. “You aided Margone when no one else would. You protected Karika. You brought P’raima to his knees. You.” She sighed. “What a ballad it would make.”

There would be no ballad. They both knew that. It could not be permitted, to have a dragonrider’s crimes preserved in song. It would damage by association the reputation of every rider on Pern, and the Weyrs couldn’t afford that. They must close ranks, play down the magnitude of P’raima’s wrongdoing, and allow only the barest facts to become the recorded history of what had really happened.

Valonna didn’t said anything to Sh’zon about her conversation with Rallai. He had taken P’raima’s death worst of all of them – apart from Sirtis, who had been so histrionic once the implications had sunk in that it had taken K’ken, L’dro, and H’ned between them to strap her onto a dragon to take her home. Sh’zon had roared and ranted at first, and punched R’maro so hard that for a moment Valonna had feared they would be interring two Southern bronze riders, not one. Then he had seethed, barrelling around Madellon like an angry herdbeast, snapping at everyone who so much as looked in his direction. Lately, he had settled into a sullen black mood so palpable that it was a wonder a small dark cloud did not actually accompany him everywhere he went. He had suspended himself from the Wings, declaring he was useless to man or beast, dumped his share of the Weyrleader’s workload back onto H’ned, and now spent most of his time taking long straight flights with Kawanth.

She didn’t feel up to confronting Sh’zon with his behaviour. H’ned, basking though he was in the prestige of being the one-and-only Deputy Weyrleader of Madellon, was flailing beneath the weight of T’kamen’s full workload. Sh’zon’s rejection of anything that approached Weyr business amounted to nothing less than a dereliction of duty, and yet Valonna didn’t want to coerce him into a semblance of normality if he didn’t want it. They were all dealing with their affliction differently, and if Sh’zon found comfort in physical contact with his dragon, Valonna wasn’t going to deny him it in the name of forcing him unwillingly back to work.

Tarshe and Carleah were managing their condition better than any of the adults. Rallai, when Valonna mentioned it to her in the correspondence they began to exchange almost daily, speculated that the relative newness of the weyrling bond made it easier for riders and dragonets alike to bear. Sh’zon, by contrast, had been with Kawanth for twenty Turns. He probably couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t shared his every thought with his dragon. Rallai didn’t mention in her note that she, too, had been a dragonrider for the best part of two decades. Valonna thought that perhaps women were simply more resilient than men, but she had – thankfully – too little day-to-day contact with L’dro, the only other male rider who had been poisoned with felah, to know.

There was G’kalte, of course, but G’kalte didn’t count. He’d only taken a small dose of P’raima’s drug. Not a weak dose – there’d still been enough concentrated felah in the polite sip of sherry that G’kalte had drunk to fog his connection to Archidath – but a small enough amount that their communication had not been blocked completely. With concentration, G’kalte could hear his dragon and make himself heard, although he was still sufficiently impaired that he had been excused from his Wing. That, he told Valonna, was why Rallai had appointed him to courier for her: so that he would have something to do besides making himself mentally hoarse shouting at his dragon. From the postscripts on Rallai’s letters, asking how Valonna liked her messenger, she doubted the veracity of G’kalte’s explanation. Not that he would have lied to her, but Valonna suspected that Rallai was quite capable of a degree of subterfuge where finding excuses to send G’kalte to Madellon was concerned.

After the first three or four times, Valonna had stopped telling herself that she didn’t look forward to G’kalte’s visits, although she didn’t admit it to anyone, especially Rallai. In that, Shimpath was her only confidante. The spare moments when they sat together, Shimpath listening raptly as Valonna told her aloud about G’kalte’s latest visit, were their way of coping with each other’s mental absence.

But as unexpectedly welcome a distraction G’kalte’s visits had become, they were just that – a distraction. And they were far more pleasant than most of the business that commanded Valonna’s attention as the days passed.

The initial hope that the felah would just wear off with time had faded. Neither Valonna nor any of the other affected riders had noticed any lessening of the barrier that separated them from their dragons. The only thing that had weakened was their mutual resolve not to resort to using fellis. They had all experienced some symptoms, from nausea and shaking to sleeplessness and anxiety. Valonna, herself, woke every morning with a throbbing headache, a bad taste in her mouth that klah didn’t wash away, and the leftover dread of nightmares she couldn’t remember.

Shauncey, the rake-thin Master sent by the Healerhall to lead the investigation into the two Southern drugs, was a specialist in medicinal herbs, but the nature of felah baffled him. “Most of the symptoms you’re experiencing aren’t real,” he’d told Valonna when he’d first arrived at Madellon. “You think you’re having withdrawal symptoms, but it’s mostly in your mind. You’re expecting symptoms, so you’re experiencing them.” He’d frowned. “But I’ve never known a substance seemingly designed to cause such dependency. We’ve created many drugs based on fellis, but the first thing any pharmacologist does is counteract its addictive and narcotic properties. Whoever devised this felah achieved the opposite. It’s more addictive than unadulterated fellis. You’d have to be an utter incompetent to formulate it that way by accident.”

No one was under any illusion that incompetence had factored into felah’s creation. The herbalists who had created the drug were a mixture of former Healerhall crafters and local experts on Southern’s native flora, and all of them were quick to accuse P’raima of directing the course of their experimentation. The riders of Southern needed little more reason to curse their late Weyrleader’s name, but the revelation that he had deliberately developed felah, and then controlled its distribution, as a means of manipulating his riders certainly didn’t win him any new advocates.

The second hope that had met a gradual demise was the expectation that Shauncey’s Healers would be able to replicate the felah antidote quickly. Five of the six vials of the counter-agent that Sh’zon had taken off P’raima had been handed over to Shauncey’s team. Rallai had the sixth. With Ipith next due of the affected queens to rise, Rallai was most in need of the means to undo the mental block, if only temporarily, during mating. Valonna sensed that there had been some disagreement at the Peninsula over the decision to give all the other vials to Shauncey. If so, Rallai had evidently quelled the mutiny.

Valonna was grateful that Sh’zon, at least, had concurred with the general consensus that Shauncey’s research was the best place for the small amount of antidote they did have, but the Master Healer would still not be drawn on a timescale for recreating the drug. “If we had the formula,” he said, “or the herbalist who concocted it...”

They had neither. The herbalists who had created felah knew nothing of the counter-agent. The strongest coercion Valonna was prepared to sanction wrung no more out of them than they had already been willing to give. They had at least agreed to work with Shauncey on the cure, and seemed to be doing so freely.

Of the formula P’raima had claimed to possess, they had found no sign. Tearing apart his office and personal quarters at Southern had yielded nothing. They theorised that he must have had a bolthole where he’d been hiding out since Long Bay – perhaps even more than one if he had planned to elude capture while still controlling events at Southern. Traces of reddish earth in the treads of the boots he’d been wearing when he died might have pointed to such a location. Or perhaps not. There were a thousand unoccupied places on Pern still where a single man and dragon could make themselves a home, a thousand valleys with wild wherries to hunt and streams to fish and caves to shelter in. Valonna suspected that Sh’zon spent at least some of his time searching, but she doubted he truly believed he would find it.

Then there was Southern. In Valonna’s bleakest nights, in her lowest moments, in her blackest contemplations of her present situation, she could still console herself that at least she was not the Weyrwoman of Southern. The fact that a twelve-Turn-old girl had assumed that title – and the responsibilities that came with it – merely made her feel guilty in her relief. The loss of first P’raima, who had clenched Southern in his iron grip for three decades, and then of both bronze riders who had sought to step into his shoes, had left the Weyr in utter disarray. R’maro, of course, had been removed as Weyrleader almost before he’d been confirmed in the role; he and Maibauth languished in custody at the Peninsula, awaiting trial for P’raima’s murder, Carleah’s attempted murder, and sundry other offences. And D’pantha, for all that he had been innocent of all the crimes for which P’raima had attempted to frame him, was so closely associated with the former Weyrleader – and with the production of felah – that he feared to return to his native Weyr. Valonna wondered to what degree he feared the ire of his daughter, but she could not dispute his reasoning. Southern didn’t want him back. He and Cyniath remained guests of Madellon, though they didn’t particularly want him, either.

Karika would not be moved from Southern. In that, D’pantha had been correct, although perhaps he hadn’t reckoned on his daughter’s resolve being as central a motivation for them to stay as Megrith’s queenly possessiveness. It was as far from being an ideal situation as it was possible to envisage: a child Weyrwoman on a weyrling senior queen, presiding over a Weyr full of half-addled riders still reeling from the events of the last several months. Karika had politely but firmly refused the offer of Madellon or Peninsula riders to support her, and rejected out of hand the notion of Sirtis being assigned to Southern as Acting Weyrwoman until Megrith reached maturity. Valonna couldn’t blame Karika for declining Sirtis, but she did wish there were another adult queen in the south who might have had more to recommend herself. Karika radiated the potential for greatness like a beacon fire, and no one could doubt her commitment to her Weyr, but Valonna knew all too well how quickly an immature, half-trained Weyrwoman could fall victim to the ambitions of her own riders. Once Southern’s bronze riders collected their wits, the contenders for the Weyrleader’s weyr would begin to move on Karika like wherries on a hatchling fire-lizard. However self-possessed, a twelve-Turn-old was simply not equipped to navigate such waters. Valonna worried for Karika almost as much as she would have had she returned her to P’raima’s custody in the first place. She knew she should be concerned for Southern as a whole, too – for the three hundred dragonpairs, and thrice as many Weyrfolk, whose lives had been turned upside down – but she could not spare the anxiety for foreign riders when her own demanded so much from her.

And one of them more than all of the others combined.

If there was a consolation to be found in the events that had shaken southern Pern since the Long Bay Gather, it was that they had dwarfed into insignificance the minor matter of the changes to the Weyrlingmaster’s staff. Everyone was still talking about Southern and P’raima and the felah scandal – for every debate that was hushed when Valonna passed in the dining hall, there were three more being held on an adjacent table to fill the silence it left – but she had heard no one discussing A’len’s appointment as Assistant Weyrlingmaster, nor any gossip concerning C’mine’s dismissal from the same post.

“If anyone asks, we’ll say that C’mine was only ever an interim measure until Jenavally felt ready to come back. And that A’len’s taken over on the same basis in the light of the scare C’mine had with Carleah being taken.” L’stev had offered the story grudgingly, with the inference that he would spin the line as a favour to Valonna, rather than to C’mine. “He’s fortunate that the weyrlings who saw him at Long Bay were too excited about the fact he’d collapsed to ask many questions about why.”

“What happens to C’mine now?” Valonna asked, with a sense of dread.

L’stev shrugged. “I don’t care so long as he stays away from my weyrlings.” He said it in that growl of his that would brook no argument, but less than half a breath later he contradicted his own assertion. “If T’kamen were still here, I’d dump the wretch back in his lap.” He met her eyes. “And if you didn’t have enough to do already, I’d dump him in yours. But since H’ned seems like he’s set on imprinting the shape of his arse on the Weyrleader’s chair…”

“No,” Valonna said. “Absolutely not.”

It had taken her a moment to articulate, even in her own head, why passing C’mine off to H’ned seemed so catastrophically wrong. It wasn’t because H’ned wasn’t the Weyrleader, nor because Valonna feared that he would mishandle C’mine. It wasn’t even because C’mine was her friend. It was more visceral than that. C’mine had been left bereft first by C’los’ death and then by T’kamen’s disappearance. He had been left to fend for himself, and well did Valonna understand the pain of abandonment. But if – as Rallai implied – Valonna had somehow blossomed in the absence of her lover, her Weyrleader, and her dragon, C’mine had collapsed. He’d been left with no one but Darshanth to turn to, and faithful as Darshanth was, he was still a dragon, and a blue, and unequipped to contend with the despair that had led his rider to do what he had done.

C’mine’s encounter with his future self at Long Bay had not been his first experience of timing; merely his most calamitous. L’stev had found the evidence of C’mine’s reckless visits to the past in his weyr: star maps, time charts, and C’los’ diaries, densely annotated with notes on the references that might guide Darshanth between to a time when C’los still lived. L’stev had been nearly apoplectic with fury when he’d brought his findings to Valonna; Valonna had been too shocked, at first, and then too consumed with guilt, to be angry.

They’d taken it all away, though it had wrenched Valonna to see C’mine’s face as L’stev and A’len between them had removed the maps from his weyr walls and packed C’los’ journals into crates and carried them all off. Understanding why it had to be done made it no easier to bear C’mine’s palpable misery at the confiscation of every scrap of information that had linked him to his dead weyrmate’s life. Shimpath had grounded Darshanth, C’mine was confined to his empty weyr, and the Healers Nial and Benner, who specialised in disorders of the mind, had been assigned to treat him.

But Valonna had resolved to keep anyone outside that small group ignorant of C’mine’s true activities. Not even H’ned and Sh’zon, who knew that he had met himself to provide the information that had led to the rescue of their two weyrlings, needed to know the full extent of C’mine’s timing. L’stev was the last rider who would have gossiped; A’len, an old friend of C’mine’s, was close-mouthed to say the least; and confidentiality was a given from the two Healers. No one else needed to know. No one.

She called on him every day, without exception, no matter how busy she was, or how many other people clamoured for her time, or how, with increasing intensity, she grew to dread the visits.

One evening, ten days or so after P’raima’s death, Valonna trod the familiar path from Shimpath’s weyr to Darshanth’s to fulfil the duty to C’mine that she’d laid upon herself. She had dinner with her in a basket, enough for both of them. C’mine’s appetite had fled him, and the Healers had reported he was losing weight, but Valonna had discovered that she could coax him into keeping her company if she brought up her own supper.

It hurt her to see Darshanth so diminished on his ledge. He, at least, could be directly bullied into eating, but fed or not, he looked a shadow, his previously silver-blue hide now more grey than any proper dragon shade. Valonna greeted him with her customary forced cheer, and he ignored her with his customary unforced sadness.

It was dark within. If Valonna had not known the layout of C’mine’s weyr so well, she would have stumbled over the furniture. As it was, she found the table by feel and set the food down on it, then spoke with determined brightness. “Why, C’mine, have your glows all faded again? I’ll have to speak to the Headwoman about the quality of our supplies!” She moved about the darkened cavern as she spoke, finding and opening glow-baskets, and giving them a good shake to wake the spores into light. There was nothing wrong with the glows, but she wouldn’t draw attention to the fact that C’mine plainly hadn’t made the effort to freshen them.

After too long an interval, C’mine said, “I’m sorry, Weyrwoman.”

The light from one of the glow-baskets Valonna had opened picked him out. He was sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, beside the pair of gitar stands that held the instruments he and C’los had once played together. He was clean, shaven, and decently dressed – that much the Healers insisted on every day – but the drape of his shirt betrayed how the flesh had fallen away from his frame. “Galyann’s sent some more of those barkspice rolls you liked so much the other day,” she said. C’mine had eaten nearly half of one, instead of merely shredding it between his fingers as he did with most things. “Why don’t you sit up and have some with me?”

She knew better than to watch him to see if he would follow the instructions. It was better to simply behave as if his compliance were a given. She busied herself with setting out the contents of the supper basket on the table. At Valonna’s request, Galyann always sent things that looked enticing: a salad of sweet greens and long curls of orange fingerroot; thin slices of cured meats overlapping into a fan with a berry chutney; a plaited loaf of seeded bread, still warm, and butter and white cheese. The promised spice rolls were warm, too, and nestled in the basket beside a truss of grapes. A corked jug would hold either juice, chilled klah, or iced milk, but no beer or wine; L’stev had warned her against offering C’mine any alcohol. Valonna arranged the repast neatly, taking plates and cups from the shelves over the cold hearth to set it on.

By the time she had poured them both drinks – it was redfruit juice – C’mine had stirred himself from the floor. He sat in the chair Valonna had pulled out from the table for him, and when she placed some greens, cured wherry, and a tear of bread in front of him, he took a fork obediently in his right hand. But he didn’t apply it to the food on his plate, he didn’t drink from the cup of redfruit juice, and he didn’t look up to meet Valonna’s eyes when she spoke.

She talked about small, inconsequential things, those being the only subjects that wouldn’t make C’mine retreat further into his shell. Benner, the more experienced of the two Healer journeymen who were caring for him, had recommended that he not be reminded of anything that might excite or distress him. It should have been a relief to Valonna to empty her mind of the weighty affairs of the Weyr that occupied her hours and talk of simple matters, but finding topics that did not lead inevitably to a contemplation of C’mine’s current situation, or her own, was a constant struggle. So she found herself speaking of how well the stickleberries were ripening in the kitchen gardens, and how the good weather showed no signs of breaking, and how she was thinking about cutting her hair against the heat and humidity.

She’d moved on to some new inanity when C’mine suddenly said, “You should, Valonna. You should cut your hair.”

Valonna stopped what she’d been saying mid-sentence. “I –” She put her hand up to touch her pinned braids self-consciously. “Do you really think so?”

“They say it’s the worst thing you can do.”

It was a moment before Valonna realised he wasn’t talking about her hair. She lowered her hand. She wasn’t sure if she should prompt C’mine to explain his remark, but she did anyway. “What is, C’mine?”

“Meeting yourself.” He spoke the two words disjointedly, as though he couldn’t quite connect them with each other, and then he said, “I met myself.”

Valonna felt herself go still. Benner had told her that she should not, under any circumstances, talk to C’mine about his timing; that encouraging him to think about his catastrophic encounter with his own future self could send his mind hurtling back to that dreadful moment. The Healerhall had records that even Valonna had never seen until recently: accounts that documented the adverse effects of regular timing on dragonriders’ psyches, and considered so dangerous and inflammatory that only a tiny selection of specialist Healers were ever allowed to read them. Disorientation, anxiety, and recurring nightmares were among the mildest afflictions; some of the riders described in the records, their names redacted, had experienced delusions, paranoia, and even complete mental breakdowns from dabbling too deeply in time. C’mine was right. The records did suggest that a rider who cut timing too fine, who met himself coming, who spent too long in physical proximity to his other self, could suffer a fracturing of his very character as the doubled existence of his dragon exerted a crushing pressure on his mind. And if Benner’s reports of what C’mine had revealed were true, then the blue rider had done much more than simply come too close to himself. He and his future self had spoken, had actually touched. Valonna thought she had detected in Benner’s demeanour an incredulity that C’mine’s sanity had not shattered entirely. She would not entertain the notion that Benner thought it already had.

C’mine was looking at her.

She realised it with a start: half guilt, half fear. C’mine had not looked at her in all the time she had been visiting; not voluntarily, at least, and the clouded hollows that his eyes had become had dissuaded her from bidding him meet her gaze. But the clarity in C’mine’s eyes now was nearly as unsettling as that fog of vague self-loathing and twisted-up pain had been. It was the look of a man who had been thinking, deep beneath tortured waters, and who had now surfaced with the truths he had found there.

“It’s all right,” he said, and put his hand on hers on the table.  Valonna did restrain herself from snatching her fingers away. “I’ve done the worst thing I could do, and I’m still here, Valonna.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m still here.”

“I’m…glad you’re feeling better, C’mine.” Valonna found her mouth was dry, so dry she scarcely had the saliva to speak. It was a reason to retrieve her hand from beneath his. She reached, too quickly, for the juice cup, and nearly knocked it over. They sat in silence for a moment. Valonna was painfully aware of C’mine’s gaze on her. “The wherry is very good,” she said, to say something.

C’mine looked at his plate. Then he said, “Carleah?”

Something in the wistfulness of his tone made Valonna relax half a notch. “You can’t see her, just yet,” she said. “It’s too soon.”

“No. I know.” C’mine bobbed his head. “I understand. But…before?”

“Before?” Valonna queried.

He smiled, a small, regretful smile that did nothing to offset the sadness in his eyes. “Before we go,” he said, and then, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “Between times again. To close the loop.”

Chapter fifty-five: T’kamen

Conventional wisdom tell us that you shouldn’t show your hand unless the play requires you to do so.

This isn’t always true. If you show an opponent who’s folded to your bluff your cards, you torment him with the knowledge that he made a mistake.

Show him the hand that would have beaten his anyway, and perhaps he’ll fold sooner next time.

But never show any of your cards until the hand is over, however much you may want to bait your rival.

– Excerpt from Dragon Poker: Stratagems

26.08.22-23 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

“Between.” It wasn’t the first time R’lony’s gruff voice had broken on the word. The shake he gave his head, and the agitated sweep his hand took through his hair, were motions he had repeated more than once, too. His stare shifted from T’kamen’s face to the middle distance and back again. “Between,” he said, yet again, and appended, at last, “Faranth’s mercy, T’kamen. It was your blighted fire-lizard did it?”

T’kamen smoothed his hand over Fetch’s head. Fetch nuzzled happily into the contact, though his contentment had as much to do with the candied nuts filling his belly as with T’kamen and Epherineth’s approval. “He saw the way,” he said. “Led Epherineth through like a harbour pilot guiding a clipper.”

“It’s been under our Thread-struck noses the whole sharding time,” said Ch’fil. He was leaning up against the fireplace in R’lony’s office, his arm stretched along the mantel. “For a hundred and Faranth-knows how many Turns.”

“And the boy,” R’lony said. “M’ric. He and Trebruth can do it, too? It’s not just some residual ability of Epherineth’s from being bred in the Interval?”

T’kamen hesitated. Once he and Epherineth had made their first jump, with Fetch’s help, to Harper’s Rock, returning to Fiver Hold the same way had been less daunting. Being prepared for the extended stay between reduced the visceral terror of knowing that they were reliant entirely on the fragile guidance of a juvenile fire-lizard. M’ric had been frantic to try it out for himself, and T’kamen feared that he already knew enough to attempt it by himself were he to refuse him. So he talked him through the steps, more than once, until M’ric was bored and annoyed with it, and Epherineth coached Trebruth, and Fetch chattered at Agusta – though whether their lizardy interaction mirrored what riders and dragons shared, he didn’t know – until at last T’kamen was satisfied M’ric was ready to try.

It didn’t go well. Once airborne, Trebruth wheeled in a holding pattern for far longer than necessary, apparently struggling to overcome the deep-seated aversion to between that their training had instilled in them. T’kamen had begun to wonder if he and Epherineth should take the young pair between with them first, to give them confidence, when Trebruth finally vanished. But he’d been gone barely half a heartbeat when Epherineth lifted his head sharply, reporting with alarm that Trebruth was panicking in the grasping blackness of between.

T’kamen didn’t know exactly what Epherineth did. He felt him reach, somehow, towards Trebruth. He sensed how Fetch was enfolded in that sending, perhaps to link with Agusta. And he caught a glimpse of a reference, of themselves against the backdrop of Fiver’s stone pillars, forced into Trebruth’s consciousness to replace the visual of Harper’s Rock that had frayed from his frightened focus. Moments that felt like hours passed before Trebruth erupted back into the air above them, his eyes ashen with terror, and his hide not a much healthier shade.

M’ric didn’t completely disgrace himself, but he did throw up once he and his dragon were safely down on the ground. His description, in a shaking voice, of how the featureless oblivion had stretched away in every direction matched T’kamen’s own experience. But M’ric, lacking T’kamen’s Interval training, had panicked, and in panicking, distracted Trebruth from his supreme effort of will and concentration. Only Epherineth’s sudden intervention, M’ric said, had saved them, pulling them backwards out of between, shaken and dishevelled..

T’kamen didn’t think it had happened quite as M’ric had perceived it. Epherineth hadn’t pulled Trebruth backwards. Between, even in T’kamen’s limited human understanding, didn’t work that way. Epherineth had only steadied Trebruth in his fright and supplied a clean visual to replace the one of Harper’s Rock he had lost. But Epherineth had done something that T’kamen had not known he could do. He had reached between with his mind, from outside, to touch a dragon there. Dragons were usually unreachable while between; T’kamen had only ever heard of queens being capable of bespeaking dragons in transit. He didn’t know if it was the fire-lizards that had enabled Epherineth to reach Trebruth, or if there was some deeper connection between bronze and brown that even he couldn’t grasp. But he didn’t tell M’ric any of that. He’d had a bad enough scare without knowing that his life, and his dragon’s, had been preserved by a skill T’kamen hadn’t even known that Epherineth possessed. And if T’kamen had feared that M’ric would treat the ability to go between with too little regard for his own safety, then at least, for now, he had no worries on that account.

“They will be able to,” T’kamen said at last, in answer to R’lony’s question, and then added, “but not easily. They need to be trained to use between safely.”

“And you’ve cut M’ric loose?” R’lony demanded, his heavy brows rising incredulously. “With that knowledge, with that power?”

“He won’t use it,” T’kamen said, flatly certain. “M’ric’s not stupid –”

“He’s a teenager,” R’lony growled. “He’ll boast of it to anybody who’ll listen.”

The insult to M’ric made T’kamen stiffen. R’lony’s wilful ignorance of the young man’s complicated character irritated him. “He will not,” he said, reining hard back on his ire. “I made it clear to him that he couldn’t tell anyone.”

“You made it clear?” R’lony snorted. “The boy outranks you, T’kamen. You have no power to command him.”

Ch’fil interjected brusquely. “If T’kamen told him to keep his mouth shut, R’lony, I’ve no qualms he will.” He met T’kamen’s eyes. “Rank be blighted, there’s no doubting that boy’s loyalty to you.”

T’kamen nodded to the remark, grateful for Ch’fil’s intervention. “I’m well aware of the significance of what Epherineth achieved today. That’s why I brought this straight to you.”

Even as he said it, he recognised his mistake. He had reported directly to Ch’fil on their straight flight return from Redyen Hold, and Ch’fil had decided the matter should go to R’lony. Almost, T’kamen expected the Marshal to make some withering remark about the nature of his loyalty, but while R’lony’s eyes tightened enough to make clear that he had not missed the implication, he didn’t dwell upon it. “I’m not sure you do,” R’lony said. He looked briefly conflicted, his brow descending again over his deep-set eyes, and then he said, “And I’m not prepared to risk either of you unleashing this on the Weyr, by design or by mistake.”

T’kamen felt Epherineth’s surprise and then chagrin as the influence of a more senior dragon came down upon him. He didn’t need to ask to know what it was. “You’re having Donauth lean on him?”

The compressed line of R’lony’s lips spoke as eloquently of his unwillingness as his words. “Would that I could keep Strategic affairs to Strategic branch, but he’s not to go between again without permission.”

R’lony’s tacit admission that Epherineth could not be quelled by any dragon less than a queen did at least give T’kamen an instant’s satisfaction. “What do you mean, Strategic affairs?” he asked. “I know we can’t spring this knowledge on the Weyr without warning, but dragons can go between again. That’s not a matter to be kept to Strategic.”

“Then you’d bring S’leondes into this confidence?” R’lony asked, shaking his head. “Doesn’t he have enough of an advantage already? Do you want to grant him greater adulation and acclaim for his deliverance of dragonriders than he’s already gathered?”

“I don’t like him much more than you do, R’lony,” said T’kamen, “but that doesn’t make it right to keep this from the man who represents six-sevenths of Madellon’s dragonriders.”

“And what about the one-sixth he doesn’t? What about what’s right for them? Faranth, man!” R’lony flung his arms up in frustration. “You’ve been here long enough now to know how we’re treated. You know what a demoralising, downtrodden life it is to ride a bronze or brown dragon.” He took a breath, and his eyes beneath his shelf of a brow glimmered with the distant prospect of hope. “But if the Seventh’s dragons could go between – if browns and bronzes could teleport – if Strategic could prove its worth in that way – maybe we’d win back some honour. Maybe we’d be worthy of respect again. Maybe S’leondes would have to admit that we deserve our place on Pern.”

“And if blues and greens could go between maybe fewer of them would die before their riders were twenty Turns old,” said T’kamen. “Between doesn’t belong to Strategic division, R’lony.”

R’lony rounded on him. “But you do.” His pale blue eyes had gone cold again. “You belong to Strategic. And Strategic is mine.”

T’kamen felt the muscles of his face strain against the desire to glower. “No,” he said, softly. “I won’t be a chess piece in this game you and S’leondes play. This is too important – between is too important – to be a prize for you to gloat over and hoard to yourself just to spite him.”

“You have the gall to accuse me of hoarding it to myself? When you stand there in all your self-righteousness and declare you won’t use it to help your fellow riders? You Thread-blighted hypocrite!”

“You’re the hypocrite, R’lony,” T’kamen said, low and steady. “Do you even feel it when a fighting dragon dies? Do you care at all?”

“Do I feel it?” R’lony near bit off his tongue with the curt snap of his words. “By the First, T’kamen, if you weren’t half a shaffing cripple already...” He stood there, radiating fury, his chest heaving with it. “I’d love to feel it. I’d love that luxury. But I can’t. It’s been twenty-three Turns since I was in a position to feel it every time a dragon got hit by Thread and died. Twenty-three Turns since I was reduced to this.” He gestured angrily at the charts and maps, the mundane and necessary tools of his mundane and necessary work. “They aren’t dragons any more, T’kamen. Do you understand me? They’re tallies and registers. Rosters and assignments. Casualties and losses. Do you know why every dragonpair is assigned a number? Because it’s easier to put a line through a number than it is through the name of a dragonet your own dragon sired less than two Turns ago. If I felt it a tenth as much as I’d like to, I couldn’t do this job at all. So no, T’kamen. I don’t feel it. But if you accuse me of not caring again, just because I don’t wail like a woman every time another fleeting green or blue life comes to an end, I swear, cripple or not, I’ll smash your shaffing face for you.”

For a time, neither of them spoke. T’kamen escaped, for a moment, the instant of regret he felt at his accusation by wondering if R’lony had ever allowed himself such an outburst before. Still, he felt he was right. He wouldn’t yield to R’lony’s self-serving argument. If restoring between to the dragonriders of Pern was the reason he and Epherineth had come to the Pass, he would restore it to all riders, not just a select few. R’lony’s ancient rivalry with S’leondes clouded his motivations far too much for T’kamen to trust him. He took a breath, preparing to resume the argument.

R’lony beat him to it, though his tone had turned petulant. “I don’t know why I’m even wasting my time trying to convince you. Seems to me that now we know fire-lizards are the key, you’re hardly necessary.”

“Shard it, R’lony!” T’kamen said. “Do you have any idea what an irresponsible notion that is?”

“The very first dragonriders must have had to figure out between for themselves,” R’lony pointed out stubbornly. “I don’t see why we couldn’t do the same.”

“The first dragonriders didn’t have to weave a connection between rider, dragon, and fire-lizard,” T’kamen said. “And who knows how many of them were lost before they got it right. Faranth.” The thought of how L’stev would have reacted to a weyrling who declared he could go between untutored gave him a reflexive shudder of dread. “Even M’ric wasn’t rash enough to think he could work it out for himself.”

R’lony dismissed that. “M’ric’s not ten minutes out of the barracks. If there’s one thing C’rastro does right with the weyrlings, it’s scare them off even thinking about between. Of course he’d look to you to hold his hand.” His obdurate stare made it plain that he felt no such need for guidance.

T’kamen was gripped with the desire to shake sense into him. He settled for a glare. “You’re an idiot, R’lony.”

“You’re both idiots.” Ch’fil’s quiet words sliced across their dispute. They both turned to him, equally stung, but Ch’fil went on before either of them could speak. “You’re blind to what should be obvious. You’re not going to be going between, R’lony, with or without T’kamen’s help.” His shrewd gaze settled on R’lony. “Geninth’s too old.”

R’lony went quite still, and a stricken look entered his eyes. “But it’s different, now,” he said. “A fire-lizard –”

“Can guide a dragon,” Ch’fil said, looking to T’kamen for confirmation. T’kamen nodded slowly, realising himself, with a sick jolt in his stomach, the implications of Ch’fil’s calm reasoning. “And only guide it. A helmsman’s no good to a boat that’s been beached for twenty-five Turns.”

R’lony sat down bonelessly in his chair, as if the comprehension of Ch’fil’s words had taken all the starch out of him. “Faranth,” he muttered. “Faranth, I thought…” He didn’t complete the sentence. He looked pole-axed.

Ch’fil didn’t. T’kamen realised he must have followed the thought through long before today, perhaps as long ago as the first time T’kamen had mentioned his hypothesis that fire-lizards were the key, because the known limitation that would prevent Geninth from ever going between applied to Stratomath, too. Both browns were far past the age at which the ability to go between atrophied for lack of use. T’kamen kept his tone carefully neutral. “How many of Madellon’s dragons are young enough?”

“Three bronzes,” Ch’fil replied when R’lony, still dumbstruck in his disappointment, didn’t. “Bularth, Stenseth, Monbeth. Vralsanth’s nearly nine; he’d be borderline. We’ve had, what, thirty-some browns Hatched in the last ten Turns? R’lony?”

At Ch’fil’s prompt, R’lony gave a start from his misery. “What? Browns?” He pulled a record hide from a cabinet beside his desk, and ran his finger down it. He looked relieved to have something to do. “There are twenty-nine under ten. Twenty-four under eight.” He raised his chin to look unblinkingly at T’kamen, stubbornness characterising his jaw once again. “Twenty-seven dragons young enough in the Seventh.”

“And four or five hundred in the Fighting Wings,” T’kamen pointed out.

“Ah, Faranth, the pair of you are like whers with a bone!” Ch’fil  said. “Stop snarling at each other and sharding well think.” He glared at them both, his deep-graven scars adding severity to his expression. “R’lony, T’kamen’s right about the dangers of between. You know that as well as I do. He and Epherineth are the only dragonpair on Pern who know anything about it, and we’d be idiotic to think we don’t need them.” Then, giving neither of them a chance to respond, Ch’fil continued, “But T’kamen, you’re just being naïve. You don’t want to be R’lony’s pawn. No man does. But you’re a piece here, not a player. You have no influence in this time and this Madellon. Maybe that’ll change. Maybe it has to. But for now, while you possess the spark of between, you’re the most important dragonrider alive, and until that spark can be coaxed into a flame, you need to be protected.”

“Protected?” T’kamen demanded. “From what?”

“From yourself, at the first,” Ch’fil said. There was a little of disgust, a little of admiration in his voice. “You’ve spent your own health and your dragon’s in pursuit of between. Coming here could have killed you. Alanne nearly did. You risked yourself and M’ric between without leaving any indication of what you were trying to do. What if you’d killed yourself, and denied Pern any chance of regaining the use of between?”

T’kamen didn’t like to admit how close it had nearly come to that. “It was my risk to take.”

“Oh, aye, and look how well that’s been going for you! No one’s going to write you a shaffing Ballad for getting yourself killed before you do something useful!” He snorted with disgust. “You need protection, T’kamen, but you also need patronage. All you’ve gained from breaking your own trail is a bad leg and an ugly dragon.”

T’kamen wouldn’t have taken that remark from almost any other dragonrider. Even coming from Ch’fil it made him bristle. He realised that R’lony had gone silent and still, as if he knew that T’kamen was more likely to heed Ch’fil’s counsel than his own. “I don’t deny that I need help,” he said doggedly. “Or I wouldn’t have come to you.” He looked at R’lony. “But between shouldn’t be used as a weapon in your war with S’leondes.”

“And you think it wouldn’t be if he knew about it?” Ch’fil asked. “I’ll tell you what would happen if you brought S’leondes in on this secret now. You wouldn’t even be a pawn. You’d be a tunnel-snake caught between two hatchlings; R’lony one end, S’leondes the other. And the greater good has never been the priority of either one of them.” Ch’fil’s words were jagged edged, softened not at all by any concern for what R’lony might think of him for saying them. T’kamen glimpsed the taut anger in his face. But Ch’fil went on, heedless of the damage he did to his own standing with R’lony. “You have the only spark in a world that’s been without fire for a hundred Turns. If a fight breaks out over it, it’ll get snuffed out. So you let R’lony – and me – help you to build it up. Let it become something that can be shared with everyone – every colour, every Weyr – in shelter and safety.”

“Amongst Strategic,” T’kamen said. He tasted the sourness of his own words.

“Aye, at first,” Ch’fil said. “With riders we can trust to keep their mouths shut. And in privacy, without the eyes of the world trained on us while we feel our way.” He cast a look in R’lony’s direction. “And when we know what it is that we have, then we bring S’leondes into it.”

R’lony had been right to let Ch’fil do the talking, T’kamen thought. Ch’fil’s bluntness was more persuasive than anything R’lony could have said. He still didn’t like the feeling that he was being recruited into R’lony’s war against S’leondes, but reluctantly, he conceded that Ch’fil was right. He had little power of his own, and while there were a few riders he thought he could honestly call his friends, they were too new for him to trust implicitly. “I’ll choose the riders to be trained,” he said.

“There are only twenty-seven,” R’lony objected.

T’kamen shook his head. “I’ll keep it to the Seventh, but I’m no Weyrlingmaster. I can’t train that many riders at once.” And then he laughed, recognising what they’d all overlooked. “Not to mention, where on Pern are we going to find another twenty-seven fire-lizard eggs?”

They were all silent a moment to contemplate that, but only a moment. “Alanne’s due a delivery tomorrow,” R’lony said. “You’ll go, Ch’fil. Seems you’re more persuasive than me.”

“What about Blue Shale? That was where you went for fire-lizards in the Interval.” The thought, connected as it was to Sarenya, caused T’kamen a fleeting lance of pain. “The Beastcraft at Blue Shale.”

“Not for a long time.” Ch’fil sounded tired. “You have to remember T’kamen, we…well. You’ve seen Little Madellon.” He looked at Fetch. “You’ve seen what fire-lizards do there.”

“No better than wild wherries,” R’lony said. He, too, was looking at T’kamen’s fire-lizard, with distaste. “Stinking carrion-eaters.”

T’kamen wondered how many riders would balk at the idea of deliberating Impressing a fire-lizard. “If they’ve been vilified for this long, it can’t only be because of Alanne’s fair.”

The two brown riders avoided his gaze, and each other’s, for a minute. Then Ch’fil said, “They used to take the bodies out to sea.” His scars deepened. “Then they started washing up.”

He didn’t need to be any more descriptive than that. When dead creatures washed up on a beach – shipfish, the larger types of eel, and the occasional deep-water monster – it never took long for the local wildlife to find them. Fire-lizards might not risk competing with wherries for an eight-foot shipfish carcass, but the massive corpse of a dragon would provide plenty for all. Well could T’kamen imagine the revulsion dragonriders had felt at the rotting, water-bloated corpses littering the beaches, not only as food for scavenging lizard fairs, but as graphic evidence of dragons’ mortality to the coastal people of Pern. “They didn’t just fall out of favour,” he said. “You wiped them out.”

“Not me personally,” R’lony said, in a growl. “It all happened long before my time.”

T’kamen wondered how it had been done. Poison, he supposed; easy enough to put out laced meat for the local fairs to devour. He found himself resting a hand protectively on Fetch’s back. “There must be beaches along the unpopulated coast with lizards still.”

“Not much of that left,” said Ch’fil. “Unpopulated coast. When your average field has no more than an even chance of going a Turn without smoking holes in it, the sea starts looking like a good place to rely on for food.”

“M’ric’s queen,” said R’lony. “When will it be old enough to mate?”

T’kamen didn’t know. “I don’t have much knowledge of fire-lizards,” he admitted. “My…” He groped for the right epithet for Sarenya, then gave up. “I knew a Beastcrafter with fire-lizards, but they were both males.”

“Found or bred, it doesn’t matter,” said Ch’fil. “Fact is, we won’t be training anyone to go between overnight, let alone all the dragons of Pern.”

“I’ll need to keep working with M’ric.” T’kamen met R’lony’s disapproving frown levelly. “Scowl all you like, R’lony. He’s a danger to himself untrained. And to the secret of it, with him flying under S’leondes. Donauth’s command or not, if Trebruth were to try dodging a Thread…”

“You should never have got him involved,” R’lony said censoriously.

“Nonetheless,” T’kamen said. “I did, and he is.”

“This thaw’s going to make it harder for M’ric to find time away from his duties,” said Ch’fil. “Best hope for another cold spell before the winter’s out. And that he keeps himself safe in Fall.”

The foreknowledge T’kamen couldn’t share with them in no way lessened his quiet pride when he said, “He’s more than capable of that.”

“Still,” said R’lony. “Neither of you are to go between without permission. I’ll find time in your roster for you to work on it, but you’ll do so under Donauth’s scrutiny. And circumspectly.”

With that, R’lony dismissed him. Ch’fil remained, perhaps to finalise the Seventh’s preparations for tomorrow’s Fall; perhaps to discuss, in T’kamen’s absence, the full implications of the news he and Epherineth had brought them. That notion didn’t sit entirely right with T’kamen. He was still uncertain of the wisdom of keeping between confined to Strategic, even temporarily. He didn’t trust R’lony. But he did trust Ch’fil, and in the end, he supposed that would have to be enough. If nothing else, he thought, as he made his halting, stiff-legged way back to Epherineth’s weyr, Ch’fil had been right about the damage he’d caused them both. Perhaps R’lony’s support would smooth the way now.

Still, the chessboard in T’kamen’s weyr was an uncomfortable reminder of the role he had consented to play. El’yan must have been there, for the chessmen were arranged in a different configuration from how T’kamen had left them, most of them cleared to the side. He studied the remaining pieces, trying to see not only the route to a checkmate, but the underlying lesson El’yan sought to teach him. It struck him, as it had before, that the rules of dragon chess, at least, had resisted the upheaval of the Weyr’s hierarchy. The Weyrleader was still the most powerful and far-ranging piece, and the game could still only be won by mating the Weyrwoman. The thought made wryness quirk T’kamen’s mouth.

El’yan’s lesson eluded him, and he realised he was more tired than he’d thought. Epherineth was already asleep, wearied as much from his mental efforts as from the long straight laden flight back from Redyen. T’kamen went to bed.

The morning came with brightness and warmth enough to wipe Madellon clean of the last of the slush. There were grumbles in the dining hall, when T’kamen broke his fast, that the afternoon’s Thread would fall lethally true, unhindered by cold or rain. He looked for M’ric but did not see him, though Epherineth touched minds with Trebruth and reported that he seemed recovered from his fright.

It was strange to prepare Epherineth for Fall, with all that had changed. Thread was scheduled to fall over a slice of Madellon’s territory no more than an hour’s flight away, and even the Seventh would not have to depart the Weyr until after noon; still, it seemed faintly absurd that they should have to fly straight to meet it. Not, perhaps, in the same scant few heartbeats that a journey between had taken when Epherineth had been able to find his own way, but no more than twice that span of time.

He wondered how long it would take between to return to the Interval.

The thought came swift and unbidden, and swiftly after it came the giddy rush of possibilities. They could go back. Back to Madellon as they knew it. Back to the office he’d deserted, the queen Epherineth had abandoned, the weyrlings they’d left to fend for themselves. And they wouldn’t go empty-handed. They had won back the secret of between. There were fire-lizards in the Interval, lots of fire-lizards, enough fire-lizards for every dragonpair on Pern. Dragons would not have to do without between. The internal grievances that ate at Pass Madellon’s dragons like a canker would no longer be the inevitable consequence of between’s loss. Everything would be set right, past, present and future. Everything.

You know that it is not possible. Epherineth’s voice, gentle, but unyieldingly firm, intruded on his spiralling vision, stopping it cold.

T’kamen leaned hard against his neck, careless of the oil that he had been working into the soft hide, the unceremonious destruction of the fragile fantasy he yearned after crushing him. He couldn’t speak, but he knew he bled bright pain into their shared awareness.

Epherineth spoke for him. You know this as well as I do. We are here. We cannot change the yesterday that shaped today. We have not. You know this. You have always known this.

And it was true. They couldn’t change the events that had led them to the Pass, nor the circumstances in which they had found themselves. Yet comprehending a thing was not the same as accepting it. The slenderest crack of hope had remained in T’kamen’s heart, and their trip between yesterday had shouldered it wider. Through that vulnerability, his longing for everything they had lost had escaped. It hurt. It hurt, and he did not have to tell Epherineth. He hurt with him. Dragon-memory or not, Epherineth’s heart pined as brokenly for Shimpath as T’kamen’s did for Sarenya.

T’kamen raised his head. His brow was sticky with oil. “But we can shape tomorrow.”

We must. Simply by being. Epherineth turned his scarred muzzle upwards. And neither of us needs be so alone.

His tone was determined. T’kamen followed his gaze. Several of Madellon’s greens were preening up in the wintry sunshine. It took him a moment to identify Suatreth among them. “You want to go after her?” he asked Epherineth. “Now?”

I can’t very well when she isn’t about to rise.

“But now?” If Epherineth had meant to divert him from his sadness, he’d succeeded. “Do we even have time before Fall?”

Epherineth radiated amusement. She’s a green. How long do you think it will take me?

“You haven’t caught a green in more than a Turn.”

Then it won’t take you long, either.

It was so rare for Epherineth to actually make a jest that T’kamen was taken aback. “Do I at least have time for a bath first?” he asked, torn between annoyance at the lack of warning and relief at the distraction.

Epherineth nosed T’kamen’s cane towards him from where it was leaning against the wall. No.

So T’kamen was still dirty from seeing to Epherineth when he limped over to the weyr where a gang of male riders waited, darting glances up towards Suatreth, in a loose circle around the green dragon’s rider. He made it twelve before several more joined and he lost his count: all blue riders. It crossed his mind fleetingly that Suatreth’s rider must not have invited any other Seventh riders to her dragon’s flights. She turned slowly where she stood, assessing her suitors, and then her eyes fell on T’kamen. For a moment he wondered, with a slump back into his earlier bleakness, what she must see: the lame, dirty, disgraced rider of a scarred and over-large Seventh Flight bronze. For a moment he feared to meet her gaze, afraid of what he would find there. But then he did. Her snapping dark eyes sparkled with pleasure, and her cheeks dimpled as she grinned at him. And then she was gone.

Afterwards, T’kamen reflected wryly that Epherineth had been right. It hadn’t taken either of them long. Suatreth’s rider didn’t seem to mind, by the way she pillowed her head on his shoulder with a sleepy murmur of contentment, while the flashes of a little green dragon, snugged and smug in Epherineth’s grasp, that overlaid T’kamen’s vision from time to time suggested that Suatreth was not displeased, either.

He realised with a start that fingers were exploring his face. The green rider’s fingertips smeared in the oil and sweat mingled on his brow. “Suatreth says your dragon is all oily, too.”

T’kamen wiped his forehead with his sleeve. His shirt was still half on, his trousers more than half off. “I’m sorry,” he offered. “Epherineth didn’t give me much warning.”

The green rider gave a gentle snort. “It’s a marvel he noticed her at all, for all the times she’s waved her tail in his face.” Her breath was warm against T’kamen’s neck as she laughed soundlessly. “I’m glad he did. And not just because Su’s been randy for your bronze.” Her fingers had reached the short scruff of his beard. “You were handsomer before you grew this.”

Suddenly disconcerted, T’kamen reached up and seized the young woman’s hand. He felt her muscles tense, and softened his grasp on her fingers. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and then groped for the green rider’s name. “It’s Leda, isn’t it?”

Her body went even more taut; too late T’kamen realised his mistake. “Faranth,” she said, and sat up, shaking his hand free of hers. The rumpled bedfurs fell away from her. She was more properly dressed than T’kamen, which was to say that she was properly undressed. “You didn’t even know – Faranth!”

“Leda,” T’kamen said, as she snatched the bedfur around herself. “I’m –” He caught himself before he apologised yet again. “That was crass of me. I didn’t have but a moment’s notice that Epherineth was going to chase. I’d have washed up first at the least, otherwise.”

The last came out with dismay and Leda paused, sitting on the edge of the bed, the fur clasped above her breasts. “Well,” she said, sounding slightly mollified, but only slightly. “I’ll take that as an apology, I suppose.”

T’kamen tried not to sigh. This, he recalled, was why he’d never been a rider to encourage his dragon into chasing greens. He had a rare knack for offending his flight partners in the post-coital awkwardness. “I –” he began, but Leda was already talking.

“It’s just that it’s not as if I’m Aurel or Stevanti,” she said. “Or G’mend, for that matter, though I suppose you wouldn’t have liked to chase Ullerth anyway.” She frowned at the perplexed expression T’kamen supposed he must be wearing. “Aurel. Stevanti. They asked you to join their dragons’ flights. Oh, don’t tell me you’re one of those men who only remembers a dragon’s name and not her riders?” She shook her head crossly. “Rhosanth and Tennatath’s riders. Well, I suppose you wouldn’t know, if you haven’t flown them. And you haven’t flown them, because they’d have said if you had!”

T’kamen was lost. Do you have any idea?

None. Epherineth didn’t sound very interested.

“And you shouldn’t,” Leda went on, before T’kamen could draw breath. “Fly them, that is. I mean, go ahead if you want to, it’s no hide off my tail, but Aurel only offered because Rhosanth likes big dragons, and Stevanti because she wanted to make a trophy of your underfurs.” She paused. “Figuratively, that is. I don’t think she actually collects underfurs. Faranth knows she’d have a mountain if she did. And as for G’mend, who even knows what goes on in that little creeper’s head. What I’m trying to say is, it’s not as if you have that many options, as far as green riders who actually want to bed with you. Except me. Because I do. I mean, I did. Want to bed with you. That is.”

She said the last part in a rush. T’kamen blinked. “Thank you,” he said, and stopped himself short of adding, I think.

“Oh, ‘thank you’, he says,” said Leda, with another snort. “Well, you should be thankful. And why did you grow that beard? It makes you look like all the rest of the crusty old Seventh riders. How old are you, anyway?”

T’kamen touched his beard self-consciously. “I cut myself if I shave, where the scar’s still proud,” he said. “And I’m thirty-two. Thirty-three now, I suppose.”

“Thirty-three,” Leda said. “Faranth. Cassah said it’d be like sleeping with my grandfather. She’s not far off.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re not my grandfather, are you? I mean, you being from a thousand Turns ago…”

“A hundred and twenty-five,” T’kamen corrected her wearily, and then added, “And it’s not likely.”

“No one there wanted to bed with you, either?” Leda asked, and then grinned.

T’kamen grasped that she was teasing him. It was unsettling, to have this young woman, virtually a stranger to him, joshing with him as if they were old acquaintances. “I did all right,” he said, more grumpily that he meant.

Leda’s chagrined look pained him. “I didn’t mean –” she started. “That is, I mean…I was just joking.” She put out a hand to him. The fur slipped down. “I do think you’re sexy. Even with the scars and the grey hair and the stupid beard.”

It was the most genuine compliment, and the most brutal criticism, T’kamen had ever received in the same sentence. “You’re a very beautiful young woman,” he said dutifully.

“Well, I know that,” said Leda. “Fifteen blues is not a bad turn-out. Though most of them won’t bother next time if there’s even a sniff of a chance that your bronze will be chasing again. No one likes losing to a Seventh dragon.”

The memory, fading already, of how Epherineth had swept dismissively through the pack of dragons to claim Suatreth made T’kamen wince. He wondered if any of those blue riders would bleat about his conduct. T’kamen discovered he didn’t care if they did. He and Epherineth had taken few satisfactions since arriving in the Pass. Epherineth’s imperious demonstration of superiority, even against a gang of runty blues, was balm to his ragged pride. So, too, was the implication that they would be welcome at Suatreth’s next flight. And the fact that Leda was still sitting there, the bedfurs slipping casually off her body in a way that T’kamen suddenly realised wasn’t accidental.

He knew a moment of ambivalence. A flight was one thing, but Leda was a very young woman. He doubted her twentieth Turn was far behind her. He was, in every sense, much older than her. Her casual catalogue of his flaws made it clear how aware she was of that. He was a bronze rider, still under sentence for crimes known to all. He was no prize.

Yet she still wanted him.

That knowledge stopped his sober analysis dead. His obvious unsuitability for her faded as a reason for him to abstain in the face of her frank desire. It halted his careful deliberation before he had even begun to question his own reasons for desiring her. She was a woman and she was young and she was willing. He was a man, and he was weak.

“Leda,” he said. He put his hand out to her, not touching her. If he scrupled no further, he would at least have her explicit consent.

Her eyes opened wider with pleasure. She took his hand. Her fingers were soft; her breast, even softer, when she placed his hand upon it. “T’kamen…” She sighed out his name, and doubt prickled him at the sound of it, but not enough to make him stop. He fumbled after Epherineth’s opinion, but Epherineth was as beguiled by Suatreth’s candid admiration as T’kamen was by Leda’s. By her softness, and her warmth, and her willingness. And nothing else. It wasn’t enough for either of them. But it was enough for now.

Perhaps it was lucky that T’kamen didn’t have the stamina of a twenty-Turn-old. It meant that when Ch’fil came clattering into the flight weyr, cursing and swearing over the dim light and the clothes scattered on the floor that almost tripped him up, he found them at rest. It was a rude enough interruption nonetheless. “T’kamen, you dirty bastard, you in there?”

T’kamen had enough time to roll out of bed and fling the bedfur over Leda before Ch’fil abruptly opened the glow-basket, flooding the weyr with light. “Faranth, Ch’fil,” he complained, shielding his eyes. “Some notice?”

“If your blighted dragon wasn’t all loved up you’d’ve had some.” Ch’fil shot a glance at Leda, watching from beneath the bedfur, and then grabbed T’kamen’s arm. “A word!”

T’kamen didn’t even have time to grab up the trousers he’d discarded. Fortunately the flight weyr’s entrance was hidden from the Weyr at large by a chance kink in the passage leading to it, and Ch’fil dragged him only that far. “What is it?” he asked, aware of and unhappy with the sulky tone in his own voice at being disturbed.

“Tell me you’re not a man who holds grudges,” Ch’fil said. He sounded shaken. “Tell me you’d not do a terrible thing in vengeance for past wrongs.”

T’kamen looked at him blankly. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“That!” Ch’fil gestured at T’kamen’s leg. “Your face! Epherineth’s! You didn’t seek revenge for them?”

“How could I?” T’kamen asked. He was too sated and stupid from his energetics with Leda to puzzle out Ch’fil’s meaning.

Ch’fil’s eyes raked his face, and then some of the tension went out of him. “It wasn’t you, was it?” he said. Relief, tinged with remorse, overlaid his tone. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

“Not the first.”

“Faranth.” Ch’fil took a deep breath, then braced his shoulders. “I’ve just been to Little Madellon.”

T’kamen recalled their conversation of the previous night. It felt like days ago. “Did you get any eggs?”

“No. Didn’t find any eggs. Didn’t find any fire-lizards.” Ch’fil met T’kamen’s confused gaze, and at last he recognised the horror there. “Just Alanne. Dead. Alanne’s dead.”

Chapter fifty-six: Carleah

A queen in a clutch is like the bonfire in a camp: the centre, the focal point, the source of light and heat around which all the other gather. Yet for all her centrality to the life of the class, she will never truly be part of its fellowship. A queen has no peers but other queens, and queens seldom enjoy one another’s company. For this reason, a queen rider must be prepared to be far more self-sufficient than any other dragonrider in the Weyr.

– Weyrlingmaster T’geon, Management Of The Queen Weyrling

100.04.12 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

The dining hall door opened, and Carleah looked hopefully up, as she had every morning for the last sevenday. But it was just A’len, and she sighed, and looked back down at her plate, and at the breakfast she’d been picking at without enthusiasm or appetite.

“I miss him too,” Tarshe said softly, from where she sat on Carleah’s left.

Carleah picked up a crust of toast and bit it determinedly in half. “I don’t care what Low-Brow says. I’m going to sneak in and see him today. You’ll cover for me, won’t you?”

“Always,” said Tarshe.

They gripped wrists for a moment, fiercely.

Across the table, Kessirke flicked her head, as if dismissing something beneath her attention, and turned to talk to Adzai, but when Carleah risked a glance she saw the angry injury in the other green rider’s eyes.

Well, it wasn’t her fault that Kessirke was taking Carleah’s new friendship with Tarshe so personally. It wasn’t even as if they’d been best friends before. And Kess had been so condescending about Carleah’s condition. “It must be so difficult for you,” she’d said, wide-eyed, stroking Irdanth’s neck, “I don’t know how you can bear not to hear her.”

Chenda had been even worse. “It must be like you don’t even have a dragon any more.”

“I have a dragon,” Carleah had snapped back. “And what we have is far too strong to be affected by a little setback like this!”

But no one had dared even hint at the question that she’d been asking herself ever since Long Bay. What if they don’t find the antidote? What if you can never hear Jagunth ever again?

No one except Tarshe, anyway.

“We’ll manage.” Tarshe said it matter-of-factly. “One way or another, we will. Not going to let a little thing like this stop us being the best sharding dragonriders we can be.”

Tarshe’s resolve gave Carleah heart. And after the first few days, when they’d both been in and out of the infirmary so often they might as well have been living there, it had seemed perfectly natural that they’d begun to spend more and more time in each other’s company. None of the other weyrlings had gone through what they’d gone through together. None of them could understand what it was really like to be dragon-deaf.

It was curious, though, Carleah thought, as she tackled her toast with grim resolve, how many of the Wildfires had realigned themselves into new patterns since the arrival – and subsequent departure – of the Southerners, and the events of Long Bay. M’touf had become isolated by the very fact of Atath’s ability to go between, and yet he seemed happier in himself than he’d ever been as the awkward third wheel of K’ralthe and K’dam’s clique. R’von and H’nar seemed both closer and more competitive than ever, while M’rany had begun to spend more time with P’lian. And S’terlion and T’gala  were inseparable, although now that the truth about T’gala’s gender was out, S’terlion had been strictly banned from visiting her weyr alone.

But the change Carleah liked the least was the appointment of A’len as Assistant Weyrlingmaster.

C’mine was gone, and L’stev didn’t want her seeing him. “He got himself in a state at Long Bay when you were taken,” the Weyrlingmaster had told her severely, when she’d asked to see him.

“But that wasn’t my fault!”

“It’s not about fault. He needs to get his head back on straight. Too many people have been cutting him too much slack for too long.” L’stev looked disgusted with himself. “I’m one of them.”

“Well, when will he be back as your assistant?” Carleah pressed.

“He won’t.”

Carleah was honest enough with herself to know that she was being unfair to A’len. She had nothing against him personally. He was a respected Wingsecond, and he’d always been a friend of her da’s. But he wasn’t C’mine, and for that failing alone she resented him.

“All right, weyrlings,” A’len said, writing on the chalkboard in his narrow, slanted print. “New assignments. These are going to be your starting formations from this morning.”

Carleah exchanged a look with Tarshe.

Jagunth had been in a trio with Warjenth and Nerbeth – the two greens closest to her size – since they’d begun training. Now, Warjenth had been placed with Irdanth and Lirpath, and Nerbeth moved into Bristath and Kitlith’s trio. The three bronzes were all together, and Heppeth’s name was listed with the two remaining Wildfire browns. Jagunth wasn’t there at all. Neither was Berzunth.

“I don’t have an assignment,” M’touf complained.

“Nor do –” Carleah began.

“M’touf,” A’len said, over their heads, “you’re going to be getting some one-to-one between training –”

“Yeah?” M’touf asked, brightening.

“– with me,” A’len finished.

M’touf’s face fell.

“Tarshe,” A’len went on, ignoring M’touf’s dismay, “and Carleah. You’re to report to the Weyrwoman.”

“Both of us?” asked Carleah.

“Both of you.”

Automatically, Carleah began to reach out to Jagunth to relay this new development. She stopped herself just before the thought ran into the barrier between them.

“Best we go tell our girls, then,” Tarshe said.

Carleah met her look, noticing, as she always did now, how the bright blue of Tarshe’s irises was almost completely obscured by the blackness of her dilated pupils. “Good idea.”

Jagunth and Berzunth were sitting side by side on the lake shore, slightly removed from the other dragonets. As Carleah and Tarshe emerged from the barracks, Berzunth nudged Jagunth, and the pair of them watched their riders approach with identically blue eyes.

Carleah had caught L’stev looking at their two dragonets with the most screwed-up expression on his face. “What is it?” she’d asked him, and he’d just shaken his head, and walked off muttering something about oil and water. Perhaps it wasn’t normal for a queen and a green to get on so well. But, like their riders, Berzunth and Jagunth had more in common than most dragons.

“What do you think they talk about?” Carleah asked Tarshe. “Between themselves, I mean.”

Tarshe stroked the end of Berzunth’s nose, frowning. “Sometimes I’m not sure they really do,” she said at last. “Not like we’ll talk about this and that. Not even like they talk to us. They…” She paused. “When they talk to us, they form thoughts, like we form sentences. As if they’re having to translate what they want to say into something we can understand. But when they’re talking to each other, it’s…different. They don’t think specific things at each other unless they’re relaying messages. It’s like they think in a cloud, and when they want to share something with other dragons they just let the clouds kind of…intersect.”

Carleah had never heard it described that way before. She shaded her eyes with one hand. “So what one dragon knows, they all know?”

“I don’t think so. Though some dragons are better at keeping private things private than others.” Tarshe shrugged. “I’ve never tried to explain it before. And since I can’t hear any of it right now…” She laughed. “It’s almost peaceful. Ever since I came to Madellon it’s been like having background noise constantly in my head, even with Berzunth helping to filter it out. Two hundred dragons all chattering away.”

“But,” Carleah said, uncertainly, “you don’t want to stay deaf to Berzunth forever…”

Tarshe’s hand went still on her queen’s muzzle. “No. Right now, I’d do just about anything to be annoyed by the background noise again.”

They crossed the Bowl together in silence. As they approached the Weyrwoman’s weyr, where Shimpath lay in solitary golden splendour, Tarshe stopped. “It’s a relief,” she said. “Being able to talk to you about this.”

Carleah wasn’t oblivious to the quiet, firm implication in Tarshe’s voice.  “I understand,” she said, and hoped she sounded grave. “You can always trust me, Tarshe.”

“Aye,” said Tarshe. “I know.”

They greeted Shimpath politely, and Valonna’s queen responded with a little muttering rumble. A moment later, Valonna called out from within. “Please come on in!”

The Weyrwoman was sitting behind her desk, looking weary. H’ned, the Deputy Weyrleader, was leaning over her, stabbing his finger down on a slate. “…just don’t think this one is a good fit,” he was saying, as Tarshe and Carleah came in. “I’d sooner the Istan man, P’larcus.”

Valonna threw Tarshe an acknowledging glance before returning her gaze to H’ned. “From a breeding perspective, H’ned, it’s too close to home. Madellon’s bloodlines are already half Istan.”

“Igen, then,” said H’ned. “Or even the Fortian rider, if you’re insistent that D’pantha goes somewhere cold.”

“Not Fort,” Valonna said. She spoke with finality. “I’m less concerned with punishing D’pantha than I am with bringing strong stock into Madellon. Half the bronzes of Fort have flown one of their junior queens, but Derinth isn’t one of them.”

H’ned raised his eyebrows at that. “If that’s your criteria…”

“It’s part of it,” said Valonna. Then she inclined her head towards Tarshe. “And I thought I’d talk through the candidates with Tarshe, since she has a stake in the outcome.”

“Well, we need to decide soon,” said H’ned. “The faster we see the back of Cyniath, the happier I’ll be. Weyrwoman. Tarshe.”

Carleah waited for an acknowledgement, but H’ned strode past her as if she weren’t even there.

“My apologies, Tarshe, Carleah,” said Valonna, when he had gone. She passed her hand briefly over her eyes. “Please, sit down.”

“It’s early to be wrangling,” said Tarshe.

“Early is all there is, when you’re dealing with the other Weyrs,” said Valonna. She smiled wanly. “A disadvantage to being the most westerly Weyr. But H’ned is right. We need to make a decision quickly on this bronze rider trade.”

“Weyrwoman,” Carleah said, not certain if she should speak, but too curious to hold her tongue. “Shouldn’t Southern be responsible for trading D’pantha?”

“Ordinarily, yes,” said Valonna. “But there aren’t many riders who’d want to transfer into Southern in its current state. And I see this as an opportunity to bring some new blood to Madellon. If we’re to learn anything from Southern, it’s that no good can come of too narrow a breeding pool.”

“That’s why you want my opinion,” said Tarshe. “You’re setting up suitors for Berzunth.”

Valonna looked pained for a moment, but then her brow smoothed out. “Yes,” she admitted quietly. “I wish it weren’t so bald a thing as it is, but Madellon’s bronzes…”

“It’s not the bronzes,” said Tarshe. “It’s the bronze riders.”

They both smiled at the same moment, a rueful little expression. “There are a few of the younger ones,” said Valonna. “But I’d like you to have the option of more than a few.” Then she said, quickly, “Unless there’s already someone…”

“No,” said Tarshe. “They’re all silly little boys.”

Valonna actually laughed at that.

“What about an open flight?” Carleah asked, and when both queen riders looked at her enquiringly, she continued, “My da said that all junior queen flights used to be open to all bronzes from whatever Weyr, back before the southern continent was settled. That’s why the northern bloodlines are more diverse.”

The Weyrwoman looked at her, and for a moment Carleah feared that she’d spoken out of turn. Then Valonna smiled. “He taught you so much about the world,” she said. “C’los. He’d be so proud of you.”

The compliment made emotion flood Carleah’s chest with an abruptness she wasn’t expecting. “I…thank you, Weyrwoman,” she whispered.

“That’s why I asked you to come here today,” said Valonna. “L’stev is concerned that formation practice won’t be safe for you and Jagunth, while you still can’t hear each other. He wasn’t sure what to do with you.” She transferred her gaze to Tarshe. “It’s time you began to learn about a weyrwoman’s duties. And you have more to learn than most, given the isolation of your upbringing.” She looked back at Carleah. “I thought you might help Tarshe learn. And learn alongside her.”

“But I’m just a green rider,” Carleah said, unthinkingly.

“So was your father,” said Valonna. “And I know there were a hundred times when T’kamen wished he could still turn to him for counsel. There is no such thing as just a green rider, Carleah. We can’t allow our thinking to be so rigid. P’raima…” Her mouth made a twist of distaste, as if even saying the name was unpalatable to her. “P’raima was deranged, but in some ways he was right. If dragons can no longer go between, then Pern will be a very different place come the Pass. We can’t afford to be constrained by traditions that have no value in that future.”

“Then you don’t think our dragons will ever be able to go between?” Tarshe asked.

“We have to be prepared for the possibility,” said Valonna. “In a couple of sevendays, when Telgar’s weyrlings are old enough…then we’ll know.”

“But why?” Carleah burst out. “Why can’t they go between? What happened?”

“I wish I had an answer for you,” said Valonna. “I don’t. I’m sorry. And you two have an even greater burden to bear.”

She didn’t have to say what she meant. In the glowlight of Valonna’s office, the dilation of her pupils wasn’t quite so noticeable as in bright sunlight, but Carleah was aware of it nonetheless.

“Are the Healers getting anywhere?” asked Tarshe.

“Master Shauncey tells me that they have identified several of the ingredients of the antidote,” said Valonna. “And the Masterhealer himself promised me that Shauncey is the Hall’s very best mind when it comes to herbs and drugs. We just have to be patient a little while longer.”

Tarshe made a dismissive sound. “I’ll bet my cousin isn’t feeling very patient about it.”

“Not especially,” said Valonna, with a sigh. “Oh.” She moved several documents on her desk, eventually uncovering one with the seal of the Peninsula Weyr affixed to the bottom. “R’maro’s Justice is set for the end of the sevenday. You’ll both be called as witnesses, unless you don’t feel you can face him again.”

“I don’t have a problem with it,” Tarshe said, “although I never saw him or Maibauth. Only those two goons.”

The mention of the Southern bronze’s name gave Carleah a shiver. She could still see him rearing above her in the jungle clearing, still feel the swipe of his forepaw bare inches over her head. “I don’t have a problem, either,” she said stubbornly.

“Will he be exiled?” Tarshe asked.

There was a curious note to her voice. Valonna must have noticed it, too. “He killed P’raima in front of half a dozen witnesses,” she said. “That alone would be enough to have him sent to Westisle for the rest of his life.”

“Some might say he did Pern a favour, killing P’raima,” said Tarshe. “With all he did. And all he would have done.”

“Pern, perhaps,” said Valonna. “But P’raima wasn’t R’maro’s to execute. There’s still no actual proof that P’raima killed Margone, and even if there were, revenge isn’t justification enough to take a life in cold blood.”

Tarshe’s nostrils flared slightly at that. Carleah wondered how much the Weyrwoman knew of the truth about her family’s exile. “How many other riders are there on Westisle?”

“Four,” said Valonna. “Two Benden riders who’ve been there nearly thirty Turns. One from Telgar. And one from the Peninsula.”

“What did they do to be sent there?”

Valonna took a short breath. Then she said quietly, “The Benden riders were involved in a plot to poison their Wingleader.”

“Faranth,” said Tarshe.

“Did they actually do it?” Carleah asked. She knew it was ghoulish, but she couldn’t help herself. “I mean, did they kill him?”

“They were only conspirators,” said Valonna. “A third rider was found guilty of the murder. He was sentenced to Separation.”

“Separation,” said Tarshe. She shook her head. “I don’t know what that is.”

Carleah did. The word alone made revulsion squirm queasily in her stomach; so much so that she didn’t even want to show off her knowledge.

“It’s the worst punishment there is for a dragonpair,” said Valonna. She was still speaking very softly. “Separation from each other. Physical, and…” She stopped. “And mental.”

“But that’s punishing the dragon as well as the rider,” said Tarshe. “Surely the dragon wasn’t in on it too.”

“His dragon could have stopped him. He didn’t.”

“But what if his dragon didn’t know?” Carleah asked. “Or didn’t understand? I mean, some dragons aren’t…altogether…bright.”

Valonna was already nodding. “Separation can only be imposed on dragonpairs brown and above. Blues and greens aren’t thought to be…”

Carleah was offended by the idea that Jagunth wasn’t intelligent enough to understand right from wrong just because she was a green. “Clever enough?”

Tarshe snorted. “There’s browns and bronzes in the Wildfires not half as smart as their riders think they are.”

“A queen has to do it,” Valonna went on. “To force the dragon to obey the terms of the sentence. To keep him from going to his rider, or speaking to his rider. Or hearing his rider.”

“A queen can do that?” asked Tarshe. She sounded sick.

“The compulsion has to be renewed,” said Valonna. “Regularly.”

Tarshe actually recoiled at the notion. “Queens have been keeping that Benden dragon apart from his rider for thirty Turns?”

“No,” said Valonna. “He died a few months after he began his sentence. He and his dragon just…gave up.”

They sat there, all three of them, in silent, mutual horror.

“But it’s not the same for us,” said Carleah, with more defiance than she felt. “We’re not apart from our dragons. We can still talk to them. Just not in our heads.”

“And it’s curable,” Tarshe added. “We know there’s an antidote.”

“It’s just a matter of time before the Master Healer finds it,” said Carleah.

“And then we’ll be back to normal,” said Tarshe.

Valonna’s eyes moved between them as they spoke. “You’re right,” she said. She reached across the desk and squeezed each of their hands. “Both of you.” Then she squared her shoulders. “Now, let’s look at these northern bronze riders, and see if any of them sounds like someone we’d like to have around.”

The morning passed in a blur. After they’d discussed the candidates for exchange with D’pantha – and settled on K’letan, a bronze rider from Telgar – Valonna took them through the most pressing issues of Weyr management currently occupying her time. They talked about Madellon’s problems with livestock supply, the blasting work due to commence soon in the south-eastern quadrant of the Bowl, and the imminent arrival of a new Harper to take up the position of Weyr Singer – though Carleah, to her own dismay, wasn’t familiar with the journeyman, whose last assignment had been in eastern Peninsula territory. They discussed how two newcomers to the lower caverns – both pregnant women – were settling into their new roles at the Weyr: one well, the other less so. Then Valonna showed them her work on Madellon’s primary tithe request. The lists and calculations of exactly what the Weyr would need each Turn for the next five went on for pages and pages, and so did the mapping of those requirements to the resources of each of Madellon’s three major Holds. Carleah was captivated by it all. It was as if a door to the inner workings of Madellon had been flung open, and she’d been invited to peer inside.

Tarshe was less enamoured of it. When the lunch hour came, Valonna sent them to the dining hall to eat, rather than all the way back to the weyrling barracks. They queued up at the serving hatches with everyone else, and then sat down at the end of one of the long communal tables to eat. “All those population charts and graphs,” Tarshe said, layering meat and bread on her plate. “I can’t make head nor tail of them.”

“I thought it was fascinating,” said Carleah. “Especially the projections for how many new dragons there’ll be in three Turns’ time, when Shimpath’s clutched again and Berzunth has her first hatchlings.”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” said Tarshe. “There were twenty-five dragons in our clutch, and nineteen in the one before that. So why does the tithe request only account for an extra thirty new dragonets by 105? Shouldn’t the population growth double with two queens clutching?”

“Oh,” said Carleah. “The more queens a Weyr has, the smaller the average clutch size. There’s a formula for estimating eggs-per-clutch based on the number of queens in a Weyr, their relative ages, and what point it is in a Pass or Interval.”

“How –” Tarshe began, and then stopped. “Your da?”

“No!” Carleah said, chagrined. “There was a note about it on one of the Weyrwoman’s charts!”

Tarshe looked at her for a moment, and then laughed. She shook her head. “I reckon you should have Impressed a queen. You’d make a far better weyrwoman than me.”

“I don’t want a queen,” said Carleah. “I have Jagunth.” She looked at nothing for a moment, trying not to reach for her dragon. “But sometimes it doesn’t seem fair. How greens are treated as if they’re stupid. And green riders, too.”

“No one’s ever going to think you’re stupid, Carleah,” said Tarshe.

“No one ever thought my da was,” said Carleah. “But he wasn’t taken seriously, because he was a green rider. Not until T’kamen became Weyrleader; and they’d been friends forever. It’s not fair.”

“I suppose it isn’t,” said Tarshe. She frowned. “Do you think we’ll ever find out what happened to him? T’kamen?”

“I don’t know,” said Carleah. “Maybe we won’t. I think –”

“Weyrlings out of the barracks?”

The challenge came from behind her. Carleah turned in her seat, an indignant protest already leaping to her lips. “No, we’re…”

She stopped. The rider coming towards them was T’rello, and he was grinning at them.

“Wingsecond,” Tarshe said, laconically.

“Weyrwoman,” T’rello replied.

Tarshe snorted. “Not yet I’m not.”

“Tarshe, then,” said T’rello. “And Carleah. Do you mind if I join you?”

Tarshe looked at Carleah , raising an eyebrow.

“If you must,” said Carleah, taking Tarshe’s cue.

T’rello put his plate down on the table, then stepped over the bench and sat down beside Carleah. For a fleeting moment, Carleah wished that Kessirke were there to see T’rello, sitting next to her. Then she banished the unkind thought.

“How are you both?” T’rello asked.

“Dragon-deaf,” said Tarshe. She reached casually over and took a fried tuber off T’rello’s plate. “Still.”

“What about you, Carleah?” T’rello asked.

“The same,” said Carleah. “How’s Santinoth?”

“Still a broken dragon,” said T’rello.

Carleah looked askance at him.

“He’s not been the same since Giskara,” said T’rello. “He’s never been afraid of anything before. You taught him the meaning of fear.”

Carleah wasn’t sure if he was mocking her or not. “I didn’t know it was him,” she said defensively. “I thought it was that Southern bronze. How was I supposed to know you were there?”

“Well, I nearly wasn’t,” said T’rello. “We’d only just been reassigned to that sector. You have no idea how surprised I was to actually find you!”

“Saving the day,” Tarshe said, with complete aridity.

“You didn’t need much saving,” said T’rello. “If it had been R’maro and not me, I think Maibauth would still be a quivering wreck right about now.”

Despite herself, Carleah stiffened again at the mention of the Southern bronze’s name. It annoyed her. How long would it be until she didn’t react that way?

Tarshe rescued her. Taking another fried tuber from T’rello’s plate, she stood up. “Best we get back to the Weyrwoman, Carleah,” she said. “If the Wingsecond here can bear to let us go, that is.”

“You know I have no authority to command you,” T’rello said. “Even when you’re stealing my lunch.”

“And don’t you forget it,” said Tarshe.

Carleah waited until they were almost all of the way out  of the dining hall before she said anything. “He’s so shameless, Tarshe.”

“He’s a bronze rider,” said Tarshe. “What do you expect?”

“But could he be any more obvious? Berzunth’s not even a Turn old yet. He’s playing a really long game with you.”

“With me?” Tarshe asked. She stopped, and Carleah stopped too. “What makes you think it’s me he’s interested in?”

“You’re a queen rider,” said Carleah. “Of course he’s interested in you.”

Tarshe shook her head. “T’rello’s not interested in me.” She shook her head, smiling strangely. “You really didn’t notice?”

“Notice what?” Carleah asked, blankly.

“The teasing. The body language. The way he deliberately sat next to you. T’rello’s not after me, Carleah.” Tarshe laughed. “It’s you he fancies.”

Chapter fifty-seven: C’mine

Never underestimate how far a dragon will go to protect his rider.

100.04.16 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

He crafted the visual as carefully as any he’d ever constructed, placing the sun in the sky just so, striping the shadows at the correct angle, recalling exactly the colours and locations of dragons he knew had been there, isolating that place and that time as precisely as his memory would allow.

There had been many dragons, and he couldn’t remember them all, so he concentrated on the ones who had stood out: queens and bronzes from other Weyrs, distinctive not only for their hides, but for the unusual fact of their presence. He filled in the gaps with details of less clarity but general relevance: Lords and Ladies in their finery arriving on dragons of all colours; the overall hum of excitement; the smell of meat that had been roasting on spits since before dawn. Finally he placed Darshanth in the visual where he knew he had been.

When at last he was satisfied that it was as complete as he could make it, he said, Darshanth, would you please pass our visual of Long Bay to Vanzanth?

Darshanth obeyed, and then said, Vanzanth says his rider will come when he can. We are not to go anywhere until he has.

C’mine hadn’t thought he still possessed the capacity to dread L’stev’s censure. He found he was wrong. Yet he wouldn’t try to duck it any more. He’d been wrong about many things, and tried to run away from them. He was tired of running away. He sat quietly in his empty weyr and looked at the wall where his charts and maps had hung.

After a bit, heavy footfalls stumped up the steps to Darshanth’s ledge. L’stev came in without waiting for an invitation. His graphic face was, for once, impassive, which was to say that it had settled only into its default frown. He sat down on the stripped bed in the sleeping alcove that had been strewn with C’los’ diaries and C’mine’s notes. He fixed his gaze on C’mine.

C’mine looked back at him.

At length, L’stev said, “And I always thought you were the sensible one.”

C’mine had no answer to that.

“I suppose you are,” L’stev went on, “on account of you being the only one left out of the three of you. It’s just that that doesn’t say much for you as a group.”

C’mine said nothing.

“Benner said I wasn’t to upset you,” L’stev said, in a conversational tone. “Well, you can imagine what I thought of that.” He leaned forwards. “Only tell me one thing, C’mine, so I can be prepared to deal with the aftermath. Will you be coming back?”

“I don’t know,” C’mine said.

“Huh. At least you’re honest about that. Better that you’d chosen to share the truth with me long ago.” L’stev took a short breath. “But it’s too late for that. Isn’t it.”

It wasn’t a question. “I don’t regret what I did,” C’mine said. “Or the cost.”

“The cost. As if trading your sanity for Carleah’s life were a straightforward transaction.”

“It’s the best deal I’ll ever make.”

L’stev snorted. “Darshanth may disagree.” He got up and stalked a couple of paces. “You don’t have to do this now.”

C’mine looked up at him.

“You have to do it. That’s unavoidable. But it could be a Turn from now. Ten Turns from now.”

C’mine found himself shaking his head. “No,” he said. “It has to be now.” He raised his shoulders slightly, and pre-empted the inevitable question. “I just know.”

L’stev stared at him for a moment. “All right. Best you get on with it, then.”

C’mine rose to his feet. He walked out to the ledge. L’stev followed him, silent and brooding. Darshanth was already harnessed. He lifted his head at their approach.

“Wait,” said L’stev.

C’mine looked back at him, one hand on Darshanth’s aft-strap.

“The weyrlings said that your other self was wearing a hood.” L’stev went back inside, then re-emerged with C’mine’s foul-weather cape. “Here.”

C’mine shrugged into the garment. He raised the hood. Then he climbed onto his dragon. Darshanth shifted uneasily beneath him.

“Strap in, for Faranth’s sake,” L’stev told him. Disgust, at last, tinged his voice. “If you’re going to die it should be for a better reason than because you fell off your Thread-blighted dragon.”

C’mine buckled in, then tugged on his safety.

L’stev stalked around to Darshanth’s head. Then he did something C’mine had only ever seen him do to juvenile dragons. He took Darshanth’s muzzle between his two hands and pulled his head down to him. Darshanth was so startled that he didn’t resist, and C’mine felt the contact as if L’stev were touching him directly. “This is on you if it goes wrong,” L’stev told Darshanth. “You’ve got it right so far. Don’t be sloppy.”

Vanzanth gives us permission to go between times to Long Bay, said Darshanth. He sounded slightly shaky.

C’mine touched Darshanth’s neck as he took off from the ledge, spreading his wings. Is he still in contact with you?

Yes.

All right. C’mine took a long, deep breath as Darshanth beat his wings to altitude. Let’s go to Long Bay.

Darshanth went between.

The instant the blackness had enveloped them, C’mine flung the image he had created of Long Bay on Gather day away from their joined minds.

What are you doing? Darshanth demanded.

In the darkness, C’mine couldn’t feel his palms, but he was sure they would have been sweaty. He’d never changed a visual in transit before. We’re not going to Long Bay, Darshanth. He called up the visual he’d created so carefully instead, pushing it firmly into his dragon’s mind. We’re going here. To this when.

He felt Darshanth take hold of the new reference, wrapping his consciousness around it. What is this when?

It doesn’t matter, C’mine told him. Just take us there.

What is it? What are you doing?

Darshanth’s fury came between them as nothing had ever come between them before. Please, C’mine begged. Please, you have to take us there. Please!

When is it? Darshanth demanded.

C’mine had never experienced the full force of his dragon’s mind pitted against his. He hung grimly on to the tiny corner of his consciousness that held his secret intention locked away, but Darshanth found it, and brushed aside his attempts at concealment. Please, C’mine pleaded. Please, Darshanth. We have to go back to Hatching day. We have to save C’los. Please!

THIS CANNOT BE!

Darshanth’s scream in the silence of between rent C’mine’s thoughts like the rake of piercing talons. Why not? he screamed back. He pushed the visual at his dragon again: the image, fraying now, of Madellon as it had been that dreadful day when C’los had been stabbed to death. We can change it! C’los doesn’t have to die!

No, no, no, no! Darshanth flung the visual aside. The past will not be changed! It is forbidden!

C’mine would have wept, but they were between, and between allowed no tears. I don’t care if it’s forbidden. Please, Darshanth. If you love me, please try.

It is because I love you that I will not. You cannot understand, C’mine. You are not a dragon. Time protects itself. And I must protect you.

Darshanth’s will was absolute. In the utter nothingness of between, C’mine knew he was defeated. Feebly, he tried to summon his home visual, his return to the Madellon of the present. But they had been between too long. He could feel the blackness entering him through his eyes and ears and mouth. He could feel it entering through his soul. And the visual would not come. The reference was smoke in his grasp. He had nothing. Darshanth, he whispered. Darshanth. I’m so sorry.

He felt Darshanth’s mind envelop his. And then he felt nothing.

The rain drumming on his head drowned out all other sound, all other sensation, all other thought.

The peak of his hood poured water in a steady stream like a leaking gutter. He had pulled it down over his eyes, but rain still dripped constantly from the end of his nose. He could feel the dampness spreading along his arms where the seams of his cape were the least weather-proof. His trouser legs were soaked, his feet clammy. He looked down at the ground and saw his boots sinking, step by step, into churned mud, nearly to the ankles. He saw other boots, too, all around, and recognised the jostle of other bodies beside him. He was not alone in this sodden march. This road had been well travelled before them. He lifted his head, but the rain lashed his face and stung his eyes. For a step or two he was blind as well as deaf. He stumbled to a halt, adrift.

A hand smacked him across the shoulder-blades. “Keep going, friend! Not far now!”

The blow jostled him into motion again. “I don’t understand,” he said. His own voice rang oddly inside his hood. “Where are we?”

“I told you, not far now. See, we’ll be onto the road soon.”

He shielded his eyes with his hand to keep the rain from them and looked up again.

A great crater squatted above them, shrouded by the sheeting rain.

“Here.” His amiable friend pushed a flask into his hand. “Have another sip of that. Should get you the rest of the way.”

He uncorked the flask and lifted it to his lips. Whiskey, strong and fierce, scorched a path down his throat to coil in his belly like a serpent.

“What did you say your name was again?”

Even as he realised he didn’t know the answer, he heard himself say something.

“Yoseller,” his friend introduced himself. “Must be your first time up at the Weyr, Mine. Well, it’s a long slog in weather like this, and no one’ll deny it, but it’s not every day you get enough warning of a Hatching to trek up.”

“A Hatching?”

“And this the big one, too. Not that I should think we’ll see sod-all. We’ll get let in last of all and if you glimpse so much as a wing over the heads of every rider and rich bugger in front of us, you’ll be lucky. But it’s the being there that counts. And there’s nothing on Pern tastes better than a free drink on someone else’s mark; am I right?” Yoseller joshed Mine in the ribs. “Have another sip. You look like you need it.”

The downpour slacked off as they climbed the final approach to the Weyr, two men in a long column of others making their way up the mountain. Mine found he had nothing at all to say for himself, but Yoseller was happy to talk enough for both of them. He was a woolman, he explained, and a good one. He travelled a circuit with a gang of other shearers through Kellad’s lesser Holds from each Turn, clipping the fleece from ewes in the spring, wethers in the autumn. He and his lads were the fastest and the best, he told Mine, without a hint of boastfulness; otherwise the holders wouldn’t pay them top mark for the piecework. His crew went its separate ways for the winter, and Yoseller himself spent the cold months with his nephew in Blue Shale. Every spring it took a little more effort to roust himself out of that comfortable berth and round up his lads, but a flat mark purse made him a poor guest by the time the days were lengthening again, and besides, he wasn’t one to want to put down roots anyway, and by the time he was on the road again he always found he was pleased to be there.

Yoseller just about paused for breath, and then asked, “And what’s your story, friend? You’ve a Kellad sort of sound to you, a Hold Proper twang, unless I miss my mark, and I’ve an ear for that sort of thing.”

“I –” Mine had no answer. It was not that he had forgotten, or mislaid the facts; there was simply a smooth, blank expanse in his mind like a wall of bricks fitted so closely together that they needed no mortar to bind them. Such things as his name and his origin were, he was sure, behind that wall, but it would not yield to his attempts to breach it.

“Thought so,” Yoseller said, nodding sagely. “Well, you’ll not have me pressing you for why you left, or asking if your master knows you’re for the Weyr today; it’s as I said, not every man has a chance to see a dragon Hatching, and likely worth the bollocking.”

It occurred gradually to Mine that Yoseller thought him somewhat slow: a drudge, or at best a dull-witted worker fled from his tasks without permission to go to the Weyr. He thought he should feel insulted by the assessment. Then he wondered why he thought that. For all he knew, Yoseller was right. Mine had no better explanation for who he was.

As they trudged into the great tunnel bored through the rock at the base of the caldera, men flung back their hoods and exclaimed at the welcome shelter from the rain. Yoseller did the same, shaking out a long tail of silver hair. He was older than Mine had imagined him: a lean, weather-beaten man in his fifties. “Come, friend, you’re here now; no one’ll send you home for seeing your face uncovered.”

Mine hesitated. A small, urgent voice in the back of his mind insisted You mustn’t be seen.

“Suit yourself,” Yoseller said, when he made no move to put down his hood. “Though no one’s here to look at you. Not with – ah, not with them to be looking at.”

They had passed through the tunnel – too regular not to be man-made – and into the great open palm of the Weyr Bowl, and before them, squarely in line with the inside opening of the tunnel, was a dragon.

Mine stopped.

The dragon was brown, a rich tan shade made glossy by the rain. He had just alighted. He shook his wings. Beads of water flew from their edges like jewels. Then he folded the great sweep of them to his back in an intricate overlapping of translucent amber sail. He towered over them, his shoulders seeming to crowd out the grey sky. His rider, himself a big and burly fellow, jumped down from his neck. “Keep moving, people, don’t block the tunnel!” he shouted. “You’re coming in, you’re turning left, keep going around the Bowl, and you’ll get to the Hatching Ground. Once you’re in there, don’t wander off, don’t go into the roped-off half, and if you need the necessary  it’s on the right on your way in. Keep moving, that’s right, keep moving…”

Yoseller nudged Mine in the back. “Better do what he says.”

Mine realised that he wasn’t the only person who’d stopped to stare. “The dragon…”

“Not seen one up close before?” Yoseller asked. “They’re mighty impressive in the flesh, I’ll give you, if you’ve only ever seen them on the wing.

“No,” said Mine. He was still staring at the dragon. He knew him, but he didn’t know how. That knowledge was locked away behind the wall in his mind, too.

“They don’t like it when you stare,” Yoseller said, and tugged him firmly away.

Mine turned his head away from the brown, and tugged his hood down over his face as they passed the dragonrider.

They joined a long procession of people following a curving path around the inside of the Weyr Bowl. The path was well gravelled, and the high walls of the crater provided shelter from the rain. Mine didn’t lower his hood and he didn’t raise his head to look around, because he knew there would be dragons everywhere.

He was afraid he’d know them, too.

“Feel that?” Yoseller asked, as they walked. “The humming? Feel it?”

Mine did feel it.

“That’s them,” said Yoseller. “The dragons. It’s their welcome. It’s how they welcome the baby dragons.”

“When they hatch,” said Mine.

“That’s right,” said Yoseller. “Only time they do it, I hear. Funny thing, isn’t it? Dragons, singing. Who’d think dragons would sing? But only on Hatching day.”

“Hatching day,” Mine repeated. It seemed significant. It seemed very significant. What had he forgotten?

They reached a yawning opening in the crater wall. Far, far above, Mine heard the sound of wings. He didn’t need to look up to know that dragons were flying through the same entrance high over their heads. A dry heat washed out of the cavern, and the babble of many excited voices made a counterpoint to the humming, a vibration that thrummed the air.

The entrance to the immense cavern had been split into two with ropes and posts. Riders with loud voices marshalled their procession down the left-hand lane, crying, “Keep left, keep left, common folk are to keep left!” They filed obediently in, their progress slowed to a shuffle as the mass of bodies crammed along the narrow roped lane. On the other side of the barrier, dragonriders and Weyrfolk, and the occasional richly-dressed Lord or Lady Holder, strode past unhindered.

And then they were inside the Hatching Cavern.

Mine saw it only in glimpses, framed by the heads and shoulders of the people in front of him, and by the peak of his hood. He saw the rising tiers, although the stone steps themselves were blanketed by the people cramming them. He saw, through the haze of steam that had risen from the wet clothes of the many spectators who’d come through the rain, the flash of brightly-coloured wings above as dragons shifted on the high ledges. He saw a slice of the sands themselves, a dull ochre that no volcano ever spewed out. And he saw, briefly, the flicker of an immense golden wing as the mother of the clutch shifted agitatedly over her eggs.

“See if I wasn’t right,” Yoseller said, with more chagrin than satisfaction, as they were herded to their places. The flat gallery at the back of the top tier had no rake, so those standing more than a few rows deep could see little of the sands at all. “Well. We’re here, aren’t we? Here on Hatching day, and with a gold egg on the Sands, too.”

“Hatching day,” Mine said. “And a gold egg.”

He knew it was significant.

“I’m going to have a little wager,” said Yoseller. “Now, what do you think, Mine? Do you have your letters, or should I read the odds out for you?”

Mine followed Yoseller’s pointing finger to the wagermen’s boards, raised up high for everyone in the gallery to see. Each one was chalked with a different set of odds. How many greens would there be, how many blues, how many browns and bronzes. How many girls would Impress and how many boys. What would be the first colour to break shell. When would the first bronze hatch. When would the queen. People were pressing around the wagermen, shouting out their bets, exchanging marks for wager slips.

“See, I could play it safe, take evens for the first one being green,” Yoseller said. “Turns a quarter mark into a half, and there’s no quicker way I know to do that.”

“Brown,” said Mine. “A brown will Hatch first.”

Yoseller guffawed good-naturedly. “Well, and said with such certainty! Do you have a marker?”

Mine didn’t know. He put his hand in the pocket of his cape. It was virtually dry now, he noticed, from the heat of the Hatching cavern. There were no marks there. He tried the pocket of his trousers and his fingers closed on a wooden disc. He drew it out and stood looking at it.

“Quarter mark?” Yoseller asked, plucking the coin from his hand. “On a brown to Hatch first? That’ll score you four-to-one. Now, you stay here and keep our place. I’ll put these wagers on.”

As Yoseller pushed his way through the throng, leaving Mine standing alone, an excited shout went up from the crowd. Mine looked up. His hood slid off his head as he did. Bronze dragons, more than a dozen of them, were flying into the cavern, each carrying a white-clad girl on his neck along with his rider. “The queen candidates,” went the murmur.

Hatching day.

A queen egg.

“Why am I here?” Mine asked himself, aloud.

There was something he was supposed to be doing here, but what was it?

The bronzes landed, dipping down out of his line of sight, then took off again a moment later having deposited their passengers on the Sands. The humming was so intense now that Mine could feel it in every part of his body: his skin, his teeth, his bones.

What had he come here to do?

Yoseller came shouldering his way back through the crush. “Here, got your mark on just in time,” he said, pressing a stamped slip of hide into Mine’s hand. “If the bronzes are here, the eggs must be fit to burst! See, brown to Hatch first on yours, and I took the safe wager, green for me. And I had a little fancy on the girl who’d get the queen. They have all the names up there, you see, on that end board, and where they’re from. Well, I wasn’t going to risk it, but the favourite’s an apprentice from the Beastcraft and I’m not Hall trained or anything, but a wool-man like me has to support a Herder lass, don’t you think? Imagine that, a Beaster girl on a queen, and this one likely to be Weyrwoman before long, if what they’re saying about the old queen rider is true.”

Mine held his betting slip tightly in both hands. Brown to hatch first, it stated, ¼ mark, 4/1, total return 1 ¼ mark. A disclaimer had been stamped at the bottom, the ink blurry where it had been applied in haste. Valid this Hatching only, 91.10.18, Madellon Weyr.

There was something about the date.

It was the wrong Hatching.

He didn’t know why, but he knew. It was the wrong Hatching.

“What’s that you say, friend?” Yoseller asked.

Mine stared at his wager slip. Then he turned to Yoseller. “The Beastcraft girl. What was her name?”

“Oh, it started with S, let me see now.” Yoseller squinted at his betting slip.

Candidate Sarenya (Beastcraft apprentice) to Impress the queen, ½

mark, 5/2, total return 1 3/4  marks.

The humming ceased at the precise moment that realisation exploded in his mind.

“She’s not going to Impress,” he said numbly. “She doesn’t Impress. She never Impresses.” He raised his head, looking around wildly. “Oh, Faranth. What am I doing here? This is the wrong Hatching day!”

But his exclamation was drowned in the roar that went up from the crowd, whoops and shouts, and a few disappointed cries. “The first Impression!” came audibly through the clamour, and then, “Brown, it’s a brown first!”

Yoseller’s thump jolted Mine out of his horrified realisation. “Brown, friend Mine, you were right, you’ve made yourself a mark! Here, now, don’t be losing it!”

The winning wager slip had fallen from Mine’s suddenly boneless hands. Who am I? he demanded of the blank smooth place. It was less blank and less smooth now. It had cracked, and things were seeping through the fissures. Things like A brown dragon will Hatch first and Sarenya will never Impress a dragon and This isn’t the Hatching day when C’los died.

“Who’s C’los?” he cried aloud.

And then he knew.

He wasn’t some half-wit drudge from the Hold called Mine. He was C’mine. He was Darshanth’s rider. He was C’los’ weyrmate. And he was out of time.

He reached for his dragon, but the blankness stopped him. It had a curve to it, he realised, and a texture. It wasn’t smooth and blank at all. It had the pebbled roughness of an eggshell. A dragon’s eggshell.

It curved in on him, not the convex shape of the outside of an egg, but the concave confines of the inside.

I’m sorry.

It was Darshanth.

I had to protect you. I had to hide you from myself.

He had trapped him within the only prison he had ever known.

C’mine was suddenly suffocated. Please! He clawed at the weakening shell. Darshanth, please! Why did you bring us here?

You asked to go to Hatching day.

Not this Hatching day! I was going to save C’los! I was going to warn him! Then realisation struck C’mine anew. He’s here. I can still warn him. I can tell him.

The lash of Darshanth’s mind was blunted only slightly by the cocoon of the eggshell. It is forbidden!

And C’mine was suddenly thrust back into consciousness of his surroundings. He was on his knees, and the floor was painfully hard and rough. People had swayed from him. He realised he’d vomited. Yoseller was crouching over him, patting his back. “There, friend. There, now it’ll be all right. The Healer’s coming. You’ll be fine, friend.”

A voice, vaguely familiar, spoke from above. “Here, now, I’ve got him. He needs to get out of this crowd.”

Hands, firm but gentle, heaved C’mine to his feet. He staggered and was caught. A strong arm went around his shoulders, keeping him even. He walked, dazed, only half under his own power. His hood had been placed back over his face; he could hardly see past it. Distantly, he heard the exclamations as dragonets chose their riders. “I’m C’mine,” he said, slurred but determined. “I’m C’mine. I’m C’mine. I’m C’mine.”

“I know. Keep walking with me.”

The familiar voice belonged to the man who was helping him. C’mine tried to turn his head to see, but his hood obscured his vision. “I shouldn’t be here,” he fretted. “Please. I need to find my dragon.”

“It’s going to be all right, C’mine. Come on. We’re nearly there.”

And then they were, out of the oppressive heat, the cacophony of the Hatching crowd behind them. C’mine felt rain spatter the lower half of his face. “Who are you?” he begged. “Why are you helping me?”

They stopped. C’mine pawed the hood back from his face. He looked up at his rescuer.

His eyes were hollow and tired, his face gaunt and lined. For a moment C’mine saw the shadow of someone else in that weary, drawn expression. “I’m here because someone we both love sent me. Come on. Darshanth isn’t far. We’ll get you safely home.”

Chapter fifty-eight: T’kamen

A dragonrider must have caution and courage in equal measure. A reckless rider will spur himself and his dragon alike to an early death. A fearful one will undermine his dragon’s self-belief. Only riders who can balance measure and mettle should be allowed to attempt going between. And only dragonpairs who trust each other completely in all ways can hope to succeed.

– Fragment from a Peninsula Weyr weyrling training manual

26.09.06 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

M’ric flung the scroll he’d been studying down on top of the heap of unread ones in front of him, and shoved the entire stack away from him. “This is pointless!”

T’kamen reached over and pushed the pile resolutely back towards him. “Stop complaining. I can’t read all of these blighted things by myself.”

“Ch’fil did offer, you know,” said M’ric. “I don’t see why he can’t take on some of this stuff.”

“Ch’fil has other responsibilities,” said T’kamen. “And I’d sooner he didn’t happen across any references to a certain familiar-sounding brown rider in these old records.”

“We haven’t,” M’ric pointed out. “Just riders I’ve never heard of.”

“All the same,” T’kamen said. “The less anyone else knows about your involvement, the better.”

“What about Leda?”

T’kamen returned M’ric’s reproachful stare evenly. “What about her?”

“The amount she’s been in here this sevenday, she could be reading anything in these records.”

“Leda doesn’t come here to read records,” T’kamen told him, with the thinnest of smiles.

“I bet she doesn’t.” M’ric looked surly. “I bet she doesn’t have to.”

“Is that what’s got you in such a bad mood?” T’kamen asked. “Leda?”

“I just don’t think some green rider with a crush on you has earned the right to our secrets.”

“What makes you think I’ve been telling her them?”

“Well, haven’t you?”

“As a matter of fact, no.” T’kamen didn’t mention that he and Leda didn’t talk much at all when she came to visit. M’ric could work that out for himself. “And she doesn’t know my cipher. You’re the only one who can read it.”

M’ric looked slightly mollified by that. Paying a compliment to his intelligence was always a sure-fire way to improve his mood – and he had picked up the trick of C’los’ old code quickly. They’d been making all their notes in it, just in case anyone happened to wonder why they were researching between.

He got up from the table. “I need another cup of klah. Do you want one?”

M’ric had found so many excuses to stop reading in favour of making klah that they’d both spent nearly as much time using the facilities as they had poring over the records. T’kamen didn’t think he could be much wider awake, despite the hour. “I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself.”

T’kamen did use M’ric’s clattering around with kettles and cups and water as an opportunity to knuckle his aching eyes. “Wake up the fire, while you’re there,” he told him, even as he pulled the nearest glow-basket across the table to try to coax a bit more light out of it.

M’ric did, shovelling a bit more coal into the grate and pushing it around with the poker. The renewed blaze made the night’s darkness recede once more into the corners of T’kamen’s weyr. But a lack of light wasn’t really the problem. Even under brilliant illumination, the faded ink and illegible handwriting on the half-century-old hides was stubbornly resisting T’kamen’s best efforts.

It should have been easier for M’ric. His young eyes and sharp mind had made sense of more documents in the first two hours than T’kamen had in a sevenday. It was motivation that he lacked. T’kamen found himself dryly amused that such a thing could be said of the young man whose defining characteristic had always been his desire to be thought bright and capable.

“Either sit down and keep reading,” he told M’ric, “or piss off back to your own weyr, if you’re not going to be helpful.”

Grumbling, M’ric sat down. T’kamen supposed that was a compliment. “I don’t even know what we’re looking for in this lot,” M’ric said. “Tithes and accountings, and the most sharding boring journal I’ve ever read in my life.” He prodded with disgust one of the bound volumes that had caused them the most trouble. “Thank Faranth for hide-mites.”

T’kamen gave him a hard look. The mites were their biggest problem. They’d left the vellum pages of Weyrwoman Heche’s personal diaries in rags and tatters. “Keep looking,” he said. “Alanne’s fire-lizards must have come from somewhere, and that journal is our best bet for finding out where.”

It had been a frustrating couple of sevendays. The one good thing that could be said for it was that at least T’kamen hadn’t been accused of Alanne’s murder. An investigation of the scene at Little Madellon had found no evidence of violence or a struggle. It seemed that the dragonless Weyrwoman had simply gone to sleep, curled up alongside the bones of her queen, and not woken again. If her end had been hastened by her encounter with T’kamen, then no one at Madellon seemed particularly keen to point it out. The impression he got from conversation in the dining caverns was that it was probably a kind end to a miserable life, and that few people wanted to linger over the thought of a queen rider who’d lost her dragon half a lifetime ago. He’d even heard a few riders remarking breezily that at least they wouldn’t be drawing supply run duties any more.

The timing still seemed suspicious to T’kamen, though he couldn’t think what anyone would have to gain by killing Alanne. Her health probably had been affected by their meeting – as much for the shock of Epherineth killing her two watch-whers as anything T’kamen himself had done. He couldn’t feel much remorse for Alanne personally, but her death, and the consequent disappearance of her fire-lizard fair, was a blow nonetheless. Alanne’s queen lizard had been their only certain source of fire-lizard eggs, and without more fire-lizards, no one but T’kamen and M’ric would be going between.

And in a practical sense, that really meant no one but T’kamen. In the two sessions they’d managed to fit in around Fall and Wing drill, M’ric and Trebruth had still not succeeded in going between – or, more specifically, coming out again – unaided. T’kamen didn’t know if it was his deficient teaching ability, M’ric’s penchant for over-thinking things, or Trebruth’s forcibly stunted instinct that was the chief issue. He suspected some combination of the three. But as frustrating as T’kamen found it, M’ric – so quick a study of everything else that had ever been set before him – was positively eating himself alive over his inability to master what, he kept insisting, should have come as naturally as flying or flaming to Trebruth.

T’kamen had drilled M’ric in all the exercises he could dredge out of his memory. Epherineth, demonstrating an excess of patience even by draconic standards, had explained the process to Trebruth over and over again. Still the young pair struggled to go between in the first place, or floundered once there, reliant on Epherineth to get out again. T’kamen didn’t know what else to do. M’ric was right that between should have come naturally to his dragon. The dragonets in T’kamen’s own weyrling class had been more than ready to go between at a far younger age than Trebruth’s two Turns, and almost all of them had found it easy, once they’d overcome their nerves. But T’kamen wasn’t a Weyrlingmaster. He had no training in teaching young dragonpairs how to go between. He could hardly have asked C’rastro for help, even had he thought the current Weyrlingmaster could have offered any insight whatsoever. And Madellon’s Archives didn’t go back far enough for T’kamen to seek help from L’stev via the records he would certainly have written.

With both approaches to reclaiming between hindered, T’kamen had been at a loss as to how to proceed. Dalka broke the impasse. She had insisted on holding a quiet ceremony to mark Alanne’s passing and, in searching Madellon’s records of her era, uncovered that her original fire-lizard had been a gift from the Weyrleaders of the Peninsula. Donauth was too egg-heavy to make the long flight all the way to Peninsula Weyr, so Dalka sent T’kamen and Epherineth there as her envoys, armed with a letter for the Weyrwoman there, asking permission to search Peninsula’s records for information on Alanne. Weyrwoman Estrinel, it turned out, had little interest in her own Weyr’s history and less in taking time away from her broody queen to help T’kamen, but she had no qualms whatsoever about letting him borrow whatever documents he pleased. The chance for T’kamen to make free with the Peninsula’s extensive records – unsupervised, no less – was no small boon. But the drawback to Estrinel’s lackadaisical disinterest towards her Weyr’s records became apparent once T’kamen went down into the Archives. If there had ever been a logical filing system, by subject or by chronology, it hadn’t been enforced in decades. Any temptation T’kamen might have had to go straight to the section that dealt with his own Interval era was thwarted by the fact that such a section didn’t exist. In the darkest and dustiest recesses of the Archives, tunnel-snakes had chewed holes through many of the oldest records, and a veritable plague of hide-mites had made documents dated only to the beginning of the Pass barely legible in places.

In the end, he’d loaded Epherineth down with about half a dragonweight of documents that he hoped would pertain either to early-Interval weyrling training or the pre-Pass era during which Alanne’s queen Ryth had been alive. But in truth, he couldn’t blame M’ric for finding the process of sorting and reading the old Peninsula records unrewarding. It was tedious, and all the more so when the document you’d just spent an hour reconstructing from fragments turned out to be some queen rider’s careful accounting of expenditure on Turn’s End gifts for her seven children rather than anything actually useful.

They had found some things that were fascinating, if not actually helpful. An account of a Hatching mentioned a Madellon Weyrleader, T’schan, whom T’kamen thought must have been the grandsire of the elderly green watchrider at Kellad. A partial Wing roster, missing the page that would have credited its author, was written in a hand T’kamen found infuriatingly familiar until he finally recognised it as Sh’zon’s work. He couldn’t tell if it dated to before or after Sh’zon’s transfer to Madellon. He found a letter, very faded, that had Valonna’s signature at the bottom; it seemed to be a personal note, congratulating someone on the birth of their first grandchild, though T’kamen could decipher neither the child’s name nor the grandparent’s.

But they’d found very little of use to help M’ric and Trebruth overcome their fear of between, and nothing about the ultimate provenance of Alanne’s fire-lizards. R’lony had been unimpressed with both failures. “Then we’re back to M’ric’s queen,” he said, when T’kamen reported on their progress, or the absence of it.

“She should rise for the first time when she’s about ten months old,” T’kamen said. That much he’d discovered, not from the Peninsula’s records, but from an otherwise unfruitful visit to Blue Shale Seahold.

R’lony scowled at that. “Then we’re looking at a Turn, minimum, before we have even a chance of any eggs.”

“At least we have the chance,” said Ch’fil. “If M’ric didn’t have the queen we’d be nowhere.”

“We may as well be nowhere, for the good it’s doing us,” said R’lony. “Faranth’s teeth! To be reliant on that boy…”

“He’s well aware of what rests on him,” T’kamen said.

R’lony shook his head. “Not good enough. I’m keeping Donauth on top of Trebruth. She has a better chance of instilling some healthy fear in that boy’s mind about what would happen if he were to lose us that blighted fire-lizard.”

“How much does Dalka know?” Ch’fil asked.

“Too much,” R’lony said disgustedly, but he’d refused entirely to be drawn further than that.

Still, T’kamen was loath to admit defeat. He was certain there were answers to be found in the Peninsula’s records. And if there was no other value to the long evenings he and M’ric were spending poring over them, then their industry did at least keep Leda at bay. She was a sweet girl, and her infatuation with him was flattering, but actually conversing with her made T’kamen feel old in a way that spending time with M’ric never had. He lacked the heart – or perhaps the courage – to turn her out of his bed entirely, but he was grateful that Leda’s aversion to watching them reading dusty old records meant that she only came to his weyr once M’ric had left, and long past the time for conversation.

“Oh, hello,” M’ric said suddenly.

T’kamen raised his gaze from the cracked vellum of a half-Turn weyrling report. “What have you found?”

“You,” M’ric replied, his eyes tracking down the page. “You never said you were going to transfer to the Peninsula.”

“What?” T’kamen leaned forwards. “Give me that.”

M’ric pulled it back out of his grasp, still reading. “This is a transfer request,” he said. “From a Weyrleader H’pold to a Weyrleader L’dro, I think. I can’t make out if that says ‘from’ or ‘for’…”

“L’dro tried to forcibly transfer us out?” T’kamen asked. “What’s the date on it?”

M’ric turned the scroll over, flattening it. “Early Interval 94.”

T’kamen laughed. “Straight after Shimpath’s first flight. The miserable snake.”

“L’dro was your big arch-rival?” M’ric asked. “The one you got rid of to the Peninsula once you became Weyrleader?”

“That was different,” T’kamen said. “I offered him the option of a transfer, and he took it. This…I had no idea he’d tried to dump me on H’pold. Does it say why the transfer didn’t happen?”

“Actually it does.” M’ric laughed. “It says here that the transfer was declined at the request of Weyrwoman Ralla –”

“Rallai,” T’kamen corrected him.

“– on account of her misliking the sound of you.”

“Give that here,” T’kamen said, and succeeded in grabbing the hide off M’ric. He rolled it back to the beginning and read aloud, hearing his voice rise with indignation as he did. “‘Bronze rider T’kamen would make the Peninsula a capable Wingsecond, in that he can reliably be asked to discipline his wingriders without scrupling to offend them; he has no illusions of his own popularity and therefore no fear of harming it by dispensing punishment. He is not a man with the charisma to inspire loyalty simply by his presence in a Wing, nor the geniality to win allies amongst his colour-mates, though he seems to have a rapport with riders of the junior colours.’” He glared at M’ric when the boy snorted. “Something funny?”

“Funny? Sharding hilarious, T’kamen.” M’ric returned his censorious look guilelessly. “This L’dro. Was he one of those people who thinks he’s much more clever than he actually is?”

“You must have met him.”

“How did anyone that thick get to be Weyrleader over you?”

T’kamen sighed. “The Weyrwoman fancied him.”

“Mating flights as leadership contests. Still the most sharding stupid thing I’ve ever heard of.” M’ric shook his head. “Where he was sort of clever is that nothing he said about you is actually untrue.”

T’kamen looked at him witheringly.

“It’s true,” said M’ric. “You would make a good Wingsecond. A better Wingleader, in the Interval, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t be a good Wingsecond too. You don’t care if you’re popular or not, and you don’t make friends with other bronze riders just because they’re politically convenient to have as your buddies.”

“I don’t make friends with other bronze riders because I’ve never met another bronze rider I liked,” said T’kamen.

“But that’s the thing,” said M’ric. “He’s taken all your good traits and tried to turn them into ones that wouldn’t be threatening to a Weyrleader, but anyone with half a brain would see through it. You’re firm with your wingmen. You don’t play politics with other rank. You understand riders of all colours, not just your own. And the new Weyrleader of Madellon is desperate to be rid of you.” He shrugged. “If I were the Peninsula’s leadership, I’d be terrified of you, too.”

“You might be overstating that somewhat,” said T’kamen. “And besides, you haven’t addressed the point about my inability to inspire loyalty.”

He said it lightly, but M’ric chagrined expression pained him. “No. That bit was true, too.” He pulled the scroll towards him and read the sentence aloud again. “‘He is not a man with the charisma to inspire loyalty simply by his presence in a Wing.’” He put special emphasis on the last part.

“There are other ways to command loyalty than through charisma,” T’kamen said softly. “Almost all of them more deserving.”

M’ric wouldn’t meet his gaze, and T’kamen didn’t make him. The boy got up from the table and went to the hearth. T’kamen thought he was going to make more klah, and began to pre-empt the offer of another mug when M’ric said, “No one ever believed in me, before you.”

He sounded quite choked. “I think I’ve been more hindrance than help to you, M’ric.”

M’ric shook his head, though whether in direct contradiction to that assertion, T’kamen didn’t know. “I wish I could help you more, Kamen.”

“You are helping. Although you’d be helping more if you’d settle down to reading this stuff instead of making drinks every five minutes.”

“We can’t go between,” M’ric interrupted. “Not without your help. It terrifies Trebruth. It terrifies me.”

“It’ll come –”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“It will come,” T’kamen repeated. “It’ll have to. Because I don’t know any other way that you’re going to end up back in the Interval, twenty Turns older than you are now, sending Epherineth and me to now.”

M’ric turned partly from the fire. The light from the flames licked up half his face. “That almost scares me most of all.”

“You thrive on challenges, M’ric. You’re not one to buckle under the weight of the world.”

“Says the man putting the weight of the world on my shoulders.” M’ric went still. “It’s not the expectation, exactly.” He hesitated, as if trying to put something abstract into words. “I’m just not sure which frightens me more. The notion that events are inevitable, that whatever else happens, whatever I might want to do, I will go back to the Interval, and I will be the M’ric you knew then. Or…the idea that you being here, me having sent you here, rests on me. That I could make a mistake, or a wrong decision, and suddenly you and Epherineth will just…disappear, as though you were never here, because I haven’t followed the path that will bring you here in the first place. And maybe it would be even worse than that. Maybe the whole world, the Eighth Pass Pern that has T’kamen and Epherineth of the Seventh Interval in it, would just vanish, if I don’t do things the right way to get you here to make it a reality. What if the weight of the world really does rest on me?”

“Then Faranth help us all,” T’kamen said.

M’ric gave him a black look. “That’s not helpful.”

T’kamen thought for a long moment before he answered. “If it rests on you, then it rests on me just as much,” he said at last. “I’ll have sent you back as explicitly as you sent me forwards.”

“But you haven’t,” said M’ric. “Or at least, you’ve told me to go, but I haven’t, yet. What if I don’t? What if I decide not to go? What if I get killed in Fall tomorrow? What if the world only exists as long as I’m still alive to make the possibility that the circle can still be completed still viable?”

“Then it won’t matter much to you, because you’ll be dead,” said T’kamen.

“That’s not helpful either, T’kamen.”

“I know.” T’kamen considered it more, though it made his head hurt. He was almost grateful that Epherineth was asleep. Having a dragon weigh in on matters of timing only made it worse. “Remember I told you that we once fouled up a reference and accidentally timed it by a few hours.”

“I remember. You got a bollocking from your Weyrlingmaster.”

“I did.” The recollection made something between a smile and a grimace curl T’kamen’s mouth. “L’stev didn’t exactly include timing in his lessons. Not how to do it, at least. He did cover why allowing temporal details to creep into a between visual could get you killed. But I don’t think I was the only one who did it by accident, because along with the bollocking and the punishment, I got a series of well-worn lectures from L’stev about the nature of timing.”

“Well?” M’ric prompted him, when T’kamen paused. “What did he say?”

“I’m reaching back nearly fifteen Turns, here,” T’kamen said. “And it scrambled my brains then, too. But the crux of what L’stev had to say was that any time you successfully timed it into your past, it would literally be impossible to do anything, while in the past, that would prevent the future from which you’d come from happening.”

“And you think that’s true?” M’ric asked.

“It concurs, more or less, with what Epherineth’s told me. I think dragons understand the ramifications of timing far better than we do.”

M’ric thought about it. “What about things that wouldn’t have an effect on the future you’d come from? Would you be able to do those differently? And then go back to a point just after you left the future, and act based on that change?”

T’kamen rubbed his beard. “He didn’t go into that. What he did say was that anything you did while timing in the past had always happened, even before you took the trip back. So perhaps the answer to your question is that whatever that action was that you took had always already happened, even before it occurred to you to do it, and therefore you wouldn’t be changing anything anyway.”

“But that would mean that everything we do is inevitable,” said M’ric. “That you never had any choice about timing it back in the first place, because the consequences of your timing were already set in stone before you did it.”

“It would seem that way,” T’kamen said. “But I don’t know if L’stev was right. I suspect he’d done some timing of his own at some point, and he was a sharp and savvy man, but perhaps he was speculating just as much as we are.”

M’ric was silent for a minute. “What colour was his dragon?” he asked suddenly.

T’kamen laughed. “Brown, of course.”

That did elicit a grin, but not for long. “Then I can’t fix it,” M’ric said. “I can’t go back to the Interval and tell everyone that they need fire-lizards to go between. Because if I did, then I would have, and everyone would know, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

Slowly, T’kamen nodded. “I think you’re right.”

“Then what’s the point?” M’ric made a frustrated gesture. “Of timing, of this – of anything we do?”

“Maybe there isn’t one,” said T’kamen. “Maybe there’s no point to any of it, and everything we do, every decision we think we make, is pre-ordained.” He shrugged. “But if that’s true, does it really change anything? You’re still going to get out of bed tomorrow morning and harness Trebruth and go and fight Thread. You’re still going to plan how you’re going to catch that green of Fraza’s. You’re still going to come up here tomorrow night and read boring Peninsula records about Weyrwoman Heche’s Gather dress fabric and the quality of the pickled boars’ feet from Hoffen Hold. You’re still going to scare yourself shitless trying to go between. You’re still going to help me figure out where we’re going to get more fire-lizards for the rest of Madellon. Because the only alternative is that you sit in your weyr, alone, refusing to do anything out of pure pique. And if you do that, you risk your other alternative being right, and the world ceasing to exist because you wouldn’t play your part.”

M’ric gave him a mulish look. “Still not helpful.” Then the expression dissolved, and he laughed so honestly that T’kamen couldn’t help but smile. “It’s absurd, isn’t it, Kamen? This knot we’re tied up in?”

“It does seem to be,” T’kamen agreed gravely.

He dropped his head briefly onto his arms. Then he lifted it again. “Do you miss being Weyrleader?”

“Yes,” T’kamen said. He didn’t have to consider the question. Then, more reflectively, he said, “I shouldn’t miss it, knowing what I know now. There are a hundred reasons why I should be glad not to be Weyrleader any more. Madellon was in a mess when I left it. Our Holds were barely tithing what we needed to exist. I was having to spend our reserves just to keep everyone fed and paid. Three of my weyrlings had just died going between and no one knew why. My Weyrwoman was terrified of me. One of my two oldest friends had been murdered, and the other one, his weyrmate, had gone to pieces.”

“And I’d stolen your girlfriend,” M’ric said softly.

“Do something for me,” T’kamen said. “When you go back.”

“Of course,” M’ric said, with an earnestness than made his youth all the more apparent.

“Protect them for me. Look out for C’mine. Don’t let him do anything stupid. And…Saren. Treat her better than I ever did. Shield her from harm and heartbreak.” He felt himself smiling at his own mawkish sentiment. “Be good for her.”

M’ric nodded, holding his gaze. “I can’t tell her the truth, can I? That you didn’t die. That you’re here.” He paused. “That you’re still in love with her.”

The words, from another’s lips, caused T’kamen a stab of physical pain that made him close his eyes for a moment. “Just protect her.”

M’ric reached across the table and gripped his wrist with all his youthful sincerity. “I will, T’kamen. I promise.”

Chapter fifty-nine: Sh’zon

A rider of another Weyr may not take part in a queen flight except under the following circumstances:

1. Where a bronze rider of another Weyr has inadvertently been drawn into a queen’s flight during a visit to the Peninsula.

2. Where the flight has been declared open to riders of other Weyrs, the specific conditions of participation in such flights being defined at the time of that declaration.

3. Or where a bronze or brown rider of another Weyr has been specifically invited to participate in the flight, such inclusions being possible only at the special request of the queen’s rider and ratified by the Council.

– Excerpt from the Peninsula Weyr’s Legal Code

100.04.18 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON AND PENINSULA WEYRS

Kawanth had just downed his first herdbeast, bowling the panicky animal off its feet with a glancing touch of his claws, and was turning back to alight beside the kicking bullock when the downdraft of another dragon, landing behind Sh’zon, blew an annoying vortex of dust and scorched bits of grass up around him.

He pivoted on his heel to confront whatever idiot rider had let his dragon touch down so close, an angry challenge ready on his lips.

That was where it stayed, for the dragon was Trebruth.

M’ric’s call down from his brown’s neck was low, but urgent. “Don’t let him eat that.”

Sh’zon stared up at him. Mistrust and anger warred with two decades of instinctively following M’ric’s advice. Then he turned back to the hunting paddock, where Kawanth was stretching his head down towards the feebly twitching herdbeast he’d killed, placed both hands on the top rail of the enclosure, and bellowed, “Kawanth! Leave it!”

Kawanth jerked his head up. His open jaws were dripping strings of slaver with anticipation of his meal.

“You heard me!” Sh’zon shouted. He made a peremptory gesture. “Don’t you take a sharding bite!”

Kawanth’s eyes, already tinged orange with killing fervour, flashed red, and the forepaw he’d planted on top of the bullock’s ribcage flexed with displeasure, sinking needle-sharp talons through its hide. Then, ill-temperedly, he released it, knocked the carcass over with an irate sweep of his paw, and stalked two steps towards the fence, looking sullen.

Sh’zon didn’t need to be able to hear his dragon to feel his annoyance. “You’d better have a shelling good reason for that!” he snapped at M’ric.

M’ric was dismounting from Trebruth. “Get him away from it,” he said. “Trebruth will have it, but he’s not going to be able to wrestle it off Kawanth by force.”

“And why should he give Trebruth his Thread-blighted dinner? For that matter, why should I be listening to a sharding word you say?”

“The answer’s the same for both questions,” said M’ric. “Ipith will rise tomorrow.”

Sh’zon stared at the rider who had been his second for so long. Then he shouted, “Kawanth!” His bronze had begun to sidle back towards the cooling herdbeast. He froze in place when Sh’zon challenged him. It would have been comical under different circumstances. “Get away from that beast! Now!” He pointed, with a wide sweep of his arm, at the wherry run on the other side of the paddock. “Go and have a wherry! One wherry!”

He waited until Kawanth took off from the beast enclosure and soared the short distance to the wherry pens. If the bronze had been able to speak to him, Sh’zon knew what he’d have said. Wherry’s dry and tough. I wanted that herdbeast. Then he rounded on M’ric, spitting, “A fine moment you pick to start playing your games again!”

M’ric didn’t recoil at Sh’zon’s hissed accusation. He never had. “Tomorrow,” he said, as though Sh’zon hadn’t just snarled at him. “About an hour into forenoon, Peninsula time.”

Sh’zon wouldn’t admit it, but the timing of it gave him a chill. He still had his friends at the Peninsula, but Ipith never showed much until she actually went to blood her kill. With no more warning than that, he and Kawanth would have been fast asleep in the dead of Madellon’s night when Ipith initiated her flight, scarcely in peak readiness to chase a queen. “And why should it matter to me, now?” he asked. “We’re in no state to go after a green, let alone Ipith.”

M’ric’s steady gaze didn’t flicker with either surprise or chagrin. It made Sh’zon wonder how much he knew about the outcome of Ipith’s flight. He forced down the excitement that surged in his chest. “I thought you’d want to know, regardless,” M’ric said.

“I’d’ve liked to know what P’raima was going to do to us at Long Bay!” Sh’zon retorted. “Was that so much to sharding expect?”

M’ric looked at him searchingly. “But Saren did pass that along. That you shouldn’t drink the sherry.”

Sh’zon stared at him. “Saren?”

“On the first night of the Gather,” said M’ric. “When we were in the officers’ pavilion. She must have done. She told me she’d passed along my warning.”

Sh’zon searched his memory. So much had happened since that night. “I remember she said something about sherry,” he said at last. “She didn’t tell me drinking it would make me deaf to Kawanth!”

“I could hardly have told her that,” said M’ric. Lines of perplexed concern had appeared between his brows. “I was sure you’d got the message.”

“You trusted that to your girlfriend? Your drunk girlfriend?”

“She wasn’t drunk when I told her to pass it on –”

“And what in Faranth’s name were you doing passing it through someone else anyway? Why didn’t you just give yourself the message?”

M’ric waited a long moment before he replied. “I’ve told you,” he said at last. “It doesn’t work the way you seem to think it does. I don’t choose how the knowledge gets to me. This time, it came through Saren. To me as well as to you.”

“But you must have given it to her,” Sh’zon said. “Why couldn’t you just have – I don’t know – written yourself a note?”

“I couldn’t because I didn’t. There wasn’t a note. Saren gave me information that she could only have heard from my future self, coming back to deliver it. And to prompt myself to make the trip backwards. But when I did, I could only fulfil what I knew I’d already done. I couldn’t give Saren a note when I knew I’d only given her information verbally.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!” Sh’zon complained. “When you decided to come back –”

M’ric interrupted him sharply. “I didn’t decide,” he said. “I never decide. I never choose to time it, or to when, or what information I pass on in the process.” He held Sh’zon’s gaze, hard. “Do you understand? I have no choice.”

It made Sh’zon’s brain hurt just trying to comprehend it. He wished Kawanth were there to help him. “But you could choose not to do it.”

“No. I couldn’t.” M’ric took a breath. “If I know I’ve done it, then I have to do it. This is what I’m getting at, Sh’zon. I don’t decide I’d like to time it back to inform my earlier self of something. I only do it if I already know I will. Once I know I must have, then I must.”

Sh’zon looked at him with frank disbelief. “You’re talking nonsense! Those times when we were still weyrlings, and we timed it back to the Peninsula so we wouldn’t be late –”

“I’m not saying you can’t time without first knowing you’re going to do it,” M’ric said. “But doubling on an hour or two isn’t the same as affecting a future that’s already happened by sending knowledge from it back to the past.”

“Why in Faranth’s name not?”

The look M’ric gave him was, for an instant, so filled with self-loathing that Sh’zon felt himself blanch. Then he looked away. After a very long time, he said, “Bad things happen to make sure you don’t succeed.”

There was a finality to M’ric’s tone that would not be disputed. Sh’zon cast about for comprehension. “Then what’s the point?” he asked. “If you can only give yourself information you know you already gave yourself…”

M’ric paused, then said heavily, “It’s fairly useful when it comes to backing winning runners.”

He sounded tired as he said it. The cracks in M’ric’s perpetually calm façade bothered Sh’zon more than he liked to admit. “Forget Long Bay,” he said. “You’ve been aiming me at Ipith’s flight for Turns. You must know what happens.”

“You’ve been aiming yourself at Ipith’s flight for Turns,” M’ric corrected him.

When he studiously did not answer the second accusation, Sh’zon glared at him. “So by your own reasoning, you’ve known what would happen for all these Turns, because your future self told you so. After the fact. After you had any ability to change it.”

M’ric actually smiled. “You’re catching on.” He didn’t sound impressed. “But, no. I’ve never brought myself information from…that far ahead.”

Sh’zon didn’t know what that fractional pause in M’ric’s words signified. “You might have told me before I went all out to catch her the first and second times. You promised I’d win my queen.”

“Yes,” M’ric agreed. “I did.”

It dawned on Sh’zon suddenly. “But not when.” He scanned M’ric’s face frantically, but the mask had gone back on. “Not the first time. Not the second. Maybe not even tomorrow? You don’t know, do you? You’re guessing! You’ve always been guessing!”

“I don’t guess. I extrapolate.”

“You extrapolate?”

“Sometimes my interpretation misses the mark.” M’ric looked at him. “I’d assumed you hadn’t had that wine. That you were putting on your dragon-deafness, for the sake of appearances.”

“Putting it on?” Sh’zon snorted. “Tell me, M’ric, in all the Turns and Turns we’ve known each other, when was I ever that good an actor?”

“You have a point.” M’ric kept regarding him with that disconcertingly perceptive gaze. “Which makes it interesting that you don’t seem too despondent about your current condition in the context of Ipith’s flight tomorrow.”

Sh’zon glared at him. “Well, do you have a solution to it?”

“No. But I suspect you do.”

It was intolerable, being put on the back foot by M’ric once more, when Sh’zon had vowed to rid himself of his influence. In the past, he would have spilled everything to his second, counting on him to find any flaws in what he’d planned. But M’ric’s convoluted excuses for his conduct weren’t enough to make Sh’zon trust him again; at least not so soon. That trust would have to be rebuilt. “That’s my business, isn’t it?”

M’ric’s slight smile made Sh’zon want to punch him in the face. “Trebruth thanks Kawanth for the herdbeast.”

Sh’zon scowled at him. “Trebruth can shove it up his arse.”

Kawanth was standing over a ichor-stained patch of grass and plucked feathers in the wherry paddock, chewing morosely. He turned his head accusingly at Sh’zon’s approach, and then, quite on purpose, snorted a cloud of wherry down in his direction. Sh’zon flapped his hands at the clinging bits of fluff. “Don’t be a shaffing tail-fork,” he told his dragon. “Like it or not, M’ric’s done us a favour. If you’d had two or three of them herdbeasts you’d be too fat to chase Ipith tomorrow.”

Kawanth’s eyes began to turn fractionally faster, and he cocked his head interestedly, but even tomorrow was too far away from now for a dragon to react strongly. Sh’zon caught his bronze a glancing blow on the cheek. “I know. You’d still sooner eat that herdbeast. Well, we’ll see about all the herdbeasts you can eat after you’ve caught our queen, hmm?”

It was strange to have precise enough notice of Ipith’s flight to be able to prepare. Kawanth finished his wherries – they were, Sh’zon decided in the end, scrawny enough that two wouldn’t weigh him down much more than one – and then they left the Weyr to visit their favourite bathing spot. Sh’zon could have cleaned Kawanth at Madellon, but the straight flight to the glistening alpine lake they favoured gave him a chance to observe closely how his dragon was flying. Kawanth had developed a minor but annoying tendency to let the final third of his trailing edges bow slightly in extended flight; Sh’zon shouted at him to stop it, and the bronze snapped his sail fully taut to correct the fault. It might not be the sort of habit that would decide a mating flight, but Sh’zon didn’t want to take the chance.

Aggravatingly, there were already two green dragons at the lake. There would have been room enough for Sh’zon to bathe Kawanth on the small gravel beach that lipped the edge of the water but for the fact that the greens’ riders had spread their furs out there so they could have sex. Sh’zon had Kawanth bellow off the dragons, which had the added benefit of startling their riders into quitting their activities. Even from aloft, the sight of two not-especially-young green riders fleeing, naked and flopping, to the cover of their dragons wasn’t one Sh’zon had wanted to witness, and he thanked the fact that he’d built up a reputation for ill humour over the last couple of sevendays.

He scrubbed Kawanth as assiduously as though they were on inspection. He checked his talons, and filed out the jags in a couple of them; there was no sense in scratching Ipith any more painfully than necessary. He dug wherry quills and bits of bone out from between Kawanth’s fangs. Once he was dry from his bath, Sh’zon oiled him all over, let the grease soak in for a while, and then carefully wiped his underside completely clean of any residue, so that Ipith couldn’t slip out of his grasp at the crucial moment. When all was done, Kawanth was the picture of bronze health and virility, his hide glowing with well-being, and Sh’zon was sweaty, dirty, and unkempt from the effort of making him that way.

They returned to the Weyr. Sh’zon ordered Kawanth to lie on his ledge and not ruin his fine condition while he saw to his own. He bathed and shaved, bullied a green rider from T’kamen’s Wing into cutting his hair, and then set out clean clothes on his bed.

Then he sat down with slate and chalk to recall in as much detail as he could Ipith’s previous mating flights. Kawanth had chased her in all five of them; he’d won the second and third, and come frustratingly close in the last two only to have Ipith, under Rallai’s influence, choose another bronze. Well; Suffath was gone, and Quongreth, the one other bronze who’d ever caught Ipith, had only won that first flight because it had become such a chaotic scrum. Sh’zon considered each of Peninsula’s other bronzes, separating them into no-hopers, lively chances, and credible threats. The first category was much the largest. It had to be assumed that every bronze at the Peninsula would give chase, but more than half of them were either too old to match Ipith’s strength or their riders too ineffectual to satisfy Rallai’s exacting standards. Essienth went in the ‘hopeless’ column too, on account of his old wing injury, as did the two bronzes from Ipith’s previous clutch who would be old enough to chase now but far too inexperienced to catch their own dam in flight.

Into the ‘chancers’ list went the majority of the rest – contenders, Wingseconds and Wingleaders both, without obvious claims to either Ipith’s affections or Rallai’s, but who might just be hungry enough to throw everything into a chance at elevation. They were bronzes who couldn’t be ignored, and whose continued presence beyond a certain point would mark them out as dragons to watch carefully.

And then there were the real dangers. Bennioth and Nalelth: strong bronzes, ridden by strong Wingleaders. Tserth, with whom Kawanth had vied most closely during Ipith’s last flight, before Suffath had swooped in to deny them both. And Solstorth, perhaps the dragon to be feared the most: the strapping young bronze who had flown Ranquiath for the first time when he was still a weyrling and sired Tynerith during his second mating with Sirtis’ queen. Solstorth had never contested one of Ipith’s flights, but Sh’zon knew him for a formidable opponent from Ranquiath’s matings. Now, with Sirtis having seemingly thrown over Solstorth’s rider K’sorren in favour of L’dro, there was no reason for the ambitious young pair not to go after Ipith.

Sh’zon spent the afternoon so: thinking about their rivals, thinking about how the chase would unfold, thinking about how Ipith would fly. He even considered making a covert trip over to Peninsula territory to refresh his memory of the terrain. He discounted that, as much to avert any suspicion of his preparations as because Ipith had never shown a preference for the course of her flights, as some queens did. He did contrive to glance at the duty roster on his way to the kitchens for dinner, to find out which dragonpairs would be on the middle and morning watches. He let Kawanth have one more wherry, and made a few casual enquiries of the apprentice on duty about the timing of the next beast drive. The fact that a herd was due to be driven up from the pasturage at the foot of the Madellon range early in the morning was slightly inconvenient, but Sh’zon reckoned he could work with it.

The evening stayed light too late. He hadn’t expected to sleep much, but lying in his bed with the dusk radiance seeping in from outside was an exercise in frustration. He wondered if Rallai knew that Ipith would be rising in a few hours. Probably not. Rallai would be fast asleep, though Ipith’s dawning season would be colouring her dreams. When she woke, she would not have long to take the antidote that would temporarily overcome her dragon-deafness.

In the dim light, Sh’zon put his hand out to the cabinet beside his bed. The top drawer opened silently on its well-oiled runners. Within, beneath layers of socks and underfurs, his fingers encountered the smooth hard shapes of two small glass vials.

He’d only stolen one, really. P’raima had been carrying eight when Sh’zon had frisked him: one for each of the riders, four Madellon, four Peninsula, whom he’d poisoned with felah. The dose that Sh’zon would be drinking before Ipith’s flight was the one that would have been his anyway. The second was just insurance, in case the first wasn’t enough. He hoped he wouldn’t need it, but he was glad nonetheless that he’d managed to secrete two vials, not one, up his sleeve. He was glad, too, that no one had questioned why P’raima had only brought six doses of antidote for eight riders. He supposed that the snake would be out of the bag after Ipith’s flight, but by then it wouldn’t matter; it was easier, sometimes, to be forgiven than it was to ask permission. He would have plenty of time to apologise afterwards.

He did sleep, at least eventually, because he was woken by the shunt of Kawanth’s nose against his feet. Sh’zon started awake. It was still early enough that the light of morning hadn’t yet reached into his weyr, and Kawanth’s eyes were turning peacefully blue. “Did the watchdragon wake you?” Sh’zon demanded, flinging off his sheet.

Kawanth chuffed an affirmative, then withdrew his head from Sh’zon’s quarters. Sh’zon followed him outside into the still, quiet Madellon night-time. The middle watchdragon, Karmunth, was silhouetted against the star-spangled sky up on the Rim. Sh’zon made a mental note to thank her rider for fulfilling his promise to wake Kawanth an hour before morning watch. “Kawanth,” he said, “ask Galdiath at the Peninsula if Ipith is looking…more gold than usual.”

Kawanth tilted his head as he reached towards the Peninsula brown whose rider, F’tren, had been Sh’zon’s other Wingsecond there. Then he sat up, rustling his wings. His eyes began to spin more quickly. Sh’zon didn’t need a vocalisation to understand what that meant. Excitement fountained in his stomach. “Keep in contact with Galdiath. When the bronzes start blooding their kill, tell me!”

He dashed back inside the weyr and scrabbled in the cabinet drawer for one of the vials of antidote. The little glass bottle had been sealed tightly with wax. He broke the seal with his thumbnail, peeled the wax from the cork, and then worked the stopper free. He only noticed that his hands were shaking when the cloudy liquid sloshed over the edge of the vial that contained it. He ran his finger around the lip of the bottle, gathering the spilled antidote, and then touched his tongue gingerly to it. The liquid was bitter and astringent, and his tongue-tip went numb from contact with it. Sh’zon recoiled for a moment. How much did they actually know about P’raima’s so-called antidote? What if it was useless? What if it was dangerous?

What other choice did he have?

He held his breath and tipped the contents of the vial into his mouth, swallowing it quickly and convulsively. It numbed his throat as it went down, and he cast about for something else to chase it. A gulp of water from his night-time mug washed the bitter taste from his mouth but not the numbness, and then he wondered manically if he’d inadvertently diluted the cure.

He sat there. Sweat broke on his brow. He should have experimented with the other vial first. He should have tried it out to see how much he needed to re-initiate contact with Kawanth, how long it took to take effect, how long it would last. He should have –

-ZON SH’ZON SH’ZON SH’ZON SH’ZON SH’ZON SH’ZON SH-

It was like a bellow right beside his ear, a skull-splitting detonation inside his head. Sh’zon staggered where he stood. As if he and Kawanth had been leaning on either side of a door that had suddenly been whisked away, they fell in on each other, collapsing in a heap of flailing thoughts and sensations.

I missed you.

I know.

Sh’zon wasn’t sure, when he’d collected himself enough to consider it, if he’d made the statement or responded to it, but it didn’t seem to matter. Kawanth’s mind nuzzled up against his – comfortable, familiar, right – and for a moment Sh’zon just basked in the restoration of the connection he’d taken for granted for so many Turns.

It was Kawanth who reasserted control. Ipith, he reminded him.

Sh’zon could feel his bronze’s slowly-building awareness of the queen, even distant as she was. Awareness of the sensation put a foolish grin on his face. Ipith, he agreed. Kawanth, you know this isn’t permanent yet. This antidote. It’ll wear off in a bit and we won’t be able to hear each other again.

I can hear you now, Kawanth said, with a dragon’s typical interest in the present. And Ipith will rise soon.

Are the bronzes blooding yet?

Soon.

Then we’d best get you ready.

Sh’zon threw on Kawanth’s light harness, not much more than a single strap with two loops for a safety. Then, silently, and without even troubling the watchdragon, they lifted off over the Rim and out of Madellon.

In the pre-dawn darkness, Sh’zon had to rely on Kawanth’s sight, but the simple act of sharing his dragon’s eyes as they skimmed down the valley made him smile. He probably wouldn’t have needed Kawanth’s vision to find the herd, though. They heard it first, a low thunder of hoofs punctuated by the lowing of bullocks and the occasional shouts of one herdsman to another. Then Kawanth coasted around a bend in the valley wall and the drive spread out beneath them, three hundred head moving in an implacable wave up the valley towards the Weyr, lit sporadically by the pole-borne glow-baskets on the herdsmen’s saddles.

The night-time hid Kawanth from beasts and herders alike. Only the crack of sail as he spilled air from his wings to descend abruptly betrayed him – that, and the wash of dragon-scent that accompanied him as he dived on the herd. A sudden cacophony of terrified bawls, a single scream, the impact of talons on flesh – and then Kawanth was beating upwards again, more labouredly, with a limp herdbeast in his grip. Sh’zon could smell the coppery tang of its blood, mingled with the midden stink of voided bowels. Kawanth rose only as high as the edge of the canyon, landing there with a thump that rattled Sh’zon’s teeth, and bent his head immediately to his prize. The wet slurp as he sucked from the dead bullock’s throat, and the convulsive swallows that rippled his hide as he gulped down the blood, should have been disgusting; instead, Sh’zon revelled in his bronze’s primal pleasure.

The herdbeast drained, Kawanth discarded its corpse and plunged from the lip of the chasm for another. Below, the herd was in full panic, its steady progress towards Madellon routed, bullocks and runnerbeasts fleeing in all directions. Sh’zon had time enough to regret the necessity of blooding outside Madellon, where Kawanth’s actions would have been noticed, before his dragon took a second bullock. Kawanth began drinking from it even as he climbed again with short, powerful wingstrokes. Through their rejuvenated connection Sh’zon could half feel, half see the bronzes at the Peninsula pulling down herdbeasts and latching onto them as Ipith, her hide suddenly blazing gold, stirred red-eyed from her slumber.

It was all the reference they needed. There! Sh’zon cried, and as Kawanth released his second spent herdbeast, he took them from the dark of night to the dark of between and then out into the brilliant sunshine of the Peninsula.

Below, the scene stretched exactly as they’d seen it: bronzes taking bullocks, bronzes draining their kill, bronzes crouching scarlet-eyed, scarlet-taloned, scarlet-muzzled. One more bronze should scarcely have made a difference, but dragons turned their heads up towards Kawanth and hissed their displeasure as he descended towards the Bowl. He did not care. He only cared about Ipith as she uncurled herself from her ledge and thrust herself towards the crimson-washed killing grounds.

Off! Kawanth snapped as he landed near Ipith’s ledge, and Sh’zon hastened to obey. He’d barely released the single buckle of the harness before Kawanth took off again; the leather dangled loose from his neck, then slithered off to land in a heap. Kawanth didn’t care, and neither did Sh’zon. Bronze had eyes only for Ipith; rider only for Rallai.

Sh’zon sprinted up the steps to Ipith’s ledge. Bronze riders already crowded it, a heaving mass of male lust. A few blue and green riders marshalled the edge lest any participant topple over it. Sh’zon joined the pack, then shouldered into it. He would not stand haplessly on the fringe while his queen occupied the centre. Riders jostled him from all sides, some more angrily than others. Sh’zon shoved them right back. He was bigger than them and stronger than them, and his claim was much the greater. He barged aside a grey-haired rider who had no place in this company, and then Rallai was before him, stiff-backed amidst the ruck of riders, her eyes wide and distant as she battled with her dragon’s hunger. K’sorren and K’ken were either side of her, touching her, holding her. Sh’zon wanted to kill them both.

“Ral,” he said, reaching for her hands, disregarding the crush of riders behind him. “Ral, I’m here. I made it.”

Rallai bared her teeth a moment, and then her face relaxed. The part of Sh’zon that was already consumed by Kawanth noted that Ipith had consented to blood her kill. Rallai’s eyes refocused on his face. “Sh’zon?” she asked, as though not believing what she could see. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s all right!” Sh’zon told her. “I’ve taken the antidote. Kawanth can still fly Ipith!”

“But…!”

Then Rallai’s attention was gone again, fixed back on her queen, and as she locked into her connection with Ipith, Sh’zon felt Kawanth’s demands on his attention wax irresistibly strong. The part of him still separate was diminishing steadily, streamers of it sucked inexorably into the whole that was Kawanth. Not yet, he told his bronze, forcing them both to look around, to be aware of their nearest rivals. Not yet! Ipith was flinging aside her second herdbeast and going for a third. Not yet! There were bronzes up on the Rim who would have a head start on altitude, but not on proximity to the queen. Not yet! Ipith was facing east; flying into the rising sun would make it harder on all of them. Not yet!

Now!

As Ipith’s muscles began the bunch that would propel her skywards, Sh’zon let his consciousness tip over completely into Kawanth’s. For an instant he felt as though he occupied his dragon’s skin, the power at his disposal, the strength of muscle and sinew, the sensitivity of broad wingsail, the capacity of lungs and hearts; and then Sh’zon the man was gone, not merely diminished, but drowned in the greater symbiosis whose name was Kawanth.

Ipith climbed, and Kawanth climbed after her. The air was thick with bronze wings, with bronze bodies, with bronze musk. Dragons tangled with each other in their haste to put the ground behind them, but Kawanth was too swift, too clever and wily, to foul wings with a rival. He cleared the Rim of the Peninsula a wingbeat behind his queen, narrowing his eyes as he did against the glare of the morning sun. Others hesitated, failing to realise how the sunlight would blind them. Kawanth did not hesitate. He would not fail.

Ipith rolled sideways, barrelling across the path of half her suitors, to veer north from her flightpath. It had been a ploy. A trick, to test her bronzes’ wits. She would not lead them into the sun, blinding herself, making herself a target. She would not fly over the Peninsula’s territory at all. Her route took her north, over endless rolling waves, with no air currents to negotiate, no thermals to ride. There would be no gentle landing sites, no place of refuge at all. A bronze who sought to claim her over that forbidding ocean must have courage and scorn weakness, as she had courage, as she scorned weakness.

Ipith flew, and the bronzes of the Peninsula flew after her, leaving thunder in their wake.

Ipith was one, and they were fifty, but a hundred bronzes could not have matched her grace and majesty. Two hundred could not have equalled her strength and beauty. And then they were not fifty, but forty-nine, the first of their number surrendering to the gruelling toll such pace exacted upon him. He fell away and was left behind, and another claimed his place in the pack.

Ipith beat on, her wings describing shimmering arcs, and far below her double skimmed across the wavetops, a golden kite trailed by a tail of bronze.

Ipith soared, and bronzes dropped away: too old, too young, too slow, too weak. Some went silently. Some howled as they failed. Their cries went unheeded, caught between uncaring sky and unforgiving sea.

Ipith levelled off where the air was thin: high enough. Still bronzes dropped away; still the sky became more blue. They had split: two packs now, off-side and near; a scatter of stragglers falling behind, not giving up.

Ipith flew, golden and glorious.

Ipith flew, and the world ceased to turn.

Ipith flew.

Ipith slowed, a dozen bronzes still in pursuit. Panting, straining, committed to the breaking point.

Ipith would be caught.

Ipith turned sharp left; veered sharp right. Not playing. This was not play. Catching sight of her suitors, measuring them with her eyes. Seeing everything: the heaving chests, the trembling wings, the drooping heads. Her caustic glare shamed the weakest. She trumpeted her displeasure with them.

Ipith wasted her breath unwisely on derision.

Ipith turned again, too slowly. A bronze lunged. His talons missed her tail by inches. He howled as he fell, his chance gone.

Ipith beat her wings, but her edge had dulled. Bronzes called to her now, spending strength in hope of buying favour. Another lunge. Another near miss.

Ipith was fading, but her bronzes faded too, in rasping breaths and tortured wingbeats. Attrition claimed them in agony and despair. So close. So close. But not close enough.

Ipith no longer fled. Now she surveyed. She judged. She inspected. One of her suitors would win her, but the decision would still be hers. She was still their superior in every way. She would permit one of them to catch her. She would not be beaten. She angled closer to one group, then, unexpectedly, dropped below them. She veered beneath them, leaving bronzes scrambling, colliding with each other, losing momentum as they sought to fall upon her. She rose, elated in her mastery of them –

Kawanth was waiting for her.

Kawanth had been waiting for her for a long, long time.

Kawanth tucked in one wing, slanted across her vector as she rose, and seized her.

Kawanth knew the exultance of victory as he snared limbs with limbs and neck and neck and tail with tail. All around, the thwarted screams of defeated dragons faded into insignificance, and only Ipith’s high, prolonged shriek remained, mingling with his roar of triumph across the rolling, surging ocean rippling endlessly below as the world turned around them.

“What have you done?”

The voice, low and insistent, slipped between Sh’zon and Kawanth like a knife freeing wax from vellum. It peeled them reluctantly apart, though time enough had passed that they no longer needed to cleave so closely together. Then a shove at his chest – Sh’zon’s, not Kawanth’s – bumped him fully out of the blissful union with his dragon.

Sh’zon looked down. His eyes no longer blurred Ipith with Rallai; only Rallai glared back up at him. “Ral,” he began.

“Faranth, Shai, get off me!” Rallai insisted, and shoved him again.

It wasn’t hard enough to shift Sh’zon, but he allowed himself to yield to her push. He rolled sideways, and almost onto the floor. He was perilously close to the edge of Rallai’s bed. “I’m off, I’m off,” he protested, grinning. “But would you budge up? I’m half on the floor!”

Rallai continued to glare at him. Her nostrils were pinched white. That had never been a good sign. “What in the Void have you done?”

Sh’zon blinked. “I told you,” he said. “I had some of the antidote. Thank Faranth it works! I’m guessing I’ll have a few feathers to unruffle with Madellon, but –”

“Oh, Faranth,” Rallai said. She closed her eyes. “Oh, Faranth, Faranth, Faranth.”

“It’s not such a big thing,” Sh’zon told her. “And at least we have proof the stuff works on bronze riders as well as –”

“You Thread-blighted dimglow, Sh’zon!” Rallai cried. “Forget about the antidote! Don’t you understand what you’ve just done?”

Sh’zon just looked at her, perplexed. “Become the Peninsula’s Weyrleader?”

“You idiot!” Rallai covered her face with her hands, distraught. “It was a closed flight! There’s no way you can be Weyrleader now!”

Chapter sixty: T’kamen

Hug your children, kiss your sweetheart, and leave your insignia at home.

– Motto carved in Madellon Weyr ready rooms, Eighth Pass

Especially if you’re in the Third Flight!

– Graffiti scratched below the same

26.09.13 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

The trumpeting of the morning watchdragon was never the kindest herald to wakefulness, and T’kamen, not habitually a deep sleeper, had learned to be up and about before the deafening sound hit the camp. He eased out from beneath the arm Leda had flung across his chest, tucked the fur back around her, found his cane by feel in the semi-darkness, and slipped out before she or the two other riders sharing their tent were any the wiser.

The sky was growing light. A narrow line of gold tipped the ridge that sheltered the valley from the east, softening the sharp edges of crag and gully. Up at the Weyrstation, looming above the plateau where the camp was pitched, light blazed from the kitchens, though the rest of the windows were still shuttered tightly against the gusty wind that had blown all night. The fighting riders wouldn’t need to be up and about for another hour, but for the men of the Seventh Flight the day began earlier.

Apart from the flap of tent canvas in the wind, their camp was still largely quiet. Someone was awake a few rows over – probably the mess tent; T’kamen could hear the clanging of kettles – but no one was stirring from any of the other tents that made up their section. He went to the glowing remnants of last night’s banked fire and nudged the ends of logs into it to reawaken the blaze. There was a thin scum of ice on the water barrel. T’kamen broke it and filled the klah kettle. He put it to heat and went to pay a visit to the latrines.

H’juke was squatting by the fire when he came back. His slender frame was deceptively bulked out by his layers of furs. He passed T’kamen up his mug, brimming with the first brew of the day. T’kamen accepted it with a nod. The scalding heat of the tin cup was moderated through T’kamen’s gloves, and a welcome warmth against the icy morning. Steam blew into tatters around his face as his sipped his klah, unadulterated by either milk or sweetener, and the jolt of bitter heat woke him fully to the day.

He was wondering if Ch’fil was awake when the brown rider emerged from his tent. H’juke, the perfect tailman, had his klah ready, too. Ch’fil took it and crouched down beside the fire to drink it. Almost as an afterthought, he nodded to T’kamen. The three of them sat there in mutually-agreeable silence, drinking their klah and warming themselves by the revitalised flames, until the dragon on watch finally voiced his strident morning wake-up call.

All along the ridge, dragons woke with startled grunts, and the camp came to groaning life around them. Seventh Flight riders staggered, yawning, from their tents. H’juke poured cup after cup of klah until the kettle was empty and then went to get more water from the barrel. By the time the second kettle had heated, six more brown and bronze riders stood or squatted around their fire, and the only cup still left upturned was Leda’s.

T’kamen filled it, then took it back into the tent. “Hey,” he said, as he ducked through the flap. “You up yet?”

Leda had her arm over her eyes. She made a reluctant sound. “Do I have to be?”

T’kamen took the klah over to her. “Probably not. But we do, and we’ll be striking camp before long.”

She groaned. Then she took her arm away from her eyes and smiled sleepily up at him. “Good morning, bronzie.”

T’kamen put the klah mug in her hands, then straightened up. “I’ll leave you to get dressed. You should be up at the station for your breakfast muster.”

“Do I have to be?” she asked again.

“Yes.”

She sighed. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

Down by the lake, wherries were being released in small groups. Blues and greens darted down on them, snatching up bucks with neat efficiency and carrying them off. T’kamen saw the scene strangely doubled, his perspective overlapping with Epherineth’s. Hungry?

Passingly.

Fetch is with you?

Yes.

You’ll let him eat from your kill?

Eventually.

T’kamen resisted smiling. The bronzes and browns wouldn’t eat until all the fighting dragons were satisfied. In that, their riders did slightly better. Morning food for the Seventh Flight was served from the mess tent, manned by the riders who’d drawn breakfast duty. T’kamen had never heard of dragonriders cooking their own meals before. Ch’fil had shrugged when he asked about it. “It’s only when we have one of these overnighters. Used to be we’d eat up at the station with the fighting riders, but there’s only so long you can wait for a meal. Quicker we do it ourselves.”

Leda burst from their tent, looking frantic. “Have to go,” she apologised, still struggling into her jacket. “Querenne’s giving me an earful for not being there yet. I was sure I wasn’t late!”

“You’ll be fine if you hurry,” T’kamen told her. “Here.” He straightened her sleeve for her.

She smiled in relief as she got her arm through the sleeve at last. “Thank you, bronzie.” She tilted her face up to him. “Kiss me for luck?”

T’kamen hesitated only a moment before obliging her. “Good flaming.”

“And you’d better have firestone ready for us when we need it,” Leda told him. Then she was off, running up the hill towards the Weyrstation.

“Kamen,” Ch’fil said. He jerked his chin at him. “Coming to the mess?”

T’kamen fell stiffly in beside him. He thought he knew what was coming. “I didn’t ask her to come down to the camp,” he said, as they walked at his limited speed.

“I know you didn’t. Not that it’d’ve mattered if you had, not as far as I care.”

“I’ll apologise to J’lope and Z’renniz,” T’kamen said. He’d been painfully conscious of his presence of his tent-mates when Leda had sneaked down from the Weyrstation the previous evening, although neither brown rider seemed to have minded.

“They don’t care either. It’s not having a guest that’s the problem. Faranth knows, on a cold night like we’ve just had, we could all do with someone to share our furs. It’s not her being here, Kamen. It’s her not being there.”

T’kamen followed his nod towards the Weyrstation. “They’ll judge her for being with me?”

“Not all of them,” said Ch’fil. “But enough. There’s probably not a green rider in the Weyr who hasn’t had a fling with a bronze or brown rider at least once, but that’s all we’re good for. They can’t bar the big dragons from green flights completely – none of them would have that – but if a green rider wants to weyr up with someone outside of mating, it’d better be a blue rider.”

The all-pervading colour politics of the Pass made T’kamen weary. “I haven’t weyred up with her,” he said. “She’s –” He wanted to say that Leda was more attached to him than he was to her, but that seemed a cowardly admission. “She’s a sweet girl.”

“That she is,” Ch’fil said. Then he glanced sideways at him. “And your heart’s not in it.”

“It’s only been a couple of sevendays, Ch’fil.”

“Would it make any difference if it’d been a couple of Turns?”

T’kamen couldn’t answer that, at least not any way he liked to.

“She’s falling for you, Kamen,” Ch’fil told him. “Faranth knows why, ugly bastard that you are, but that’s young girls for you. If you were falling for her right back, I wouldn’t say anything.” He paused. “You’re not. And you’re not going to. Are you?”

“Faranth, Ch’fil, we’re dragonriders,” T’kamen said irritably. “Since when did sharing furs with a green rider get so blighted complicated?”

“All I’m saying is that it’s costing her more to be with you than it is you to be with her.”

“You’re telling me I should break it off?”

“I’m not telling you any such blighted thing.”

That, at least, was true. Ch’fil rarely issued orders at all, much less on personal matters. He didn’t need to for his counsel to have weight. And he’d said very little that T’kamen didn’t already know. He knew from Leda’s remarks that allowing a bronze to humiliate more than a dozen fighting blues in Suatreth’s flight had gone down badly with some of her wingmates. He knew her Wingleader disapproved of bronze riders in general, and T’kamen in particular. He knew it was damaging Leda’s prospects that she was flaunting her connection to a Strategic rider. And he knew she was doing it out of some misguided, starry-eyed infatuation with him that he in no meaningful way returned.

Much better if you were only interested in mating during a flight, said Epherineth.

Breakfast was cereal and toast, eaten standing up, and with every man expected to wash his own bowl and spoon. The Seventh riders who had cooked up the porridge were dousing their cookfires and scraping out the kettles; other riders were already knocking down tents and packing up the camp. The speed with which it all happened was impressive, but then the Pass riders had had plenty of practice. Even before his leg injury, T’kamen hadn’t mastered the knack of either pitching or striking a camp at speed; now, he was even less handy with guy-lines and tent-pegs.

It would be a long day for the Seventh Flight. Thread was falling two hours south of Madellon West Weyrstation and would end even farther away. The fighting riders would fly immediately for home once Fall was over, but the Seventh would have a massive swathe of sparsely-populated territory to comb over for burrows, with limited assistance from local ground-crews. R’lony didn’t expect them to get back to Madellon much before midnight. It was a grim and gruelling prospect on a day that was windy enough to be tiring, but not so cold that Thread would be any less lethal.

The firestone bunkers at the Weyrstation were, at least, fully stocked. They’d spend most of the previous evening grading and bagging stone. Each of the bunker dragons, Epherineth included, had his own small mountain of sacks piled up nearby. T’kamen rigged his bronze with the heavy cargo harness, tied a pair of sacks to each ring, and then returned to the firestone dump to fill more.

He hated the work. It was so menial, so boring, so lacking in any skill or satisfaction. Epherineth’s ability to go between should have freed them from the drudgery of flying everywhere straight and wrangling massive loads of firestone. T’kamen understood why it couldn’t be, but he still chafed at the necessity of keeping Epherineth’s ability secret. With every effort at finding more fire-lizard eggs drawing a blank, they had no way of extending between to any dragon besides Epherineth and Trebruth, and revealing how agonisingly close they were to an answer would only be demoralising.

Their work with M’ric and Trebruth had lapsed, too: not for want of motivation, but simply for lack of time. The warming weather meant that Fall had returned in its full deadly force, and finding opportunities to get M’ric away from his Wing duties had become almost impossible. M’ric had been so exhausted from drills and Fall over the last few nights that he’d nearly fallen asleep over their increasingly futile study of the Peninsula records.

T’kamen supposed, bleakly, that it didn’t matter. M’ric was still struggling with his own ingrained fear of between, and his frustration that he and Trebruth hadn’t yet mastered it. And even once Trebruth did learn to overcome his aversion to between, he couldn’t do much with it, either. Until such time as Agusta was old enough to produce eggs, no one could know about the link between fire-lizards and between. And that was even assuming that Fetch would be up to the challenge of catching M’ric’s queen – and that, if he did, they would be able to find Agusta’s clutch. Against the dispiriting backdrop of failures, disappointments, and frustrations, T’kamen thought the solace he took in Leda’s affections was little enough compensation.

He didn’t see Suatreth among the closest rank of fighting dragons chewing stone, but Trebruth was impossible to miss when he took his turn at the bunker, the one brown hide in a sea of blue and green. Despite everything, T’kamen still took satisfaction in M’ric’s successful ascension to the fighting Wings. The boy might be having a hard time of it with his wingmates, but the only grumbles T’kamen had heard had been about Trebruth’s colour, not his competence.

The riders of S’leondes’ Wing fanned out around the dump to select bags for their dragons, or to ask Seventh riders to fill them to order. T’kamen whistled M’ric over as he shovelled firestone into a sack. “Your size?” he asked, showing him the grade he was shifting.

M’ric nodded his thanks. “It still feels strange having you doing this for me.”

“Nothing’s stopping you picking up a shovel,” T’kamen pointed out, and then when M’ric reached for the closest tool, “Put it down. I was joking.”

M’ric tucked his hands under his armpits. “Put in a few little bits for Agusta, would you?”

T’kamen paused in his shovelling for a moment. “I don’t think she’s going to cut much of a swathe.”

“Try telling her that. I’d just sooner she didn’t choke trying to eat a lump Trebruth’s size.”

“I’d sooner you left her with us,” said T’kamen.

“She wouldn’t stay,” M’ric said, “and anyway, even if she did get scored, she’d just go between, wouldn’t she?”

“It’s not that simple,” said T’kamen. “And I’m more worried about her encouraging Fetch. He’s as important as she is, given that he’s the only male we have to fly her.”

“If he can catch her,” M’ric said. Then a thought seemed to occur to him. “Faranth. It’s not going to be like a dragon mating flight, is it, when she rises?”

The look of sudden horror on his face was too much for T’kamen to resist. “We’re dragonriders, M’ric. You knew you’d have to make sacrifices when you Impressed.”

“When I Impressed Trebruth, yes! Not for Impressing a sharding fire-lizard!”

“The lizard decides and the rider complies,” T’kamen said gravely. “You’ll be taking one for the Weyr.”

“I don’t care if Agusta’s the only way for us to get more fire-lizard eggs! I am not having sex with you! That would be like –”

M’ric stopped. T’kamen realised that his face must have given him away. He scratched his beard with one hand to try to cover it, but it was too late. “You tail-fork,” M’ric said flatly. “You sick shaffing tail-fork. You actually had me believing…” He whirled suddenly at an outbreak of snickering, and shouted at a young tailman who had been filling firestone sacks behind him. “And you can just shaff off, S’dore!” He punched T’kamen on the shoulder, quite hard. “Don’t do that to me again!”

T’kamen couldn’t hide his smile. “You were too easy a mark,” he said. “I couldn’t resist.”

“Tail-fork,” M’ric grumbled.

T’kamen looked up at where the dragons of the Commander’s Wing were assembled. “Spalinoth’s looking very green this morning.”

“She’s giving all the males in the Wing something to think about,” M’ric said, with a sigh. “Even Karzith.”

“Think Trebruth is up to outflying him?” T’kamen asked.

M’ric gave him a startled look. “What, Karzith? Karzith’s not going to chase Spalinoth. That would be gross.”

“Because Fraza tailed for S’leondes?”

“Because she’s practically like his daughter,” said M’ric. “I mean, it’s not as if tails don’t sleep with their officers sometimes, but it’s not like that with Fraza and the Commander.”

T’kamen wondered if M’ric was telling himself that for his own reassurance. “But Trebruth’s going to chase her?”

“He’s entitled to,” M’ric said, with asperity. “He’s a fighting dragon. He doesn’t need permission to chase a green any more.”

“Permission or not,” said T’kamen, “is Fraza happy about you taking part?”

“She said she doesn’t care if I do or not, because she doesn’t see Spalinoth ever being caught by a brown anyway,” said M’ric. He snorted. “We’ll see about that.”

“No one likes a flight pest, M’ric,” T’kamen said. “It’s not fair to exploit a mating flight to get in bed with a green rider who’s not interested in you.”

M’ric looked genuinely offended. “Do you think I would?”

“No,” T’kamen said. “You were raised better than that.”

“Thank you. I think.”

“Speaking of how you were raised,” said T’kamen. “Will you be able to get permission to visit your mother tomorrow or the day after?”

“I…” M’ric shifted uncomfortably. “A couple of the guys in the Wing already think I’m some kind of mummy’s boy, because I ask for home leave so often.”

“We have to keep at this, M’ric,” T’kamen told him. “I know you’re not enjoying it, but you can’t give up.”

M’ric sighed. “Maybe the day after next Fall,” he said. “We’re going to have to drill even harder after today.”

“Why?”

“It’s just…” M’ric shrugged vaguely. “Changes in formation, you know.”

T’kamen gave him a hard look. It wasn’t like M’ric to make so many excuses. He finished filling firestone bags and stretched as he straightened up from tying off the necks, knuckling the aches in the small of his back. “This is where I came into this time,” he said suddenly, looking up at the ridge. “Madellon West.”

“Yeah,” said M’ric. He looked like he was about to say something else, and then didn’t, looking uncomfortable.

“What?” T’kamen asked.

M’ric hesitated. Then he said, “You know Dalka has a drawing of you.”

“She has what?”

“A drawing. Of you. In her workshop.” M’ric met T’kamen’s blink, and added, “It’s all right, it’s not a naked drawing.”

“That’s reassuring,” said T’kamen. He frowned. Dalka had threatened to draw him, but he hadn’t thought she’d meant it. “What were you doing in Dalka’s workshop?”

M’ric didn’t reply. “Do you think she’s…” He halted the sentence unfinished, and then said, “Why’s she so interested in you?

“I didn’t know that she was.”

“She always has been,” M’ric said, “right from –” He stopped.

“You were reporting to her about me, weren’t you?” T’kamen asked. “When I first arrived. She set you on me.”

M’ric looked torn. Then he nodded. “I didn’t know you then,” he said. “I wasn’t spying on you, just…telling her what you’d said, about being Madellon’s Weyrleader.”

“You didn’t owe me any loyalty then,” said T’kamen. When M’ric looked even more wretched, he asked, “Are you still reporting to her?”

“No!” M’ric said, and then added, “I mean, she thinks I am, but I don’t say anything important. Nothing anyone else who knows you couldn’t tell her, like Ch’fil or El’yan.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“It’s just that…I went up to see her yesterday, before we left to come here. I must have got there earlier than she’d expected. I think I saw something, in her office, that I wasn’t supposed to see.”

“The painting of me?”

M’ric shook his head. “It was something else.” He took a breath, and his eyes flickered up towards the Weyrstation.

“Stop messing around and get mounted up, brown rider!” G’reyan’s shout made them both jump. “This isn’t a sharding Gather!”

M’ric looked stricken. “Go,” T’kamen told him. “And if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think you’ve been disloyal to me.” He clapped his shoulder. “Good flaming, M’ric.”

M’ric didn’t look much less troubled, but he heaved his firestone sacks over his shoulders and, with a parting nod, headed back towards Trebruth.

T’kamen had always known that M’ric had been reporting on him to someone in his early sevendays in the Pass. It didn’t really surprise him to have confirmation that it had been Dalka. She certainly seemed to have an agenda where T’kamen was concerned. He just didn’t know what it was. As sincere as Dalka’s attachment to R’lony seemed to be, they clearly didn’t think or act as one, so whatever Dalka was up to didn’t necessarily involve R’lony. He just couldn’t think what was at the root of her particular interest in him.

Epherineth commented on his preoccupation as he paced up the ridge to find a good place to take off. Who can know the mind of a queen’s rider?

A queen?

Epherineth spread his wings and sprang ponderously from the ridge, into the wind. For a stomach-turning moment he dropped, and then his sail caught the air and he rose, beating hard. Donauth won’t tell me.

No, said T’kamen, as they angled up to join the massed Wings of Madellon Weyr. I suppose she won’t.

M’ric’s confession left him feeling conflicted. The boy hadn’t owed him anything, at least at first, and T’kamen couldn’t fault a weyrling with poor prospects for leaping to curry favour with any major player in the Weyr. It stung him more that M’ric hadn’t come clean with him sooner. T’kamen believed his assertion that he hadn’t told Dalka anything of serious significance, but it still put him off-balance to wonder what M’ric had told her. He’d suspected for a long time that Dalka knew more about him than Madellon’s incomplete records should have permitted; now, knowing that M’ric had been sharing intelligence with her, catching her out would be that much harder. It gave T’kamen plenty to contemplate as they flew south-east to meet Fall.

Any hope that the windy morning would yield a snowfall to blunt the force of Thread proved fruitless. The sun was shining down weakly between fast-moving scuds of cloud by the time the fighting Wings rose to burn the first sheeting fall of Thread. The prevailing southerly had every dragon working hard just to keep on station, and the unpredictability of the gusts make Thread difficult to judge. Three times in the first hour of Fall, fighting dragons had to break their formations to chase stray Threads that the crosswind had blown nearly as far as the bunker dragons.

Epherineth roused suddenly beneath T’kamen, stirring from his dull and dogged struggle against the wind. Geninth says we are to chew stone.

T’kamen glanced up to where R’lony was overseeing the Seventh’s operations from his usual high vantage. He’s letting us stoke?

There’s too much Thread getting through the Wings when the fighting dragons break formation. Stratomath says they can’t keep up with the burrows. Geninth says we need to protect ourselves.

T’kamen hesitated a moment over the wisdom of allowing his bronze stone with Thread in sight. He remembered with a shudder how Epherineth had reacted to that first Threadfall, and the relish with which he’d destroyed the burrow at Fiver Hold.

You can trust me.

Epherineth didn’t sound offended. T’kamen reached back for the closest firestone sack. This stuff was graded for a green.

It will have to do.

T’kamen untied the neck of the sack and put his hand inside. The stone he pulled out was about half the size of one he’d have selected for Epherineth. Here.

Epherineth twisted his head back over his left shoulder, opening his mouth. T’kamen got five chunks of stone between his dragon’s teeth before Epherineth closed his mouth and turned back, chewing. The grind of firestone mostly masked the sound of slobbering, though T’kamen was still very conscious of it. He was aware, too, of how Epherineth always took care to avoid turning the scarred side of his face towards him if he could help it. Perhaps in time he’d become accustomed to the twisted snarl that characterised his dragon’s once-handsome face, but the scars, and the shame he felt at being responsible for them, were too fresh yet.

Fetch, clinging to Epherineth’s harness in his accustomed perch just in front of T’kamen, chirped hopefully. “Not a chance,” T’kamen told him. “You wouldn’t do any good.” More, Epherineth?

After three more reloads, twenty stones and nearly half a sack, Epherineth said, That’s enough.

Be careful where you breathe, T’kamen warned him. You don’t need to set your load off.

Epherineth angled his head carefully upwards and exhaled a long breath of flame. Up and down the row of bunker dragons, other bronzes and browns were testing their fire, too, but none of them could match Epherineth’s range. T’kamen got a faceful of sooty firestone stench, carried by the manic gusting of the wind. He found he didn’t mind. Epherineth was alive and awake to the Fall now as he hadn’t been since that first time, watching the fighting dragons with eyes tinged orange with the beginnings of combat aggression. The agile little blues and greens darted around the sky, but the net they wove couldn’t catch everything, and as T’kamen watched, his perception enhanced through Epherineth’s, he began to see the gaps. The northern flank of the Wing flying the pivotal centre stack was missing more Thread than any other. He couldn’t identify the Wing – the fast-moving greens and blues gave him no point of reference – but he could see why it was failing. It was the two anchor blues, trying in vain to both contain the edge of the Fall and hold station against the constant crosswind. T’kamen watched as the two toiling dragons took it in turns to attempt to mop up what was getting blown past them before struggling back to resume their appointed places. They were just too small for the job under the conditions; they lacked either the strength or the flame range they needed.

If they could go between, T’kamen said, and Epherineth concurred.

It seemed inevitable that the struggling blues would let something past sooner or later, and so it proved. A heavy patch of Thread disintegrated into more strands than they could contain, and the stragglers were blown erratically towards the line of bunker dragons flying lateral to the Wings.

Epherineth was moving before the threat even became fully clear. He thrust in towards the Wings as though his heavy load of firestone weighed nothing, warning off the dragons to either side of him, and came up underneath the writhing strands. T’kamen felt the firestone gas surge up his dragon’s gullet and then burst free in a sooty scarlet lance. It took the first Thread square on, incinerating it instantly. Epherineth twitched his head slightly and the tip of his exhalation caught the second Thread, setting it on fire that ran hungrily up the length of the strand, leaving dissolving ash in its wake. The third strand had blown farther and fallen faster. Epherineth folded his wings slightly to drop with it, and a final belch of fire obliterated the filament completely.

T’kamen thumped his neck. He realised he was grinning. Good job, Epherineth.

Epherineth had to beat his wings hard to regain the altitude he’d lost. It burns differently to how I had expected, he said. I should not have expended so much flame on the first one. It was wasteful.

Between with wasteful, Epherineth. It was well done.

He rumbled, and not just with his stored gas. Those blues are still struggling.

The frustration in his voice had no solution. T’kamen could just imagine how receptive S’leondes would be to his opinion on the competence of the fighting Wings. Still, he couldn’t help agreeing with Epherineth. One bronze, or even a big brown, would anchor that formation far more effectively, especially in the windy conditions. But watching one of the blues roll narrowly out of the way of a fast-falling tangle reminded him that a bronze or big brown wouldn’t be capable of the acrobatics needed to stay alive.

He tore his eyes away from the compelling toil of the two blues to seek out Trebruth. It took him several minutes to pinpoint M’ric’s dragon through the overlapping ranks of blue and green bodies and the frequent flares of crimson flame, even with Epherineth’s long eyes to help him. S’leondes’ Wing was flying on the top level two ranks back from leading edge. Trebruth was stationed halfway down the southern arm of the Wing with a green either side of him, and as T’kamen watched he recognised that the three were working as a squad. M’ric’s grumbles about how S’leondes had deployed him were not unfounded. The Commander’s entire Wing was split into trios, each comprising a blue and a pair of greens flying in a reverse stacked triangle with the blue above and slightly behind, the greens forward and somewhat spread out. The blue in each squad met any Thread coming into their airspace first, burning everything he could reach; the greens tackled what he missed. As often as any member of the trio had to break formation to reach a strand, or to dodge one, each dragon maintained his overall position. The trios themselves were stacked on two levels, alternating all along the line of the Wing, and from time to time the two levels exchanged positions, the lower rank rising as the upper descended for a respite from the thickest rain of Thread.

It was an elegant formation, and an effective use of a blue’s skills – but not for Trebruth’s. For all his small stature, M’ric’s brown was just put together differently to a blue. His deeper chest and greater lung capacity meant he scarcely had to move at all to cover off his section of sky. He could flame Thread at a range greater than that of any blue in the Wing. It was impossible to tell at that range, but T’kamen suspected that Trebruth’s squad was letting through less Thread than any other in the Wing. That was fine, but it still seemed a gross misuse of him as a unique asset. Trebruth and M’ric were inexperienced, it was true, and perhaps S’leondes sought only to protect them while he got their measure, but T’kamen still wondered why the Commander, famously colour-biased, had taken them into his Wing if not to make proper use of them.

The wind direction was changing when the first dragons began to come back to the Seventh for firestone. The weak winter sun that had partly counteracted its chill found fewer and fewer places to filter through the racing streamers of cloud, and the headwind moved gradually around to the south-west, blowing across and into the Wings. Amidst much shouting and exchanging of arm signals, the Wings shifted formation to cope with the strengthening wind, but dragons already besieged by the conditions began visibly to struggle. One blue who came to Epherineth for firestone was buffeted so violently into his flank that a smaller dragon would have been sent spinning. Another blue’s rider missed the catch, and shouted up an apology when Epherineth had to duck down sharply to grab the falling sacks. Almost every dragon who pulled alongside them for a reload was heaving with exertion. The first green retired with wing cramps not far into the third hour of Fall. But it was the unpredictability of the wind, more so than its punishing strength, that claimed the first life.

T’kamen didn’t know if older riders ever got used to the sound of a dragon’s mortal screams. He knew he never would. He caught a glimpse he didn’t want, passed reflexively through Epherineth’s perceptions, of a green dragon thrashing wildly in the grip of a spreading net of Thread filaments. The fact that her shriek reached them in pieces, torn apart by the gale, made it no less harrowing. It did, at least, cut off quickly. But the sound of that cry was still ringing in his ears when the next one rent the sky, and Epherineth groaned. Who is it?

The youngster was Twibith. Jolyoth tried to cover her vector and has been struck.

Salionth and Recranth were sprinting inwards, angled down. A moment later, T’kamen saw Jolyoth, a Wingsecond’s blue, dropping like a stone through the massed fighting dragons, his wings already more Thread than sail. But in the space of moments the orderly rhythm of the fighting Wings disintegrated into chaos. Dragons veered in all directions to dodge Jolyoth’s unchecked tumble through the centre of the stacked formations. Not all of them succeeded. Some of those who did avoid the plummeting blue collided with each other instead. And Thread poured through the gap left in the top level by the two stricken dragons.

Another dragon was hit by Thread and went between. Dragons who’d clipped wings fought to regain lost altitude and their lost positions. A green had slammed broadside into a blue and the pair of them were tangled hopelessly with each other. Roars from around and above T’kamen accompanied the surge of catching trios from the Seventh, and then Epherineth’s muscles bunched beneath him. We go to catch Kahnath. Plumiath assists!

If Epherineth’s load of firestone troubled him at all, he didn’t show it. He arrowed inwards and down, dropping beneath the level of the lowest Wings. T’kamen stole a glance up and back to see A’dry and Plumiath darting after them. No third?

We are spread too thin. Plumiath will clear and steady. I will catch!

There were at least half a dozen dragons in distress, Threaded or injured or both, down below the Wings. T’kamen didn’t have time to identify them all. Epherineth locked onto their target and T’kamen assessed the situation as the gap closed between them. Kahnath, a big blue for the Pass, was losing height with every passing moment. The main sail of his left wing had been sliced through from elbow to trailing edge, and the rent halves fluttered in useless strips, but the damage was clearly the result of another dragon’s talons rather than Thread. Kahnath could be saved. Epherineth bugled out to him, and the blue raised a frightened warble in return.

He cannot control his speed, Epherineth told T’kamen as he drew alongside the stricken blue, matching his precipitous vector. Hold tight.

Then he dipped below Kahnath and angled beneath him. T’kamen felt the shudder through Epherineth’s frame as Kahnath’s belly bumped his back, and then a massive jolt rattled his teeth as Epherineth came up hard beneath the smaller dragon.

They had never caught a dragon for real before. For all the practice catches they’d made, those dragons had been faking injuries, and Thread had not been falling around them. T’kamen heard Plumiath flaming above them, felt the heat of his fiery breath, and bits of charred Thread rained down on them. Kahnath’s scrabbling claws sliced several firestone sacks free from Epherineth’s harness, sending them tumbling to the ground. And the ground itself was not as far away as it had been. A glance earthwards revealed the alarming proximity of the hilly moorland below, all rocks and ridges.

He is only a blue, Epherineth insisted, and gradually the power of his wings levelled out their steep trajectory. A third, lesser impact was Plumiath, grasping Kahnath’s wing-shoulders from above to steady him on Epherineth’s back.

T’kamen twisted in his seat to find Kahnath’s rider. He didn’t know the man’s name. “We’ve got you,” he shouted up to the shocked blue rider. “Keep him calm. We’ll get you down.”

With Kahnath secure on his back, Epherineth veered against the direction of Fall, heading back towards the safety of territory it had already passed over.

But the carnage of the last several minutes was made bleakly plain by the sight that awaited them. The burrows dotting the width of Thread’s footprint as far as the eye could see were not the only things on fire. Three bigger blazes marked the corpses of dragons, set alight to sear away the Thread infestations that had taken their lives. T’kamen tore his eyes away from them.

The catching trios were setting down the injured but unscored fighting dragons on a knoll some way outside the Thread corridor. Healer and Dragon Healer teams, riding with G’bral’s Watch section, were already at work on the wounded. Epherineth landed downwind of them, and Plumiath helped the moaning Kahnath down from his back. Ichor from the blue dragon’s slashed wing spattered T’kamen and Epherineth as one of the Dragon Healers raced over. “Leave him with us, bronze rider!” he called up to T’kamen.

“Good catch, T’kamen!” A’dry shouted down. Plumiath was already airborne again. “Check Epherineth’s shoulder. Kahnath gave him a rake!”

T’kamen turned to look at his dragon’s back. Epherineth’s left shoulder was seeping ichor from three short slashes. Is it bad?

Epherineth put his head over his shoulder to investigate. He licked the gash experimentally, then turned back, dismissing it. It’s nothing important. Geninth wants us back in formation.

He heaved off from the ground. In that heavy take-off, T’kamen knew that Epherineth’s strength had been tested more sorely than he would admit. The bunker dragons weren’t normally expected to make catches while carrying loads of firestone. You all right?

Yes. Epherineth’s reply was terse as he beat his wings hard, battling the crosswind to catch up with the fighting Wings. I was the only one who could have caught Kahnath. I had to go. He would not have survived the fall.

It took T’kamen a moment to grasp Epherineth’s implication. Geninth didn’t order you to make the catch?

All the other catchers had already deployed. Kahnath had no one to help him.

You disobeyed Geninth?

Geninth did not tell me to go. Geninth did not tell me not to go.

T’kamen slapped the fore-ridge. You did the right thing.

They were less than halfway back to the Wings when a distant cry made Epherineth falter in his stroke, and then go rigid. What? T’kamen asked, abruptly afraid. There were few individual dragons whose distress would have rocked Epherineth’s composure. Is it Trebruth? Is he all right?

But the stricken dragon whose image, passed back through the other dragons of the Wings, Epherineth shared with him was not Trebruth.

It was Suatreth.

She had been hit. A partially-burned Thread, not much more than a yard long, had glanced the trailing edge of her left wing. A gust of wind in the right direction would have blown it clear, but that gust had not come, and the half-burned Thread was slowly taking hold. T’kamen experienced that vision in all its horrible clarity, and then, abruptly, Suatreth and Leda were gone.

It seemed for an instant as if the world had ceased turning.

Every moment’s inattention, every dismissive word, every half-hearted kiss T’kamen had given Leda came back to him like a punch to the gut. His willingness to accept what she offered without returning it in kind shamed him to his bones. The salve to his ego that the candid ardour of a much younger woman had been seemed a tawdry self-indulgence.

His pretty, defiant, bright-eyed young green rider was going to die between.

Dragonriders died. Fighting riders died. Pass riders died. T’kamen had seen it with his own eyes. He’d thought he understood. He’d thought he grasped the meaning of a dragon’s death in Threadfall. He’d thought he comprehended how unflinchingly fighting riders faced the possibility – the probability – of death in battle. He’d thought he could live with it.

He’d been wrong.

Once, and only once, had another rider’s death shaken him to the bottom of his soul; not in Thread, not even in the Pass. He still recalled in nightmares the horror of Epherineth’s cry when C’los’ murder had sent Indioth fleeing into the oblivion of a death between. Over the Turns he had lost classmates and wingmates, friends and mentors, but none had hit him as devastatingly as C’los’ death, not only because he had been one of his oldest and closest friends, but because he’d died while carrying out T’kamen’s orders. If only he’d paid C’los more attention, if only he’d counselled him to more caution, if only he’d expected less of him; perhaps his death could have been averted.

Now another green rider’s life hung in the balance.

Leda was not C’los. T’kamen hadn’t grown up with her, hadn’t spent his adult life confiding in her, hadn’t come to rely on her as ally and adviser. She wasn’t family as C’los had been. But she was one of the few riders in the Pass who had accepted him, welcomed him, despite the colour of his dragon and the many mistakes and blunders he’d made in his ignorance of the era. She’d offered him companionship and intimacy where no one else had, freely and honestly. He didn’t love her. He didn’t know that he would ever love her. But he did care for her, and in that moment, in that instant, with rider and dragon beyond all possible hope, he knew he couldn’t let his inaction end her life.

He didn’t have to communicate his decision, or his reasoning, to his dragon. Epherineth knew and he understood, as he’d known and understood every major decision T’kamen had ever made. Fetch reared up from his perch on the fore-strap, spreading his wings, infected with their mutual decisive intent. T’kamen felt Epherineth’s mind, twined with the brown fire-lizard’s, reach into between. It was like and yet unlike their groping after Trebruth when M’ric’s dragon had lost his way. Trebruth had required only a steadying, the imposition of the solid visual that he and Agusta needed to bring them safely out. Suatreth had no fire-lizard to pilot her. No visual Epherineth could provide could show her the way through. Bronze dragon and brown fire-lizard quested instead to find her between, to strain the intangible fabric of that unknowable place through their combined comprehension of it, and to centre themselves on the tiny, fading speck of life that was Suatreth within it.

Epherineth flung all three of them recklessly between as he had never done before: with between itself as his only destination. The choking darkness seemed blacker and more final than ever with no light of an endpoint to guide them. T’kamen wrapped his thoughts tight with his dragon’s, letting neither fear nor doubt tug at Epherineth’s resolve, lending his strength instead to the tremendous mental effort. And as he surrendered himself completely to Epherineth’s purpose, he glimpsed at last how a dragon perceived between: not the blank nothingness that was all a human’s mind could comprehend, but an infinitely complex, infinitely huge nexus of glowing paths, criss-crossing, overlapping, sprawling out to encompass everywhere and every when. T’kamen’s mind tried to shudder back from the alien intricacy of it, but he was carried along as Epherineth’s will and Fetch’s vision traversed the monstrous immensity along gleaming threads like the gossamer of a spinner’s web. They were not alone. Other motes of life flickered in and out of existence all around them, too fast to follow, nearly too fleetingly to see. They were green and blue and brown and bronze and gold. They were the dragons and fire-lizards of Pern: the present, past, and future indistinguishable from each other in that timeless, limitless place.

But not every strand glimmered with potential. As Fetch led and Epherineth followed, they skirted places where the shimmering paths hung dark and dead, the threads drifting forlornly in infinity; not severed, with ends sliced cleanly through, but frayed, as though they had been tested to snapping point and been found wanting. They moved faster and faster through the maze of paths and it seemed to T’kamen that the dark places grew more abundant as they travelled. Between was broken. If he had not comprehended that fact before, now he finally did. And he realised, too, that some of the points of brightness that he saw winking out were not dragons exiting between, but dragons perishing there, helpless to navigate the incomplete pathways unaided, their lives and lights extinguished there in the endless tangle of possibilities.

And then they arrived at their destination, at the weakly shining verdant gleam that was somehow recognisably Suatreth. The collective consciousness of their three minds, dragon and lizard and human, enveloped her, wrapping her in its steadying strength.

Where?

Epherineth did not speak the question. It echoed through the fabric of their combined being, and T’kamen found himself thrust back into the confines of his own perceptions to answer it. Between fell around him again like a shroud, black and frozen. It seemed they’d been there forever. But fifteen Turns of training made the emergency visual spring into his mind. With the last of his consciousness he held tightly to it. Home. Get us all home, Epherineth.

Ch’fil was there when he awoke.

T’kamen raised his head marginally off the pillow, and then regretted it. It felt thick and sodden, like he’d come off a two-day drunk, and for a moment he had no idea where he was or any recollection of how he’d got there.

Ch’fil had been dozing in a chair beside the bed, but he straightened up at T’kamen’s groan. “Kamen. You’re awake.”

T’kamen found enough saliva to speak. “Not the…sharding…infirmary…again.”

Ch’fil’s low affirmative grunt hurt T’kamen’s head, and so did the light from the glow-basket he opened a crack. “The Healers want to start charging you rent. Here.”

T’kamen took gratefully the water mug Ch’fil pushed into his hand. A cool swig restored him more than he would have imagined it could. “What time is it?”

“About half through middle watch. The Healers thought you might be out for longer, but they didn’t have much precedent to go on.”

T’kamen tried to reckon the hours. He couldn’t. “We missed the end of Fall.”

“Aye. You get a pass, though. This time. R’lony wanted to bollock you for dereliction of duty, but I talked him out of that, under the circumstances.”

The circumstances. It all began to rush back into T’kamen’s mind: emerging over Madellon in a snowstorm with Suatreth dangling limply from Epherineth’s grip; the startled bugles of the off-duty dragons below; Donauth, arrowing across the Bowl to assist in landing the Threadscored green; dragons everywhere barking incredulous queries at Epherineth over the nature of his arrival; Epherineth silencing them with a tired, irate bellow. Epherineth landing hard, and standing there, heaving and exhausted, as Suatreth was mobbed by Dragon Healers. And then the slow, dizzy spin into unconsciousness that was the last thing T’kamen remembered. “Ch’fil. Is Suatreth...?”

“Suatreth’s fine,” Ch’fil said. His voice was tired and dull. “As fine as a green dragon who by all rights should be dead can hope to be, anyway.”

“How badly was her wing scored?”

“She’s down about a fourth part of the trailing sail and the last joint of the middle and inner fingers. She’ll have lost some speed and the fine control on that side, but the Dragon Healers are saying they’ve seen dragons with worse wing injuries flying again. There’s not a scratch on Leda. She’d be in here now if it weren’t that she don’t want to leave Suatreth.”

T’kamen let out his breath, weak with relief. “Thank Faranth for that.”

Ch’fil didn’t reply. His silence seemed peculiar to T’kamen, and then he grasped the reason why. “Shards,” he said, after a minute. “The snake’s out of the bag about between, now, isn’t it?”

“Aye,” said Ch’fil. “Every dragon who wasn’t flying Fall saw Epherineth appear out of nowhere with Suatreth in his talons. There’s nothing to be done about it now. In the morning we’ll work out the details of what you’ll say happened. Best you don’t talk to anyone else before then.”

“How bad was the Fall?” T’kamen asked, and when Ch’fil hesitated, he went on, “I heard three go between before Suatreth, but there could have been more.”

“There were more,” Ch’fil said. “It was… Ah, Faranth, T’kamen, I’m sorry. I’m really shaffing sorry.”

He suddenly gripped T’kamen’s shoulder. T’kamen looked at Ch’fil’s hand blankly, and then searched his face. His expression was twisted in a rictus of grief that he’d never seen there before. “What’s happened, Ch’fil?”

“The Wings took such a beating,” Ch’fil said. “It was mayhem after Jolyoth got hit. You saw it. And…” He visibly took hold of himself. “M’ric didn’t make it, T’kamen.”

“He didn’t…” T’kamen began, and then stopped. Ch’fil’s words didn’t seem to make sense. “What do you mean?”

“I talked to G’reyan,” Ch’fil said. “He saw it happen. He said Trebruth just didn’t have the experience to know what to do when the formations went to shit. He tried to burn a Thread-bomb by himself, and it shattered down all over them. There’s no dragonpair in the Weyr would have had a chance.”

“Then he went between?” T’kamen asked. He still couldn’t make sense of Ch’fil account.

“Aye.” Ch’fil’s hand closed painfully hard on T’kamen’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, T’kamen. He’s gone.”

T’kamen stared uncomprehendingly into nothing for a moment. Then he said, determinedly, “No. He went between. He would have come out somewhere else. Probably Fiver. That’s where we’d been training, that was his emergency reference. He’s probably there right now, too ashamed to come back here until he’s found himself clean pants.” Epherineth, wake up.

“We already thought of that, Kamen,” Ch’fil said. “Stratomath and Geninth both tried to raise Trebruth. Even Donauth did. They couldn’t find him.”

“They weren’t looking in the right place,” T’kamen said. Epherineth!

Epherineth roused sluggishly, but in an instant he discerned T’kamen’s distress. I will look for Trebruth.

“Epherineth’s looking right now,” T’kamen told Ch’fil. “He’ll find him.”

“T’kamen –”

“He will,” T’kamen insisted. “Void take you, Ch’fil; you shaffing Pass riders give up far too shaffing easily!”

I cannot find him.

Don’t be ridiculous, Epherineth, look harder. Try Fiver Hold.

I have. Trebruth is not there.

“Blight you between, Epherineth!” T’kamen shouted. “Find him!”

Epherineth’s voice came back full of regret. He is not here.

Only then did T’kamen allow the truth of Ch’fil’s report to hit him. He choked, his throat gone suddenly tight with emotion, his voice dried up, and raised his eyes to Ch’fil’s in mute entreaty.

“I’m sorry, Kamen,” Ch’fil said. “I know you loved that boy like he was your own. He was a credit to what you did with him. He died as brave a dragonrider as any we’ve ever had.”

It was the use of that word, inaccurate as it was, that jolted T’kamen from his grief. Dead. The pieces finally fell into place. “He’s gone,” he heard himself say aloud, and then bit off the words that wanted to follow them. Gone. Not dead. Gone to the Interval. For an instant he felt overwhelmed with relief. He did it. He went back. He did it!

And then desolation struck him like a Threadscore.

“You stupid boy,” he heard himself say, and then his anger roared up his throat and out like a dragon’s flame. “You stupid, thoughtless little shit! Look what you’ve done!”

“T’kamen!” Ch’fil barked. “Settle down! He was a fighting rider! It happens!”

“Void take it, Ch’fil, don’t you get it? We should never have let him fight!”

“That was never your decision –”

“It should have been! Blight it, Ch’fil! It’s not just M’ric we’ve lost, it’s Agusta!” T’kamen raked both hands agitatedly through his hair. “Where on Pern are we going to find more shaffing fire-lizards now?”

Chapter sixty-one: Sh’zon

The upheaval that characterised the middle of the Seventh Interval was centred primarily upon Madellon and, to a slightly lesser degree, Southern. But the significance of events at the Peninsula Weyr should not be overlooked. Weyrleader H’pold’s death and Senior Queen Ipith’s illegal mating flight had consequences that would, themselves, establish precedent for much of the political revolution that would follow in the century and more to come.

– Masterharper Hennidge, Chronicle of the Seventh Interval

100.04.18-23 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON AND PENINSULA WEYRS

He regretted nothing. Not stealing the antidote, not intruding on a closed flight, not incurring Rallai’s rage. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that and he knew it wouldn’t be the last. Kawanth had flown Ipith, fair and square. No one could dispute that he’d caught the senior queen. No one could dispute Kawanth’s superiority over every other bronze who had pitted his strength and skill against the Peninsula’s senior queen that day. No one could dispute Sh’zon’s right, hard-fought and hard-won, to assume the title on which he had set his heart all those Turns ago: Peninsula Weyrleader.

And yet dispute it they did.

The welcome that awaited him outside Rallai’s weyr was not a warm one. The heartsick despair that normally characterised beaten bronze riders was nowhere to be seen in the faces of the crowd of Wingleaders and Wingseconds who started up from their positions guarding Ipith’s ledge when Sh’zon and Rallai emerged from within.

Sh’zon met one angry pair of eyes after another, noting as he did who was there. K’sorren, B’reye, C’eena; they’d all had live chances, but P’less and M’roka sharding well hadn’t. “Gentlemen,” he said. “If you’d just –”

“What the shaff did you think you were doing, Sh’zon?” The hiss came from G’lorn, Badderth’s rider. “You had no right –”

“No shaffing right at all!” C’eena broke in.

“C’eena. G’lorn,” The mollifying voice was K’ken’s. The Peninsula’s Deputy Weyrleader looked the least drained of all of them, but that wasn’t surprising; Essienth would have been among the first to abandon Ipith’s pursuit. “All of you,” K’ken said, looking around at the stony-faced gathering.

Sh’zon nodded his thanks, grateful – until K’ken took Rallai’s arm. “Weyrwoman, if we could have a word…”

Enough of Kawanth’s instinctive possessiveness still imbued Sh’zon that he growled, “Don’t take liberties with my Weyrwoman, K’ken!”

“Beg your pardon, Sh’zon,” K’ken said. “But if you could give us just a moment.”

Sh’zon had to consciously unclench his fists as K’ken drew Rallai aside. They conversed for several moments in low voices that came to him only in snatches.

“…concern with the nature…”

“…never my intention to allow…”

“…doubts around the legitimacy…”

“…would never have…”

“…H’pold…riders looking for stability…”

“…understand…”

“…need to move swiftly to reassure…”

Sh’zon didn’t like the gist of what he overheard; he didn’t like it at all. He’d just decided to insist on being included in the conference when K’ken and Rallai turned back towards him. Rallai’s face was grave; K’ken wore a furrow-browed expression of concern. The other bronze riders shifted moodily on the other side of the ledge.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Sh’zon,” said K’ken. “Perhaps we could step back inside the Weyrwoman’s weyr a moment.”

“No,” Sh’zon said. “Whatever you’ve got to say, say it out here for everyone to hear.” He raised his chin defiantly as he spoke. “You’re questioning my right to be Weyrleader; is that it?”

If he’d hoped K’ken would hurry to deny the accusation, he was disappointed. “There’s some concern over the validity of your claim,” he said. “It was a closed flight; by tradition you weren’t entitled to take part.”

Sh’zon reined in his irritation. “No one told me it was closed.”

“The feeling is that you should have presumed it was unless specifically told otherwise.” K’ken spoke with careful choice of words. “The question of if you were…misinformed…puts the Weyrwoman in a difficult position.”

Sh’zon stiffened as the significance sank in. “You’re turning this around on Rallai?” he demanded, and raked the watching bronze riders with a furious glare. “You’re making this her fault?”

“It’s not a matter of fault,” said K’ken. “Only of responsibility. It’s enshrined in Peninsula law that the Weyr has the right to be governed by one of its own –”

“I am one of its own, blight it!” Sh’zon shouted. “Faranth’s shaffing teeth, K’ken, do twenty Turns flying under Peninsula knots mean nothing to you?”

“I’m speaking on the Weyr’s behalf, Sh’zon, not my own,” said K’ken. “Please believe me when I say I have no agenda of my own except to serve the Peninsula’s interests.”

Sh’zon wouldn’t have believed that assertion of any other bronze rider, but he grudgingly allowed K’ken that much credit. “I’m a Peninsula rider. Kawanth’s a Peninsula bronze. The Peninsula runs in my veins, blight you. If that’s not good enough –”

“Your Peninsula blood isn’t in question,” said K’ken. “Your right to contest the Peninsula leadership, as a rider wearing the Madellon badge, is.”

Sh’zon searched K’ken’s lined and crumpled face incredulously. “Then what? You’re going to disqualify me?”

“I’m sorry, Sh’zon,” K’ken said. The regret in his voice sounded genuine. “But until the Weyr at large has had the opportunity to consider the ramifications, you can’t be confirmed as Weyrleader.”

“Confirmed?” Sh’zon cried. “Confirmed? My dragon flew the Thread-struck senior queen! How much more confirmation do you want?”

“Sh’zon,” said Rallai, quiet, but harsh. “Don’t make a scene.”

He turned on her. “You, too?”

She shook her head. “If I’d known, Sh’zon…  I didn’t think I had to tell you not to come. I didn’t think you’d be so…”

“So what?” Sh’zon asked, when she didn’t complete the sentence. “So determined? You didn’t think I’d find a sharding way around the felah?”

“I should have known. I was wrong.” Rallai said it without flinching. “But it doesn’t change anything. K’ken’s right, Sh’zon. You can’t be confirmed as Weyrleader. Not like this. The Peninsula has a right to self-determination.”

“I’ll turn in my Madellon badge,” Sh’zon said suddenly. “My Wing, all my rank...”

“You can’t without your own Weyrwoman’s permission.”

“I’ll get it! Valonna will let me go. And you can accept me back as a Peninsula rider –”

“It’s too late for that. You were a Madellon rider when Kawanth flew Ipith –”

“I’ve always been a Peninsula rider in my heart!”

“Your heart doesn’t get to decide, Shai!” Rallai flared. “And neither does mine!”

Sh’zon had no answer for that. He stared at her, seeing the despair in her eyes, and then couldn’t face it any more. He turned away, trying to deny the tightness in his chest.

“Sh’zon,” said K’ken, with quiet gravity. “The Peninsula needs time to digest what’s happened today and to decide what happens next. Until then, you should go back to Madellon.”

“Rallai,” he appealed, futilely, but she shook her head.

“You need to go, Shai,” she told him, and lifted her chin against any weakening of her resolve.

So he went back to Madellon, and to a reception comprising equal parts avid interest and chilly opprobrium. He stopped only at his weyr for a change of clothes and a wash, so he could face Valonna decently, but even the short walk from Kawanth’s ledge to Shimpath’s brought him into contact with too many riders who either looked at him with open censure or else talked behind their hands to each other, darting glances at him.

He hated it. He should have been returning to Madellon as the new Weyrleader of the Peninsula. He should have been going to Valonna to be greeted as her equal. He should have been hailed as the triumphant winner of Ipith’s flight, not stared at like some thieving deserter.

Yet that was exactly how he felt when he presented himself to Valonna.

She looked so tired. The hard lessons that the smooth-faced young Weyrwoman had been forced to learn in the last several months had taken their toll on her, not only in the darkness beneath her eyes, but in the weary worldliness of her once-guileless gaze. The hopeful naiveté she had possessed had been scoured from her by responsibility and circumstance. It would make her a better Weyrwoman, Sh’zon thought, but he found something poignant in the loss of Valonna’s girlish ingenuousness. It was with sadness, not anger, that she said, “I only wish you’d told me you meant to vie for Ipith.”

“I never meant it as a betrayal, Valonna,” he said humbly. “I’ve given Madellon my loyalty. I’ve worked for you as honestly as I would any Weyrwoman. But my heart…my heart always belonged to the Peninsula.”

“And to Rallai,” Valonna said.

Sh’zon bobbed his head. “I’ve been in love with her since I was a boy of seventeen. But always, she’s…” He made a gesture with both his hands, of seizing something that slipped hopelessly through his fingers.

Valonna’s eyes flickered. “Sometimes, love’s not enough.”

The stark pragmatism in her voice made Sh’zon flinch. “The flight was closed,” he said. “I didn’t know.” He took a breath, and said, “I still hope the riders of the Peninsula will accept me as Weyrleader, when they’ve had time to get used to the idea.”

Valonna didn’t reply for a long moment. When she did, she said, “The riders of Madellon can’t accept you as theirs, Sh’zon. And nor can I.”

It was the injury in her voice that hurt the most. Sh’zon couldn’t look at her. “I’m sorry, Valonna.” He took from his pocket the second vial of antidote and set it on the desk before her. “I only used one.” Then he lifted his head, speaking quickly. “It does work. I can hear Kawanth –”

“Thank you, Sh’zon,” said Valonna. “But it’s…” Too late, was the conclusion she didn’t speak. “I’ll pass this to Master Shauncey. He wants to see you.”

“I’ll take it to him,” Sh’zon offered, reaching to reclaim the antidote.

But Valonna moved the glass vial back out of his grasp. “No,” she said. “I don’t think that would be right.”

She didn’t trust him. Sh’zon wasn’t sure he’d have been able to restrain his indignation in the face of any other rider on Pern but the slight young girl who was the Weyrwoman of Madellon chastened him with her mistrust. “Beg your leave to go, Weyrwoman.”

“I’ll need your insignia, Sh’zon.” She didn’t sound like she was enjoying what she had to do. “All of it.”

He’d known it was likely, and yet still it made shame burn his cheeks. He unfastened the thick braid from his shoulder, the tailed knots of a Wingleader and the single silver tassel that had pronounced him Deputy Weyrleader. He unbuttoned the left shoulder strap, then the right, and pulled the starred four-bar epaulettes free. He laid them on the Weyrwoman’s desk. The marks of rank he’d worn so complacently looked sad and forlorn, curled there beside the antidote vial.

“H’ned will give you your new assignment,” said Valonna. “Until then you might be better to stay in your weyr.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “You can go.”

“I’m sorry, Valonna,” Sh’zon said. He’d never felt so worthless in his life. “Please believe that.”

“I do,” Valonna said. “I do believe it.”

But there was no trace of forgiveness in her voice.

As the days went on, Sh’zon heeded Valonna’s advice and stayed in his weyr. It was the bleakest and loneliness sevenday of his life. The antidote’s efficacy wore off as the time passed. Kawanth’s voice and presence became weaker and weaker in his mind, until on the morning of the second day after Ipith’s flight Sh’zon woke as dragon-deaf as he had been since Long Bay.

H’ned visited him in his self-imposed isolation to inform him that he was suspended from active duty, pending the Peninsula’s decision. “I’ve made J’tron Acting Wingleader,” H’ned told him. “I know M’ric was your senior Wingsecond, but…well, he’s tainted by association, I’m afraid.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” Sh’zon said dully. “Madellon leadership for a Madellon Wing.”

H’ned looked pained. “I don’t blame you for doing what you did,” he said. “I mean, in a personal sense. Faranth knows, you had a chance to be Weyrleader of your native Weyr, and you took it. But you understand I can’t be seen to be showing you any leniency. You’re not a popular man right now.”

Tell me something I don’t know, Sh’zon nearly snapped, but he just lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I understand.”

He had other visitors. Tarshe brought him a new set of goggles and a dressing down. The goggles had dark tinted lenses to protect his eyes from the sunlight, and Sh’zon was grateful for them, but he could have done without his cousin’s angry tirade. “You’re a Thread-blighted idiot, cuz!” she shouted at him. “What in Faranth’s name did you think you were doing? You selfish, thoughtless numbwit! Did you even stop for one minute to think about the rest of us who can’t hear our ash-blasted dragons? Did you think no one would care that you stole the antidote for your own stupid selfish reasons? Faranth save us from the arrogance of shaffing bronze riders!”

It was at least cathartic to yell back at her, venting some of the anger and frustration that he’d been bottling since Ipith’s flight, and then, at last, when he’d finished ranting, to engulf her in a hug. “I’m sorry, girlie,” he said into her hair, hearing the misery and despair in his own voice. “I know. I’ve been a prize idiot. But it’s done now. It’s done.”

He didn’t say to her what he did say, later, to M’ric. “If the Peninsula doesn’t give me a chance, I’m finished. My name’s been dragged through the dirt here.”

M’ric shook his head when Sh’zon looked at him with the naked hope that he could offer some encouraging insight. “I don’t have anything to tell you. I don’t suppose it’s much comfort me pointing out that I was right about Kawanth flying his senior queen.”

“No sharding comfort at all, you miserable bastard.” But Sh’zon lacked the heart for real venom. “Have you heard anything at all?”

News from the Peninsula had been conspicuously sparse, even considering that Sh’zon wasn’t in a position to seek it out himself. The last he’d heard was that K’ken had asked each Wingleader to poll his riders’ opinion on the situation. Given how opinionated most Peninsula bronze riders were, it was no wonder nothing had been decided. But M’ric did have information. “Sirtis has got herself involved,” he said. “She’s arguing that Rallai showed poor judgement at best, wilful self-interest at worst, in letting Kawanth fly Ipith.”

“Oh, and that silly spit-bitch has never shown poor judgement or self-interest in who she lets fly Ranquiath,” Sh’zon scoffed. “The insidious little she-wher. She’s still sore that Ral was made senior over her. Can you imagine what a disaster Sirtis would be as Weyrwoman? Pah! Southern’s better off with a twelve-Turn-old on the queen that it ever would be with Sirtis in charge!”

But it was a different brown rider who, four days after Ipith’s flight, came to Sh’zon’s weyr with a missive, sealed with the black-and-ochre wax of the Peninsula. Sh’zon started to his feet when G’kalte appeared in the archway from Kawanth’s sleeping chamber. “You.” He said it with accusation, though not rancour.

“Bronze rider,” G’kalte said. He extended the message to him. “The Weyrwoman asked me to bring you this.”

“Rallai?” Sh’zon asked, snatching the letter and nearly tearing it in half in his haste to get it open.

“Valonna.”

Despite his anxiousness, Sh’zon spared G’kalte a long, baleful look. “She might not mind the way you’ve been sniffing around her,” he said flatly, “but you’ll not presume to call the Senior Weyrwoman by her name in front of me.”

“Weyrwoman Valonna,” G’kalte said, and had the grace to look chagrined. “Apologies, bronze rider. I didn’t mean any insult.”

“Not me you have to apologise to,” Sh’zon growled. “Now what in the Void is this?”

“It’s from the –”

“Peninsula Council.” Sh’zon spoke over him. He read the brief paragraph several times. It was a summons, requiring him to appear before a special session of the Council the following day. Not asking, requiring him. The officiousness of it made his teeth grind. He wanted to tear the page up and throw it on the floor, but G’kalte’s presence stopped him. Who knew what he might report back to the Peninsula? “Tell the Council it can expect us tomorrow.”

G’kalte nodded, but he didn’t leave. Sh’zon scowled at him. “Why are you still here? Go on, run along home. Don’t keep the precious Council waiting.” He narrowed his eyes. “Or are you going to stand there and tell me that you know what it is to love a Weyrwoman?”

G’kalte didn’t flinch. “I think I might have some understanding –”

“Ha! You come back in twenty Turns, boy, and maybe I’ll listen to you!”

“– but that’s not why I’m still here.” G’kalte met his eyes levelly. Sh’zon conceded, grudgingly, that the Wingsecond had more about him than most. “You’re not without allies at the Peninsula.”

That made Sh’zon pay attention. “Is that so.”

“You haven’t been gone so long that everyone’s forgotten you. And not everyone’s in favour of the alternative.”

“The alternative?” Sh’zon echoed. “Which is what?”

G’kalte’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t think I should say,” he said. “It might harm your chances tomorrow if it seems like you’ve got more out of me than I was sent to give.”

“My chances.” Sh’zon seized on that. “Then a decision hasn’t been made? I’m to have an opportunity to argue my case?”

G’kalte looked torn. “I…there isn’t a consensus. That’s all I can say, bronze rider.” He shrugged apologetically. “I’m just a Wingsecond. This is all well above my knots.”

“Aye, and you don’t get wind of anything above your knots while you’re flying courier between two Weyrwoman, I’ll bet,” Sh’zon said. He snorted, but more at himself than at G’kalte. “Well. I reckon I’ll see you tomorrow. One way or another.”

He didn’t sleep well that night. He turned and twisted in his furs, unable to find a comfortable place to settle, and when he did sleep, he dreamed.

He dreamed of a boy named Shaizon, a boy not quite fourteen, a boy who’d left his cothold in defiance of his father to answer Search, a boy who’d known from the moment he first set eyes upon the magnificent caldera of the Peninsula Weyr that he would, one day, be its Weyrleader.

“You’re not going,” his father had told him, when he’d come sprinting down the valley, shouting that the Search dragon up at the Hold had found him acceptable. “You’re the only boy of Sherdain’s line, and he’d turn in his sharding grave if I gave you away to the Weyr. No. Put the thought out of your head. Your place is here.”

But Shaizon’s heart had been set on it, so he’d forged Shondan’s chop on the chit that released him from his duties at home. He’d hiked up to the Hold Proper with no more than the clothes on his back to muster with the other Taive boys and girls who’d been chosen on Search.

He dreamed of a candidate who claimed no hold as his own, who declared when asked that where he came from didn’t matter, but that he would become a dragonrider or die trying, because he had nowhere but the Weyr to call home any more.

“You’re not going to Impress,” Fennidar, one of the Weyrbred boys, had said, when Shaizon was assigned to bunk in with him. “Too many candidates, not enough eggs, and Weyrbred always do better than Hold. It’s in our blood.”

But Shaizon’s heart had been set on it, so he’d pushed his way into the front rank of candidates circling Haeith’s clutch, so that when the dragonets began to Hatch they could not fail to see and consider him. The splendid bronze dragonet who had Hatched first had not only seen and considered him; he’d chosen him, and named himself to him: Kawanth.

He dreamed of a weyrling, Sh’zon now, who had told everyone he would graduate at the top of the class, and prove that it didn’t matter where he’d come from or how he’d got there.

“It’s no good,” K’tersan, the Weyrlingmaster, had told him. “I can’t fault your practical training, but you’ve always lagged behind F’dar in your written work, and that’s going to make all the difference when it comes to your final rankings. I’m sorry, Sh’zon. I wish the footing between Weyrbred and non-Weyrbred weyrlings were more even.”

But Sh’zon’s heart had been set on it, so he had enlisted the help of the strange brown rider, M’ric, to borrow the questions for the final written assessment from the Weyrlingmaster’s office, so that he could research every answer in advance of their examinations. When he scored ten points higher than any other weyrling, F’dar included, K’tersan had complimented him warmly on the application he had shown to his studies, and told him that every Wingleader would be seeking to tap him to their Wing on graduation.

He dreamed of a young bronze rider with two Turns as a wingrider behind him, keen to show himself capable of more when an opportunity for advancement presented itself.

“That Wingsecond slot is going to B’roggen,” V’lorm, the Weyrleader, had told him, when Sh’zon had begged him to be considered for the promotion. “He’s been waiting for that kick up to Wingsecond for a decade. He’s a career brown rider, and it’s his turn. You’re bronze. You’ll get your chance soon enough.”

But Sh’zon’s heart had been set on it, so he and M’ric had found out why B’roggen had been passed over for rank so many times, and quietly, quietly encouraged enough rumours to surface about an indiscretion with certain green weyrling some Turns previously that, when it came time for the Wingsecond’s role to be filled, V’lorm selected for youth and energy over dissolute experience.

He dreamed of a Wingsecond so in love with a queen rider that he could scarcely eat or sleep, dizzy with the thought of her, though she was older than him and seemed barely to know his name.

“Kawanth’s never going to catch Ipith,” his Wingleader, T’bret, had told him. “You were there the first time she rose. It was chaos. You can’t strategise for a mating flight with fifty bronzes giving chase. The luckiest dragon will win, not the best.”

But Sh’zon’s heart had been set on it, and so he had courted Rallai – persistently, determinedly. He had discovered her favourite flowers and filled her weyr with them; he had begged dances from her at Gathers and Hatchings; he had paid a Harper to write a poem for her and recited it to her on a moonlit evening. He had flattered and charmed and laughed her into giving him the chance he needed, and when Ipith had risen for the second time, Rallai’s regard for Sh’zon had given him all the luck he needed.

He dreamed of a Wingleader who had been an ambitious boy and a single-minded young rider and a volatile weyrwoman’s lover, whose lifelong goal of winning the Weyrleadership had three times come so tantalisingly close to fruition.

“I can’t trust you,” Rallai had said, the first time. “You’re still such a boy. You’ve never grown up!”

“Why did you let H’pold provoke you?” she’d demanded the second time. “I can’t let Kawanth win Ipith’s flight, with your family history hanging over you!”

“You idiot!” she had raged, the third time. “It was a closed flight! You can’t be Weyrleader now!”

But Sh’zon’s heart had been set on it. His heart had been set on it for twenty Turns of his life. In that time he’d done whatever he needed to do in pursuit of his dreams. He’d never flinched from an unpleasant necessity or a hard decision. He’d never hesitated to sacrifice lesser goals to the greater cause. He’d never balked at the thought of making enemies or losing friends.

He’d always done what he had to do.

In the morning, he rose unrested but resolute. Kawanth sensed his mood, not from shared thoughts, but from the firm touch of his hand. He stood to be harnessed, mirroring Sh’zon’s determination in the set of his shoulders and the lift of his head.

When they emerged from between above the Peninsula, the sight of the great coastal crater below gripped at Sh’zon’s heart, as it always had. It was his home. Madellon had done right by him, but it was not his Weyr. The Peninsula, with its fierce winter storms and its rippling ocean vistas, was where he belonged.

Every dragon, from the humblest green dragonet on the training grounds to Ipith herself, watched them descend. Kawanth inspected his queen boldly as he spiralled to land. Sh’zon didn’t need to be able to hear him to know what he was thinking. Tynerith might be the youngest, Ranquiath perhaps the most comely, but Ipith was splendidly dominant. She would not show in egg for months yet, but it gave Sh’zon a grim satisfaction to know that the unborn dragonets she carried within her were Kawanth’s get.

The watchdragon directed them where to land. Whomever had arranged the roster had been sure to put a bronze on duty – savvy enough to know that Kawanth would have ignored any lesser colour and landed as close to Ipith as she would permit. But he consented to touch down near the archway that led up to the Peninsula’s Council chamber, between another pair of bronzes: Zlanth, the Weyrlingmaster’s dragon, and Gunth, old B’rodd’s. Neither of them were formidable dragons, at least not any longer, and Sh’zon wondered why they had been chosen.

He got his answer soon enough. Gunth’s rider – a retired Wingleader in his eighth decade – hailed him before he’d even climbed down from Kawanth. “What’s this?” Sh’zon asked. He’d always been on fair terms with B’rodd. “I’d expected a gang of angry young riders still sore that Kawanth outflew them.”

B’rodd didn’t smile. “You can’t go in yet,” he said. “The Council’s already hearing the Weyrwoman Second’s case.”

“Case?” Sh’zon asked. “What case? What’s Sirtis got to do with the Weyrleadership”

B’rodd pressed his lips together in a disapproving line. “She’s challenging Rallai’s seniority.”

“What?”

“You’re to give evidence. F’dalger’s presiding. You’ll be called in when they’re ready for you.”

B’rodd’s curt words didn’t really sink in. Sh’zon was completely nonplussed. “But I’m here to argue my right to be Weyrleader!”

“No,” B’rodd said. “You’re not.” There might have been sympathy in his voice. “Why don’t you sit down? They’re likely to be a while.”

Sh’zon sank onto the bench B’rodd indicated outside the archway. “I don’t understand,” he said at last. “Kawanth flew Ipith. He flew her!”

“Sh’zon,” B’rodd said, “it was a closed flight.”

“I’m not some stranger to the Peninsula!” Sh’zon protested. “I only went to Madellon because H’pold made me!”

“For what it’s worth,” said B’rodd, “I think your claim had merit. You are a Peninsula rider, and Kawanth is a Peninsula bronze. But for the circumstances, the Council might have been more inclined to confirm you regardless of the questionable legality of your participation in Ipith’s flight.”

“Questionable legality?” Sh’zon repeated incredulously.

“Sirtis is claiming that Rallai acted against the sovereignty of the Peninsula by plotting for you to win Ipith’s flight. She’s making the case that Rallai’s judgement is impaired beyond her ability to serve as Senior Weyrwoman. ”

“Faranth’s teeth.”

B’rodd went on in a neutral tone. “She’s also alleging that Rallai’s original confirmation as senior Turns ago was illegal, and that she should rightfully have been named Senior Weyrwoman.”

“That’s complete whershit!” Sh’zon said. “Ipith was first to rise when Larvenia stepped down!”

“She was,” B’rodd agreed. “And if Larvenia held on long enough to make sure Ranquiath had already risen before she abdicated…well, she wouldn’t be the first Weyrwoman in history to manipulate the succession, would she?”

Sh’zon shook his head, unable to credit Sirtis’ mendaciousness. “How much support does she have?”

B’rodd shrugged. “Hard to say until the Council votes. She might have three or four Wingleaders willing to declare for her openly, but no more than that. No one wants to stick their neck out with the leadership in dispute. For my mark, Rallai’s not done anything to merit sanction.” He glanced sideways at Sh’zon. “Has she?”

“No!” Sh’zon exclaimed, before he’d even stopped to consider B’rodd’s meaning. He scowled. “Anyone who thinks Sirtis would do a better job as Weyrwoman than Rallai needs their head examining.”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that score, Sh’zon,” B’rodd agreed peaceably. “But more may ride on this than simply which queen rider is Senior.”

He was prevented from elaborating any more by K’ken’s appearance in the archway. “Wingleader,” he said, nodding to B’rodd, and then addressed Sh’zon. “If you’d come this way, they’re ready for you now.”

“Ready for what?” Sh’zon asked.

“Your testimony. If you’d follow me.”

The Council room was an impressive chamber. No table was large enough to seat all the Wingleaders of the biggest Weyr on Pern at its full strength of seven Flights. Even the Peninsula’s current complement of seventeen Wingleaders could not have fit around a single table. The normal configuration of the room seated them at tables forming three sides of a square, five Wingleaders to a side. The table on the raised dais at the fourth side would traditionally be occupied by the Weyrleader, his own Flight’s Wingleaders, and any other Weyr dignitaries who were in attendance. Sh’zon had seldom seen the room laid out differently.

It was different today.

F’dalger, the Peninsula’s Weyrlingmaster, was seated where the Weyrleader would ordinarily have been, at the centre of the table on the raised dais at the head of the room. He was flanked on one side by Natarre, the Weyr Singer, and on the other by an empty seat that could only have been K’ken’s place. A smaller platform had been set up on the floor in front of the dais with only a lectern upon it and no seat. In front of that, two tables had been arranged side by side; Rallai sat at one and Sirtis the other. Behind them, the Wingleader tables had been broken up and placed facing the dais in rows.

Sh’zon had seen the Council chamber arranged this way only a handful of times in his Turns as a Peninsula rider. He stopped in the doorway, balking at what he was being led into. “This isn’t a Council meeting,” he objected. “This is a Justice!”

“If you’d go to the stand, Sh’zon,” K’ken told him, indicating the unwelcoming platform at the foot of the dais.

“You’re trying the Weyrwoman?” Sh’zon hissed at him, still refusing to move. “On what sharding grounds?”

“Sirtis invoked her right to a hearing,” K’ken said. “And Rallai waived her right to refuse.”

Sh’zon sought Rallai’s gaze across the room. Her face was pale and still, but her eyes implored him to comply. It struck Sh’zon with a horrible certainty  that she was there because of him. He wished, not for the first time, or the fiftieth, he could call on Kawanth’s steadying presence.

He straightened his shoulders and strode across the Council chamber to the stand. He was glad, he decided perversely, that there was no chair. He didn’t think he could bear to be seated. He planted his hands on the lectern instead, wrapping his fingers around the edges of the wood. As he did, K’ken quietly resumed his place on the dais.

“Bronze rider Sh’zon,” said F’dalger, from his place at the high seat. He had never been Sh’zon’s Weyrlingmaster, and they’d never served together, but Sh’zon thought they’d always respected one another. “Please state your full name and rank for the record.”

Sh’zon threw a glance at Natarre. The Peninsula’s Master Harper was writing in the rapid strokes of Harper shorthand. “Sh’zon, bronze rider of Kawanth,” he said. “Formerly of the Peninsula Weyr. Currently posted to Madellon Weyr.”

F’dalger raised his eyes from his notes. “Is that your full rank and title, bronze rider?”

Sh’zon had to fight not to look down where his rank knots should have been. “It is, Presider.”

The soft ripple that passed through the room dismayed him. News of his demotion at Madellon clearly hadn’t reached the Peninsula. He could hardly have lied about it, but perhaps he could have avoided mentioning it in some way. Rallai’s impassive mask didn’t falter, but Sh’zon chanced to look at Sirtis, and her demeanour unsettled him. Sirtis had dressed both soberly and magnificently for the occasion. There could be no mistaking the expense of the shimmering Peninsula-sand satin of her gown, yet its cut was imperious, eschewing the flirty, girlish touches that usually characterised her attire. Sh’zon tore his eyes away from her, knowing he’d scowl if she met his gaze.

“Bronze rider,” F’dalger said. “As Presider, it’s my duty to inform you that your testimony today may be construed as evidence of illegal action on your part. As such, you are not obliged to give any testimony that may cause you to implicate yourself. If you wish to exercise your right to hold your peace, you may do so now.”

It was a chilling warning, but Sh’zon didn’t let his apprehension show. “I’m no coward, sir,” he said. “I’ll speak the truth, and if it condemns me, then it condemns me an honourable man.”

“Very well,” said F’dalger. “Weyrwoman Second.”

Sirtis rose from her place. Her eyes were bright and fervent with the occasion. “Sh’zon,” she said, denying him even the courtesy of his humblest title, “when you contested senior queen Ipith’s mating flight this past sevenday, were you aware of the illegality of your participation?”

“The what?” Sh’zon asked.

“The illegality,” Sirtis repeated. “Punishable under Weyr law.”

Sh’zon straightened his shoulders. “No, Weyrwoman, I was not.”

“Then you believed that Ipith’s flight was open.”

“I didn’t know it was closed,” Sh’zon said. “Not to me.”

“Not to you.” Sirtis seized on that. “What gave you the impression that Weyr law didn’t apply to you, Sh’zon?”

“I don’t know which law you mean.”

Sirtis stabbed her hand down at a record hide that lay open on the table before her. “‘A rider not of the Peninsula may not take part in a queen flight –’”

“I am a rider of the Peninsula,” Sh’zon insisted.

“‘– except under the following circumstances.’” Sirtis glared at him for the interruption, then went on. “‘Where a bronze rider of another Weyr has inadvertently been drawn into a queen’s flight during a visit to the Peninsula.’ Was this the case, Sh’zon? Were you and Kawanth drawn into Ipith’s flight against your will?”

Sh’zon blinked at Sirtis. Was she trying to lure him into claiming something that wasn’t true to trip him up? Punishable under Weyr law. “No,” he said, “but –”

“‘Where the flight has been declared open to riders of other Weyrs, the specific conditions of participation in such flights being defined at the time of that declaration.’” Sirtis looked at him again, raising her eyebrows. “Were you, then, under the impression that Ipith’s flight had been thrown open to other Weyrs?”

That thought hadn’t occurred to Sh’zon at all. He could feel himself sweating. He shook his head. “No.”

“‘Or where a bronze or brown rider of another Weyr has been specifically invited to participate in the flight, such inclusions being possible only at the special request of the queen’s rider.’” Sirtis fixed him with a piercing look. “Then Weyrwoman Rallai specifically invited you to participate in Ipith’s flight.”

It was the final condition under which Kawanth’s pursuit of Ipith could have been legal. Sh’zon wanted to look at Rallai, but consulting her would have damaged his credibility. He wished, yet again, that he could speak to Kawanth. Rallai’s remark to him, the night before the luncheon at Long Bay, flashed through his mind. Shai. Don’t make me have to choose H’pold a third time. She had invited him. She’d challenged him to prove himself worthy of her by being worthy of Valonna. She’d wanted to choose him. “She –”

“Forgive me, bronze rider,” K’ken said suddenly, from his place beside F’dalger. “I believe the Weyrwoman Second may inadvertently have omitted the last part of that final condition. Weyrwoman, if you’d perhaps unroll your scroll there a little more…”

The look Sirtis tossed at K’ken was venomous. Rancorously, she unrolled the record hide. Her voice was flat. “‘Or where a bronze or brown rider of another Weyr has been specifically invited to participate in the flight, such inclusions being possible only at the special request of the queen’s rider and ratified by the Council.’”

A murmur went through the room, and Sh’zon clenched his hands tight around the lectern, staring at Sirtis. The bitch had tried to entrap him! And then he realised that while Sirtis had set the snare for him to blunder into, it had been intended to destroy not his reputation, but Rallai’s. Angry heat raced through him, and it took all the self-control he had not to call out Sirtis’ treachery right there. He took a deep breath. “No, Sirtis,” he said, and didn’t care if she objected to his refusal to use her title. “Weyrwoman Rallai did not invite me to participate in Ipith’s flight. That decision was mine and my dragon’s, and ours alone. We came to chase Ipith and to win her.” He deliberately looked past Sirtis, meeting the gazes of one watching Wingleader after another. “And win her we did!”

He expected the room to erupt at his defiant statement. It didn’t. Some of the faces he saw looked as critical as he had thought they would, but not all, nor as many as he would have imagined, given how his assertion rubbed their noses in Kawanth’s superiority. It threw him almost more than blanket outrage would have. “If we broke Weyr law, then we broke it, and we’ll accept the consequences,” he went on. “But we transgressed alone.”

Sirtis’ face was thunderous, but she didn’t seem vanquished. “Those are fine words, Sh’zon,” she said, her pitch a fraction higher than it had been. “But it’s clear that you’re protecting Rallai.”

“Are you calling me a liar, Sirtis?”

“Your testimony doesn’t match the facts,” Sirtis said. “How did you know that Ipith was rising to mate that morning?”

Sh’zon scoffed at that, as much out of genuine incredulity as to buy himself an instant’s thinking time. “You think news of a queen’s rising doesn’t spread faster than a Threadscore?”

“She rose early in forenoon,” Sirtis pointed out. “It would have been the middle of the night at Madellon.”

Sh’zon returned her look flatly. “I happened to be awake. I don’t sleep so well these days.”

“Kawanth had already blooded his kill when he got to the Peninsula,” Sirtis said, and that did make the assembly mutter. “How did he have time for that, if you didn’t have prior warning of Ipith’s rising? Admit it, Sh’zon! Rallai told you Ipith would rise! She tipped you off so you could be ready!”

“She did no such blighted thing!” Sh’zon roared. If he hadn’t already been standing, he’d have leapt to his feet. “What is it you’re accusing us of, Sirtis? Why don’t you just spit it out, you perfidious bitch?”

He had a moment’s satisfaction as Sirtis recoiled from that slur. “Bronze rider!” F’dalger barked from the dais. “You’ll remember your manners!”

“Between with manners, sir!” Sh’zon snapped. “I won’t suffer the Weyrwoman’s honour to be sullied with this whershit!”

“You may call it whershit, Sh’zon,” Sirtis said, evidently recovered from her shock. “I call it whitewash. You and Rallai thought you could flout Weyr law by scheming to have Kawanth win Ipith’s flight, and have no one here question you!”

“We never schemed! I already told you, the decision to come was mine and Kawanth’s!”

“And I challenge that assertion! You couldn’t have acted alone. By refusing to confess that you were Rallai’s accomplice, you –”

“Her accomplice?” Sh’zon burst out. “Her accomplice in what?”

“A coup,” Sirtis said triumphantly. “A coup against the sovereign laws of the Peninsula Weyr that began seven Turns ago when Rallai was confirmed as Senior Weyrwoman. You and she have been plotting to seize this Weyr for yourselves for Turns.”

“Oh, and now it comes out,” said Sh’zon. “You’re still sore that you weren’t made Senior.”

“I should have been!” Sirtis cried, and the shrillness of her voice betrayed how desperate she had become. “Haeith was barren and Ranquiath was next to rise! Ranquiath, not Ipith!”

She turned the force of her anger and bitterness away from Sh’zon and towards the Council at large with that anguished accusation. It was a mistake. Sh’zon discerned that instantly. His mind raced. “Then your case isn’t against Weyrwoman Rallai,” he said, into the shifting unease. “It’s against Weyrwoman Larvenia for delaying her abdication until after Ranquiath’s flight. Or is it the Peninsula Council you’re accusing of foul play? Most of whom are still sitting in this assembly today?”

Colour had flamed to Sirtis’ cheeks. “No,” she insisted. “It’s Rallai who convinced Larvenia to wait!”

“Every rider here knows that Weyrwoman Larvenia wasn’t likely to be convinced of anything she didn’t believe herself,” Sh’zon said.

“Then she was wrong!” Sirtis’ increasing desperation was bleeding through her defiance. “And the clutches have proved it. Ranquiath clutched a queen! How can Ipith be worthy of seniority when she’s never even laid a gold egg?”

“Weyrwoman Second Sirtis,” F’dalger said, in the Weyrlingmaster growl that could freeze a weyrling at a dragonlength. “This accusation falls outside the scope of this assembly.”

“You see?” Sirtis said, ignoring F’dalger and seeking out individual riders in the sea of Wingleaders. “It’s as I said. It was a whitewash!”

“If you have any further testimony that pertains to the matter of Ipith’s recent flight, by all means let it be heard,” said F’dalger. “But if you had issue with the manner of Weyrwoman Rallai’s confirmation as Senior, the time to raise it was seven Turns ago. Not now.”

Sirtis drew herself up. “Very well.” She levelled an accusing finger at Rallai. “I assert that Weyrwoman Rallai sought to install her own chosen candidate for Weyrleader over a Peninsula rider. She deliberately informed Sh’zon of Ipith’s condition to give him time to prepare, and notice to attend close enough to Ipith’s rising that he couldn’t be turned away. In inviting a foreign bronze rider, favouring his dragon to win, and then expecting the Peninsula to accept an unlawful winner as Weyrleader, Rallai has, at best, shown an ignorance for Weyr law unbecoming of a Senior Weyrwoman, and at worst, demonstrated a flagrant disregard for it.” The speech was too carefully rehearsed not to have been pre-prepared, and Sirtis’ tone steadied as she went on. “As a result of Rallai’s failure to ensure the appointment of a legitimate Weyrleader, the Peninsula has no leadership at a time when the Weyrs of southern Pern are in a crisis such as they have never faced before. I implore the Peninsula Council, therefore, to annul Weyrwoman Rallai’s seniority, and appoint an alternative queen rider of the Peninsula in her place, as it sees fit.”

F’dalger waited to see if Sirtis had anything more to say. When she didn’t, the Weyrlingmaster looked at Rallai. “Weyrwoman, do you wish to question bronze rider Sh’zon?”

“No, Presider,” said Rallai. “I have no questions for him.”

“Very well.” F’dalger looked out over the Council chamber. “Bronze riders of the Council, you’ve heard the Weyrwoman Second’s claims, Weyrwoman Rallai’s defence, and bronze rider Sh’zon’s testimony. Judgement in this matter falls now to you. Any who concur with Weyrwoman Second’s claim that Weyrwoman Rallai acted wilfully against the interests of the Peninsula Weyr in Ipith’s recent flight, please rise.”

For a long, drawn-out moment, Sh’zon thought that no one would support Sirtis. Then a chair scraped back. Every eye in the room went to its occupant as he rose. K’sorren. Sh’zon might have known. The arrogant young bronze rider had been Sirtis’ weyrmate for Turns, and she’d only recently turned him out of her bed. Doubtless he hoped to win his way back into her favour with his support.

Two more Wingleaders stood from their places: C’eena and M’roka. Bad losers, both of them. C’eena’s Tserth had almost won Ipith once before; M’roka’s Kapriath had never come close. Perhaps they fancied they had a better chance with Ranquiath.

Then, as if encouraged by the others, a further two Wingleaders stood. One was Z’denk, an ageing rider whose bronze could never have hoped to catch either queen. Sh’zon didn’t understand what grievance he could have with Rallai. The other was T’neb, one of H’pold’s old Wingseconds, made up to Wingleader himself in the aftermath of H’pold’s death, if his presence here were to be credited.

F’dalger scanned the room for any further motion, and then nodded curtly. “Five for, twelve against. Weyrwoman Rallai is exonerated.”

Sh’zon happened to be watching Rallai as F’dalger formalised the verdict of the assembled bronze riders. Her expressionless mask had never slipped, but she closed her eyes for a moment, her relief plain.

“Scorch you all!” Sirtis cried, springing from her seat and turning on the room. “One of you could have been Weyrleader in less than a Turn when Ranquiath rises again!”

“Your grievance has been heard, Weyrwoman Second,” F’dalger reminded her. “You’ll respect the Council’s decision, or leave.”

“Respect it?” Sirtis spat. “I don’t know why I expected anything different to the travesty of justice that made Rallai Senior in the first place! Blight you all to the Void!”

She spun so quickly that she knocked over her chair, and strode out of the Council chamber. Every rider in the room watched her go, and then a cacophony of excited conversation broke out all at once as the assembled Wingleaders debated what had just happened.

F’dalger allowed it only for a few moments. “Council members,” he called, and then, in his full parade-ground boom, “Your attention!”

The buzz died nearly as quickly as it had begun as the Wingleaders attended him. “Our business here isn’t concluded,” F’dalger said. “As bronze rider Sh’zon waived his right not to implicate himself, we have heard testimony which makes the illegality of his participation in Ipith’s flight plain. Bronze rider. Do you have anything further to say?”

Sh’zon wrenched his shoulders back as the attention of the Council fell on him. “It’s as I’ve said,” he said. “If I broke Weyr law, then I’ll accept the consequences. I didn’t break it wilfully. I didn’t set out to cause the Peninsula strife. Blight it all, that’s the last thing I’d ever want. You know me, all of you, better than that. No matter what knots I’ve been wearing the last Turn, this is my Weyr. The Weyr that gave me my dragon. The Weyr I’ve served for twenty Turns. The Weyr I love. Maybe I’m not a Peninsula rider in the eyes of the law. Maybe I’m not in your eyes. But I am in my heart, in my blood and my bones. I’ve served Madellon as honestly as an outsider ever could, but I’ll never love another Weyr the way I love the Peninsula.” He let his eyes slide over to Rallai. “Or the way I’ve loved its Weyrwoman. I’m sorry for what I did, but not for why I did it. So if I’ve done wrong, then I’ve done wrong in the name of love. Love for my dragon. Love for my Weyrwoman. Love for my Weyr.”

Sirtis’ speech had been rehearsed. Sh’zon’s hadn’t. The words burst out of him like blood from a wound, bright and painful and scarlet. He couldn’t have given them more of the truth of himself had he torn the still-beating heart from his chest and placed it before them. He looked around at the Wingleaders who’d been his friends and rivals and comrades-in-arms for most of his life; not expecting them to forgive him, but hoping they would believe him.

“Do you deny that your participation in Ipith’s flight was illegal under Peninsula law, Sh’zon?” F’dalger asked.

“No.” Sh’zon spoke heavily. “I can’t.”

F’dalger leafed through the notes in front of him. “There are very few precedents for this situation. It’s not unknown for an ineligible dragon to fly a queen of his own Weyr.” He aimed a pointed look at K’sorren, who had still been a weyrling when his Solstorth had flown Ranquiath for the first time. “The penalty for a rider who broke Weyr law in allowing his dragon to fly a foreign queen is not clear. Much less when that queen was senior.” His tone was almost conversational. Sh’zon found the informality jarring to his strained nerves. “However, any Weyr wronged by a rider of another Weyr has the right to demand reparations from that rider. During an Interval, that includes requiring the transfer of such an offender so that he may make amends for his transgression.”

A slow hope began to build in Sh’zon’s chest. “You’re transferring me back here?”

F’dalger didn’t exactly smile, but his expression could have been more stern. “Subject to the consent of your superiors, you’ll be required to serve the term of your sentence here at the Peninsula. On completion of that term, Madellon may reclaim you, or you may seek permanent reassignment to the Peninsula, or to any other Weyr of Pern.”

“And my sentence?” Sh’zon asked.

For the first time, F’dalger turned to K’ken. The two riders spoke in soft voices for a moment, and then F’dalger said, “You’ll serve the Peninsula Weyr for a period of no less than two Turns, on half stipend.”

Sh’zon would gladly have given up all his stipend for a chance to return to the Peninsula. Two Turns on half pay was nothing. “In what capacity?”

“That will be for the Weyrleader to decide, and the Council to verify,” said F’dalger. He looked at the assembled Wingleaders. “Weyrwoman Sirtis was correct in her assessment of the state of southern Pern. We are three Weyrs without Weyrleaders. It is not unheard of for a Weyr to lack a Weyrleader during periods of transition, but this is as critical a time for the Peninsula as any outside of a Pass. Pern’s dragonets are losing the ability to go between; our own Weyrwoman, and Madellon’s Weyrwoman Valonna, are still dragon-deaf; Southern and Madellon have both lost their Weyrleaders. This is a time of upheaval, gentlemen, and in such times our riders look to you, their Council.” He paused. “Over the last few days you’ve all spoken with your wingriders. The overwhelming consensus that you have reported back is the desire for stability and leadership. No rider wants to wait another three Turns for a new Weyrleader to be selected in Ipith’s next flight.”

Every rider in the room had gone still, listening intently. Sh’zon was among them. The fact that the Council hadn’t simply ordered him to leave was telling. He could not be confirmed as Weyrleader in spite of Kawanth’s victory because he was considered a Madellon rider, and yet there he still was, in the Peninsula’s Council chamber, listening to F’dalger slowly laying out the Weyr’s future.

“There are many precedents for the governance of a Weyr which has no Weyrleader,” F’dalger continued. “In the Sixth Pass, Telgar Weyr opted to be governed entirely by its Council for two Turns when its Weyrleader died in office eight months into his premiership. Igen and Benden both underwent periods of leadership by former Weyrleaders when the incumbent was incapacitated or killed in service. Madellon Weyr, as we have seen, has been governed since the disappearance of Weyrleader T’kamen by his chosen deputies; bronze rider Sh’zon among them.” That prompted a pleasing little murmur; once again, Sh’zon’s suspicions that there was more to this Council than met the eye sharpened.

“Yet the Peninsula has fewer options than those Weyrs enjoyed,” F’dalger went on. “Had H’pold still been among us today, he would have been entitled to seek re-confirmation as the incumbent Weyrleader; but he is not. There is little appetite among our riders for leadership by committee, especially at a time of such upheaval amongst the Weyrs of southern Pern.”

Then F’dalger turned to where K’ken had been sitting quietly for the duration of the meeting. “But as Deputy to two previous Weyrleaders, Wingleader K’ken has both right and responsibility to assume command.” He inclined his head to the other bronze rider. “Deputy Weyrleader. Will you accept this charge?”

K’ken stood slowly. He didn’t look delighted by the appointment. His lined face betrayed instead an enormous weariness. “I will, Presider.”

“Bronze riders of the Council,” F’dalger said, turning back to the room. “Will you please rise to indicate your ratification of Deputy Weyrleader K’ken as Peninsula Weyrleader.”

About half the Wingleaders stood up straight away. Half of those who didn’t rose a moment later at a more measured pace. Four remained in their seats: P’kesker, D’lane, I’scal and N’met. Their opposition surprised Sh’zon; they were all solid Wingleaders, none of them with any axe to grind with K’ken that he could imagine. Then D’lane stood, and N’met. I’scal joined them after a moment. Finally, and with a great show of reluctance, P’kesker dragged himself to his feet.

It was a curiously subdued ratification, but then Sh’zon supposed that any rider who became Weyrleader by appointment rather than by right couldn’t expect a rapturous reception. It was good enough for F’dalger. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said. He looked at Rallai, who had been listening quietly. “Weyrwoman. Have you any objection to K’ken’s appointment?”

It was mere courtesy – the Weyrwoman had no power to override a Council decision – but Rallai replied softly, “No, Presider, I do not.”

F’dalger rose from his seat. He had the Weyrleader’s rank knot in his hands. He fastened it around K’ken’s shoulder with sober ceremony. “Weyrleader K’ken.”

“Weyrleader K’ken,” the assembled Wingleaders repeated, some with more enthusiasm than others.

If K’ken was stung by the lukewarm response, he didn’t show it. As F’dalger ceded the floor to him, he looked out at his Wingleaders with a troubled expression. “It was nearly forty Turns ago that Essienth received the wing injury that distinguishes him today,” he said. “I was a young rider of eighteen or nineteen. When the Dragon Healers told me that he’d never been the fast flier he’d once been, I was devastated. We’d never be able to win a queen, never sire a clutch, never contest a senior flight. Eighteen Turns old, and my life was quite clearly over.” He smiled. “Young bronze riders are such dramatic creatures, aren’t they?”

Sh’zon snorted softly, and some of the assembled Wingleaders chuckled.

“But what I came to realise as the Turns passed was that Essienth’s injury wasn’t a limitation,” K’ken went on. “It was a liberation. It made me free in a way that no bronze rider with a perfect dragon could claim to be; free of the expectation that every bronze rider labours under from the moment he Impresses his dragon: the pressure to vie for the Weyrleadership. I watched bronze riders who should never have become Weyrleader win that role on the brute strength of their dragons, and bronze riders who could have been legendary leaders miss out. I watched that failure eat bronze riders alive. But I, with my wing-damaged bronze; I was free of it. Or so I thought.

“I’ve served the Peninsula as deputy to two Weyrleaders, but I served at their pleasure, not by consent of the Weyr. You’ve done me the great honour of ratifying my appointment as Weyrleader today, and I will serve this Weyr in that capacity with all my strength, but still, I serve only by appointment. I have no mandate derived either from the might of my dragon or the collective will of the Peninsula. History tells us that the Weyrleaders who step in when circumstances force it seldom distinguish themselves. The Peninsula deserves better than a caretaker Weyrleader.

“Kawanth flew Ipith. Under only slightly different circumstances, Sh’zon would be standing here now with this knot on his shoulder.” A rumble rolled around the room, comprised to Sh’zon’s ears of equal parts approval and criticism, and K’ken held his hands up to forestall an outburst. “Some of you believe he should be, regardless of the legality of his victory. Some of you think he should be barred from ever holding rank at the Peninsula again. Some of you have misgivings with either extreme, for all kinds of reasons. The arguments back and forth have consumed this Weyr for most of the last sevenday. While half the Peninsula believes Sh’zon a hero and the other half a scoundrel, no Weyrleader – including me – can hope to govern effectively. For all of our sake, they have to stop.

“Sh’zon broke the law. He cannot be ratified as Weyrleader. But there is another capacity in which he can serve the Peninsula, for the duration of his sentence.”

K’ken paused then, for a long moment, and Sh’zon felt all the hairs on the back of his neck prickle as, one by one, each Wingleader turned to look at him.

Then, finally, K’ken said, “Bronze rider Sh’zon. I should like to appoint you Deputy Weyrleader of the Peninsula Weyr.”

Chapter sixty-two: L’stev

Dragonriders like to speak with the benefit of hindsight, claiming they’d always known that this boy or that would Impress a bronze, or would never do better than blue, or any of the other well-worn refrains that come out after a Hatching. And some candidates do stand out as being especially suited to one colour. Girls, in particular, are typically either queen-types or green-types – a girl temperamentally suited to the life of a green rider quite simply wouldn’t be a good match for a queen. There are certainly boys who’d be hopeless on bronzes – and boys who’d be hopeless with anything less than bronze.

But we forget, sometimes, that the kids we put up are just that – kids. Lads of twelve or fifteen or even seventeen Turns aren’t the men they will one day become. And while Impressing will force a boy into the role that his dragon’s hide has decreed for him, it doesn’t necessarily follow that that role is the right one for him.

– Weyrlingmaster D’hor, Weyrling Training Manual, volume four

100.04.27 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

TELGAR, HIGH REACHES, AND MADELLON WEYRS; TELLER HOLD

“It’s a southern problem,” F’rer said loudly from where he was standing with Igen’s A’stay. “Though whether it’s of breeding, training, or something else, who knows?”

L’stev snorted. He’d already taken the measure of Benden’s new Weyrlingmaster and found him wanting. F’rer was the youngest of their company and the only bronze rider – neither good reasons for any of the rest of them to take him very seriously. Experience always trumped colour when it came to the respect a Weyrlingmaster commanded amongst his peers. In that sense they were the most egalitarian riders on Pern.

“Not that we don’t want to agree,” B’reko commented where they stood drinking klah against the chill of a spring morning in Telgar. “But wishful thinking, not helpful.” He slurped from a cup at least half full of sweetener, and added, “Also. Man’s an idiot.”

L’stev had no arguments with that opinion. He resumed his thoughtful study of the Telgarese dragonets, comparing them mentally to his own. They were three sevendays younger than the Wildfires, but both bronzes were almost as big as Berzunth. L’stev sometimes forgot that Madellon’s dragons were some of the smallest on Pern. The young riders looked nervous, but that was to be expected. Bad enough that they had to try to go between with the spectre of what had happened at Southern and Madellon hanging over them; worse still that every Weyrlingmaster on Pern was there to watch.

G’dorar, Telgar’s Weyrlingmaster, had asked for L’stev’s advice specifically in advance of the morning’s trials. L’stev had supplied him with the detailed written reports of his experiments with the Wildfire and Southern weyrlings. Now, the Telgarese brown rider came over to join him and B’reko. “They’re as ready as I can get them.”

“You have a contingency plan for if this goes sideways?” L’stev asked.

G’dorar nodded towards the queen waiting near the dragonets. “We’ve done a little experimentation with one dragon pulling another out of between. Fadath can do it, but these are Sesmeeth’s hatchlings. She insisted.”

“Know which are your plotters, which jumpers?” asked B’reko.

“Yes, but I haven’t told them which are which. I don’t want them having any more doubts in their minds than they already do.”

“Fair.”

“And your running order?” asked L’stev.

“Drew lots,” said G’dorar. “Or they’d only ascribe significance to who I’d put first.” He sighed. “I’ll get them started.”

L’stev wondered, as G’dorar crossed the training grounds towards the line of dragonets, how effective the measures would be in eliminating preconceptions from the weyrlings’ minds.

Not very, said Vanzanth. Failing is all they can think about. Then he added, We’re not helping.

The first dragonet, a brown, took off from the training grounds. G’dorar’s Fadath and the queen Sesmeeth accompanied him to altitude. Reckon G’dorar threw the draw?

To make sure a brown went first? Vanzanth asked. Not every brown rider is biased towards his own colour, L’stev.

Just the sensible ones, said L’stev.

The brown dragonet circled for what seemed like hours. Then he gave a little shudder, and his head drooped. Doesn’t want to, Vanzanth reported.

“Shaff,” L’stev muttered. “Plotter? Or just afraid?”

“Who could blame him?” asked B’reko, but his voice had gone grim too. He jerked his chin towards the next dragonet in line, a green. “Pity that little girl.”

L’stev tried to banish his negative thoughts, but it didn’t surprise him in the least when the green refused to go between, and the blue who came after her, and the next two greens.

“Shard it all, they’re just feeding off each other’s fears!” said F’rer.

“Probably,” said L’stev. “But do you want to be the one to force them between?”

That shut him up.

The sixth dragonet was a bronze, and from the moment he launched himself skyward, the picture of confidence, it was clear that he wasn’t going to let his clutchmates’ doubts affect him. Vanzanth winced as the young dragon began his holding pattern. He’s very loud, he remarked, when L’stev asked. They probably heard him at home.

Then the bronze disappeared.

“Aha!” F’rer exclaimed.

Long moments passed. L’stev was reminded horribly of the creeping sense of dread he’d felt when the four Wildfire weyrlings had gone between. Come on, he thought, come on, find your way; let that idiot F’rer be right…

Then, even as Sesmeeth cried out and went between, Vanzanth said, He can’t do it.

“Faranth blight it all,” L’stev said softly.

Sesmeeth emerged from between nauseating heartbeats later with her terrified son shaking in her grip.

None of the other weyrlings wanted to try after that, and no one wanted to make them.

“Least they didn’t lose anyone,” B’reko said later. He and L’stev had decamped to High Reaches to give Telgar some peace, having agreed to convene another meeting of Pern’s Weyrlingmasters the following sevenday to discuss what to do next.

“That being so, it was nearly worth it just to see that idiot F’rer almost fill his pants,” said L’stev. “We’re scorched, aren’t we?”

B’reko sank his chins onto his chest. “Seems so.”

L’stev let out an explosive breath. “I’ve been holding off starting mine on firestone. The thought of letting them loose with live flame when they can’t dodge each other’s mistakes turns my blood cold. But I don’t know what else I can do with them. There’s only so much benefit they can get from repeating formations they already know.”

“Worse,” said B’reko. “Can’t put them in a Wing. Dragon can’t go between, liability in a formation with ones who can.”

L’stev had already had the same thought. “Don’t fancy the idea of a Wing of nothing but raw weyrlings, either.”

“You wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. Might have to rethink. Overcome traditional wisdom. Not going to be the same without between.”

“And how the shaff are dragons going to cope when we get to the Pass?” L’stev asked.

“Not we,” B’reko said, with a fatalistic chuckle. “You and me, long dead by then. Someone else’s problem!”

L’stev had to laugh at that. Then, “No,” he said. “It’s not someone else’s problem, and you know that as well as I do.”

B’reko sobered. “No,” he agreed. “Up to us to prepare. Owe that much to Pern.”

“It’s still the why that’s eating me,” said L’stev. “Dragons have been going between for centuries. And taking longer to do it, it’s true, but what went so catastrophically wrong to stop them completely?”

“Have a theory,” said B’reko. “Two things, not related. Not directly. Between broke when the Southerners made their first attempts. Don’t know why. But the time it’s taking...” He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a length of string. He dangled it from one hand. “Between.” He closed his fist around the hanging end. “Dragons.” He increased his grip on the bottom of the string, and it stretched a little. “More dragons.” He pulled harder. The cord stretched more. “Even more dragons.”

“You think it’s the sheer quantity of them?” L’stev asked. “Stretching between? Making the distance in there greater, so it takes them longer to pass through it?”

“Don’t know,” said B’reko. “Maybe stretching is wrong. Maybe they’re doing damage in there. Busy roads need repairing. Maybe between needs repairing. Was never meant for so many dragons.”

“But the population’s no bigger now than it would have been at the end of the last Pass,” said L’stev. “Smaller, probably. We’re all well under capacity.”

“Just a theory,” said B’reko. “Just guessing. “He splayed his fingers out on the desk. “Don’t know,” he said at last. “Suppose it doesn’t matter. It is what it is. Have a Turn or more to think of a plan for the Reaches.”

“You have eggs on the Sands again?”

“Not yet. Soon. Cosmith’s the size of a barn. Going to be a big one. Got any candidates?”

“Not many I could let you have,” said L’stev. “Not now that we have two queens.” Then he reconsidered. “There are a few who’ll be too old by our next clutch. They’ve been left standing two and three times, but if you wanted to give them a try I think I could persuade Valonna to let them go.”

“Would appreciate it,” said B’reko. “Caverns are mined out.”

“You won’t Search?”

B’reko made a disparaging sound. “One Search rider at the High Reaches. One. Couldn’t find his own ass with both hands.” He grasped his own formidable cheeks for emphasis.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said L’stev. He sighed. “Suppose I’d better get back to my kids. Though I’m blighted if I know what to do with them. I have two who can’t hear their dragons, one outlier who can actually go between, and a girl on a blue who’s going to start chasing greens before long, and Faranth knows how that’s meant to work in the flight weyr if she ends up with another girl.”

“Smithcrafthall,” said B’reko promptly. “Master Olham. Makes –” he wiggled his fingers, “– devices. Very discreet.” Then he added ruminatively, “Have a few myself.”

“B’reko! L’stev complained. “That’s a mental image I never wanted to have!”

He and Vanzanth made one more stop on the way back to Madellon. Teller Hold, looking to Jessaf, had always been a pleasant holding. Its mild climate, good soil, and north-facing hillsides had made it eminently suitable for the cultivation of grapes, and the orderly rows of vines that stretched as far as the eye could see were as intrinsic a part of the Teller visual as the silhouette of its towers and the yellow-and-burgundy of its banner. It was a gentle place, a kind place. A place, L’stev hoped, where a soul could find a measure of healing.

He met with Jenavally in the sunny east-facing sitting room of the watchrider’s apartment, directly below the fire-heights where Vanzanth had joined Hinnarioth. “Start early, don’t they?” he asked, gesturing towards the vineyards outside, where the holders of Teller were already working, despite the early hour so far west.

“When the grapes are ready, the grapes are ready,” said Jenavally. “They’re lucky here.” She indicated with a nod the aqueduct that marched across Teller’s landscape from the north. “There’s not been much rain. It won’t be a good Turn for many wine holdings.”

L’stev noted her choice of words. They. It wasn’t the first time he’d visited Jenavally here, the Hold of her birth, since the loss of the weyrlings, but it was the first time he’d heard her distance herself from the other folk of Teller. He sipped from the cup of tea she’d made him, and said, “And how is Hinnarioth?”

He already knew, from the glad way that Jenavally’s green was cosying up to Vanzanth, but he let her say it. She smiled sadly. “Lonely,” she said. “She misses the Weyr. She misses the company of other dragons.”

“We miss you, too,” said L’stev.

“I’m not coming back.” Jenavally said it simply, plainly. “To the Weyr, perhaps, but not to the weyrlings.”

L’stev masked his disappointment. “I wish you’d reconsider.”

“I can’t, L’stev,” she said. “I know that I’m not the first mother to lose a son. But I can’t.”

“I understand,” said L’stev. “But you’re a difficult woman to replace.”

“I thought C’mine –”

L’stev shook his head. “Didn’t work out.”

The three words seemed inadequate to express his disgust and disappointment, but Jenavally had been a Harper, and she could read what he hadn’t said. “Grief can drive a person to terrible things. Don’t judge C’mine for being human.”

“You never did what he –” L’stev stopped himself. He didn’t want the truth of what C’mine had actually done to go farther than it already had. “A’len is filling in,” he said instead.

“A’len?” Jenavally asked, raising her eyebrows.

“I thought you’d approve; him having been a Drum apprentice.”

“There’s generally a reason why an apprentice is sent to the Drum Master,” Jenavally said, a hint of her old humour resurfacing.

“He’s solid,” said L’stev. “Reliable.”

“But he doesn’t have the feel.”

“Not a speck of it.”

“A man whose best tool is a drumstick…”

“…will treat every problem like it’s a drum.” L’stev completed the idiom resignedly. “I know.”

Jenavally smiled.

“Should I tell H’ned to expect you back?”

“Hinns will rise at the end of next sevenday. So I’ll have to be back at the Weyr by then anyway, I suppose.” She looked thoughtful. “He hasn’t been confirmed as Regent yet?”

“It’s only a matter of time,” said L’stev. “Especially with the mess Sh’zon got himself into at the Peninsula.”

“It sounds to me like he did quite well out of that whole business,” said Jenavally. “I never minded Sh’zon. He wasn’t a bad sort, for a bronze rider.”

“Well, he’s the Peninsula’s problem now,” said L’stev, but he made a face as he said it.

“It’s not that simple any more, is it?” asked Jenavally.

L’stev thought about F’rer and his stubborn insistence that between was a southern problem. “We can’t afford to be so inward-facing,” he said. “If we hadn’t turned a blind eye to P’raima’s tyranny…if the Weyrs would take advice from each other…if they’d just talk to each other…”

“The cultural differences run too deep,” said Jenavally.

“We’re all shaffing dragonriders,” said L’stev. “Here or at Benden or Southern, what difference does it make?”

“All the difference in the world, L’stev. I was born in Southern territory, and when first I came to the Harperhall with that accent…” She shook her head. “The first thing any Harper apprentice learns is to homogenise. There are holds where pronouncing grass the wrong way will get you marked as a queer foreigner before you can turn around. And there’s no Weyr on Pern that doesn’t think its dragons are better than everyone else’s.”

L’stev couldn’t disagree with any of what she said. He couldn’t even suppress the reflexive thought – well, our dragons are better than everyone else’s – that immediately came into his mind.

He drained his tea and stood up. “Suppose we’ll be seeing you soon anyway, but in the meantime, if there’s anything you need, have Hinnarioth pass it through to Vanzanth.”

“Thank you, L’stev,” Jenavally replied gravely. “I will.”

Valonna and H’ned had already heard the news from Telgar by the time L’stev got back to Madellon, but they still listened carefully to his first-hand account of the abortive between trials.

“Is that it, then?” H’ned asked, when he’d finished. “Is there no hope at all that we’ll resolve this problem with between?”

“We’re all out of ideas,” said L’stev. “Which isn’t to say we won’t keep trying to think of new ones. But we can’t stay in this holding pattern much longer, waiting for between to start working again. We have to prepare for a scenario where it doesn’t. Ever.”

For all the steel Valonna had developed over the last several months, she went tense at that – but only for a moment. “I’ve already been thinking about how Pern might look without dragons who can go between,” she said quietly. “But I’d appreciate your insight.”

L’stev wondered if Valonna’s projections were as bleak as his own. “In the short term, we need to figure out what to do with the weyrlings,” he said. “I can advance them to the flaming part of their training – though I don’t very much like the notion of them breathing fire without being able to blink out of trouble. It’s what happens afterwards that concerns me; what happens once they graduate.”

“Because we can’t place betweenless dragons in the existing Wings,” H’ned said, frowning.

“No. It would be bedlam. And much as the prospect of completely novice Wings sits wrong with me, it may be the only option.”

H’ned’s brow furrowed at the thought. “Well. There’s a bronze or two in the class with the right sort of profile to lead straight out of weyrlinghood, at least.”

L’stev stifled a snort. He knew exactly which bronze H’ned was talking about. “If I do my job right, any of the three could grow into the role,” he said. “They’re good dragons and decent lads.” He paused, thinking of K’ralthe, then decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Not a L’dro among them.”

“Or a Fr’ton, I hope,” said H’ned. “I suppose, if this is going to be the way of things now, future weyrlings will just join one of the betweenless Wings.” He rubbed his head, frowning. “How long until we have more dragons who can’t go between than can?”

“About thirty Turns,” said Valonna. “After fifty, there won’t be many between-capable dragons left. And by the Pass…”

“Shards,” said H’ned. “That’s thinking a long way ahead.”

“We have to,” said Valonna. “Why else have Weyrs, during an Interval, if not to make ready for the Pass? Everything we do has to prepare Madellon to face Thread without between in a hundred Turns’ time.”

“You’re right, of course, Valonna,” said H’ned, though he still looked as though his mind was racing through consequences that he hadn’t yet let himself entertain. “Well, and we aren’t the only ones. Southern and the Peninsula have their own plans to make.”

“And the northern Weyrs,” said L’stev.

“It’s not Madellon’s job to worry about the north,” said H’ned. He cleared his throat, then went on, “It’s as well you’re here, L’stev. I’d thought to get your opinion, as an unbiased party. I think it’s past time Madellon’s Council saw to the matter of confirming a Weyrleader Regent.”

Oh, you do, do you? L’stev thought, and then, Unbiased? He spoke neither aloud. “Practical,” he said, cautiously neutral. “Your voice will carry more weight with the Holds if you can legitimately call yourself Weyrleader.”

H’ned’s eyes widened disingenuously. “I would never presume, L’stev –”

“Yes, you would,” said L’stev. “Don’t mimsy around it. You were T’kamen’s Deputy, and with Sh’zon gone there’s no one else with any sort of mandate. Oh, F’yan or L’mis might put themselves forward as alternatives, just to be difficult, but they won’t get the votes. Follow due process by all means, but you’ll come out of that Council chamber with the Regent’s knot on your shoulder, and we all know it.”

“I’m certainly glad for your confidence in me, Weyrlingmaster,” said H’ned, preening only slightly. “And not only because I’d be relying on your vote in Council. And your endorsement.” He looked at Valonna. “Weyrwoman, I believe it falls to you to initiate the selection process.”

Valonna looked for a moment – just a moment – as if she would dispute the necessity of the action. Then she inclined her head. “I’ll look up the procedure before the next Council meeting, H’ned.”

“One more thing, before I go,” said L’stev. “Jenavally and Hinnarioth expect to be back from Teller by the end of next sevenday.”

“That’s good news,” said H’ned. “Will they be re-joining your staff?”

“No. Jena’s not ready for that.”

“V’stan’s been complaining that he’s short a green,” said H’ned. “I’m sure he’d be happy to have them. I’ll tell you, L’stev, when – if, that is – I’m confirmed as Regent, I’ll have some promotions to hand out in the Wings. I’m down two Wingleaders, with T’kamen and Sh’zon both gone, and you’ve stolen R’yeno’s best Wingsecond. And I’ll have to decide what’s to be done with C’mine before long. Perhaps the watch post at Teller would do for him.”

“C’mine is my responsibility,” said Valonna.

“He’s a fighting rider –”

“No,” Valonna said. She didn’t raise her voice, but she spoke with complete authority. “He was relieved of duty from the Weyrlingmaster’s staff, and the Weyrlingmaster answers to the Weyrwoman.”

“He does,” said L’stev, when she looked to him for confirmation. It amused him that she had quoted that piece of Weyr governance at H’ned. “I do.”

“All right,” said H’ned, with a hint of pique. “I take it we’re still keeping it hushed up that he timed it at Long Bay? It is a Disciplinary offence, however well-intentioned the motive.”

L’stev met Valonna’s eyes. They were the only two riders who knew just how far C’mine’s timing had gone – or how close he’d come to disaster when he’d tried to complete the loop. “I understand that Discipline is a private affair in the Wings,” said Valonna. “C’mine’s punishment will remain a private matter between him and me. As will his rehabilitation.”

“Well, I’ll need to find someone to put on that fire-height at Teller,” said H’ned. “If you’ll excuse me, Weyrwoman, Weyrlingmaster, I’d better go and have a word with V’stan.”

L’stev stayed in his seat on the other side of Valonna’s desk. When H’ned had gone, he raised his eyebrows at the Weyrwoman. “Think you can live with him for a couple of Turns?”

Valonna sighed. Then she lifted her chin. “I lived with L’dro.”

“H’ned’s neither that crass nor that incompetent,” said L’stev. “And you’re not the same woman you were when he was your Weyrleader.”

“No,” said Valonna. “I’m not.”

Something he’d discussed with B’reko earlier came back to L’stev then. “How short-handed are you in the caverns at the moment?”

“We’re always short-handed,” Valonna replied immediately. “Why?”

“As I recall, there were four or five older candidates left standing at the Hatching last Turn who decided to stay on here. How would you feel about letting them try for a High Reaches clutch in five or six sevendays?”

“High Reaches?”

“B’reko’s low on candidates.” Another thought occurred to L’stev. “Maybe they’d let us have a few of their caverns staff in exchange. There’s always a few restless types looking for a new horizon.”

Valonna looked thoughtful. “We have a new bronze rider coming from Telgar tomorrow.”

“K’letan,” said L’stev. “Yes. The exchange for D’pantha.”

“And we already have T’gala,” she went on. “A Southern rider. M’ric’s from the Peninsula.”

L’stev nodded. “Becoming quite cosmopolitan, aren’t we?”

“Do you think that’s a good thing?”

“Yes,” he replied. “It has to be.” He thought about his conversation with Jenavally. “We won’t become less parochial by accident. I think we should have more rider exchanges. I think we’d do well to have at least one rider from every other Weyr here at Madellon. And at least one Madellon rider at every other Weyr.”

“That’s quite a radical stance, L’stev.”

“I’m feeling radical,” he said. “Or maybe that’s just age catching up with me.” That thought sobered him. “I’m not going to be around forever, Weyrwoman,” he said, more softly. “It worries me, how stagnant Madellon’s become. There’s not a senior bronze rider worth a damn. There’s barely a brown rider I like enough to set up as my replacement. We’re all stuck in ruts so deep, we don’t even know we’re in them to try and climb out.” Then he smiled, an expression so unusual on his face that it actually hurt his cheeks to make it. “Except you. Faranth be blighted, but Fianine would be astonished to see you now, sitting in that chair. I’m astonished. If Tarshe makes up to be half the Weyrwoman you’ve become in the last few months, I’ll consider my job well done when Vanzanth and I ship out to South Cove to dribble away our twilight Turns.”

Valonna smiled in return, and for a moment the lost look in her eye – the look of a rider who couldn’t reach to her own dragon for support – disappeared. “Why didn’t you Impress a bronze, L’stev?”

He laughed. “Because even as a lad, Weyrwoman, I was far too sensible for that.”

Chapter sixty-three: T’kamen

He wouldn’t let her go. Couldn’t let her go.

Wouldn’t bear it, so he dared the darkness men should never know.

And she shone there for him, brightly in the void of cold between

And he sought her, man to woman, love to lover, bronze to green.

– The Ballad of Leda, music and lyrics by Weyr Singer Tawgert

26.09.26 – 26.10.07 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

It was strange to walk the Weyr with Fetch riding openly on his shoulder, to take him freely into the dining hall and find the kitchen staff ready with a dish of sweetmeats for him, to have other riders look at the little brown with envy rather than revulsion; but then, in a way, Madellon’s new-found acceptance of T’kamen’s fire-lizard was only the least of the disconcerting changes he’d faced since the day of that Threadfall out of Madellon West.

Another rider might have basked in the glow of approval that T’kamen found radiated his way, in the admiring glances and respectful nods that he encountered as he went about the Weyr. T’kamen wasn’t that rider. The mellowing of Madellon’s opinion of him had been happening slowly and naturally enough for him to be comfortable with it; this new dramatic shift from grudging acceptance to outright reverence unnerved him. Riders who would once have refused even to acknowledge his existence were suddenly falling over themselves to make themselves known to him. The youngsters who had made sport of mocking his halting gait still trailed after him, but in hope that he might have an errand for them to run, so that they could say they were about on his business. And more green riders had invited him to join their dragons’ mating flights than he could possibly have satisfied, even had he been inclined to oblige them. Epherineth was finding the avid interest of a veritable bevy of flirtatious young green dragons more trial than temptation.

Yet T’kamen understood the desire of all those dragonpairs to make his acquaintance, because overnight, he and Epherineth had gone from being the scarcely-tolerated remnants of a forgotten age to the shining saviours of Madellon Weyr, responsible already for preserving the lives of not just one fighting dragonpair in Leda and Suatreth, but multiple others in the Threadfalls since. Freed to go between at will during a Fall, they had on three occasions seized and taken between dragons with Thread-strike that the cold of the void could arrest before it killed them. Four dragonpairs owed them their lives now, and no fighting rider in the Weyr was blind to the idea that he could be next.

As reasons to be lauded went, T’kamen supposed it could have been worse, but he still found the avid interest in him wearing. The growing presumption that he and Epherineth would always be there to save a dragon in need exerted a pressure on them both unlike anything they’d ever experienced before, in Pass or Interval. And it had soon become clear that the demand for the use of their ability to go between would quickly exceed their capacity to fulfil.

And they still didn’t have their liberty. R’lony made that clear. “You can do what you have to do during Fall,” he told T’kamen, “but I’m not having you jaunting around Pern unfettered. You’re the most valuable asset the Seventh has now. I won’t be accused of letting you use between frivolously on top of everything else.”

R’lony’s ill-temper had fair justification. He had been fighting a losing battle to save face in the aftermath of Epherineth’s rescue of Suatreth. T’kamen had heard riders of all colours criticising R’lony’s decision to keep the link between fire-lizards and between secret, but as ever, the loudest voice was the Commander’s, and it was his succinct condemnation of R’lony that T’kamen heard repeated the most often. If we’d known fire-lizards could enable dragons to go between, we’d never have let M’ric fight.

No one had called for R’lony’s resignation over that error of judgement – yet. It wasn’t deemed necessary, with the annual Marshal ballot only a few months away. But if R’lony felt the inevitability of his unseating, he was bullishly ignoring it. For that, T’kamen allowed him a degree of credit. Some riders would just have given up in the face of such universal disfavour, and the Weyr would have suffered for it. And T’kamen’s reluctance to denounce R’lony was rooted, too, in his bleak conviction that, as wrong as R’lony had been in his decision to keep the fire-lizard link secret, he himself was just as complicit in M’ric’s loss.

T’kamen missed him with a keenness he would never have believed possible. I know you loved that boy like he was your own. Ch’fil’s words had seemed wide of the mark at the time, but as the days passed T’kamen began to see the truth in them. He’d never had a son to love, but perhaps if he had he’d have felt the same mixture of exasperation, pride, irritation, and protectiveness that M’ric had gradually engendered in him. It was jarring to think of the boy he’d come to know so well growing into the man he’d barely known at all, and yet he wished now that he had known the adult M’ric better.

It was his fault. He didn’t think he was being unduly hard on himself to claim that responsibility. He’d relied too heavily on his assumption that nothing serious would happen to M’ric. He should have been more cautious. He should have insisted that M’ric withdraw from the Wings once Agusta’s importance became clear. He should have argued more strongly with R’lony’s stance. He’d failed on all counts, and if he could take some comfort in the knowledge that M’ric was only gone, not dead, then it paled in the face of the wider catastrophe his weakness had wrought: the loss of the only known fire-lizard queen on Pern, and with her, the potential for any future dragonriders to go between.

It was thin solace that R’lony seemed to have shouldered the entire blame for the mistake. No one had pointed a finger at T’kamen for failing to disclose the truth; he had, after all, merely been following orders. Ch’fil, too, had escaped the brunt of public disfavour, although T’kamen had his suspicions about the reason for that. Ch’fil himself was too decent to turn the situation to his own political advantage even had he wanted it, but S’leondes had been extravagantly careful to focus his censure on R’lony alone. The Commander wasn’t supposed to get involved with Strategic politics, just as Seventh riders were supposed to keep out of the business of Tactical, but given the enmity between the two leaders of Madellon’s riders T’kamen could see why S’leondes would want to preserve Ch’fil’s reputation. It seemed increasingly likely that either Ch’fil or G’bral would become Marshal in R’lony’s place come ballot day, and S’leondes would surely consider Stratomath’s rider a more palatable candidate than G’bral, who was thoroughly R’lony’s man.

Ch’fil was predictably dour about his prospects, though not because he feared G’bral as a rival. “Faranth, Kamen, you know I’ve never wanted this,” he said one evening. They were in M’ric’s weyr, going through his possessions. T’kamen hadn’t had the heart to do it alone. “Get down to it and someone like El’yan would be a better Marshal than I ever would. It’s all paper-shuffling and arithmetic.”

The thought of eccentric old El’yan butting heads with S’leondes as the Weyrmarshal made T’kamen snort. “I think he’d rather fly into leading edge without any firestone.”

“Aye, and you think I wouldn’t?” Ch’fil asked. He was pulling shirts and underclothes out of a chest and tossing them on the bed M’ric had left unmade. “Fact is, R’lony’s good at the grind of being Marshal. No one understands Madellon’s logistics like he does.

“Why not keep him on, then?” T’kamen asked. “Make him Deputy Marshal, or something.”

“No. If he goes down at the ballot, he’ll go down hard. He can’t refuse an assignment to bunker or fire crew, but he’d be a liability with rank.”

T’kamen could understand that. Former leaders tended to make poor subordinates. He included himself in that appraisal. “G’bral seems confident he can give you a contest.”

“I’d give him my own vote if I didn’t think he’d be an even worse disaster for the Seventh than me. Say what you will about R’lony, T’kamen, but the man’s held Strategic together for twenty Turns. Whoever succeeds him is going to go through the mill. Now what in the Void is this?”

T’kamen reached for his new walking cane to cross the weyr, noticing as he did how sleekly the ornate handle fit his hand. The cane had been a gift from E’rol, whose blue Grechanth Epherineth had pulled out of between three Falls previously. The haft alone – cast in bronze, and in the shape of a snarling dragon’s head – must have cost more marks than a fighting rider made in a Turn, but E’rol was the second-born of the Lord Holder of Kellad, and Lord Fantrol had been extremely grateful for his son’s deliverance. Dalka had told T’kamen in no uncertain terms that to refuse the gift would cause a diplomatic incident. T’kamen wasn’t comfortable with it – and even less so with the fact that the bronze dragon head bore a terribly familiar scar down the right side of its face – but he couldn’t deny that the cane suited his height and hand perfectly.

Ch’fil had pulled out the top drawer of the cabinet beside M’ric’s bed and was going through the contents. The sheaf of paper he’d found was covered with M’ric’s compact handwriting, but blotches and crossings-out marred the close script. “A letter?”

Ch’fil frowned over the pages. “I think it’s poetry,” he said after a moment, and then read aloud.

“‘Was in moonlight I first saw you.

Soft-eyed, sleepy, languorous.

Moonbeam fingers touching your lips.

How I wished those hands were mine

In snowfall then I watched you.

Chilled and laughing, breath as steam.

Snowflakes tangled bright in your hair.

Snowflakes spangling like stars.

And at sunset I beheld you.

Painted amber, streaming sky.

Night-time shines on your horizon

Will the evening make you mine –’”

“Stop, Ch’fil,” T’kamen implored him, “Please, for the love of Faranth, please stop.”

“Are you sure?” Ch’fil asked. “It goes on for about another twenty verses.” He sat down on the edge of M’ric’s bed. “Faranth, T’kamen.” His voice had turned gruff. “He was so sharding young.”

“Youth is no excuse for poetry that bad.”

“Oh, and yours was so much better, when you were his age.”

“I don’t think I ever wrote any.”

“You didn’t? Shame on you, T’kamen. Was there no romance in the Interval?” Then Ch’fil shook his head. “You don’t need to answer that, what with Tawgert’s latest –”

“Ch’fil,” T’kamen said, more sharply than he intended.

Ch’fil returned the look with exaggerated innocence. “But it’s a lovely song,” he said. “All heroic and romantic, and –”

“Please, Ch’fil,” T’kamen said. The song that the Weyr Singer had written about his rescue of Leda in Threadfall had become an unlikely hit in the lower caverns. T’kamen cringed instinctively every time he heard the opening chords. “What are we going to do with this?” It was a genuine question. He was loath to simply throw away M’ric’s poetry, excruciatingly earnest though it was.

“Do you know who he wrote it for?” Ch’fil asked.

“Probably Fraza.”

Ch’fil snorted. “She should have it, then. There’s nothing those green riders love better than a tragic bawl over their wingmates. You saw what it was like when they put M’ric’s name on the Wall.”

The thought of that ceremony made T’kamen uncomfortable, and not only because it was the first time he’d been invited to witness the inscription of a new name on Madellon’s memorial. S’leondes had spoken eloquently of M’ric’s sacrifice; G’reyan, his second, had paid tribute to Trebruth’s courage; Fraza, and several of the other younger green riders, had indeed wept heartbrokenly over M’ric’s loss. It all seemed a far cry from the suspicious cold-shouldering that M’ric himself had told T’kamen about. He was perhaps most surprised that neither S’leondes nor G’reyan had used the opportunity to blame Trebruth’s colour for his death, in case any other brown riders took it into their heads to aspire to the fighting Wings. But whatever rancour M’ric’s wingmates might have felt towards him for Trebruth’s hide seemed to have been wiped away entirely by his loss. After the ceremony, several riders T’kamen hardly knew came to him to offer him apparently genuine condolences and to compliment him on his former tailman’s spirit and persistence. In death, it seemed, M’ric was far more popular than he’d ever been in life.

“I’ll give it to her,” T’kamen said, and Ch’fil put the pages in his hand. T’kamen tucked them into his belt pouch.

There were a few other keepsakes in M’ric’s top drawer – a lock of hair tied in a ribbon; his weyrling shoulder-cord, complete with the tailman’s knot that he’d refused to untie; and right at the back, nestling in the felt-lined interior of a box the size of T’kamen’s hand, a piece of iridescent shell that must have come from Trebruth’s egg. He gathered them together with the Wing insignia that Tactical riders deliberately didn’t sew onto their fighting wherhides, so as to leave something to be remembered by. M’ric’s mother had been informed of her son’s death by the West Gully watchrider, but T’kamen decided he would take the small mementos of M’ric’s life to her at Fiver as soon as he had the opportunity.

It didn’t take them much longer to finish clearing M’ric’s weyr. Most of his clothes and tools would go back down to Stores. Trebruth’s spare harness would be taken apart by the Weyr Tanner, the metalwork returned to the Smiths to be melted down, and the hide given to weyrlings to practice their leather-working skills. T’kamen kept the long-bladed hunting knife that M’ric had carried on their excursions. The leather-wrapped hilt was stained dark with sweat. It still seemed unbelievable that he was gone.

Finally, they stood looking around the weyr, M’ric’s occupation of it reduced to a few boxes of possessions. “I guess we should strip the bed,” said T’kamen. “Whoever moves in here next won’t want M’ric’s grubby furs.”

“Might be a while before anyone does move in,” said Ch’fil, coming over to help T’kamen pull the rumpled linens off the mattress. “It’s not like we don’t have enough weyrs, and this one wouldn’t be top of many lists.”

It was the closest anyone had come to saying that Madellon was under-populated, though T’kamen had drawn his own conclusions. He paused in pulling the cover off a pillow. “Just how bad is it?”

Ch’fil slowly rolled a sheet into a bundle. “We’re below seven hundred dragonpairs for the first time since the early Turns.”

“Adult dragonpairs?” T’kamen asked, but Ch’fil shook his head.

“Including weyrlings, watchdragons, and invalids. Six hundred and ninety-eight of us left. A little over five hundred fighting dragons. It’s getting draughty out there in the Wings. Everyone’s understrength.”

“I’ve heard rumours that the Third is going to be disbanded.”

“Likely true,” Ch’fil said. “It’s been floundering the last four Turns, no matter which Wingleaders S’leondes puts in. Though no one competent wants to get rotated into a Third assignment when they’re twice as likely to get hit in that Flight as any other.”

“Then it’s the Third’s riders that are the problem?”

Ch’fil shrugged. “It’s become a dumping ground for riders who are good enough.”

“Good enough never is,” T’kamen said.

“Aye. But I don’t think we can lay it all at the Third’s feet. They aren’t the only part of the Weyr that’s underperforming.”

T’kamen looked at him, and then surmised, “The queens.”

Ch’fil nodded grim agreement. “I never thought I’d see a situation where a queen’s clutch was outnumbered by green-laid eggs. It’s twice in three clutches now that Donauth’s produced fewer than ten. She was never the most generous layer, but you don’t have to look too far back to see her production’s on the decline. Levierth’s doing a little better, but she’s not a young queen. Fact is, we’re losing more dragons than we’re replacing. Ten Turns ago we had over eight hundred, even after half the browns and bronzes defected north. If we keep declining at this same rate, we’ll be under six hundred dragons in another ten Turns, with two queens near the end of their breeding lives.”

That painted an even bleaker picture than T’kamen had realised. “I suppose it’s not helpful to point out that Madellon needs another queen.”

“Not helpful at all, unless you know a way of rustling one up.”

“A decent long flight with a decent strong bronze would probably do it.”

“Or perhaps just produce a mob of massive bronzes and browns that no one wants.” Ch’fil sighed. “No offence meant.”

“None taken. But maybe a few clutches of bigger dragons is the price you need to pay. You don’t get queen eggs from short or low flights, and a brown can’t push a queen to the limits of her potential like a bronze would. No offence meant.”

“None taken.”

“Or even if you can’t brook the idea of bronzes taking on queens again, maybe you should un-ground the browns who’ve sired too many bronzes.” T’kamen said. “If a brown can throw a bronze, he’s a prime candidate to throw a queen.”

“And I’d look a right paragon of objectivity then, wouldn’t I?” said Ch’fil. “Stratomath’s the only grounded brown, Kamen, unless you count old Rhugranth, and he’s so ancient you’d probably stop his hearts if you told him he was needed to sire a queen.”

“You can’t appeal to one of the other Weyrs for a transfer?”

“No one’s overburdened with queens, T’kamen,” Ch’fil said. “Southern had a gold egg four, five Turns back, but that was the last one anyone had.”

“Faranth, Ch’fil,” said T’kamen. “You’re barely halfway through the Pass. Why isn’t anyone thinking long-term?”

“When you have a life expectancy of four and a half Turns, I guess the question of what’s going to happen in a decade’s time isn’t so urgent,” Ch’fil said. His eyes fell back onto M’ric’s bed. “And poor old M’ric didn’t even get four and a half Turns.” He frowned. “What I don’t understand is why he didn’t come out again. From between. Hadn’t you shown him how?”

“He’d struggled with it,” T’kamen said. “It went against every bit of training he’d had drilled into him. Epherineth almost had to pull Trebruth out every time he tried it in practice. And then the one time Trebruth actually had to do it for real, we were elsewhere. If we hadn’t been rescuing Leda…”

“Don’t do that to yourself, Kamen,” Ch’fil told him. “You weren’t to know. And if you’d had the choice between saving Leda and saving the boy…” He made a face. “Just don’t. At least it was clean. They wouldn’t have suffered for long, and no one had to put them down.”

Every time someone made a remark like that – offering T’kamen comfort over M’ric – he had to stop himself from correcting their assumption that he was dead. It wasn’t in his nature to dissemble. “I suppose he’d have been miserable anyway,” he said instead. “He’d be grounded.”

“That he would,” Ch’fil agreed. “Probably permanently, like the riders of the fertile greens. He’d have hated that. Hold on; we’ve missed something here.”

As he stripped the base sheet off M’ric’s mattress, he revealed the corner of a box poking out from under the bed. Ch’fil balled up the sheet and tossed it over with the rest of the dirty linens, then hooked the box out with his foot. It was almost more chest than box, made of heavy dark-stained wood with brass hinges. The hasp of the lid was secured with a substantial padlock. “You haven’t chanced across a key, have you?” Ch’fil asked.

“No.” T’kamen sat on the edge of the bed, his bad leg extended in front of him, to inspect the box. “Was this his? This much brass and hardwood must have cost a few marks.”

“And a few more on top of those,” said Ch’fil. He rattled the padlock, then leaned closer to peer at it. “Skimped on the lock, though. Hand me that narrow borer from his leatherworking kit, would you?”

T’kamen handed him the tool. Ch’fil drew his belt knife and, between knife-tip and bradawl, soon had the padlock open. He tossed it on the floor with a snort. “Ten-mark box, two-mark lock. Stupid.”

“Where did you learn how to open locks?” T’kamen asked.

“I wasn’t always the upstanding, law-abiding fellow you know now, T’kamen.”

T’kamen blinked at that inference. “How did you end up a dragonrider?”

“Long story. Now, what have we got in here?”

Ch’fil flipped open the lid of the heavy box. It was crammed with rolled and folded documents. “More bad poetry?” T’kamen asked.

“I don’t think so,” Ch’fil said. “Looks older. All hide, no paper.” He picked up the top record. “This has a Peninsula mark.” He passed it up to T’kamen.

It only took T’kamen a moment to identify the hide. “It’s one of the records Weyrwoman Estrinel loaned us,” he said. “I told M’ric not to take them out of my weyr.”

“Not exactly light bedtime reading, is it?” Ch’fil asked.

T’kamen ran his eyes down the top couple of paragraphs. The script, like so much of the writing on the old records they’d been studying, was badly faded, but a word leapt out at him. Between. “This is a Weyrlingmaster’s report,” he said. He struggled to piece together the sentences. “No. Not a report. A training guide. ‘On visualisation’. It’s a Weyrlingmaster’s treatise on exercises to teach weyrlings to go between.” He frowned. “This is exactly the kind of thing we’d been looking for. What was M’ric doing with it locked up under his bed?”

Ch’fil looked as puzzled as T’kamen felt. He pulled several more hides out of the lockbox. “This one’s falling apart.”

“Be careful with it,” T’kamen told him. “These all need to go back to Estrinel.”

Ch’fil held the record gingerly by its flaking corners. “This is old,” he said. “Pre-Pass old. This is the Igenite seal, isn’t it?”

T’kamen looked at the cracked and dusty lozenge of pale yellow wax affixed to the corner of the document. The seal had been stamped there sloppily, blurring the outline. “I’m not sure it is,” he said. He touched the imprint, trying to trace the shape. “I think it might be Istan, not Igenite. The colour’s just faded. What is it?”

“It’s a barter agreement,” said Ch’fil. “Five cases of Hoffen Hold single malt, in return for…”

“In return for what?” T’kamen asked, when Ch’fil stopped abruptly.

He stared at the old document. “Two fire-lizard eggs.”

T’kamen didn’t mean to snatch the record off Ch’fil, but he did. “‘Tavie, I hope this finds you in good health and that both eggs are whole and sound. Weyrleader R’don has been very much enjoying the Hoffen malt and we should be glad to share a bottle with you should you and Weyrleader Th’gare make the journey north to see us. Please convey our regards also to queen rider Alanne on the occasion of her naming day, and our wishes that she enjoy the exclusivity of her new companions.’”

“Dalka said they were a naming-day gift,” Ch’fil said. “And they were. But they came from the north.”

“Then there are still fire-lizards there?” T’kamen asked

Ch’fil hesitated for a long moment, and then said, “This has to be more than fifty Turns old, Kamen. Even if there were then, there’s no telling if there still are now.”

“But it’s the best lead we’ve had on fire-lizards,” said T’kamen. “Faranth, there can’t be a beach in Madellon territory that hasn’t been picked over by off-duty riders now, and they’ve found nothing.”

“What are you suggesting, Kamen?” Ch’fil asked. “We can’t just go to Ista Island and start searching their beaches for fire-lizard clutches.”

“Why in Faranth’s name not? Epherineth can go between. We could be there and back in an afternoon –”

“Aye, and you have a visual of some nice secluded place for him to jump into without being seen, have you?” Ch’fil asked. “You know where to look for fire-lizard clutches, do you? Shards, do you even know if it’s the right season for them to be breeding?”

T’kamen didn’t have answers to any of those questions. “Then I go direct to the Istan Weyrleaders,” he said determinedly, “or whoever leads Ista these days. I –”

He was interrupted by Ch’fil’s short bark of laughter. “T’kamen,” he said, “I know you don’t like being the centre of attention much, what with every other green rider humping your leg. But I can’t think of any way for you to turn every rider and dragon of Madellon against you that would be quicker than you going to Ista Weyr.”

“Why?” T’kamen asked. “What did Ista do?”

Ch’fil paused, and then said, “Ista’s where Chrelith went, when she defected.”

“Oh, Faranth.”

“And the last time a Strategic rider took it into his head to go north…he wound up west.”

“Westisle?” T’kamen asked. “Really? S’leondes is that blinkered he’d exile a dragonpair just out of spite?”

“It wasn’t S’leondes,” said Ch’fil. “It was R’lony.” He looked away from T’kamen for a minute, his eyes narrowing. Then he looked back. “Not how I’d have played it. But the penalty for defection has to be stiff, or Faranth knows, there’d barely be a bronze or brown left in Madellon.”

“I don’t want to defect,” said T’kamen. “But we need fire-lizards. Epherineth and I by ourselves are shaff-all use without being able to train more dragons to go between.”

“Tell that to Leda,” Ch’fil told him. “Or E’rol, or Vellary, or whoever that other green rider was that you saved last Fall.”

“We can’t save them all,” T’kamen said. “Not by ourselves. Shard it, we couldn’t even save M’ric and Trebruth.”

Ch’fil went quiet. “I told you,” he said after a moment. “You weren’t to know.”

T’kamen exhaled a long, weary breath. He looked at the open lockbox on the floor. “What was he doing?” he wondered aloud. “He didn’t tell me he’d found these documents. He knew these were exactly what I was looking for. Why did he hide them?”

“Maybe he thought to spring them on you?” Ch’fil suggested. “The boy always did love to be praised for a good job done.”

T’kamen shook his head slowly. “The day he went between,” he said. “Before Fall, he told me that he’d been reporting to Dalka.”

“Reporting to her?” Ch’fil asked. “About you?”

“Yes.” T’kamen frowned, thinking back. “He seemed upset about it. Guilty, I guess. I couldn’t work out why. I don’t think there’s much he could have told Dalka.”

“You think he was hoarding these for her?” Ch’fil asked, kicking the chest lightly with the toe of his boot.

“I don’t know. Maybe. She was the one who sent us to the Peninsula for them. But if she wanted these documents, I don’t know why she wouldn’t have just asked for them.” Something else occurred to T’kamen then. “He said he saw something in her workroom. Something he shouldn’t have seen.”

“Did he say what it was?”

“No.” T’kamen looked at Ch’fil. “You know Dalka better than I do. What’s her angle?”

“Her angle?”

“What does she want? It seems to me that she has what she needs. She’s Senior; she has her workroom; she seems genuinely devoted to R’lony…”

“Oh, aye, devoted,” Ch’fil agreed, but irony shaded his voice. He gave T’kamen a look. “You know Stratomath flew Donauth a couple Turns ago.”

T’kamen nodded. “When he sired Stenseth and Bularth. The flight that got you grounded.”

“It wasn’t an accident that Stratomath won,” said Ch’fil. He shrugged. “It wasn’t an accident that Geninth wasn’t there that day.”

T’kamen didn’t follow. “Dalka wanted you to win?”

“I think she thought I was set to make Marshal that Turn. The Seventh was restless. R’lony wasn’t looking secure. Or maybe they’d fought. I don’t know what it was exactly.”

“She was lining you up as his successor.”

“Something like that. Anyway, I didn’t get the votes for Marshal, not that I wanted them then any more then than I do now. Maybe it blew over with her and R’lony. But Dalka…Dalka likes to have a hand in things. She likes to stay close to power and influence.” He shrugged. “If she has an angle, that’s it.”

“Then why’s she interested in me?”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Kamen,” said Ch’fil. “Just by being here you’ve shaken this Weyr up more than any rider has since S’leondes’ coup.”

“Being a curiosity doesn’t give me any special pleasure,” T’kamen said. “Not when we could do so much more.”

“Like helping other dragons to go between again?”

“I came a long way to be here. If there isn’t some purpose to that…” He sighed. “Do you know how history remembers me, Ch’fil? As a minor Weyrleader who abandoned Madellon when it was most in need.”

“But you didn’t abandon it,” said Ch’fil. “You came here. You didn’t mean to leave your post.”

“I know,” said T’kamen. “And if I thought that I could do some real good here, I could live with being remembered as a deserter.” Even saying it aloud made the bald fact of it sting anew. “Probably, if I’d known I could make a difference now by deserting Madellon then, I’d do it anyway. It would be worth the sacrifice. And worth the shame.”

Ch’fil only gave him a sidelong look in response to that, which T’kamen took as his way of telling him he was being pompous. The thought that M’ric wouldn’t have scrupled to tell him he was being pompous to his face made him miss him even more.

R’lony, ever the pragmatist, had quickly grasped the value of having even a single dragonpair capable of going between, and it was several days before T’kamen was able to convince him to fit a visit to Fiver Hold into their schedule. R’lony’s reluctance had little to do with his opinion of M’ric, and everything to do with the restrictions T’kamen himself had insisted upon. For all that Epherineth and Fetch in concert could see them safely from one point to another, going between was no longer a skill T’kamen took for granted. He felt less in control of the process, it took much longer to reach a destination than it ever had in the Interval, and Fetch was, after all, still very young. Besides, the unsettling trip they had made into between itself to rescue Leda and Suatreth had given T’kamen too frightening a glimpse of the real nature of what he had always assumed to be a featureless void. He’d kept that part completely to himself. But he’d decided that Epherineth should make no more than five trips between on any day when there was no Thread, and even during Fall they should refrain from making jumps that were any less than critical until he felt more confident in this new way of travelling.

The business of deciding where best to employ T’kamen and Epherineth on Thread-free days was already becoming a bone of contention between R’lony and S’leondes. In spite of – or perhaps fuelled by – his waning influence at Madellon, R’lony stubbornly resisted the pressure to cede rights to their deployment to the Commander. T’kamen wasn’t a party to any of the arguments between R’lony and S’leondes, but he could imagine how ugly they were. He kept his head down, flew the assignments R’lony gave him, and quietly reported to Ch’fil when he thought a mission had been prompted by the Commander rather that the Marshal.

When, one morning, T’kamen’s daily orders did include a visit to Fiver Hold, it was the last stop of three in the region. They went first to West Gully, the Hold Major to which Fiver looked, to deliver a packet of correspondence to the watchpair there; flew straight to the nearby Minehold to make enquiries of the Master Miner about the quality of firestone it was tithing; and only then proceeded to Fiver Hold to meet with M’ric’s mother.

As committed as T’kamen was to the errand, he still dreaded it. He’d never had to deliver bad news to the family of his Interval riders. The few riders who’d died during his tenure as Madellon Weyrleader had been Weyrbred, and L’stev had insisted on going to the families of the weyrlings they’d lost to between. He wasn’t sure what he could say to Alisker. Even if he’d been able to tell her where M’ric had really gone – which he couldn’t – it would have been cold comfort. She was never going to see her son again.

Yet when he arrived at Fiver, using the reference of the great stone stacks that had become so familiar from his training attempts with M’ric, Alisker met him straight-backed and dry-eyed, with a dignity that humbled him. “He was a dragonrider of Pern,” she said, when T’kamen expressed his deepest condolences at her son’s death. “And his father’s son. From the moment he was Searched he was at peace with the notion that he wouldn’t live to an old age.”

T’kamen gave her the keepsakes he’d salvaged from M’ric’s weyr, in the heavy box that he and Ch’fil had found under the weyrling’s bed, emptied of its scrolls. Alisker examined each item carefully, tracing the careful braid of M’ric’s weyrling knots, flattening out the curling corners of the diamond-shaped black-and-indigo Madellon patch; touching with reverence the shard of Trebruth’s eggshell. Then she said, “There was a ring, a silver ring…?”

She didn’t have to complete the sentence. T’kamen bowed his head. “His father’s signet. I’m sorry, Alisker. He was wearing it when he went between.”

Alisker closed her eyes, and for a moment T’kamen feared that the grief would break through her composure. Then she straightened her shoulders. “I should have liked to pass it on,” she said. “He was M’gral’s only issue, but he had cousins at Starfall Weyr.”

T’kamen had slipped the gold twin of M’ric’s silver ring into his pocket, as he had on the previous occasions he’d been at Fiver Hold; he could feel the heavy signet pressing against his leg. The question of how M’ric’s family had ended up with a silver replica of the Madellon Weyrleader’s seal was still a mystery; one he supposed he would never solve now. “He was very proud of where he came from,” he said. “Fiver, as well as the Weyr.”

“You’re kind to say so, bronze rider,” said Alisker, “but he chafed to leave Fiver for Turns before he was Searched. It almost seems he became more interested in Fiver in the last few months than he was the whole time he lived here.”

The remark made T’kamen pay attention. “In what sense?”

“He’d started asking about when the Hold’s name changed,” said Alisker. “Not only just before the Pass, when the sixth spire collapsed, but back to even earlier than that. He had Terihf look out the old records for him. I didn’t know until he said that there were nine columns when the Hold was first founded.” She smiled sadly. “I wonder how they’ll call it when they have all fallen.”

That’s how he did it, Epherineth, T’kamen commented to his dragon later, as they were leaving Fiver. He visualised this place when it was still Sixer Hold.

Epherineth turned his head slightly to look at the five stone spires as he spiralled upwards. Was it not Sixer Hold for many Turns?

T’kamen hadn’t thought of that. Would that stop him from using it as a reference?

It would stop me.

The thought that M’ric had been actively seeking a route back to the Interval, in spite of his shaky grasp of between, gave T’kamen something to think about as he and Epherineth continued on their rounds. In one sense it didn’t surprise him. M’ric had been far too inquisitive and resourceful not to want to find out as much as he could about his place in the tangle of time that had snared them both. But it was yet more evidence that there was much the boy hadn’t been telling T’kamen. He tried not to take it personally, even as he still sought to puzzle out why M’ric had kept those crucial Peninsula documents from him, but it was hard not to feel hurt by it. It was hard not to wonder what else M’ric had been hiding from him.

Wake up. Wake up!

Epherineth’s urgent intrusion jarred T’kamen instantly out of sleep. He opened his eyes to pitch darkness. “What is it?”

Donauth’s rider comes.

T’kamen sat up. The bed was empty next to him; he had a dawn Threadfall, but Leda had gone back to her own weyr. She hated being woken early when she didn’t have to be up. “What watch is it?”

Middle. Donauth’s rider is here.

“Keep your voice down, T’kamen.” Dalka’s low hiss came out of the darkness along with an almost shielded glow-basket. “Get up. Get dressed. I need you.”

“What’s wrong, Weyrwoman?” T’kamen swung his legs stiffly over the edge of his bed. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Quickly. Don’t ask questions.”

That made the last vestiges of sleepy disorientation flee. “Weyrwoman?”

“Now, bronze rider!”

T’kamen groped for his cane and got up. Dalka was a slender shape in the gloom. “All right. Give me a moment.”

As he dragged on clothes, he asked Epherineth, Is something going on?

Donauth won’t say. The Weyr is quiet. The watchdragon seems calm.

“Come with me,” Dalka said, when T’kamen was dressed. “Leave that,” she added, when he reached for another glow-basket. “I don’t want the watchdragon to see you.”

T’kamen followed her out past Epherineth’s couch. He watched them pass, his eyes whirling faster than normal. “What’s going on, Dalka?” he asked, limping determinedly to keep up with her long-legged stride.

Dalka’s face was shrouded in shadow, the narrow wedge of light cast by her glow-basket illuminating only the ground in front of her feet. “When we get to the Hatching Grounds.”

“Is Donauth all right? Her clutch?”

There was enough of a pause before Dalka’s reply to make T’kamen pay attention. “Donauth and her eggs are fine.”

“Then –”

“Save your breath for walking,” Dalka said sharply.

Even with his cane to help, T’kamen was leg-weary by the time they reached the Hatching Cavern. Inside, Donauth was lying imperiously by her eggs, the clutch of nine neatly enclosed within the curl of her tail. She turned her head to look at Dalka with chilly indifference.

“Has Epherineth ever lied to you?” Dalka asked abruptly.

“No,” T’kamen replied, before his surprise at the nature of the question even had time to register.

Dalka glanced over at her dragon with an expression that almost matched Donauth’s iciness. “Perhaps only queens have that propensity,” she said. Then she said, “Ceduth’s eggs are gone.”

“Gone?”

Dalka led him around the bottom tier of the stands to the partitioned-off corner where Madellon’s green-laid eggs were kept. Ceduth’s rider sat there in the lowest tier, his face in his hands. He lifted his head as they approached, and leapt to his feet. “Dalka! Have you…” He trailed off when he recognised T’kamen, looking confused.

“Sit down, N’meru,” Dalka told him. “I told you, you need to stay calm. The last thing we need is Ceduth getting upset.”

“Ceduth doesn’t understand why I’m upset,” N’meru said despairingly. “She doesn’t understand at all.”

“She’s a green,” Dalka said. “Of course she doesn’t understand. Just keep her quiet.”

T’kamen looked behind the screens. There were six eggs half-buried in the mounded sand in two groups of three, all of them the small, pale green-blue common to green-laid eggs, and not much more than half the size of Donauth’s smallest egg. But more noteworthy than the eggs he saw there were the ones he didn’t. There were four holes where eggs had clearly been dug out of their sandy incubators. “What’s happened to them?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Dalka, but she threw another cool look at her queen.

That was easier to read. “You think she ate them?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Dalka said, her eyes flashing. Then she added, “She says she didn’t. But so she did last time this happened.”

T’kamen looked at the holes where the missing eggs should have been. “And it’s just Ceduth’s that have disappeared?”

“Yes, blight it,” said Dalka. It was the most agitated T’kamen had ever heard the ordinarily cool and collected Weywoman. “I don’t suppose anyone would have cared much if it were Ferrelth’s that had gone missing, or even Brenelth’s, but no, she had to eat Ceduth’s eggs, didn’t she?”

Across the Hatching Sands, Donauth turned her head away from her rider in a gesture of utter disdain.

“She must have gone for them especially,” N’meru said miserably. “Ferrelth’s were closer, and they’re bigger than Ceduth’s were, but there they all still are.”

“Then you didn’t see it happen?” T’kamen asked.

“I’d only stepped out to the dining cavern for an hour or so.”

By his guilty tone, N’meru had been absent from his post minding the green-laid eggs for longer than that. “You weren’t here either, Dalka?”

She made a dismissive gesture. “Donauth doesn’t need me to help her watch her eggs all night.”

“And she didn’t see what happened to Ceduth’s?”

“She says she was asleep.”

T’kamen transferred more of his standing weight onto his cane, wrapping his fingers around the dragon-head haft. “Does R’lony know?”

“Between with R’lony,” Dalka said. “When the Commander finds out –”

“What?” T’kamen asked. “What will he do?” He glanced at the wretched N’meru, then turned Dalka slightly aside, so the green rider couldn’t hear them. “S’leondes is a blue rider, Dalka. Karzith can’t intimidate Donauth. The Commander has no hold over you.”

The words had hardly left his mouth before he saw, in the lines of strain on Dalka’s face, how mistaken they were. “I need your help, T’kamen,” she said, speaking each word with careful precision, and not an ounce of entreaty, despite her obvious distress.

“Why me?”

“Who else am I to turn to? No Wingleader or Wingsecond is going to take my part. The Seventh is at Madellon South, and there’s not another bronze or brown rider with a spine left in Madellon tonight!”

Ch’fil was – he would be leading a Seventh Wing in the partial Threadfall over Jessaf the following day – but T’kamen supposed that the history between Dalka, R’lony, and Ch’fil precluded Stratomath’s rider from getting involved. Still, he suspected that Dalka’s compliment was merely flattery. He knew what his real use to her was. “Do you want me to go and get R’lony from Madellon South?”

“And what can he do? R’lony’s days as Marshal are running out, and even if they weren’t, he’d be no match for S’leondes!”

T’kamen had to let that sink in for several seconds before he could form an answer. “And you think I am?” he asked, incredulous. “You want me to fight him?”

“Don’t be absurd,” Dalka said coolly. “But no one has held a candle to the Commander’s charisma in the Weyr for decades. Not since the Pass began. You know how he’s adored. You’ve seen it. You’re the only rider who would even have a chance of facing him down in a battle for the heart of this Weyr.”

“What are you saying, Dalka?”

“That you might not wear the knots of a Weyrleader on your shoulder any more, but everyone can see them there just the same.” She leaned closer. “Help me, T’kamen. Stand up to S’leondes, and I’ll make sure that when the Marshal votes are counted, your name will come out on top.”

T’kamen stared at her in frank astonishment.

“It’s your only way to ever be a credible threat to S’leondes. If you knew the things he’s done to stay where he is –”

She broke off for no reason T’kamen could discern except to bait him into asking for more. Even realising that, he nearly did anyway. What had S’leondes done? But the thought of setting himself up as an actual rival to the Commander seemed so ludicrous that he almost laughed aloud. S’leondes had two decades’ experience leading the Wings into Fall. He had the hero-worship of six-sevenths of the Weyr. He was almost a head taller than T’kamen, outweighed him by half his weight, and he didn’t need a stick to walk on a crippled and twisted leg. On every front, S’leondes had the advantage.

Except that he is only a blue rider, said Epherineth.

That remark was nearly more startling than Dalka’s had been. You think this is a good idea?

Epherineth said nothing.

“If Donauth really has eaten Ceduth’s clutch,” T’kamen said, looking at the pits where the green-laid eggs had been, “then –”

He stopped, then limped closer to look more carefully at the eggs that had been left. The sand was mounded up around them, and yet where Ceduth’s four were missing the holes were almost flush with the surface of the sand. “Where’s the rest of the sand gone?”

“What?” said Dalka.

“The rest of the sand.” T’kamen pointed at one of the other green-laid eggs. “If you took that egg away, some of the sand would fall into the hole it left, but there’d still be more piled around the edges.” Then he added, “There aren’t any claw marks, either.”

He stepped back a pace to survey the scene. As he did, he noticed how both his boots and the end of his cane had left clear prints. The sand around the eggs was scarred with many overlapping sets of footprints, and with the long, thin marks left by the front wheel of the barrow that was used to move the green-laid eggs around.

One of the wheelbarrow tracks stopped at the lip where the sand met the lip of the stands, which wouldn’t have been remarkable, except that the narrow rut overlaid almost all of the other footprints.

“Donauth didn’t eat them,” T’kamen said. He crouched awkwardly, extending his bad leg stiffly and holding onto his cane with one hand, then reached down with the other to trace the fresh wheel print. “They were taken.”

For an instant, Dalka’s face betrayed her relief. Then she said, “The watchdragon…!”

Brifnith says there have been no intruders, said Epherineth, before T’kamen could even ask.

“Wake up the Weyr!” Dalka cried to Donauth. “Someone’s stolen Ceduth’s eggs!”

Donauth looked unmoved by her rider’s urgency, but with a grudging toss of her muzzle, she bugled out a brassy alarum, answered an instant later by a cacophony of queries from the hundreds of dragons of Madellon.

“Northerners?” T’kamen asked, raising his voice to be heard above the din.

Dalka’s eyes were sparkling black now, her normal confidence restored. “It has to be. They’ve been after our green-laid eggs for Turns.”

“But how did they get past the watchdragon?”

“Brifnith’s blue. His rider can answer to the Commander on that count.” Then Dalka cried, “Intruders, on Donauth’s Hatching sands! Northerners stealing our eggs! Get after them! They can’t have gone far!”

T’kamen wasn’t so sure about that – he suspected that N’meru’s dereliction of duty had lasted longer than the green rider had been prepared to admit. “They could have two hours’ head start on us, and it’s pitch dark,” he said. “Anyone clever enough to get in and out of here unchallenged is clever enough to plot a route back to the north that we won’t expect.”

Geninth’s rider demands that we go to Madellon South and bring him back to the Weyr, said Epherineth, sounding about as enthused by the prospect as Donauth had been by Dalka’s demand that she raise the alarm.

“R’lony wants picking up,” T’kamen told Dalka, even as he asked Epherineth, Can you bring Fetch and your harness and meet me at the Hatching cavern?

Dalka looked at him warily. “You won’t mention what I said to you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“No,” said T’kamen. He didn’t trust himself to say any more than that. “You’ll be all right until we get back?”

Her mouth quirked. “I won’t forget what you’ve done here, T’kamen.”

He nearly winced at the implication, but he didn’t think it was the moment to argue with her. Then his gaze fell on N’meru, forgotten and terrified. “Are you going to be all right, green rider?”

“The Commander’s going to kill me,” he said, faintly. “He’ll stake me out for Thread. He’ll ground Ceduth for a Turn. He’ll…”

“He won’t,” T’kamen told him, “but if you need some advice on the most efficient way to shovel the shit out of the weyrling barracks, then come and ask me. I’m the expert on that.”

N’meru looked slightly reassured – though only slightly. “Thank you, T’kamen.”

Riders were beginning to converge on the entrance to the Hatching sands, and then T’kamen heard the distinctive snap of Epherineth’s wings. “We’ll be back with R’lony in a few minutes,” he told Dalka. “Ch’fil should take charge here.”

She looked at him. “Ch’fil’s at Madellon South with R’lony.”

“No,” T’kamen said, “he’s sitting this Fall out so he can lead the Seventh at Jessaf tomorrow.”

“But he’s not here,” said Dalka. “He’s not at Madellon now.”

T’kamen blinked. Epherineth?

Stratomath is not here.

Did he go to Madellon South with the Seventh?

He is not at Madellon South.

Then where is he?

Epherineth paused. I don’t know.

Dalka said, sharply, “Donauth can’t find Stratomath.”

They looked at each other. T’kamen wondered abstractedly if his face wore the same sort of alarm as Dalka’s.

“Epherineth,” he said, speaking the thought aloud, “ask Brifnith if Stratomath went anywhere during his watch.”

It seemed to be an age before Epherineth replied. He says Stratomath left the Weyr about two hours ago.

“What in the –” Dalka began, and then, “He couldn’t have been involved, could he? Ch’fil? Ch’fil?”

It hit T’kamen so hard that if he hadn’t been leaning most of his weight on his cane, he might have staggered. He could feel the blood draining from his face. “Oh, Faranth,” he said. “Ch’fil, you didn’t. You couldn’t. You Thread-blighted fool.”

“What is it?” Dalka asked. “What’s he done? Answer me, T’kamen!”

“I know where he’s gone,” T’kamen said. “I know where he’s taken them.”

“Where?” Dalka demanded, her voice snapping like a whip.

“Ista,” T’kamen said. “He’s going to trade Ceduth’s clutch for fire-lizard eggs.”

Chapter sixty-four: Sarenya

Those candidates who stand again and again until they outgrow the age of candidacy often leave the Weyr entirely. This is almost always for the best. It is cruel, monstrously cruel, to expect someone who has spent his entire youth yearning for a dragon to spend the rest of his life in service to those more fortunate than himself, and no good can come of it – for the individual, or for the Weyr.

– Weyrlingmaster D’hor, Thoughts On Candidacy

100.04.28 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Sejanth was dying.

If there’d been any doubt before, there was none now. He had begun to refuse food, consenting only intermittently to swallow joints of wherry that were forcibly pushed into his mouth. No amount of coercion could persuade him to move from his wallow so they could clean him or it. And while he had not yet stopped drinking, Sarenya dreaded the day, seemingly inevitable now, when she came into the dragon infirmary to find that even the water trough had ceased to hold any temptation for him. No animal had long to go once it reached that stage.

She was scrubbing her hands, getting the last traces of salve out from under her fingernails, when Vhion asked quietly, “What would you do if he were a runnerbeast?”

It wasn’t the first time he had asked her that question. The first part of Sarenya’s answer was always the same. “A dragon isn’t a runnerbeast.” Then she added, “Take a knife to his throat and call it a kindness.”

She was lying, and Vhion knew it as well as she did. Most Beastcrafters faced with an animal as sick as Sejanth would have put it down without hesitation rather than waste time and resources on prolonging its end. Sarenya had always been more tender-hearted than that, nearly to a fault. More than one Master had criticised her reluctance to let a beast go, and more often than not they’d been right. Only once had her stubborn perseverance with a runnerbeast yielded a happy result – a massive cart-mare at Blue Shale with a badly abscessed foot – and that more because of the foal she had been carrying than because she was particularly valuable herself. Still, Sarenya didn’t lightly give up on any creature in her care, and Sejanth was more precious than any runnerbeast she had ever nursed back from sickness or injury.

“When he goes,” Vhion said, “I don’t know that I’ll have enough for you to do here.”

Sarenya studied her fingernails without seeing them. “You and Arrense, again.”

“Would you sooner neither he nor I cared enough about your prospects to discuss them?”

She wanted to say, yes, I wish you two would stop making decisions about what’s best for me without consulting me first, but she didn’t. “Tebis is going to be laid up for sevendays with his broken leg,” she said instead. “With everything that’ll need doing while he’s out of action I don’t know that my Master will be able to spare me for much longer anyway.”

“Tebis won’t be in the infirmary forever,” said Vhion. “And in a month or six sevendays, Master Benallen’s offer may not still be open to you. Look to your own future, Saren. Not your Master’s, not mine. Not even his.” He jerked his head in the direction of Sejanth. “And don’t allow your disinclination to let things go stop you from making the right decisions.”

Sleek swooped down as Sarenya left the infirmary. He never accompanied her inside, although she had never decided if it was Sejanth’s presence, or simply the infirmary itself, that deterred him. A combination of both, probably: the fresh air was a relief after the stink of sick dragon that surrounded Sejanth.

“What do you think, fella?” she asked as Sleek landed on her outstretched arm. “Do you want to start somewhere new again?”

Sleek hummed at her non-comprehendingly, which was about what Sarenya had expected. She shook him off her wrist and onto her shoulder as she crossed the Bowl towards the Beastcrafters’ cot. Simple-minded or not, Sleek had been her only confidant since Long Bay. Her predicament might be trivial compared with all that had befallen the Weyrleaders of all three southern Weyrs during and since the Gather, but she wished she could have talked it through with someone.

A lifetime ago, or so it seemed, she would have gone to C’mine. He had once been a reliable fund of good advice, sometimes understanding her better than she did herself, even if he lacked expertise on her Craft. In the old days, C’mine would have listened to Sarenya’s dilemma – leave Madellon and abandon her life, stay and perhaps stunt her career – and seen to the heart of her uncertainty. He wouldn’t have told her what to do, only shown her the most sensible way to resolve her indecision. But that C’mine was gone. When Sarenya had heard that he’d had been replaced as Assistant Weyrlingmaster, she’d gone to see him and been turned away by journeyman Benner. That in itself had increased her concern for him. She’d been treated by Benner herself after her kidnapping. Benner specialised in helping patients with troubled minds. And the sight of Darshanth, more grey than blue, on C’mine’s ledge filled her with dread. But whatever was wrong with C’mine – and something must be badly wrong – no one, neither rider nor crafter, would tell her.

She couldn’t go to Valonna. Even had they continued with their informal meetings since T’kamen’s disappearance, the Weyrwoman was utterly mired in Madellon’s affairs; Sarenya wouldn’t have presumed on her time simply to seek counsel for her own benefit. She found an honesty in her trepidation at what Valonna was facing. It might have been the first time Sarenya could tell herself sincerely that she didn’t envy the Weyrwoman her situation.

And she quite simply hadn’t had the opportunity to confide in M’ric. Their hectic lives – his running two Wings nearly single-handed, hers covering first for Jarrisam and then for Tebis since the stampede in which he’d broken his leg – meant that they’d spent little time together in the month since Long Bay. Sarenya might catch a glimpse of M’ric between evening stables and milking time, notice dark wings in the killing pens as Trebruth fed, or spot Agusta’s golden form stretched out in the sun alongside Sleek, but not much more than that. She could have sent him a note asking if he could find some time for them to talk, but she was reluctant to do so. M’ric was, after all, under nearly as much strain as Valonna; distracting him from Wing business seemed crass.

There, too, Sarenya was honest enough with herself to recognise that her reluctance was rooted in more than just an unwillingness to bother him. She still didn’t know what to make of what the Peninsula green rider, S’rebren, had said. If M’ric hadn’t been born in a seahold, and Trebruth hadn’t Hatched at the Peninsula, then where did they come from? And if either claim were true, why would M’ric have lied to her?

The second question troubled her more than the first. She’d always taken pains not to pry into M’ric’s business, to make it clear that he was not accountable to her in any way, to respect his prioritisation of Trebruth’s needs. Romantic involvement with a dragonrider demanded such considerations. Sarenya had seen too many fellow crafters fall out with their rider lovers over issues of privacy, transparency, and fidelity. It was the price she had chosen to pay for M’ric’s love – and before him, T’kamen’s – and one she felt that he recognised and appreciated that she paid. If Sarenya still found it upsetting that M’ric must be intimate with green riders two and three times a month in accordance with Trebruth’s libido, then at least M’ric neither denied it nor confronted her with it. She, in turn, didn’t demand a reckoning of his mating flight activities, or go out of her way to find out which greens Trebruth had flown. Neither of them pretended it wasn’t an issue at all, but skirting diplomatically around it made for fewer awkward conversations.

But their mutual, unspoken agreement not to discuss Trebruth’s sex life was different to peddling outright lies.

Sarenya turned it all over in her mind as she crossed the Weyr. M’ric had never outright said that Trebruth was a Peninsula dragon. She’d presumed he was. M’ric had never corrected her fallacious assumption, though she’d probably never stated it for him to contradict. But where, then, had M’ric Impressed his dragon? Not at Madellon , that was for sure. Sarenya hated herself for it, but she’d checked the public Weyr Book, with its chronicle of every dragonet Hatched and rider Impressed since Madellon’s founding. M’ric and Trebruth weren’t there. Southern? She doubted it. Before the recent conflict there’d have been no reason for M’ric to lie about coming from there – and besides, Southern was known for producing big dragons, not small ones. That only left the northern Weyrs, and there Sarenya’s knowledge ended. She’d never been north to know if Trebruth’s unusual size and coloration were typical of a northern bloodline. Then, too, if Trebruth – and by extension, M’ric – did originate from the north, that would also explain Agusta, a northern fire-lizard queen. Had M’ric ever specifically said he’d grown up in a Peninsula seahold? Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps his sin, if he had indeed sinned, was merely of omission. S’rebren had said something about M’ric making a bad jump between as a weyrling and addling his wits. But if that were true, why hadn’t M’ric just gone home? Surely it would have been facile to check which northern Weyr was missing a brown weyrling. Had M’ric been running away from something that had been done to him at his native Weyr? Or something he had done?

It seemed far-fetched. But then there was the question of the race-runner M’ric had backed, supposedly on S’rebren’s expert advice. That had turned out to be untrue, unless M’ric had simply misremembered the source of the tip. But that wasn’t like him; not at all. Even when he’d been drinking, as he had that first night of the Gather, M’ric always kept a clear head. So where had the tip come from? It wasn’t as if that runnerbeast had been well fancied, that M’ric could have heard about it and hoped to impress Sarenya by backing a winner. Sixteen-to-one shots seldom won at a canter as that grey colt Wonder Dream had. Sarenya paused in her stride for a moment. Could the colt have been a ringer? It wasn’t unheard of for one runner to be entered in a race under the name and auspices of another, similar-looking animal. A superior runner would be substituted for an outsider, allowing those in the know to collect a handsome return when it won at long odds. There were harsh penalties for any trainers caught running ringers, and the stewards kept a sharp eye open for suspicious behaviour in the racecourse stables and anomalous changes in the betting market that could indicate a scam, but the practice did still occur. Had M’ric got wind of some shady scheme to replace the real Wonder Dream with a higher-class stablemate? Had he been involved in it? M’ric always seemed to have marks to spend, and there wasn’t so much disparity between a Wingsecond’s stipend and a journeyman’s pay that he should be much better-off than Sarenya. Could M’ric be part of some Pern-wide conspiracy to defraud the wagermen by running ringers at the major race meetings?

Sarenya couldn’t have dreamed up a more absurd notion if she’d tried.

She laughed out loud at the wild direction her conjecture had taken. Sleek chuffed enquiringly, and she put her hand up to him. “It’s nothing, fella,” she told him, opening the lower half of the split back door of the Beastcraft cot. “I’m just seeing schemes and conspiracies everywhere I look these days.”

Jarrisam raised his head from where he sat poring over a slate behind Arrense’s desk. “What’s that you say, Saren?”

“Nothing, Sam. Just talking to myself.” Sarenya crossed to the klah pot, craning her neck to see what he was looking at. “Milk projections?”

“What else?” he asked. “We’ll be under quota for the entire next quarter if this dry spell doesn’t break soon.”

Sarenya poured herself a mug. “There’s nothing much we can do about that.”

“I don’t want to be the one who has to tell the Weyr to expect more goat milk than cow in its klah for the foreseeable future.”

Sarenya sipped her klah, then almost gagged. “It might not be the milk that’s the problem. Who brewed this pot?”

“I did,” Jarrisam said. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It tastes like wet hound.”

“It seemed all right to me,” Jarrisam said. He pushed his slate away. “How was Sejanth today?”

“Not good. Vhion doesn’t think he has long to go.”

“Faranth. I’m sorry.” Jarrisam paused. “You’re not back on shift until first evening watch, are you?”

“Not strictly, no.” Sarenya eyed him charily. “Why?”

“I wouldn’t normally ask, but I’m not sure if anyone’s gone down the valley to headcount the drive.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the blackboard on the wall. “It was Teb’s turn.”

“Didn’t Arrense go?” Sarenya asked. “He said he would this morning.”

“I haven’t seen him,” said Jarrisam. “And Franc’s still in his stall.”

“Maybe he was called away,” Sarenya said. She kept her tone neutral. More likely Arrense had disappeared out-Weyr on another of the investigative missions that he’d been refusing to discuss with her, but she didn’t want to get into a conversation with Jarrisam about it. He’d already been speculating on the reason for Arrense’s regular absences. “Let me just change my clothes, and I’ll ride down for the count. But only if you’ll get an apprentice to run over to the dining hall and bring me something to eat on the way. And something to drink that isn’t that disgusting klah.”

“Deal.”

Sarenya stopped in her room to exchange her tunic and trousers for riding clothes. The dirty items went into the overflowing basket at the end of her bed. Doing laundry just hadn’t quite reached the top of the list for the last sevenday or so. She put it out of her mind as she buckled on chaps. Laundry could wait.

Arrense’s tall bay Franc was still in his end box in the stables, barred in to prevent him from savaging hapless passers-by. What Jarrisam hadn’t noticed was that Bovey was missing from the turn-out paddock behind the stables. When Sarenya went into the tack room to investigate, she found Bovey’s saddle missing, too, and a note in Arrense’s scrawl chalked on the board. Time we had Crawler back.

She experienced a moment’s red rage. Maybe Bovey wasn’t hers, but Arrense knew she’d been enjoying riding him. And what was the point of her having oversight of the stables if he was just going to take a runner without asking? It must be a ploy to discourage her from staying at Madellon, to remove one more reason she might have cited against leaving. And it was mean spirited enough on Arrense’s part that Sarenya wondered if souring her to him wasn’t half the point.

Well, if Arrense thought he was going to manipulate her that way, he was going to be disappointed. Sarenya took Franc’s saddle down from its rack. If Arrense was going to take her mount without asking, she’d take his.

She led Franc out of his box to saddle him. He wasn’t quite as aggressive out of his stable as in. She still had to dodge the snap of his teeth twice as she tightened the girth. “Don’t be a sod,” she warned him when he made as if to sidle away from her as she put her foot in the stirrup to mount. He didn’t, but he did start forwards before Saren had got her leg fully across his broad back.

Anthelle came into the yard as Sarenya was shortening the stirrup leathers. The apprentice looked askance at Sarenya’s choice of mount, and made a wide detour to avoid getting too close to Franc’s ready teeth. “Hand me up that waterskin, too,” Sarenya said, taking the bulging napkin Anthelle handed her and slipping it into one of her saddlebags. “And while I’m gone, would you skip Bovey’s box completely out and scrub it down with redwort? Master Arrense will probably be bringing Crawler back up, and he should go into a clean stall.”

“You’re joining him to do headcount?” Anthelle asked, passing her the waterskin.

“Just going to make sure he gets it right.” Sarenya nearly fumbled the waterskin, and caught it only by the end of its carry strap. She swore, and wrapped the thong of the skin twice around the saddle horn. “He might get it wrong if it’s more than he can tally on his fingers.”

She regretted the remark as she whistled Sleek down from where he’d arranged himself in his favourite sunny spot on the stable roof. It was poor form to be snide about one’s Master in front of the apprentices. In truth, Sarenya was more interested in making a point with Arrense by riding down the valley on his own personal mount. No one else would have dared take Franc. But Arrense, by his own admission, had been treating Sarenya differently because of their blood relationship; she didn’t see why she shouldn’t take a few liberties in return.

It was, at least, a fine afternoon for a ride. She kept Franc to a walk until they had left the tunnel that bored through the wall of the Bowl, raising a hand in passing to the duty watchman, then followed the paved road that was the main ground approach to Madellon as far as the first crossroads. There, the thoroughfare split, descending north and east through the mountains to Kellad in one direction and the southernmost border of Blue Shale in the other. The trail wasn’t paved along its entire length, but it was always passable, winding through passes that laden tithe wagons could traverse in all but the worst winter snows.

Sarenya turned Franc off the main road onto the unpaved but still broad herders’ trail, its margins defined not with stone or gravel but with the churned-up prints of thousands of hard-edged herdbeast hoofs. The food beasts they drove up to the Weyr twice each sevenday from the pasture at the base of the range didn’t require such a gentle climb as the tithe wagons, though even their route had been made easier by Turns of work on Madellon’s road system. The high switchbacks of the beast trail looked daunting from above, on dragonback, but they rode straightforwardly enough for the doziest apprentice to negotiate, even when heat, stillness, and the passage of a herd combined to fill the air with dust. The heat and stillness applied, but not the herd, and the only dust was what hung in Franc’s wake as he trotted along each leg of the switchbacks, dropping to a walk to negotiate the hairpin bend at each end.

At the base of the switchbacks, the trail became gentler both in gradient and in its curve, following the descending ridges to the pasturage below. For Beastcrafters riding down unencumbered by a herd there were two options. They could kick their runners on, cantering – and more often than not, racing – along the flat stretch of trail, or else they could leave the track entirely and ride one of the steep and narrow ravines that offered the most direct descent to the valley. Bovey had been swift on the flat and surefooted down the more civilised gorges, and Franc was just as able, but Sarenya decided not to push her luck. She stopped where a creek bisected the trail, dismounting to let Franc drink and nibble a leaf or two off the bushes that overhung the water. Sleek carried off half a meatroll from the napkin Sarenya took out of her saddlebag, leaving her one-and-a-half meatrolls and some cheese for her own lunch.

She stretched her legs as she ate, looking down towards the pasture. The herds moved only sluggishly in the heat of the day, making it easy to estimate their numbers. They looked short. A hundred and fifty head didn’t have to mean a hundred and fifty steers. Depending on the season, up to a third of the count might comprise wethers, at the rate of six to the steer; a drive could involve up to four hundred individual beasts in total. That was part of the reason for headcount: so the Weyr’s Beastcrafters knew how many animals to expect and of which type. From this distance, Sarenya wasn’t certain that even the sheep and goats, penned according to their type, would make up the shortfall in the head of cattle. That probably meant that the drovers hadn’t finished bringing up all the animals for tomorrow’s drive yet, which in turn meant that she would have to ride down to the lower pastures to get an accurate count.

“Looks like you’re going to have to put up with me a bit longer,” she said to Franc, pulling his near rein to get him to raise his head.

Franc ignored her. He continued to nose around in search of something worth eating.

Sarenya sighed. “You bugger. Bovey was never like this.”

Franc ignored that too.

There was a sticky square of travel-cake at the bottom of the napkin Anthelle had brought from the dining cavern. Sarenya broke it in two. “What about if I give you this?”

That made Franc lift his head. He sniffed the cake, then lipped it off her palm without leaving a crumb behind. Sarenya took advantage of his noisy enjoyment of the oats and dried fruit to boost herself the long way back up into the saddle. She heeled him on, eating her half of the cake as she rode.

By the time they were off the ridge and onto the last stretch of rough ground before the pasture, one of the drovers had ridden up to meet them. Sarenya raised her hand in greeting even as she recognised him, and winced mentally. Not all of Madellon’s drovers were agreeable. “Afternoon, Ernick.”

“Ho, journeyman.” The herdsman pulled in his runnerbeast in front of them. “What brings yeh down t’mountain?”

Sarenya had to rein Franc in sharply. He was nearly three hands taller than Ernick’s hill-runner, and would have barged the smaller animal without intervention. “Count,” she said. “Tebis’ ankle was broken, not just sprained, so I’m filling in on his runs.”

“Aye, heard bout Teb,” Ernick said. His grey sidestepped a bit under him, and he jabbed it in the mouth with a sharp tug of the reins. “But Master’s already bin down fer count. Wasted trip fer yeh.”

“The herd’s looking light,” Sarenya said, nodding towards the pasture. “Has he gone down the valley to see the rest?”

“Aye, aye, that he has. Down t’valley.” Ernick’s runner danced a bit more; again, he yanked harder on the reins than the mare deserved. “Probably going t’be a while. Lennig’s runner were down with t’colic this morn. Master said he’d look t’it.”

Sarenya never liked to see a runner socked in the mouth like that. “Something up with your mare, Ernick?”

“Bin nappy since t’dragon last drive. Hope t’rider gits shit on.”

“I think he has been,” said Sarenya. “Look, since I’m here anyway, I may as well come down and see what you have for us. Then I can ride back to the Weyr with my Master once he’s seen to Lennig’s runner.”

Ernick looked like he was about to argue with her. Then he shrugged and spun his agitated runnerbeast. “Suit self.”

Sarenya was glad to see him trot back towards the drovers’ hut. She’d never had much time for Ernick. It wasn’t unusual for herdsmen to dislike Craft folk with equal parts resentment of their status and contempt for the Hall’s methods. To a herder family that had been breeding, handling, and treating its own animals for generations, the opinion of a Hall-trained Beastcrafter might seem patronising. But most of Madellon’s drovers were at least polite, and if one of their own beasts was sick then having a Beastcrafter look at it could be the difference between recovery and euthanasia. Ernick, though, had always shown the minimum possible tolerance towards Madellon’s Beastcrafters. Sarenya thought dryly that at least if she left the Weyr, she wouldn’t have to deal with Kellad’s sullen drovers any more.

She rode to the edge of the pasture to inspect the herds. Some of the wether sheep had been shorn of their summer fleeces. The ones that hadn’t would be sheared up at the Weyr. There was no point in feeding good wool to dragons. The goats were all of the coarse-haired hill variety and not worth shearing, though the hides of the ones that went for human consumption, rather than into dragons’ bellies, would make decent leather. Sarenya counted nearly a hundred of each: the equivalent of thirty steers.

There weren’t a hundred and twenty bullocks. Sarenya’s tally only reached eighty-four, and two more penned apart from the rest in such a sorry state that together they would barely have counted as one. Arrense would have ordered those beasts roped off from the others, and an additional animal brought up to compensate for their condition. The rest were the sort of bullocks they’d become accustomed to seeing – poor quality, under-fleshed, but at least in a condition to be driven to the Weyr without dying on the way.

Arrense had been quite firm about Sarenya keeping out of his investigation of the animals being supplied to the Weyr by Madellon’s Holds. Specifically, he’d told Sarenya not to go looking for Peninsula cattle in the herds. She’d obeyed that order, at least insofar as she didn’t make a point of poking around at ear tattoos. But now that she knew there was something to look for, she couldn’t help but notice when she saw a Keroon Red with its hide suspiciously free of river itch.

What was curious about the bullocks that grazed the pasture before her now was that none of them were obviously Peninsularite. Every Keroon that Sarenya could see had some amount of stippling on its hide. She wondered if that meant that the shortfall she could see in this group would comprise only Peninsula stock. Arrense would probably have come to the same conclusion. He would have gone down the valley as much to investigate where the Peninsula beasts were being held as to count the stock still being brought up for the drive. Sarenya supposed that she shouldn’t go after him. That would have taken her very close to sticking her nose into his investigation, and she’d agreed she wouldn’t.

Still, she thought she might as well ride down as far as Gadman’s cot to see if he was pleased to have Bovey back. Gadman, unlike Ernick, was always cheerful, and he might like to know how his gelding had been going for Sarenya up at the Weyr. Casendie, Gadman’s cot-bound wife, liked visitors, and Sarenya wouldn’t mind a mug of proper klah while she waited for Arrense to come back up from the bottom of the valley.

Gadman’s smallholding lay in one of the many dales that branched off from the broad valley that descended through the Madellon range. The vale had water, a bit of rough grazing, and shelter from the weather: resources enough for a drover and his wife. As Franc crested the ridge that overlooked the holding, Sarenya looked down at Gadman’s cot. The cottage itself, seemingly tumbledown in the way of all the structures built of the mottled local stone, was tight against wind and rain. The lean-to stable on the south side was just as snug. Bovey was hitched to the rail near the gate of the small paddock, enclosed by a dry stone wall, that fronted the holding. A smaller runner was tethered beside him.

The chestnut gelding raised his head as Sarenya rode Franc up to the front of Gadman’s cot. “Hey, fella,” she said. “I’m going to miss you.” She raised her voice. “Hello, the hold?”

An instant after she called out, a muffled shout from within made her hesitate in the saddle. On her shoulder, Sleek mantled his wings, suddenly rigid with alarm.

A man came out of the cothold. He had a drover’s staff in one hand, but he wasn’t Gadman, nor any other herdsman Sarenya recognised. More than that she didn’t have time to see. “Git down offa dat runner!” he bawled, grabbing at Franc’s reins.

He never got near them.

Sarenya found herself with a faceful of mane as Franc reared. Instinctively, she shifted her weight forwards to stay aboard. She felt rather than saw one of Franc’s feet connect, a sickening sensation of iron-shod hoof striking bone. She couldn’t tell if the screams she could hear were Franc’s or Sleek’s or even her own.

Then Franc crashed down onto all four hoofs again, making Sarenya’s teeth clash together. The man who’d grabbed at him was howling on the ground, clutching at his shoulder. His arm was bent at a grotesque angle. “You idiot!” Sarenya shouted down at him. She could hear her own voice shaking, and her fingers felt boneless on Franc’s reins as she tried to turn him. “Why did you have to snatch at him like that? Faranth!”

She didn’t know how she got down, except that it was a long way down from Franc’s back to the ground. She took a step towards the writhing man. “Are you all right?”

Then her foot caught the staff he’d been holding, sending it rolling. She looked down. The end of the stave was sticky with blood.

“Why’d ya hafta come?” the man panted. His accent wasn’t Kelladian. “Why’d ya hafta? Whut mind’s it o’ ya’s where the shedded bists is kem from?”

Sarenya took a step back, then another. “Where’s Gadman?” she asked, and then as realisation struck, she whirled towards the cothold.

Sleek preceded her into the cot, whistling urgently. It was dim inside, damp and dusty with neglect, the hearth old ashes, the floor mildewed reeds. Oddments of broken furniture were all that remained of Gadman and Casendie’s possessions.

Arrense was sitting on the floor, his back against one of the roof posts. He’d been gagged and bound. And beaten. Blood from a gash at his temple washed half his face. But he was alive. His eyes burned blue from the ghastly mask, and when he saw Sarenya he began to struggle, his shoulders bunching against his bonds.

“Master!” Sarenya flew to him. She tore the filthy and blood-stained gag from his mouth. “Faranth, Master!”

“The herdsman,” Arrense said thickly, and spat out a bloody mouthful. “What happened to the herdsman?”

“Franc kicked him,” Sarenya said. “I think he’s broken his arm.”

“Franc? Franc’s here?” Then he shook his shaggy head. “Never mind that. Send your lizard for help. Send him now!”

“He’s never –” Sarenya began, and then stopped. “Sleek!” She almost had to catch him out of the air, so great was his agitation. “Sleek, go back to Madellon! Find Agusta, tell her to send M’ric and Trebruth!”

Sleek shook free of her grasp, too upset to be held. He flew up to the top of the fireplace and perched there, creeling excitedly.

“Thread take you, Sleek!” Sarenya shouted at him.

“Never mind!” Arrense barked. “Untie me!”

Sarenya fumbled her belt knife out of its sheath. It took her two tries to slice through the thongs that bound Arrense’s wrists, and she nearly cut him in the process. “Can you get up?”

“Give me your hand.”

Sarenya did, and braced herself as he used it to help heave himself to his feet. Arrense’s grip was still strong, but he caught himself against the post he’d been tied to, visibly swaying, and when Sarenya took his arm to steady him he swore and drew it back. “Master –”

“I’m all right,” he said. “I’ll be all right.” With an effort, he let go of the post to stand unaided. Sarenya could see what it cost him to do so. “What in the Void are you doing here, Sarenya? I told you to stay out of it!”

“I came to do the count!”

“You knew I was doing it! I didn’t want you down here today!”

“You took Bovey. You didn’t even ask!”

“You came down because of a shaffing runnerbeast?”

“I thought you’d done it to try and encourage me to leave,” Sarenya said. It sounded stupid now she said it aloud. “I wanted to have it out with you, away from the others.”

Arrense gave her a hard look made all the worse for his bloody condition. “I guess I should be grateful you picked today to be stupid,” he said. “They were expecting Tebis. They –” He paused to spit blood again, pressing one hand to the side of his chest. “They needed him to falsify the tattoos.”

Sarenya’s head swam. Tebis? Stolid, unremarkable Tebis? “He can’t be,” she protested weakly.

“We knew they had to have someone this end,” Arrense said. “Thought it would be down the valley.” He put his hand gingerly to his head and brought it away sticky. “I came to see Gadman. I thought he’d be reasonable. They were expecting Tebis to go down to the lower pastures and tattoo the Peninsula stock –”  He stopped to clear his mouth again. “Do you have any water?”

“On Franc’s saddle,” Sarenya said, and when Arrense looked at her, his brows contracting in a scowl, she added, “I was really annoyed about Bovey.”

“That sharding –”

The sound of hoofbeats, going fast and moving away, stopped Arrense mid-sentence. He staggered out of the cothold; Sarenya followed close behind him. The man Franc had kicked was riding away as fast as his little runnerbeast could carry him, still favouring his broken arm.

Arrense watched him go. “Shaff.” He spoke quietly. “A pity Franc didn’t break his leg.”

Out in the light, the evidence of the beating Arrense had taken was more explicit. His face was swollen, the skin over his cheekbones split, and bruises mottled his jaw. Sarenya dreaded to think what he looked like under his sweat-darkened shirt. “Can you ride?”

“Going to have to,” Arrense said. “That fellow wasn’t acting alone.” He looked at Sarenya. “What, you think, one little bastard was enough to do this much damage to me? That little shit Ernick was the worst though.” He touched his face. “I think he broke my shaffing nose again.”

Sarenya peered harder at his face. It didn’t look any different to her.

Arrense gave her a withering glare. “The fellow who just left isn’t a local. He’s some sort of overseer. The drovers were terrified of him.” He threw a look at the abandoned cothold. “Guess Gadman stepped out of line. They made an example of him.”

The thought chilled Sarenya to the bone. “Is he dead?”

“There are two shallow graves behind the cot.”

“Two?” Sarenya asked, and then, realising, “Casendie. Oh, Faranth.”

“No one wants the flow of marks to dry up,” Arrense said savagely. “And they won’t treat you or me any more kindly if we’re still here when that bastard with the broken arm gets back here with reinforcements. We need to move. Take the chestnut.”

It only took a moment for Sarenya to adjust Bovey’s stirrup leathers and swing up into the saddle. Arrense had to use the wall to climb up onto Franc. He was moving cautiously, and he was shaking, but once he’d settled into the saddle with the instinctive ease of a lifelong runner-man some of the pain seemed to go out of him. He swigged from the waterskin, spat, swigged again. “We need to do this the hard way,” he said. “Are you ready?”

Sarenya put her hand to Bovey’s neck. He was picking his feet up nervously, reacting to Sarenya’s tension and Franc’s unease – and the smell of blood. “Ready.”

Arrense nodded. “Hyah.”

Franc leapt forward to Arrense’s urging, and Bovey went after him.

Arrense didn’t take the well-worn trail to the top of the ridge that Sarenya had used to approach Gadman’s cothold. He led the way instead towards the steeper ridge at the southern end of the valley, uncut by any path left by man or beast. Franc, willing beneath Arrense as he had not been for Sarenya, waded through stiff high grass, through tangling undergrowth and around hidden boulders. Bovey scrambled after him, cantering the clearer stretches where Franc’s passage had flattened the undergrowth into something close to a trail, trotting or walking the treacherous parts where rocks could catch his hoofs. It was a jolting, difficult ascent to the top of that high ridge, and when Bovey struggled up to its peak to stand blowing beside Franc, Sarenya was glad of the chance to catch her breath, too.

The other side of the ridge dropped as steeply as the slope they’d just climbed had risen. Sarenya followed the route with her eyes. Arrense was taking them around the base of the great upthrust of mountain that culminated in Madellon Weyr. By doing so, they could avoid completely the main road and the traitorous drovers who were watching it – but the terrain was fearsome. Crossing it would take every bit of courage that their runners had. Sarenya was glad for Bovey beneath her. “We follow the ridge?” she asked Arrense, when there was air in her lungs again.

Arrense shook his head. “Too exposed. We’ll be visible from every direction.” He pointed down into the brushy draw that lay between them and the next ridge. “Half a dozen ridges, and then we turn west.”

Sarenya mentally plotted the route. “But that’ll take us up below the Water Tank. That’s not a route to ride at speed!”

“Bovey can do it,” Arrense said. “So can you.”

“But –”

“Don’t argue. Just keep close.”

With that, Arrense kicked Franc on. Sarenya couldn’t have hung back if she’d wanted to; Bovey was too keen to keep his head at the other runner’s flank. They plunged down the precipitous far side of the ridge, through brush and scrub that fouled the runners’ legs, slowing their progress even where it didn’t threaten to bring them down. Bovey had the easier task, following in Franc’s wake, but the descent was a jolting one, beset with hidden hazards. One chance misplacement of a hoof on false ground, or a hole that would catch a fetlock, would have been disastrous. Sarenya let Bovey’s reins run through her fingers to the buckle, giving him his head entirely and leaning hard back in the saddle as he wallowed down the ridge in Franc’s tracks.

A shallow stream wound along the bottom of the gully, heavily overhung from the other side. They turned west to follow it for a quarter of a mile before the slope of the far bank gentled enough to offer them a way out. Then the runners were fighting their way uphill again, this time up a gradient comprising more shale and gravel than sound stone. Sarenya saw Arrense kick Franc hard in the belly to force him onwards. It frightened her. He would never have ridden a runner so severely if he weren’t afraid. Both geldings were blowing hard. The sun blazed down from the sky, and foamy white sweat showed in dribbles from beneath Franc’s saddle pad and patches where Bovey’s reins chafed his neck.

As they made the top of the ridge, a green dragon suddenly soared over them. They both waved their arms and shouted, trying to get the rider’s attention, but then a cluster of blues and browns boiled over in pursuit of the green. It was a mating flight, and the dragons’ minds were otherwise occupied. Sarenya let her arms drop, crestfallen. They pushed on.

At the top of the next ridge, Arrense reined in. He turned back towards her. His face was sweaty and grey with pain, and blood was bubbling from the corner of his mouth. He had only one hand on the reins; the other was clamped to his side. His bruised and swollen face had narrowed his left eye to a slit. “Take the lead.” His breath was beginning to sound wet and thick. “I can’t make Franc go on.”

That really frightened Sarenya, but she fought not to let it show. “Shouldn’t we take a break?”

Arrense looked back the way they’d come. Over Franc and Bovey’s blowing, the distant sounds of pursuit carried well. “Not until we reach the Water Tank,” he said, and then, “I’ll be all right,” to Sarenya’s unspoken question. “Just keep moving.”

Sarenya heeled Bovey past Franc and on down the ridge. Bovey was more reluctant to break the trail than he had been simply to follow, and she had to boot him hard to send him forward. It struck her as she glanced back to make sure Arrense was still following that they had left a trail even a child could follow.

A narrow path zig-zagged the descending slope of the next ridge. Following it would slow their progress to the bottom of the cut, but Sarenya feared that Arrense would fall from Franc’s saddle if they attempted the direct route. Bovey seemed grateful to follow the path, thought Sarenya had to keep chivvying him along to keep his walk brisk.

Climbing the other side of the ridge was an ordeal. Bovey didn’t want to do it, and for all Sarenya’s efforts, she was too tired to make him. It was as much as she could do to keep him moving, and even then he would only consent to follow a gradual, meandering path up the slope.

At last, they crested the ridge. Ahead, the terrain flattened into one of the high pastures that the herders used to graze their own flocks in the spring. The gradient from their current vantage down to that even plateau was invitingly gentle. At the end of it, the mountain pushed up again a sheer cliff face cut only by occasional ravines and gorges. The best of them were passable, barely, in summer, when the meltwater-fed streams that had carved them in the first place no longer ran, and their stony beds offered a direct but dangerous route from the plateau to the foot of the Madellon caldera.

Behind, their pursuers had made it to the top of the second-to-last ridge.

The shouts that went up from the mounted riders turned Sarenya’s blood to ice under the blazing sun. The Beastcrafter’s eye that could tally up a herd of steers in a glance told her that there were eight men chasing them, all mounted on hill runners far better equipped for the rough terrain than poor Franc and Bovey.

One of them nocked an arrow to a bow and loosed it in their direction.

The shaft fell far short, but it had made the intent plain. Sarenya thought about the shallow graves Arrense had found at Gadman’s cothold. The drovers who had been benefitting so handsomely from the trade in Peninsula herdbeasts had no desire for their scheme to be exposed – and they wouldn’t scruple to kill to prevent it.

“We have to –” she began, turning towards Arrense.

Arrense was sagging slowly in Franc’s saddle.

“Master!” Sarenya cried.

He roused from his stupor. With a terrible effort he pulled himself straight. He looked dreadful. “Water Tank,” he said. His breath was gurgling now. “Now.”

Some dispassionate part of Sarenya’s mind noted that one of Arrense’s broken ribs must have punctured a lung. “Can you even stay mounted?”

Arrense’s fingers tightened on the horn of Franc’s saddle. “Just get us there.”

Sarenya snatched Franc’s reins. He was too weary to object after an hour’s hard riding. Then she kicked Bovey on, one hand on his reins, the other leading Franc.

Somehow the two runners found a canter down the gentle slope. Sarenya glanced back often to check that Arrense was still mounted, wrapping her legs more tightly around Bovey’s sides to ensure her own seat. She glanced up nearly as often at the Weyr, crouching above them atop its mountain.

It might as well have been a thousand miles away.

The Water Tank lay between them and any hope of sanctuary. The steep ravine, carved down through the cliffs by hundreds of Turns of spring melts, was named for the old water trough that had been pushed off the plateau above by some recalcitrant herdbeast, and lodged partway down the canyon. The stream that tumbled down through the rock strata made it impassable in winter, but in summer the flowing water shrank to a trickle, and its gravelly margin became a treacherous, narrow, but negotiable shortcut from the base of the mountain back up to the tithe road that led to Madellon.

The thought that traversing the Water Tank on two large and weary runnerbeasts was the best chance she and Arrense had of returning to Madellon alive made Sarenya feel physically sick. Yet as they approached the ravine, and she reined Bovey back to a walk, the sight of the narrow passage between rock-faces that led into the gully gave her hope. Their pursuers would lose sight of them for a time as they passed between the stony walls, and they would be as constrained by the close quarters as Sarenya and Arrense. There could be no arrows loosed through that  crooked corridor. Sarenya urged Bovey on into the gap in the cliffs. The rock walls swallowed them, muffling the sounds of pursuit that had trailed them ever since Gadman’s valley.

“We’re almost there, Master,” she said, turning back to Arrense. “Almost there. Just hold on a bit longer. I’ll get us home.”

Arrense didn’t stir from his slump. His big shoulders were hunched, his shaggy head drooping. Franc’s reins were taut only where Sarenya had hold of them. Arrense remained there in his runner’s saddle, his seat not failing him even as the rest of his body faltered, and Sarenya pushed on through the passage, too afraid to rouse her Master from his torpor.

A thin lance of sunlight marked the divide between the narrow passageway and the bottom of the Water Tank. The chasm walls opened up slightly, and the runners’ hoofs crunched over gravel. Bovey lifted his head as he stepped into the slender shaft of light, and so did Sarenya, craning her neck back, up and up, at the steep, twisting, terrifying ascent that cut the cliff face before them.

“Stop.”

Arrense’s voice was thick and slurred, as if his tongue were too big for his mouth. He looked dreadful in the light, the bruises darker than ever, the fresh blood that had masked his face cracking as it dried. “We can’t,” Sarenya said. “They’re not far behind us.”

Arrense shook his head painfully. “Your runner. Let him get his breath. Water. Then go.”

Water. Sarenya focused on that word. The stream that ran down the gorge in winter and roared in a torrent with the thaw was barely a seep by autumn, but a mossy green patch of gravel showed at the bottom of its course. Bovey was already questing towards it, his nostrils flaring. “Water. Hold on, Master. I’ll get you something to drink.” She dismounted from Bovey, letting his reins and Franc’s drop. She dug with her bare hands at the gravel, scraping away a shallow basin and damming the lip, and after a moment the trickle of water began to puddle there. She pushed Bovey away long enough to scoop several handfuls of muddy water into the neck of the empty waterskin, and then turned back to Arrense. “Here you –”

Arrense was dismounting slowly from Franc.

“Faranth, Master!”

He ignored her. His knees nearly buckled as he hit the ground, but Franc stood stolidly for him, letting him lean against his side. “Take Tebis in,” Arrense said. He spoke slowly but with determination, despite his failing breath. “Before he runs. To H’ned. Tell the Weyr…the Weyrwoman.”

“You can tell her yourself,” Sarenya said, recognising the sharpness of fear in her own voice. “We’re nearly there. We just have to…just have to ride up.”

“And then get yourself out of the Thread-blighted Weyr,” Arrense continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “To Benallen. Or Rosken. Anywhere there aren’t shaffing dragons. And dragonriders. Get out.”

“Master –”

“Listen to me,” Arrense said, and his hand on her shoulder trembled. He focused, somehow, his bloodshot eyes upon her. “The Weyr’s not good for you. No better than it was for me. I didn’t have a choice. You do!” He gave her a shake that at full strength would have rattled her teeth. “Get away from dragons, Sarenya. Stop wasting your life yearning for what wasn’t meant to be. A wound can’t heal if you keep picking at the scab. I should know.” He shook her again. “Get out of here. Get out of Madellon. Don’t ever look back.”

“I’m not leaving you here!”

“Franc wouldn’t make it, even if I could,” Arrense said. He seemed to have steadied. “I’ll hold them here. They won’t get through more than two at a time.” He grinned, baring his red-rimmed teeth; a ghastly sight. “I’ll hold them.”

“Master,” Sarenya said helplessly. She grasped his shoulder, then his hand on her own shoulder. “Uncle.”

“Now she admits it,” said Arrense. He lowered his head to press his bloody brow briefly against hers. Then he thrust her away from him. “Go.”

Sarenya nearly couldn’t see as she set her foot into Bovey’s stirrup. She pulled his head up one-handed, knuckling away the tears that blurred her eyes with the other. She looked down one final time at her uncle: bleeding, battered, drowning in his own blood, but unbowed as he led Franc closer to the gap in the chasm, blocking it with the runner’s solid bulk.

Then she set her heels to Bovey’s sides.

He trotted up the first, gentlest stretch of dry stream bed, his hoofs sending small stones flying in all directions. Despite his weariness, and his ill-suited size, he followed the twisting path of stones as it wound up towards the lip of the cliff dragonlengths above. Sarenya leaned over his neck, shifting her weight to help as he toiled upwards. Bovey lurched up a series of shallow steps where the winter would form frozen teeth of ice and the spring foaming cataracts, and Sarenya pressed herself smaller against him as the sides of the ravine closed in on them.

It grew steeper, and Bovey’s gait changed to a halting canter, his forequarters heaving beneath Sarenya’s precarious seat as his hind legs drove them higher up the defile. Sarenya remembered to duck just in time to avoid the low-hanging rock slab that protruded into the gully at head level to a runner-rider; the saddle horn caught her painfully in the side as she did, and she felt rock scrape her shoulders.

And then, from below, the first shouts drifted upwards to meet Sarenya’s ears.

As Bovey hauled himself around a sharp-corner boulder, Sarenya turned in the saddle to look back the way they’d come. She regretted it at once. The sheer drop behind dizzied her; she swayed in her seat, and only Turns of experience at staying atop difficult mounts prevented her from tumbling sideways off her runner. In dreadful detail she pictured herself toppling down the gully, smashing into the rending teeth of the rocks either side. She squeezed her eyes shut, grabbing handfuls of Bovey’s mane as vertigo made her head spin.

But through it, through the laboured sounds of Bovey’s breathing, and his grunts of exertion as he obeyed the dig of her heels into his sides, she still heard Franc’s scream from far below, and the resounding crash as a large and heavy body dropped, and the frenzied voices of half a dozen men, and Arrense’s gurgling shout.

Almost, Sarenya halted Bovey. She couldn’t leave her uncle to die down there! She tugged at Bovey’s head, trying to turn him.

But Bovey had reached a flatter part of the climb, where the gravel that made the trail so slippery was less deep, and with his feet on truer ground he surged doggedly on. Sarenya clenched her fingers deeper into his flying mane, trying to deny the fresh tears that fell onto her cheeks.

The sudden clang of an iron-shod hoof against metal jolted her from her near stupefaction. Sarenya glanced down Bovey’s shoulder and recognised the rusted frame of the famous water tank. Bovey’s pace had slowed to an uneven jog, and as Sarenya turned her gaze from the tank to what waited above them, she wasn’t sure if she should be relived or more afraid than ever.

They were nearly at the top of the narrow chimney of stone, but a final obstacle lay between them and the safety of the tithe road. Bovey halted as he came up against the lip of stone that marked the divide between the Water Tank and the road. It was four feet high. He couldn’t climb it with Sarenya aboard. She must dismount, as she had the first time she had ridden the Water Tank, and lead him up after her.

There was scant room for her to climb down from her shuddering runnerbeast. Above the edge of the shelf the defile opened out onto the road. It was achingly inviting, but Sarenya leaned a moment against Bovey’s lathered shoulder, bracing herself.

A soft tick made her raise her head, and then another, and then a third, a more solid clunk of metal against stone, followed by the clatter of a wooden shaft falling back down the gorge.

Arrows.

Sarenya wrenched Bovey’s reins over his head. Her chaps protected her knees as she scrambled up the shelf, but the edge of the stone bit cruelly into her hands. She left bloody smears behind her as she clambered up over the lip of the cliff.

Bovey rolled his eyes as she began to tug on his reins to induce him to follow her up. He tossed his head and took a step backwards. One more step, and he would slip backwards, dragging Sarenya with him. But then Bovey gathered himself and leapt at the cliff edge. He got one front leg up cleanly, the other on its knee. “Come on, you bastard, push!” she shouted at him, and as her voice bounced and echoed down the ravine, Bovey thrust with his back legs and somehow scrambled up onto the flat ground beside her.

Sarenya would have wept with relief if she’d had the time. She’d have worried about the bleeding scrapes on all four of Bovey’s legs if she’d had the luxury. She had neither. She patted his neck and spoke a few words of praise, and then looked up at the hulking form of the Weyr, so close ahead now.

She didn’t know how she got back into Bovey’s saddle, but she found herself there, reins and mane in her hands. His weary, dragging gait jarred her with every step, but Sarenya didn’t think she’d have been able to walk under her own power. Still Bovey placed one foot in front of another. “One more step,” Sarenya found herself saying. “One more step. One more step.”

And then the shout from behind her made her blood freeze.

She looked over her shoulder. There were runners on the road, not more than a dozen dragonlengths behind her. The herders must have split up, some of them taking the longer but easier route back up to the Weyr, hoping to cut them off if they did escape through the Water Tank. “No, no, no, no!” Sarenya heard herself cry out the denial, even as instinct tightened her legs around Bovey’s sides to urge him on one last, desperate time.

And as Bovey gathered himself into a heavy-limbed canter, the realisation that Sarenya had been fending off ever since she and Arrense had begun their wild flight from Gadman’s cothold slipped past her weakening defences.

She had been here before.

Not precisely. Not exactly. The circumstances had been different, on that dreadful day. Hatching day. It had been dark, not light; Madellon had been behind her, not before; her pursuit had been friend, not foe.

Yet she was on runnerback now, as before; terrified for her life, as before; fleeing beneath the uncaring, oblivious shadow of the Weyr, as before; with the threat of death behind her, as before; and the distinctions faded away as the similarities tightened inexorably around her. She blinked, and a cloud over the sun turned day to night; the knot of the bandanna catching against her throat became the hard leather of a belt wrapped with malice around her windpipe; the slickness of sweat on her palms was blood, ghastly warm between her fingers with the dying heat of the man who’d shed it.

And C’los lay dead once more upon the floor of the dragon infirmary at her feet, scarlet blooming on the pristine white of his shirt, crimson shining on his lips, and Sarenya felt again the pain as she fell to her knees beside him, trying vainly to stanch the wound that had already killed him.

And his murderer’s knife bit again at her throat as Katel seized her, and noosed her neck with his belt to subdue her.

And Sejanth roared and howled, and flung himself about the infirmary, too big and too slow and too ill to help.

Sarenya was helpless against the tumult of images and emotions and sensations that crashed over her, the debilitating trauma of her abduction made cripplingly fresh by this new ordeal. Every ghastly memory, every unprompted flash of recollection, every sweat-soaked nightmare crowded in on her at once. Her world reduced to that tiny, terrifying place, suffocating her, choking her as surely as that belt around her throat had choked her, tightening hideously as the drumming hoofbeats of her pursuers drew closer and ever closer.

The last corner of her mind that wasn’t paralysed by fear rebelled against the absurdity of it all. Was this how it would end for her, chased down by a gang of herdsmen in broad daylight in the shadow of the Weyr itself? Was she to be murdered to stop her exposing the scam that had been lining their pockets at Madellon’s expense? Sarenya felt a terrible, bubbling laugh of hysteria escape her throat. What had Madellon ever given her to warrant such a price? What good had the Weyr ever done her, that she should surrender her life in its service? The shaffing Weyr, with its dragons who hadn’t wanted her. The Weyr that squatted there, oblivious to the reality that her life hung by the slenderest of threads.

The rage and resentment Sarenya had harboured for Turns, had suppressed for Turns, surged up and out of her like a torrent of flame from a dragon’s maw. What do you even care if I live or die?

If it had been a shout, it would have echoed from peak to peak all along the Madellon range.

It wasn’t a shout. And neither was the voice that responded.

I care.

The touch on her mind, weak and feeble though it was, hit Sarenya like a slap, forcing her back to herself. Bovey still loped haltingly along beneath her, but the three herders pursuing her were close now, less than a dragonlength away. She could hear the laboured blowing of their mounts, nearly as harsh as Bovey’s own sucking breaths. An arrow hummed past her ear. Sarenya felt the vulnerability of her unprotected back as though a target hung between her shoulder-blades. The next one wouldn’t miss. And finally, she wrenched on Bovey’s reins, hauling his head around, because if she was going to die alone on the tithe road, she was blighted if the arrow would take her through the back.

In a blur, she saw the faces of her pursuers. She saw their surprise as she wheeled Bovey to confront them. She saw the one on the right raise his bow to take the shot that would kill her. In an instant of clarity Sarenya recognised Ernick. “Come on, you bastards,” she panted. “Come on and kill me!”

And then the sky was full of dragon.

Sejanth barrelled towards Sarenya’s hunters, his ruined wings barely arresting his descent. Bovey reared, screaming, as shadow and stench hit them at once. Sarenya clung frantically to his neck, but his fright was too great. The runnerbeast who had borne her so honestly for so long crashed down onto his front feet and pitched up his hindquarters, hurling her from his back, and Sarenya hit the ground hard.

Lying there she watched, dazed, as Sejanth fell upon the herdsmen.

His immense bulk crushed Ernick, hill-runner and all. A flail of his talons snatched another drover off the back of his mount, sending him flying through the air helpless as a doll. The third man had managed to turn his runner, fighting with its panicky plunges. Sejanth lunged after him. He snagged the claws of one forepaw into the hill-runner’s hindquarters, and the other deep into its rider’s back, rending man and beast into bloody meat. He spread wide the wings that would never again bear him in flight and trumpeted a dreadful scream of victory.

And then he collapsed.

The uncontrolled plummet had crushed more than just Ernick and his runner. Sejanth’s chest was grotesquely misshapen where he lay upon it. One hind leg was caught at an impossible angle beneath his quarters. Ichor was pooling beneath him.

He lifted his head, swung it ponderously to where Sarenya lay on the hard paved road, and then let it fall with a crack to within the reach of her hand. The stink of his sickness, joined by the metallic rankness of dragon blood, was like a miasma.

To Sarenya no smell could have been sweeter.

“Sejanth. Oh, Sejanth.” She scrambled to her knees and pressed her hands to his face. His breath washed over her, foul and moist, spattering her with a fine mist of warm ichor. Sarenya leaned her head against his muzzle, sobbing: for him, for herself, for Arrense.

I care, Sejanth said. Sarenya.

And then Sarenya tumbled abruptly forwards, barely catching herself with her hands. She knelt there on the tithe road, her hands soaked with Sejanth’s blood and her own and her uncle’s, surrounded by the mangled corpses of men and runners, and an immense, shining pool of dark ichor where a bronze dragon of Madellon Weyr had spent his last breaths to save her.

Chapter sixty-five: Valonna

The substance felah, developed at the behest of Weyrleader P’raima of Southern Weyr in the mid-Seventh Interval, has the primary property of dulling the connection between rider and dragon. This is achieved on a physiological rather than chemical level; felah’s active ingredients cause actual damage to the part of the brain that facilitates communication between the partners of a dragonpair. The extent of the damage depends upon the strength of the dosage, and while a low dose taken regularly will not create a cumulative effect, a large single dose can inflict permanent, lasting dragon-deafness on a rider unfortunate enough to be administered with it.

– Except from Felah: properties and usage by Master Healer Shauncey

100.05.03 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Valonna had just dismissed Tarshe and Carleah back to the barracks for their afternoon muster when she heard the distinctive sound of Izath landing on the ledge outside, and then the agitated report of H’ned’s boots as he came striding into the Weyrleader’s office.

“They’ll never admit to it,” he said without preamble, slapping his riding gloves agitatedly against his thigh.

“The Hall?” Valonna asked.

“The Hall. The Holds. Anyone with any clout whatsoever who was mixed up in this mess. Oh, they’ll stake a few journeymen and stewards out for Fall, and then they’ll look you in the eye – Meturvian, and Winstone, and that slippery tail-fork of a Masterherder – and say that they’ve dealt with the culprits and they very much regret the cost to the Weyr, and then they’ll all go home and throw a few more shovelfuls of dirt over wherever they’ve buried their share of the marks they’ve all made ripping off Madellon for the last two Turns.” H’ned slapped his gloves against his leg again for emphasis. “You see if I’m wrong.”

Valonna had the sinking feeling that he wouldn’t be. Still, she objected, “But Arrense’s notes make it clear that the scheme was too widespread to have been constrained to mid-level Beastcrafters. Even if Masterherder Kiedracc wasn’t involved…”

“Of course he was involved,” H’ned said, with a snort. “Why’d you think he was so keen to get a new Master into our cothold within half a day of this breaking? It wasn’t to make sure that Madellon’s dragons don’t go hungry, that’s for certain.” He shifted moodily, and added, “As it is, I’m wondering if we can really trust that journeyman you’ve put in charge. Or any Beastcrafter, for that matter.”

“Sarenya has vouched for Jarrisam,” said Valonna. “And you can’t believe that she had anything to do with it!”

H’ned looked as if he’d like to dispute that for a moment, and then he said, “I suppose not. But blight it, Valonna. The people behind this are going to get away with it.”

“The herdsmen M’ric rounded up –”

He threw her a pained look. “Even if you could prove that any of them had a direct hand in Arrense’s murder – and even if your journeyman could identify them, she didn’t see them actually kill him – it’s small good to Madellon. Kiedracc will claim compensation for Arrense’s loss to the Beastcraft. Meturvian will magnanimously offer to pay. And we won’t see a sliver of it.”

“It’s not just about the marks, H’ned,” Valonna said. “It’s about getting justice for Arrense.”

“I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for either. The best we can hope for is to use it to drive a better deal at the primary tithe negotiations. Do you have figures yet for how many beasts we’ve been done out of because of this? At least we can hope our dragons won’t have to go so sharding hungry next Turn.”

“Leave the primary tithe to me,” Valonna told him.

“Of course, of course,” H’ned said, and Valonna felt a moment of gratification for how quickly he backed off the territory she had come to claim as hers. Then he said, “I can’t hold off the Wingleader and Wingsecond appointments any longer, though. I know the timing isn’t ideal, but how quickly can Crauva organise a suitable meal?”

Valonna recognised the approach for what it was. H’ned was as intent to establish his authority over Madellon’s fighting operations as she was over its domestic governance. For all the many complications that Sh’zon’s transfer back to the Peninsula had caused, it had at least simplified Madellon’s command structure: one Deputy Weyrleader was easier to manage than two. “I’ll speak to her today and let you know. You’ve decided on T’kamen’s replacement, then?”

H’ned nodded, though his expression betrayed that he still had some doubts. “I’d like to keep F’halig on as Wingleader, but then I’d have to move either S’herdo or B’mon under him as Wingsecond so that North High has a bronze, and I don’t see that working. B’mon wasn’t ready the first time he took a run at Wingleader, but he’s learned a great deal under L’mis this last Turn, and F’halig will prop him up if he needs it. Then I can put K’letan in as L’mis’ replacement Wingsecond, and everyone’s more or less happy.”

“Then S’herdo will be taking over Sh’zon’s Wing?” Valonna asked, hearing the note of dismay in her own voice.

“I’m less worried about him,” said H’ned. “I know you don’t like him much, but he’s competent enough.”

“He has awful breath.”

“Then I’ll be sure not to let him sit next to you at dinner.” Then H’ned paused, throwing her a strange look. “Is there…anyone you’d prefer to have on your left…in particular?”

A couple of sevendays ago, Valonna would have looked at him blankly. Now, though, she felt a creeping heat touch her face, and tried to will it away. “There’s no one,” she said, and then in a rush, because she feared she misled him, “no one at Madellon…”

“Weyrwoman,” said H’ned. His eyes were oddly bright. “I know I’m not really your Weyrleader. I know our dragons have never – we’ve never –” He stopped himself, took a breath, then reached over and put his hand over hers. “Valonna.”

She had to stop herself from snatching her hand back. It wasn’t that H’ned was unattractive – the opposite, if anything – but that his advance had come so suddenly and unexpectedly. She stared fixedly at his hand atop hers, unable to both control her racing thoughts and speak simultaneously.

H’ned seemed to take her stunned silence as an encouragement. “The last Turn has been so hard,” he said. “The weyrlings. T’kamen’s disappearance. Everything that’s happened with Southern. And through it all you’ve managed wonderfully. Better than most riders would have imagined you ever could.” He said that last as though it were a compliment. “I want you know to know that it hasn’t gone unnoticed. At least, not by me.”

Valonna didn’t know where she found her voice, but she did. “Thank you, Wingleader,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as strangled as she felt.

If H’ned noticed her use of his title rather than his name, it didn’t put him off. “I only hope I haven’t let you down,” he went on. “It hasn’t been the easiest thing, sharing command with Sh’zon. At least –” He caught himself, perhaps noticing how that sounded. “At least, it hasn’t been straightforward. Sh’zon and I didn’t always agree on everything. We had different opinions on how to go about leading Madellon. But – well – now that he’s gone back to the Peninsula, I was hoping that you and I would be able to…to work more closely together. And…perhaps more than that.”

Controlling the instinctive desire to retrieve her hand was getting harder, but Valonna had the alarming feeling that H’ned would only grip tighter if her fingers so much as twitched. “I…” she said, and then stopped, her mind whirling. Rallai had warned her to expect H’ned to press his advantage with his chief rival removed; she had even predicted that K’ken’s promotion to Weyrleader at the Peninsula would spur Madellon’s one remaining Deputy to push for the same recognition. Between Arrense’s murder and the question of how Madellon would seek compensation for the fraud that had been perpetrated against it, Valonna hadn’t had time to initiate the process of confirming H’ned as Weyrleader. She’d given even less thought to what she would do in this situation. She wished, vainly, that she could consult Shimpath, and then reflected that her queen would probably already have bitten Izath’s head off for his rider’s forwardness.

“Valonna?” H’ned prompted her, and squeezed her fingers.

She took a deep breath, caught between saying nothing and encouraging H’ned further, and saying something that would offend him. “H’ned,” she said. “I’m very grateful for everything you’ve done since T’kamen disappeared. Madellon owes you a great debt of gratitude.”

H’ned’s voice nearly vibrated with emotion as he said, “Weyrwoman, thank you. I can’t tell you what it means to have your support.” To Valonna’s dismay, he ran his other hand lightly over her hair. “And your regard.”

Valonna changed her mind. She wished Shimpath were there to bite Izath’s head off. It would have been a kinder way to dissuade H’ned of his sudden flight into fantasy. “Wingleader,” she said, pulling away and shaking her hand free of his grasp. H’ned let her go abruptly, as if burned. “If I’ve given you the wrong impression, then…”

She trailed off as H’ned’s expression transformed from surprised to injured to affronted. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, jerking his shoulders back. “I didn’t realise it was so offensive for a man to offer comfort to a fellow rider.”

For a long, horrible moment, Valonna was stricken by the frozen horror that she’d misinterpreted his overfamiliarity for something else. “H’ned,” she began. “I didn’t mean to suggest…that is, I wasn’t implying…”

He turned sharply away from her attempt at conciliation, his entire demeanour gone from friendly to hostile. If Valonna hadn’t been so mortified she’d have laughed at the absurdity of it. But then H’ned spun back to face her, and undid all Valonna’s embarrassment. “Are you still in love with L’dro? Is that it?”

Valonna nearly gaped at him, not just for the accusation, but for the confirmation that her first assessment of H’ned’s intentions had been right.

“Because if that’s it, and I’m sorry to be the one to say it, then you’re a blighted fool,” H’ned went on. His pale eyes flashed. “If you’d heard some of the things he used to say about you! The names he called you! The cruel jokes he made!”

Anger, and humiliation, and the sudden pain of an old wound torn unexpectedly open, struck Valonna all at once, but where once the hurt would have dominated, suddenly she found that her anger was stronger. “And what were those things, H’ned?” she asked. “What were those names he called me? Well? Are you going to tell me, or are you just trying to make me feel small?”

H’ned’s eyes went suddenly huge as he realised his blunder. “No, Weyrwoman, I…I just don’t want to repeat them!”

“You don’t want to repeat them? But you were happy to laugh along with him when he was making jokes at my expense?”

“No, Valonna, I didn’t laugh; Faranth, no, I was just –”

“You were just there,” Valonna finished for him, when H’ned couldn’t complete his sentence. “You were there, and you didn’t speak out in my defence.”

He looked wretched. “I didn’t know you, then.”

“I was your Weyrwoman,” she said softly. “It shouldn’t have mattered.” She stared unseeingly at the surface of the Weyrleader’s desk. Old humiliations didn’t cut any less deep, or taste any less bitter.

“Valonna…”

She raised her head, though she still wouldn’t look directly at him. “I think you should go. Bronze rider.”

Even from the corner of her eye, she saw how he stiffened at her use of that title. “Weyrwoman,” he said, and stalked away.

When he had gone, Valonna let out the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. She felt wretched. H’ned had deserved her anger – the rude, condescending watch-wher! – but alienating him would only make her life more difficult. When it came to it, Madellon’s bronze riders probably would ratify H’ned as Weyrleader just as the Peninsula had confirmed K’ken in the same post. She would have to endure him for at least another two Turns, until Shimpath’s next mating flight. The fact that she couldn’t think of any Madellon bronze rider she’d like to see take up residence in T’kamen’s weyr was hardly a consolation. They were all tainted by their association with L’dro, almost to a man; they had all enthusiastically supported his rank-centric policies, even if not every one had been part of his inner coterie. She was sick of the whole rotten lot of them. She missed T’kamen. She even missed Sh’zon, who for all his bluster and bravado, had never suffered anyone to give her insult. His rivalry with H’ned had kept both of them on their best behaviour; now he was gone, H’ned was free to revert to form. The thought made Valonna despair.

Distracting herself with work was the surest remedy she knew for that. She shuddered instinctively away from the coming conflict with the Beastcrafthall, and yet half the items on her desk intersected with it. She’d already negotiated hasty short-term measures with Southern and the Peninsula, allowing Madellon’s riders to take more than their normal share from the free-roaming herds of the unoccupied South until Madellon’s livestock supply lines could be re-established. She’d authorised the Headwoman to draw on Madellon’s winter stores of dried and salted meat to compensate for the lack of fresh. She’d reassured the crèche mistress that there would be no break in the supply of milk from the Weyr’s dairy herds, and assigned extra hands to help in the milking sheds to be sure of keeping that promise.

But the consequences she couldn’t mitigate were more numerous than those she could. Madellon’s Beastcrafters were still reeling from the loss of their Master and the exposure of journeyman Tebis as a conspirator in the scheme that had cost Arrense his life. Valonna had assigned the Dragon Healer, Vhion, to oversee the remaining Beastcrafters, and Jarrisam, the most senior journeyman, had assumed responsibility for the Craft’s work at Madellon, but with Arrense gone, Tebis in custody, and Sarenya still in deep shock, they were struggling.

Worse, the Weyr itself was divided in its opinion. Many of the riders Valonna had spoken to were so outraged by the fraud that had been perpetrated against them and their dragons that there had been calls for the Beastcraft to be turned out of Madellon entirely. And in the lower caverns, where Master Arrense had been a highly respected figure amongst the Weyr’s crafter population, there were mutterings that his murder had not attracted as swift and fierce an investigation as the killing of a rider would have. The general dissatisfaction and unrest hadn’t yet spilled over into anything more, but Valonna feared it wouldn’t take too great a catalyst to turn discontent into conflict.

There were other issues. The Ops Wing had been tasked with finding and bringing in the herdsmen who had killed Arrense and almost Sarenya too. In retrospect, Valonna realised, that had been a mistake: M’ric, the Ops Wingleader, was far too personally invested. The dozen herders that they’d brought back to Madellon had been more bruised and bloodied than Valonna would have liked, and while none of them had actually complained of heavy-handedness, the looks some of them had darted towards a stone-faced M’ric were telling. Madellon had a small gaol where two or three men might be locked securely overnight, but no facilities for holding a larger group for an extended period. They’d had to put them in vacant sky-level weyrs for want of anywhere else to house them.

The very first night one man had tried to climb down from his high weyr. His body had been found early the next morning by the blue dragon onto whose ledge he’d fatally fallen. No one at Madellon had been particularly concerned about the herdsman’s fate, save the blue’s rider, who was outraged at the grisly mess on his doorstep.

Meturvian, though, had been less pleased. The Lord Holder of Kellad had been most vocal in his objection to Madellon’s imprisonment of the men. The herders were Kelladians, he argued, and the crimes of which they had been accused had been committed on Kelladian soil; they should therefore answer to Kellad’s justice. The death of one of the men while in Madellon’s keeping had been the final straw. Meturvian had ridden up to the Weyr personally with the Masterharper at his side, demanding the release of the eleven remaining herdsmen into the custody of his constables and citing Madellon’s obvious lack of facilities for confining them. It was a battle neither Valonna nor H’ned could win. They’d allowed the band of herders to leave with Meturvian, although, privately, they’d agreed that Kellad itself had probably been a beneficiary of the fraudulent trade in falsified livestock that had led to Arrense’s murder in the first place.

Valonna had, however, resisted the Beastcrafthall’s offer to send a replacement Master directly to Madellon. The notes Arrense had left on his investigation clearly implicated the highest echelons of the Hall in the scheme to deny Madellon its Charter-enshrined right to the fruits of its own territory. Any senior Beastcrafter must be considered suspicious. But there, too, she had been obliged to couch her refusal of a new Weyr Beastcrafter in carefully polite terms, insisting that Madellon’s Beastcrafters were a tight-knit group that would be demoralised rather than stabilised by the imposition of a new superior, and that in any case they were managing in spite of their losses. They were thin excuses, made thinner by the paucity of truth to them.

She worked for an hour on the tithe review, losing herself in the neat and orderly numbers, at least until the dismaying thought that she would have to persuade Madellon’s Lords Holder of those same figures crept up on her. She pushed them aside, contemplated the other work on her desk, and then left it.

Crauva happened to be in the kitchens when Valonna found her, overseeing the preparation of the evening meal. The Headwoman’s staff had done a fair job so far of disguising the dried meat that had replaced fresh on Madellon’s menus. Tonight’s effort involved marinating the tough strips of herdbeast in a bath of oil and herbs. Crauva listened with a pained expression to Valonna’s request for a celebration feast. “I think we could pull something together by the day after tomorrow, say,” she said, “but there are some things I’ll need.”

Valonna left the kitchens with a list of Crauva’s requirements and a sense of resignation. She supposed she’d been too optimistic, imagining she might be able to avoid thinking about the Beastcraft crisis for an afternoon; but then it was probably a good thing. Pretending it didn’t exist wouldn’t make it go away. And unpopular though Beastcrafters currently were with most of Madellon’s rider population, they were still residents of the Weyr, and Valonna’s responsibility.

And Sarenya most of all.

Sarenya had resisted every suggestion that she take time off from her work to recover from her ordeal, but Vhion and Jarrisam between them had at least seen to it that the duties she was assigned didn’t take her too far from home. Valonna spotted Sarenya’s fire-lizard on the stable roof as she walked down towards the Beastcrafters’ compound, and altered her route to head that way. “Hello, Sleek,” she said, as she passed beneath where the blue lizard perched. “Let Saren know it’s just me, won’t you?”

She’d never been sure quite how intelligent fire-lizards were, but Sleek must have alerted his mistress in some way, because when Valonna turned the corner into the stable yard Sarenya didn’t look surprised to see her. She was bending to pick up a hoof knife from the ground beside the runnerbeast she had out in the yard. As she straightened up, putting her hand on the animal’s shoulder for balance, Valonna noticed that Sarenya’s eyes took just slightly longer to focus on her than they should. “Weyrwoman. Is there something I can do for you?”

Valonna hesitated, wondering if she should ask how Sarenya was doing first, then changed her mind. “The Headwoman has asked me to source some extra supplies for a feast the day after tomorrow,” she said. “I hoped you might be able to help.”

“A feast,” Sarenya said, in a voice so devoid of inflection that Valonna nearly flinched. Then she went on, “What do you need?”

Valonna handed over the list Crauva had written. Sarenya looked down it. “We can provide enough milk for either the cream or the butter,” she said, “so long as you don’t mind that it’ll be watery for a couple of mornings, but probably not both. Wherry eggs shouldn’t be a problem as they’re overlaying at the moment anyway. The meat, though… Even if we took from what’s in the dragons’ pens, those beasts aren’t going to be much use for human consumption. They’re hardly worth a dragon eating, let alone people.”

“What about swine?” Valonna asked.

“We could slaughter some of the hoglets early, but it would mean there’s that much less to be smoked and cured.”

Valonna didn’t like to solve one problem by creating another, but at last she nodded. “We’ll worry about that when it comes. Please, if you could make the arrangements for the slaughter. That is – if you have the manpower…”

“We can manage,” Sarenya said. There was more of an edge to that statement than there had been to anything else she’d said. Then, as if recalling her professionalism, she said, “Hannser can do it. He doesn’t need much supervision.” She paused. “It’s time he walked. Sam and I can put him through his assessments. But he can’t be promoted without a Master to approve it.”

The remark hung in the air between them, pregnant with significance. Valonna couldn’t read Sarenya at all. She had always been slightly inscrutable to Valonna’s understanding, and the brittle withdrawal that was the most obvious mark of her recent ordeal made her even more difficult to read. “It’s likely to be a bit longer before a new Master arrives at Madellon,” Valonna said at last.

Sarenya nodded slowly. Her eyes were still carefully vague. “Because the Hall won’t assign one?” she asked. “Or because the Weyr barely trusts those of us who are here now?”

The truth of that made Valonna uncomfortable. “No one is accusing you of anything, Saren,” she said. “With all you’ve been through –”

“All I’ve been through,” Sarenya repeated, as though the words were somehow amusing. “There are more riders blaming me for Sejanth’s death than care what I’ve been through.”

That took Valonna aback. “Blaming you? In Faranth’s name, why?”

“Because he sacrificed himself for me. Because I called and he came.” Sarenya’s mouth twisted in an expression half of resentment, half self-loathing. “Now every other rider looks at me as if I’m going to lure their dragons to their deaths too.”

“But Sejanth died valiantly!”

“Sejanth should have died with his rider beside him. D’feng…”

Sarenya stopped, for which Valonna was grateful. She hadn’t seen D’feng’s body until just before his interment between, but she’d had to read the reports of the condition he’d been in when he was found, with both wrists sliced through right to the bone. “It’s still not your fault,” she said. “You couldn’t have known Sejanth would hear you.”

Sarenya turned her head to look at the runnerbeast she was tending without focusing her eyes on it. “It runs in the family.” When Valonna didn’t answer straightaway, she went on, “Arrense was once a candidate; did you know that?”

Valonna shook her head. “I didn’t.”

“Neither did I. I found his Search acceptance slip in his quarters. It was dated before I was even born, forty-odd Turns ago. And he was Searched to the Peninsula, not Madellon. But he never forgot.” Sarenya’s eyes were distant and unreadable. “You never do.”

Valonna could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t have sounded either patronising or crass. She had consoled unsuccessful candidates as well as congratulated new weyrlings after both of Shimpath’s Hatchings, but the kind words of commiseration –better luck next time and your dragonet didn’t Hatch today and there’ll be other clutches – could offer no comfort to an adult long past the age of candidacy. In practice, Hold- and Craft-bred candidates seldom got a second chance. Most of those left standing after an Impression returned quickly to their previous lives, and clutches were so infrequent that few of them had the opportunity to come back two or three Turns later to try again. It was different for Weyrbred candidates. While all those aged from twelve to twenty were entitled to stand, many elected not to. Anyone who grew up around dragons knew from an early age if they had potential or not; those who didn’t often chose to excuse themselves from candidacy to spare themselves the disappointment of failure. Some Weyrbred youngsters simply didn’t want to become dragonriders, perhaps too familiar with the regimented lifestyle and restricted choices that came with being partner to a dragon. But those who did stand again and again until they grew too old tended to leave the Weyr.

One of the few pieces of advice Fianine had imparted to Valonna before her death was the instruction not to try and stop them.

So Valonna looked at Sarenya, a woman who, Turns ago, had once dreamed of being in her place, and felt – what? Pity? Guilt? Elements of both, perhaps, but neither so strongly as she felt the echo of Sarenya’s pain. How it must have twisted the knife, to know that she was not the first in her family to be presented to dragonets; how unjust it must feel, that she and Arrense had enough sensitivity to dragons to be noticed by them, but not the fortune to Impress; how agonising it must be, to discover they had something so keenly in common only after her uncle’s death. And how painful it must be for Sarenya – how painful it must have been for Arrense – to be around dragons, the constant reminder of what had once been within their reach, and yet never within their grasp.

“Will you leave?” she asked.

Sarenya looked as surprised as Valonna felt at the baldness of the question. “I…don’t know,” she said. “Arrense wanted me to. He was desperate for me to be somewhere else.” She stopped, staring at nothing, her fingers clenching on the runnerbeast’s orange-coloured mane. “I can’t leave Sam to cope alone.”

“Is that the only thing keeping you here?”

“M’ric,” Sarenya said. “He could have gone back to the Peninsula with Sh’zon. I know I’m part of the reason he didn’t. And I’d never have left while Sejanth still needed…while Sejanth was still alive.” She looked at Valonna with anguish plain in her eyes. “Or while T’kamen was.”

That smote Valonna harder than she would have imagined it could. For all the tacit agreement that T’kamen was gone and not coming back, she still resisted believing he was dead. There had been so much death among the dragonriders of Pern. The weyrlings lost between; Margone and Grizbath; H’pold and Suffath; P’raima and Tezonth; D’feng and Sejanth. Valonna couldn’t bear to add T’kamen and Epherineth to the roll. That even Sarenya seemed to have accepted that they, too, were dead was more compelling than any pressure H’ned had put on her to acknowledge the Weyrleader’s demise. “Sarenya,” she said, and grasped her forearm. “I’m so sorry. For everything you’ve had to go through.”

It seemed inadequate as an expression of sympathy, but Sarenya slowly reached out to return the gesture. “None of it has been your fault. But thank you, Weyrwoman.”

“Will you be all right?”

“I have been so far,” Sarenya said, but the dullness in her eyes put the lie to that.

Under different circumstances, Valonna would have made a point of talking to H’ned about how Madellon’s riders had been speaking about Sarenya. It certainly wasn’t fair that she was being blamed for Sejanth’s death, and any small way that Valonna could intervene to stop it must ease her burden. But the thought of seeking out H’ned, given how he had behaved earlier, filled Valonna with a kind of weary dread. She knew she couldn’t avoid him for long, but hastening their next meeting was something she couldn’t bear to do. Recalling how he had touched her hair gave her a sudden shudder of such visceral revulsion that she had to stop dead on her way back to her weyr to collect herself.

The sight of a green dragon lazing on a low ledge close by gave Valonna a sudden impulse. She changed course to head for the weyr, and hardly paused before climbing the steps to the ledge. The green raised her head, her eyes spinning politely blue. “Jyelth,” said Valonna, “is your rider available?”

The green dragon exhaled a soft snort through her nostrils, and then a moment later her rider appeared at the entrance to the weyr. Z’fell was a handsome man in his forties, always rather smartly-dressed, and very popular with the ladies of the lower caverns. He was known for a number of talents, the reports of some of which would have made the bawdiest Harper blush, but most widely for his skill at cutting and styling hair. “Weyrwoman,” Z’fell said warmly. “Jyelth said it was you. Have you come for a cut?”

“Only if you’re not busy, Z’fell,” Valonna said. “I know I don’t have an appointment.”

“Not necessary for you, my dear,” he told her. “Why don’t you come in, and I’ll have everything ready in a jiffy.”

It was a mark of how valued Z’fell’s expertise was that, as an unattached green rider, he rated a weyr that most Wingseconds wouldn’t have disdained. Beside his living and sleeping space and the bathing room, there was a third chamber which he used exclusively to practice his barbering. He preceded Valonna into that comfortably-appointed room and ushered her into the chair that waited before what must have been the largest looking-glass in the Weyr. Then he went around opening the glow-baskets that sat in each corner, taking clean towels from a cupboard, and laying out his scissors and combs within easy reach. Finally, he draped a gown around Valonna to protect her clothes, fastening it at the back of her neck, and then stood behind her with a smile. “Now. What did you have in mind today? Just your normal trim?”

Valonna looked at herself in the mirror. “Actually, I…I was thinking of something a bit more dramatic.”

“Oh, lovely,” said Z’fell. “Well, let’s see.” He began to unpin Valonna’s braid, removing the grips that held it in place with quick, competent speed. When it fell free, he ran its length through his fingers. “You’d like to go shorter? Like this?” He described with his hands a cut that would have reduced the length of her hair by a third.

It was curious, Valonna thought, how Z’fell’s sure and professional touch didn’t wake the distaste in her that H’ned’s did. “Shorter than that,” she said. “I think…I’m not a young woman any more. I think my hair should be more sober.”

“Weyrwoman,” Z’fell chided her. “Of course you’re a young woman.” He demonstrated again, moving his hands up her hair. “Like so?”

“Shorter,” Valonna blurted out, and wrapped her fist around her braid at the back of her head. “Short.”

“Valonna, my dear, I should never have guessed you’d be so daring!” Z’fell exclaimed, sounding delighted. He turned her head this way and that, looking from her to the mirror and back again. “Yes, yes, that would suit you very well. Businesslike. Sophisticated. Very practical.” He leaned down closer, putting his arm around her shoulders; again, Valonna reflected how the intimacy didn’t make her feel uncomfortable. “You’re sure this is what you want?”

Valonna thought of how H’ned had looked at her, that first time she’d noticed him looking, when her hair had been down and unbraided. She took a deep breath, and nodded. “Yes. Please, do it.”

“As you say,” Z’fell replied. He picked up a pair of shears, and before Valonna could change her mind, snicked through the thick tail of her hair at the nape of her neck.

She gasped in spite of herself at the sudden sensation of lightness, and Z’fell chuckled. He handed her the pale rope of hair he’d so ruthlessly cut off. “Well, there’s no going back now!”

“No,” Valonna agreed faintly. The severed braid was heavy in her hands, and yet oddly pathetic, like a dead tunnelsnake. Suddenly revolted by it, she put it down on the ledge below the looking glass. She didn’t dare look at herself; not yet.

“Don’t worry,” Z’fell reassured her. “You’re going to look spectacular when I’ve finished. Now. Tell me. Have you heard about the outrageous party Hollie and H’imo threw the night before last? No? Let me tell you, those two are going to give green riders a bad name!”

It was uniquely relaxing, to sit still and passive as Z’fell washed and brushed and cut her hair, talking all the while about inconsequential things. He seemed to know instinctively which subjects were causing Valonna anxiety, and adroitly avoided them. Valonna let the friendly talk wash over her like a balm.

Then Z’fell’s busy hands and stream of chat stopped at the same moment, jolting Valonna out of her serenity. “Z’fell?” she asked, alarmed. “What is it?” She opened one eye gingerly. “Is there… Oh!”

The woman looking back at her from the mirror was a stranger. The intricate, traditional Hold-style braiding that Valonna had worn since she was a girl of twelve was gone, and so were the smooth, neat wings of hair, parted in the middle, that had underlain it. In its place was a choppy, textured style, short but not uniform or severe. It framed her face without dominating it, and Valonna was startled to see how much more strongly her facial features stood out: her eyes, her cheekbones, the line of her mouth. The pale gold of her hair that had always seemed so washed-out and insipid caught the light in different ways in its new style, creating highlights and shadows and depth. She put her hand to her head, hardly able to believe it, but the woman in the looking glass moved her hand to her hair as she did, and when Valonna spoke, her lips moved too. “Z’fell, it’s…I love it!”

He smiled and flicked his fingers roughly through the choppy locks, then applied his scissors critically to a few more strands. “I thought it would suit you. And it does, doesn’t it?” He turned her chin gently with his fingertips, left and then right, so she could see the sides. “But I’m sorry I froze a moment there. Shimpath bespoke Jyelth, and Jyelth doesn’t often have a queen’s attention. It quite overwhelmed her.”

“Is she all right?” Valonna asked.

“Oh, yes,” Z’fell said, “they’re both splendid. But Shimpath said someone came looking for you in your weyr – let me see if this is right – a ‘very ugly brown rider’.” He made a small, pained expression. “Forgive me. That might not be the best translation, through my girl. And, Faranth, there are ugly brown riders to spare at Madellon.”

It took Valonna a moment to realise that she had no idea who Shimpath meant, and to ask Z’fell for more details would be terribly discourteous to whomever it was. “Would you please ask Jyelth to tell his brown that I’ll be with him shortly?”

Z’fell paused, his eyes moving up and left as some riders’ did when they were speaking directly to their dragons. “He says it would be better if you met his rider in the infirmary,” he said after a moment.

That gave Valonna an instant’s alarm, but she nodded quickly. It must be L’stev. Perhaps one of the weyrlings had been taken ill? She was momentarily distracted by her reflection, nodding with her, the shortened locks of hair flipping energetically. “Then I’ll go there now,” she said. “Is it…that is, are you finished?”

Z’fell scrunched his fingers through her hair one last time, setting a few locks just so, and then nodded. “A work of art, if you’ll allow me to say so. Yes, Weyrwoman, I’m very pleased.”

“So am I,” Valonna said, and then caught his hands, momentarily overwhelmed with gratitude to him. “Thank you so much, Z’fell.”

“All of the pleasure is mine, my dear.”

Valonna left him sweeping up the gleaming strands of her hair, and hastened around the perimeter of the Bowl in the direction of the infirmary. She kept putting her hand up to her head, hardly able to believe she’d finally had her long hair cropped short. She didn’t know if she was more exhilarated or terrified by the change, and until she sorted out which was dominant, she couldn’t quite make herself meet anyone’s gaze.

She hurried into the infirmary and up to the duty Healer on the desk. “Hello, Harling,” she said, rather breathlessly. “Is the Weyrlingmaster here?”

The journeyman looked up at her, looked down, and then looked back up again with an almost comically surprised expression. “Weyrwoman! I’m sorry, I didn’t…” He composed himself. “Um, no, I haven’t seen the Weyrlingmaster. Were you expecting him?”

Valonna didn’t know quite how to take the reaction to her new look. She lifted her chin, determined to ignore it. “I got a message third-hand that there was a brown rider here to see me.”

“Oh, that Peninsula rider came through a few minutes ago,” said Harling. He gestured over his shoulder. “He’s back with Master Shauncey and the herbalists.”

If Valonna could have scolded Shimpath, she would have. Why hadn’t she just said she meant G’kalte? And why had she described Archidath’s rider as very ugly? “Thank you, Harling,” she said, trying not to let dismay sound in her voice. “I’ll show myself through.”

As she made her way through the labyrinthine infirmary complex, she caught herself patting anxiously at her hair again. She felt suddenly terribly exposed by it; shorn, scalped. What if it looked awful? What if it looked silly? Harling’s reaction hadn’t exactly been encouraging. She wished desperately she hadn’t been so impulsive. It took an enormous effort of will to stand outside the archway to the workroom where Shauncey and his team were based and not turn around and pretend she hadn’t got the message. She overcame the temptation, made herself stop fussing with her hair, and went in.

As always, the pungent odour of the workroom hit her full in the face as she entered, making her eyes water and her throat sting. The long benches where Master Isnan’s apprentices would normally have been busy making basic healing supplies were occupied instead by the motley group of Healers and herbalists who had been working on the felah counter-agent. Their tools were the same – the mortars and pestles, the precise scales, the miniature braziers – but the blackboard that would ordinarily have listed the precise proportions for whatever salve or tonic the apprentices were mixing up was covered instead with questions and suggestions in the handwriting of at least half a dozen different people, some of them spilling beyond the confines of the board and onto the walls.

Valonna had observed the group at work several times in the sevendays since it had taken up residence in the Weyr. Master Shauncey was typically to be found stalking the rows, poking at concoctions, looming over shoulders, and occasionally having loud arguments with the non-Hall herbalists about their unscientific methods. Valonna usually left the room when that happened. Today, though, the Master Healer was standing at the front of the room where the supervising journeyman normally sat, with several members of his team gathered in front of him. They had G’kalte seated on a stool with his sleeves rolled up; one of the journeymen was taking his pulse as Valonna came in, and another was testing his eyes by moving a lit candle near to them.

Shauncey was a tall bald man, stoop-shouldered from a career of bending close over bubbling flasks and boiling potions. The hairless dome of his head contrasted with the untidy growth of white beard that covered the lower half of his face and neck. One of the journeymen on his team had told Valonna that the length of Shauncey’s stubble correlated directly to the intensity of his current line of enquiry. The longer it was, the more days he’d gone without troubling to shave or wash, which meant he was particularly absorbed in his research. Its present length, almost half an inch, gave Valonna a sudden flutter of hopeful wings in her stomach.

“Weyrwoman!” Shauncey boomed across the room. “Come in. We may have cracked it.”

The flutter became a flurry. Valonna hurried over towards the Master Healer, glancing sideways towards G’kalte. He hadn’t yet looked at her, intent on whatever tests the journeyman had him doing, but he said, “I can hear Archie clearly again, Valonna. Really hear him, without having to concentrate and guess at every other word.”

“Credit to Berro,” said Shauncey, jerking his chin at one of the other Healers. “He’s the one who came up with black narlbark resin as a contender for a herb with stimulant and nervine properties.”

Valonna knew Berro slightly better than any of the other Healers. He’d been one of Isnan’s journeyman before earning his Mastery. He’d taken a new assignment in Southern territory a Turn or so ago, researching new plants and roots for their medicinal uses, before a scandal around his illicit trade in fellis juice during his time at Madellon had resulted in a demotion back to journeyman. His expertise, however, had seen him assigned to Shauncey’s team. “Black narlbark resin?” Valonna asked.

“It’s not well known outside Madellon territory,” said Berro. He was a bright-eyed man in his late thirties whose obvious passion for his specialism didn’t seem to have been dimmed by his professional disgrace. “In fact the black narl doesn’t grow outside a smallish region of south-eastern Kellad, around Speardike Hold. The medicinal properties of its resin are only present in early spring, when the new sap is flowing, but if you start harvesting it before the last frosts of the season the bush will die. The resin is also poisonous in its raw form, and the process of leaching the toxins from it without compromising the potency of its desirable qualities is both lengthy and –”

“Yes, yes, Berro, the Weyrwoman gets the idea,” Shauncey cut him off. “Additionally, Weyrwoman, narlbark is a protected substance under the Healerhall’s governance. The Healerhall has first refusal on all refined narlbark produced by Speardike, at a price that is agreed and controlled each Turn.”

“What does it do?” Valonna asked.

“Stimulant, nervine, hallucinogenic,” Berro rattled off. “Blend it with the right mixture of other herbs, and it’ll take you on flights of fantasy like you wouldn’t believe.”

“And then kill you,” Shauncey said, “unless you know exactly what you’re doing.”

“That’s why it’s protected?” Valonna asked. “Because it’s dangerous?”

“Yes, but also because, in the right hands, it can be a powerful remedy. It’s been used with some success to rouse those with injuries to the brain from deep comas. Nonetheless it is a most obscure substance, not known to most Healers, and both rare and difficult to obtain. And yet seemingly the missing piece to the puzzle of this counter-agent for Southern’s felah.”

“Well, obviously,” Berro muttered.

“Scarcely that, journeyman,” Shauncey told him, with cool emphasis on his craftmate’s diminished rank.

“Analysis of the sample substance clearly indicated the presence of an aromatic terpene –”

“Of which there are literally hundreds of more likely candidates native to Southern –”

“I said right from the start that you were being too provincial –”

“The balance of probability –” Shauncey bit off his words mid-sentence, and then composed himself. “Apologies, Weyrwoman. Journeyman Berro’s insight may have resulted from an…unorthodox…logical leap. Regardless, it seems that by whatever means, we have succeeded in recreating the sample counter-agent.”

The unintelligible nature of the argument had briefly dulled Valonna’s hope; now, it came jabbing back. “Recreating,” she repeated. She took control of her excitement. “Does that mean you have a cure?”

From the bench behind him, Shauncey took three glass flasks. “This is the sample substance that was taken from Weyrleader P’raima,” he said, tapping the first one. He indicated the second. It looked almost identical to Valonna’s inexpert eye; perhaps a shade lighter in hue “This is the incomplete counter-agent that we’d formulated but not perfected.” He pushed the first two flasks back, and flicked with one finger the final container. “And this is that incomplete formula with the addition of two parts in one hundred of a distillate of black narlbark resin. It is, as far as our craft enables us to discern, identical to the original sample. And it appears, in our trials on G’kalte, to produce the same results.” Shauncey inclined his bald head. “So I believe, yes, we do.”

“Shauncey’s had me on different doses of this stuff for the last sevenday,” said G’kalte. He sounded contrite. “I wanted to tell you it was working, but until he was sure, I didn’t dare say anything.”

Valonna couldn’t take her eyes off the glass flask. A crazy, desperate part of her wanted to snatch it off Shauncey and gulp down its contents. She made herself stay calm. “But G’kalte was only partially impaired by the felah.”

“Just so,” said Shauncey. “This formula’s efficaciousness on a subject fully dragon-deaf has yet to be tested.”

Valonna spoke before Shauncey had even completed his sentence. “Try it on me.”

“Are you sure, Weyrwoman?” he asked gravely. “It might be more prudent to test it on a less eminent rider first.”

“Less eminent?” Valonna asked. “No. G’kalte has taken the risk for all of us. I won’t ask any of the others to shield me. And I’ve gone without my queen’s counsel for long enough.”

Shauncey almost smiled. “Very well,” he said, and nodded to one of the journeymen who’d been examining G’kalte. “Olyden, if you’d take the Weyrwoman’s vitals.”

For the next several minutes, Valonna sat on the stool beside G’kalte’s as Olyden took her pulse, counted her breaths, and listened to her heart and lungs. She wondered if her building excitement skewed the measurements he took. She could feel her heart beating much faster than normal. She was acutely aware, as she had come not to be over the sevendays, of the negative space in her mind where Shimpath should have been; she explored it with fingertips of thought, probing the boundaries of the barrier that separated them. Shimpath was still there on the other side, a distant throb, like dragons humming through many layers of rock; Valonna was aware of her as she might be vaguely aware of someone’s presence in an adjacent room. But the hateful remove that she had forced herself to live with since Long Bay had never seemed more unfair or unnatural with the promise of reunion seemingly within her grasp.

“All right, Weyrwoman,” Shauncey her, and handed her a cup. “Drink this. Slowly.”

Obeying the last part of his instruction was difficult. Valonna sipped the liquid in the cup, though she wanted to gulp it down. It tasted bitter, but with a sickly aftertaste, like fruit gone beyond overripe. She didn’t care. She drank it all, and set down the cup on the bench. She raised her eyes to Shauncey’s. “Now what?”

“Now we wait,” Shauncey said. “You should start to notice a difference within a few minutes.”

Valonna could still taste the rotten-sweet flavour of the mixture in her mouth. She licked her lips to make sure she’d got all of it. She must have grimaced, because G’kalte said, “It’s not good, is it?”

“I’ll drink it every day for the rest of my life, so long as it works,” Valonna replied.

“You may have to,” said Shauncey. “We don’t have much data on felah’s long-term effects yet. But my colleagues at Southern are studying the riders there who’ve been taking a low dose for several Turns. The early indications are that prolonged use causes interference to the dragon-rider bond that is not reversed simply by abstention. The counter-agent doesn’t undo the physiological damage; it merely seems to bypass it. It may be that you’ll be reliant on this drug indefinitely to maintain your connection to your dragon.”

It was a sobering thought, but Valonna wouldn’t let it dismay her. “Whatever it takes.”

“If you can get the narlbark resin,” Berro said, half under his breath.

“Berro!” Shauncey snapped.

“I’m just saying,” Berro insisted. “It’s hard to source, hard to refine, and it doesn’t keep well. Speardike’s supply has been limited in recent Turns, and this season’s harvest won’t be ready for at least another month.”

“I’ve spoken to several of my colleagues in the Farmcraft about cultivation,” began Shauncey.

“It doesn’t cultivate,” said Berro, with the air of someone who’d made the point more than once. “It’s like spolymoss or Neratian beachroot. Reliant on a specific set of environmental conditions to thrive. I’ve harvested the stuff myself, and let me tell you – two valleys over, you won’t find a black narl bush no matter how hard you look. It’s that fussy about where it grows.”

“If it’s so rare,” G’kalte said, into the silence that was Shauncey’s inability to counter Berro’s assertions, “and so obscure, then how did P’raima know about it?”

Even Berro didn’t seem to have an answer for that. Behind him, Pericho, one of the non-Hall herbalists from Southern, cleared her throat. “The Weyrleader wouldn’t have known about it,” she said. “He wasn’t any sort of a botanist. That’s what he had us for.”

“And yet he had a counter-agent,” said G’kalte. He looked from Pericho to Berro to Shauncey. “So someone else must have been helping him.”

“Another herbal expert,” said Valonna. “Someone with knowledge of rare plants native only to Madellon territory.”

“Well it wasn’t me,” said Berro, when she and G’kalte both glanced in his direction. “I was in Boll five Turns ago, when P’raima was perfecting his felah counter.”

“Has anyone spoken to Speardike’s holders?” Valonna asked. “Someone must have been selling the resin to P’raima for him to make his own supply of the counter-drug.”

“Illegally,” Shauncey added. “As I said, it’s a protected substance. Although if Speardike was supplying it to P’raima, it would explain the scarcity of it in recent Turns.”

“I’ve worked with these botanists,” said Berro. “I don’t think they would sell it illegally. Narlbark isn’t the only rare herb they supply to the Healerhall. There’s a lot of scrutiny over what they produce.”

Valonna frowned. “Could they have advised P’raima on narlbark’s properties?”

“Does it truly matter, Weyrwoman?” asked Shauncey. “The agenda was P’raima’s. Whatever crafter or herbalist first thought of narlbark as a component to counteract felah wouldn’t have been acting with any malice towards you.”

“It matters to me,” Valonna replied.

And to me.

The voice was so small and faint, and so closely in agreement with Valonna’s opinion, that it was a moment before she even registered it as separate to her own. Shimpath? The thought still seemed to echo. She pushed against the blankness in her mind. Shimpath?

I am here, the tiny voice replied, as though from terribly, terribly far away, and then, infinitesimally louder, I can hear you!

Valonna didn’t realise how abruptly she’d stood until the clatter of her stool falling over made her jump. I can hear you too! she shouted back, with all her strength.

G’kalte’s hands landed lightly on her shoulders. “Valonna. Valonna!”

She looked up almost uncomprehendingly at him. “I can hear her, G’kalte!”

“I know you can, and it’s wonderful, but don’t strain yourself doing it,” he told her. He grasped her shoulders encouragingly. “It’s working. Let it happen. You’ll blast each other senseless if you’re shouting when the barrier goes.”

Presumptuous little brown, Shimpath said. Telling me what to do. Oh, Valonna. My Valonna. I have missed you so!

If G’kalte hadn’t been holding her, Valonna knew she would have crumpled. Shimpath’s awareness was flooding back into her mind like sunlight into a darkened room, and suddenly she was fourteen again, a candidate again, looking down into the liquid blue eyes of a hatchling queen and hearing her name herself to her for the first time. Shimpath. Oh. Shimpath.

They flowed into each other like two streams of water rushing into the same channel. They shared in instants all that they had been unable to share since the Gather at Long Bay, absorbing thoughts and emotions that each had experienced alone during their separation. Valonna felt her queen sift through each of the preoccupations with which she had been struggling by herself: understanding her dilemmas, approving her decisions, validating her opinions. And offering, at last, some of her own.

Izath shall never fly me, Shimpath said, dismissing the notion with a contempt and revulsion that soothed immeasurably Valonna’s guilt at how she had rebuffed H’ned’s advances. Then she added, You do not look awful. Or silly. And he agrees, you know.

Their perfect comprehension snagged on that. H’ned? Valonna asked, confused. But he hasn’t seen me.

Not him, said Shimpath. Him. That ugly brown rider.

The image Shimpath offered Valonna was the sight before her own eyes, shared and sent back: G’kalte’s handsome face, his warm blue-grey gaze locked with her. Why do you say he’s ugly? Valonna asked, seizing on that smallest of mysteries.

He is ugly. Compared to you.

Then you don’t –

Approve? Of him, for having the audacity to court you? I do not! Just as I do not approve of you, for finally meeting a man almost worth liking and him being the rider of a Peninsula brown. Shimpath radiated outrage. We are separated for a few sevendays, and this is what I find when you come back to me?

Valonna didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t been prepared for such opposition from her queen. Shimpath, I… Then she did something she had never done in her eight Turns as Shimpath’s rider. I’m sorry if you don’t like him, Shimpath. But I do.

She didn’t expect the warm glow of admiration that Shimpath transmitted to her. She could almost see how her queen had dropped her jaw in a dragonish expression of pleasure. If he was not worth defying me for, Valonna, then he was not worthy of you. I have told Archidath he may stay.

Stay? Valonna asked, at the same moment as G’kalte exclaimed the same word aloud.

I have already spoken to Ipith, Shimpath said nonchalantly. We are in agreement. She says we had probably better keep him.

Chapter sixty-six: Sarenya

How many people and dragons have died as a consequence of my actions?

No more, I tell myself, than would have died anyway. I have no power to dam the course of events; only, in small ways, to deflect its path.

Perhaps even that has been an illusion. Or perhaps I cling to the immutability of history as the only way I can justify the things I’ve done.

But he gave me one charge, one job to do, and I botched it.

For all the things I’ve done, that’s the failure that will always hurt me the most.

100.05.06 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Jarrisam had insisted that Sarenya go to the infirmary, and for all that he wouldn’t make it an order, he could be like a hound with a bone when it came to worrying at a thing until it was done. So after a day or so of him nagging at her every time their paths crossed, and finally threatening to take her off the work roster entirely, Sarenya left Hannser in charge of selecting beasts to go for the Lower Caverns, and took herself to the Weyr Healer’s forenoon surgery.

The waiting area outside the duty Healer’s room was busy with riders and Weyrfolk alike. None of them would be seriously unwell. The gravely sick and badly injured never had to wait to be seen. But for the sore muscles, the persistent coughs and the aching joints of the Weyr, forenoon surgery usually came round soon enough, and didn’t excite the same attention as someone who considered themselves in sufficiently dire condition to seek treatment from the Weyr Healers outside their regular hours.

Attention was something Sarenya didn’t want to attract. She left her name with the apprentice manning the desk and settled down on the end of a bench to wait her turn. In amongst the usual crowd of arthritic labourers, runny-nosed weyrbrats, and muscle-sore dragonriders, Sarenya found herself comfortingly anonymous, especially with her shoulder-knots still lying on the table beside her bed where she’d been leaving them. It wasn’t a good time to be identified as a member of the Beastcraft at Madellon.

She found, as she leaned her head back against the wall, that the enforced period of inactivity had one significant drawback. It gave her the time to think that she’d been trying so hard to avoid. And while her thoughts circled warily around the most painful things, bits and pieces were still drawn in, like leaves dragged unwillingly into the vortex of water over a sinkhole. Thinking about how Bovey was sound again, the cuts on his legs all but healed, was not uncomfortable, but it inevitably reminded her of the empty stall that had belonged to Franc, and how she couldn’t yet bear to put another runnerbeast in there, or even to remove the bars that had protected unwitting passers-by from Franc’s long reach. Remembering that she no longer had to report to Master Vhion after her morning shift was fine, but thinking about the empty bay in the dragon infirmary where Sejanth had spent most of the last Turn of his life made Sarenya’s stomach wrench with guilt. And considering which of the senior apprentices might be best rewarded by moving into Tebis’ now-vacated room in the Beastcraft cothold was all right, but the thought of going into Arrense’s quarters again, to face the ghost of him that now resided there, started a tremor in her hands that, unchecked, she knew would spread until she was a shaking wreck.

“Journeyman Sarenya?”

She heard the words, but it took a nudge from the elbow of the woman sitting beside her to alert Sarenya to her name being called. She started up from her place, looking to the duty apprentice. “Yes?”

“The Weyr Healer will see you now.”

That should have tipped her off, but preoccupied as Sarenya was, she was halfway through the door into the Healer’s room before she realised what it meant. Master Isnan looked up from the desk. “Journeyman Sarenya. Please, close the door and take a seat.”

Sarenya obeyed, but slowly. “I didn’t realise you would be taking forenoon surgery, Master.”

“I like to keep my hand in,” said Isnan. “But you needn’t have waited with the sneezers and wheezers. Did Lante not tell you to come in for a follow-up anyway?”

“She said something about it, but I’ve been absolutely fine,” said Sarenya. “Really, I was hardly even grazed.”

“It’s not your grazes that we’re concerned about,” said Isnan. “But we’ll talk about that in a moment. Have you come in for something else today?”

Sarenya was beginning to wish she hadn’t. “It’s really nothing.”

“Sarenya,” Isnan said. He spoke with a directness that she found disconcerting. “Why don’t you tell me how I can help you?”

She took a deep breath, then sighed it out. “I’ve been finding it hard to concentrate,” she said at last. “I’m…distracted. I keep dropping things. I’m tired all the time.” She looked at him sheepishly, knowing how vague and unspecific a list it was. “Sam keeps saying I’m not myself. He wanted me to see a Healer about it, but there’s really nothing in particular –”

“Sarenya,” Isnan said. “Stop apologising for being here. With all that’s happened to you, you have more reason than most to seek our help.” He paused. “How are you sleeping?”

“Better than I have a right to,” she said. “I can’t say I haven’t been sleeping, at least.”

“Are you waking often in the night?”

“Not often.” Sarenya thought about it. “Maybe once or twice a night, to use the facilities.”

“And is that normal?”

She shrugged. “It’s been hot. I suppose I’ve been drinking more than usual.”

Isnan made a mark on the wax tablet in front of him. “But you say you’re tired all the time.”

“I suppose more exhausted than actually sleepy,” Sarenya said. “I just keep wanting to sit down.” She shook her head. “Sam’s right. That’s not me.”

“No,” Isnan agreed. “Tell me about how you’re dropping things.”

“I’m just…jittery.”

“Is it anxiety? Things making you jump? Because given your recent experience…”

“Not really,” Sarenya said quickly. She didn’t want to foster the notion that she’d become nervous. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t been drinking as much klah as normal.”

“Is that to help you sleep? Not drinking it, that is.”

“No, I’m just a bit off it,” she said. “I think the cothold’s had a bad batch of bark. Just the smell of it makes my stomach turn.”

Isnan put the back of his hand against Sarenya’s brow, and then took her wrist, pushing back her sleeve. “Have you been feeling nauseous generally?” he asked, placing his fingers over the pulse points.

“Not generally, no.”

“Headachey? Achey anywhere?” When Sarenya shook her head, Isnan asked thoughtfully, “When was your last bleed?”

Sarenya blinked. “About six sevendays ago.”

Isnan looked at her.

“I’m not pregnant,” Sarenya said, almost laughing. “I drink goldwort tea every day.”

“Goldwort isn’t infallible,” Isnan said. “You know that. And you’re late.”

“I’ve never been regular,” she said. “Not since I was a girl. And goldwort’s always worked for me.”

“Perhaps,” said Isnan. “Or perhaps not.” He cocked his head. “Do you know who the father would be likely to be?”

Sarenya did laugh then. “There’d only be one candidate, Master, but it’s a moot point. I’m not pregnant.”

“Journeyman,” Isnan said matter-of-factly. “You’re a Beastcrafter. You know very well that the only way you could be absolutely sure of that would be if you’d been sleeping alone for the last ten months.” He held his hands up. “And if that’s the case, then I apologise…”

“It’s not,” Sarenya said, more sharply than she intended. “But goldwort’s stopped me conceiving for the best part of a decade. I don’t see any reason why it should have stopped working now.”

“I’ve been a Healer for thirty-seven Turns, Sarenya,” Isnan told her. “I’ve yet to come across any herbal means to prevent conception that is wholly reliable.” Then he added, “Nor, regrettably, a certain way to tell, at least until a woman is far enough along to feel a babe quicken. There are some tests…”

“Master Isnan!” Sarenya said, nearly in a shout. She found she’d leapt to her feet. Her hands were sweating. Absurdly, she felt hot behind the eyes, as if she was about to cry. “I’m not pregnant! I’m just…I’m still not myself! I only came to get a tonic or a remedy to settle me down! I’m blundering around, nearly too tired to pick up a runner’s foot or milk a sharding cow!”

“Saren. Saren.” Isnan’s voice was soothing, but it made Sarenya irrationally more angry. “Sit down. Please.”

“I don’t want to sit down!” she cried.

And then she did. Hard, bonelessly, brokenly. She put her face in her hands, and felt herself heave with uncontrollable sobs.

The kind arm that Isnan placed around her shoulders did nothing to still her shaking. If anything it made it worse. Sarenya didn’t want anyone’s sympathy. She didn’t want anyone’s pity. She didn’t want to be coddled and cosseted as a nervous wreck; as a frightened child; as a feeble, helpless woman. Because that woman existed. She’d existed since Hatching night, when Sarenya had become Katel’s hostage, and realised what it was to fear for her life. She’d been rescued that night, and perhaps that had been the deepest injury of all. For all her pride, all her competence, all her resilience, she had been powerless to save herself. And so the seed of fear and doubt had been planted in the deepest, darkest, most secret fastness of Sarenya’s soul, and she knew that if she let it thrive beneath her attention, she would become it. The only way she knew to suppress that insidious sprout of weakness was to bury it beneath other things, heaping work and worry atop it each time scrutiny made it worm towards the light, and avoiding anything that might leave her mind or body free to encourage its growth: introspection, idleness, injury.

Or pregnancy.

“I can’t be pregnant. I can’t.”

She didn’t realise she’d spoken the words out loud until Isnan squeezed her shoulder, then let it go. “You wouldn’t be the first woman to feel that way,” he told her. He resumed his seat behind the desk. “Would it be so terrible if you were?”

Sarenya looked at Isnan without seeing him. In truth, she’d never given it much thought. She’d begun drinking goldwort tea as a senior apprentice, when she had been seeing one of the Smiths assigned to the Beastcraft hall, and falling pregnant would certainly have prevented her from making her journeyman’s knot. That relationship had come to a natural end, but she’d kept drinking the tea. It was small enough inconvenience to keep a supply of the herb and it had kept her from conceiving all the Turns since; or so it had seemed. Perhaps goldwort wasn’t infallible – it didn’t work for every woman – but Sarenya had been in relationships on and off through the Turns, and she’d never caught with child. Before.

She tried to turn her Beastcrafter’s instincts inwards. Did she feel different? She wasn’t sure she knew what normal was to be able to tell. She had been surprised by how deeply she’d been sleeping in the aftermath of Arrense’s death. Certainly she put her twitchy clumsiness down to her frayed nerves. And she’d assumed the revulsion she’d been feeling at the smell of klah had been down to Sam burning it.

Would it be so terrible if you were? Sarenya didn’t know. She knew more about gravid cows and ewes than she did about women. Faranth, she knew more about egg-heavy fire-lizards than she did about human pregnancies. How long would she be able to work if she was pregnant? What would she do with the child once it was born? Could she nurse it herself and go back to work, or would it need a milk-mother? What would the Hall do? Would she ever have a hope of making Master having interrupted her progression through the Craft to bear a child?

What would M’ric think?

That thought came after all the practical considerations. Sarenya wasn’t sure if she should feel guilty for thinking about M’ric so belatedly. Because if she was pregnant, the child was his. She felt a sudden pang of sadness that too many months had passed for there to be any possibility of it being T’kamen’s, and then made herself put the sentiment aside. Dragonriders could be dismissive of their offspring, especially those conceived during mating flights, but this was different. M’ric had cared very much for the daughter he’d lost several Turns ago. Surely he wouldn’t disdain to know their child.

“There are alternatives,” Isnan said into the space left by Sarenya’s furious thinking.

“Alternatives,” she said, not quite blankly.

“You could bear the child and foster it. The Weyr is more than equipped to accommodate women whose work doesn’t allow them the time to be mothers. You could perhaps ask for a half-assignment for a few Turns, if you wanted to raise the babe yourself; several of my journeymen and apprentices have done just that, and returned to their duties full time once their children are weaned.” Isnan paused, and when Sarenya had let a little span of time elapse, went on, “Or, if you would prefer not to continue the pregnancy, arrangements can be made for it to be ended.”

“Ended.” The word seemed oddly portentous. “Ended between.”

“You’re familiar with the process,” said Isnan. His face was neutral; neither approving nor judging.

Sarenya found herself nodding. “Green riders who go between all the time don’t get pregnant. So I’d…find a rider willing to take me between a dozen times?”

“Frequency isn’t the key so much as duration,” said Isnan. He spoke with careful dispassion. “A longer stay between than normal is usually enough to shake a child loose, done sufficiently early in a pregnancy. Otherwise no green rider would ever carry to term.” He paused again. “There are a number of exceptionally discreet riders who may be called upon to offer such a ride between. Should you wish it, no one else need ever know.”

Sarenya wondered if she should feel more affronted by the thought of aborting her pregnancy – the pregnancy she was still far from convinced existed. She felt oddly calm about it, perhaps because she was still so disconnected from the absurd notion that she could be a mother. It didn’t seem at all real. She heard her voice, steady and professional, ask, “How soon would I need to take a stay between to be sure of it?”

“For your physical health, soonest would be best,” said Isnan. He reached for a hide marked with a date line. “Do you have an exact date for your last bleeding? We would generally count ten months, forty sevendays, from the first day…”

Sarenya settled on the sevenday before the Long Bay Gather. “About six sevendays,” said Isnan. “Well, you have a little time to think about what you’d like to do.”

“If I’m even pregnant,” she said automatically.

Isnan nodded. “Though if you are, and you do decide to carry to term, you’ll need to take extra care of yourself. No wrestling with steers, or…”

“Breakneck rides up mountain gorges?” Sarenya asked grimly, when Isnan’s words trailed off.

Isnan’s eyes were pained. He leaned forwards, placing his hand on her arm. “Your uncle was a good friend, Sarenya. I can’t say how sorry I am. The circumstances…”

Sarenya shook her head emphatically. “I can’t dwell on it, Master Isnan.”

“I wish you’d speak to Benner or Nial…”

“They’d just make me chew over it again,” Sarenya said. She spoke with determination. “It doesn’t make it better, Master. It only keeps it raw.”

Isnan looked at her for a long minute. “If you knew a runnerbeast had an infection in its hoof,” he said finally, “but it wouldn’t let you lift the foot to poultice it out, what would you do?”

“I’m not a runnerbeast,” Sarenya said. “The Weyrwoman’s promised there’ll be justice for my M– for my uncle. That’s all the remedy I want.” She rose abruptly. “I need to get back to my apprentices. I’ve been away from my duties too long.”

Isnan let her go, but not before sending her to the dispensary for a blend of tea herbs that he said would ease her jitters. The senior apprentice who mixed the prescription for her was professional enough not to comment on its composition, but Sarenya suspected Isnan had slipped a few more potent herbs into the formula than a mere relaxant would require. It would at least give her something to show for the visit, and Sam wouldn’t know any better.

But if she’d been clumsy and accident-prone before visiting the infirmary, then the startling explanation that Isnan had put forward for them only made them worse. She could hardly get a bridle on Sunny for her fumbling fingers, and she was so preoccupied that when she rode him down to the far end of the Bowl to headcount the dairy herd, she found herself simply staring uselessly at the black-and-white milk cows rather than actually tallying them.

Trebruth wasn’t on ledge or Rim, and by the similar absence of any of the other dragons Sarenya recognised from the Ops Wing, she suspected M’ric was out drilling them. She was half grateful, half frustrated – grateful because she wasn’t sure she was ready to tell him what Isnan had said, and frustrated because she was desperate to tell someone. She didn’t have many alternatives. Sam was certainly out of the question. He’d been mother-henning her enough since Arrense’s death; Sarenya couldn’t bear the thought of how he’d try to coddle her if he got wind that she might be pregnant. She couldn’t bother the Weyrwoman with it. And the thought that she could have confided in Arrense made her insides clench in a way she was sure wasn’t good for her, pregnancy or not.

As she rode back up to the stables, she noticed in passing the off-colour blue dragon in the killing paddock. Her first thought was to wonder if he’d been sick. Quitting her shifts with Master Vhion meant that she no longer had an insight into the health of Madellon’s dragons. As with so many things these days, she had ambiguous feelings about it. She missed working alongside Vhion, and dragons made fascinating patients by comparison to most of the low-quality food animals that she treated as a Weyr Beastcrafter. But even if half of Madellon’s dragonriders hadn’t still been treating her like a pariah, Sejanth’s echoing absence in the infirmary would have been too painful for Sarenya to bear.

She’d ridden almost back up to the stables before she recognised the sickly-looking dragon. It was Darshanth. The realisation gave her a jolt in the bottom of her stomach. She reined Sunny in to stare over the fence at C’mine’s blue. Darshanth, once the handsomest dragon of his colour at Madellon, was a faded wraith. His greyish hide hung on a frame that had lost its vigour; his eyes were dull, lacking sparkle or vitality; defeat showed in his every movement. He hunched over the wherry he had brought down, pulling it methodically into pieces which he gulped without chewing. His attention to the business of eating was completely joyless; he performed it grimly, as a task that must be done in spite of its lack of relish. It reminded her of nothing so much as Sejanth. But both Sejanth and his rider had been gravely ill, and their decline sadly inevitable. Darshanth’s condition could only mirror that of his rider.

Sarenya hadn’t seen C’mine since before Long Bay. She’d heard that he’d had some sort of breakdown in response to finding out that Carleah had been abducted. She’d learned from her work with the weyrlings that A’len had replaced him as Assistant Weyrlingmaster. And she’d been turned away from his weyr when she’d gone to visit him. Now, she felt terrible for not trying harder. Darshanth had been subdued and quiet on that occasion, but not the physical wreck that he seemed to be now.

Ingany was sweeping the yard, so Sarenya handed Sunny over to her to be untacked and turned out, and walked back to the kill paddock. C’mine was nowhere in sight, but Darshanth was slowly consuming a second wherry. Sarenya put her hand on the top rail of the fence, then paused. It was bad practice to go in the pen when a dragon was in there. Some dragons didn’t like anyone coming close when they were eating, and there was always the possibility of a frightened animal breaking free and stampeding. But Darshanth was the only dragon in there, his wherry-hen was decidedly dead, and Sarenya didn’t think the blue had the spirit to bridle at her presence.

Still, she decided not to take too many chances. She ducked into the paddock and walked slowly towards Darshanth, making sure she was well within his field of vision, and placing her feet deliberately loudly on the ground. He didn’t react to her approach at all. He continued to swallow pieces of wherry without savour. Sarenya stopped half a dragonlength from him. “Darshanth.” He didn’t respond, so she tried it silently. Darshanth.

He froze for an instant, and then he raised his head from his meal. His eyes focused on Sarenya. It was impossible to read dragon expressions in the same way as humans, but she thought he looked briefly hopeful. She started forward, extending her hand to him. “Darshanth, I’ve missed you. I’ve missed C’mine. Where is he?”

Darshanth watched her come closer, his eyes spinning perhaps a tiny bit faster. Sarenya could see his nostrils vibrating, like a runnerbeast taking in a scent. She wondered if he recognised her. He was the first dragon she’d ever seen up close; the first dragon, and one of the only ones, who’d ever spoken to her; he’d Searched her all those Turns ago. She slowed down as she moved within touching distance, still holding out her hand. “Are you –”

Darshanth flinched back from her, almost tripping over his own tail as he did. He caught himself, his limbs splayed, and then retreated three big steps, shaking his head.

Sarenya let her hand drop. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying not to feel crushed. “Don’t abandon your meal on my account.” She backed off, giving the pathetic remnants of Darshanth’s wherry plenty of distance. “You need to eat, Darshanth. You need to…”

But he suddenly unfurled his wings and took off with a lurching leap, beating his wings to cross the Bowl back towards his weyr.

Sarenya climbed out of the paddock, feeling both stung and stupid. Perhaps Darshanth had become as wary of her as the rest of Madellon’s dragons because of what had happened with Sejanth. Perhaps she’d been presumptuous to even try reaching out to him.

Perhaps Arrense had been right.

She returned to the cothold, and spent a fruitless half hour trying to make Sleek understand the concept of carrying a message to M’ric’s weyr and leaving it there for him to find. Even attaching a message tube to Sleek’s leg was an exercise in frustration. He’d let her tie the tube on, but the moment it was in place he persisted in clawing or biting it off again. Sarenya gave up after half a dozen attempts. She knew it was futile – most fire-lizards of the junior colours wouldn’t learn new tricks once they were mature – but she kept trying anyway.

It was late in the evening, after the herd had come in to be milked, and then driven back to their pasture, before the sight of Trebruth at the edge of the lake alerted Sarenya to M’ric’s return. The brown dragon had his head under his wing when she reached him, nibbling with his teeth at an itchy patch farther back than his talons could reach. “Hello, fella,” Sarenya greeted him as she approached. She didn’t expect M’ric’s brown to reply – he’d never spoken to her – but he did stop what he was doing to acknowledge her presence.

M’ric ducked under Trebruth’s neck. “Stop chewing on your – oh, hello Saren.” He held the oil-soaked rag he was carrying in his right hand out of the way, and gave her a left-armed hug. “I was just about to come down and see if you were in.”

“Beat you to it,” Sarenya said. It sounded a bit inane, so she said, “That scaly patch again?”

“For my sins,” said M’ric. He fended off Trebruth’s inquisitive nose with a swat, and stretched up to wipe the oily cloth briskly across the damp place where he’d been scratching. “Now leave it alone,” he told the brown, with an admonitory finger.

Trebruth exhaled a mildly affronted snort, and turned his head away. M’ric slapped his back leg. “Long day? You look tired.”

“I could say the same for you,” she said. “Were you out drilling your riders all afternoon?”

“Most of it,” M’ric said. He picked up a towel to wipe his hands. “Did you need me for something?”

“I –” Sarenya started the sentence, then stopped, unsure of how to proceed.

M’ric threw the greasy towel in the direction of the closest bench, then looked at her enquiringly.

“Sam’s been on at me to go and see the Healers,” she said at last. “You know, because I’ve not been myself, since…”

He nodded. “Did you see someone?”

“Master Isnan was on duty,” Sarenya said, with the dismay she’d felt at the time.

“Well, there’s nothing like an expert,” said M’ric. “What did he say?” When Sarenya didn’t immediately answer, he asked, “Is everything all right, Saren? Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said quickly, “yes, I’m fine. I’m absolutely fine. I’m…can I sit down?”

M’ric’s expression registered his concern. He moved the dirty towel off the end of the bench. “Sit,” he said, pushing her gently down onto the seat, and sitting next to her. He took her hand in both of his and looked worriedly into her face. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Sarenya promised him earnestly. She almost felt like laughing at his solicitousness. “I mean, I’m not sick or anything.”

“But?”

She took a breath. “I told him I just wanted something to settle my nerves,” she said. “But you know what it’s like when you ask a Master’s opinion. They have to know everything. He kept asking questions about my general health, and…” Suddenly the notion of repeating to M’ric what Isnan had said to her seemed ludicrous. She didn’t even believe it herself. “Well, he said – and it’s silly really, I told him it was ridiculous – he said he thought there was a possibility, maybe, that perhaps I might be pregnant.”

M’ric didn’t react. He just sat there, holding her hand, looking at her. “He said you might be what?”

“I know, I told him it’s not likely,” Sarenya said. The words tumbled out of her now. “I told him I’ve been on goldwort for Turns. I brew it myself. I never miss a dose. You’ve seen me drinking it in the evenings. So it’s really not –”

M’ric suddenly let go of her hand. It dropped onto her knee, stinging her knuckles. His expression was completely blank. “Pregnant,” he repeated, emphasising the two syllables strangely. “You’re pregnant.”

“It’s not confirmed,” Sarenya said. His reaction baffled her. “It’s too soon. Isnan just thought, because of how I’ve gone off klah, and the fact I’ve been so tired, and because my monthly is a bit late, that I might be.” She peered uncertainly into M’ric’s face. “M’ric? Are you all right? You look…”

He stood up abruptly. “I don’t understand how…” He paced two steps away. “How far along are you?”

Sarenya stared at his back. His shoulders had gone stiff, the fabric of his shirt pulled taut between his shoulder-blades. “No more than six sevendays.”

M’ric still didn’t turn around, though he did turn his head slightly. “Six sevendays.”

“If at all,” Sarenya said, and then, as an explanation for M’ric’s sudden coldness occurred to her, she added, “It’s definitely yours, M’ric. I haven’t been with anyone else the whole time we’ve been together.”

If she’d hoped that the assurance would soothe him, she was disappointed. M’ric pivoted on his heel. Sarenya found herself looking up at him. He had never loomed over her so intimidatingly before. “If you’re only six sevendays, then we can take care of it. Right now. I’ll get Trebruth harnessed –”

“Take care of it?” Sarenya repeated. It was her turn to speak as though she hadn’t heard what he’d said. She rose from the bench, unwilling to quail in his shadow. “What do you mean, take care of it?”

“It just means a few moments extra between,” M’ric said. “I thought we’d been careful enough already, but I can’t have been paying attention this last month.”

Sarenya’s head spun. Isnan’s words came floating back to her. A longer stay between than normal is usually enough to shake a child loose. You’re saying you want me to get rid of it?”

The indignant disbelief in her voice surprised her as much as it briefly froze M’ric. Then he said, “Sarenya. I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

“You’re sharding right it is!”

“It should never have come to this,” M’ric went on. He raked a hand through his hair in a completely uncharacteristic gesture of frustration. “Faranth, I got complacent. This last month’s been so frantic. We haven’t taken you anywhere.”

It seemed a complete non-sequitur, totally unconnected to the situation. And then Sarenya suddenly grasped his implication. “Do you mean,” she asked, not sure if she completely comprehended the significance, “that you’ve been taking me between longer than necessary…to prevent me from falling pregnant?”

M’ric fixed his gaze on her. For a moment, Sarenya was sure he would deny it. And then he said, “It was the best way.”

Sarenya couldn’t bear to look at him. She dragged her eyes away and half spun. Her chest was tight, and there seemed to be a fire burning in her brain. She felt her hands curling into fists at her sides. Then she whirled back to face him. “How dare you! How shaffing dare you!”

M’ric looked pained, but he didn’t back away. “It was for –”

“Don’t say it! Don’t even think about saying that it was for my own good! How shaffing dare you presume to make that decision for me?”

“You were already taking precautions,” M’ric said. His voice was tight, restrained. “You were taking goldwort to prevent yourself from conceiving. All I did was make sure of it.”

“Make sure of it,” Sarenya repeated. “Do you have any idea how patronising that sounds? How controlling? Make sure of it?”

“You’ve never said anything about wanting children,” M’ric said. Anger tinged his reply. “Your Mastery, but never children. And we both know that having a baby would impede your career.”

The truth of the statement didn’t make it any less inflammatory. “I never said I’d sacrifice any chance at having children in the cause of my career, either! You’ve just presumed that for yourself, too, without bothering to even talk to me about it!”

“I didn’t think we needed to,” said M’ric. “But if we’d ever had that conversation, I’d have told you the truth.”

“Which is what?”

M’ric’s jaw hardened. “That if you wanted children, then you’d have to find someone else to father them.”

That hurt like a kick in the stomach, but Sarenya was too angry to let the insult defeat her. “You should have thought of that before you started sleeping with me!”

M’ric came as close as she’d ever known him to shouting. “I did!”

For a moment there seemed no response to that. They turned away from each other. Sarenya felt sick. She wanted to leave, but she didn’t see how she could with so much unresolved between them. At last she said, slowly but with determination, “I’m not getting rid of it, M’ric. Not yet. Not before I’ve had a chance to think about it.”

It was a long minute before M’ric replied. He sounded choked – strangled, even. “I wish you would reconsider.”

“Why?” The indignation she felt rang in her voice. “Why are you so opposed to me having your child? What makes me different to all the green riders you must have knocked up in mating flights over the Turns? Because Faranth knows, there’ve been enough of them!”

Her anger had made her careless. She knew it even as she spoke, knew that her savage words exposed too much of her own underlying inadequacy and insecurity, and M’ric knew it too. The look he turned on her went right through her. “Don’t throw green flights in my face, as if you didn’t know what the life of a dragonrider was before we were together.”

“Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I care that I’m not your only lover? Why should I have to pretend I don’t care that you bed with someone else every time Trebruth catches a green? Faranth! It was never like this with T’kamen!”

M’ric stiffened. “Don’t hold me to the same standards as T’kamen. I can’t compete with him.”

“At least I’m consistent in my expectations! You hold other women to completely different standards than me!”

“I don’t.” M’ric ground the words out.

“Oh, really? Do you make all the green riders you bed go between until they abort your inconvenient offspring, too?”

“No, Sarenya,,” he said, and his eyes flashed black with anger. “I haven’t shared a mating flight with a female rider in the last two Turns to avoid exactly that.” He must have seen her reaction; he glared at her in a way he had never done before. “And do you think I enjoy that? Do you think I like always waking up with other men; do you think Trebruth likes being limited to male-ridden greens; do you think I would choose to constrain us both so unhappily if I didn’t have Faranth’s own reason to sharding do it?”

Sarenya didn’t know what to say; she felt unsteady, as if the ground had grown treacherous beneath her feet. “Why? Why are you so determined not to be a father?”

“Because I’ve been a father. And all of my children die!”

M’ric’s voice, almost a howl of anguish, broke on the final word. He looked at Sarenya with such raw grief, with such unassailable self-censure, that she nearly couldn’t hold his gaze. Then she didn’t have to. She held him instead; they held each other, hard, desperate, angry and sad, accusing and consoling. Sarenya didn’t realise she was crying until M’ric’s fingers dislodged the tears on her lashes; she put her hand to his face and found his own sorrow damp on his cheekbone.

At length, they pulled apart. M’ric passed his hand over his face. “I love you, Saren,” he said. “I’d do anything for you. But I’m not meant to have children. I’m not meant to. It flies in the face of the natural order.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! M’ric, please. I know you lost your daughter. And I’m so sorry. But that doesn’t mean…”

“Daughters,” M’ric said. The word caused him visible pain. So did the next one. “Sons. Five that I know of. Temmal was the daughter of my heart, Saren. I loved her mother, and she was the child of that love. And when she died…” He lost, briefly, the capacity for words. “She was the only one to live past childhood. And when I lost her…I knew I should never have sired a child here. Time –” He seemed to catch himself mid-sentence. He took a deep breath, and grasped Sarenya’s shoulders with a terrible tenderness. “I only want to shield you from harm and heartbreak, Saren. I’ve not done well with the first. Please let me protect you from the second.”

Sarenya raised her eyes to his. She didn’t understand M’ric’s reasoning, though she bled for his pain. “I love you, M’ric,” she said. “I love you.” Then she removed his hands from her shoulders. “But you can’t protect me from heartbreak by breaking my heart. And you can’t save me from harm by trying to control me.”

She was proud that she kept the catch from her voice. She turned to go. She heard M’ric speak her name, once, twice, three times; each time more urgent than the last.

She ignored it. She walked away. She didn’t look back.

Chapter sixty-seven: T’kamen

When the Commander plays host to his officers for poker, it’s your responsibility to ensure that his wine is properly watered. You should accommodate any preferences for stronger or weaker drinks from his guests, but absent any such indications you should continue to serve wine at its full strength.

No alcoholic drinks should be served when the Commander is in conference with the Weyrmarshal; klah and water alone are to be provided during such meetings.

The glowbaskets in the Commander’s weyr and office must not be permitted to fade and should NEVER be turned completely dark. The Commander prefers well-lit rooms even when sleeping and will be very displeased if you ever allow him to wake in darkness.

– Handover notes on tailing for Weyrcommander S’leondes by green rider Fraza

26.10.12 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON AND ISTA WEYRS

It was five days before the message came through from the north. T’kamen, with the assistance of several weyrlings, was putting yet another coat of oil on Epherineth, who had gone between so much in the last few days that his hide was as patchy as a four-month-old dragonet’s. He left H’juke supervising the younger weyrlings and made his way to R’lony’s office.

He was surprised to find both Dalka and S’leondes there – S’leondes especially. T’kamen knew that R’lony was usually obliged to climb the two flights of stairs to the Commander’s own office when they met. When he limped in, the three riders were standing around the big map of Pern that hung on the Marshal’s wall, and R’lony was measuring off distances with a piece of string.

“You were right, T’kamen,” said R’lony, without greeting or preamble. “Ista.” He stabbed the northern island on the map with his finger. “Though I’m blighted if I know how he contrived a route there without being seen.”

“Obviously he had help,” said S’leondes, and while he didn’t look directly at T’kamen – the Commander seldom deigned to look at him – his implication was clear.

“You’ve heard from him?” T’kamen asked.

“Chrelith bespoke Donauth,” said Dalka. “Ch’fil and Stratomath are at Ista Weyr, being treated with every courtesy –”

“As if we should give a shard how they’re being treated,” said S’leondes.

“– and Ceduth’s eggs are whole and undamaged,” Dalka went on, as though he hadn’t interrupted her. “Though she referred to them as the trade goods.”

“Won’t they have hatched by now?” T’kamen asked. The six eggs belonging to Brenelth and Ferrelth had hatched the previous day – or, at least, five of them had, all producing green dragonets; one of Ferrelth’s had been another dud.

“Ceduth’s were laid later, and the disruption might have retarded their development, so perhaps not,” said Dalka.

“It’s irrelevant,” said S’leondes. “Those eggs are lost to us now. We’re never getting them back.”

“Four green-laid eggs, Commander,” said R’lony. “It’s hardly like we’ve lost four fighting Wings, or even four fighting dragons. And they probably won’t hatch anyway –”

“You may think it’s acceptable for a brown rider to steal eggs from Madellon’s Hatching sands and give them to our bitterest enemies, Marshal,” S’leondes said, almost snarling down at him, “but I don’t, and nor do my riders. Those eggs were mine, laid by one of my greens, and one of your riders stole them. Someone’s going to pay for that, and as Ch’fil is now out of my reach, and you’re his commanding officer –”

“Oh, wind it in, Commander,” said R’lony, his pale blue eyes smouldering slow hatred.

“This isn’t helpful,” said Dalka, almost at the same moment, putting a hand on each man’s arm.

T’kamen thought that was almost as interesting as the way that both R’lony and S’leondes only ever addressed each other by title. “If Chrelith referred to the eggs as trade goods, that implies Ista have something to trade in return.”

“That was the other part of Chrelith’s message,” said Dalka, smoothly removing her hands from R’lony and S’leondes’ arms. “She said that our payment is ready for collection.”

“Payment,” said S’leondes. The fine spray of spittle he ejected along with the word sparkled briefly in the light from the window.

“Any specifics?” T’kamen asked Dalka.

“They have four fire-lizard eggs waiting for us. And Epherineth may reach out to Chrelith for a visual.”

T’kamen saw S’leondes’ lip curl, and the avid look on R’lony’s face, but he moved his gaze away from them both, because he didn’t trust his own expression not to betray his turmoil. Four fire-lizard eggs for four dragon eggs. The surface symmetry of the trade belied the complexity of the issues that roiled beneath it. What price could one put on a dragon’s egg? What price on a fire-lizard’s, whose occupant might grant access to between to the rider who Impressed it?

“What I could do with four more dragons who could go between,” said R’lony. The hunger in his voice matched that on his face.

“That’s what Ista is counting on you thinking, Marshal,” said S’leondes. “You think they won’t know now that fire-lizards can guide dragons between?”

“You think they didn’t already know that, before Ch’fil went to them?” R’lony retorted.

“I have no doubt that Strategic sympathisers leaked the knowledge north sevendays ago,” said S’leondes. “But on the basis that northern dragons haven’t been appearing all over the south like burrows after Fall, they can’t have mastered the technique. There’s only one rider on Pern who knows that secret, and isn’t it convenient that they want him to collect the fire-lizard eggs they supposedly have for us?”

“You think it’s a trap,” said Dalka.

“Of course it’s a shaffing trap,” S’leondes said. “We send Epherineth to Ista, and Madellon will never see him again.”

R’lony said, scornfully, “I hardly think T’kamen would defect.”

“You’ve said that about every Strategic rider who’s ever crossed the ocean,” said S’leondes. “If Chrelith’s coercion was responsible for all those defections, there’s no reason to think Epherineth would be immune.”

R’lony seemed to have no answer to S’leondes’ assertion. “We need those fire-lizards, Commander,” he said. “Even you must recognise that –”

“Without Epherineth to teach the other dragons how to work with them, they’re nothing more than ornaments,” said S’leondes.

“So Epherineth and I won’t go alone,” said T’kamen.

S’leondes looked at him for the first time. “What.” It was too flat to be a question.

“The only dragon capable of facing down a queen is another queen,” said T’kamen. “So we take a Madellon queen with us.”

R’lony said, with undisguised glee, “Ha!” and swivelled his eyes to S’leondes.

S’leondes’ face had frozen. “No,” he said, after an instant. “You won’t risk a Madellon queen in the north. I forbid it.”

“Forbid it?” R’lony asked. “You overstep your authority, Commander. The deployment of Madellon’s fighting dragons might be your exclusive privilege, but queens are not and will never be fighting dragons.”

“They don’t fall within the purview of Strategic, either!”

“No,” said Dalka. She looked curiously afire with the direction of the argument. “Queens fall under no one’s authority but their own.” Her eyes swept slowly over the two men, and then met T’kamen’s. “Not since the days when Madellon had a Weyrleader.”

“No indeed,” said R’lony, with relish. “Lirelle and Levierth will –”

“No, R’lony,” said Dalka. “You know quite well that Levierth wouldn’t be capable of overruling Chrelith’s will.”

R’lony looked at her, the elation fading from his face. “Donauth’s still on the sands,” he said, with the air of a man grasping for justification. “She won’t leave her eggs.”

Dalka dismissed that with a shrug. “They’ll Hatch tomorrow or the day after.”

“What if the fire-lizard eggs hatch before then?”

“Chrelith said nothing about that.”

“Faranth blight it, Dalka!” R’lony swore. “I can’t risk you going between!”

Dalka smiled with what could have been affection, had her eyes not been so calculatingly a-glitter. She cupped R’lony’s cheek fondly in her hand. “T’kamen won’t dare let any harm come to me. Will you, bronze rider?”

T’kamen had glanced at S’leondes to see if he would react to Dalka’s placation of R’lony. He had, if only through the slightest narrowing of his eyes. But when Dalka turned her back on both men to flash her most arresting smile at T’kamen, S’leondes’ eyes, flaring like banked coals given a sudden prod,  confirmed T’kamen’s growing suspicions.

“I won’t go between on a reference from a dragon who’s never been between herself,” he said. “Not even a queen.”

“Thank Faranth,” said R’lony, with a grunt. “Some sense.”

T’kamen ignored him and stepped closer to the map. “Epherineth and I will fly straight,” he said. He put his finger on the promontory of land that extended north from Southern territory, closest to the south tip of Ista Island. “From here. Once we have sight of Ista Weyr, and a good reference to work with, we’ll jump back to Madellon and pick up Dalka and Donauth.”

“I still don’t like it,” said R’lony.

S’leondes’ nostrils flared before he said, “Neither do I.” It seemed to pain him to be agreeing with his ancient rival.

“It’s out of your hands, gentlemen,” said Dalka. She turned back to them, so she stood with T’kamen on one side of the map, R’lony and S’leondes on the other. “Donauth is in agreement with me. Once her clutch has Hatched, we’ll go with Epherineth to Ista Weyr. Madellon will have fire-lizards.”

She placed her hand on T’kamen’s arm as she spoke. The proprietary gesture made him mildly uncomfortable, but not, he suspected, as unhappy as the expression on R’lony’s face reflected, or as deeply angry, frustrated, and afraid as S’leondes resentment-filled stare seemed, disproportionately, to betray.

Though R’lony insisted, with a string of dire warnings, that the ocean crossing could be perilous at this time of Turn, with difficult winds, unpredictable weather, and the risk of encountering raiding parties using the same, shortest route from the northern continent to the south, T’kamen and Epherineth’s reconnaissance mission went off without incident.

The straight flight across the ocean from the northernmost point of Southern Weyr’s coastline to the islets off the south shore of Ista Island took Epherineth about ten hours. Sunburn and boredom were the greatest threats T’kamen encountered; those, and the dazzle of sunlight reflecting off the miles of sparkling blue ocean below. When the first spits of land came into view, Epherineth climbed to a higher level than the cruising altitude he’d been maintaining so as not to alarm the residents of those outposts of civilisation with his Interval size.

Even from their high elevation, T’kamen was surprised by the density of the settlements clustered along the coasts of the archipelago. More piers and jetties extended out into the sea than he ever remembered from the Interval, and vessels of all sizes, from tiny dories to three- and four-mast clippers, plied the Istan waters.

They had only one encounter with an Istan dragonpair: a green, flying a sweep by the vector of her flight. Epherineth climbed higher still to avoid her notice, concealing himself in the tufts of cloud that punctuated the bright, Thread-free sky – and soaking himself and T’kamen with a drenching mist of water vapour – until the sweepdragon had moved on.

When the five black spires of Ista Weyr broke the horizon, T’kamen sent Epherineth into a high holding pattern. He didn’t dare go much closer in case some vigilant Istan dragon noticed and sent a queen questing after them. He noted the contours of the headlands, the scribble of the paths that hugged the clifftops, the irregular grids of cotholds and barns and beast pens. He ignored, carefully, the line of the coast, where the black Istan sand met the sea; a margin that would change with the tides, providing unsafe time-specific detail. Then he looked away from the reality, holding his visual of it in his mind. What do you think? Will it get us and Donauth back here safely between?

Epherineth inspected the reference gravely. T’kamen felt the inquisitive presence of Fetch accompanying his dragon’s scrutiny. It is a good reference.

T’kamen committed the details to his Interval-trained memory. Then he cleared his thoughts of the Istan reference, and summoned instead his visual for Madellon. Then let’s go home.

Epherineth was wing-weary, and both of them were tired and hungry, when they emerged back over Madellon. Why don’t you drop me at our weyr and then go and get yourself something to eat? T’kamen suggested.

Donauth’s clutch has hatched while we were gone, Epherineth said, as he angled towards their ledge in response.

How was it?

No bronzes. A brown. Two blues and the rest green.

I guess that’s what passes for a good clutch, these days.

Epherineth snorted his opinion of that.

T’kamen unrigged his harness and began to haul it into the weyr for cleaning, but his leg seized up painfully with the first step, and he grimaced, catching himself against Epherineth’s shoulder.

Epherineth turned his head down to him. His fiercely scarred face was incongruous with his concern, but T’kamen looked away from it anyway. Are you all right?

“I will be. I should report to R’lony and Dalka, but I won’t make it across the Bowl if I don’t see to this leg first.”

I will speak to Donauth and Geninth.

“Thank you.” T’kamen pushed himself upright again, keeping most of his weight on his good leg. Then he noticed a rough patch just in front of Epherineth’s near arm-pit. “You need oiling again.”

Epherineth nosed at the spot, then exhaled a sigh through his nostrils. I will ask Bularth to send his rider.

The irony that H’juke, who was still technically Ch’fil’s tail in spite of the Crewleader’s defection, had been seconded to T’kamen, who wasn’t supposed to ever have a tailman again, was not lost on any of them. “Ask him if H’juke can bring up something for Fetch and me to eat, too.”

I will.

T’kamen had left his cane inside his weyr so he had to hop-limp in, hunched over, gripping his twisted and cramping leg with one hand. Fetch fluttered after him, humming sympathetically.

Someone must have anticipated their return, because there was already food laid out on the table in the weyr: meatrolls and cheese, half a loaf of bread, a pitcher of klah and a dish of dried redberries. Fetch’s attention diverted onto the food the moment he saw it, but T’kamen discovered that the pain in his leg had killed his appetite. The only thing that nearly tempted him was the klah, but it would be old and cold, and he couldn’t stand stale klah. “Go and help yourself,” he told his fire-lizard.

Fetch flew over to the table and – true to form – ignored the meatrolls in favour of shoving his head into the bowl of redberries.

T’kamen sat down heavily on his bed, stretching his leg out in front of him. He rested a moment, then leaned down to undo the buttons that closed the lower part of his left trouser leg. He could have sewn them up once the initial swelling had gone down, but he’d found that his torn and twisted calf muscles still gave him enough trouble after a long flight that quick access was welcome.

As the blissful cooling effect of numbweed spread down his leg, T’kamen closed his eyes. Now that Donauth’s latest dragonets were Hatched and matched, and he had the visual that Fetch and Epherineth needed, they could go to Ista and pick up the fire-lizard eggs for which Ch’fil had sacrificed himself. Assuming that they existed, and that Ista would honour the bargain, anyway. S’leondes was still against the entire thing, and even R’lony clearly mistrusted the Istans, for all his eagerness to get his hands on more fire-lizard eggs. T’kamen realised he didn’t even know the name of Chrelith’s rider, but he hoped she would defy the reputation that preceded her.

The tread of feet at the entrance to his weyr made him open his eyes. “H’juke?”

“No, it’s me.” The voice was Leda’s. “I saw Epherineth get back. His harness is on the ledge; did you want me to bring it in?”

“Leave it,” T’kamen told her. “Juke will deal with it. My knee just stiffened up while I was out, is all.”

“You poor thing,” Leda said, coming into the weyr. “Why don’t you go and soak it in the bathing pool?”

“In a minute,” T’kamen said. “Would you put some water on for klah? That stuff someone left is stone cold.”

Leda crossed to the hearth, craning her neck to look at the food on the table as she did. “Not hungry, eh, Fetch?” she asked, stroking the brown’s folded wings.

T’kamen sat up a bit. “He’s always hungry,” he said. “Hasn’t he eaten anything?”

“I don’t think he has,” Leda said, looking in the bowl of redberries. She popped one in her mouth. “Ooh, these are a bit sour. Maybe not sweet enough for his tooth.”

Ask H’juke to make sure he brings some scraps for Fetch. “Epherineth said that Donauth’s eggs Hatched.”

“Oh, you missed that,” said Leda, filling the klah kettle with water. “The Commander’s in a foul mood. One of his sons Impressed the brown.”

T’kamen laughed. “Serves him right. S’leondes, that is, not the boy.”

“You know I can’t have a word said against the Commander,” said Leda, but her eyes sparkled mischief nonetheless. She gathered cups and spoons and klahbark and squatted on her heels by the hearth, waiting for the water to boil. “So where did you go today?”

“Around and about,” said T’kamen. “Just the normal runs.”

“Tithe collections?”

T’kamen made a noncommittal sound.

“Without Epherineth’s cargo rig?”

“Nothing to pick up today,” T’kamen said.

“Really?” Leda asked. “That must be the first time ever.”

T’kamen gave her a flat look.

Leda returned it with an arched eyebrow.

“What are you trying to say, Leda?”

“Look,” she said. “It’s not that I need to know where you’ve been. That’s your business. But if I’ve noticed you’ve been gone all day, and Epherineth’s come back in light harness without so much as a despatch satchel, then you can wager your last mark that other people will be wondering what you’ve been up to.”

“Madellon’s riders have enough to worry about with double Fall over the border tomorrow without wasting time watching our comings and goings.”

Leda snorted. “Don’t be so naïve. There’s not a fighting dragon in this Weyr who isn’t watching every move Epherineth makes. Especially since Ch’fil.”

T’kamen shifted position on his bed, uncomfortable in both senses. “Why?”

“Why?” Leda echoed. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because they’re petrified you’re going to follow him and leave the Wings without Epherineth’s protection?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know that. And Faranth knows, I’ve told it to everyone who’ll listen.” She shrugged, a bit petulantly. “Doesn’t stop other green riders making comments about how it would be better if you had someone prettier in your weyr to keep you loyal.”

T’kamen sat up, then regretted it as his leg protested. He gritted his teeth. “That’s whershit. I don’t need anyone in my weyr to keep me loyal.” Then he added, belatedly, “And I don’t want anyone prettier, or…not prettier, or…”

“Take your foot out of your mouth, Kamen,” Leda said. She pointed at him with a spoon. “But they don’t know you like I do. All they can see is that you’re a Strategic rider who lost his tailman flying in the Commander’s Wing, and whose closest ally has just defected to a Weyr where bronze and brown riders are treated with a lot more respect and reverence than they are in the south. Can you blame them for being worried?”

“Now that you put it in those terms, no.”

“I mean, just look at your weyr,” Leda said. “The food. The wall hangings. The new bedfurs –”

T’kamen looked down. “These are new bedfurs?”

“Clouded feline, not that you’d notice,” said Leda, “and if there’s not a love-note under the pillow from whoever thought you’d like it then I’m a wherry’s uncle.” She gestured. “Look around T’kamen. Your weyr’s full of the sort of nice things that bronze riders shouldn’t – wouldn’t – expect to have.”

He obeyed, with a frown. He’d assumed that the new rugs on the floor, and the tapestries that had appeared on the walls, and the comfortable cushions that had replaced the patched and worn old ones on the couch, had been Leda’s doing. “This is all intended to make me want to stay?”

“Yes!”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“I know. And that’s the problem. You’re oblivious to your own importance in the eyes of the Weyr. And that means you can’t disappear off for hours, in light rig, and come back without cargo or passengers, without people speculating about what you’ve been doing all day.”

T’kamen let out his breath, which didn’t relieve in any way the headache that had joined his throbbing leg in tormenting him. “Then I’ll be more circumspect next time.”

“Circumspect doing what?”

“I thought you said you didn’t need to know.”

“I don’t need to. I’d like to.”

“I’m not going to talk about it.”

“Then don’t talk about it. I’ll talk, and you can tell me if I’m right. Or just look evasive, which amounts to the same thing.”

“Leda –”

“Look, Kamen, you know I’m not going to blab your business around the Wings. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about what’s going on. Unless you count trying to persuade Tr’seff not to be an idiot, it’s about all I have to do with myself at the moment.” She said the last with a scowl. Leda had taken Suatreth’s miraculous escape from death with the gratitude it merited, but she still chafed against the limitations of her green’s recovery. “Ceduth’s eggs were taken days ago, and nothing’s been done, unless you count N’meru being reamed in front of the entire Weyr. The Commander’s been boiling away like a Thread-bomb ready to explode, and the Marshal’s not much better. You’d think he’d be pleased that Ch’fil did what he did, given how it leaves him clear to be re-elected.”

“I think R’lony has other things on his mind,” said T’kamen, thinking of how neither R’lony nor S’leondes had liked the way Dalka had deferred to him.

Leda snorted again. “You must be joking. The only thing that R’lony thinks about more than staying Marshal is how much he hates the Commander. But it’s the inaction that doesn’t make sense. The Commander’s furious, and R’lony has a trundlebug up his fork, but neither of them are doing anything.” She looked at him with those bright brown eyes. “Unless you’re doing the doing.”

T’kamen tried not to look evasive.

He must have been partially successful, because Leda didn’t leap on him. “Is there more to it than we know?” she said, speculating aloud rather than asking. “Was this someone’s scheme all along, to get Ch’fil out of the way? But if R’lony had a hand in it, then why’s he so testy? And why would the Commander plot to get rid of Ch’fil, when everyone knows he’d rather have him as Marshal than R’lony or G’bral?”

“Ch’fil had his reasons,” T’kamen said, more brusquely than he intended.

“Really?” Leda asked. “Do you know what they were?”

“I can make a good guess,” said T’kamen. “It doesn’t make him any less of an idiot for defecting. Or a –” He couldn’t make himself say traitor. “Or a pariah in Madellon’s eyes.”

Leda was quiet for a moment, absorbing that. “Then you are doing something?”

“Something,” he allowed, at last, and when Leda grinned, he said, “Not a word. Not one word to anyone.”

“I can live with that,” she said.

H’juke arrived at that moment, forestalling any further conversation – for which T’kamen was grateful. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Leda; not exactly. But he’d twice placed his confidence in riders since coming to the Pass – first M’ric, then Ch’fil – and both of them had done stupid things. Not treacherous – he wasn’t ready to believe that was true of either of them – but they’d each taken something he’d told them, and used it to martyr themselves. He’d pulled Leda out of the fire once already. He didn’t want any reason to have to do it again.

The time difference between Ista and Madellon made it simpler to keep their second journey there quiet, though R’lony did manipulate the watch roster to make sure that a Strategic rider was on duty in the darkest part of the night.

T’kamen rigged Epherineth with his catching harness – having double- and triple-checked every buckle and every inch of leather, especially the thick band that lay across his withers and which T’kamen had already replaced twice. He had no doubt of Epherineth’s ability to carry Donauth’s weight, but didn’t want to risk Donauth’s grip slipping as they took her between. He’d already incurred Dalka’s displeasure when he’d told her to check Donauth’s hide for any rough patches, but he’d rather that than deliver the queen back to Madellon with a lesion. Hide care in the Pass wasn’t as stringent as it had been in the Interval, and a couple of the dragons T’kamen and Epherineth had saved during Fall had emerged with ugly sores where imperfectly oiled hide had broken in the deep cold of between.

He didn’t have to sneak out past Leda or manufacture an excuse for her. She’d retired to her own weyr early the previous night, pleading an upset stomach. T’kamen knew he should have been more sympathetic than he actually was, but it was undeniably convenient that she wasn’t around to speculate about what he was doing.

He didn’t like the subterfuge, but he appreciated the need for it. If S’leondes was right about northern sympathisers at Madellon, and any hint of what T’kamen and Dalka planned got back to Ista, they would lose what advantage of surprise they had. Ista would be expecting Epherineth to come alone, and while S’leondes was an arrogant wher, he was right about how vulnerable a bronze would be to a queen’s will. Donauth’s presence would protect him – and put Ista off balance.

Epherineth took off with a crackle of wingsail that made T’kamen wince. The sound of his dragon’s wings was unmistakable to anyone who had an ear for such things. But the only eyes he could see glowing across the Bowl belonged to the brown on watch, and he didn’t react to Epherineth’s spiralling climb into the star-speckled night sky.

They flew straight on a leisurely easterly vector for a few minutes before T’kamen became aware of their pursuer. Epherineth slowed his wingstroke slightly, and a few moments later a fast-moving patch of darkness soared above them, cutting a dragon-shaped hole in the blanket of stars. Epherineth lifted his head but made no sound. Donauth, I hope? T’kamen asked.

Of course. Brace.

T’kamen did, feeling Epherineth follow his own advice. The dragon above matched their speed and direction, and then bore sharply down on them.

Epherineth didn’t make a sound as Donauth landed on his back, though T’kamen felt all the air whoosh out of the bronze’s lungs. For an alarming moment, gold and bronze wings tangled as Epherineth’s resumed their powerful beat to regain the altitude they’d lost in their glide; and Donauth fussed with furling hers. Then Epherineth steadied, Donauth settled down, and T’kamen heard a snatch of Dalka’s laughter, whipped briskly away by the cool night wind.

He ran his hand over Fetch’s head, feeling the brown fire-lizard nuzzle happily into the contact from his usual perch on the fore neck-strap. Is everyone ready?

He felt as well as heard Donauth’s talons clench into the broad catching-strap. All ready, said Epherineth.

T’kamen summoned up the visual for Ista he’d taken earlier, stripped of any temporal details. The last thing they needed was to encounter their earlier selves there. Fetch and Epherineth inspected it; hooked into it, as T’kamen sometimes felt was a more accurate description of what they did.

It passed their muster. Epherineth resettled his precious burden with a ponderous roll of his shoulders. T’kamen felt Donauth snort a warm breath from somewhere just above him. We go between, Epherineth said, and they did.

It occurred to T’kamen, in a frozen flash, that however much he disliked going between, it must be far worse for the dragonpairs they took along with them. No rider had ever asked them for a lift before. The Threadscored dragons that they seized and took between were already in such pain and shock that a sojourn in painless darkness probably came as a relief to them, but Dalka and Donauth had no such distraction. T’kamen wondered how they were coping with it.

Then Epherineth and Fetch dragged them all out of the darkness and into the brilliant sunlight over Ista. T’kamen winced and had to shade his eyes, adjusted for the night-time, but he didn’t need to see to hear the exhilarated cry coming from Dalka’s direction.

Donauth disengaged from Epherineth’s back, angling away on a downstroke to avoid fouling wings. Is Dalka all right? T’kamen asked Epherineth, making the arm signal for All well? as Donauth levelled off alongside them.

Donauth says she will be.

Dalka ignored his arm signal. She had thrown her head back and seemed to be laughing. Did she enjoy it? T’kamen asked, unbuttoning his riding jacket against the heat.

I think she did.

T’kamen shook his head.

Ahead, the dark specks of dragons were rising in a cloud from the splayed hand of Ista Weyr’s caldera. Ista knows we are here, said Epherineth.

“Come on, bronze rider!” Dalka shouted across from Donauth’s neck. “See if you can beat us there!”

“Is that –” T’kamen began.

Donauth looked back at Epherineth with a challenging cry, and then she was off, and nothing T’kamen could have said could have stopped him from following.

The first Istan dragons met them halfway to the Weyr. Donauth grandly ignored the browns and bronzes, though she slowed to let Epherineth, half a level higher than her, overlap her protectively. Thus escorted, they proceeded to the Weyr.

Ista’s shape was closer to Little Madellon’s than Madellon’s. Its jet-black curtain wall was interrupted where some titanic force had sheared away a quarter of its circumference eons ago. The Bowl revealed was open to the ocean, and water from the stream-fed lake cascaded off the sheer edge of the plateau into the bay below. The outside walls of the caldera were broken by the famous forest weyrs that had once been unique to Ista, and though none of them were in use, almost every one of the ledges sheltering inside the cupped palm of black volcanic stone was occupied by a dragon.

A single queen waited for them on the Istan plateau, flanked by bronzes on both sides. The cry that she uttered to Donauth was neither welcoming nor a threat; instead, it was curiously neutral.

We may land, Epherineth told T’kamen.

As they descended towards the plateau, something about the dragons watching them from their weyr ledges struck T’kamen as significant. It took him almost until Epherineth landed to realise what it was. Most of the dragons he could see had the same compact, short-winged conformation that was typical of Geninth and Donauth’s offspring. Ista’s dragons were clearly almost all descendants of Madellon’s dominant pair.

The Istan queen was even more clearly the scion of a Madellon bloodline. That was no surprise to T’kamen. Her rider was. Ista’s Weyrwoman stepped forward as T’kamen and Dalka dismounted from their dragons, flanked by her retinue.

“Reloka,” Dalka greeted her, cool enough to chill the hot Istan day.

The Istan queen rider’s reply confirmed what T’kamen’s eyes had already told him. “Mother.”

Just as Chrelith was visibly the get of her parents, her rider was unmistakeably the daughter of hers. Reloka was her mother, twenty Turns younger, in the slenderness of her frame beneath her flowing Istan dress, and the angle of her cheekbones, and the sensual curve of her lips, and though her hair was darker, the resemblance between mother and daughter as they stared at each other was striking. It was no wonder R’lony had taken Chrelith’s defection so personally, T’kamen thought. He hadn’t just lost Geninth’s daughter to the north. He’d lost his own.

Then Reloka looked at him, and her eyes narrowed in exactly the way Dalka’s had the first time she’d looked at him. “Weyrleader T’kamen.”

The use of his Interval title sounded odd to T’kamen’s ears. “It’s just bronze rider now, Weyrwoman. Where’s Ch’fil?”

Reloka was unmoved by the abruptness of his question. “On his way,” she replied. “If you’d told us you were coming...”

“And ruined the surprise?” Dalka asked. She smiled a thin, thin smile. “I know how you love to be surprised, Reloka.”

Reloka didn’t rise to the apparent bait. Instead, she looked at T’kamen. “Did my mother tell you I couldn’t be trusted?” she asked. “Or was it my father who sent Donauth to protect your bronze from Chrelith’s irresistible charms?” She must have detected some small motion of Dalka’s, because she cocked her head slightly. “Oh, Mother. You do me such great disservice.”

“I taught you too well,” said Dalka.

“You certainly didn’t teach me to keep guests standing outside getting sunstroke,” Reloka replied. “Won’t you please come in out of the heat, bronze rider?” When T’kamen hesitated, she smiled. “Epherineth would come to no harm even without Donauth’s protection, I assure you; much less with her claws sunk into his tail.”

“What about Ch’fil?” T’kamen asked.

“He’ll meet us,” Reloka replied. “See, there’s Stratomath.” She pointed up the Bowl wall.

He says his rider has not been hurt or coerced, Epherineth told T’kamen.

“And the eggs?” T’kamen asked.

He was deliberately non-specific. Reloka paused before replying. “Also inside.”

“Fine,” T’kamen said, and turned to take his cane down from its loop on Epherineth’s harness.

“Not you, though, Mother,” Reloka said, with a smile as sharp as Ista’s spires. “You’d best stay with your queen. I wouldn’t like her to start beguiling Chrelith’s bronzes away from her. Better if you stay to control her.”

T’kamen was about to object, but Dalka said, “If you’re so concerned she might, Reloka, then that’s fine. I wouldn’t want to poach away any of your bronzes.” She cast a scathing glance over the arrayed Istan dragons. “I truly wouldn’t.”

Is she sure?

Quite sure, Epherineth replied. She believes her daughter will be more honest without her around.

Keep an eye on her? T’kamen asked, whistling Fetch down from his place on Epherineth’s neck to his shoulder.

“I’d heard you’ve had an uncomfortable time in the Pass,” Reloka said to T’kamen as they walked across the plateau towards a low, white-painted building perched on the lip of the Weyr. When he looked at her for clarification, she drew a hand across her own face to illustrate. “You and your dragon.”

“We got on the wrong side of a queen rider,” said T’kamen.

Reloka laughed. The brittle rim of ice that had edged her pleasantries seemed to have thawed. “Never the wisest course of action.”

“So I’ve learned.”

“And yet fruitful,” said Reloka, glancing at Fetch.

“You’re very well informed,” said T’kamen.

“If you’re asking if Ch’fil is my source, then I’ll relieve you of that misconception,” Reloka said. “He’s not the only southern continent rider who sympathises with the north’s plight. And the south has been afire with talk of little but you and your bronze ever since you arrived. I feel privileged to meet you.”

T’kamen found himself assuming the irony that he would have expected from Dalka in her daughter’s words. He made himself set the presumption aside. “Your own reputation precedes you,” he said. “Though I’d never heard your name before today.”

“Ha.” Reloka’s eyes flashed. “You can thank my inimitable parents for that. Has Dalka seduced you yet?” She narrowed her gaze at T’kamen’s wordless reaction. “I’ll take that as a no. She must be losing her touch.”

“What do you want from me, Weyrwoman?” T’kamen asked.

“Your knowledge, your dragon, and your loyalty,” she replied, and then laughed. “Is that so much to ask?”

“It’s a fair amount to ask,” said T’kamen. He kept his voice even. “My loyalty is already promised elsewhere. My dragon isn’t mine to give.”

“And your knowledge?” Reloka asked.

“That may be negotiable.”

“You can go between,” Reloka said. There was a hunger in her voice that reminded T’kamen strongly of R’lony.

“Epherineth is an Interval bronze,” he said. “He was trained to go between from a dragonet. And even he finds it difficult now.”

She looked at Fetch. “The fire-lizards are the key.”

T’kamen lifted the shoulder his brown wasn’t riding on in a deliberately noncommittal shrug. “Perhaps.”

“Perhaps?” Reloka stopped. “Ch’fil stole dragon eggs and scorched his reputation for a perhaps?”

“Ch’fil’s a numbwit,” said T’kamen.

“No,” said Reloka. “Ch’fil’s not a numbwit. A martyr. An idealist, even, but not a numbwit.”

They had reached the white-painted structure. It was more a shelter than a building, the roof supported by pillars, the walls made of woven panels that swung gently from hooks in the breeze off the ocean. Three cushioned seats clustered around a table made of a solid block of polished basalt. Reloka gestured T’kamen to one of them.

As he sat, leaning his stick against the side of the chair, several serving-men arrived with refreshments. The water they poured for him was lukewarm, but welcome in the Istan heat. It was another small reminder of something T’kamen had taken for granted as an Interval rider: the availability of fresh ice to chill drinks.

“I like to come here,” Reloka said. “To look…”

She didn’t finish the sentence. T’kamen tried to guess how it might have ended. Was it the ocean she liked to watch, in all its endless, rolling, Thread-drowning beauty? Was she thinking of Madellon, far and far south beyond the sparkling horizon? Or was it simply a way to escape the oppressive claw of Ista that groped impotently at the sky behind her, and all the responsibilities that it represented?

“I could set Chrelith against Donauth,” she said abruptly. “Ista’s bronzes may be few and weak, but we have a dozen against your one. And Chrelith is young and strong. They see to that.”

T’kamen sipped his water, to give himself time to think, and to watch Reloka over the rim of his cup. “And then what?”

She measured him with her eyes. “I could compel you to stay.”

“Perhaps.”

“Your bronze couldn’t disobey Chrelith.”

“She is a queen.”

“And you’d co-operate.”

It wasn’t quite a statement, nor quite a question. T’kamen smiled. “I’m not a bronze dragon. I can’t be forced.”

“There’s honour here for a bronze rider.”

“You’re asking me to defect,” T’kamen said, feeling sudden anger surge in him. “There’s no honour in that.”

Reloka leaned impassionedly forward in her seat. “I’m asking you to open your eyes. There’s a Pern beyond Madellon Weyr!” Then she sat back, the force gone from her, and said softly, “Less and less of it with every Threadfall.”

T’kamen shifted with a discomfort that had nothing to do with his leg. “How bad is it?”

“Bad.”

The voice was Ch’fil’s. He walked slowly into the shade, his scarred face set in even grimmer lines than usual. He wore Istan dress, a flowing shirt over light linen trousers, sandals on his feet. “Hello, T’kamen.”

T’kamen rose, too quickly. His fingers curled themselves into fists. For a sevenday he’d thought about what he’d say to Ch’fil when he saw him, but now the moment had come, the words escaped him. He tore his eyes away, too angry to even look at his face.

Ch’fil stumped over and flung himself into a chair. “Good to see you, too.”

And that boiled T’kamen’s anger over. “You abandoned your post!” he shouted. “You stole Madellon’s eggs, and you slipped away like a coward, and you abandoned your Weyr and your Wing and everyone who was relying on you, you miserable, Thread-riddled piece of shit! Faranth!”

Fetch squealed and took flight in alarm as T’kamen stood, shaking with rage, over Ch’fil, but Epherineth, twined as he was with T’kamen’s thoughts and feelings, said nothing. Neither did Reloka. She had gone silent, watching, her eyes flicking from one to the other. At last, it was Ch’fil who spoke. “I’m all those things but one,” he said. “I’m a thief. I’ll hold my hands to that. I’m a deserter. A Thread-riddled piece of shit, no question.” He stared at T’kamen, running his tongue around his mouth, as though to remind himself of the scars that were as present inside as out. “But I’m no coward. When we’re done here, whatever’s decided, I’ll go back to Madellon to face what’s coming to me.”

Reloka gave an exasperated cry. “Where they’ll send you to Westisle at best, making your sacrifice completely futile!” She shook her head, disgusted. “You were right, T’kamen. He is an idiot.”

T’kamen sat down. “What?” he asked, not sure which of them he was addressing.

“I didn’t defect,” said Ch’fil. “That was never what this was about. This was about getting what Madellon needs.” He pointed at Fetch, who’d perched on a rafter, and was peering down at them. “More of him.”

“You stole Ceduth’s eggs!”

“You think S’leondes would’ve given them to me if I’d asked?” Ch’fil asked, with a snort. Then he stabbed a finger at Reloka. “And you think she’d trade fire-lizard eggs for anything less valuable?”

“You said yourself that Madellon’s population is declining –”

“Declining?” Reloka asked. “Madellon, with seven hundred dragons, declining?” She waved a hand around Ista. “How many dragons can you count here, T’kamen?”

“I…” T’kamen looked around the Bowl. “A hundred? A hundred and ten?”

“One hundred and twelve,” Reloka said. “You’re looking at Ista’s entire fighting roster.”

“But that’s barely three Wings,” T’kamen objected. Ista’s protectorate wasn’t anywhere near the size of Madellon’s, but he’d assumed there must be at least twice as many Istan dragons as he’d noticed on their ledges. “How can you protect all your territory with only one Flight?”

“We can’t,” said Reloka. “We tried. That’s why we only have a hundred and twelve dragons left. Now, we concentrate on the coasts, and a few of the most valuable valleys, and leave the rest to Thread.”

“Southern Keroon alone –”

“Keroon,” Reloka said, with a humourless laugh. “They used to call Keroon the breadbasket of Pern.” She shook her head slowly. “Keroon’s gone, T’kamen. It’s dead Thread and dead earth and ashes. We didn’t have the air power to protect so much naked land.”

T’kamen felt stunned, as though someone had struck him between the eyes. “But the south –”

“Has grubbed enclaves,” said Reloka. “And riders willing to overthrow tradition to survive. And the luxury of letting greens go without firestone on the off-chance they might be fertile, long past the age when we need every pair of wings in the air!”

“Then that’s why you wanted Ceduth’s eggs,” said T’kamen.

“Ista’s need is far greater than Madellon’s.”

“Why,” T’kamen started, and then stopped. He didn’t need Reloka to tell him why he’d never heard how bad it was in the north. Of course the southern Weyrs wouldn’t want their riders sympathising with the plight of the northern continent. “What about all the bronze and brown riders who came north with you?”

“What about them?” Reloka asked. “They came. They spread out among the remaining northern Weyrs. Most of them died.”

Ch’fil said, “S’leondes is right about that much, Kamen. Threadfall’s no place for a bronze or brown dragon.”

“It’s no place for any dragon who can’t go between,” said Reloka. Her cool eyes met T’kamen’s. “Which brings us back to you. And to fire-lizards.”

“Do you even have any?” T’kamen asked. “Didn’t fire-lizards fall out of favour for eating carrion here, too?”

“They did,” said Reloka. “But the one advantage of having ceded swathes of the continent to Thread is that it left the wild fairs that survived the cull free to replenish themselves. We’ve had riders out searching every dune and sand-flat from Nerat Tip to Bayhead. All three Weyrs have been doing the same since word came from the south that a fire-lizard could pilot a dragon between.”

T’kamen was sure he’d heard that wrong. “Three Weyrs? But there are –”

“Six,” said Reloka. “There were six northern Weyrs when the Pass began. And now there are three. Ista. Igen. Fort. They abandoned the others. Too far inland; too far north. There are fewer than five hundred dragons left on the entire continent.”

If Reloka meant to put him off-balance with the magnitude of the crisis, she was succeeding. T’kamen had to force himself not to dwell on the appalling implications. He focused on the issue at hand. “How many fire-lizard eggs have you found?”

“Enough to honour Ch’fil’s bargain.”

“Fire-lizard eggs come in clutches of more than four.”

“Not enough to equip all my riders.”

“Have any of them hatched yet?”

Reloka shook her head.

“When they do, don’t waste them on riders with older dragons.”

“Ch’fil’s already warned us about that.” She looked out over the water for a moment. “We don’t have so many older dragons that it’s a problem.”

T’kamen wondered how old Chrelith was, but he didn’t ask. Instead, he said, “What if I asked you for more?”

Reloka snatched her eyes away from the ocean. “In return for your co-operation?”

“In return for something.” T’kamen assessed her. “Twenty.”

“Twenty?” Reloka asked, outraged, but he could see her weighing it up in her mind. “Six.”

“Sixteen.”

“Ten.”

“Twelve.”

Reloka laughed. “I don’t even know what it is I’m bargaining to gain!”

“I don’t know if I can train Pass dragons to go between, fire-lizards or not,” T’kamen said. “The one rider I tried to teach went between and never came back.” It wasn’t all of the truth, but he needed the partial lie. “Ista can’t afford to lose dragons to my poor teaching any more than it can risk giving fire-lizards to dragonriders and letting them experiment on their own.”

He heard Ch’fil swear under his breath, but he didn’t take his eyes off Reloka. “But Madellon can,” she realised aloud.

“Give me twelve eggs, and I can train a Wing,” said T’kamen. “A Wing like in the old days. A Wing of dragonpairs with fire-lizards to pilot them.” He paused. “A Wing whose members I can deploy to all the Weyrs of Pern to give them back between.”

In one way, Reloka was not like her mother. Dalka would never have let so much unguarded longing show on her face. But she lifted her chin, and said, “You spin a lovely dream, T’kamen. But my father and the Commander would never allow you that much autonomy.”

“Leave your father and the Commander to me,” T’kamen told her, and then nearly stumbled on his own bluster, because by the strengthening light of hope in Reloka’s eyes, she believed him.

But she still shook her head. “It’s not enough. I need more than a promise of future payment. Ista’s dying, T’kamen. At this rate we won’t see out the Pass. We may not see out the next five Turns! Chrelith’s only one queen, and her suitors…” She didn’t need to elaborate on the thin, weary collection of bronzes and browns that Dalka had scorned. “I can’t save the north alone!”

“I understand,” T’kamen said. He glanced over towards where Epherineth and Donauth were waiting. “Will you give me a few minutes?”

“A few minutes I can grant you,” Reloka said. She smiled, but it was a taut, painful thing. “Our next Fall’s not for another four days.”

Ch’fil accompanied T’kamen back across the Istan Bowl. “I knew you’d be spitting at me,” he said. “I would’ve been, if you’d done what I did.”

T’kamen’s preoccupations didn’t blunt his residual anger much. “R’lony’s making you out as a traitor like Madellon’s never known.”

“Thought he might,” said Ch’fil. “Guess he’ll be happy enough, though. G’bral’s not likely to go up against him in the ballot.”

T’kamen halted his stride so abruptly that Ch’fil walked on a pace or two without him. When he turned back, T’kamen said, “That’s what makes me angriest of all, Ch’fil. You’ve condemned Madellon to another Turn of being torn in two by R’lony and S’leondes’ Thread-blighted vendetta.”

Ch’fil made a disparaging sound. “If you think I could have healed that rift as Marshal, T’kamen, you’re more of a naïf than I thought.”

“You could have made a start,” T’kamen told him. “You could have worked with S’leondes. R’lony would bite off his own tongue before he ever spoke a word of compromise. ”

“Oh, aye,” Ch’fil said. “R’lony never met a grudge he didn’t want to hug to his bosom for all of time. But don’t think S’leondes is any better. What he built in the early Turns of the Pass, when the traditional ways had gone all to shit, and Pern needed a revolution to survive, was nothing less than heroic. There’s a reason his riders love him, just as there’s a reason the Harpers sing songs about him. He pulled all our hides out of the fire. But it’s too easy for a man to believe he’s a hero when he’s been told he is every day for twenty Turns, even when he hasn’t done anything to deserve it for a long time. And sometimes the opposite.”

“Is that some kind of half-stoked justification for tipping yourself over the villainous end of the scale?”

Ch’fil shrugged. “I think it’s better to do what you think is right at the time, reputation be blighted, and let history sort it out. And it’s like you said to me, back when we were clearing out M’ric’s weyr. Sometimes it’s worth the shame.”

“For Madellon’s sake?” T’kamen asked. “Or for Ista’s?”

“There’s a saying among the riders who’ve defected here from the south,” said Ch’fil. “No one ever came here because they wanted to save the north. But they sure as shells didn’t stay here for the food.”

Epherineth was staring out over the water at the distant shape of one of the smaller Istan islets – glaring at it, it would have seemed to an observer of his permanently snarling right side. T’kamen knew better. He leaned against his dragon’s forepaw, folding his arms.

If you had wanted your life to be simple, said Epherineth, in response to his unspoken feelings, you should have Impressed a blue.

S’leondes would probably dispute that.

He probably would.

T’kamen tipped his head back against Epherineth’s neck. Do we have a right to interfere? We shouldn’t even be here. We don’t belong in this time.

And yet we are here. Epherineth had always been sanguine about their temporal relocation. We do not have a right, T’kamen. We have a responsibility.

Founded on what? The colour of your hide?

The colour of a dragon’s hide is no indication of his worth. Epherineth said it without rancour. Nor a guarantee of his rider’s character. I have no doubts about my worth or your character. I’m not so certain about others.

Madellon chose S’leondes to lead the Wings and R’lony to coordinate Strategic. We can’t just usurp the will of the Weyr.

Madellon chose Pierdeth’s rider for its Weyrleader, said Epherineth. You had no qualms about challenging his right to lead.

T’kamen wanted to argue that that had been different; that they had beaten L’dro and Pierdeth fair and square for the Weyrleadership, in flight, as was traditional.

Except it hadn’t been as simple as that. Even in Interval Madellon, where absolute power hung on the strength of a bronze dragon’s wings, strength alone wasn’t enough. T’kamen thought about how he’d really won the Weyrleadership, how C’los had crafted the campaign that had raised him to prominence among Madellon’s riders, how C’mine had guided Valonna towards breaking free of L’dro’s hold on her. Epherineth’s wings had been strong, but T’kamen still recalled how another force had lifted them at the end of Shimpath’s flight when his bronze had been at the limit of his strength.

The will of the Weyr.

Dalka was sitting on a rock at the edge of the plateau. She had a sketchbook on her knee, fine vellum bound into pages, and with loose, economical pencil lines, she had described the ocean vista. There were no people in the drawing, and no dragons. I don’t do dragons.

“He’s right,” she said, not looking up from her work.

T’kamen decided not to ask for clarification. “He’s a bronze. He always thinks he’s right.”

“I ride a queen, T’kamen. You don’t need to tutor me on the inflexibility of a dragon’s convictions.” With short strokes of her pencil, Dalka suggested the deep shadow cast by the closest of the islets. “You temper your ambition with caution.”

“It’s not a matter of ambition.”

“It’s always a matter of ambition.” Her mouth curved. “But for argument’s sake, let’s call it vision. Something that’s been in short supply among Madellon’s riders for, oh, twenty Turns.”

“S’leondes…”

“Had vision. Made it a reality. And now everyone’s living that wild boy’s dream, whether they want to or…well. Not living it.” She smudged a line with the edge of her thumb. “R’lony, of course, never had any imagination at all, which was his greatest weakness as Weyrleader, and his greatest strength as Marshal.”

“What makes you think I’d do any better than either of them? History remembers me as the Weyrleader who deserted his post.”

“History,” Dalka said, with a snort. “History gets rewritten all the time, by those with the ambition to steer it.”

“You want me to oppose R’lony in the Marshal ballot.”

“Any brown rider could do that,” said Dalka. “Ch’fil could have done that. Instead he’ll be Exiled. Because he lacked sufficient…vision.”

T’kamen ignored that. “But I can’t compete with S’leondes. Epherineth’s bronze. I’m half a cripple. We’ve never fought Thread in anger or led a Wing into Fall. We’d be laughed out of the Weyr.”

Dalka did turn to look at him, then. “Is that what you’re afraid of? Ridicule? Is that what’s holding you back?”

“I’m not qualified to do what S’leondes does. He’d be right to deride me.”

“S’leondes doesn’t deride you, T’kamen,” Dalka said. “S’leondes fears you. Since the moment you arrived in the Pass, you’ve been everything he hates, everything he dreads. You’re the Thread that burrows in his mind, the ghost that haunts him when he sleeps, the monster that turns his dream into a nightmare, because you make him irrelevant.”

“His dream,” said T’kamen. “Blue and green riders…”

“The overthrow of the traditional order,” said Dalka. “The humbling of the old colour hierarchy. S’leondes’ necessary revolution. It could only exist without between. And now you want to bring back between and destroy everything he’s spent the whole Pass building.”

“He doesn’t want dragonriders to be able to go between?” T’kamen said. The notion was absurd. “With all the death and destruction that not having it has caused?”

“What’s a little death and destruction in the pursuit of preserving one’s own legend?” Dalka asked.

T’kamen took a long, slow breath. He didn’t like S’leondes, and S’leondes didn’t like him, but accepting Dalka’s allegations as truth would commit him to a goal that he only half believed was right, let alone feasible. And how far could he really trust a woman who was prepared to betray her lover – or lovers – in favour of an alliance with someone like him?

“You don’t trust me,” said Dalka. She had been watching him. “You think I’m a fickle, faithless woman. You think I use powerful riders and then set them aside when a more tempting prospect comes along.”

“Do you?” T’kamen asked.

“I serve my Weyr in the best way I can,” she said. “It doesn’t always allow me the luxury of a clear conscience.” She shrugged. “You’re right not to trust me. But what else can you do?”

“I don’t have to do anything,” T’kamen told her.

She smiled, as if indulging a child. “But you do. You can’t help yourself. You’re incapable of sitting idly by while there’s a villain to be vanquished and a world to be saved.”

“You haven’t convinced me yet that S’leondes is a villain,” said T’kamen. “Or that he’d resist the return of between. Or that he’s the least bit afraid of anything.”

“Sometimes it’s as if he’s carved out of stone,” said Dalka. “There’s no weakness in S’leondes, no softness. He can’t afford to let his riders see that he’s as human and fallible as they are.” She smiled. “But strip away the anger and the aggression, make him lower his guard and bare his soul, and he’s just like almost every other man I’ve ever known. Just a scared little boy, frightened that someone will come and take away his playthings. Afraid of the dark.” She flipped her sketchbook to its first page and pushed it at T’kamen.

The picture was so familiar it was as if Dalka had seen into his mind and drawn what she’d found there. A sharp-toothed ridge. A beacon fire. Dawn lightening the east. A distant Wing, sketched against the starry sky. And the black, black outline of a dragon, wings spread in titanic cruciform, as if to cast the whole of Pern in his terrible shadow.

“You were there,” he said. “At Rift Valley. When we arrived.”

“I wasn’t,” said Dalka. “S’leondes was. This is the scene that’s haunted his nightmares. Between. Epherineth. You.” She closed the sketchbook with a snap. “Do you think he resisted you coming here today because he was afraid you’d change your allegiance? Do you think anyone but R’lony believes that the brown and bronze riders who came north were forced? No. S’leondes was afraid you’d come here and, in doing exactly what you set out to do, set in motion the axe that’s been hanging over his head since the instant you came out of between and into his Pass.”

“Why are you only telling me this now?” T’kamen asked. “Why weren’t you honest with me before?”

Dalka’s eyes flickered. “Because I had to know for myself what kind of man you are before I could go all in with you.”

He forced a smile. “I’m not much of a poker player, Dalka.”

“Maybe not. But I know that chessboard in your weyr isn’t just there for decoration.”

That wasn’t all she knew, T’kamen realised. The resonance of all that Dalka knew and wasn’t telling fair thrummed through her.

Worrying about it could wait. T’kamen put his hand on Epherineth’s shoulder. We go into this together, Epherineth. You and me.

Epherineth lowered his head. Always.

Reloka had reclaimed her seat in the shade. She watched them approach, T’kamen and Dalka, with Ch’fil a pace behind, but her face was completely composed, completely inscrutable.

“How long did he last?” Dalka asked her daughter, before T’kamen could begin.

Reloka lifted her eyes unapologetically. “Not long enough.”

The flare of Dalka’s nostrils was her only reaction. “Who’s been leading the Wings?”

Reloka shrugged. “Whoever’s still alive.”

“The north should have been abandoned Turns ago.”

“It’s too late for that now, Mother.”

“It’s never too late.”

The two Weyrwoman locked eyes with each other. T’kamen noticed Ch’fil shifting his weight uneasily from foot to foot, and wondered how much more he knew about the history between mother and daughter.

It wasn’t the time for that, either. T’kamen took a step forwards, deliberately bringing his cane down against the ground to punctuate the tense silence. “Twelve fire-lizard eggs, Reloka.”

She looked at him without betraying a hint that she was grateful to break her mother’s stare. “What are you offering for them?”

“Every egg but one from Donauth’s next clutch.”

Ch’fil muttered a profanity, and even Dalka couldn’t catch her reflexive intake of breath.

Reloka’s eyes searched T’kamen’s face as she grasped the significance of his words. “What about between?”

“A rider to train Ista’s dragons, when Madellon has more than one to spare.”

Her disappointment was plain. “It won’t be you.”

“I’m going to have my hands full at Madellon for the next little while,” T’kamen said. “One more thing.” He paused, letting her guess, taking a tiny shred of pleasure from it, and then gestured over his shoulder towards Ch’fil. “You can have him.”

“What?”

“What?”

The demand came from Reloka and Ch’fil at the same instant: Reloka’s laced with uncertain delight, Ch’fil’s with flat disbelief.

Dalka just laughed.

“I’m not taking him back to Madellon to be Exiled,” said T’kamen. “Consider him Ista’s.”

“You have no right –” Ch’fil protested.

“I’d take it as a personal favour if you’d have Chrelith make sure Stratomath doesn’t go anywhere,” T’kamen continued, raising his voice only slightly over Ch’fil’s objections.

“She’ll be happy to oblige,” said Reloka.

Ch’fil was still spluttering. T’kamen had never seen him so outraged. “You don’t have the authority to do this, Kamen!”

“Do you think I give a trader’s cuss about that?” T’kamen asked him, with all the coldness he could find. “I’m not going to indulge your desire to martyr yourself. Or the Commander’s to make an example of you. If you want to get yourself killed, at least you can do it by putting yourself between Thread and Ista.” He turned brusquely away from Ch’fil. “Are we in agreement, Weyrwoman Reloka?”

“Yes, Weyrleader,” she replied. “I believe we are.”

It was peculiar how, this time, her use of his old title felt right. It shouldn’t have. T’kamen had no real claim to the mantle. Not yet. But the moment he’d made the decision to take on Dalka’s challenge, he’d felt the familiar gravity of the Weyrleader descend, the weight of rights and responsibilities that had been snatched from him. It was like shouldering into an old harness and rediscovering all the spots where it chafed, all the binding places he’d almost forgotten, all the cold and comfortless fittings of it.

He welcomed it back like an old friend.

Chapter sixty-eight: Sarenya

A stupid liar will always be caught out eventually. A clever liar will only be caught if, on some level, he wants to be.

– Harper saying

100.05.16 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Atath and Goldevath were on duty when Sarenya arrived at the elevator station with her carry-sack over her shoulder. Though they were visibly still juveniles, yet to reach their full height or fill out their frames – what, in race-runner parlance, Sarenya would have described as unfurnished – they were just as clearly no longer just dragonets. At a Turn of age, some of them would be mature enough to mate soon. It was hard to reconcile the waist-high hatchlings Sarenya had first tended a few hours after their Hatching with the imposing young dragons she saw now.

M’touf and W’lenze were playing cards on the bench under the station’s overhang. “Chance of a lift?” Sarenya called to them.

The two weyrlings looked up from their game. W’lenze stared at Sarenya for a moment, then looked at M’touf, saying something too low and urgent for Sarenya to hear. M’touf frowned at the younger boy, and shoved him in the shoulder, not hard, but in disgust. “Where to, journeyman?”

“Trebruth’s weyr,” said Sarenya.

M’touf wrote the assignment on the elevator board with the bit of chalk that hung from it on a string, then brushed off his hands. “Right this way.”

Sarenya followed the tall boy towards his dragon. She hadn’t intended to draw attention to W’lenze’s behaviour, but as they reached Atath, M’touf turned to her and said, “Ignore him. He’s an idiot.”

“It’s all right,” Sarenya said lightly.

M’touf snorted. “It’s bloody rude and bloody ignorant is what it is.”

Sarenya nearly smiled. After two sevendays of being openly snubbed by more than half the dragonriders she met, she was used to the chilly reception. “I’m sure it’s not meant that way.”

“I saw how you were with Sejanth, when Atath was in the infirmary,” said M’touf. “You couldn’t have looked after that dragon better if he’d been your own. It’s not your fault he loved you.”

That was so unexpected, Sarenya almost couldn’t answer for the sudden lump in her throat. She swallowed it back, and said quietly, “It was my privilege to tend him. I never imagined he’d be able to hear me from so far away.”

“Well, that’s dragons for you,” said M’touf. “They like who they like. Anyway, Sejanth was on his last legs, the poor old sod. At least he got to go outside again one last time before he died.” He vaulted up to Atath’s neck, and then asked his dragon to dip her shoulder so Sarenya could mount behind him.

It only took half a minute for the green dragon to convey them up to Trebruth’s weyr. “No one’s home,” said M’touf.

“That’s all right,” said Sarenya. “This won’t take long. Will you wait a few minutes?”

M’touf reached back to unhook the safety he’d looped around Sarenya’s waist. “We’ll be here.”

The weyr was empty, as Sarenya had known it would be. She’d watched the dragons of Ops Wing form up behind Trebruth and then disappear in unison less than half an hour ago. Sarenya wasn’t given to sneaking, as a rule, but she’d left things in M’ric’s weyr that she wanted back, and she didn’t want to have to ask him for them, She didn’t want to talk to him at all. Even the sight of him, or of Trebruth, from afar made her stomach clench in a way she didn’t think was good for her health. So, while she wasn’t making a secret of her visit to his weyr, she’d timed it so she wouldn’t have to encounter him there. Still, she didn’t like the necessity of it. She resolved to go in, do what had to be done, and then get out with as little fuss as possible.

She dumped out the contents of her carry-sack on the small table by M’ric’s cold hearth first. Then she went directly to his bathing room, where she’d left a few personal items. One of them was a small packet of goldwort. She didn’t let herself dwell on it, stuffing it in the bottom of her bag with the other toilet items.

Next, she emptied the drawer in M’ric’s chest that had become hers. There were only a few items – a spare shirt, underthings, half a shoulder-cord she hadn’t finished braiding. The basket on the hearth which Sleek shared with Agusta had the chewed remains of one of the message bands Sarenya had been trying to train her fire-lizard to accept. She left that where it was.

There was a record on race-runner feed that she’d been reading in the evenings, a mug from the cothold that she’d forgotten she’d left in M’ric’s weyr, and a broken headstall from a bridle he’d offered to repair for her. He had repaired it, Sarenya noticed, when she found the piece of tack with his leather-working kit, but she didn’t let herself dwell on that, either.

When she was finished, she crossed back to the table to look at the items of M’ric’s she’d brought with her. He hadn’t left as many things with her as she had with him. An shirt of his that Sarenya had sometimes slept in, down in the cot. A razor and comb. His old two-stripe epaulettes.

And the beautiful blue velvet dress he’d bought her at the Long Bay Gather. Saren brushed the soft pile of the fabric with her fingers, remembering that night, even through the fog of alcohol. Drinking the vintage Benden wine that had gone to her head; listening to the Harpers play as she hadn’t heard music played her entire life; dancing with her handsome brown rider, who’d made her promise not to dance with anyone else. And she hadn’t. She hadn’t.

She twisted her fingers in the fabric, though her thoughts turned inwards, to the child she had, reluctantly, begun to believe might be growing there. The child M’ric had sired. The child M’ric didn’t want. The child M’ric had tried to stop before it could even get started.

Her child.

Sarenya realised she was clenching her teeth so hard her jaw ached. She made herself stop, and disentangled her fingers from the velvet dress. She loved it. It was fine and rich and beautiful. It had wrapped her in softness and luxury. But it would be no good for her, where she hoped to go.

Go.

Sarenya still recoiled from the word. If she’d been struggling with the question of her future before, then her pregnancy, and M’ric’s reaction to it, had made it even more complicated. On the one hand, the case Arrense had made for her to leave Madellon had become more compelling in the wake of her separation from M’ric. On the other, her condition could only harm her prospects. She faced bias already merely for being a female Beastcrafter; as a pregnant, unmarried female Beastcrafter, that bias would increase tenfold. The fact that her unborn child was dragonspawn would only throw the fact that she had embraced the morals of the Weyr into sharper relief. But she could hardly conceal her condition – at least, not for long, and that would only delay a confrontation. If she meant to leave Madellon for a new assignment, she would have to be upfront about her pregnancy – and that could put an end to either of the plum posts Arrense had set up for her. She’d worked through her options mentally a dozen times, and each time dispirited her more than the last.

Stay at Madellon. Have the child. Raise it there.

The Weyr didn’t throw out the women who bore its riders’ children, as long as they were willing to pull their weight. The childcare available in the lower caverns freed Madellon’s women, riders and non-riders alike, to pursue tasks other than full-time child-rearing. But it would mean staying at Madellon indefinitely, staying within M’ric’s orbit, staying somewhere Arrense had insisted was a bad place for her. And it would put an end to any hope Sarenya had of progressing in her Craft.

Have the child. Foster it at the Weyr. Then leave.

There were plenty of children in the crèche who barely knew their birth parents, or cared to. Fostering was common even among the non-rider women, and Madellon’s most sought-after foster-mothers were regarded just as highly as the best cooks and gardeners and seamstresses. There was no stigma to handing over the care of one’s children to a woman with a proven talent for child-rearing. But something in Sarenya balked at the thought of simply giving away a child – washing her hands of it. Her baby had already been rejected by its father. It seemed cruel to allow a child to grow up knowing that neither of its parents had wanted it.

Accept a new posting. Have the child. Find a way.

It was both the option Sarenya most wanted to take, and the one she thought least achievable. She’d received offers not only from Master Benallen at Kirken Hold, but from Masters Jauro at Southern Hold and Greflink at Rosken, too. Southern paid the most, Rosken by some margin the least – Sarenya suspected Greflink had only made the offer grudgingly – but Kirken was much the most attractive assignment. It just seemed a forlorn hope that Sarenya could aspire to such a desirable posting with a child in tow.

She’d spent two days composing a letter to Benallen: thanking him for his offer, explaining her situation, asking him to consider taking her on anyway. It had been sitting in a drawer for another four. She’d gone so far as to take it to the message station to have it sent, and then, having handed it and the quarter mark payment for its delivery to the Wingsecond on duty, lost her nerve. She’d snatched the letter back out of the brown rider’s grasp, and left so quickly she’d forgotten to reclaim her mark. Once that letter was sent, her cards were all on the table. If Benallen withdrew his offer on the basis of Sarenya’s pregnancy, the Hall would want to know why, and it would spread through the Craft on the wings of its ingrained gender discrimination. Whatever happened subsequently, the incident would affect Sarenya’s professional standing for the rest of her life.

And there was one more option that would change everything.

Take a long stay between. Pretend it never happened.

There was a simple logic to it that couldn’t be dismissed. If she shook the babe loose, all the barriers hemming her in would suddenly fall away again. There’d be no reason for Benallen to withdraw the assignment, no call for her to stay at Madellon, no need for her to abandon her goal of earning Mastery of her craft. She’d be free again. It wasn’t as if she’d wanted to get pregnant; she’d been taking precautions to avoid such an occurrence for Turns, however ineffective. Nor would it mean she couldn’t conceive again in the future, at a better time, when she was in a more stable place, with a man who wouldn’t disown their offspring. And she wasn’t even eight sevendays along yet; with her Beastcrafter sensibilities, she shouldn’t feel much connection to something no bigger than a bean and so tenuous that she might have miscarried it naturally without even knowing it had been there.

So why did it feel like such a wretched, cowardly, selfish indulgence even to be considering it?

“Ah…journeyman?”

M’touf’s shout made her startle out of her preoccupation. How long had she been standing there in M’ric’s weyr? “I’m just coming, green rider,” she called back.

The worst of it was that she had no one to talk to. M’ric and Isnan – and possibly the dispensary apprentice – were the only ones who knew about her pregnancy. She didn’t want anyone else to know before she’d made her decision, one way or the other: not Jarrisam, not Vhion, not Valonna. Whatever she decided – continue the pregnancy or terminate it, leave Madellon or stay – she wanted there to be no hint that she’d agonised over it. When all the choices were bad ones, the appearance of resoluteness at least permitted face to be saved.

She was reminded unavoidably of other occasions when her pride had dictated a decisive course of action: both times, when she’d left T’kamen. The last time, a Turn ago, when he’d allowed the pressures of the Weyrleadership to make him insensitive, and she’d allowed vanity to trump her love for him. And the first time, when they’d turned their anger and disappointment on each other as only proud, stupid young people could. She’d left the Weyr then, and never let slip any suggestion that she’d regretted it.

Except to C’mine, the one constant tying her first stay at Madellon Weyr to the second; the one rider she’d seen, albeit infrequently, in the seven intervening Turns; the one person on all of Pern she’d trusted with her heartbreak. T’kamen had brought Sarenya to the Weyr, but C’mine had helped her leave. And it struck her, with an irresistible symmetry, that since T’kamen had brought her back to Madellon the second time, C’mine was the right rider to help her escape it again.

She walked back out onto Trebruth’s ledge. M’touf was slouching against Atath’s side. He straightened as she approached. “Want us to drop you down to the Beastcraft cot?”

“Actually, I wonder if you could tell me where C’mine and Darshanth are,” said Sarenya.

M’touf frowned in concentration for a moment, and then said, “They’re down by the lake.” He pointed.

“Could you drop me close to them?”

“If you want,” M’touf replied. “C’mine’s gone a bit funny, though, you know. Since the Gather at Long Bay. A bit…” He made a circular motion with one finger at the side of his head.

“I’d heard,” Sarenya replied. She didn’t ask for details. She’d heard enough gossip and speculation about C’mine’s frame of mind; she didn’t need to know what a weyrling thought of it.

“Shame really,” M’touf said. “I liked having him as L’stev’s assistant. You could get away with anything. A’len’s more of a hard case.” He shrugged. “Not going to matter to me much longer, though. I’m off to Igen.”

“Igen?” Sarenya asked.

“Since it looks like Atath’s the only Wildfire dragon who can go between,” said M’touf. “Igen’s weyrlings are six sevendays older than her, but there’s not much point me staying here, is there?”

He said it as if the notion of transferring out of Madellon had been his own. Sarenya doubted that was the case. Still, getting away from certain members of Wildfire class would probably do M’touf good. “Well, good luck at Igen,” she said. “I hope you’ll both be happy there.”

Atath set her down a couple of dragonlengths from where Darshanth was resting on the sand, visibly damp from a bath. C’mine was sitting on a bench nearby. Sarenya dismounted, thanked M’touf and his dragon, and walked up to join the blue rider. C’mine had his back to her, but Darshanth saw her approach. He whined, raising his head, and for a moment Sarenya feared that dragon and rider would bolt.

But C’mine just turned his head slightly. “Sarenya.”

His voice sounded resigned, but not hostile. Sarenya couldn’t imagine him ever sounding hostile. She sat down on the bench beside him, unslinging her carry-sack from her shoulder. “Hello, C’mine.”

They sat in silence for several long moments. Sarenya didn’t know where to start. She burned to unload her troubles onto the blue rider who’d been her confidant for so many Turns, but he looked so weary and grey, it seemed inappropriate.

Then C’mine said, “I knew you’d catch up with me eventually. I should have come and talked to you sooner. I’m sorry.”

“I’ve been trying to see you,” Sarenya said. It came out more accusatory than she intended.

“I know,” C’mine said. “I’ve been avoiding you.” He sighed. “I thought you’d be angrier.”

“Why would I be angry, Mine?”

He lifted his head. “You don’t –” he began, and then stopped, frowning. “M’ric didn’t say anything?”

Sarenya felt herself stiffen fractionally. “About what?”

“About the Hatching,” C’mine said. “About Shimpath.” He looked her searchingly in the face for a long moment. “He didn’t tell you.”

“I haven’t spoken to him for a sevenday. What didn’t he tell me?”

C’mine closed his eyes. He raised a hand briefly to his face, then lowered it again. He opened his eyes. “I’m sorry, Saren. It’s my fault that you didn’t Impress.”

That wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. “Don’t be silly. You can’t take the blame for that.”

“You should have Impressed,” C’mine insisted. “Even if not Shimpath, there should have been a queen for you. You should be a dragonrider.”

It wasn’t the first time Sarenya had heard those words in commiseration. It wasn’t even the first time C’mine had said them to her. He should have known her well enough to know that she’d never found them comforting. “Well, I’m not,” she said, too sharply. “I’m sensitive enough that dragons notice me, but not sensitive enough to be chosen. It’s a family trait. My uncle was left standing, too. We just weren’t good enough.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “It’s not a matter of being good enough. You couldn’t have Impressed. You never had a chance.”

“Now you’re contradicting yourself,” Sarenya told him. “Faranth, C’mine. You’re a master of finding things to blame yourself for that were nothing to do with you! Maybe if you’d spent less time torturing yourself for the past and more thinking about the future, L’stev would have kicked you off his staff!”

C’mine didn’t recoil, or even shoot Sarenya the wounded look she would have expected. She was almost disappointed. Having C’mine drag up her failed candidacy, as if re-chewing that old ash would do any good, was the last thing she wanted. “I’m not explaining very well,” he said. He took a breath, then began again. “You weren’t left standing because you weren’t good enough. You didn’t Impress because I was there, and I knew you wouldn’t Impress, so you couldn’t.”

“C’mine, please just stop,” Sarenya begged. “Can you even hear how…confused…you sound?”

“Faranth scored!” C’mine swore. It was the first time Sarenya had ever heard him swear. “I don’t mean the me of eight Turns ago that was there then. I mean me. Me, now. We were there twice, Saren. Darshanth and I were there twice. We were doubled up. That’s why you didn’t Impress. Because the future me was there too, gone between times to Shimpath’s Hatching, eight Turns ago.”

Sarenya just looked at him. “Between times.”

C’mine looked steadily, miserably, back at her.

She folded her arms. “And did Darshanth miraculously heal a sick child just by breathing on it, too, and make a heartless holder mend his ways with one look from his rainbow eyes, while he was at it?”

“Don’t make fun, Sarenya –”

“Don’t make fun of me! If you want to contrive some reason why every wrong thing that’s happened in the last ten Turns has been your fault, then go ahead, but don’t patronise me with silly children’s fantasies!”

“Timing isn’t a fantasy, Saren,” C’mine said.

“Timing.” Saren’s scepticism curdled her voice. “Travelling through time? Just how credulous do you think I am?”

“I don’t. I’m not making fun of you. I’m not patronising you. I’m telling you the truth. It’s not a children’s fantasy. Dragons can go between times as well as places. Darshanth and I have done it.” He hesitated. “We’ve done it a lot.”

Sarenya stared at him. “But,” she said, and then couldn’t decide which of a dozen objections to raise. “But that would be ridiculous. Faranth; more than ridiculous. Completely absurd. If you could go into the past with knowledge of the future, you could change it all. You’d have hundreds of dragonriders running around changing history to suit themselves!”

“It doesn’t work like that,” C’mine said, and his voice vibrated with sorrow. He paused, visibly composing himself, then went on. “Most dragonriders have never timed it. Not on purpose, at least.”

“You mean they could do it by accident?”

“When we first learn to go between, we have to learn not to put temporal details in our visuals,” C’mine said, and then went on, to Sarenya’s blank look, “The sun’s position. The length of the shadows. Anything that would tie the visual to a specific time. An inexperienced dragonet might use those details to navigate, and try to go between to the when as well as the where.”

“And…what would happen if they did?”

“If the visual was sound, they’d just slip a few hours,” C’mine said. “But if there was one thing wrong – one mismatch between time and place – they wouldn’t ever come out of between.”

“Are you saying that that’s what happened to the weyrlings who died?”

“No. That’s something else completely. But it’s one of the most dangerous things about learning to go between. Dragons learn to discard temporal details as they get more experienced, so they don’t slip, or try to between to a place-time that doesn’t exist.” He paused. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t still do it deliberately. If they’re stupid enough to risk it.”

“You could still try to go to a – a place-time – that isn’t there,” Sarenya said. Her scepticism was fraying in the face of C’mine’s sober explanation. “And be lost between.”

“Yes.”

“And…you’ve been doing this?”

C’mine didn’t reply for a long moment, and then he said, again, “Yes.”

“Why?” Sarenya asked, and then answered her own question in the next breath. “C’los. Oh, Faranth, C’mine, you wanted to save C’los, didn’t you?”

“Not at first,” C’mine said. “I just wanted to see him again.”

“But you could have killed yourself! You could have killed Darshanth!”

That did make him look wretched. “I was careful,” he said. “I only went back to times I could find accurately. I used records. Star maps. Darshanth could always find the right when.”

“Faranth,” Sarenya said, and she wasn’t sure if she was more aghast or admiring. Then she said, “But if you saw C’los in the past, he must have seen you and known you’d come between times.”

“I didn’t let him see me, the first few times,” C’mine said. “I just…watched him. He didn’t even know I was there.”

“And after the first few times?”

“C’los kept a diary. I started finding…inconsistencies in it. Times when he mentioned seeing me somewhere I know I wasn’t.” C’mine looked across the lake again for a moment. “Being able to touch him again…”

Sarenya wrapped her fingers around his. Then she said, “Didn’t he realise you were a different you? You’ve…changed, in the last Turn.”

“It was always dark. Or he was drunk. I never stayed long.” C’mine raised his shoulders. “If he noticed anything, he never said so.”

“What would you have said, if he had?” Sarenya asked. When C’mine didn’t reply immediately, she asked, “Would you have told him? About Hatching day? About…Katel?”

She hadn’t spoken that name aloud in many months. It made C’mine flinch, too. He covered his face with his hands. “I tried to stop it.”

For a moment, Sarenya let herself wonder what it would have been like not to have been taken hostage on Hatching night, not to have lived through that ordeal. “Why didn’t you?” she asked, and tried not to make it an accusation.

C’mine lowered his hands. His eyes were hollow with despair. “Darshanth took me to the wrong Hatching.”

“The wrong Hatching?”

“Cherganth’s last clutch. Eight Turns ago. The Hatching when Valonna Impressed Shimpath. That’s where he took me, when I asked him to take us back to Hatching day.” He looked at her with desperate guilt. “That’s why you were left standing. And why it’s my fault that you were.”

Sarenya tried to fit the pieces together. “I don’t understand.”

“I knew you wouldn’t Impress,” C’mine said. “So you didn’t. You couldn’t. It’s like I said. You never even had a chance because I was there.”

“But you were already there,” Sarenya said. “You were in the stands with C’los and T’kamen. I remember looking up at you just before the eggs started cracking.”

“That was the me of that time,” said C’mine. “But I was there too. Now me.”

Sarenya just looked at him for a moment, trying to reconcile what he was saying with her understanding of the world. “Are you saying you were there…twice? That there were two of you?”

“Yes,” C’mine said. He sounded almost relieved that she’d understood the concept. “And two Darshanths. We were doubled up, two of each of us in the same place at the same time.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense! No one can be in… In two places at once.”

Even as she said it, something about the phrase tickled her memory, but C’mine said, “It’s not so bad when there’s some distance between the two yous. Being too close is worse. And I thought meeting myself was the worst thing I’d ever done timing.” He shook his head. “I stopped you becoming a dragonrider, Sarenya. If I hadn’t timed it back – if I hadn’t been there, knowing what was going to happen – you’d have Impressed. I’m so sorry, Saren. I’m so sorry.”

Sarenya didn’t know what to think. The revelation that travelling between times wasn’t just the stuff of Harper tales was dumbfounding enough. The suggestion that C’mine’s time-travelling could actually have affected Sarenya’s own past in such a fashion was more than she could take in. It was so unreal, so paradoxical an idea, that she couldn’t grasp it firmly enough to accept C’mine’s apology – or even to be angry with him in the first place. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

“Why have I never heard anything about this before?” she asked. “I’ve been at Madellon more than a Turn. I’ve never heard anyone mention going between times.”

“We don’t talk about it,” C’mine said. “We’re not supposed to even think about it, much less do it. And we’re not meant to tell non-riders about it.” He looked at her mournfully. “I shouldn’t have told you, but…I assumed M’ric must have…”

He trailed off. “Why would M’ric have told me?” Sarenya asked.

“Because he was there too.”

“He was – where?”

“At Shimpath’s Hatching, eight Turns ago.”

Sarenya tried to ignore the sense of disquiet that was creeping over her. She tried shrugging it off. “There must have been lots of Peninsula riders there that day,” she began, but C’mine was already shaking his head.

“I don’t mean he was just in the stands,” he said. “He wasn’t the M’ric of then. He was there because he’d timed it back.”

“How do you know?” Sarenya asked, too sharply. “Why would he go between to then? Why would he go between times at all?” Her head spun with the idea of it. “Oh, Faranth. Was he trying to change things so I Impressed?” She looked dazedly at C’mine. “Is that why he was there?”

He avoided her gaze. “I don’t think so.”

“Then why on Pern would M’ric do something as dangerous as going between times?”

“To save me,” said C’mine. “He came back to save me.” He caught his breath. “He said that someone we both loved had sent him.”

It was a moment before Sarenya caught his implication. “Me? You think I sent him?” She sought refuge in logic, poorly though it had served her so far. “How could I have told him to go between times when I didn’t even know it was possible until now?”

“You haven’t yet,” C’mine said. “I see that now. But you will.”

The paradox implicit in that statement made Sarenya’s head swim. “Oh, Faranth, C’mine. I’m… M’ric is… I’m not with him any more.”

“You’re not?” The genuine dismay in his voice made him sound nearly like the empathetic C’mine of old. “What…what happened?”

Sarenya almost laughed. The issues she’d been struggling with seemed banal and petty by comparison to everything C’mine had just revealed. “We had a falling out.” She shrugged helplessly. “Because…well, it seems that I’m pregnant.”

She hadn’t realised the relief she would feel at saying those words aloud to someone, or how much of a balm to her strained emotions C’mine’s reaction would be. An instant’s surprise turned into an expression of such genuine and whole-hearted delight that Sarenya could have wept to see it on his scarred and sorrowful face. “Saren! Oh, Saren!” He grasped both of her hands. “You’re going to be a mother. That’s the most wonderful thing –” He stopped. “Is it…?”

“It’s M’ric’s,” Sarenya said, pre-empting his question.

“There’s no chance at all it could be Kamen’s?”

“I’m not far enough along. If it were Kamen’s, I’d have delivered by now.” She exhaled a long breath, and said, “It’s definitely M’ric’s. That’s what we fell out about. Shards, I might understand if it was someone else’s child, but…”

“He won’t acknowledge it?” C’mine asked. He sounded as mystified as Saren felt.

“He doesn’t want to be a father.” She shrugged with a lightness she didn’t feel. “So that’s that.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

It wasn’t just the sincerity in C’mine’s voice that Sarenya found so heart-breaking. It was the hopefulness, as pure and bright as a single shaft of sunlight through grey clouds. He wanted so desperately to be able to help someone else, even though he himself was in more critical need of help than anyone Sarenya knew. “I don’t know, Mine,” she said at last. “Maybe. I’m…thinking about leaving Madellon. With everything that’s happened recently…”

“I heard about your Master.” C’mine said it slowly, as if he was only just realising the significance of it.

“My uncle,” Sarenya corrected him. “He was so desperate for me to leave. He said Madellon was the wrong place for me. Too many bad memories. Too many negative associations. And now there’s not much left to keep me here. M’ric and I are finished. Arrense is gone. Sejanth’s gone.” Her chest felt tight and constricted. “I need to be somewhere else, C’mine,” she said, when the sensation had receded. “Some place where I’m not seeing ghosts every time I look over my shoulder.” She looked up for the first time since she’d sat beside C’mine, around at the Bowl, at the walls of Madellon Weyr, and heard herself say, “The only time this place has ever felt like home was when I was with T’kamen.”

“I miss him, too,” C’mine replied.

They shared that perfect resonance of mutual loss for a long moment. Then Sarenya began, “Couldn’t you…?”

“No,” C’mine said. He cut her off, not sharply, but with quiet finality. “I’ve promised Darshanth I’ll never make him go between times again.” He looked across at his dragon. “I’ve broken so many promises to him. I mean to keep this one.”

“I understand,” Sarenya said regretfully. She put her hand on the back of C’mine’s neck, and leaned into his shoulder. “I understand.”

The business of the cothold was quiet for the rest of the day, for which Sarenya was more than usually grateful. She normally liked to be busy, especially when she had a lot on her mind. But her conversation with C’mine had overwhelmed her with so much to think about that she was glad she didn’t have to do more than supervise the apprentices in the milking sheds before evening stables, both of which she could have done in her sleep. Anything more complicated wouldn’t have been guaranteed her full attention. Even so, short-handed as the Madellon Beastcraft still was, it was late into first watch before all the apprentices were back in their dorm, enabling Sarenya to retreat to the peace of her own quarters for the night.

The herbs Isnan had prescribed her were surprisingly inoffensive, given her over-sensitive palate, but even the everyday routine of brewing them into a tea was something she had to do mindfully. She was still clumsy, fumble-fingered and liable to bump into things. It was a relief to simply sit down with her mug in quiet and solitude.

Still, she hardly knew where to start. The notion that dragons could actually travel between times was still so astonishing by itself that everything else C’mine had told her seemed secondary to it – everything, at least, except his guilt-stricken claim that his timing had been responsible for her being left standing at Shimpath’s Hatching. Sarenya still wasn’t sure she followed his logic. And even if she took at face value C’mine’s insistence that the presence of his time-travelling future self had somehow influenced Shimpath’s choice, it changed nothing. Whatever the reason, she hadn’t Impressed. Transferring blame for that failure to C’mine would only make her resent him, and he didn’t deserve her anger. He’d never intentionally done her any harm.

The thought brought her back to M’ric. If there was truth to C’mine’s reasoning that the presence of someone with knowledge from the future could affect an event in the past, then M’ric was just as responsible for what had happened at Shimpath’s Hatching as C’mine, and Sarenya was far less inclined to be forgiving of the brown rider than the blue. She could understand why C’mine had started going between times to see C’los. She couldn’t understand why M’ric, as cautious and level-headed as she knew him to be – would have taken the same risk. She didn’t really believe C’mine’s assertion that she was responsible for M’ric going back to that day. Even if she could exert any such influence on him now, she doubted that he would put himself and Trebruth in danger going between times for the sake of a rider he hardly knew.

Unless he’d done it before.

The enormity of the thought rocked her. If she’d been standing, she would have reeled. As it was, she sat upright in her chair so abruptly that she spilled her drink. She exclaimed aloud as tea slopped over her hand, and thrust the mug away from herself before she dropped it. But the spilled tea wasn’t hot enough to stop her mind, unbidden, from racing through possibilities, drawing lines between previously unconnected points, and forming conclusions she didn’t like at all.

C’mine wasn’t the only rider who’d lost someone close to him. What if M’ric’s motivations were the same? The loss of his daughter at the Peninsula had clearly devastated him, enough that he’d taken steps ever since to prevent himself fathering any more children. Had he gone between times to visit Artema before her death? Had he tried to prevent it? And – Sarenya felt a lurch in her stomach as the next thought occurred to her – did he have knowledge from the future that no children of his would ever survive? The idea that his seemingly irrational aversion to her bearing his child might be rooted in such foreknowledge made her break out in a chill sweat. It wasn’t a notion she liked to entertain, but it did have a certain grim logic. And why would a respected, successful Wingsecond with the seniority and the means to do virtually anything he wanted risk himself going between times if not for a very good reason?

The second epiphany hit her with only slightly less force than the first.

M’ric had always had marks. It had taken a while for Sarenya to notice, because he wasn’t the type to show them off in gaudy jewellery or flashy clothes. But everything he owned, from his plain but perfectly cut shirts, to the tooled leather of Trebruth’s dress harness, to the long-bladed hunting knife that fit his hand as though crafted for it, was of quiet, understated quality. Most of his possessions should have been Master-stamped. Their superiority was concealed by the absence of such distinction. M’ric didn’t want anyone to notice just how well he was dressed and equipped. Sarenya had always put that down to his natural disinterest in ostentation – an inclination offset by Trebruth’s aerial flamboyance. Now, it struck her with absolute certainty that M’ric had been hiding his actual wealth all along.

A dragonrider who could go between times would never need to be poor.

The pieces fell into place with irresistible precision. The long-odds outsider M’ric had backed with such apparent arbitrariness at the Gather had been no happy accident, no beginners’ fortune. He’d known that unfancied colt would win, not because it was a ringer, but because he’d gone between times to find out the result, and then furnished himself with the information in time to bet on it. He’d manufactured an explanation by crediting his old Peninsula colleague with the tip, and further covered his tracks by deliberately backing losers for the rest of the afternoon – while taking care not to lose more than he’d gained.

The sheer dishonesty of it was breath-taking, and yet, with a growing grimness, Sarenya realised that she shouldn’t be surprised. She knew M’ric had lied about being from a Seahold. She knew he’d lied – or, at the least, been very selective with the truth – about Trebruth’s origins. He’d even been evasive about how he’d come to Impress Agusta, a northern fire-lizard queen. Sarenya had never pressed him on any of those things, assuming that he must have reasons for being vague. But the truth about dragons’ ability to go between times – and C’mine’s insistence that an out-of-time M’ric had been at Shimpath’s Hatching – threw everything Sarenya thought she’d known about the brown rider into doubt. She’d thought him a decent and moral man, and he was neither. He was a cheat. A thief. He was a liar. And if a dragonrider would lie about something so fundamentally important as the origin of his own dragon, what other lies had he been telling?

In spite of the circumstances of her split from M’ric, Sarenya had thought she would be able to remember the good times with only bitter-sweet regret: the companionship, the laughter, the love. Now, she felt compelled to re-examine everything in a new and ugly light. There was no sweetness in sifting through sharp-edged memories of things M’ric had said, seeking the deceit beneath them, the self-serving fabrications, the too-accurate predictions that might be based on unnatural foreknowledge rather than his own perception. She thought about the things he’d told her over the time they’d been together. Had he really lost his father at a young age? Had he really been a Weyrleader’s protégé as a weyrling? And what else had he done with information stolen from the future to further his agenda?

That was where Sarenya stumbled. What was M’ric’s agenda? What end could his deception possibly be serving? What could a dragonrider want, beyond a few luxuries, with the proceeds from a gambling scam? Nothing she knew about him gave her any insight into his motives. It hardened her heart still further against him. Clearly, she hadn’t known the real M’ric at all. The man she’d loved, the man who’d courted and won her, didn’t exist. Bitterly, she wondered how much of that courtship had been informed by his timing. He’d always been far too selflessly understanding and considerate, as if he’d known exactly what would appeal to her after she and T’kamen had blown themselves to pieces for the second time.

And then the phrase that had plucked at her memory earlier, when she’d been expressing her incredulity to C’mine, insinuated itself back into her consciousness. No one can be in two places at once.

Her third epiphany was explosive.

I was out with Ops, M’ric had said, all those sevendays ago. I couldn’t very well be in two places at once.

“You liar,” Sarenya said aloud. “You liar.” She felt her fingers squeeze into fists. “You shaffing piece of shit liar, what did you do to T’kamen?”

ACT FIVE

Chapter sixty-nine: T’kamen

Thank you for your latest report. Things seem to be moving in a promising direction. I trust you recall I asked you to be circumspect with regard to how active a role you take in developments at the Weyr; that notwithstanding, the songs you’ve been sending are excellent. I would hope it will not be too much longer until we are in a position to debut them openly – all over Pern.

– Letter from Masterharper Marlaw to Weyr Singer Tawgert

26.10.17 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

“This again?” C’los asked.

T’kamen shrugged, staring out past him. Below, the dense timberlands of Kellad rippled in the wind, blanketing the land in every direction as far as the eye could see. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“That’s always what gets you into trouble, Kamen. I told you. Let me do the thinking. Then you can do the doing.”

“Is that wise?”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you. It’s only…”

“What? That I’m a green rider?” C’los asked. “You think I’m not on your side any more?”

“The Commander did achieve what you always talked about,” said T’kamen. He looked across the fire-height to where S’leondes stood at the edge of the roof, his hand on M’ric’s shoulder. “Respect for blue and green riders.”

“He gets them killed a lot, too,” said C’los. “Don’t eat the pie.”

“What does pie have to do with it?”

“It’s gone too far.” C’los pointed. “Look.”

T’kamen followed his finger, but he couldn’t see anything in the sea of undulating trees. The smell of ashes wafted up from the forest. “There’s nothing there, Los.”

“Yes, there is,” C’los said patiently. “You’re still too high up. I’m closer to the ground than you. You can’t be afraid to fall.” He pointed again, in a different direction. “See?”

As T’kamen watched, M’ric took a step off the edge of the roof. “No –” he began, starting forwards, but it was too late. He pitched over the edge and was gone.

“We’ve done all this before,” said C’los, unperturbed. He was eating a gigantic wedge of pie. “Nothing’s really changed. Well, I suppose a few things have.”

“Everything’s different,” said T’kamen. “And I thought you said not to eat the pie.”

“Doesn’t matter to me any more,” said C’los. Scarlet berries were oozing out of the pie and dripping onto his shirt. “And the cards are all the same. Just shuffled in a different order.”

“I’m a terrible poker player.”

“It’s not poker. It’s just a trick. You keep them watching what one hand’s doing and they won’t notice what the other one’s up to. Anyway, you hold all the aces.”

T’kamen looked at the hand of cards dealt on the table in front of him, three face up, two face down. The Five of Eggs. The Weyrwoman of Harps. The Wingleader of Stones. “These aren’t aces.”

C’los rolled his eyes. “It’s a figure of speech. And it’s still a strong hand.”

T’kamen looked at S’leondes. “He has a lot more cards than me.”

“The rest of the deck,” said C’los. “But he doesn’t know what you have in the hole.”

T’kamen turned over the fourth card. The Ace of Spears was a snarling scar-faced bronze dragon. “I think he might have guessed this one.”

S’leondes was holding out a card to him.

C’los plucked the card from the Commander’s fingers and inspected it. “Huh.” He handed it to T’kamen.

The Weyrling of Eggs. The face on the card wasn’t clear. T’kamen offered it back to C’los.

“Keep it,” C’los told him. “You still have one card left.”

T’kamen turned it over. The Weyrleader of Spears bore his own face. “Very funny. This isn’t a winning hand.”

“I told you, it’s not poker,” said C’los. “I can’t do this for you any more, Kamen.”

“Why not?” T’kamen asked. “You did it last time.”

“I know,” C’los said. The pie was gone, but the stain on his shirt remained, crimson and spreading. “But you know the drill. You’ll be fine. You’ve done this before and you can do it again.”

“But without you to think for me,” T’kamen said. “Los…”

“I’ve done the thinking,” C’los said gently. He turned away, smiling. He’d always had the most dazzling grin, ever since he was a boy. “Now it’s your turn.”

T’kamen reached after him, grabbing for his shoulder. “Los –”

But his hand passed through C’los’ shoulder, as if through smoke.

“Wake up, Kamen. Wake up. You’re –”

“– having a dream. Wake up!”

T’kamen startled into consciousness.

Leda was leaning over him, shaking his shoulder. “Come on, Kamen, wake up!”

He pushed her hand away. “I’m awake. I’m awake.”

“Thank Faranth,” Leda said, and sat back on her heels. She’d cracked open the glow-basket, and a narrow slice of light fell over her face. “Are you all right?”

T’kamen sat up. He passed a hand over his face. “I’m fine.”

“You must have been having a nightmare,” Leda said. “You were thrashing around and talking in your sleep…”

“Not a nightmare,” T’kamen said abruptly. He felt for his cane in the semi-darkness, and got up out of bed.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” Leda asked, behind him.

T’kamen limped over to the hearth.

Fetch raised his head, his eyes gleaming green. He was curled comfortably in the hollow he’d scraped for himself in the warm sand that incubated the fire-lizard eggs. “All’s well with them?” T’kamen asked.

The brown extended a wing protectively over the clutch, then laid his head back on his forearms, but his eyes never ceased their watchful whirling.

T’kamen eased himself carefully onto the floor next to the tub of hot sand. He brushed the closest shells lightly with his fingers. “The Five of Eggs,” he said softly. “The Clutch.”

“Who’s Los?” asked Leda, from the bed.

T’kamen looked across at her.

“You kept saying that name.”

“He was my friend,” T’kamen replied slowly. “My brother.”

“In the Interval?”

“He died,” said T’kamen.

The Weyrwoman of Harps. That was Dalka. The Wingleader of Stones; Ch’fil? The Ace and Weyrleader of Spears were clear enough. But who was the Weyrling of Eggs? M’ric?

“It makes no sense,” he said.

“Your dream?” asked Leda.

T’kamen said, “He was trying to warn me.”

Leda sat back. “You mean his…ghost?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” said T’kamen.

He didn’t. He’d never held with that sort of superstition. The C’los of his dream had been no more real than the manifestations of S’leondes or M’ric he’d seen there. T’kamen’s own mind had conjured all three phantasms and imbued them with life…and perhaps with knowledge that his conscious mind hadn’t yet grasped.

He levered himself back up off the floor and limped carefully back to bed. “I’m sorry I woke you,” he told Leda, as he settled himself next to her again.

She put her arm across his chest. “I worry about you sometimes.”

You can’t be afraid to fall.

T’kamen smiled in the darkness. “I’ll be fine.”

R’lony and S’leondes were nothing if not predictable.

“What’s the point of a few fighting dragons being able to go between?” R’lony asked the Commander.

“What’s the point?” S’leondes’ voice was flat. “What’s the point?”

“Twelve out of six hundred isn’t going to make a spit of difference against Thread. But twelve Seventh dragons who can do what Epherineth’s been doing these last months…”

“And give brown and bronze dragons the monopoly on between, so they can disappear off to the north and never be seen again? You’re a bigger fool than I thought if you think I’ll allow that, Marshal.”

“There’s more value in using between to move cargo –”

“What value a dragon’s life –”

“– and to mount rescues of fighting dragons –”

“Dragons who wouldn’t need rescuing!”

“– than squandering what few fire-lizards we have to make one paltry half Wing.” R’lony ground out the last of his sentence with dogged resolve.

S’leondes looked down at him, his face set into rigid lines. “Those fire-lizards were traded for dragon eggs. My dragon eggs.”

“Only four of them,” said R’lony. “The other eight were exchanged for my Crewleader.”

“Who should be on Westisle as we speak,” said S’leondes.

“Who’s been worth more to us in fire-lizard eggs than he could have been as a sop to your vindictiveness.”

They continued in that vein for a while. T’kamen wondered, as he listened to them argue, if the two men actually took pleasure in bickering with each other, or if they only did it out of ingrained, spiteful habit. Perhaps R’lony was sincere in his plans for the twelve fire-lizard eggs, but S’leondes wasn’t. S’leondes, T’kamen suspected, would have smashed the entire clutch if he’d thought he could do it without repercussions.

He sent a thought in Fetch’s direction for a moment, glimpsed his fire-lizard’s vigilant calm, and was reassured.

You know I won’t let anyone through, said Epherineth

They’d tried offering the fire-lizard clutch to Donauth to watch, but she had turned her nose emphatically up at the lizard eggs. Dalka had reported, quite straight-faced, her queen’s huffy declaration that she should hardly know what to do with such puny eggs. The custodians of the three green-laid eggs currently in their corner of the Hatching Sands had offered to care for the fire-lizard clutch, but given the sub-optimal dragonets that T’kamen had seen Hatch from some of those stunted shells, he’d been loath to hand over responsibility for them. So the clutch remained in his weyr, guarded at all times by Fetch’s conscientious attendance – and by Epherineth’s substantial bulk blocking the entrance.

T’kamen had no idea if Fetch knew what he was doing, but the little brown tended the eggs diligently: sniffing at them, scraping sand over some and scratching it away from others, and once nudging T’kamen awake in the middle of the night to re-stoke the fire when it had burned lower than usual. The eggs had been quite leathery when they’d brought them back from Ista, but as T’kamen hadn’t handled the pair of eggs M’ric had stolen from Alanne until they’d actually hatched, he had no basis for comparison. The Istan clutch did seem to be hardening, though, and T’kamen took Fetch’s devotion as a sign that the lizardlings inside were still viable.

He hoped they were. They’d cost enough.

But the question of which riders should be granted the privilege – and responsibility – of Impressing one of the twelve fire-lizards, when they hatched, had been the subject of bitter disagreement between R’lony and S’leondes. It had been inevitable that both would argue for the entire clutch to be bestowed upon their own riders; it had been equally inevitable that they would scorn each other’s claims. Dalka had told T’kamen to let them. “Thread will stop falling before those two pass up an opportunity to sling mud at each other. When they start repeating themselves, I’ll step in.”

It made T’kamen wish Ch’fil were still there. He was sure that he could have negotiated an agreement with S’leondes in half the time it took Commander and Marshal to squabble themselves to a stalemate. If Ch’fil hadn’t done what he’d done, there wouldn’t be any fire-lizard eggs to bicker over…yet, still, T’kamen missed him.

“S’leondes,” Dalka said at last. “R’lony. We don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Those eggs will hatch soon. This decision can’t wait forever.”

The two riders glared at each other, each too stubborn to give ground.

“There are twelve eggs, not one,” said Dalka. “There must be a way of dividing them between your two branches that you can agree on.”

“There are six hundred fighting dragons in Madellon and only a hundred in the Seventh Flight,” said S’leondes. “I make that ten eggs for my riders, two for yours.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” R’lony said. “You can have four. The four that those miserable eggs of Ceduth’s bought.”

“Not acceptable,” said S’leondes. “What am I supposed to do with four dragons who can go between?”

“Nearly as little as you’d do with twelve,” said R’lony.

“Why don’t you make it simple and have six each?” Dalka suggested.

“Because there’s not an even split of dragons in this Weyr,” said S’leondes. He didn’t exactly turn on her, but he spoke with angry impatience. “It’s completely disproportionate.”

“Numbers aren’t everything,” said R’lony.

Dalka sighed, as if exasperated, and turned to T’kamen. “What do you think, bronze rider?” she asked. “You’re the one who has to train these riders.”

T’kamen waited for both R’lony and S’leondes to look at him before he spoke – although he noticed, as he had ever since Dalka had pointed it out to him, that the Commander seldom truly looked at him. “This first group is an experiment,” he said. “There’s no point limiting its scope. We need to know that dragons of all colours can be piloted between. I need at least two of each colour to test that.” Then he paused. He looked, deliberately, at S’leondes, and almost enjoyed how he first sought to avoid his gaze completely and then, failing, unfocused his eyes to look through him instead. “But it’s a difficult concept for any dragon to grasp. Even Epherineth found it hard to combine his mind with Fetch’s. Whatever else is true of the role each colour occupies in the Weyr these days, green and blue dragons aren’t as intelligent as browns or bronzes.”

S’leondes’ face hardened, while R’lony’s cracked in a smirk.

“So I need more greens and blues to work with,” T’kamen went on, which wiped both expressions clean.

It’s just a trick, he heard C’los say, the memory of the dream of a ghost.

He said, “Two bronzes. Two browns. Three blues, five greens.”

R’lony found his voice first. “You’re giving them twice as many as us!”

“I need to know that they’ll obey my orders,” T’kamen went on, ignoring him. “And while I’m training them, none of them can fight. They’ll be too valuable to lose to Thread, like we did M’ric.”

S’leondes recoiled a bit at that, but he soon regained his composure. “I’ll select the riders –”

“You can make recommendations,” said T’kamen. He glanced at R’lony, to include him in the statement. “You both can. But I think every eligible rider with a dragon young enough should be entitled to put himself forward for consideration. And I’ll make the final decisions.”

“You vastly overreach yourself, bronze rider,” said S’leondes.

He probably intended the emphasis on bronze as a reminder of T’kamen’s lowly status. It had the opposite effect. “Going between is dangerous, Commander,” he said. “These riders will be my responsibility. I won’t train anyone I haven’t vetted.”

S’leondes sat back. “You still report to him.” He jerked his head in R’lony’s direction. “I won’t ask my riders to be subject to Strategic’s authority.”

“This isn’t a Strategic operation,” said Dalka. “It’s training.” She shrugged languidly. “The Weyrlingmaster reports to me. I don’t see why T’kamen shouldn’t come under me, too.”

Her choice of words made them all miss a beat.

“Fine,” said S’leondes at last. “You and Donauth can oversee this operation.”

R’lony looked harder at his weyrmate for longer, but eventually he muttered, “All right.”

Dalka excused herself shortly afterwards, pleading a summons from Donauth, and S’leondes left R’lony’s office with alacrity, as he always did – whether to be away from T’kamen, or simply out of the Marshal’s domain, it wasn’t clear. But R’lony closed the door behind the Commander before T’kamen could make his halting way out. “What are you doing?”

T’kamen held his accusing gaze without flinching. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“You gave far too much ground to him,” R’lony said. “Eight of his riders and only four of ours? You’ve just brought Thread down on your own head. He’ll give you the pick of his acolytes.”

“You underestimate me, R’lony,” T’kamen said mildly. “I asked for five greens and three blues.”

R’lony looked at him, uncomprehending.

It’s just a trick, said C’los.

T’kamen smiled slightly. “I didn’t say I’d choose them all from Tactical.”

El’yan pushed his Star-stone four spaces forwards to threaten T’kamen’s remaining Wingsecond, and said, “You’re quite serious.”

The move had placed both of El’yan’s Wingleaders in jeopardy. T’kamen analysed the board, trying to see his stratagem. “I have to be.” He moved his Weyrleader, resisting the obvious invitation to take one of El’yan’s strongest pieces off the board.

“No one can say your ambitions lack scope,” said El’yan. He turned in his seat as T’kamen considered his move, taking another game-board and set of chess-pieces from the table. He set it up beside the first, arranging only half of the white stone chess-men on the new board, facing a full array of black.

T’kamen thought he understood the lesson. “I’m to play white?”

“Black,” El’yan replied. “And it’s your move.”

The white pieces were in disarray, the gaps in their ranks presenting a host of tempting vulnerabilities to the solid ranks of the black. One of the white Star-stones could be taken with a mere Wingrider, opening up a clear path to the Weyrwoman. T’kamen made the move and removed the Star-stone from the board. “Check.”

El’yan moved one of his white Wingriders to protect his Weyrwoman.

T’kamen took it with a Wingleader. “Check.”

El’yan moved his Weyrwoman.

T’kamen moved his Wingleader to hem her in.

El’yan jumped a Wingsecond in to block him.

T’kamen took the Wingsecond with a Star-stone.

El’yan moved his Weyrleader clear across the board to threaten T’kamen’s Weyrwoman. “Check.”

T’kamen blinked. “Shaff,” he muttered.

“Do you understand?” asked El’yan.

“I can’t let my goals blind me to my own vulnerabilities?”

El’yan snorted. “You should know that already.” He reset the board, placing the pieces back where they’d been. “Look again. Take your time.”

T’kamen studied the board carefully. Knowing that taking the Star-stone was the wrong course made it simpler, but it still took him a moment to see the solution. “I take your Wingsecond with my Wingrider, there, and put you into check so that you have to counter with your Weyrleader. Once he’s out in the open, I can get my Wingleader in to mate.”

“And the lesson?”

T’kamen ran the sequence through in his mind. “A provocative move is more effective than an obvious one.”

El’yan grunted his assent as he began to clear the second board.

T’kamen watched him dump the almost full set of black pieces, and the depleted white, back into their box. “What do you think of my chances, El’yan?”

He didn’t reply for a bit. “These are changing times, T’kamen,” he said finally. “And you’re the change. Fire-lizards. Between. Bronze dragons, and brown, mattering again. R’lony has the experience, but does he have the vision? The leadership? He’s steered Strategic well enough on its current course, but the climate’s different now, and everyone knows it. And you were a Weyrleader. Don’t underestimate how attractive the old ways are starting to look to the young riders coming up in the Seventh.”

“Attractive enough that I won’t be censured for defying the newer traditions?”

“You don’t have to take every piece on the board to win, T’kamen. But you’ll need to play smart as well as bold. R’lony hasn’t stayed Marshal this long by being stupid.”

“What’s his blind spot?” T’kamen asked.

“You already know what it is.” El’yan threw T’kamen a look. “Uncomfortable though it clearly makes you.”

“It’s too personal,” said T’kamen. “I don’t have a vendetta against R’lony. I’m not setting out to destroy him.”

“Don’t try and sell me that it’s R’lony’s tender feelings you don’t want to bruise,” said El’yan. “I didn’t come down with the rain.” He studied him measuringly. “It’s the entanglement you’re afraid of, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t use the word afraid.”

“Why not? You wouldn’t be unjustified. Dalka’s not a woman to be taken lightly. She’s broken men who haven’t lived up to her expectations.”

“That’s not reassuring, El’yan.”

“It wasn’t meant to be. If that’s the move you’ve chosen, you have to commit to it.”

T’kamen didn’t have an answer for that.

“Is it that little green rider of yours?” El’yan asked.

“Yes. No.” T’kamen stopped. “Not exactly.”

“You’re not convincing me that it’s a passion for the ages.”

“Maybe it’s not, but I still don’t want to hurt her.”

“There’s no avoiding it. It’s really only a question of how soon and how badly.”

T’kamen winced.

“You can’t hatch a clutch without breaking some shells,” El’yan told him. “And, if you’ll forgive me for a second metaphor, a rider can’t straddle two dragons. Particularly when one of them is a queen.”

“Bronze rider! Bronze rider, sir, could I have a moment!”

The shout made T’kamen’s heart sink, and for an instant he wondered if he might be able to redouble his speed and make it as far as Epherineth’s ledge before it was too late.

Then he squared his shoulders, suppressed the look of resignation that threatened to cross his face, and turned awkwardly to face his pursuer.

The green rider who had hailed him looked relieved. “Thank you, sir. I don’t mean to bother you, sir.”

The exaggerated courtesy had become so ubiquitous as to be unremarkable. “It’s no bother, wingrider…?”

“Tr’seff, sir,” the green rider said. “Tr’seff, Franth’s rider. I was hoping you’d consider us for your Wing, sir.”

It was late and T’kamen was tired. He wanted to tell the young rider that if he hadn’t already submitted his name to his Wingleader, he was too late. That was the method S’leondes had proposed after T’kamen had spent most of a day being mobbed by riders of every colour desperate to volunteer themselves. Under other circumstances he would have been grateful for the intervention. But he didn’t want his options narrowed to those riders who had already been filtered through their Wingleaders – and, implicitly, by S’leondes himself. And C’los’ ghost, riding with him as it did almost all the time now, reminded him that every opportunity to look a fighting rider in the eye was an opportunity that shouldn’t be wasted. Even when all he really wanted was to go to bed.

“Tr’seff,” he said. “Why don’t you step inside my weyr for a moment?”

Fetch looked up from the clutch as T’kamen preceded the young green rider into the weyr. Out of habit, T’kamen crossed to the hearth and put his hand down to feel an egg. It still didn’t feel quite hatching-hard to the touch. T’kamen straightened and gestured Tr’seff to one of the chairs. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Franth’s eight,” Tr’seff began, and T’kamen wondered when word would finally get around. He’d asked for riders whose dragons were no more than eight, and privately, he was of the mind that younger was better. It hadn’t stopped riders with older dragons – sometimes much older – from approaching him. He’d been polite, regretful, and increasingly firm with them. Some of them had wept.

“Who is she out of?” T’kamen asked.

That was important because he wanted to make sure that the dragons he worked with were representative of all Madellon’s breeding lines – both green and gold. If green-laid dragons were less capable of going between even with a fire-lizard’s help, he needed to know.

Franth was out of Levierth. Tr’seff was happy to talk about his dragon, as most riders were, but when, after he’d spoken for several minutes about his green’s endurance and flame range and straight-line speed, he still hadn’t mentioned their Wing, T’kamen interrupted. “Where are you assigned?”

“Herony’s Wing, sir,” Tr’seff said. His face coloured slightly as he said it. “Well, I mean, it used to be G’sol’s Wing, but…”

“Third Flight,” said T’kamen.

Tr’seff looked pained, but he nodded. “Yes, sir.”

T’kamen had been approached by riders from every Flight, but by more representatives of the notoriously ill-fortuned Third than any other. Given its mortality rate over the last Turn, he couldn’t be surprised. Nor was it surprising that most of the Third riders he’d seen were ashamed of their assignment. It would have been easy to dismiss them on the basis that any dragonpair posted to the Third must be deficient in some way, but T’kamen resisted the reaction. Wing assignments were as political in the Pass as they’d ever been in the Interval, and just because S’leondes had seen fit to banish a rider to the Third didn’t mean he or she had necessarily done anything to deserve it.

But he didn’t remark on Tr’seff’s assignment, consolingly or otherwise. Instead, he asked, “Why should I choose you?”

He asked the same question of every rider who came to him, and in many cases he got the same answers. He heard a lot of platitudes about loyalty and hard work and commitment that were probably sincere, but fundamentally empty. He heard boasts of Thread-fighting feats too extravagant to be true, and modesty so overstated it could only be false. Some riders begged him for a chance, and others informed him that he’d be making a serious mistake to exclude them. It made for a wearying cross-section through the layers of conceit, idealism, self-importance, and insecurity that made up the average late-teenage fighting dragonrider. And he’d thought M’ric was bad.

Tr’seff frowned in a way that indicated he hadn’t rehearsed his answer. “Franth’s not the fastest green,” he said. “She’s not the smallest or the most athletic. Her flame’s not the best. The one thing she’s good at is not being in the way.” He smiled ruefully. “She always knows where not to be when Thread’s falling. She sort of has a sense for it. I suppose that’s how we’re still here, with the age she is.”

“I see,” said T’kamen.

“It just means she misses a lot,” said Tr’seff. “Not from want of trying. It’s only that by the time she’s got herself out of the way, the strand she would have burned is out of range.”

He was silent for a long space, but T’kamen didn’t prompt him.

“I suppose she’s not very brave,” Tr’seff went on at last. “She worries too much. Thinks about everything too hard. She’s always second-guessing herself.” He raised his eyes sheepishly to T’kamen’s. “And I’m not making a good case for us, am I?”

“Not an obvious one,” T’kamen agreed. It would have been disingenuous to say otherwise.

“It’s only that I don’t think we’re making a difference, where we are,” Tr’seff said. “I don’t think we’d be missed, very much.” He hesitated, chewing his lip, as if trying to decide whether or not to go on. “If something happened to us. It wouldn’t be a big loss to the Wings.”

T’kamen studied Tr’seff for a long moment. Fatalism wasn’t an uncommon trait amongst Madellon’s young fighting riders. He wondered if, in some sense, it was even encouraged. He’d seen enough Falls now to know that Thread would have cut a far greater swathe through southern Pern’s fertile lands if not for the unflinching heroism of the dragonriders who threw themselves in its path, regardless of their own safety. And yet there was a certain look in the eyes of the riders who’d resigned themselves to a short life and an early death, like a fire stoked too high, and Tr’seff lacked that manic glitter. The young green rider just sat and watched him with an earnestness that T’kamen found intriguing rather than disturbing.

“You think something could happen to you if you joined my Wing,” he said, keeping his voice neutral, and watching for the reaction.

Tr’seff raised his shoulders. “It’s between, isn’t it? It’s dangerous.”

“Does that frighten you?”

“Frighten me, sir?” He looked surprised. “Well, of course. I’d be stupid if it didn’t.”

T’kamen nearly smiled. It wasn’t every young man who could admit to being afraid. “Why do you want to be chosen if you’re afraid?”

“Because I’m always afraid, sir,” said Tr’seff. “I’m afraid every time Franth and I fly Fall. That’s why she’s so careful. That’s why we’re so…I don’t want to say bad at it, but… She’s eight. We don’t have much time left, before…”

“Before what?”

Tr’seff evaded his look. “We could be doing something else, is all. We could be better at something else.”

“All right,” said T’kamen. “I’ll keep you in mind. Why don’t you go to bed, green rider?”

He sat by the fire for a long time after he dismissed Tr’seff back to his own weyr, wondering if the Commander had sent him.

S’leondes had passed him a list of some forty candidates for the eight fire-lizard eggs that had been allotted to green and blue riders, and T’kamen was certain that every last one was completely loyal to the Commander. If S’leondes couldn’t prevent Madellon’s dragons from going between, he would want at least to exercise control over the dragonpairs so enabled. He probably reckoned that having two-thirds of their number loyal to him would give him the edge in a Wing that was nominally under T’kamen’s command.

T’kamen planned to thwart that ambition. Of the three eggs allocated to blues, he intended only one to go to a fighting rider. The other two he had already earmarked for F’sta and I’gral – Seventh Flight blue riders.

Of all Madellon’s dragons, the handful of blues who failed to make the fighting Wings were perhaps the most unfortunate: reviled by their colour-mates, ostracised by their Flightmates. There were only eight of them, and they kept themselves to themselves, even within the Seventh. Tapping two of them for fire-lizards would put both S’leondes’ and R’lony’s noses out of joint: the former would doubtless call the selection a slur on his fighting blues, and the latter would see it as a direct bid for influence within Strategic. As political moves went, it wasn’t subtle, but that was the point. No one would be surprised by the mounting evidence that T’kamen intended to stand for Marshal, and while S’leondes believed that was the limit of his aspirations, T’kamen’s true intent remained obscure.

The ploy did redress the balance between the fighting Wings and the Seventh in T’kamen’s force, but he still had to choose five green riders and one blue, each of whom would probably be reporting every word and action back to the Commander. Some of the riders he’d seen had been obvious acolytes and others had gone so far in the other direction that their true loyalties were plain, too. And the candidates who seemed ostensibly the most promising were probably the Commander’s most fierce devotees.

Tr’seff was the latest of thirty or so riders who had approached him independent of the shortlist. Most of them were hopeless. S’leondes had, at least, culled the totally unsuitable – too old, too unpredictable, too desperate – from his list. But the odd one came along to make T’kamen think. Tr’seff’s uninspiring service record didn’t make him an obvious candidate. But the green rider’s admission that his dragon was more cautious than courageous – and his self-awareness – spoke to T’kamen. A careful rider was more use to him than a fearless one.

But of all the riders who’d come to him on their own, Tr’seff was one of the few with promise, and that made T’kamen distrust him. If S’leondes really wanted to slip a spy into T’kamen’s camp, someone like Tr’seff would be a prime suspect.

He sighed. The process was making him paranoid. S’leondes, Dalka had told him, was a cunning man, but he wasn’t subtle. As many traps as he might lay, they wouldn’t be that sophisticated. T’kamen had to choose someone to train to go between. And for all the scheming S’leondes was doing, neither he nor R’lony seemed to have grasped why T’kamen had asked for the ratio he had. He supposed it was a consequence of a Pass population nearly three times as large as that T’kamen had governed as Weyrleader. S’leondes and R’lony wouldn’t consider a force as paltry as twelve dragons – thirteen, including Epherineth – as a credible unit. T’kamen, whose first command had been a Wing of a mere eleven dragons, did. The split between green, blue, brown, and bronze was close to the perfect ratio that Interval bronze riders used as a basis for their theoretical Thread-fighting strategies.

Whatever the Commander thought T’kamen intended to do with the riders he trained to go between, he couldn’t have realised that he had handed him the components of the classical fighting Wing.

The list he presented to Dalka two days later induced her finely-arched eyebrow to rise more than once.

“H’juke and O’sten I can see for the bronzes,” she said, “though you’ll have made a deathly enemy of N’briel. And Z’renniz would have been my first choice among the browns, too. But what’s the thinking behind B’nam? He’s loyal to R’lony through and through.”

T’kamen sipped the wine that – as usual – Dalka had mixed stronger than he liked. “I’m counting on it.”

She regarded him contemplatively. “Another distraction for S’leondes?”

“That,” said T’kamen, “and an antagonist for the fighting riders loyal to him.”

“I thought you wanted your Wing to be the model of traditional colour harmony.”

“That dragon isn’t going to get hatched until I break a few eggshells,” T’kamen said. “B’nam will be the natural rallying point for the Seventh riders. Either Dannie or B’roce will be the same for Tactical.”

Dalka nodded slowly. “But because B’nam is R’lony’s boy, the fighting contingent’s resentment for him deflects from you.”

“They won’t be able to accuse me of favouritism towards him when I’ve deposed his mentor,” T’kamen said. “I need to be fair above everything else. No rider is going to get an easier time from me based on their dragon’s colour.”

“H’juke could be a problem, then,” said Dalka. “He practically considers himself your tail.”

“I’m still barred from ever taking another tail,” said T’kamen.”

“But he’s the one who’s been helping with Epherineth. It hasn’t gone unnoticed.”

“I’ll speak to him,” said T’kamen, though it troubled him. Dalka was right – he couldn’t be seen to favour H’juke – but he still needed help with his dragon, and perhaps always would. He just couldn’t climb all over Epherineth the way a dragonrider needed to any more.

“These greens,” Dalka said, returning her attention to the list. “You’re right about Dannie. She’s been spoken of as Wingsecond material. But she’ll be solidly in the Commander’s corner.”

“Name me a green rider with leadership potential who isn’t.”

Dalka accepted that with a shrug. “You’ve gone for Kayrin because Mnorth is green-laid?”

“I liked the girl, too. She seemed steady.”

“And you’re aware that Fraza tailed for S’leondes?”

“Well aware.”

She laid the slate with T’kamen’s selections on it down upon the table, and sighed. “Well, no one can say you’ve shied away from difficult candidates, T’kamen. I’m not sure there’s a rider among them whose loyalty you could count on, barring H’juke.”

“That’s the idea.”

“You have so much faith in your ability to win them.”

It was more statement than question, and spoken without Dalka’s characteristic irony. T’kamen cocked his head. “I have to. If I can’t persuade twelve kids to believe in me, what hope do I have of convincing the rest of the Weyr?”

Dalka looked at him with that calculating gaze. “You haven’t selected Leda.”

T’kamen heard the challenge behind the neutral observation. “I had every reason not to.”

“Does she agree with those reasons?”

“I didn’t discuss them with her.”

“And she’s happy with that?”

“For now.”

Dalka watched him avidly. “Only for now?”

“I’m not ready to show my hand, Dalka.” T’kamen steeled himself, and added, “Our hand.”

Dalka’s eyes lit. “And what’s the play?”

T’kamen thought about El’yan and his chess board. “I make it personal.”

Chapter seventy: Valonna

As often as I tell myself that I did only what was necessary, still I look back at the tally sheet of my life, and wonder when I will be asked to pay for all I’ve done.

100.05.16 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

JESSAF HOLD AND MADELLON WEYR

It was a tradition long established that the Lords Holder of Madellon territory must begin any summit discussing their duty to the Weyr by protesting the poverty of their Holds. Never mind that Lords Meturvian, Winstone, and Zinner were the three richest men west of the Peninsula; never mind that, despite the drought, a child could have observed the overflowing granaries and storehouses stuffed with the most fruitful harvest southern Pern had seen in ten Turns; never mind that Winstone of Jessaf had just engaged a full dozen Master Miners and their teams to survey the promising deposits of iron, copper, and silver that his holders had found in the westernmost reaches of his vast domain. When the Weyr came asking for tithe, the Holds would put on a show of destitution worthy of a Gather play.

It was a shame, Valonna thought, as Masterharper Gaffry held her chair for her, that Meturvian hadn’t been able to divest himself of all his jewellery. Kellad’s Lord, always a burly man, was running to fat – enjoying too much of his Hold’s recent prosperity, no doubt – and the chunky rings of gold and silver embedded in his sausage-thick fingers had clearly resisted all attempts at removal. Their stubborn presence made the absence of any other adornments nearly laughable, while the fact that the Lord of Kellad had surely had his ostentatiously unostentatious tunic tailored for the occasion somewhat undermined his efforts to present himself in a state of self-imposed austerity.

Winstone was better at playing this particular game, partly because he was miserly by nature in spite of his wealth, and partly because he’d been at it longer. Meturvian would probably have stripped the more expensive paintings and tapestries from his halls, and hidden away the best glassware; Winstone, not given to lavishing his marks on such things anyway, had simply chosen a room that didn’t overlook the construction of Jessaf’s new racing flats for the meeting.

Blue Shale’s Lord Zinner had taken the least trouble to make himself look poor. Under other circumstances, that would have surprised Valonna. But of the three Lords, the Seaholder was the only one who could afford to wear his Hold’s affluence unselfconsciously. Blue Shale wasn’t a region known for its livestock and could have taken little part in the plot that had been perpetrated against the Weyr. And evading culpability for that, more so even than the drive to appear too impoverished to meet Madellon’s tithing demands, was certainly foremost in Meturvian and Winstone’s minds.

Zinner was quick to take full advantage of his Hold’s strong position. “I understand congratulations are in order, H’ned,” he said, clasping wrists with the bronze rider. “Or should that be Weyrleader?”

“It should be, Zinner” H’ned replied, “but as we’re all equals now, H’ned will do just fine.”

Winstone looked as if he’d have liked to dispute H’ned’s assertion, but he held his tongue. Meturvian showed somewhat less restraint. “Is this to be the way things are done in the Weyr now? Weyrleaders elevated to the position by their peers rather than winning the right? It seems quite the fashion, these days.”

“Not at all, Meturvian,” said H’ned. “Shimpath’s next mating flight will decide the Weyrleader in traditional fashion. Though I have every confidence that there’ll be no change in leadership at that time.”

Valonna hoped that Shimpath’s snort of distaste was only mental. She didn’t disagree with it, though. H’ned’s boast made her skin creep. She understood the need for him to present a strong front to the Lords of Madellon, but she couldn’t bring herself to back him up with more than the smallest smile.

“Be that as it may, I trust that whatever the source of your authority, you’ll honour the agreements we had with your predecessors,” said Winstone.

H’ned’s smile hardened, and while his tone remained affable, his words didn’t wholly match it. “I wish it were the case that prior arrangements could be allowed to stand. In the light of recent events, however, I’m sure you’ll appreciate that we must insist on a complete reassessment of our relative positions.”

The statement dropped like a stone into snow. Winstone’s pinched face contracted still further. Meturvian checked the retort that was clearly on his lips. Zinner, leaning far back in his seat as if to emphasise his disassociation from the recent events of H’ned’s allusion, looked casually from one Lord to the other. And Masterharper Gaffry was the picture of sober neutrality, though Valonna was sure that his eyes missed nothing at all.

H’ned forged on regardless. From a record tube, he took the summary of Madellon’s demands. “We propose three changes to the Charter, to take effect for the coming five-Turn period. The first is a material increase of the base tithe from each of your holdings of seven per cent…”

Meturvian snorted, “Seven! Absurd!”

“…to redress the current shortfall in our supply,” H’ned continued, ignoring him. “A further three per cent, deferred until the Turn 102, to reflect the predicted increase in Madellon’s dragon population that will result from our second queen.

“Secondly, a special measure for the first Turn, with the possibility of extension thereafter.” H’ned cleared his throat. “The replacement of material goods in each category with marks, pegged to market values as set by the governing Crafthall of the first day of this Turn.”

“What?” Zinner exclaimed.

“Finally, a binding pledge to set aside a portion of your holdings’ overall income each Turn of no less than two parts in one hundred to create a fund for the ongoing and future development of Madellon protectorate’s Thread defences and preparations; said fund to be used strictly in the cause of readying the territory for the Pass.”

The brief period of incredulous silence that followed H’ned’s pronouncement didn’t surprise Valonna in the least. Nor did Meturvian’s eventual response. “You’re Threadstruck if you think we’ll swallow that,” he said. “A ten per cent increase? In marks? And what in Faranth’s name is this fund?”

“Seven per cent for the next two Turns, Meturvian,” H’ned corrected him, “and given how Madellon has been explicitly defrauded in the supply of livestock, our demand for marks rather than goods is hardly unreasonable.”

Winstone cut into the exchange, perhaps fearing that Meturvian would compromise them both if allowed to speak. “We are all as appalled as you by the criminal activities of the Beastcrafthall, H’ned, and by the unconscionable and shocking actions of certain other individuals…”

“Do you mean the Kellad herdsmen who tried to hide the evidence of their crimes by beating and killing Master Arrense?” H’ned asked, with an icy glance at Meturvian.

“Those men will be punished!” Meturvian said, before Winstone could stop him. “Those mountain folk scarcely consider themselves under Kellad’s jurisdiction at all, but I am bringing the full weight of justice to bear upon them nonetheless!” He took a breath, then added, “And upon the steward who it seems was facilitating the fraud across Hold and Weyr borders – who was also embezzling marks from my own coffers!”

Valonna noticed how Winstone almost winced at that last creative flourish. She wondered if Gaffry found it as blackly humorous as she did that Meturvian was trying to evoke some sympathy for himself. Everyone – Jessaf, Kellad, and especially the Beastcrafthall – had been producing culprits in droves. Valonna didn’t doubt that a plot as wide-ranging as the one that had been robbing Madellon of its rightful beast tithe must involve dozens of people, and she knew that there was a weyrling’s chance in Thread that either Winstone or Meturvian would confess to their own part in it. Still, Meturvian’s attempt to cast himself as the victim of a treacherous steward struck her as particularly farcical. It was a mark of how afraid Kellad’s Lord was of implicating himself that he would prefer to appear gullible than guilty.

“And these marks have all simply vanished, have they?” H’ned asked. “All the proceeds from the illegal sale of Madellon livestock that should have come to the Weyr?”

“Would that we could pry the whereabouts of those marks from the guilty parties, Weyrleader,” Winstone interjected. “None of the ringleaders are prepared to talk, and as the Charter forbids us from extracting information by force…” He let it trail delicately away. “We have, of course, seized all assets belonging to those responsible. Some marks, personal luxuries, a number of expensive runnerbeasts. Perhaps it would be some small token of our sympathy for the proceeds from the sale of those items to be paid directly to you, Weyrleader, for you to dispose with as you see fit. For the benefit of Madellon, of course.”

It gave Valonna a small cause for reassurance that H’ned’s eyes had gone flat at Winstone’s offer. Izath says to assure you that his rider is not Pierdeth’s rider, said Shimpath.

Tell him I had no doubt on that account.

“It will take more than a handful of marks to replace what Madellon has been deprived of, Lord Winstone,” said H’ned. “Both in goods, and in trust.”

“If you mean to imply –” Meturvian began.

“Nothing of the sort,” said H’ned. “I’m sure you’d both be more than happy to submit to Shimpath’s scrutiny.”

If Valonna had had any doubt about Winstone’s complicity before, the rictus of frozen terror that briefly broke through his controlled façade dispelled it. She let the fear take root for a moment, and then spoke for the first time. “H’ned, you know how upset Shimpath already is. I would not lightly expose the Lords of Madellon to her agitation, nor her to anything with the potential to heighten it. She already feels sorely disrespected by the failure of Madellon’s Holds to support her dragons adequately.”

Then she turned to the anxious Lords Holder and spoke with the earnest meekness she knew they expected from her. “My Lords. I’m not concerned with apportioning blame or seeking vengeance. I know that you will mete out justice against the men in your territories who did the Weyr, and you, wrong. I also trust you know that Madellon will assist in the exile of any parties found guilty of the worst crimes. In this, the Weyr bows to your judgement.” Meturvian looked relieved, and even Winstone nodded to her with a greater show of humility than Valonna had ever seen from him. She pressed on. “But however it came about, we have been poorly supplied in recent Turns. The low-quality beasts that have made up your quotas are plainly not satisfactory. And it’s clear that the mark-making scheme that has deprived our dragons of decent sustenance has all but emptied Madellon territory of acceptable stock. Peninsula territory, meanwhile, is experiencing a glut of high-quality beasts that has driven prices down to an unprecedented level. We appreciate it will take time for your pastures to be adequately repopulated, and therefore we ask merely for the capacity to purchase stock outside Madellon’s borders, at a fair market price.”

“A Weyr doesn’t buy outside its own borders,” said Meturvian. “That’s always been the tradition.”

“Only in the south,” Valonna corrected him, “and the tradition was only established when Southern Weyr was founded, to prevent an influx of cheap southern goods to the north. We would restrict our purchases to the southern continent. And it would enable us to modify our supply to what is required, rather than what we happen to have tithed. We often find ourselves with a surplus of one item and a dearth of another. The use of currency would make our resourcing more efficient.” And stop the Holds fulfilling their duty to the Weyr with the minimum quality of this or that commodity, as the livestock fraud had exploited – but Valonna didn’t say that. She didn’t have to. The three Lords of Madellon knew exactly what she hadn’t spoken aloud.

“Weyrleader T’kamen made it clear last Turn –” Winstone began.

“Weyrleader T’kamen is gone,” said Valonna, and then she had to catch her breath as the impact of saying it aloud briefly rattled her. “And much else has changed. And will change. And must be paid for.”

“I’m sorry you lost your Weyrleader, Valonna,” Meturvian said. He didn’t sound sorry. Aggression was bleeding through his imperfect control. “But exactly why should we be tithing more to the Weyr – and in hard marks! – if you’re not providing a better service to us now? What benefit to us, supporting two hundred and fifty dragons and a thousand people? You sit up there on your mountaintop, doing Faranth-knows-what; expecting us to feed you, to clothe you; stealing our young men for your candidates; getting our young girls pregnant; and all the time demanding respect that you haven’t earned!”

Valonna had expected the argument – all the riders who had served as Madellon’s Weyrleaders for the past sixty or seventy Turns had heard it in one form or another, and written angrily of it in their records – but it was the first time she’d had it shouted in her face. Her instinctive indignation echoed through to Shimpath, and she felt her queen’s anger rousing, even as H’ned drew himself up beside her to answer the insult. No, Shimpath, she told her dragon, and, “No, H’ned,” she said to her Weyrleader.

Then she met Meturvian’s belligerent stare. After all she had faced that summer, she found, curiously, that he didn’t intimidate her. She had stared down worse men. “Have you anything more to add, Lord Kellad?” When he recoiled slightly – perhaps at the use of that variation of his title – Valonna looked at the other Lords of Madellon. “My Lord Jessaf? Blue Shale? Would either of you like to add your voices to Kellad’s?”

Zinner looked uncomfortable, and Winstone clearly disapproved of Meturvian’s outburst, but it was he who spoke. “Weyrwoman, I have known your family for many Turns. Will you allow me to speak, if not as impolitely as Kellad, then at least as plainly?”

Valonna inclined her head towards him. “Of course, my Lord.”

Winstone pressed his lips together. Then he spoke. “You make the same argument that we have heard from every Weyrleader who has sat in your place since Madellon’s founding. Our response is also the same. The Pass is a hundred Turns away. My children’s children will be old men before a dragon of Madellon burns a single Thread from Jessaf’s skies. Meturvian is right. We support the Weyr, as the Charter promises. We allow you to choose candidates from our Holds. We even look the other way when your riders plant dragonseed in our women. We do this out of respect for you, for your queen, and for the ways of dragons.

“But you demand tribute without merit. You are the descendants of yesterday’s heroes and the ancestors of tomorrow’s, but you have won no glory of your own. We’re not children, Weyrwoman, to believe that every man or woman who rides a dragon is better than us. It seems, indeed, that a man like P’raima, raised to power and influence by Impressing a bronze dragon, in fact has the ability to become far worse. We are not so short-sighted that we fail to see the role Madellon’s dragonriders will play when the Red Star passes, a hundred Turns from now. So we will support you. But you are not protecting Pern. You cannot expect to be venerated for deeds you have not performed, or entertained in luxury to the detriment of those who labour to keep you. I say this not to offend you, Weyrwoman. Weyrleader. I’m sure that if you had been born in the Pass, you would have distinguished yourselves against Thread. It’s not your fault that you were born to the Interval, yet here we are, a century deep in Thread-free skies, and we must all of us cut our coats according to our cloth.”

Valonna nodded to Winstone as he finished his speech. “Thank you, my Lord,” she said. She kept her voice completely absent any inflection. “My Lord Blue Shale?”

“I would like to point out that Blue Shale had no part in disrespecting you, your queen or your Weyr,” said Zinner. “But I cannot fault Lord Winstone’s logic. And I would add just one thing. My Hold is a hub for sea-trade, but getting our goods inland over our southern terrain has held back Blue Shale’s development ever since it was founded. The dragons of the Peninsula are well known to accept paying contracts for conveyance of cargo. Let your riders do the same.”

Next to Valonna, H’ned bristled. He was much the more level-headed of the two riders who had served as Valonna’s Deputy Weyrleaders since T’kamen’s disappearance, but on this one count, Valonna would have preferred to have Sh’zon sitting beside her. H’ned had a Madellon rider’s instinctive distaste for the idea of dragons being used as literal beasts of burden. Valonna could feel his resistance to the suggestion radiating from him.

Valonna felt differently, and Sh’zon would have, too. The time Valonna had spent in Rallai’s company over the last couple of months had educated her on a great many matters. The Peninsula was the largest protectorate on Pern, but not the most populous; that distinction belonged to Southern. Valonna had been astonished to discover that tithing accounted for only seven parts in ten of the Peninsula’s upkeep. It earned the remaining thirty per cent by contracting out its dragons to carry passengers and cargo. The mercenary approach had also earned the Peninsula the disdain of every other Weyr on Pern, but Valonna couldn’t deny the appeal, from a fiscal point of view, of creating a new income stream for Madellon. If things had been different, she might have agreed to pursue the idea as a genuine alternative to the changes she wanted to make.

“My Lords,” she said, and opened the record tube she had brought with her from Madellon. From it, she passed out copies of the map that Carleah, with her excellent eye for detail and beautiful script, had duplicated for her from the Records. There was one for the Masterharper as well as the copy she kept in front of her and H’ned. “This is our latest map of Madellon’s protectorate and all the Holds major and minor within it.”

Each of the Lords studied the map with fierce concentration; checking, no doubt, that the full extent of their holdings was represented. The territory of each was shaded in the primary colour of each Hold: yellow for Jessaf, blue for Blue Shale, and green for Kellad. The lesser Holds were marked within each territory, and Madellon itself was an uncoloured island in the middle of the three regions.

“Is this a true representation of your respective holdings?” Valonna asked.

Zinner and Meturvian nodded, the latter rather grudgingly. Winstone frowned slightly, and said, “We’ve settled rather further south of the Bonnery River than this shows, but other than that, it seems accurate.”

Valonna unrolled a second set of hides from the tube. The vellum had been specially treated and scraped so thin that it was actually translucent. “If you’d lay these over the first,” she said, handing them around the table.

Winstone’s face went guarded as soon as he complied with Valonna’s instructions. Meturvian’s clouded. “What’s this?”

“The overlay shows the borders that were proposed for your three Holds before their founding at the end of the last Pass,” said Valonna. She didn’t need to point out that each territory was dramatically smaller than the one on the first map, or that the three original tracts of land would all have fit within Jessaf’s actual current borders with room to spare.

“Weyrwoman,” said Winstone, curtly enough to make it clear that he was rattled by the direction of Valonna’s demonstration, “if you’re hoping to argue that our Holds have exceeded the boundaries that the Weyr pledged to protect at Founding, then I’m afraid you’ve wasted some good vellum. Jessaf’s expansion was agreed nearly forty Turns ago; I believe Weyrleader O’ret’s name and seal are on the amendment to the Charter.”

“Blue Shale’s claim on the coastline clear to the West Delta was established even before that,” Zinner said, “not that we’re halfway close to pushing that far west.”

“And if we hadn’t struck south, we’d never have uncovered the firestone deposits in the Greatpeaks, and Madellon would be begging to Peninsula or Southern for supplies,” said Meturvian.

“Your claims aren’t in dispute, my Lords,” said Valonna. “Madellon’s capacity to protect them is.”

“Oh, and here it comes,” Meturvian muttered.

“My Lord Kellad.” Valonna spoke sharply. “I’m sure you are not ignorant of the news from Telgar. The crisis that began with Southern’s weyrlings last Turn is not confined to the south. Pern’s young dragons have lost the ability to go between.”

“We were promised that you were looking into the matter,” said Winstone.

“We have been,” said Valonna. “We are. But if we have learned one thing from this situation, it’s that we have no true understanding of how between works. Even our dragons don’t completely comprehend how it functions. They merely use it.” She looked at Zinner. “If the ocean currents were to stop flowing, would your sailors know how to fix them?”

The analogy clearly resonated with Zinner; he looked unsettled indeed. “No,” he admitted.

“Dragons still have wings,” said Meturvian, though some of the force had gone out of his protestation.

“And runnerbeasts still have legs,” said Valonna, “and neither is as swift as a trip between.” From her record tube, she removed a final set of translucent hides. On them, Carleah had inked a series of concentric circles, centred on Madellon. “Travel times,” she said, once each Lord Holder had laid the plans over the two they already had before them. “Flying straight, without breaks, and assuming fair weather.”

Winstone was the first to speak into the uncomfortable silence that ensued. “Seven hours from Jessaf to the Weyr. Seven hours a-dragonback.”

“Two hours just from Kellad would be intolerable,” Meturvian objected.

“Concerned though we obviously are for your comfort and convenience,” said H’ned, with a remarkable lack of inflection, “I think you fail to see the bigger picture here. When the Red Star passes, Thread will fall wholly or partially in Madellon territory twice and sometimes three times per sevenday. Conservatively, the Weyr will need to fly Fall every three days.” He leaned forward for emphasis. “Madellon’s present protectorate is more than thirty hours’ flying time across. How do you think we will be able to reposition our fighting Wings to meet it without being able to send them between?”

To their credit, the Lords Holder grasped the issue rapidly. Even Meturvian paled slightly as the significance of H’ned’s words sank in, and though he was quick to retort, his protest lacked force. “Well, it seems to me that the Dragonweyr had better find a solution to its between problem, and soon!”

“Would that we could, my Lord,” said Valonna. “And we won’t stop looking. But we would be remiss – and foolish – to simply assume that we will find an answer in time, and make no provision for what happens if we don’t.”

“The Pass is a hundred Turns away –” Zinner began, without conviction.

“In fifty, there won’t be a dragon left alive on Pern who can go between,” H’ned cut across him, “and our successors, and yours, will be sitting here that much worse equipped to prepare for a Pass that much closer.”

“And cursing us for being too short-sighted to consider the legacy we bequeathed them,” said Valonna.

The mention of legacy made the Lords Holder stir. “And how do you propose that we prepare?” Winstone asked. “More dragons? More Weyrs? Is that what this fund is to furnish?”

“We don’t yet know,” Valonna said simply. “We’re only beginning to see the edges of what a Pern without between looks like.”

“It does seem that Madellon is better placed than the other southern Weyrs to serve its protectorate,” said Zinner. He had been studying the map intently. “The Peninsula’s too near the coast. Southern, too. Faranth, but half of Peninsula’s western holds are closer to Madellon as the dragon flies. Are you seeking to change Madellon’s borders?”

“We haven’t got that far,” said H’ned. “But I can assure you that the Peninsula’s Weyrleaders, and Southern’s, will be having conversations with their Lords Holder much like this one.”

“You said that we are not protecting Pern,” Valonna said, looking at Winstone. “And maybe, in any other Interval, you’d be right. But this isn’t any other Interval. We have been shaken out of our complacency by the events of this last Turn. If dragons have truly lost the ability to go between, then a hundred Turns from now our descendants will be facing Threadfall without being able to travel between to meet it wherever it falls, without the ability to dodge, without the ability to freeze Thread off in the cold.

“We’re dragonriders, my Lords, and Pass or Interval, we’re sworn to protect Pern. We can’t fly Fall when there’s no Fall to fly. But we’re still Pern’s protectors, Thread or no Thread, and if we don’t start readying Pern for the Pass now, we fail in our duty. We’ve had a hundred Turns beneath Thread-free skies, and we have a hundred more to come. This is the turning point, midway through the Interval, and we are the fulcrum on which Pern’s future turns. Because I promise you, my Lords; if we don’t discharge our duty to our descendants, history will judge us. And judge us harshly.”

She had them, not through fairness, but through fear. She could see it in their eyes, in the set of their shoulders, in the inability of even Meturvian to argue. “You make a unsettling case for forward-thinking, Weyrwoman,” Winstone said, at length. There was nearly a shade of respect in his voice. “And maybe there is a call to invest some of our present plenty against future need. Jessaf would be willing to pledge, perhaps, one per cent into your fund. But its management must be stringently overseen by a third party.”

“The Harperhall would be honoured to play such a part in this forward-looking endeavour,” Gaffry interjected smoothly.

Meturvian looked slightly mollified by that; perhaps, as the Harperhall was at Kellad, he believed he’d have some measure of control over the money there. “One per cent might be feasible,” he said. “But your other demands are out of the question.”

“Quite out of the question,” Zinner added, “unless you’re willing to consider my proposal regarding moving cargo around the territory.”

That’s close enough, Valonna told Shimpath, knowing her queen would relay the message via Izath to H’ned.

A moment later, H’ned nodded. “Maybe you’d all read these in detail,” he said, passing out documents to each Lord. “And we can reconvene to discuss further in a sevenday.”

Lord Winstone walked them all out to where Shimpath and Izath waited with the two blues who would return Zinner, Meturvian, and Gaffry to their respective Holds and Hall. He clasped Valonna’s wrist last, and then held it, and her, there for a moment. She raised her gaze questioningly to his shrewd old eyes. “I’ll admit you surprised me today, Weyrwoman,” he said, quietly enough to go unheard by the others. “I’d thought to spar with H’ned, not with you. You’re not the gauche young girl you once were.”

Valonna had known Winstone long enough not to be offended. “My Weyr can’t afford me to be.”

“Your new Weyrleader?” Winstone asked, with a jerk of his chin towards H’ned.

Valonna could have interpreted the question in a dozen ways. She opted for the least controversial. “H’ned is devoted to Madellon.”

“And to you?”

She hoped the grimace she felt didn’t show on her face. “As are all my riders, my Lord Winstone.”

“Hm.” Winstone’s eyes searched her face. He cracked a smile for the first time. “A shame you went for the Weyr. You’d have made some match for my Herstone. More than I can say for the flitter-by creature he’s to wed. My duty to you, Weyrwoman. Safe flight home.”

The unexpected praise – effusive, by Winstone’s standards – left Valonna feeling slightly disconcerted as she walked back to Shimpath. What is it?

He just suggested that he’d have liked to marry me to his second son. Valonna nearly shook her head as she climbed up between the golden neck-ridges. When I was fourteen, I’d have done anything to catch Herstone’s eye.

A good thing you are not now fourteen, said Shimpath.

They almost had to dodge a mating green’s followers when they emerged over Madellon, although the pack of blues and browns scattered with alacrity to make way for Shimpath’s descent. Shimpath snorted at that. She didn’t snort, though she might well have done, when Izath preceded her down to her ledge. Do you want me to tell H’ned to have Izath land on his own ledge? Valonna asked.

I would tell Izath myself if you weren’t more concerned with not offending his rider.

Valonna winced at the mild rebuke. He’s Weyrleader now, Shimpath, she pointed out as they touched down. I have to work with him for the next couple of Turns, no matter how I feel about him personally.

No one asked my opinion.

“I thought that went as well as we could hope,” H’ned said as Valonna dismounted. “Did Winstone have anything to add?”

“Not that bears repeating.” Valonna unbuckled Shimpath’s harness and, heaving the heavy leather over her shoulder, hauled it inside to hang it on its rack.

H’ned followed her in. “Zinner’s going to be difficult to win round on the increases,” he said. “We don’t have the livestock matter to hold over him. And you saw how he reacted to the idea of tithing in hard marks.”

As always, the pile of new work on Valonna’s desk had grown in her absence. She skimmed quickly through the heap. Then she looked up at H’ned. “Zinner has a point about paid cargo conveyance, you know.”

His face instantly darkened, as she’d known it would. “We’ve discussed this. Dragons aren’t draybeasts.”

Valonna took a breath, and then asked, “Aren’t they? What else do we ask them to do, if not carry things for us?”

“For the Weyr,” said H’ned. “Not at the whim of all of Pern. I won’t put dragons at the beck and call of every holder and crafter who wants to haul his wares two hills over.” He held up a finger. “And don’t tell me the Peninsula does it. Peninsula riders are scorned the world over for the way they pander.”

“Peninsula riders are better dressed and their dragons better fed than any on Pern.”

“Not while I’m Weyrleader,” said H’ned.

It was the first time he’d said it. He even seemed a bit surprised himself by the statement. “Yes,” Valonna replied, forcing herself to keep her tone even. “You are.” She didn’t add, For now.

H’ned might have read the thought. “Weyrwoman,” he began, and then, “Valonna.” He sighed. “That came out wrong.”

Valonna didn’t quite trust herself to reply, so she didn’t.

“Look, I’m very conscious that I’m a Weyrleader you’ve been landed with, rather than one you’ve chosen,” H’ned said. “And I know that I’ve said and done some things, hurtful things, about you, about T’kamen… And I’m sorry.” He said it in a rush. “I was wrong to slight him. It was small of me. Petty. Epherineth beat Izath fair and square, that day. T’kamen did everything he could as Weyrleader. I don’t believe he’d have abandoned his post wilfully.”

“I know he wouldn’t have,” said Valonna.

“And I was wrong to…pressure you,” H’ned went on. He looked uncomfortable. “I…know you must feel like every bronze rider who pays you a compliment is just currying favour. That they’re courting your position, not you.”

Valonna couldn’t keep the irony out of her voice. “Aren’t they?”

“Most of the time, probably,” H’ned admitted. “But…” He met her gaze candidly. “But not me, Valonna. Not any more.”

She could hardly endure the ardency of his stare, but she couldn’t bear to break it off either. “H’ned…”

“Valonna,” he pleaded. “All I’m asking is…let me court you. Not your position. Not your queen. You. I’m not L’dro. Let me try to be a Weyrleader you would choose. A weyrmate you would choose.”

The last time H’ned had put Valonna in this position, Shimpath had not been there to counsel her. This time, she was, but she remained watchfully silent. Valonna already knew Shimpath’s opinion of Izath. In choosing not to comment on H’ned, she was granting Valonna complete power to decide for herself how to reply to her earnest suitor.

And there was an appeal to accepting H’ned’s entreaty. He had acquitted himself well with the Lords Holder, walking the fine line between conviction and diplomacy without mishap. His apology had resonated with sincerity. He was a handsome man. And he wasn’t asking Valonna to love him, or to have him in her weyr; only to allow him to try to win her. Was it so unreasonable a request? Was he so untenable a proposition as a weyrmate? In the stormy waters that lay ahead, would Madellon not benefit from a solid and stable partnership at its helm?

But while her head stacked reason atop reason for her to give in, it was Valonna’s heart that answered.

“There’s someone else, H’ned,” she heard herself say.

It was horrible to witness the moment that the hope in H’ned’s pale eyes died. He made it mercifully fleeting by looking away from her. He didn’t speak for a moment, though his nostrils flared white. “So it’s true,” he said at last, with a tightness that suggested he was struggling to keep his emotions in check. “About G’kalte. I’d thought… I’d thought you were more…discreet.”

“Discreet?” Valonna asked slowly. “What have I done that wasn’t discreet? I haven’t even –” She caught herself before she could finish the sentence. It was none of H’ned’s business what she had or hadn’t done with G’kalte.

“He’s a Peninsularite,” H’ned said, from between gritted teeth. “And a brown rider.”

And that was it, of course. It wasn’t that Valonna had feelings for another that H’ned couldn’t stand, nor even that the object of her affections was a foreigner. It was G’kalte’s rank that offended H’ned the most; his perceived inferiority, as displayed to the world by the colour of his dragon’s hide. How emasculating it must feel, for a bronze rider to be passed over in favour of a man who had only Impressed a brown. How insulting to the edifice that was a bronze rider’s pride. How bruising to a bronze rider’s certainty that he was paramount among dragonriders.

Shimpath’s relief that she had seen through to the truth at H’ned’s centre flooded through Valonna like sunlight.

“I’m sorry, H’ned,” she said simply.

He walked two strides away, stopped, stood there a moment, then turned back. “He’s,” he began. His jaw tensed, as though he was forming and then discarding sentences. “When he transfers here –”

“I know you’ll treat him fairly,” Valonna said. “Because I know you’re not L’dro.”

The anger in H’ned’s eyes were replaced, just for an instant, by chagrin, by regret, by the agonising knowledge that he’d made his play and failed. Then the hardness came down again. “No, Weyrwoman,” he said stiffly. “I’m not.”

I could not have lived with you if you had convinced yourself you could live with him, Shimpath said softly, when H’ned had gone.

Valonna sat down behind her desk. “I don’t think he’s a bad man, Shimpath,” she said aloud. “Maybe he won’t even be a bad Weyrleader. I just hope he’s good enough at both not to make my next two Turns miserable.”

She dashed off a summary of the meeting at Jessaf and put the document in the roll of records pertaining to the five-Turn Charter amendment. No doubt H’ned would have his own to add, and a copy of Master Gaffry’s notes would arrive from the Harperhall in due course. Valonna paused, her hand on the document tube, thinking. She knew H’ned didn’t really think that the between issue would persist. Some of the northern Weyrs as yet unaffected still seemed perversely resistant to the notion that it was a universal problem, in spite of its recent manifestation at Telgar. Southern might have been first affected, but things were still too chaotic there for any of its senior riders to be thinking about anything beyond who would next be selected to serve a month as Weyrleader Regent. Madellon’s thinking on the subject was more advanced than any other on Pern. Valonna could see a hide covered edge-to-edge in L’stev’s handwriting amongst the new records that had appeared while she was at Jessaf; probably a report on the progress of the Wildfire weyrlings’ new training manoeuvres. For all that she and H’ned had made the Lords Holder think about what Pern would be like without dragons who could go between, she didn’t think anyone yet truly grasped how dramatically the Weyr would need to change to cope.

As she tried to pull L’stev’s document out from the pile, one of the scrolls on top of it slid off, almost into her lap. Valonna went to put it aside, and then stopped, frowning. A note in Master Shauncey’s looping hand had been pinned to the top. It read simply, Explanation?

The document was a receipt for the purchase of narlbark resin from Speardike Hold. The date on it made it two months old. The handwriting was nearly illegible, but the two seals – one ink, one wax – beneath it weren’t. The inked stamp was the crest of Speardike. The wax bore the unmistakeable imprint of the Madellon Weyrleader’s signet ring.

Valonna stared at it for a long time, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. The Weyrleader’s signet had gone missing along with T’kamen. Sh’zon and H’ned, looking for it, had assumed he’d been wearing it when whatever had befallen him happened, and although Valonna couldn’t think of an occasion when she’d actually seen the big ring on T’kamen’s hand, she’d accepted the explanation. Having a new signet made was near the bottom of her list of things to do – if probably somewhat higher on H’ned’s.

But if this document was accurate, that same ring had been used to authorise the purchase of narlbark a month after T’kamen’s disappearance. The only person outside the Healerhall who’d had reason to buy narlbark was P’raima. Had he somehow got his hands on T’kamen’s signet ring? Realisation gripped Valonna suddenly. T’kamen had gone to Southern the day he’d disappeared. Had he mislaid his ring there? Had he gone back to retrieve it, and stumbled somehow onto P’raima’s machinations? Had P’raima been behind T’kamen’s disappearance?

Be calm, Valonna, Shimpath urged her, sounding concerned.

Valonna realised she was clutching the document hard enough to crumple it. She made herself let it go, and smoothed it flat. Her hands were sweating. They’d assumed that Speardike’s botanists had been selling the rare resin to P’raima illicitly, but if they had believed they were selling to Madellon then that cleared them of any wrongdoing. And implicated P’raima in yet another crime. “P’raima didn’t scruple to murder people who got in his way.”

I would have known if Epherineth had died, Shimpath said, grasping Valonna’s implication, and rebutting it with authority. Tezonth’s rider could not have killed him.

“But how did P’raima get hold of T’kamen’s ring?” Valonna asked aloud.

Then another thought struck her. P’raima had been using the felah counter-agent for Turns. He must have been buying narlbark for longer than a single season – at least as far back as 94, Grizbath’s penultimate flight.

Which was when L’dro had become Weyrleader at Madellon.

Valonna’s guts turned over.

The Weyr was the one establishment whose right of purchase within its territory overrode any other. L’dro must have facilitated P’raima’s supply of narlbark from Speardike. He wouldn’t have asked the Southern Weyrleader why he wanted it. L’dro would have agreed to anything that put marks into his pouch. Valonna wondered if he even knew now that his little side deal with P’raima had contributed indirectly to their mutual poisoning at Long Bay. Probably not. L’dro had never troubled himself with the details. He might not even have known it was P’raima he was selling to. D’feng would have been the one to arrange the transaction and bury the minutiae in Madellon’s books.

And then P’raima’s convenient deal had run into an obstacle: T’kamen. He’d been digging into Madellon’s ledgers almost since the moment he’d become Weyrleader, and he wouldn’t have turned a blind eye to an obvious scheme, however many marks it might have put in his own pocket. And with D’feng injured, P’raima would have lost his side door into Madellon’s upper echelons. He must have been terrified of losing his secret pipeline to the substance that was keeping his Weyrleadership alive. He must, somehow, have stolen T’kamen’s signet ring, and used it to falsify Madellon authorisation for narlbark purchases.

Valonna sat there, shaking, as the facts came together.

He could not have killed Epherineth’s rider, Shimpath said again.

It was difficult for Valonna to believe that, when P’raima had committed so many terrible crimes, but she made herself accept her queen’s logic. Perhaps it was just  a coincidence that T’kamen had vanished a few hours after his visit to Southern. Perhaps his disappearance had nothing to do with narlbark or the missing signet ring. Perhaps in that one matter, P’raima was blameless.

But dead riders told no tales. P’raima was dead. D’feng, with the knowledge he must have possessed, was dead. T’kamen, the only one who truly knew what had happened that day, was gone. Perhaps Valonna might find a way to trace L’dro’s involvement in the narlbark trade back to him, but she doubted it, and the thought of taking up a vendetta against her ex-Weyrleader merely filled her with despair. She supposed she could have found some satisfaction in having unravelled part of the mystery, but without the last crucial pieces, the puzzle remained frustratingly incomplete.

She reluctantly set the matter aside and bent to the task of reading L’stev’s training report.

Late that evening, after Valonna had retired, and long past the time when she would have expected a visitor, Shimpath made a small noise of warning from the ledge.

Valonna sat up. She’d been sitting up in bed with her sewing basket beside her and her current sampler, a large piece depicting a sunrise over the snowy peaks of southern Madellon, draped over her lap. Shimpath?

Someone is here.

It was dark outside, and the image Shimpath shared with Valonna was unclear. Who is it?

She is leaving.

She? Valonna swung her legs out of bed and swept up a robe, pulling it on over her nightdress as she walked through her weyr. Don’t let her leave.

After a pause, Shimpath said, I have told her not to go.

There were few women who would have come to Valonna’s weyr at any hour, let alone such a late one, and yet still she was surprised when she came out barefoot onto her queen’s ledge and found Sarenya halfway down the steps.

“Saren?” she asked, and put her hand on Shimpath’s inquisitive nose.

Sarenya looked a little shaken. “I was just going, Weyrwoman, but…your queen…”

What did you say to her? Valonna scolded Shimpath.

I told her not to go. She hears well. She is very upset.

“Whatever is it, Saren?” Valonna asked. “Come in, for goodness’ sake. It’s pitch dark.”

Sarenya climbed the steps slowly, every inch of her body, even in silhouette, transmitting reluctance. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“You wouldn’t have if it wasn’t important,” said Valonna. “Come in. Let me get you some wine.”

“I…no, thank you, Weyrwoman.”

“Klah, then.” Valonna glanced back as she led the way inside, sensing Sarenya’s resistance. “Some tea?”

Finally, Sarenya nodded. “Tea…would be…”

As they stepped into the glow-lit living room, Valonna finally caught a glimpse of Sarenya’s face. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face damp with recent tears. Valonna didn’t think she’d ever seen her cry. “Sit down, Saren,” Valonna told her, distressed by her distress. “Please, sit down!”

Sarenya nearly collapsed into one of the armchairs by Valonna’s hearth, and sat, her shoulders hunched, her head bowed, visibly struggling with her emotions. Valonna grasped her hands, alarmed and concerned. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

She raised her head. She heaved a great controlling breath and held it a moment, then whispered, “Tea would be lovely.”

Valonna went to the hearth, giving Sarenya the time it took for the ever-present kettle to start bubbling to collect herself. By the time it was ready, Sarenya looked slightly closer to composure. She wrapped her fingers around the cup of tea and breathed in its aroma without drinking.

“Tell me what the matter is,” Valonna urged her, sitting on the adjacent armchair.

Sarenya exhaled, blowing steam from the surface of her tea. “I don’t want to get C’mine in trouble,” she began, with a brittle determination.

“C’mine?” Valonna asked, and then, “Is he all right?”

“Oh, no, he’s…” Sarenya looked flustered. “It’s not him. He’s…he’s all right. As all right as he’s been recently.” She managed a wan smile. “I think he might even be a little better. But he told me some things. Things I don’t think I’m supposed to know about…going between times. Please don’t give Mine grief. He didn’t intend to let dragonrider secrets slip.”

Valonna felt tension stiffen her shoulders. She made them relax. “He’s not in trouble,” she told her. “You’re a friend of the Weyr, Saren. You’re not going to be telling all of Pern.” Hopefully, she asked, “Is that what’s upsetting you? C’mine’s timing?”

Sarenya shook her head. “No. I mean – yes. He said some things about what he’s done…the consequences…” She shook her head again. “It’s not him. He knows he’s been stupid. Reckless. I could slap him. But it’s not that.” She hesitated for a long moment. “Can you…is it possible for a dragonrider to be in two places at the same time?”

Valonna took a careful breath. “I’ve never gone between times, Saren,” she told her quietly. “I don’t exactly…” She let it out. “Yes,” she said. “It’s terribly dangerous, but it is possible.”

“So a rider could be seen in one place,” Sarenya said, “and also be somewhere else completely, but at exactly the same time?” When Valonna nodded, she pressed on. “So he could have been at the second place, but used being at the first place too as a way to claim that he wasn’t?”

The line of questioning was making Valonna uneasy. “Do you mean…as an alibi?”

“Yes.” Sarenya seized on the word. “An alibi.”

Valonna sat a moment, her mind racing. “Sarenya,” she said, very quietly, “do you think that – someone – has used timing to do something bad?”

“It’s not C’mine. I’m not talking about C’mine.”

“Then you think someone else has been timing?” Valonna asked. That did alarm her. “With criminal intent?”

Sarenya nearly laughed. It was unsettlingly incongruous. “I don’t know why he’d do it,” she said. “I can’t believe he’d do it over me. He knew Kamen and I were finished. He knew. But I can’t think of any other reason why he’d do it.”

The chill Valonna had felt earlier when she’d grasped, or thought she’d grasped, a piece of the truth about T’kamen’s disappearance came back in full icy force. “What, Saren?” she asked, though she thought she already knew the answer. The second question was still opaque to her. “And who?”

“He’s been timing,” Sarenya said. Her eyes were painful with tears. “Timing, and lying, all along. He said he didn’t see T’kamen before he disappeared. He said he was out with his Wing. He said he couldn’t be in two places at the same time. But he could, couldn’t he? He was.”

Valonna was finding it hard to breathe. Only Shimpath’s calming presence steadied her ragged inhalations. “Who, Saren?”

Sarenya squeezed her eyes shut, and the tears broke and ran down her cheeks. “M’ric,” she whispered, and then, “Oh Faranth, Valonna, but I think he killed T’kamen.”

Chapter seventy-one: T’kamen

There’s one thing I’ll say for having a rival like T’kamen. S’leondes is twisting himself in knots trying to decide which of us he’d hate less.

And the irony is that for all our differences, past and present, I suspect he’d still sooner have me as Marshal. Who’s kept this Weyr supplied and flying these twenty Turns? Me. Who’s quelled rebellion amongst the brown and bronze riders all this time? Me. Who’s provided him with a steady stream of the right kind of dragons he needs so badly? Me.

If S’leondes wanted me out of this office, he could have contrived it Turns ago. No. He may hate me, but he knows I’m the best man for the job. He knows what it would mean for Madellon – for Pern – if T’kamen were to get elected in my place. Chaos. Absolute anarchy.

And Dalka knows it, too. Oh, she has a roving eye, but she’s served this Weyr as long as I have. She knows what a disaster T’kamen would be as Marshal. It’s crucial – absolutely crucial – that we don’t let it happen, no matter how radical we have to be to prevent it.

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Weyrmarshal R’lony

26.10.25-26.11.09 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

By contrast to Fetch and Agusta’s chaotic night-time emergence, the fire-lizard hatching went smoothly.

Fetch gave T’kamen plenty of violet-eyed warning, and all twelve of the riders they had selected, plus Dalka, R’lony, and S’leondes, crowded into his weyr for the occasion. Epherineth did have to persuade Fetch to allow T’kamen to pass out the twitching eggs to their designated handlers, but with that achieved, there was little else for T’kamen to do. He still half expected S’leondes to interfere in some way, but the Commander just watched with an unreadable expression as, one after another, infant fire-lizards broke free and Impressed upon their new owners.

T’kamen couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t a little disappointed that no queen hatched from the Istan clutch, but with a final haul of four greens, two blues, three browns, and three bronzes, he couldn’t complain that Reloka had given them the worst eggs, either. R’lony still grumbled, but none of the riders who left T’kamen’s weyr carrying tiny sleeping fire-lizards in the crooks of their elbows seemed dissatisfied.

A couple of days later, on a Thread-free morning and with the whole Weyr in attendance, Dalka presented the twelve riders and their fire-lizards to Madellon. The ceremony itself had been T’kamen’s idea, but its execution was all Dalka’s. One at a time, each rider rose from his Wing’s table to introduce himself and his fire-lizard and receive a new four-strand shoulder-knot from the Weyrwoman. The knots combined the usual thick cords in indigo for Madellon and in the colour of the rider’s dragon, with a third, narrower strand in the colour of the fire-lizard, and a slender thread of gold to acknowledge Dalka’s supervisory authority over the new Between Wing. Last of all, she called T’kamen to the dais, affixing his new rank-knot to his shoulder. It was tailed and knotted like a fighting Wingleader’s braid. With his back to the massed riders of Madellon, T’kamen couldn’t assess their reaction to this provocative symbol, but when he passed R’lony and S’leondes on his way to join his new cohort of riders, their faces were stony.

Commander and Marshal both said a few words about hope and the future and new beginnings that neither of them really meant. Dalka’s speech was mostly rhetoric, too, but she did slip in a few allusions to the spirit of cooperation and the value of building bridges and forging links. She was vague enough that even T’kamen wasn’t sure if she meant within Madellon itself or between the northern and southern continents of Pern.

He knew R’lony feared he would make a speech of his own, though he’d said he wouldn’t. There was an air of expectation generally that he would use the public occasion to announce his intention to stand in the Marshal election, less than a month away. He had considered it. But when he went down the line on the dais, clasping wrists with each of the riders whose between training had been placed in his hands, he knew he’d been right to decide against it. When he reached H’juke, halfway down the line, with the blue lizard he’d named Fathom sitting sleepily on his shoulder, the young bronze rider looked him in the eye, and asked, clearly enough to be heard by the riders either side of him if not by the Weyr at large, “Will you be declaring, sir?”

“Not today, H’juke,” T’kamen said. “Today is about you, not me.”

It was the closest he’d yet come to confirming his intention to contest the Marshal election publicly. He knew it would get back to R’lony and S’leondes. But as his answer rippled outward in both directions along the line, passed along in murmurs to those who hadn’t heard it with their own ears, he saw each of the riders of Between Wing stand just a little bit straighter.

At the nadir of T’kamen’s Interval disfavour, when L’dro had just become Weyrleader and demoted him from Wingleader back down to wingrider, T’kamen had gone to L’stev to ask for a position on his staff.

L’stev refused him on the spot.

“But H’ben’s already said he doesn’t want to do another class,” T’kamen argued, following L’stev determinedly up the steps to Vanzanth’s ledge. “And I know you don’t have anyone else in mind.”

“Who told you that?” L’stev asked, over his shoulder, and then snorted. “C’los, I suppose.”

T’kamen didn’t dispute his source. “I want to do it, L’stev. Faranth knows I won’t have much opportunity to distinguish myself otherwise for the next three Turns.”

“That’s the problem,” said L’stev. “You want to distinguish yourself. That won’t do.”

“What other choice do I have? L’dro’s got me by the balls.”

“And I’m as sorry about that as you are. It doesn’t matter. I won’t have you.”

“But –”

“Do you want to be Weyrlingmaster? Do you want my job?”

“Of course I don’t. I just –”

“There’s no just, T’kamen. You want to be Weyrleader. There’s nothing wrong with that. But a Weyrlingmaster whose mind is elsewhere is a sorry thing to inflict on weyrlings. They deserve better than to be used as stepping-stones to influence.”

Those words were never far from T’kamen’s mind in the sevendays that followed the hatching of the twelve Istan fire-lizards. Most of his charges weren’t weyrlings, and he certainly wasn’t calling himself a Weyrlingmaster, but he doubted L’stev would have considered the distinction worth making. They were young – all but two of them under twenty – and he and Epherineth were the only ones even remotely equipped to teach them what they needed to know. And they weren’t so much stepping-stones to influence as a precarious rope-bridge upon which one mislaid step could plunge them all into utter catastrophe.

He reckoned he had three or four sevendays before the newly-hatched lizards would start to go between and, in doing so, represent an immediate danger to riders over-eager to impress him, over-zealous to please S’leondes and R’lony, or simply over-keen to prove themselves against their fellows. As carefully as the twelve had been selected, there was no accounting for the competitive rivalry of any group of young dragonriders.

At least he had more support this time. He didn’t have to train his riders in secret. The documents he’d recovered from M’ric’s weyr were a great help, once he overcame the unfamiliar terminology used by the long-dead Peninsula Weyrlingmaster who’d written them. And if none of his students were quite as clever as M’ric had been, then at least none of them laboured under the same burden of tortured alienation as he had. But there were other obstacles that he hadn’t anticipated. He didn’t expect Eighth Pass riders to know anything about fire-lizard husbandry, but he had presumed they’d be able to look after their own dragons. His first formal inspection had turned up five dragons out of twelve with the sort of hide damage that could split between. And for all that each dragonpair seemed well enough versed in the narrow band of skills required for their role in Tactical or Strategic, they were hopelessly ignorant of anything that fell outside it.

When he walked into the training room they’d been assigned by the Weyrlingmaster on the first official day of instruction, he found that his riders had segregated themselves: Tactical at the front, Strategic at the back, all the fighting riders organised by their old Wing or Flight assignments, and the two Seventh blue riders apart from everyone else. That situation T’kamen had expected, but he wasn’t prepared to indulge it. They had, at least, all risen when he’d entered the room. He limped to the front. “Be seated.”

“Yes, sir!”

The crisp acknowledgement came only from the fighting riders in the front row. They sat down promptly, leaving the six Strategic riders behind them still standing, and looking bemused.

“Yes, Wingleader,” H’juke said uncertainly, and he and the remaining riders from the Seventh sat down, rather more raggedly than their new Tactical wingmates.

T’kamen wondered if the fighting riders had planned that little demonstration to show up the Seventh. “Who’s the senior rider in this Wing?”

They looked amongst themselves for a moment, and then Dannie rose from her place. She was one of the older riders, and Dalka had warned T’kamen that she might be trouble. T’kamen had chosen her anyway. He’d been slightly nonplussed when he’d inspected her Lusooth for the first time. Dannie had Impressed and trained at the Peninsula, and while T’kamen was familiar with how that Weyr’s riders liked to tattoo themselves, he’d never before come across a tattooed dragon. Lusooth had been inked with tally marks on her near shoulder – one, Dannie had told him proudly, for every month of Threadfall she’d flown. “I am, sir.”

Behind her, Z’renniz stood up. “I am, from the Seventh.”

“How many Turns have each of you served?” T’kamen asked. He knew the answer, but he had a point to make.

“Five Turns in Second Flight,” said Dannie.

“Six in the Seventh,” said Z’renniz.

The fighting riders didn’t actually turn around and glower at Z’renniz, though some of them looked very hard at T’kamen. He could read their minds. They were wondering if he was going to favour the Strategic riders, and use Z’renniz’s marginally longer service record as justification.

“Sit,” he said. “You don’t have to keep jumping up and down just to answer questions. Fraza, how long have you flown in the fighting Wings?”

She sat perfectly straight in her place. “Four and a half months, sir.”

“H’juke,” said T’kamen. “What about you?”

“I’m still only a weyrling, sir,” said H’juke, sounding abashed.

“There’s quite a big difference, isn’t there,” said T’kamen. “From five and six Turns of adult service, all the way down to none.” He looked around the room, seeing heads nodding in agreement, Tactical and Strategic alike. “All right. Who’s gone between the most?”

The nods stopped. Riders glanced at each other, frowning, perhaps wondering if it was a trick question. “Wingleader,” said Dannie, after a moment, “none of us have ever gone between.”

“None of you have ever gone between,” said T’kamen. “Let me say that one more time. None of you have ever gone between.” He looked from rider to rider, meeting one pair of eyes after another. “This isn’t a fighting Wing. This isn’t the Seventh Flight. This is the Between Wing. None of you has any more experience of between than anyone else. So in this Wing, under my command, there is no seniority. No hierarchy. No rank. Whatever your assignment was before; whatever the colour of your dragon – or your fire-lizard – you are all equals. Is that understood?” When they didn’t respond immediately, he repeated, “Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” they answered back, rather unevenly. Some of them looked happier about it than others.

“This won’t be easy,” T’kamen went on. “You’re not used to working with riders from the other branch of the Weyr. Or taking orders from a bronze rider. I’m going to be asking you to do things that run counter to your training, and part of that is overcoming some of the attitudes and preconceptions that govern you. It won’t feel safe or natural. You’re going to feel exposed. Unsafe. You’re going to be scared.”

He noticed a couple of the fighting riders bristle slightly at that. “Yes, scared,” he said. “And I’m not questioning your courage by saying that. Those of you who’ve fought Thread already know what it is to be brave. Those of you who haven’t have shown a different kind of mettle. But your nerve will be tested, in this Wing. Between isn’t something to be taken lightly; not now, not ever. No matter what you’ve faced before, and no matter the colour of your dragon, you’re all coming to this equally raw.”

He looked across the room. Dannie had raised her hand. “Green rider?”

“Sir,” she said. “You said that we’re all equal, whatever the colour of our dragon. But without rank, how will you prevent riders with larger dragons from intimidating those of us with fighting dragons?”

“I won’t tolerate bullying,” said T’kamen. He didn’t want to single out the Seventh riders – a green could harass another dragon just as unpleasantly as a bronze could. “And any dragon of any colour who tries to intimidate another member of this class will answer to Epherineth. I can promise you that that’s not a comfortable experience.”

Dannie had her hand up again. “But sir,” she said. “My riders are –”

“You have no riders, Dannie,” T’kamen said. “I appreciate you feel a responsibility towards the other fighting riders of this group, but that’s an instinct you’ll need to suppress. What we’re trying to achieve is too important to be obstructed by colour loyalties and ingrained prejudice. That applies to everyone here, and in that spirit, the way you’ve organised yourselves isn’t going to work.” He surveyed the seating arrangements. “Every other rider on the front row, swap seats with every other rider on the back row.”

That provoked a low-level buzz of discontented muttering. Fire-lizards that had been dozing in breast pockets or on shoulders began to rouse, grizzling irritably as they picked up on the agitation. The two Seventh blue riders, F’sta and I’gral, looked particularly unhappy to be separated. A brown rider’s green lizard lunged snappishly at a green rider’s blue, and that set all the infant fire-lizards to squalling.

Fetch’s reaction silenced them all. T’kamen’s little brown – not so little, now, by comparison to the younger fire-lizards – squealed his displeasure, and all the babies, even the bronzes, recoiled and shut up. The dragonriders, just as startled by the admonition as their lizards, finished exchanging seats without further grumbling, though one or two of them still looked mulish about their new neighbours.

It wasn’t the most promising start, though T’kamen had always known that getting riders from the two bitterly-divided branches of the Weyr to accept each other would be a challenge. He started them on one of the exercises in visualisation that M’ric had found most helpful, which didn’t require too much interaction between riders, and the rest of the morning passed without serious incident.

In the days that followed, T’kamen drove them hard. He was determined to instil a proper attitude towards between in his riders’ heads before they could take it upon themselves to start experimenting. M’ric had been far too eager to take Trebruth between before the first experience of it had scared him sensible. Epherineth couldn’t watch twelve other dragons all the time. But T’kamen didn’t want to cause his riders such anxiety about between that they would fear to risk themselves at all when the time came. The aversion training they received as weyrlings was a tricky enough obstacle to negotiate without making it worse. He was aware of what a fine line he must tread with the riders whose progress was being so closely scrutinised by S’leondes and R’lony.

Their training followed a routine. They always started the day in the classroom. T’kamen’s insistence that they move around, change seats, and get to know all the other members of the group remained unpopular, but after the first sevenday he found he no longer had to enforce his rule in the training room. After the second, he discovered that, while his riders still tended to separate themselves into groups during breaks and mealtimes, those groups didn’t necessarily follow the strict colour divisions that they had at the beginning.

He didn’t usually keep them confined to the training room for long. He took them out to visit nearby Holds and points of interest, developing their ability to construct and memorise visuals, and beginning the process of building their own reference inventories. Sometimes he took them as a Wing, sometimes in smaller groups, and sometimes individually. The one-on-one flights gave Epherineth the opportunity to assess each dragon on his own merits; the small groups, in varying configurations, let T’kamen compare different dragons with each other; and the full Wing excursions gave him the broadest understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the dragonpairs under his command.

One problem found a natural resolution. Early on, T’kamen told H’juke, gently enough, that he couldn’t continue to serve as his tail, even informally. H’juke hid his disappointment poorly, but he was nothing if not dutiful, even when being asked to do less rather than more. He listened to T’kamen’s explanation that the perception of favouritism would be bad for both of them, and left chagrined but apparently acceptant of the situation.

The following morning, T’kamen was woken by the sound of voices conferring quietly in his weyr. When he got up to investigate the disturbance, leaving Leda still asleep, he found H’juke and F’sta, their fire-lizards in tow, poking around the hearth in his quarters. “What in the Void are you two doing?” he asked. “H’juke, I told you –”

“I know, sir,” H’juke replied. “That’s why F’sta’s here, sir. I’m showing him what needs doing.”

T’kamen was still too sleep-fogged to grasp his meaning. “What?”

“We know you can’t have a tail, sir,” said F’sta. “But you’re our Wingleader, and with your leg…”

“We’ve drawn up a duty roster,” said H’juke, holding out a slate.

T’kamen looked at it. The slate had been marked with neat rows and columns, splitting each day into three shifts – morning, afternoon, and night-time – with the name of one of the Between Wing marked against each shift. “What?”

H’juke was trying hard not to grin, but his enthusiasm still shone through. “See, we each take a shift, once every four days, rotating through so that no one has to do an overnight more than once every twelfth day. We’ve marked Fall for the first two sevendays – see – and swapped some shifts so that different people are on duty for them. And on the back here –” he turned the slate over, “I’ve made lists of everything that your duty rider should be doing for you.”

The reverse of the slate listed everything from making morning klah to greasing Epherineth’s harness to replenishing the wood and coal for the hearth. “This is far beyond even what a tail would be doing for me,” he said. “None of you are weyrlings. I can’t have you drudging for me.”

“We’re all in agreement, sir,” said F’sta.

“All of you?” T’kamen asked. He was thinking of Dannie, who had been almost senior enough to rate a tail of her own before joining his Wing.

“Sir, all of us,” said H’juke, firmly. “You’re a Wingleader. You’re our Wingleader. You shouldn’t have to polish your own boots just because you’re not supposed to have a tail.”

“And we’re not drudging,” added F’sta, “because each of us is only ever on duty for two watches every four days.”

T’kamen hesitated: uncomfortable, flattered, and conscious as he always was now of the need to consider how it would look to the Weyr that his riders were serving him.

“And you’re not just going to be our Wingleader,” said H’juke. “I mean, after the election, that is.” He raised his eyes to T’kamen’s, as if daring him to disagree.

“All right,” he said at last. “All right.” He thumped both riders roughly on the shoulder, and was rewarded with their grins. “Thank you. But just to warn you. If Leda’s here in the mornings, for Faranth’s sake, don’t wake her up. No amount of shine on my boots is worth the grief I’ll get about that.”

For all his concerns about the arrangement, T’kamen was soon glad of it. He’d not been so busy since he’d arrived in the Interval, and with his mobility limited, knowing that his weyr would be tidy, Epherineth clean, and food and klah no more than a request away, made things much easier. He and Epherineth still flew Fall in the Seventh, patrolling behind Trailing Edge on the lookout for dragonpairs in trouble, although their schedule of journeys between to collect tithe and convey passengers was greatly reduced. R’lony grumbled about that most mornings, in between dropping unsubtle hints about the burdens of being the Marshal. T’kamen reported officially to Dalka, R’lony, and S’leondes every other day, and privately to Dalka more often than that. His chess matches with El’yan continued, as did his occasional gitar sessions in the dining hall with Tawgert.

It was during one of those, just after he’d played through a difficult piece that had been eluding him for a time, that the Weyr Singer turned to him and remarked, “That’s as well as I’ve ever heard you play, bronze rider. I think you’ve rediscovered your talent.”

“My fingers disagree,” T’kamen replied, rubbing his fingertips together ruefully. “Those last few measures hurt.”

“They should. I don’t know many Harpers who’d get through that kind of fingering with all their skin intact.” Tawgert leaned on the body of his gitar. “Where did you say you learned?”

“Wintering at the Harperhall every Turn from when I was nine. My friend Carellos taught me the basics. And found an apprentice gitar from stores for me to borrow.” He felt himself smile at the thought of that awful old gitar, with its slightly crooked neck and its uncomfortably high action and the tendency of its A string to go out of tune if he so much as looked at it.

“And he was a Harper?” Tawgert asked.

“No. Craftbred, and he was a much better gitar player than me, but he never apprenticed. We were both Searched out of Kellad. He Impressed a green and became C’los.”

“C’los,” Tawgert said thoughtfully.

“He was like a brother to me,” T’kamen said, and then, when Tawgert looked curiously at him, he went on, “He died. On my watch.”

“I’m guessing that wasn’t something that happened too often in the Interval.”

“Things were different then. A dragonrider could expect to live to sixty-five or seventy, and retire to the coast when he’d had enough of the Wings.” He raised his eyes to the occupants of the long tables in the dining hall. “Everyone’s so sharding young.”

Tawgert chuckled. “The immaturity of your riders is getting to you?”

“I’m only ten Turns older than some of them. They make me feel like I’m about five hundred, and what I’m teaching them about between is some mystical make-believe that they can’t quite bring themselves to trust.”

“You come from a different time,” said Tawgert. “Everything they learn from you is filtered through that perception.” He looked contemplative. “Maybe I could revive some of the old songs that mention between.”

“I haven’t heard March of the Wings since I’ve been here,” said T’kamen. “That would be a good one to start.”

“March of the Wings,” said Tawgert. “That fell out of favour a long time ago.” He set his fingers to his gitar strings, frowning. “Remind me how it starts?”

“Don’t ask me to sing,” T’kamen warned him, but he flexed his sore fingers and then struck the opening chords of the ballad that had been a mainstay in the Pern of his birth.

It took Tawgert only a couple of bars to pick up the tune. “From the top?” he suggested when they reached the end of the introduction, and then, when they reached the first verse for the second time, joined his voice to the music.

Drummer, beat, and piper, blow

Harper, strike, and soldier, go

Free the flame and sear the grasses

Till the dawning Red Star passes

A little buzz always came over the dining cavern when the Weyr Singer sang. T’kamen, playing the easy chords that his fingers knew so well, saw heads turn in their direction.

From the Weyr and from the Bowl

Bronze and brown and blue and green

Rise the dragonmen of Pern

Aloft, on wing, seen, then unseen

The buzz hushed a bit at that verse. More people turned to look. T’kamen wondered what had made the song unpopular: the reference to an ability no longer available, or the implication that dragons of every colour had once risen to fight Thread?

Dragonman, avoid excess

Greed will bring the Weyr distress;

To the ancient Laws adhere,

Prosper thus the Dragon-weyr

Everyone from T’kamen’s time had known the first three verses of March and everyone with a mind to would normally join in. Hearing it sung solo, in fascinated silence, caused him an odd prickle down the back of his neck.

Agile greens will do or die

Swiftest of the dragon-breed

Turning, burning, flaming, fly!

Daring in the hour of need

There was no set order for the colour verses. Whoever was leading the song would usually build up to the greens, on the basis that there were always far more riders of that colour than any other, and therefore it was usually the most raucously subscribed. No one joined in – they didn’t know the words – but several voices shouted approval of the rousing verse.

Valiant blues will leave no trace

Scorching Thread in deadly style

Sky-born fighters full of grace

Wing-sure, fearless, versatile

There might not have been as many blue riders as green in the dining hall, but more of them anticipated their verse, and the whoops that erupted from the Wing tables made the green riders’ shout  sound subdued.

Doughty browns will hold the line

Frame the battle, flank the Flight

Break formation, realign!

Steady in the endless fight

From the back of the cavern, where most of the Seventh’s riders were sequestered, a cheer so loud and so sustained went up from the throats of forty or fifty brown riders that T’kamen glanced at Tawgert and, in mutual agreement, doubled the bridge before the next verse to give the din time to die away.

Splendid bronzes show the way

Roaring flame in battle-cry

First in, last out of the fray

Born to lead in Thread-filled sky

There could be no roar from Madellon’s bronze riders. There were only twelve, and T’kamen was one of them. The lyrics should have been incendiary in a Madellon where bronze dragons had been virtually redundant for decades. But as he scanned the cavern for signs of dissent, his gaze happened to fall on H’juke. He was sitting perfectly still at the Between Wing’s table, and tears were shining on his face.

Weyrling, focus; weyrling, strive

Learn all you need to survive

Then in time your place you’ll earn

In the fighting Wings of Pern

The riders at the weyrling tables made up for what they lacked in numbers with youthful enthusiasm and volume, banging mugs and stamping their feet so loudly that they nearly drowned out the closing gitar flourishes of the ballad.

T’kamen looked at Tawgert as the final chord died away. Tawgert’s eyes gleamed with the satisfaction of having elicited such an uproarious response from his audience. “They’ve never heard that before,” he realised aloud.

Tawgert shook his head, but with a Harper’s instinct for the significant, his eyes had slid past the applauding ranks of riders, even as they clamoured to hear the ballad again. “T’kamen.”

He didn’t gesture, or even move his head, but T’kamen followed his gaze. S’leondes was standing by the entrance to the dining hall. His face was a mask of contained anger, and his eyes bored into T’kamen’s even from so far away.

“Is this going to make your life difficult?” T’kamen asked Tawgert, not breaking S’leondes’ stare.

“I’m a Harper, T’kamen,” said Tawgert. “If I’d wanted life to be easy I’d never have apprenticed in. And the Commander isn’t the only one with the power to make lives difficult.”

That observation was pointed enough to drag T’kamen’s attention away from S’leondes.

R’lony had risen from his place, and while the nuance of his displeasure did not match S’leondes’, the intensity of it did. As T’kamen watched, Dalka rose beside him, putting her hand on his arm and speaking quickly into his ear, but if she meant to defuse him then she failed. R’lony pushed her hand away and stalked towards the hearth where T’kamen and Tawgert were playing.

“Marshal,” Tawgert greeted him pleasantly.

“Make yourself scarce,” R’lony told him, and only when Tawgert had gone from his place did he address T’kamen. “What in the Void do you think you’re doing? Do you want to start a shaffing riot?”

T’kamen met his irate look steadily. “It’s just a song, R’lony.”

“Whershit. You’re putting ideas in riders’ heads that have no place being there in this Turn.”

“What kind of ideas would they be?” T’kamen asked.

“You know exactly what,” said R’lony. “And all you’re doing is whipping them up. You don’t have the first clue how hard I’ve worked to keep the Seventh’s riders content with their lot.”

“Perhaps they shouldn’t be.”

“That’s your manifesto, then, is it?” R’lony asked. “Equal rights for brown and bronze riders?” He snorted. “You’re an idiot if you think a hundred of us can defy six hundred of them. It’s not the Interval any more, and for all that you’re giving my riders tales of former glories, it never will be.”

“You and S’leondes are really more alike than you realise,” T’kamen said. He knew the mild tone of his voice would needle R’lony as much as the content of his remarks. “You’re both in denial.”

“I’m in denial? You’re the blighted fool who thinks a fire-lizard on your shoulder and a few young idiots wanting to emulate you makes you fit to fill my shoes!”

“My fire-lizard doesn’t make me fit for that,” said T’kamen. He felt a smile that he hadn’t intended twist the corner of his mouth. “But my dragon does.”

“Dragons don’t decide elections,” said R’lony.

“Clearly,” said T’kamen. “Or it would have been a warm day between before you ever became Marshal.”

R’lony laughed. “You think insulting Geninth is going to get you anywhere? He’s sired forty clutches. How many did yours manage?”

“Just one,” said T’kamen. “Twice the size of any of yours, and with a gold egg. And that was in the Interval.” He let his smile broaden, though the unaccustomed exercise of his facial muscles wasn’t comfortable. “You don’t think Donauth’s to blame for the puny size of her clutches, do you?”

That put R’lony in an impossible position. He glared at T’kamen with those pale blue eyes. “Size isn’t everything.”

T’kamen threw a look over towards Dalka. “Have you asked her if she agrees?”

R’lony made as if to seize T’kamen by the front of his shirt. He barely checked himself in time, balling his hands into fists. “You’ll keep your tongue civil, bronze rider.”

T’kamen just barely smirked in reply.

“You filthy wher,” R’lony said, spitting the words out. “Thinking you’re better than me –”

“I am better than you,” said T’kamen. “And Epherineth could crush Geninth like a crawler.”

“Epherineth can’t bully Geninth. He doesn’t have the seniority.”

“He doesn’t need seniority,” said T’kamen. “And he doesn’t need to bully Geninth to prove he’s better than him. He only has to beat him.”

R’lony’s nostrils flared. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? To throw him in against our inferior browns. Think he’d sweep them all aside, don’t you?”

“He wouldn’t need to. Donauth would be so grateful for a real dragon, she’d probably –”

“Shut your mouth.”

R’lony said it with such justified revulsion that T’kamen nearly backed down. He didn’t like being so crude. It wasn’t his way at all. But R’lony didn’t know that, and Epherineth’s support for the necessary measures stiffened T’kamen’s resolve. He shrugged. “It’s lucky for you that Epherineth’s not eligible to chase Donauth. It would be humiliating for you to lose your queen and your job.”

“You haven’t won the election yet, T’kamen,” R’lony said, forcing the words through gritted teeth.

“You’ve already lost it,” said T’kamen. “Whether it was Ch’fil who took your place, or me, you were never going to be wearing that knot for much longer. And that won’t be the only thing you’ll have lost.” He jerked his head towards Dalka. “Do you think she’ll still be hot for you when you’re not Marshal any more?”

R’lony looked over at Dalka. His face was flushed and ruddy, his teeth partly bared in a grimace, but his eyes sought reassurance from his weyrmate, and as T’kamen watched, they found it. “I should call you out here and now,” he said. “You’ve insulted me, my dragon, my weyrmate and her queen. I wouldn’t allow the least of those slights, let alone all of them.” He stared at T’kamen, his nostrils flaring. “But you’re a cripple. I won’t raise a hand to a man who can’t even stand unaided.”

“How noble of you,” T’kamen mocked softly.

“Shut up,” said R’lony. “I’ll still have my satisfaction. As will Dalka. When Donauth rises, feel free to send Epherineth after her. Then we’ll see whose dragon is superior.”

Epherineth’s excited surge of reaction almost distracted T’kamen from his purpose. He narrowed his eyes, searching R’lony’s face, as though looking for the catch. “That’s ridiculous. You can’t possibly imagine that Geninth can outfly Epherineth.”

“Ridiculous, is it?” R’lony asked, suddenly bullish again. “Or is it that you’re afraid that when it comes to it, your bronze won’t have what it takes to fly a Pass queen?”

“He could fly any queen, Pass or Interval.”

“Donauth isn’t just any queen,” R’lony said. “She’s my queen.”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” T’kamen said. “Epherineth will fly Donauth, and you’ll use it as a way to turn every brown rider in the Seventh against me for siring dragons too big to fight. And the bronzes too, for being excluded when Epherineth isn’t.”

“Then we’ll throw it open to all Madellon’s bronzes,” R’lony said. “What does it matter what oversized dragonets come of it? You’ve already bartered them off to Ista anyway!”

T’kamen put his gitar, which he’d been resting on his knee, to one side. He rose slowly from his seat, careful to keep his weight on his good leg. Even standing, he was half a head shorter than R’lony. “If this is going to be a traditional flight,” he said, “then let’s make the stakes traditional, too. If Geninth flies Donauth, I won’t oppose you as Marshal. No. If any other dragon flies Donauth, I won’t oppose you.” He paused, watching as R’lony reviewed those odds. “But if Epherineth flies Donauth, you won’t just step down as a candidate. You’ll support me as Marshal.”

“I’ll never support you for anything, T’kamen,” R’lony said, with towering disdain. “But I accept. If Epherineth wins, I’ll stand aside. And if he doesn’t…once you’ve taught those riders to go between, you’ll get the shaff out of my Weyr.”

Chapter seventy-two: Sh’zon

Timing isn’t difficult.

It’s an uncomfortable truth, but a truth nonetheless. Timing isn’t difficult. The very fact that weyrlings are prone to slip the odd hour when they’re first learning to go between is evidence enough of that. To a dragon, a trip that takes him between times is hardly more challenging than a normal jump from one place to another.

Why, then, is Pern not full of time-shifted dragonriders, running amok in past and future alike, learning things they shouldn’t yet know, changing things to suit themselves? When disaster strikes, why doesn’t someone simply go back to avert it? What’s stopping dragonriders from shaping events in whatever way they like?

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Weyrlingmaster D’hor

100.05.17 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

It was a moment before Sh’zon realised that the woman sitting behind the Weyrwoman’s desk was, in fact, Valonna. He looked, and then looked again, harder. “You’ve cut your hair!”

Valonna smiled wanly. She looked older than Sh’zon recalled, an impression created only in part by the new, short style of her hair. There were shadows under her eyes, and she looked like she’d lost weight in the sevendays since he’d last seen her. Under the circumstances, he wasn’t surprised. “Thank you for coming, Sh’zon.”

“No need to thank me,” he said. “M’ric’s served under me for Turns. I owe it to him to be here just as much as I owe it to you.”

If Valonna noticed the forced heartiness of Sh’zon’s tone, she didn’t say anything. He was glad of that. He hadn’t had much time to think about how to play the situation, but he’d come down on the side of showing bluff support for the man who had been his second for so long – up until the point when he had to seem shocked and baffled by whatever accusations M’ric was charged with, anyway. He’d only incriminate himself if he gave away any hint that he’d been aware of M’ric’s activities. He just hoped that M’ric wouldn’t implicate him. He tried not to let the thought put visible tension in his body. It was already hard enough keeping his anger tamped down. Some part of him had always known that this day would come, but M’ric had promised him he’d be careful, that he wouldn’t ever slip up, and like an idiot, Sh’zon had believed him. He was glad he had Kawanth back to help him keep his emotions in check. If he’d still been dragon-deaf, Sh’zon didn’t know if he’d have been able to maintain his composure.

“Where do you –” he began.

He was interrupted by H’ned’s arrival. “Sh’zon! Izath told me Kawanth had come in.”

“Came as soon as the Weyrwoman asked,” Sh’zon replied, clasping wrists with H’ned.

They engaged in a few moments’ contest to see who could inflict more pain on the other. Sh’zon won, and H’ned retrieved his arm, trying to conceal his discomfort. “Well, you’d be the expert at coming running when a queen rider calls, eh, Sh’zon?”

“Don’t pay to be tardy when your dragon’s twined with hers,” Sh’zon said, with matching sincerity.

“Weyrleaders,” Valonna interrupted, before H’ned could respond, “I think it’s best we proceed as quickly as possible.”

“Of course, Weyrwoman,” H’ned replied. He didn’t quite look at Valonna as he spoke.

“What’s M’ric supposed to have done?” Sh’zon asked.

H’ned shrugged, but his pale eyes watched Sh’zon intently as he said, “Timing.”

Sh’zon looked right back at him. “Timing? Where? Or when, rather?”

“I was hoping you’d be able to shed some light on that.”

Sh’zon braced himself for a specific accusation, but when none came, he asked, “What makes you think that, H’ned?” He let indignation shade his tone. “I hope you’re not suggesting that I’d endorse that sort of nonsense in a rider under my command.”

H’ned spent another couple of moments searching his face, and then gave up. “Of course not. It’s only that, having been his Wingleader for so long, you might have an insight into M’ric’s agenda.”

He didn’t have anything specific, Sh’zon realised, but that didn’t mean H’ned suspected him any less. “Insight?” he repeated. “I’ll not deny M’ric was my Wingsecond for many Turns, and a sharding good one too, but the man’s never been a friend.”

“Then he’s never confided in you?” H’ned asked. “Never told you he planned to go between times for any reason?”

“Never,” said Sh’zon. It was very nearly true. M’ric had seldom told him anything about timing runs he planned to make; only about the ones he already had, which wasn’t the same at all. “And I’d have given him a piece of my mind if he had,” he added. “Fool thing to do, timing.” He frowned at H’ned with what he thought was a credible attempt at bafflement. “Not something a rider with any sense would attempt. M’ric’s always been level-headed. There has to be some mistake.”

“For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have marked him as the sort to go playing with time, either,” said H’ned, “but…” He glanced towards Valonna; again, without quite focusing on her.

“Journeyman Sarenya came to me with it last night,” said Valonna.

“M’ric’s girlfriend,” H’ned added.

“I know who she is,” Sh’zon said. He furrowed his brow, thinking fast. Sarenya wasn’t a dragonrider. Whatever she’d seen to make her turn M’ric in, surely it could be put down to a misunderstanding. “How did she even know about timing?”

“M’ric wouldn’t be the first rider to boast about his dragon’s abilities to a woman,” said H’ned.

“Absolutely not. Even if M’ric has been timing – and that’s a big if – he’s no braggart.”

“C’mine told her,” Valonna said, with a sharpness that Sh’zon had seldom heard her use. “And he says he’s witnessed M’ric and Trebruth timing first-hand.”

That was uncomfortably near the mark. Sh’zon and M’ric had once manipulated C’mine into going between times to Search Tarshe – albeit only by a few hours, and not with his explicit knowledge. Still, as credible witnesses went, it could have been worse. “C’mine’s not all there himself,” said Sh’zon. “Who knows what he saw?”

“You’re defending M’ric rather hard, Sh’zon,” said H’ned.

“I won’t condemn a man who’s served me long and faithfully before I’ve good reason to do so!” Sh’zon said. “The say-so of some girl with no business knowing about timing in the first place, and a crackdust blue rider who’s timed it so much he doesn’t know if he’s coming or going, doesn’t add up to shaff-all!”

“Ah, but you haven’t heard the good part, yet,” said H’ned, with a perverse sort of relish. “The girlfriend thinks M’ric got rid of T’kamen, and then timed it to give himself an alibi.”

Sh’zon felt his blood go cold. “Got rid of,” he repeated with exaggerated slowness, to give his face something to do that wouldn’t betray him. “And why on Pern would M’ric want to do a thing like that?”

“She and T’kamen were lovers,” said H’ned. He spread his hands. “What more motive does a jealous boyfriend need?”

“A jealous boyfriend!” Sh’zon scoffed. “This isn’t a Harper farce, H’ned! M’ric wouldn’t do in another rider over some sharding piece of tail!”

H’ned looked hard at him. “I thought you said he wasn’t a friend.”

“You don’t have to be bosom-pals to know something of a man’s character after flying together twenty Turns!” Sh’zon snapped. He stabbed a finger at H’ned. “Whatever else M’ric might have done, he’s no killer!”

He could say that with a clear conscience, with M’ric’s promise from all those months ago ringing in his head. I haven’t killed him, if that’s what you mean. Sh’zon found himself able to stare H’ned in the eye until he backed down. “Maybe you’re right,” H’ned said in a placatory tone. He cast another non-look towards Valonna. “It does seem a little far-fetched, Weyrwoman. I know you’re fond of C’mine, but he’s not been stable for a long time now; and as for the Beastcrafter, she’s probably still distraught over the business with her Master.”

“Sarenya isn’t given to flights of fancy,” Valonna insisted.

“No one’s saying she is, Valonna,” Sh’zon said. He sensed the chance to nip this whole troubling matter in the bud. “But how much can some girl from the Crafts know about dragons and between? She’s not a rider. She probably just misinterpreted something.”

“You’ve said yourself that Shimpath would know if Epherineth had died that day,” H’ned told the Weyrwoman.

“Then where did he go?” Valonna asked. “Where did T’kamen go, if not to his death?”

Sh’zon exchanged a look with H’ned. “It’s like I’ve said, Valonna,” H’ned said, too patiently. “He must have bungled a visual and slipped between times. He could have ended up anywhere, in any Turn. And if he tried to come back, and missed his mark…” He lifted his hands. “Shimpath wouldn’t have sensed Epherineth’s death if it happened before she was even Hatched.”

“T’kamen was never that careless,” said Valonna, quietly, but resolutely. She lifted her eyes, first to H’ned, who avoided them, and then to Sh’zon. “Something happened that day. And if M’ric wasn’t telling the truth about where he was, he must have something to hide.”

“Valonna, if it makes you feel better not having the man around, I’ll take him back to the Peninsula with me,” Sh’zon said. “And I wouldn’t expose my Rallai to a man I thought had a speck of malice in him. You know that.”

“I could let him go, if it would ease your mind,” H’ned said quickly, as if to remind them both that he, not Valonna, had the last word on the disposition of a fighting rider. “I’d need to find a new rider to take on Ops, but –”

“No,” said Valonna.

“But, Weyrwoman –”

“I said no.” Valonna rose from her seat. It shouldn’t have been impressive, as slight and young as she was, and yet Sh’zon had to stop himself taking an instinctive step back. H’ned looked equally startled. “I’m not letting this pass, and I’m not letting him leave my Weyr. No.”

“Where’s M’ric now?” Sh’zon asked, breaking the uneasy pause that followed Valonna’s statement.

“In his weyr,” said H’ned.

“Alone?”

“S’rannis is keeping an eye on him.”

“So he knows he’s under investigation. Does he know what for?”

“Not yet. I wanted to get your take on him first.”

“Then you haven’t even asked him to his face if he’s been timing?”

“He’d only lie if he had –”

Valonna interrupted, “Trebruth can’t lie to Shimpath.”

“M’ric wouldn’t lie,” said Sh’zon, conscious of the irony that it was the biggest falsehood he’d yet uttered.

“You can harm a dragon, forcing him to choose between his rider and his queen,” H’ned added. “I’d sooner not do that without good reason.”

“And the disappearance of Madellon’s rightful Weyrleader isn’t reason enough, H’ned?” Valonna asked.

That rocked H’ned. Sh’zon could almost feel for the poor man. No wonder he wouldn’t look Valonna in the eye. “Weyrwoman,” he said, and subtly moved his shoulder towards her so the tassels of Peninsula’s Deputy Weyrleader swung eye-catchingly there. “I’ll question M’ric. He was my Wingsecond for Turns. I don’t believe he can lie to me. Asking Shimpath to get involved is a last resort.”

“We’ll both question him,” said H’ned. “And Trebruth is only a brown. He won’t be able to hold out against Izath for long, if it seems M’ric is lying.”

Sh’zon thought H’ned might be surprised where Trebruth’s ability to obfuscate was concerned, but he refrained from saying so. “Fine by me.”

Finally, Valonna nodded. “I won’t have Shimpath pressure Trebruth…yet. But I want to find out what M’ric’s been doing. You two might not believe C’mine or Sarenya, but I do.”

“I’ll have S’rannis escort him up here,” said H’ned.

“No,” said Valonna. Sh’zon was sure she hadn’t used that word nearly so often when he’d been her Deputy Weyrleader. “We’ll go to his weyr. He won’t be expecting that.”

It wasn’t the resolution Sh’zon had been hoping for, but it was a reprieve, of sorts. Trebruth would be helpless to resist a queen’s coercion. Still, as he and H’ned flanked Valonna on the way out of her office, he wished he could send M’ric some sort of warning. He couldn’t, of course. Shimpath would certainly be listening for any communication Trebruth either sent or received. The fact that there was probably nothing Sh’zon could say that would prepare M’ric any more than he’d already prepared himself didn’t make him feel any better about it.

Trebruth wasn’t on his ledge. The undersized brown dragon was curled up on the couch inside the weyr. He regarded them with eyes still slow and green, but on the distinctly yellow side of that colour. Sh’zon risked a hard stare at him. He didn’t say anything, or even think in words, but he hoped Trebruth would get the message.

Inside the weyr, M’ric was sitting at the table with his leather-working kit open and a piece of harness spread out in front of him. If it hadn’t been for the stern and stony-faced presence of S’rannis, standing stiffly by the archway to the outside, the scene might have been perfectly normal. But even as M’ric looked up from what he was doing, Sh’zon recognised the subtle signs of tension in his shoulders and in the lines of his face. However good a show he put on, M’ric was afraid.

And that made Sh’zon afraid.

“Weyrleader,” S’rannis said, straightening unnecessarily to attention. “Weyrwoman. And, uh…”

“Weyrleader will do fine, Wingsecond,” Sh’zon said shortly.

“Weyrleader,” S’rannis said obediently, but his attention was on H’ned.

“Anything to report, S’rannis?” H’ned asked.

“No, sir. He’s just been greasing harness.”

S’rannis’ eyes pleaded for some explanation, but H’ned only nodded. “Thank you. You can go.”

“But –”

“Weyrleader Sh’zon and I will take it from here.”

M’ric had set his harness aside and was wiping oil from his hands with a cloth. Once S’rannis had gone, he rose from his chair. His face expressed surprise to see Sh’zon, but his eyes didn’t. “What’s this all about?” he asked, with just the right amount of perplexed concern. “S’rannis wouldn’t say why we’ve been confined to quarters.”

“Sit down, M’ric,” Sh’zon said, and then turned to H’ned and Valonna. “If you’ll let me…”

He moved the three vacant chairs around so that they all faced M’ric across the table. He took the centre one himself and gestured for Valonna and H’ned to take the pair slightly behind him. He leaned his elbows on the table and stared at M’ric, hoping he could read his expression. “There’ve been some allegations made against you, M’ric.”

“Allegations of what? And by whom?”

“Murder,” Sh’zon said, before H’ned or Valonna could say timing. “You’ve been accused of murder.”

To anyone who didn’t know him well, M’ric’s expression of pure, uncomprehending shock would probably have been convincing. Sh’zon was nearly convinced himself. M’ric looked blankly at him, then at Valonna and H’ned. “Is this…” He started to smile. “This is some kind of joke?”

“Do we look like we’re joking?” H’ned asked.

The half-smile fell from M’ric’s face. He continued to look from one to another, his dark eyes moving quickly. “Murder,” he said, and coughed, as though the word caught unfamiliarly in his mouth. “Faranth. Murder? How can you… I mean… Faranth, has someone died?”

“T’kamen,” said H’ned.

M’ric blinked. “But… He disappeared months ago. Has...has a body been found?”

“No,” H’ned said, “but you’ve been accused of his murder nonetheless.”

“Did you do it, M’ric?” Sh’zon asked, angling his body forwards. “Did you kill T’kamen?”

“No! Faranth, Sh’zon, of course I didn’t kill him!” M’ric looked as appalled at the notion as Sh’zon could have hoped he would. “Faranth’s teeth, I…” He raked a hand through his hair, looking totally bewildered. “Why would I do such a thing? Who would think I could?”

Sh’zon didn’t know if H’ned had Izath pressing Trebruth to confirm if M’ric was speaking the truth, but he assumed he was. “Then you weren’t the last person to see him the day he disappeared?”

“I don’t know,” said M’ric. “I suppose I could have been.”

“Then you did see him?” H’ned asked.

M’ric looked straight at him. “Yes, I saw him. He was intending to come and observe Ops on night manoeuvres, but he had a lot on that night, so we rescheduled… Weyrleader, you and Sh’zon asked me about this the day it happened, and I told you what I knew then…honestly, I’ve probably forgotten the exact details between then and now…”

“All right, M’ric,” H’ned interrupted him.

“And you didn’t kill him,” Sh’zon said, “or hurt him in any way, or…lay a finger on him?”

“Faranth, no,” M’ric said. “I’d never hurt anyone. Least of all another dragonrider. Least of all the Weyrleader.”

Sh’zon turned in his seat to look at H’ned. “Kawanth says Trebruth says he’s telling the truth.”

“Izath says the same,” said H’ned. He looked towards Valonna. “Weyrwoman, I think –”

Valonna’s face was unreadable as she looked at M’ric. “Brown rider,” she said quietly, “what do you know about timing?”

Sh’zon’s heart sank.

M’ric met the Weyrwoman’s gaze guilelessly. “Timing?”

“Going between times,” said Valonna.

“I…know it can be done,” said M’ric. “I know it’s dangerous.”

“Do you know it’s against Madellon law?” H’ned asked.

“Yes,” M’ric replied. “It’s against the law of the Peninsula, too,” he added, glancing at Sh’zon.

“That it is,” Sh’zon agreed, “and I don’t know of a Weyr on Pern that isn’t the same…”

But Valonna wouldn’t be distracted from her line of questioning. “Have you ever done it, M’ric? Gone between times?”

M’ric went fractionally more still. He hesitated a moment, and then said, “Weyrwoman, I’m not the only rider in this room who has.”

Sh’zon gaped. He hadn’t expected that answer, or for M’ric to implicate him so blatantly. Nor had H’ned, by his indignant response. “What? Explain yourself, brown rider!”

“My apologies, Weyrleader,” said M’ric. “But…” He looked at Sh’zon. “Look, maybe it doesn’t happen so much at Madellon. But at the Peninsula, almost every weyrling dragonpair slips a few hours at some point. You place the sun too specifically in your visual on your way home across a timezone or two, and you arrive three hours later than you intended…”

“Is this true, Sh’zon?” H’ned demanded.

Sh’zon let out the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. “Aye,” he said. “Me and Kawanth did slip a time or two as weyrlings. You don’t think of it as timing, so much as…well, cocking up, if you’ll excuse my language, Valonna.”

“I never did,” said H’ned, as if he were offended by the implication that he and his precious bronze could have been so careless.

Undeterred, Valonna pressed, “Have you ever gone between times deliberately, M’ric?”

“Deliberately?” M’ric asked. “You mean by my own choice?” He shook his head. “No.”

Sh’zon braced himself for the uproar from Izath at least, Shimpath at worst, at that bare-faced lie. It didn’t come. He was baffled for a moment, and then he recalled what M’ric had said the day before Ipith’s mating flight. I didn’t decide. I never decide. I never choose to time it, or to when. M’ric wasn’t lying. He was plotting a circuitous route around the truth, but he wasn’t lying. You clever bastard. You might just fly us out from under this tangle yet.

“Then you didn’t time it back to the day of Shimpath’s Hatching in 91?” Valonna asked.

M’ric looked as puzzled as Sh’zon felt – genuinely puzzled, Sh’zon thought. “Shimpath’s Hatching? No. I can’t think why I’d want to?” He cocked his head expectantly.

Valonna frowned. “You didn’t go back to bring C’mine and Darshanth back through time to the present?”

“C’mine and Darshanth?” M’ric really did look baffled. “I don’t know C’mine all that well. I’d heard he’d had some difficulties getting over the death of his weyrmate, and that he’s not working with the weyrlings any more, but…” He shrugged, plainly at a loss.

“Faranth, Valonna,” H’ned said suddenly, forgetting not to look at the Weyrwoman. “You don’t think C’mine could have been behind T’kamen going missing…all the timing he’s been doing…”

“C’mine loved T’kamen,” Valonna told him curtly. “And it wasn’t C’mine who accused M’ric of being involved in the Weyrleader’s disappearance.”

“Then – pardon me, Weyrwoman – who is?” M’ric asked. Again, he looked sincerely bewildered. “I don’t know why anyone would suggest such a thing.”

Valonna looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think we should say.”

“Don’t I have a right to know who’s been making accusations against me?” M’ric asked.

“I don’t know…” said Valonna.

“He has a point,” said H’ned. “He’s been accused of some very serious things. And by a non-rider. It’s not right that a dragonrider should have no recourse –”

But M’ric had raised his head mid-way through H’ned’s sentence. “A non-rider,” he said softly, and then, after a long moment of frozen disbelief, his face contorted into sorrow. “Oh Faranth. Saren.”

Valonna stiffened, and turned to H’ned, looking furious. “I told you we shouldn’t say anything!”

“I didn’t!” H’ned protested.

“M’ric,” Sh’zon growled. The last thing either of them needed was for M’ric to lose his masterful grip on the situation when they were so close to being free of it.

“You’d be within your rights to make a charge of false accusation against her,” said H’ned.

“Sarenya wouldn’t have made the allegation if she didn’t believe it to be true,” Valonna told him.

“No one’s making a charge against Sarenya,” M’ric said, cutting across them both with a finality that verged on the insubordinate. “With all she’s gone through, everything she’s lost… I don’t blame her. Faranth. I’ve let her down so badly.”

“Why would she make these allegations up, M’ric?” Valonna asked. With both C’mine’s and Sarenya’s credibility in shreds, some of the force seemed to have gone out of her.

“Does it matter?” H’ned intervened. “A woman scorned; am I right, M’ric?”

“No, Weyrleader,” M’ric replied. He sounded heartsick. “The fault was entirely mine.”

“That being so, I won’t have a rider’s honour being called into question by a non-rider,” H’ned said. He held up a hand to Valonna. “And matters of reputation fall squarely in my bailiwick, Weyrwoman. The Beastcrafthall has done enough damage to Madellon. I’m not having some overwrought journeyman running around my Weyr making up malicious lies about my riders.”

“H’ned –” Valonna began.

“Faranth knows, respect for the Weyr is thin enough on the ground already without tolerating this sort of insult,” H’ned went on, warming to his subject. “And we’ve put up with it for too long. Not any more. I’m taking a stand. The Beastcrafthall can have this woman back – between with her contract – and I’ll make sure they know exactly why she was ejected.”

M’ric was looking horrified. “You’ll ruin her career!”

“She should have thought of that before she decided to accuse you of killing the Weyrleader,” said H’ned. “If we don’t make an example of people like her, we’ll never get out from under this disrespect that Pern has for the Interval Weyr.”

“That’ll do, H’ned,” Sh’zon said. He could see something terrible building in M’ric’s eyes. “We get the idea.”

“Too much compromise!” H’ned continued, ignoring him. “Too many Weyrwoman willing to sell their dragons’ dignity for a few extra marks they should have been entitled to anyway! Too many weak Weyrleaders too frightened to stand up for their riders with Hold and Hall! And yes, that means you at the Peninsula, Sh’zon; you and your Weyrwoman! And T’kamen, too, Valonna! What did he even achieve in his fleeting tenure except selling all of us down the river to fatten the purses of his blue and green rider friends?”

Sh’zon saw M’ric start to move, but he was still too late to stop him.

M’ric threw himself across the table at H’ned, sending the Weyrleader crashing backwards on his chair and following him down. “You pathetic piece of shit!” he snarled, seizing the front of H’ned’s shirt and shaking the suddenly shocked and gaping Weyrleader like a dragon with a wherry. Distantly, Izath was bugling in distress. “You’re not fit to clean T’kamen’s boots! Your dragon will never fly a queen! History will barely even remember your name, you pompous, petty little bastard!”

Sh’zon found himself dragging M’ric off H’ned. He was shouting at them both, though he didn’t know what he was saying. A pained yelp from nearby was probably Trebruth, suffering beneath Shimpath’s displeasure. Sh’zon outweighed M’ric in bone and muscle, but M’ric was fearsomely strong with rage. Sh’zon had never seen him so furious. He’d rarely even seen him angry. But he manhandled him off H’ned, leaving M’ric with a torn handful of shirt and H’ned dishevelled and disbelieving of what had just happened to him.

He shoved M’ric away, interposing himself between him and H’ned. “You all right, Valonna?” he asked, not daring to take his eyes off M’ric for more than a second to check for himself.

Then he had to, when Valonna didn’t reply straightaway. “Weyrwoman?”

Valonna was sitting very still on her chair, looking at M’ric.

H’ned struggled to his feet, gasping. “You’re finished, brown rider!” he bawled at M’ric. “You’re finished!”

“Be quiet,” Valonna said, and Shimpath must have reinforced the command, because H’ned shut up immediately. She tilted her head, still looking at M’ric. “How do you know how history will remember H’ned?”

M’ric’s chest was heaving with his exertions, but the wrath had faded from his eyes. Sh’zon interceded. “Figure of speech, Valonna,” he said, “surely…”

“Be quiet, Sh’zon,” Valonna told him, and Sh’zon didn’t need Shimpath sitting on Kawanth to close his mouth. “How do you know, M’ric?”

M’ric shook his head.

“Have you gone between times to find out what’s going to happen in the future?” Valonna asked.

Sh’zon could see the strain on M’ric’s face increasing as Shimpath exerted force on Trebruth, but M’ric set his jaw, and shook his head.

Valonna rose from her seat. She approached M’ric, brushing Sh’zon aside. “Have you used timing to make marks gambling on runner races?”

M’ric’s expression was agony. He staggered where he stood as Trebruth’s low keen of anguish rang discordantly around the weyr, and then said, hoarsely, “Yes.”

Valonna recoiled – in surprise or disgust, Sh’zon didn’t know – and then steadied herself with a hand on the corner of the table. “Have you used timing to better your situation, or the situation of others close to you?”

“Yes,” M’ric said. He didn’t look at Sh’zon as he said it.

Valonna took a deep breath. “Were you timing on the day T’kamen disappeared?”

“Yes.”

She had his measure now, Sh’zon realised, with a sick feeling in the depths of his gut. M’ric might dance around the facts, and he could turn a half-truth to his advantage, but he couldn’t answer falsely to a direct question while Shimpath was poised over his dragon, and Valonna knew it. “Do you know what happened to him?”

“Yes,” said M’ric.

“What did you do to him?” Valonna asked.

“I didn’t hurt him.”

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t hurt him!”

“Tell me, M’ric!” she ordered him, and all of Shimpath’s strength was behind her command.

M’ric went to his knees, crushed by the force of the queen dragon’s mind, crushed by his own dragon’s suffering. He raised his head slowly to meet Valonna’s stare, his every movement an ordeal under the full focus of Shimpath’s titanic will. “No.”

Valonna flinched, and suddenly the tremendous pressure of queenly will that filled the confined space was gone. “What do you mean, no?”

M’ric swayed where he knelt. “Do what you want to me,” he panted. “Do what you want to Trebruth. It doesn’t matter. We won’t talk.”

Sh’zon had never seen a scene like it: M’ric brought low but still unbroken; Valonna uncomprehending that a brown rider could defy her queen; H’ned still reeling from his own reprimand.

Then Valonna said, “Sh’zon. H’ned.” She snapped their names out hard enough to bite her tongue. “Restrain him. Restrain Trebruth. And search this weyr. Tear it apart if you have to.”

She was almost in tears, Sh’zon realised. “What are we looking for?” H’ned asked. His voice still sounded thick and slow from the mental slap Shimpath had dealt Izath.”

“Something. Anything!” Valonna voice wavered before she got control over it. “If there’s any evidence of what he did to T’kamen, I want it found!”

There was no refusing her. Sh’zon used part of the fighting harness M’ric had been greasing to bind his hands behind his back. M’ric looked mutely at up him, his eyes dull, but Sh’zon didn’t dare say anything. He hauled him to his feet and then pushed him unresistingly into a chair. “Stay there and don’t move!”

H’ned had already begun to turn over the weyr, pulling out drawers and upending them onto the floor. Sh’zon joined him, making a good show of it: stripping M’ric’s bed to its bare frame, rifling through the collection of slates and hides in the record case, pulling clothes from their rail and searching the niche where they had hung. He didn’t think they’d find anything. M’ric was too clever, too careful, to have left anything incriminating hanging around in plain view.

He was only half right.

“What’s this?” H’ned cried suddenly, triumphantly. He’d been throwing items out of the chest at the foot of M’ric’s bed. As Valonna and Sh’zon crowded around to see, H’ned rattled what seemed to be the base of the chest. “I think this is a false bottom,” he said. “Give me that beveller from his tool kit.”

Unhappily, Sh’zon handed over the narrow blade. H’ned wedged it in the crack between the bottom and side of the chest and then levered up the entire base plate. He threw the beveller aside, got his fingers under the false panel, and pulled it out of the chest. Then he reached into the shallow space it had concealed and pulled out a book, bound in worn grey leather, and a pouch that rattled with the sound of mark pieces. Wordlessly, H’ned handed the book up to Valonna.

She took it from him with hands that visibly shook. She opened the cover. Sh’zon caught a glimpse over her shoulder of pages filled edge to edge with writing, but although the neatly inked marks looked familiar, they didn’t form any words he recognised. “What is it?”

“This is a cipher,” Valonna said slowly. She traced her finger down the page. “This is T’kamen’s cipher.” She looked blankly at Sh’zon. “He used it to make notes he wanted to keep private.”

That was where Sh’zon knew it from: the incomprehensible nonsense scrawled in T’kamen’s workmanlike handwriting in the margins of a dozen records. But the hand that had inscribed these marks wasn’t T’kamen’s. “Can you read it?”

Valonna shook her head. Her face was tight with frustration. “He never showed me how.”

Sh’zon turned to M’ric, bound and silent in the chair where he’d shoved him. “Is this yours?” he demanded. M’ric didn’t reply, and Sh’zon turned back to Valonna. “Does anyone else know how to read this cipher?”

“C’los invented it,” Valonna said, “but…”

“Weyrwoman!” H’ned interrupted them suddenly.

He had emptied the contents of the cloth pouch onto the table. The mark pieces – ones, twos, even fives – were mostly Beastcraft bullmarks, with a few treemarks, and odd coins from most of the other major Crafts among them. But it was the heavy silver ring lying on top of the money that made Sh’zon, with all he knew about M’ric’s clandestine activities, catch his breath.

Valonna picked it up and turned the flat face of it to the light. Greenish glowlight described the deep grooves etched in the metal, picking out the dominant letter M clasped in a dragon’s talons. “This is a copy of the Weyrleader’s signet ring.”

They all stared at it for a moment as the enormity of the implications sank in.

“He must have been falsifying documents,” said H’ned. He was shaking off his shock; but for his torn shirt and unkempt hair, he nearly sounded himself again. “Shaffing shards –”

“The narlbark,” Valonna said across him, silencing H’ned. She turned incredulous eyes to M’ric. “You used this to buy narlbark. For P’raima.”

M’ric didn’t deny it. He didn’t say anything. He just stared back at her from where he slumped in the armchair where Sh’zon had put him.

“Is this true?” Sh’zon found himself shouting. He advanced on M’ric, fury suddenly overriding his caution, and seized him by the collar. “Were you working with P’raima? Did you help poison us? Were you involved in kidnapping Tarshe?”

“Sh’zon!” Valonna shouted.

Kawanth shuddered beneath Shimpath’s reprimand, and Sh’zon let M’ric go. He stared at the man he’d known for so long; the man he’d never truly known. “You traitor,” he whispered disbelievingly. “You filthy snake traitor!”

“You’d better start talking,” H’ned told M’ric. There was a hysterical edge to his tone. His pale eyes were almost bulging with outrage. “Or it’s Westisle for you!”

“No,” said Valonna. Her tone was hollow, flat, her face pale. “The sentence for a brown rider for murder and high treason isn’t Exile. It’s Separation.”

M’ric’s eyes flickered. It was the first expression Sh’zon had seen on his face since he’d refused Shimpath’s command to speak. Separation. The sentence even P’raima had feared. The sentence that made exile to the bleak dragonrider penal settlement of Westisle seem desirable. M’ric would be placed, alone, on one barren island. Trebruth would be placed on another, and compelled by a queen never to speak to him and never to leave. If the unbearable loneliness of complete and permanent division from one another didn’t kill them, hunger or exposure soon would. There was no capital punishment for dragonriders in the way that a non-rider could be staked out for Thread, or hanged by the neck in an Interval, but Separation was a death sentence in all but name.

But didn’t M’ric deserve it? Hadn’t he committed treason? Hadn’t he lied to everyone – including Sh’zon himself? Hadn’t he forged Madellon documents? Hadn’t he colluded with the most monstrous Weyrleader Pern had ever known?

He says he didn’t kill anyone, said Kawanth. And Trebruth does not deserve to die.

“Why did you do it, M’ric?” H’ned asked. “What did you have to gain by working with P’raima? By getting rid of T’kamen?”

“I have nothing to tell you,” said M’ric.

“What do you think you have to lose?” H’ned snapped. “Talk and we’ll consider Exile. Otherwise, like the Weyrwoman said, you’ll never see or hear Trebruth again.”

M’ric’s resolve didn’t waver. “You’ll do what you have to do.”

“Whoever you’re protecting –”

M’ric laughed. It was a terrible, incongruous sound, devoid of mirth.

“You find this funny?” H’ned demanded.

And then it struck Sh’zon. He’s protecting me. He swallowed back the bile in his throat. M’ric wouldn’t talk because doing so would implicate him. He was throwing himself in front of Thread for Sh’zon’s sake.

Sh’zon couldn’t let him do that.

“Talk, M’ric,” he growled, fixing him with his most penetrating glare. “No matter who it hurts. No one’s worth losing you dragon over. No one.”

M’ric returned the look, and in that instant Sh’zon knew that he grasped his meaning, and was grateful for it. But then he said, “I can’t.”

H’ned snatched up the book with its coded pages. “We’ll decipher this sooner or later, M’ric. Whatever you’re hiding won’t stay hidden for long, and you’ll be rotting on an island somewhere with nothing but the wind for company!”

“C’mine,” Valonna said suddenly.

They all looked at her.

“C’mine will be able to read the cipher,” she said. “He and C’los and T’kamen used to leave each other notes in code when they were boys.”

“Well, let’s get him down here now,” said H’ned. He pointed a finger at M’ric. “Last chance to talk, brown rider, while you still can!”

“For the love of your dragon, M’ric,” Sh’zon begged him. “Just tell us what you know. You’ve nothing to lose.”

But M’ric wasn’t looking at him. He wasn’t looking at anyone. He was staring intently into thin air, his brows drawn together in thought.

Then he refocused. He looked not at H’ned, nor at Sh’zon, but at Valonna. “Bring me C’mine. I’ll talk to him. And no one else.”

Chapter seventy-three: T’kamen

Even in the Eighth Pass, a queen’s flight is nothing but politics, writ large upon the sky.

The only question is: whose hand is doing the writing?

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Weyrwoman Dalka

26.11.18-26.12.09 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON AND ISTA WEYRS

F’sta and S’devry came whooping into the classroom at the tail of the class, heaving an exasperated-looking Kayrin between them. “She did it!” S’devry shouted as everyone else turned to look. “Fiasco did it!”

“Would you get off,” Kayrin said, batting at the two jubilant riders who were half carrying her in their excitement.

She looked annoyed by the manhandling, and T’kamen shot the pair of riders a look. “Blue riders,” he said, “put her down. You’re not weyrlings any more.”

“But she did it,” F’sta said. “We saw her. She –”

T’kamen held up a hand to silence him. “Kayrin?”

She took a moment to compose herself after her unceremonious treatment. “It’s true,” she admitted, and couldn’t help the grin that crept onto her face. “Fiasco went between. She can do it.”

T’kamen allowed her a smile. “I never had any doubt,” he said, and as he turned to mark a cross in the box next to Kayrin’s name on the progress board on the wall, the rest of the group broke into a chorus of cheers and congratulations behind him.

He let them celebrate for a few moments. It was a breakthrough worthy of some high spirits – though for T’kamen, it was more relief than revelation. All eleven other fire-lizards had been popping in and out of between for several days already, and he’d been concerned that Kayrin’s Fiasco seemed reluctant to follow their example. Losing even one dragonpair from the Wing would have been a major setback.

But when he turned back to the room, and asked for quiet with a motion of his head, he leavened his words with caution. “Well done, Kayrin. You could have discouraged Fiasco if you’d given her any indication you were worried about her, and you didn’t.” He approved with his eyes Kayrin’s tiny nod of satisfaction at the compliment. Then he expanded his attention to all of them. “But I don’t want any of you taking this as a cue to start getting impatient. Your lizards are still only three sevendays old. They aren’t mature enough yet to be sensible, especially the smaller ones.” He said it in the confidence that no one would take offence. Even the most prickly blue and green riders had learned, early on, that the brown and bronze lizards were markedly more calm than their more junior brethren. “By the time they’re six sevendays old, and awake more than they’re asleep, they should be able to concentrate well enough to be reliable as pilots.”

The response to that was mixed. Tr’seff and Z’renniz, the most level-headed of T’kamen’s riders, nodded sagely. Dannie and Fraza looked disappointed at the delay. Most of the others sighed with varying degrees of frustration. Only B’nam didn’t react, staring instead at his hands with the same sullen expression he’d been sporting for more than a sevenday now.

T’kamen had intended to take them through a visualisation exercise from the Peninsula’s records, but he doubted they’d concentrate on it with the excitement around Fiasco’s achievement. Instead, he sketched a formation on the board. “Let’s go and stretch some wings.”

The need to keep the fighting dragons fit gave T’kamen an excuse to put them through manoeuvres, and after half a Turn flying only with the Seventh, Epherineth liked taking out an all-colour Wing. They didn’t flame, though Dannie had protested that the greens and blues would lose their edge. The Strategic dragons weren’t trained for it in close formation, and T’kamen didn’t want any of his irreplaceable dragonpairs getting scorched or – worse – going between to dodge live flame before they were ready.

He could, and did, put dragons into formations that they had never flown. As weyrlings, bronzes and browns were soon separated from their smaller siblings, the better to learn the skills that would be appropriate to their supporting role. That Trebruth had been allowed to continue to train with the fighting colours was a testament to M’ric’s persistence as much as to Trebruth’s size. But neither Tactical nor Strategic dragons were used to flying together, and it had taken a couple of sevendays for them to settle into the unfamiliar patterns. Neither side was ready to cave in and admit it yet, but T’kamen thought they all quite liked it.

He took care to include contemporary formations, too – allowing the greens and blues to work independent of the bigger dragons, to lead themselves, and even to command the browns and bronzes. But T’kamen found that hybridising traditional and modern patterns was the most rewarding approach. Flanking two or three sub-formations of fighting blues and greens with layered stacks of browns and bronzes, or assigning a single Seventh dragon to anchor a trio of greens, or assigning big dragons to static stations and infilling the gaps with free-moving smaller ones, combined old-fashioned strategy and new in ways that neither T’kamen’s Interval training, nor the rigidly segregated tactics of the Pass, would have allowed.

Whatever he did, he knew that someone would be reporting back to S’leondes. Dannie, or Fraza, or B’roce – it could have been any of the fighting riders or all of them. T’kamen didn’t let it worry him. He hadn’t asked his riders to keep anything secret. He reported to S’leondes himself, answering his sceptical questions about the nature of the flight training he was putting his Wing through. And if the Commander had hoped to expose him as partisan towards his Seventh men over the fighting riders, then T’kamen thought he’d been sufficiently even-handed with everyone to disappoint him.

It was true that his greens gave him more headaches than all the other dragons of the Wing combined, though. The emphasis that Pass tactics put on speed seemed to have endowed every green dragon in the Weyr with the need to prove that she was the fastest of them all. Without Threadfall to take the edge off their ferocious rivalry, T’kamen’s complement of five were constantly vying with one another over who was quickest and who could turn the tightest and who could best catch Epherineth’s eye in the process.

Epherineth was unmoved by the one-upmanship. Despite his mangled face, he had half the green dragons in the Weyr competing for his attention already, and he’d never been liberal with his favours. He caught Suatreth in her flights, but he wasn’t the sort of dragon who needed to make a show of his virility. Still, the young greens of T’kamen’s Wing kept bickering with each other and attempting to flirt with his bronze. It was exhausting.

Mnorth, Kayrin’s green, flew with particular exuberance in the morning’s drill. T’kamen wondered if she was just reacting to her rider’s good mood, but when they returned to the Weyr, Epherineth said, No. She’ll rise later.

The one fighting blue, Nankinth, had landed next to Mnorth. T’kamen watched the two dragons for a minute as Tr’seff, his duty wingman, helped him to strip Epherineth of his harness. “Tr’seff,” he said. “Is there a problem with Kayrin and S’devry?”

“They used to be weyrmates, sir,” said Tr’seff. “Didn’t you know?”

For all T’kamen’s careful vetting of his riders, that was one fact that he’d missed. “Used to?”

“Kayrin broke it off,” said Tr’seff. “Said they couldn’t be involved any more now that they’re in the same Wing. Though I think that was just an excuse.”

T’kamen didn’t like the way that Nankinth had positioned himself possessively beside Mnorth – or how S’devry was clearly pestering Kayrin. He limped over to the two riders. “Something the matter?”

“No, sir,” S’devry said promptly. “Nothing the matter, is there, Kayrin?”

Kayrin looked pained, but she straightened. “No, sir.”

T’kamen looked at S’devry. “Why don’t you stop bothering Kayrin, then,”

“I’m not –”

“See to Nankinth,” T’kamen told him brusquely.

“Sir,” S’devry said, sounding petulant.

T’kamen watched him stalk off towards his dragon. “Is there a problem with him?”

“No, sir,” Kayrin said quickly. “He’s just… An idiot.”

“Do you want him grounded when Mnorth rises?”

“Grounded?” Kayrin looked taken aback. “Nankinth’s a fighting dragon. It’s his right to chase any green he wants. Mnorth won’t let him catch her.” She made a face. “Probably.”

“I didn’t know that you two had a history,” said T’kamen. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have selected both of you for this Wing.”

Kayrin put a protective hand up to Fiasco, riding on her shoulder. “It is history,” she said. She looked anxious. “You won’t kick us out of the Unseen?”

The word gave T’kamen an instant’s dislocation. “The Unseen?”

“Oh,” Kayrin said, “it’s something Tr’seff came up with. Aloft, on wing, seen then unseen.”

“From March Of The Wings?”

“Though I suppose we’re more like the Seen Wing, until we actually go between,” said Kayrin. “H’juke and O’sten don’t like it. They think we should still be called your Wing. T’kamen’s Wing.”

“I don’t know,” T’kamen said. “I think the Unseen has a certain ring to it.”

He appreciated H’juke and O’sten’s loyalty, though he didn’t think it was necessary. He wondered how much of it was down to the shift in the dynamics between the brown and bronze riders of the Wing. Yaigath, B’nam’s brown, had started out as the most confident of the Seventh dragons, but Bularth and Monbeth were beginning to assert their natural dominance. T’kamen hadn’t realised just how heavily suppressed Madellon’s bronzes had been until he’d had daily contact with them. Under Epherineth’s guidance, Monbeth and Bularth were starting to behave more like bronze dragons should.

It was with that observation in mind that he spoke to their riders in the dining hall a couple of nights later. “Will you be sending Bularth after Donauth?” he asked H’juke quietly, beneath the hubbub of dinner conversations.

H’juke looked startled. “Bularth? Chase Donauth?”

“Dalka says she’ll rise within the sevenday,” said T’kamen. “If you want to try for her, you should be thinking about it now.”

“Faranth,” said H’juke. “I don’t know if I want to think about it.” His slightly glazed expression suggested that he was doing exactly that. “I don’t want to oppose you.”

“Don’t put your loyalty to me ahead of your duty to Bularth,” said T’kamen. “This might be the only opportunity he ever has to catch a queen.”

H’juke’s expression turned pained: the look of a rider torn between his own desires and his dragon’s. Then he shook his head emphatically. “No. I’ll wait. Bularth’s young.”

O’sten was less noble, which T’kamen found refreshing. “I’ve been giving it some thought already,” he said, absently stroking Flicker’s folded wings. “Monbeth’s keen.”

“As he should be.”

“I don’t think he really has a chance,” O’sten said. “Not that he couldn’t give Epherineth a run for his money.” He grinned, and T’kamen chuckled, approving. “But it’s a match race really, isn’t it? Epherineth and Geninth, winner takes all. Still, we’ll be there. Even if we’re just making up the numbers.”

“He’ll be doing more than that,” said T’kamen. “You can’t underestimate any bronze in a queen’s flight.”

“I heard Br’lom say he’ll be putting Shadith in,” said O’sten. “Faranth knows why. He’s older than dirt.”

“Any dragon who’s caught a queen once could do it again,” said T’kamen, thinking of Epherineth’s canny old sire Staamath. “Experience counts for plenty.”

“So does the queen’s choice,” said O’sten. He was looking over towards Dalka. Donauth’s rider was laughing at some joke R’lony had made, her hand draped familiarly over his forearm. “She’s been with R’lony a really long time.”

“I know,” said T’kamen.

“What happens to us if Epherineth doesn’t win?” O’sten asked. “I mean, do we just muddle on by ourselves?”

“No,” T’kamen said. “No muddling.”

“What, then?”

T’kamen shrugged with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “We’ll fly that Fall when we come to it.”

“It’s going to happen today, isn’t it?”

T’kamen made his slow way out onto the ledge, placing his cane quietly. Leda was barefoot, wearing one of his shirts, her arms wrapped around her against the early morning chill. She hadn’t turned to see him approach. Her attention was elsewhere.

So was Epherineth’s.

T’kamen nearly didn’t dare touch him. Epherineth was an arc of tension, his body strained taut in the same direction as Leda’s gaze. So intent was he on staring across the Bowl, he seemed to have forgotten that T’kamen didn’t like having to come along his right-hand side. So T’kamen made a point of not looking at the disfigured snarl of his dragon’s face, and moved between Epherineth and Leda. “Yes,” he said.

Leda did turn to him then. Her face was blotchy with more than early-morning sleepiness. “You could go,” she said. “There’s still time. You could…”

Epherineth tilted his head in response to some stimulus in the Bowl: another bronze, if the tightly-contained flare of anger that T’kamen felt and shared was any indication. T’kamen reached out to place his palm against his dragon’s shoulder, half expecting it to be fever-hot. Epherineth flinched, but his hide was merely warm beneath T’kamen’s fingers. “You know I can’t.”

“I could come with you,” said Leda. “I’d go anywhere with you. To Starfall, or to the north, or…”

“Leda,” T’kamen said.

He meant it gently, but it came out shadowed by Epherineth’s rising aggression. She looked at him, stricken, and he tried again. “Leda,” he said, “you know I have to do this.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” she said. “You could choose to do something else if you wanted to. If you really wanted to.”

T’kamen couldn’t find anything to say.

“But you don’t want to,” Leda said. “You don’t want me. Not enough.”

“Leda…”

“No.” She unfolded her arms, lifting her chin. Her eyes sparkled with the tears she refused to shed. “No. I won’t beg.” She stepped past him, walking faster than T’kamen could have followed.

He watched her go helplessly.

Leda stopped just before she passed beneath the shadow of the archway. “But I’ll be waiting for you,” she said. “I’ll still be here.”

Then she was gone.

T’kamen stood looking at the place where she’d been for a long moment.

B’roce came out onto the ledge with a mug of klah a few minutes later. His face was screwed up in a sympathetic grimace. “Didn’t think she’d take it well, when the time came.”

T’kamen accepted the drink with a nod. “Will you keep an eye on her today?”

“Not like there’ll be much else for us to do,” B’roce replied.

“Fetch, too,” T’kamen added, after a sip of klah that did nothing to clear the sour taste from his mouth. “Just make sure he’s fed, and keep him out of trouble.”

“I know all about keeping a mad brown calm,” said B’roce, whose own brown, Frenzy, was the most placid lizard of the entire clutch. “Is there anything else you need me to do?”

“See if you can get someone else to cover B’nam’s shift later,” said T’kamen. “One way or another, I don’t think he’s going to be in any condition to be picking up after me today.”

Donauth didn’t make it easy on anyone. When she woke, mid-morning, every bronze and half the browns in the Bowl started to creep closer, but she merely stretched, threw a scathing look around at the expectant males as if to mock their eagerness, and then set to a meticulous preening of her wings. The brown riders whose dragons regularly chased Madellon’s queens were unfazed by Donauth’s behaviour. “She always does this,” J’lope remarked. He was dealing cards around one of the tables that had been set up just below Dalka’s ledge. “Teases it out as long as she can before she goes.”

“Doesn’t it drive your dragons crazy?” T’kamen asked.

“They’re used to it, with her,” said A’dry, picking up his hand. “Not like Levierth. With Levierth, the minute she wakes up, she’s ready.”

Their relaxed complacency was in marked contrast to the taut anticipation on the faces of the bronze riders loitering near Donauth’s weyr. Only three of them had left Madellon early, escorting Levierth away – H’juke, C’pul, and ancient M’gard – but T’kamen suspected that even creaky old Arwilth had needed Levierth’s motivation to remove himself from the Weyr. The remaining bronzes, so long forbidden from even dreaming of flying a queen, were growing increasingly aggressive and restless.

But it was Geninth who made the first move.

As he launched himself from the Rim and towards the killing grounds, R’lony and Dalka emerged from Dalka’s weyr. The angry flare of indignation that T’kamen felt was only half Epherineth’s. R’lony had Dalka in a possessive embrace, his hand wrapped familiarly around her hip, and Dalka showed no sign of displeasure with the arrangement. She arched against R’lony with feline contentment, paying no attention to the riders waiting below.

R’lony didn’t ignore them. As Dalka pressed up against him, he glanced down at his rivals, dismissing them with the quick motion of his eyes, until his gaze landed on T’kamen. Then R’lony broke into a broad and gleeful grin.

It made T’kamen bristle, and he took a unthinking step forwards. It was nearly the end of him. Without the support of his cane, his left leg buckled under him. Only J’lope’s quick grab saved him from falling, and T’kamen found himself turning on him with his teeth bared.

“All right, T’kamen,” said J’lope, releasing his arm. “Here.”

J’lope pressed T’kamen’s cane into his hand, and T’kamen wrapped his fingers around the handle, feeling the familiar, comfortable shape of the bronze haft, steadied by it. He was already more than half with Epherineth, feeling the air flowing beneath his wings as he descended towards the killing grounds to stake his claim on the queen. Other dragons veered away as he came down hard on a fleeing herdbeast, but Geninth, already rending open the throat of his prey, merely threw him a red-eyed glare.

What’s Dalka doing? T’kamen demanded of his dragon as he made his way determinedly towards the steps of the weyr.

Epherineth wasn’t to be distracted from his kill. Doesn’t matter.

It does matter. If she’s changed her mind…

Doesn’t matter, Epherineth repeated. She won’t outfly me. He threw aside his first herdbeast with more force than necessary and took off after another.

Riders more mobile than T’kamen barged past him as he climbed the steps one at a time. He had to make himself refrain from lashing out. He gripped the cane hard enough to imprint the lines of the snarling dragon head on his palm, and made the ledge just as Donauth leapt lightly down among her suitors.

T’kamen shouldered through the shifting ranks of riders. Browns moved instinctively aside; bronzes turned and glowered at him, but only for a moment. They saw him as he was, with Epherineth’s superiority cloaking him like a mantle.

Only R’lony squared up to him. He stepped in front of Dalka, blocking T’kamen’s path to her. “You can’t walk straight,” he said. “Why, you can barely stand up. You –”

He had reached out, as if to push T’kamen, to prove his point. T’kamen stopped him with the hilt of his cane. “Touch me and you’ll never use that hand again.”

R’lony withdrew his hand, his eyes flashing with resurgent anger. “Maimed dragon,” he said, gesturing at the ornamental handle of the cane, with a vicious grin. “Lame rider. You can’t give her what she needs.”

“Neither can you,” said T’kamen. “Or she wouldn’t be taking other men into her weyr.”

The smile couldn’t have vanished from R’lony’s face more quickly had he been slapped.

But then Donauth shrilled a challenge, and T’kamen felt himself slide more completely into Epherineth’s consciousness. His awareness of his own damaged body diminished; he felt Epherineth’s strength and power as his own, huge and winged and dominant. He raised his head, and R’lony, shrouded by the snarling presence of Geninth, took one step backwards.

Dalka stood at their centre, the queen among them, and her eyes glowed with Donauth’s radiance.

“Catch me,” she cried, “if you can!”

Madellon was black and silent, and it was a long, dark, cold walk home without Epherineth to carry him.

T’kamen was glad of it.

He was grateful, in spite of his stiff leg, for the distance between Dalka’s weyr and his own. He was grateful for the lateness of the hour, that meant he could cross the Bowl undisturbed. Most of all he was grateful for the chill night air that seeped through the torn fabric of his shirt to numb the many small throbbing pains on his back and chest and neck.

He found himself thankful for another small mercy when he climbed the steps to his weyr. The only dragon on the ledge was blue. If it had been green, T’kamen thought he would have turned around and left, and he wasn’t sure exactly where he could have gone.

His determined, one-step-at-a-time progress up the stairs brought the blue’s rider out of the weyr. His voice was low, but clear. “T’kamen, sir.”

“I’gral,” T’kamen replied, relieved again that the rider on night-time duty was a Seventh man.

“Yes, sir,” said I’gral, after a moment. “I changed shifts with B’nam. We took over up here about half an hour before you – Epherineth –”

“Good,” said T’kamen, cutting him off. He wasn’t ready for that conversation yet, even with the mild-mannered I’gral. “You can go to bed, if you want,” he added, as he limped wearily into the glow-lit mouth of Epherineth’s chamber.

I’gral’s sharp intake of breath, more so than the expression T’kamen’s tired and glow-dazzled eyes couldn’t really make out, was telling. “I…don’t think I should, yet, sir,” he said. “I, um. Do you want me to get something for you to eat while you, um, bathe?”

T’kamen leaned heavily against the archway, exhaling hard. “Is it that bad?”

It was. He discovered some of it for himself when he peeled the ruins of his shirt from his scratched and bleeding back. Pulling the fabric away from the barely scabbed wounds broke them open again. He was too tired to do more than grimace at the pain, or to watch passively as the blood tinged the water of his bathing pool red before the circulating flow dispersed it.

“Um…T’kamen, sir?”

He must have dozed off in the warm water. T’kamen sat up, opening his eyes. I’gral had ventured into the bathing room. “Hand me that towel,” T’kamen said, and when the I’gral obliged, T’kamen rose unsteadily from the pool with as much dignity as he could muster.

I’gral had laid out redwort, numbweed, and bandages in T’kamen’s weyr. T’kamen waved him away when he picked up the redwort and cotton. “I’ll do it.”

The sting of the antiseptic solution jolted T’kamen out of his vagueness, if not the bone-deep weariness that infused every part of his body. He resented it. He didn’t want to be awake, to have to think, to have to process everything that had happened. To have to plan for what would happen in the morning.

Still, he found he kept stopping, too stupefied to complete the task he’d set himself.

After the third or fourth such occurrence, I’gral took the medical supplies out of his hands, and T’kamen didn’t stop him. “Who did you tail for?” T’kamen asked, as the blue rider deftly swabbed and numbed and dressed the scratches that hatched his torso.

“J’naide,” said I’gral. “His weyrmate used to bite.” He paused, and then said quickly, “I don’t mean that –”

“It’s fine,” T’kamen said. “I don’t know J’naide.”

“He was a Wingsecond,” said I’gral. “In the Third.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He’s the one who washed me out. I hated him right up until the day he died.” I’gral’s sure hands hesitated for a moment, and then he carried on. “He saved my life. Alvamorth and I were never going to be more than an inscription on the Wall if we’d made it. He said I might as well have Impressed a bronze…”

I’gral went silent for a while. T’kamen didn’t interrupt.

“Is Epherineth…?”

“He’ll be back in the morning,” said T’kamen. “He’s tired, and he can’t come between without Fetch.”

“Should I have bandages ready for him?” asked I’gral. “I mean, for when Dannie takes over.”

“I don’t think he’s hurt that way,” said T’kamen. “It’s only me who was…”

“Mauled?”

“Mauled.”

I’gral brought T’kamen a shirt to wear, loose enough not to bind. As T’kamen struggled into it, I’gral said, “She was here, you know. When I came on shift, and for hours after. Waiting for you to come back.”

T’kamen fastened the buttons of the shirt slowly, one at a time. After a bit, he said, “I’d like to get some sleep. You should too. I’ll need to be up not too long after the morning watchdragon takes over.”

“What should I do if anyone should come looking for you before then?”

There were too many people who might, and no one way that they could all be handled. “Tell them to come back tomorrow.”

He didn’t truly believe that sleep would come easily. Left alone and undistracted, his mind trawled incessantly through the events of the day, pushing glass-sharp memories through the hazy film of his weariness. Some were overlaid with Epherineth’s perceptions, recalling bronze wings and brown and golden. A pursuit that left more than half its competitors floundering before Epherineth had even found his top speed. Blue sky and rolling clouds spanning the widening gaps between those in contention and those without hope. A brown dragon whose triumphant roar turned desolate when his decisive move found no queen for his lunge to capture.

Geninth’s incredulous bellow of loss still rang in T’kamen’s ears, echoed as it had been by R’lony’s howl of despair. It had almost jolted him out of flight-merge. The vivid image of R’lony’s face, aged by ten Turns in the instant of his dragon’s failure, could have been imprinted on T’kamen’s brain, and in the moments it took him to rejoin his consciousness fully with Epherineth’s, other dragons had pressed their advantage. Other bronze dragons; and in the reassertion of the traditional order, Epherineth’s determination to prove his superiority had swept away T’kamen’s distraction.

Epherineth hadn’t paid any heed to the identities of dragons around him, but now, as T’kamen relived the flight in glimpses, he recognised the players. Recranth had outlasted Salionth, Br’lom’s Shadith had hung grimly on past the point at which he should have given up, and Monbeth had flown in Epherineth’s shadow until the very end.

Donauth’s endurance had run out before theirs had. Decades of only outcompeting browns had inhibited her stamina, and she had been ready to be caught before clear dominance had emerged among the bronzes. She’d flagged, beginning to zigzag between her remaining pursuers, and Epherineth’s instinctive desire to drive the queen as far and high as possible had warred with his need to claim her before someone else did. But he hadn’t needed to make that decision. Donauth had made it for him, swerving out of Recranth’s desperate clutches, and directly into Epherineth’s. If T’kamen’s memory of it had ended with his dragon’s exultant capture of Donauth, it would have been the most straightforward queen flight they’d ever contested.

But his memory didn’t end there.

His eyes, blinking free of Epherineth’s fading scarlet overlay, focused on Dalka’s face. Her hair was tousled and wild; her lips were puffy, bruised-looking. “Dalka,” he said, in a voice made rough in his dry throat. “Did I –”

Her hands on his chest stopped him from rising. “You did,” she replied. Her voice was as husky as his, but not for the same reason. Dalka’s eyes sparkled with fierce satisfaction. “We did.” She bent over to kiss him, and her hair fell in a cascade to shroud both their faces.

T’kamen accepted it passively, unresisting, still trying to reassert his identity. “Dalka,” he said, when she allowed him air. “I need to –”

“You don’t need to do anything,” she told him. “Let me.”

And he did.

Later, as he drank too thirstily of the wine Dalka gave him, T’kamen asked, “Will R’lony forgive you?”

Dalka stiffened only slightly. “What does that matter?”

“He’s been your weyrmate for a long time.”

“Was my weyrmate,” said Dalka, and paused, looking expectantly at him.

T’kamen evaded the challenge. “The ballot…”

“Will take place tomorrow,” said Dalka. “A formality, and everyone knows it, after that flight.” She smiled. “Donauth already thinks she’ll bear her best clutch.”

Unthinkingly, T’kamen said, “It was too short.”

“Too short?” Dalka asked sharply.

It was the wrong thing to say, but T’kamen couldn’t think of a way to back out of it. “Donauth’s smaller than Epherineth.”

“Donauth chose him,” Dalka said. “I chose you.” The fingers she curled into his shoulder were sharp-tipped. T’kamen winced. “Did we make a mistake?”

“No,” he said, but the pain of her nails raking his skin made him incautious. “But they could have flown longer. Higher. It’s the length that makes the…” He grunted with pain as Dalka’s fingernails bit into him. “Stop it.”

“Did you hear me asking you to stop?” she asked him, low and deadly. She clutched his shoulder, and T’kamen felt fire streak his shoulder-blade. “Do any of you ever stop once your blood’s up?”

“If it’s blood you want, you’ve got it.”

“It’s not your blood I wanted.” Dalka dug her talons into him again, and then released him. Bristling, she climbed off him and stalked away, the lithe muscles of her back rigid with displeasure. She pulled a robe about herself, cloaking her naked form, and T’kamen found himself slightly better able to think, despite the awareness that he was bleeding.

“What do you want, Dalka?” he asked. He tried to swing his legs over the edge of the bed, but found his bad knee had seized completely. “You wanted change. I’ll bring Madellon change. I’ll bring the whole of Pern change.”

“And what about me?” Dalka flared. “What about how my life is going to change?”

“It doesn’t have to,” said T’kamen. “R’lony’s your weyrmate. I won’t stand in his way…”

“You won’t stand in his way.” Dalka said it very softly – dangerously softly. “No. Of course you won’t. You won’t fight for what’s yours. You’ll never fight for me, will you; any of you! Not you, not S’leondes, not Ch’fil…”

“You’re not mine to fight for, Dalka.”

She glared at him, but the pain in her eyes betrayed her. “Why not? Aren’t I good enough? Am I too old? Is that it? Is it really some little girl of a green rider whose tender young body and child-like innocence I’m to compete with? Well? Is it?”

“No, Dalka,” T’kamen said, and then groaned as he forced his leg to bend. He grimly did it anyway. “You’re not competing with Leda.”

“I saw how you looked at my daughter,” Dalka said. Her colour was up, her cheeks flushed with more than passion now, and her eyes were black and brittle as agates. “My shadow. The younger me.”

The tiredness came over T’kamen like the leading edge of Fall. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Dalka.”

“I want to know who has such a hold on you that I’m not worth your love!” she cried; and then, as if struck by a thunderbolt, she shuddered and sat down. “It’s her, isn’t it? The one you left behind. Your Interval lover. Valonna.”

It was so far from the mark that T’kamen, without meaning to, laughed aloud.

“How am I meant to compete with a woman who’s been dead for a hundred Turns?”

The brutal gravity of it silenced T’kamen’s helpless laughter. “You can’t,” he replied, and as he said it, thinking not of Valonna but of Sarenya, something seemed to snap in his chest. “No one ever will.”

It was that, and not Dalka’s low, insistent, repeated command that he go, that had impelled him out of her weyr and into the darkness of Madellon’s night-time, in the clothes ruined by the first force of dragon passion.

As he lay there, sleepless and bleak, stripped temporarily even of Epherineth’s comfort, he thought he’d never felt so completely alone.

Then something landed softly on his chest. In the darkness, it took the small head nuzzling his face for T’kamen to recognise his fire-lizard. “Fetch.”

And he found himself laughing again, this time at the absurdity of it all: he, a bronze rider, kept company not by his dragon, nor by either woman who wanted so desperately to be his weyrmate, but by the undemanding friendship of a small brown fire-lizard.

The Marshal ballot took place late the following day, in deference to the fact that most of Madellon’s bronze riders were still recovering from their exertions.

Dalka had been right. It was a formality. When the Weyr Singer asked the assembled Strategic riders to rise to indicate their intention and willingness to serve, G’bral was the only man other than T’kamen to stand. Each rider marked his preference on a ballot stone before dropping the lot into a covered basket presided over by Tawgert and Lirelle. Even before they’d finished counting, the way that the stones piled up indicated that there was a clear winner, and the final totals bore that out. Of the Seventh’s ninety-three riders, fifty-eight cast their ballots for T’kamen, twenty-nine for G’bral, and six abstained.

R’lony was one of the abstentions. T’kamen hadn’t seen him since Donauth’s flight. No one had, and though Geninth’s subdued presence about the Weyr was evidence enough for most of T’kamen’s supporters that R’lony hadn’t done anything dire, T’kamen himself was less sanguine. For all their differences, he took no great satisfaction in having beaten R’lony. In truth, he felt he hadn’t defeated him at all. Dalka had been the architect of R’lony’s downfall, manipulating his blind devotion to her with ruthless finesse. In the moments when T’kamen let himself think about it, he felt outright dirtied by his part in ousting R’lony not only from his position, but from Dalka’s weyr. Perversely, it was something Dalka had said to him at Ista that kept coming back to him when he wrestled with his ambiguity. I serve my Weyr in the best way I can. It doesn’t always allow me the luxury of a clear conscience.

He resolved to live by the first part of that assertion. Before the afternoon was out, he’d already called a number of Strategic riders to a meeting in the Marshal’s office. They weren’t all riders he liked, nor even riders he thought had voted for him. Some of them looked surprised to have been invited. T’kamen himself was surprised that some of them had actually come. But he nodded to them each in turn, and each of them, warily, nodded back, even Br’lom, even R’ganff, even G’bral. “I can’t do this alone,” he said, without preamble. “I know R’lony did, but I’m not him. I don’t have the expertise, and I don’t have the time.”

“And we elected you why, exactly?” asked R’ganff, only perhaps half in jest.

“Ask fifty-seven of your Flightmates,” T’kamen told him. He rapped the back of his hand against the big logistics chalkboard on the wall. “We have half a Fall over eastern Jessaf tomorrow afternoon and then a full one over Speardike two days after that. R’lony left the numbers for Jessaf, but that’s as far ahead as his planning went. D’vek says Madellon East hasn’t been resupplied with livestock or firestone, and we don’t have the calculations for what’s needed.” He stopped to let the gravity of the situation sink in. “G’less.”

If G’less, most senior of the Seventh’s small cohort of blue riders, had been surprised to have been invited to the meeting in the first place, he was even more startled to be called upon. “Marshal T’kamen?”

It was the first time T’kamen had been addressed directly by that title, and it threw him for a second. “You’ll be taking over as Watchleader.” He saw, and ignored, G’bral’s outraged reaction. “I need you to scout the footprint of the Speardike Fall. If it’s going to hit the high slopes I don’t want to waste dragonpower on it. Take as many sweepriders as you need, but I want your report on exactly how and where it’s going to fall by noon tomorrow. R’ganff.” He turned to the Bunkerleader without pausing. “You’ll take five bronzes to the mineholds south of Speardike. There won’t be time for them to cart firestone to the Weyrstation with the passes still closed, so you’ll need to haul it by air. Br’lom, you’ll take half a Wing and scare up stock from all the Holds within an hour of the Weyrstation. If it can’t be driven, have it slaughtered and hauled by dragon. El’yan.”

His chess partner straightened from his position by the door. “Marshal?”

“I need you coordinating everything from here,” said T’kamen. “Talk to D’vek, and once you have G’less’ sweep report I’ll need you to forecast the dragons and supplies we actually need at Madellon East. Keep in close contact with R’ganff and Br’lom, and liaise with the Commander about the Wings he’s going to need to muster.”

“With the Commander?” El’yan queried.

“If he gives you any trouble, tell me,” T’kamen said. “G’bral, you’re Crewleader now.”

G’bral, who had been looking incandescent at his removal as Watchleader, blinked. “What?”

“The fire crews have been in disarray since Ch’fil left,” said T’kamen. “I need you to get them organised again.”

“But,” said G’bral, visibly torn between pleasure and dismay. “But my riders…”

“Will be flying under G’less,” said T’kamen. “And I want all of you section leaders – that includes you, El’yan – to bring me two names of riders who can deputise for you. I just don’t want to be in the position of being dependent on one rider in each role.”

“That’s not how…” Br’lom began.

“…R’lony did it,” T’kamen finished for him. “I’m not R’lony. Get used to it.” He started to dismiss his riders, then stopped. “Oh. El’yan, G’less. You’ll both need tailmen. Speak to the Weyrlingmaster.”

“Five section leaders?” asked G’bral, rather petulantly, as if the addition of one more somehow diluted his own rank. “Strategic only has commissions for four. You can’t just summarily make more. The Commander will veto it.”

T’kamen felt a humourless smile twist his mouth. “Leave him to me.”

“I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him all day,” T’kamen admitted, stretching out his leg more comfortably. “And I don’t know if that should surprise me or not.”

Ch’fil looked pensive. “He’s caught between a singe and a Threadscore. He’s wanted anyone but R’lony to be Marshal for twenty Turns. Guess he should have been more careful what he wished for.”

“I know we’re going to have a confrontation sooner or later,” said T’kamen. “I’m just grateful it wasn’t today. I’ve had enough confrontations for one sevenday.”

“Professional or personal?”

“Both.”

Ch’fil snorted. “I’m guessing R’lony’s taking it hard.”

“I haven’t seen much of him, either. I did send B’nam to check on him, not that I expect him to report back.”

“That boy’s loyal,” said Ch’fil. “Any rider worth his knots feels it personally when whoever he tailed for takes a knock, and R’lony’s been knocked right on his ass.”

T’kamen looked off Stratomath’s ledge and over the dark ocean south of Ista. He knew the peaceful scene was an illusion, created mostly by the northern Weyr’s grave under-population, but he found it calming in a way that no vista of Madellon’s could be. “He’s not the only one I’ve knocked this last day or so,” he said, finally touching on the reason why he’d woken Ch’fil in the middle of the night and brought Epherineth north to seek his counsel. “And I can’t salve my conscience by sending someone else to check on either of them.”

Ch’fil set down his drink on the table between them. “Some riders would consider having two women fighting over him a nice problem to have.”

“I’m not some riders,” said T’kamen. “And they’re not fighting over me.” He paused, contemplating the prospect, and shuddered. “Not yet.”

“Beats me what acrobatics must be going on in a woman’s mind to make you worth fighting over,” said Ch’fil. He grinned. “Now, if you were pretty like me…”

“Would that I were,” T’kamen said, glancing involuntarily at Epherineth, though his bronze had turned the unscarred side of his face to him.

“You couldn’t have picked two women less like each other,” said Ch’fil.

“I didn’t exactly pick them.”

“I mean,” Ch’fil continued over him, “Leda. Rides a green. Substantially younger than you. Cuter than you have any right to expect in your weyr. Worships the ground you walk on.”

T’kamen winced, but he couldn’t argue with the summation.

“And then there’s Dalka,” Ch’fil went on. “Queen rider. Substantially older than you. Scarier than a nest full of hungry tunnel-snakes. And expects the ground she walks on to be worshipped.”

“There’s one thing they do have in common,” T’kamen said. “They both compromised themselves to be with me. And I’ve hardly rewarded them for it.”

“Don’t look to me to wag my finger and call you a bastard, T’kamen,” said Ch’fil. “If you want to eat yourself alive for messing women around, be my guest, but I’d be a hypocrite to condemn you for it. And I can’t speak for Leda, but if Dalka was going to die of a broken heart, she’d have done it Turns ago.”

“I’m not so concerned about Dalka’s heart as I am about Epherineth’s,” said T’kamen. “Donauth’s smug enough for now having the biggest bronze on Pern for her mate, but when the novelty wears off and Dalka’s grudge against me sours her, it’s Epherineth who’ll suffer.”

“Donauth’s not spiteful,” said Ch’fil. “Bad-tempered, but not spiteful. She never took against Stratomath even when Dalka hated me the most. Though it didn’t hurt that she always clutched better by him than she ever did by Geninth…which brings me to the question of just how many dragonets Ista can expect in four months’ time.”

T’kamen shrugged, genuinely at a loss. “I wish I knew. From what I’ve been told, the flight went longer than standard, but it didn’t seem as long as when Epherineth flew Shimpath.”

“Older queen,” said Ch’fil. “How many did Shimpath –”

He cut off his words mid-sentence, his eyes flicking over T’kamen’s shoulder, only an instant after T’kamen himself became aware of Epherineth’s sudden stiffening to attention. What?

For all its silence, Epherineth’s mental roar was deafening. Stupid dragonet!

He sprang from Stratomath’s ledge with a downstroke of his wings that knocked the mugs off the table, shattering them and spilling their contents. Epherineth, T’kamen began, but then he felt his dragon’s consciousness mesh with Fetch’s, and a moment later he disappeared.

“Faranth!” said Ch’fil. He was on his feet. “Where’s he gone?”

T’kamen couldn’t even express his alarm by emulating him. Standing up abruptly wasn’t something he could do any more. “He said something about a dragonet.”

“Istan?” Ch’fil asked, and then in the next breath, “Can’t be. Stratomath says they’re all accounted for.”

“I can’t distract him while he’s between,” said T’kamen. He found he was gripping the handle of his cane hard, and relaxed his grasp. “I hate it when he does this without me. The last time –”

We come, Epherineth told him, and a heartbeat later he reappeared, higher than he’d vanished, a black shape against the starry Istan sky.

He wasn’t alone. A smaller dragon hung passively in his clutches. What happened?

Epherineth landed down in the Istan Bowl, backwinging carefully to set down his burden. She thought she’d try to go between by herself, he said, in a voice that crackled with displeasure. She was not ready.

“Faranth’s teeth, T’kamen,” said Ch’fil, squinting down at the two dragons. “That’s Fraza’s green.”

It took the couple of slow minutes that T’kamen needed to descend from Stratomath’s ledge for him to master his anger. That, he supposed, was one small advantage to his disability. If he’d been able to run down the steps three at a time, he’d have had Fraza by the shoulders, shouting demands for an explanation into her face. Spalinoth, Fraza’s green, could enjoy no such respite: she huddled in a wretched heap beneath Epherineth’s displeasure. But when T’kamen finally approached Fraza – the hunch-shouldered mirror of her dragon – he’d had time to quell the first force of his fury. “Are you all in one piece?” he asked, not much more curtly than he’d have queried a rider who’d had a near miss in the air. “Your dragon? Your lizard?”

“Frost t-took off,” said Fraza. “I don’t know where –”

Fetch has him, said Epherineth.

“He’s safe,” T’kamen told her. He glanced at Spalinoth, though it was too dark to judge if her colour was as bad as he suspected. “What about you?”

“I’m c-cold,” Fraza said, and T’kamen realised abruptly that she wasn’t stammering simply out of nervousness; her teeth were actually chattering.

He seized her hand and found it ungloved, the skin chill with the unmistakeable touch of between. “You went between without…” he started incredulously, and then stopped himself. He took a deep, controlling breath. “Ch’fil, can we get her inside and warmed up?”

“And away from all these curious eyes,” said Ch’fil. “Aye. Use my weyr. I’d best go and let Reloka know what’s happening.”

Fraza was looking confusedly at Ch’fil. “C-crewleader? Where are we?”

“Ista,” T’kamen told her. He looked up at the hundred pairs of dragon eyes whirling interestedly down from the walls of the Bowl. “For which you should probably be grateful, unless you wanted every dragonpair at Madellon to know you…” He caught himself again. “To know what you’ve been up to.”

Ch’fil kept a tidy weyr, and it didn’t take T’kamen long to find a blanket to drape around Fraza’s shoulders. He left the girl wrapped in it while he stoked up the tiny fire Ch’fil used to heat water, a lively hearth being of small use in Ista’s climate. It seemed strange to be tending a fire and brewing a drink for one of the riders who had so conscientiously performed the same duties for him for the last few sevendays.

He wasn’t the only one who noticed the oddness of the reversal. “I sh-should be d-doing that for y-you,” said Fraza. Her voice sounded steadier, and the stammer more definitely a mark of her nervousness.

T’kamen put a mug in her hand – tea, not klah; he wanted her soothed, not roused. Then, as she obediently sipped it, he dragged another chair over to face hers. As he sat down in it, Fraza’s frightened eyes lifted from the rim of the cup to meet his, and half a dozen different questions warred briefly to be first out. What were you thinking? was tempting. Do you know how stupid that was? would be more satisfying but less helpful. And a simple, Well? was nearly as much as he wanted to say.

Instead, he said, “What went wrong?”

Fraza blinked. “What?”

“What went wrong? Was it the visual? Did Spalinoth freeze? Or was it the link with Frost?”

Fraza looked down into her mug. “It was me,” she said. “I don’t think I was strong enough. I failed.”

“You failed this time,” said T’kamen.

“But I failed,” Fraza said. Her fingers clenched on the mug. “I’ve never failed at anything! I Impressed my first time standing; I graduated at the top of my class; I was tapped to the Commander’s own Wing…”

T’kamen looked at her until she fell silent. “That was what this was about, then?” he asked. “Beating the others to it? Being top of this class? Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Fraza had been avoiding his gaze. She jerked her eyes up to obey him with a guilty flinch.

“Did one of the others put you up to it?” T’kamen asked. “Have you been getting pressure from someone because of who you are?”

She shook her head emphatically. “I just wanted to prove I was worthy of the trust put in me...”

T’kamen leaned back in his chair, irritated. “Faranth save me from weyrlings with something to prove.”

“I’m not a weyrling,” Fraza said, with a touch of indignation.

“You could have fooled me!”

“I’m not afraid of danger,” she said, with a tremble in her voice. “I’m not afraid to die for my Weyr…”

“You sharding well should be!” T’kamen shouted, and that made Fraza quail in her chair. “This shaffing obsession that you all have with burning bright and dying young is complete whershit. Life expectancy might be short for a fighting dragonrider, but that makes it more important for you to cling onto it with every last ounce of will you have!” He glared at Fraza. “And if you’d gone and got yourself killed between, do you have any idea of what that would have done to the others? How it would have affected them? How it would have affected me? I already lost one rider to between. I’ll be scored bloody before I’ll be responsible for another!”

Fraza looked at him, her face stricken, and then without any further warning she burst into tears.

T’kamen just sat there, at a loss, although a small corner of his mind noted dispassionately that he could add another name to the list of women he’d caused to weep in the last couple of days.

He wasn’t much better at comforting Fraza than he had Leda or Dalka. “Don’t cry, Fraza,” he said roughly. “Come on. You got away with it this time, thank Faranth. If the only harm done is some dents to your pride and some extra greys in my hair then I’ll call that getting off lightly.”

“It’s not that,” Fraza cried. “It was all my fault. All my fault!” And she dissolved again.

T’kamen thought it would be a pretty good time for Ch’fil to return, but when, after several more long and uncomfortable moments, he didn’t, he exhaled hard. Then he leaned forwards and put his hand on Fraza’s shuddering shoulder. “It wasn’t all your fault,” he told her. “Your fire-lizard isn’t even a month old, and –”

“Not today, I don’t mean today!” Fraza’s face had gone blotchily pink. “When M’ric died. When he went between. It was my fault.”

T’kamen’s hand on her arm went stiff, and he made himself relax it. “Fraza,” he said, as gently as he could manage. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened that day.”

“But I can,” she said. “Spalinoth was proddy all that day. She’d been flirting with Trebruth in the morning, so he knew… We were in the formation below him, and we hardly burned a Thread. He was getting them all, even ones he shouldn’t have tried for. Then that shower of Threads all got through at once, and he went after that Thread-bomb when he should have let it fall. That’s why he died. He was trying to protect us.”

T’kamen couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Of course he was,” he said. “The stupid, cocky little shit. He’d have done anything to impress you.”

“I was going to let Trebruth fly Spalinoth anyway!” Fraza wailed. “If he’d known, maybe he’d have been more careful…”

“I doubt it,” T’kamen told her. The pang of regret he had grown to expect when he thought about M’ric was tinged with bitter-sweet pride. “He was in love with you.” As much as a seventeen-Turn-old dragonrider can ever be said to be in love with someone, he amended mentally, but he didn’t say it aloud.

Fraza sniffled back another giant sob. “R-really? He was always going on about that Harper girl he was seeing…”

“I don’t think he was ever serious about her,” T’kamen said.

“Because I told him, someone who doesn’t ride a dragon can’t ever understand, and he said I couldn’t understand...”

T’kamen let that one pass, but he was encouraged by Fraza’s improving demeanour. What was it Ch’fil had said about green riders loving to weep over tragic deaths? That reminded him of something else. “He wrote poetry about you,” he said, trying hard not to grimace as he said the word.

“Poetry?”

“I found it in his weyr, after…” He let the sentence trail, as much to avoid speaking an outright lie as to avert a fresh round of weeping.

“Do you still have it?” Fraza asked avidly.

T’kamen nearly told her it was in his weyr somewhere, and then stopped, fearing she’d tear the place apart looking for it. “I’ll look it out for you when we get back to Madellon.”

Apprehension replaced, at least partially, the grief on Fraza’s face. “When we get back.”

“Unless you want to stay at Ista,” T’kamen said.

Fraza looked at her hands. “I have to go back and face up to it, don’t I?”

“You have to go back, and you’ll blighted well learn from this, but I won’t be telling anyone about it,” said T’kamen. “Least of all the Commander.”

She looked up sharply, and though she didn’t seem entirely reassured, some of the tension had gone out of her. “I thought for sure you’d make an example of me with the others.”

“This isn’t about them. It’s about you. They’re all just about young and stupid enough to think that what happened to you wouldn’t apply to them, anyway.” That elicited a wan smile, and T’kamen decided it was time to back up the soft approach with some fire. “But I need your promise – your sincere promise, on your dragon’s egg – that you won’t ever pull a stunt like this again. I haven’t been demanding your obedience these last sevendays just to throw my weight around. Between has always been dangerous, now more so than ever. Until we know more, caution will serve you far better than courage.” He let steel enter his voice. “If you ever defy me again, I’ll send you back to the Commander in disgrace – and don’t think that Epherineth couldn’t scare Frost away permanently if I thought you couldn’t be trusted to obey.”

Fraza’s eyes had gone large at that last part, but she bowed her head. “I understand, Wingleader.”

“Go out to your dragon,” T’kamen told her. “We’ll take you home.”

As the Fraza left to obey, Ch’fil came in. “World set to rights?”

“How much did you overhear?”

“Enough.” Ch’fil strolled over to Fraza’s chair, picking up the discarded blanket and folding it. “We need to get tougher with the kids who have lizards.”

“Much tougher,” said T’kamen. “I’d bring them all back to Madellon to keep an eye on them if I thought you’d let them go.”

“No chance of that,” said Ch’fil. “We can’t even excuse them from Fall the way you can. Every dragon has to fly, excepting Chrelith.”

“Stratomath’s fighting?”

Ch’fil shrugged. “If you can call it fighting, when we’re barely staving it off over a few valleys.”

“Maybe Dalka was right,” said T’kamen. “Maybe the North should have been abandoned. Reclaimed again after the Pass is over.”

“That’s a dangerous notion for you to get in your head, T’kamen.”

“What, the prospect of bringing the North’s survivors south?”

“Dalka being right.”

T’kamen laughed, not quite mirthfully.

“You need to make peace with her, though,” Ch’fil said. “She’s not someone you want as an enemy. You have enough of those already.”

“At least R’lony and S’leondes haven’t drawn blood.”

Ch’fil’s cautionary answer followed T’kamen all the way home, more insidiously chill than the ultimate cold of between. “Yet.”

Chapter seventy-four: C’mine

Where a Justice concerns matters that would be harmful if disclosed to the Weyr, the Weyrleader or Weyrwoman may move to hear the Justice in private rather than in public. In such cases, Weyrwoman and Weyrleader must be joined by three Council bronze riders, chosen by lot, to hear the case.

In lesser cases, a simple majority vote is sufficient to deliver a guilty verdict. In capital cases where the potential sentence is Exile or Separation, a unanimous verdict is preferred. If unanimity cannot be reached a majority of four-to-one may be accepted; however, this is not ideal, as doubt will remain as to whether or not true justice has been served.

– Excerpt from Madellon Weyr’s Legal Code

100.05.18 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

“Why me?” C’mine asked, even before B’ward, the Wingsecond on guard, had closed the outer door behind him and turned the rusty key in its lock.

M’ric rose from the bench inside the single cell that comprised Madellon’s gaol, moving stiffly. That didn’t surprise C’mine. There was no padding, and the seat was neither wide enough for someone to lie down on it, nor long enough for a tall man like M’ric to stretch out. Besides the bench and the sturdy wooden bars, the only other features of the cell were a bucket in the corner and a single glow-basket, dimly supplied. The ventilation shaft that permitted fresh air to circulate even here, deep in the bowels of the lower caverns, might have allowed a snake to slither through, but nothing larger than that. There was nonetheless an odour of damp, of stale disuse, and overlaying it, fresher and ranker, the smell of a man’s sweat.

“Why me?” C’mine asked again, more insistently, when M’ric didn’t answer straightaway. He’d asked the same question of Valonna when she’d relayed M’ric’s request to him the previous day and she hadn’t had an answer for him. The question had kept him fretfully awake all night in equal parts perplexity and anger, but now he was here, M’ric’s slowness to answer made the anger dominate. “Well? Don’t you have anything to say? Aren’t you going to explain yourself?” He held the leather-bound book that the Weyrwoman had given him up against the bars of the cell. “Aren’t you going to explain this?”

“I’ll explain everything, C’mine,” M’ric said. He spoke softly. “It’s only that I hardly know where to begin.”

“Did you kill T’kamen?” C’mine asked. Emotion made his voice unsteady.

M’ric met his gaze unblinkingly. “No. I didn’t kill T’kamen.” Then a shadow crossed his face, and he looked away. “But I did betray him.”

The word seemed odd, with what C’mine knew of the minimal relationship that had existed between T’kamen and M’ric. “Where is he now? Is he still alive?”

“He was alive the last time I saw him.”

“But did you put him in harm’s way?”

M’ric paused, and then said, “Yes.”

“Where is he?” C’mine asked again. “For Faranth’s sake, M’ric! I know you didn’t like him, but –”

“I didn’t like T’kamen,” M’ric interrupted. “He was the finest rider, the best leader, and the most honest man I ever knew. I didn’t like him, C’mine. I loved him.”

“You hardly knew him!”

“I knew him when I was a boy,” said M’ric. “When I was angry, and insecure, and far too convinced of my own cleverness.” He almost smiled, a terribly sad expression. “He never entirely cured me of that last one.”

C’mine looked at him in complete bafflement. “But you’re older than him! You’re from the Peninsula! You –”

“Timing,” M’ric said simply, and when C’mine broke off, he added, “It all comes down to timing. When, and how, and why. And why I asked to talk to you, C’mine. Because you’ve gone between times. Deliberately. Knowingly. So Darshanth can keep you safe from what I’m going to tell you.”

“Safe from what?”

“Time,” said M’ric. “Because time protects itself, and it doesn’t care who it has to hurt to do it.”

The part of C’mine’s mind that was only human had no idea what M’ric was talking about. But the part that was twined inextricably with Darshanth quivered with a shock of instinctive comprehension. Does he mean…?

Listen to him, said Darshanth.

A chair had been placed outside the cell, and C’mine sat down, the book on his lap. Within the cell, M’ric eased back down onto his uncomfortable-looking bench. “Tell me everything,” C’mine said.

“I need something from you first,” said M’ric. “I need your word that you’ll hear me out completely before you tell anyone else what I’m going to tell you. Otherwise I can’t tell you anything.”

H’ned had told C’mine not to let M’ric take advantage of him. “If he refuses to answer a question, or he tries to bargain with you, or threaten you, you just remind him what’s at stake.”

“If you won’t talk, you’ll be Justiced and sentenced to Separation,” C’mine said. He almost couldn’t bear to say the terrible word. Aghast though he’d been by the revelation that M’ric had been involved in T’kamen’s disappearance, the idea of being a party to the forcible division of a rider from his dragon filled him with visceral horror.

“Then I’ll be sentenced to Separation. But I won’t talk without your promise.”

C’mine didn’t know what was compelling M’ric to prize his discretion over his own dragon, but he couldn’t bear the dreadful resolve in his eyes. “All right,” he said. “I won’t repeat anything until I’ve heard you out.”

Some of the tension seemed to go out of M’ric. “Thank you,” he said. “I hope to make you understand why I needed that promise.” He leaned his head back against the bare stone wall for a moment. Then he took a breath. “I was born in the eighth Turn of the Eighth Pass.”

C’mine looked at him without comprehension. “You mean the Seventh Pass?”

“I mean the Eighth Pass.”

“But that hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen for another hundred Turns.”

“I came back between times,” said M’ric.

“You timed it by a hundred Turns?”

“Almost a hundred and fifty.”

C’mine stared at him through the bars. Knowing M’ric had been timing was one thing. The claim that he had made a jump between times of more a century was something else. C’mine had thought his own trips of ten and twelve Turns dangerous enough. The idea of travelling more than ten times as far made him feel queasy. “A hundred…and fifty…Turns?”

“Give or take,” said M’ric.

C’mine groped for a suitable response. “Why?”

“Because I had to.” M’ric sighed. “That’s not a good answer. I’m sorry. Let me start this from the beginning. My beginning, anyway. I was born at Fiver Hold in eastern Madellon territory. My father was a blue rider of Starfall Weyr, but when I was fifteen I was Searched to Madellon, where I Impressed Trebruth.”

“Starfall Weyr?”

“It won’t be founded until about twenty Turns from now.”

“And Fiver Hold?”

“It goes by a different name now, and it’s still in Peninsula territory. The borders will change quite a bit between now and the Pass. A lot of things will change. The Pern I grew up in was very different to how it is now. By the time I Impressed Trebruth, no dragon had gone between in sixty Turns.”

“Then our weyrlings…”

“Were only the first,” said M’ric. “No dragonet Hatched from now on will be able to go between and come out the other side.”

It was such a terrible, desperate thought that C’mine briefly couldn’t take it in. “Then, you mean,” he said, “it can’t be fixed – we can’t put it right?”

“Not here,” said M’ric. “Not now.”

“Then…” C’mine swallowed hard. He’d just assumed that L’stev and the other Weyrlingmasters would eventually get to the bottom of the problem with between. “Then we have to tell the other Weyrs. Before any more weyrlings die trying –”

M’ric sprang from his bench to seize the bars emphatically with both hands. “Remember your promise, C’mine!”

“But –”

“Remember your promise!”

C’mine flinched back from his fierceness. “All right. All right.”

M’ric released the bars and slowly sat down again. “Pern will be very different without between,” he said. “I don’t think anyone here yet has any idea of just how different. And Madellon will be at the centre of it all.”

C’mine listened, torn between incredulity and fascination, as M’ric told him of a Pern made almost unrecognisable by the loss of between; of how the devastating casualties of the early Pass led to the rise of a revolutionary blue rider, S’leondes, and in his wake the overturning of traditional Weyr hierarchies; of a Madellon divided along colour lines, with blues and greens venerated for their heroics, bronzes and browns relegated to an inglorious supporting role. And of a young man with dreams of riding a blue who had, instead, Impressed the first and only brown dragonet ever to Hatch from the egg of a fertile green dragon.

“I believed I was the most overlooked, underappreciated, friendless rider on Pern, and if you’ll forgive a degree of youthful self-importance, I wasn’t far from the mark,” M’ric said. “I burned to fight Thread with the Tactical Wings, but the fighting riders wouldn’t trust a brown rider, and the bronzes and browns of the Seventh Flight despised me for a traitor to my colour. I was caught between their two worlds, no place for me in either. I didn’t help myself. I was seventeen, and too keen to prove my worth, and not nearly as clever as I thought I was. I was a disaster in the making. But then something happened.

“Trebruth and I had nearly finished our training when, one Threadfall day, we were summoned out to Madellon West Weyrstation at Rift Valley. I remember thinking it must be some sort of test. But when I got there, there was an enormous bronze dragon in the valley, and I was told that his rider was asking for me. His name was T’kamen.”

“Faranth,” said C’mine. “So he did slip between times!”

M’ric nodded. “He didn’t have the softest of landings in the Pass, in any sense. But his injuries healed. He convinced the riders of Madellon that he wasn’t a raving madman. He even took a position in the Seventh Flight.”

“But why didn’t he try to come back?”

“Because Epherineth found he could no longer navigate between, any more than all the other dragons of the Pass could,” said M’ric. “And then T’kamen discovered records showing that he never returned to his own time, and he realised that trying would be futile. Or fatal.”

C’mine closed his eyes. His chest hurt with a jumble of emotions: anguish, that T’kamen was truly lost to them; relief that he had not died; hope that his oldest friend had made a new life for himself in the future. “He always said he wished he’d been born during the Pass. He always wanted the chance to test himself against Thread.”

“He was a bronze rider,” M’ric said. “And Epherineth was the biggest dragon anyone had ever seen. It took time for them to adjust to their new status. Although even saying that implies that they did. I’ve never met a rider less tolerant of injustice, or more willing to spend himself in the service of others.” There was an odd tone in his voice; the echo of a young man’s zealous adoration, perhaps, tempered by an older man’s self-awareness. He met C’mine’s eye, as if conscious of how it sounded. “Or more short-tempered in a friend’s defence.

“He had no reason to help me. He had every reason not to, based on the M’ric he already knew. And I was a cocky little bastard of a weyrling. He didn’t like me much at first. But he took me on. He gave me a chance when no one else ever had. He wouldn’t put up with any whershit from me, but he never judged me for the colour of my dragon’s hide, or for the direction of my ambitions. And he wouldn’t stand for it when anyone else did.”

Every word rang so true that C’mine felt his throat constrict. “That was T’kamen,” he said. “He was always that way, right from when we were boys together, before we’d even dreamed of being Searched.” Then he suddenly recalled the book, forgotten in his lap. “He taught you our cipher.”

M’ric nodded. “He used it to keep notes. I tried to decode it myself, but I didn’t get far.”

“You wouldn’t have,” C’mine said. He found himself smiling, though it hurt. “C’los invented it.”

“Kamen often spoke of him as the cleverest man he’d ever known,” said M’ric. He exhaled a long breath. “He trusted me with the secret. I’ve never forgotten it.”

C’mine touched the book. “I can’t read this,” he said. “You use the same symbols, but a different keyword, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said M’ric. “I had to be sure I was the only one who could decode it.”

C’mine’s doubts about the veracity of M’ric’s claims were ebbing away. “But how did you get back to the Interval, if even Epherineth couldn’t go between in the Pass?”

“T’kamen figured it out,” M’ric said. He pointed with his thumb towards his own shoulder. “Because she was missing.”

It was a moment before C’mine grasped his meaning. “Your fire-lizard?”

M’ric met his eyes. “Remember your promise.”

“It’s fire-lizards?” C’mine asked. He could hardly believe the implication. “Fire-lizards?”

“It’s not that straightforward,” said M’ric. “Even Kamen didn’t like Epherineth going between with only Fetch to pilot them.”

“Fetch?”

“His fire-lizard.”

“Kamen couldn’t stand fire-lizards.”

“I know,” said M’ric. “But his guidance was the only way Epherineth could navigate between in the Pass.” His eyes went briefly distant. “The strange thing was that when we came back to the Interval, Trebruth discovered that he could travel between without Agusta’s help.”

C’mine was still struggling to take in the frivolity of the solution. “But why did you come back to the Interval, and not Kamen?”

“T’kamen knew he never made it back,” said M’ric. “There was no record anywhere of his returning to the Interval. He knew that meant he never had. But he also knew that I had travelled back in time to become the M’ric he had known.”

“He told you?”

“Yes. I didn’t believe him for a long time. I wanted to, but it didn’t seem even slightly plausible until he intuited the fire-lizard connection.

“But I started to find myself in old records from the Peninsula. Nothing major, nothing significant, but a passing mention in a drill muster, or a note that Trebruth and I had conveyed a passenger. The chance of there having been another brown dragonpair with exactly the same names as Trebruth and me seemed…well, eventually, less likely than the possibility that T’kamen was right. And eventually, I uncovered a record of my own arrival in the eighty-first Turn of the Interval, not far from Sixer Hold, in Peninsula territory.”

“Sixer,” C’mine began, and then made the connection. “Fiver Hold.”

“They say you can’t go home again,” M’ric said, with a shade of irony. He shook his head. “I thought I was so clever for figuring it out. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have come back between times when I did. I’ve always wished that I’d spent more time in the Pass, but, as I’ve come to understand, it was out of my hands.”

“What happened?” C’mine asked.

“We went between without a visual,” said M’ric. “And the first reference my panicking brain could produce was the one I’d just read about in my home Hold’s records, describing the day in Interval 81 when a strange brown dragon appeared out of nowhere to the west of the hoodoos.”

“Then –” C’mine began.

“No.” M’ric interrupted him. “I haven’t told all of the truth.” He took a long deep breath and let it all out. “It was my own fault. Not because I was careless in Fall that day. Not because Trebruth was, Faranth knows. But because I’d made the biggest, stupidest, most unforgivable mistake of my life, not just sevendays, but months before. I’d betrayed the trust of the best man I’ve ever known.”

M’ric didn’t speak again for a long time. His eyes were dark pits of ancient self-loathing, of decades-old shame, of fathomless regret. Into that bleak vacuum of reflexive recrimination, C’mine said, “You betrayed T’kamen.”

“Some would say that I was punished for it,” M’ric said. His tone had gone hollow, empty. “I tend to disagree.” He looked at nothing for a moment. “It was a while between the point when Kamen and I Impressed our fire-lizards and him working out how to actually use them to help pilot our dragons between. During that time, I completed my weyrling training. I was so desperate to fight Thread. I knew that, however skilled Trebruth was, however well I did on my assessments, we’d never be assigned to a fighting Wing. We were the wrong colour. It was that simple. And I couldn’t bear it. I didn’t sleep at all the night before our final assessment for thinking about how we’d be posted to the Seventh. I went to see T’kamen, to ask his advice. He said in my position he’d have done anything at all. Faranth forgive me, it’s the one piece of counsel I wish he’d never given me. Because I did exactly what he said. I made a deal with S’leondes.”

“The Commander,” said C’mine, uncertainly.

“No one else knew that T’kamen was trying to rediscover between at that point,” said M’ric. “I thought S’leondes would want to know. Stupid boy that I was, I thought he’d be pleased. I remember making the case to him that once dragons were able to go between again there’d be no reason for browns and bronzes not to fight Thread, and that allowing me combat experience now would give him a Wingleader he could trust in the future.” He shook his head. “I was such an arrogant little shit. S’leondes promised me a chance in the Wings if I continued to report to him in private about T’kamen’s experiments with between. I sharding near bit his hand off.

“S’leondes tapped me to his own Wing.” M’ric bared his teeth in the parody of a smile. “It was the proudest day of my life. And Kamen was proud of me. That only made it worse. I convinced myself that it justified the fact that I was spying on him. Faranth, I convinced myself that S’leondes knowing what he was up to would help.

“I remember reporting to S’leondes the day T’kamen figured it out. I almost didn’t. T’kamen and Epherineth had gone between successfully, but Trebruth and I…we struggled. Having to admit that part to the Commander was difficult. I remember thinking how stony-faced he looked when I told him that T’kamen could go between with his fire-lizard’s help, but that I couldn’t. S’leondes asked me if fire-lizards were definitely the key, and then told me to keep working with T’kamen to see if Trebruth and Agusta could learn the trick too. He even made sure I had the free time to do it.

“But we were still having trouble, and sourcing more fire-lizard eggs was a problem, too. T’kamen got his hands on a pile of old records from the Peninsula and had me reading them with him, looking for answers to both problems. S’leondes asked me to cull out any documents I found that would have helped – to keep them from T’kamen, and bring them to him instead. Anything about fire-lizard eggs, anything about learning to go between.” M’ric paused. “I half obeyed him. I did hide documents from T’kamen. But I’d begun to feel uncomfortable about what S’leondes was doing with the information I’d given him. I’d started to wonder if he’d find another young rider – a blue or green rider – to Impress a fire-lizard and learn how to go between. So I kept the records I found to myself, and Trebruth and Agusta and I used them to work on mastering between by ourselves. And we finally did. We finally discovered how to go between and get out again – badly, slowly, with great effort and not a little panic – but we could do it. And like an idiot, the first thing I did was tell S’leondes.”

C’mine dreaded where the story was going. “What did he do?”

“He told me I’d done well, but that I had to keep it to myself,” said M’ric. “He asked me not to tell T’kamen, and not to do it again in our training sessions, until he’d decided on the best way forward. And that wasn’t a comfortable order for me to take, because T’kamen had been getting more and more frustrated with me and Trebruth, and I wanted to show him that we could do it. But S’leondes was my Wingleader. He was the Commander. So I did what he told me, even though I knew it was making T’kamen doubt himself. If he couldn’t teach me to go between, even with Agusta to help, then maybe he was wrong about everything. I hated seeing him second-guessing himself like that.” M’ric took a deep breath. “And then a couple of days later I did something really stupid. I got us Threadscored.”

Despite himself, C’mine recoiled at the notion. “Faranth.”

“It should have been a death sentence,” M’ric said. “To any other Eighth Pass dragonpair, it would have been. It was a bad Fall. A really bad one, in strong winds, all Thread-bombs and unpredictable tangles. It was frantic. The Wings were at full stretch, and the formations couldn’t hold. I remember glancing up and seeing dragons veering aside in both directions, and nothing but silver pouring down on us. There was someone…” He paused. “There was someone important to me in the formation below us. I remember Trebruth going vertical, almost standing on his tail, trying desperately to flame everything that was coming down on us. I remember when the Thread-bomb ignited and then shattered and rained half-burnt bits of Thread down on us. I remember Trebruth twisting and turning, trying to evade it, and I remember the Thread that got through all his flame and all his manoeuvring and hit us.”

M’ric drew a line with his finger over his own left leg. “It struck here,” he said. “Across my thigh, Trebruth’s neck, the fore neck-strap and my left-hand tether. I remember having enough time to think that it looked like a tunnel-snake had landed in my lap before it ate through my wherhides. It was like someone had poured boiling water across my leg. The tether went a moment after that. I remember the safety going taut. I remember Trebruth throwing his head back as it started to eat into his neck.”

He stopped for several moments, his eyes narrowed in the memory of pain. “And then he went between,” he said, at last. “Without a visual.”

“Trebruth dodged,” said C’mine. “Blinked.”

“He didn’t know how to blink. When we’d gone between that one time before, it had been on a visual, carefully, with Trebruth and Agusta both concentrating on where we were going. Trebruth didn’t have time for any of that. He just reacted. And the strangest thing was that I didn’t panic. I should have. We’d just been in the middle of the worst Threadfall of my life, we’d been hit, and we’d gone between blind. I had every reason to panic. I didn’t. I just sat there in the dark and the cold, thinking that at least my leg didn’t hurt any more, and waited for T’kamen and Epherineth to rescue us. It wouldn’t have been the first time.”

“But they didn’t?” C’mine asked.

M’ric shook his head. “I don’t know how long we were there. Long enough for me to start thinking that maybe we’d both been wrong all along, and the dragon who’d appeared near Fiver all those Turns ago hadn’t been Trebruth at all.” He smiled distantly. “Fiver when it had still been Sixer. That was the key. That sixth hoodoo up on the ridge. I’d dug a drawing of it out of Fiver’s records. And that’s the image Trebruth – and Agusta – grabbed onto. That’s the where and the when that they found. That’s where and when they took us.”

C’mine tried to reconcile what he knew of timing visuals – the need to find a specific, unique reference to a specific, unique moment in time – with M’ric’s account. “You went between times on a visual from a drawing?”

“I knew it could be done,” M’ric said. “I knew it had been done. And most importantly, Trebruth believed he had to do it.”

“Believed?”

M’ric’s eyes found his. “Believed,” he said. “If I’d known what I know now, about timing, about the fail-safes, about the consequences of getting it wrong…”

They sat for a moment in silence.

C’mine’s head hurt, crammed so tight with everything M’ric had told him about his origins and T’kamen’s fate and Pern’s future that he hardly had room to think. He’s telling the truth, isn’t he?

Yes, said Darshanth. He understands time almost as a dragon does.

The words gave C’mine a chill. Abruptly, he felt suffocated by the close walls of the gaol, as if the weight of the rock above and around him was pressing down upon him. “Can we stop for a minute? I just need…”

He was going to say some air, but the words caught in his throat. M’ric seemed to sense them anyway. “I understand,” he said. “It’s a lot to take in.” He leaned back against the stone wall of his cell. “Could you see about getting me something to drink?”

C’mine hadn’t noticed that M’ric’s cell didn’t even contain so much as a pitcher of water. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll ask B’ward.”

“Thank you,” said M’ric.

C’mine rose and went to the door. He’d barely lifted his knuckles from knocking before it opened. B’ward stood in the gaol doorway, looking grim. “Well?”

“He needs a drink,” C’mine explained.

B’ward threw a sceptical look over C’mine’s shoulder towards the cell. Then he gestured behind him with a jerk of his head. “The Weyrleaders want to talk to you.”

“We haven’t finished yet –”

“Still, they want to talk to you,” said B’ward. “They’re coming down now. I’ll get him some water.”

“Remember your promise!” M’ric called out hoarsely from his prison.

C’mine hated to leave M’ric with his confession half told, and yet leaving the oppressive confinement of the gaol was undeniably a relief. Going outside into the sunlight was almost giddying, and he raised his eyes to where Darshanth was resting up on the Rim. His blue had been conspicuous by his silence throughout most of M’ric’s account.

Sometimes it is better to listen than to talk.

H’ned was striding over from Izath. Valonna wasn’t far behind him, but the Weyrleader got to C’mine first. “Well? Has he talked?”

C’mine looked past H’ned towards Valonna. “He…”

“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” H’ned told him. “Has he confessed or not?”

“He’s not finished,” said C’mine.

“You’ve been in there for hours! Hasn’t he told you what he did to T’kamen yet?”

“Not exactly…”

“Well, has he explained the book?”

“No, he –”

“Then for Faranth’s sake, C’mine, what have you two been talking about?”

“H’ned,” Valonna interrupted, catching up with the Weyrleader at last. C’mine was grateful for her intervention. He’d found himself nearly on the verge of hysterical laughter. “Don’t harass C’mine. This can’t be easy for him.”

“We’re only asking him to do one thing,” H’ned said. “Get that treacherous brown rider to talk.”

“He is talking,” C’mine insisted.

“Then what –”

“H’ned!” said Valonna. She looked at C’mine, and he was struck by how much she’d changed over the last Turn. Under different circumstances he would have been delighted to see how far she’d come. “Has he told you what happened to T’kamen?”

“Sort of. I…don’t know everything yet.”

“What about his timing? Has he talked about the details of where and when he’s been?”

C’mine wrinkled his brow. “I think he has more to say on that subject.”

“Oh, for the love of…” H’ned began. “Get back in there, C’mine! Finish the sharding job!”

“C’mine isn’t the one accused here, Weyrleader,” Valonna told H’ned. “Don’t speak to him as if he’s guilty of something.”

“He might as well be,” H’ned said. “Timing is still a breach of Weyr law…”

“That’s enough,” said Valonna. “You’re not being helpful.” She took C’mine’s elbow and walked him a step or two away from the Weyrleader. “Mine. You look so pale. Are you all right?”

“M’ric’s said a lot of…startling…things,” C’mine said. “It’s a lot to take in.”

“What sort of startling things?”

“I think I need to hear everything before I can put it into…proper context,” he said. “But I believe him when he says he didn’t kill T’kamen.”

“You believe him,” said Valonna. “Would H’ned?”

“I don’t think so.”

Valonna’s expression briefly betrayed her distress. “He wants to push for Separation, C’mine. Wants it.”

“But he’d have to prove M’ric was guilty at a Justice –”

“A closed Justice,” said Valonna. “Because timing’s involved. And it only needs a majority of four-to-one to carry a verdict.”

C’mine didn’t have C’los’ instinct for politics, but he knew how Madellon’s Council operated. Every senior rider was already manoeuvring for H’ned’s favour. He’d have no trouble persuading three bronze riders to find M’ric guilty. “He doesn’t deserve to be Separated,” he said. “No one does.”

“Then you have to find a way to avert it,” said Valonna. “Get M’ric to confess to what really happened. I don’t want to have to be the instrument of separating a dragon from his rider.”

“I’ll do my best,” C’mine promised.

Valonna squeezed his arm. “Thank you.”

M’ric stood abruptly from his bench when C’mine came back into the gaol. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes spoke all the same. “I didn’t tell them anything,” C’mine said. “I just said that you were cooperating as you said you would.”

M’ric sank back down onto his bench. A cup rested on the end of the seat, and a pitcher, half full of water, had been placed on the floor on the outside of the cell. “Thank you.”

“You’ve only told half the story,” said C’mine. “I still need to know the rest. What you did when you came back to the Interval.”

M’ric nodded. His eyes were distant again. “A couple of Peninsula riders picked us up,” he said. “They got us back to the Weyr and patched us up, but they didn’t know what to make of us. They could see that our injuries were Threadscore, so they guessed I’d slipped through time, but they thought I must be from some long-ago Pass, on account of Trebruth’s size.”

“They didn’t question you?”

“Oh, they questioned me,” said M’ric. “And I talked. I told the Weyrleader, Xh’len, everything. About the Pass, about between, about fire-lizards. And about blues and greens leading the Weyr. You can probably imagine how seriously he took me. He was kind, but he thought I’d had my wits scrambled between. He wasn’t completely wrong. I’d forgotten everything T’kamen had told me about the dangers of timing, the dangers of trying to change the past with knowledge from the future. Xh’len promised me he’d look into what I’d told him, but he also counselled me not to go telling my wild tales to anyone who asked, unless I wanted to be thought peculiar.” M’ric looked sorrowful. “I wonder how many lives he saved with that piece of advice, almost as often as I wonder if Xh’len was my first victim.”

The word made C’mine’s heart lurch. “Victim?”

“Xh’len died a few days after I arrived in the Interval. They said he’d always had a weak heart.”

C’mine’s disconcertion subsided. “That couldn’t possibly have been your fault.”

M’ric didn’t dispute the point. He took a breath, then continued. “Trebruth and I were given over into the care of the Weyrlingmaster, K’tersan. We weren’t really weyrlings, but we were totally unequipped to join a Peninsula Wing. K’tersan thought that my belief that we couldn’t go between without Agusta’s help was a consequence of our timing ordeal. He wasn’t right about that. But he insisted on teaching us – re-teaching us, as he thought – to go between properly. That’s when we discovered that Trebruth didn’t need Agusta to show him the way any more.”

“Trebruth was…cured?”

“No,” said M’ric. “I don’t believe there was ever anything wrong with him, or with any of the dragonets who couldn’t go between. The problem was with between itself, and back in 81 that problem didn’t exist.

“It wasn’t the only adjustment I had to make. I don’t think I really appreciated how lost T’kamen must have felt, arriving in a timeframe so alien to his own, until I experienced it for myself. I’d listened to his stories of how things were different in his day without ever really grasping them. So it shocked me to be treated as an equal, and even as a superior, by blue and green riders. It seemed unbelievable that dragons could just go between at will for the most trivial reasons. And it took a long time for me to get used to the idea that Thread wouldn’t fall for more than a hundred Turns, and all the grass and greenery around the Weyr was considered decorative rather than dangerous.

“But I adapted. I absorbed everything K’tersan could teach me, and all the time I was learning to be a dragonrider of the Interval, I was also piecing together a timeline of what I knew was going to happen over the next century and a half.” M’ric’s gaze fell on the book resting in C’mine’s lap. “I used Kamen’s cipher to record it.”

“Then you tried to change things?” C’mine asked.

“I’d like to say I was wiser than that,” M’ric replied. “I wasn’t. But most of the events I knew about were decades away. I hadn’t had time to research the complete history of the Interval, so all I knew about the immediate future was what Kamen had told me, and bits and pieces I’d picked up from reading old records. Mostly, I had the names of people who’d be significant. Names like L’dro and H’pold and P’raima. Names like Sh’zon.”

“Did you tell him where you were from?”

“No. Sh’zon will have told you that we were never friends. He’s not saying that to cover himself. He was already the dominant bronze in the weyrling class that I joined when I arrived in the Interval, and I set out to make myself useful to him. It’s common at the Peninsula for bronze and brown riders to form strategic partnerships. Sh’zon and I became allies, but not friends.”

“Then you didn’t help him by telling him what was going to happen?” C’mine asked.

“Sh’zon was ambitious. He didn’t need my encouragement to set his sights high. I may have nudged him once or twice, but I knew from the fragments of records I’d read that he’d become the Peninsula’s Weyrleader eventually, so I was content to simply shadow him up the ranks until his time came.” M’ric looked reflective. “How does that song go? About life carrying on even while you’re waiting for something else to happen? I found out the truth of that. And I found out that there were things about the Interval, things about my own future, that I didn’t know. I met a girl. A green rider. Artema. She’d been weyrmated to a brown rider, but that had ended badly, and she wasn’t interested in weyring up with someone new – especially another brown rider. I discovered she had a taste for good wine – she was Craftbred to the Vintners – and I decided that would be the way to win her over. The only problem was that I didn’t have anything like the kind of marks I need to buy the sort of wine that would impress her.”

“So you started using timing to cheat on the runner-racing,” said C’mine.

“Yes,” said M’ric. His tone was resigned. “I’d already been timing, right from the point when Trebruth and I had learned how to go between properly. The first time was ridiculously trivial. Sh’zon had been trying to get me to tell him where I came from, and when I wouldn’t, he said I must have timed it by accident, because he didn’t believe I had the stones to do it on purpose. Then he went into his harness kit for something, and found a note, in my handwriting, saying that I had stones bigger than his, on top of the answers to the following day’s history test.

“And that was always how I timed it. Not because I wanted to, but in response to knowing I must have.” He shrugged. “Not that it stopped me from using it for my own benefit. It wasn’t long before Sh’zon and I realised we could make marks on the runners, and it was convenient how, whenever we were feeling poor, the results for the following day’s races at Blue Shale or Rosken or Long Bay would fall into my possession, and I’d know that Trebruth and I would be making a short trip backwards to fulfil the loop.”

“Didn’t Sh’zon ever do it?” asked C’mine.

“He was never comfortable with it,” said M’ric. “He came between times with us once or twice, usually because we were late home from a Gather or something, but mostly he left it to me. I kept close records of when we’d been, and Trebruth got good at timing, very confident in knowing what references he needed. Dragons do, when they time it often.”

C’mine couldn’t argue with that – Darshanth’s aptitude for timing had certainly improved since they’d begun. “But we never did it for personal profit,” he said. “Or to impress a girl.”

M’ric bowed his head to the banality of it. “And by all rights it shouldn’t have worked. But it did. I wore Artema down with wine and persistence. Eventually we had a daughter together, Temmal. I’ve never been happier than I was in those five or six Turns in the 80s when we were together.”

He went quiet for a long time; so long that, finally, C’mine had to prompt him. “What happened?”

“She died,” M’ric said simply. “Her Wing was flying an extended drill. Towards the end, Zovath got caught in a downdraft that threw her into the side of a mountain. Their Wingleader said they’d overflown their strength. He even said he thought Zovath might have been proddy and less receptive to his orders.” He shook his head slowly. “Zovath wasn’t due to mate for sevendays. But Artema and I had…argued…the night before. I blamed myself for her state of mind. She must still have been angry with me. I thought it had affected her judgement.”

C’mine felt his chest ache, in sympathy for the bereavement, and for its resonance with his own. He hadn’t known that M’ric had lost a weyrmate. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was,” M’ric replied. “Just not for the reason I thought at the time.” He hesitated, his gaze far away. At last, his eyes refocused. “Life carried on. I carried on. I had no choice.

“The Turns passed, and pieces of my picture of the mid-Interval began to move into place. T’kamen Impressed Epherineth – I was there for that Hatching – but I knew I couldn’t make contact with him. P’raima had been Weyrleader at Southern since before I’d even arrived in the Interval and showed no sign of slowing down. Shimpath Hatched in 91.” He paused. “I meant to go to that Impression ceremony, too. I knew it was my first chance to get a look at Sarenya. Kamen had told me about her, but I had no idea what she even looked like. As it turned out, Trebruth decided to catch a green that day, so I missed the Hatching.”

He was there, C’mine said to Darshanth, but he didn’t interrupt M’ric’s tale.

“It was about 93 when I started to feel anxious,” M’ric went on. “Ipith became senior at the Peninsula, but Kawanth didn’t win her leadership flight. That rattled me. I’d been telling Sh’zon for Turns that I knew he’d be Weyrleader, but when the time came it hadn’t happened. I started wondering if there was something I should have done. Up until that point, I hadn’t taken much action to make the things I was expecting to happen, happen. Kamen had said that whatever I did wouldn’t make a difference anyway. But I began to think that maybe he was wrong. I began to doubt if events were as fixed as he believed.

“So I started to experiment. I tried to change the outcome of a race whose result I already knew. The next time I found information about a race that I’d passed back to myself, I set out to try and change the result. I remember the winner was a runner called Foreman. Before the race, I found the jockey who was going to be riding. I bribed him to throw the race – to deliberately not win it.”

That was the first admission M’ric had made of a specific criminal action. “Did it work?”

“The jockey did exactly what I paid him to do,” said M’ric. “He took a pull, and Foreman finished second.”

“Then you did change it!”

M’ric smiled wryly. “I thought so. And then the jockey of the winner weighed in light. His runner was disqualified. Foreman still won.

“Then I tried to make a minor change to a record that stated that a certain blue rider from my Wing, T’rolf, had conveyed Lord Astag from Peninsula South to the Harperhall. I gave the assignment to a different blue rider, K’ler. Trebruth and I even shadowed him to make sure he did the pick-up. But when we got back, I found that the Wingleader in charge of rostering had already written up the day’s conveyance report with T’rolf listed against Astag, and he wasn’t about to rewrite a perfectly good report by changing what he’d already put down.”

“So the record was wrong,” said C’mine.

“Yes. And that heartened me. It showed that records aren’t infallible. Just because something was written down one way doesn’t mean it happened exactly like that. It made me realise that there can be many routes to the same destination, some better than others. Perhaps I couldn’t change the bare facts of major events – Trebruth would always stop me if I suggested it – but I could influence how they happened.

“I thought that, maybe, even if I couldn’t stop between from going wrong, and even if I couldn’t tell Interval Pern how important fire-lizards would become, then at least I could encourage events to come about in the best possible way. I stayed away from Madellon – I knew from Kamen I wasn’t supposed to be there yet – but I kept nudging Sh’zon. I kept nudging a lot of people more powerful and better connected than me, in small ways, tiny ways.” Then M’ric sighed. “One of them was P’raima.”

C’mine felt himself go rigid. “You helped him?”

For a moment, he thought M’ric was going to deny it. Then M’ric said, “I didn’t know what he would become. But he’d been Southern’s Weyrleader for decades, and I knew he’d still be Weyrleader when T’kamen took over at Madellon. I knew T’kamen didn’t like him. But as a man of significance and authority, there weren’t many riders better placed to influence the course of events.

“Even now, I don’t know if I told him too much or too little. I was vague. I had to be. But he took my warnings about how the world would change by the Pass, and set out to make himself Pern’s saviour. I’d thought to steer him towards breeding better dragons. I’d hoped I could encourage him to trust riders of all colours in authority, not just bronzes and browns. I hinted at the idea of a chosen successor, not one selected in mating frenzy. I fed his megalomania, but he used what I gave him in every wrong way. Better dragons simply meant bigger; trusting riders meant never going outside the Weyr to find candidates. And when Tezonth’s dominance began to wane…”

M’ric’s voice trailed off. C’mine shifted unhappily on his comfortless chair. “Were you involved in felah?”

“No. Not felah itself. That was a secret P’raima kept to himself. I’d stopped trying to influence him long before I had any inkling of the terrible things he’d do – to his weyrlings, to Madellon, to Southern.”

“Why did you stop?”

M’ric took a while to reply. “Temmal, my daughter, Impressed a green in 97,” he said at last. “She died two Turns ago, overflying her dragonet, exactly as her mother had.” He stopped for a long time. “She was fifteen Turns old.”

It paralysed C’mine in a grip of such empathetic pain that, for a while he couldn’t speak, either.

“I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t prevented it,” M’ric went on softly. “Why hadn’t I already told myself to stop it happening? I’d used timing to warn myself off one thing or another a dozen times over the Turns. It made no sense. I was so angry I didn’t even have room to grieve. I was convinced that I could just go back and fix it. I told Trebruth that that was what we were going to do.” He stared straight ahead. “He wouldn’t let me. He told me that the past couldn’t be changed.”

C’mine’s stomach turned queasily over at the echo of what Darshanth had screamed when he’d tried to make him go between to the day of C’los’ murder.

“I tried to make him,” M’ric went on. “He wouldn’t. He gave me a shove like I’d never felt before. It dazed me for most of a sevenday. I suppose people just assumed I was grieving for Temmal, but the fact was I could barely function at all. I didn’t think it was possible to hate your dragon like I hated Trebruth then. I didn’t know it was possible to be so cruel.”

That remark, even from M’ric and aimed inward, caught C’mine painfully true, but Darshanth, his silent, very present companion in listening to the confession, merely crowded his thoughts briefly closer to C’mine’s in wordless forgiveness.

“It was a long time before I realised that he’d been protecting me,” M’ric said. “Protecting me from the consequences of trying to change something that had already happened. And so I quit. I quit timing, because what Thread-blighted good was knowledge of the future when I couldn’t even use it to keep my own child safe?” His voice, usually so steady, shook as he spoke. “I realised that Trebruth and I weren’t the masters of time I’d believed we were. We were its thralls. No action I’d ever taken while timing had done anything but fulfil what had to happen. I was powerless. I’d gone back to the Interval for one reason and only one – because I had to be there to send T’kamen to the Pass. Everything else I did was pointless at best, harmful at worst. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I wasn’t supposed to affect the present that wasn’t my own. And wherever I had tried to, I’d left death in my wake. I discovered that Temmal wasn’t the first of my children to die. There were others, four of them, children I’d sired during green flights, dragonspawn I’d left at the Holds. They’d all died in accidents and illnesses. I wasn’t meant to be a father. I wasn’t meant to leave a legacy. I wasn’t meant to be at all.”

C’mine reached through the bars of the cell to put his hand on M’ric’s shoulder. He didn’t recall deciding to do it. He’d simply reacted to his pain, to his pure, agonising existential desolation. Perhaps no two people could every truly understand each other’s personal pain, but C’mine knew what it was to suffer beneath the crushing gravity of despair.

M’ric drew a shuddering breath into his lungs, and then he continued, with the determined momentum of a man coming to the end of his tale. “So I rejected time,” he said. “I rejected timing. Or so I thought. Trebruth and I didn’t receive any intelligence from the future, and we didn’t try to influence events. I let Sh’zon muddle along by himself. We went through the motions of our lives. I convinced Trebruth to only fly greens with male riders, so I couldn’t father any more children to die on account of my displacement. I half convinced myself that time had had its use of me and would leave me alone, since I’d grasped how I couldn’t change its course.

“Then T’kamen became Madellon’s Weyrleader.” M’ric’s smile looked like it hurt his face. “I remember hearing about it, and feeling like I’d been woken from a kind of stupor. Kamen was the only person still alive on Pern who was worth waking for.”

“You hadn’t tried to contact him before,” said C’mine.

“I’d wanted to. But he’d never knowingly met me before I transferred to Madellon. I knew that didn’t necessarily mean we’d never met, but I couldn’t bear the thought of meeting him and being so…unmemorable.”

The poignancy of that boyish yearning for a mentor’s approval gripped at C’mine’s heart. “Then when you came to Madellon, it was the first time you’d seen him in nearly twenty Turns?”

“It was a shock,” said M’ric. “He was so much younger than I remembered. Faranth, he was younger than me. Sh’zon was dismissive of him, because he’s a bronze rider, and you know how scathing they all are of each other. I nearly punched him.” He looked almost sheepish. “But I could hardly look at T’kamen. I’d betrayed him, back in the Pass, and half of me wanted nothing more than to beg him for a forgiveness he couldn’t possibly give. And then I betrayed him again. With Sarenya.

“I’d carried the guilt of my first treachery for nearly two decades. I’d nearly worn it out, half from telling myself that I’d been a gullible boy, and half from swearing that, when the time came, I wouldn’t do it again. I knew, because Kamen had told me, that I’d steal his girl. I’d even promised him that I’d be good to her, that I’d protect her from heartbreak and harm.” He said those two words as if both caused him physical pain. “But I vowed I wouldn’t really love her, because she wasn’t mine to love, and because I thought all the love I had in me for another woman had been spent, when Artema died.” He was silent a moment. “I broke all those promises to him, and to myself. I set out to take care of Saren, not to love her. I’ve ended up loving her, but not taking care of her. And yet I still don’t love her like he did.”

C’mine hadn’t thought one man could contain so much pain: a lifetime of pain, many-layered and multi-faceted. “The day after the weyrlings went between,” he said. “When Kamen disappeared. You sent him between times, didn’t you? To the Pass?”

“I closed the loop,” said M’ric. “As he said I would; as he said I had. My third betrayal. And I thought I was finished with it all. I’d done the one thing that I’d come back through time to do. I thought my life was my own again. And then I found, for the first time in nearly a Turn, an intelligence report from the future, in my own cipher. Because time hadn’t finished with me. And, Faranth, I still don’t think it has.”

There was a little more. M’ric talked about how he’d timed himself an alibi; how he’d found himself compelled to fulfil timing loops once more; how he’d resumed, with immense reluctance, the practice of supplying himself with knowledge from short trips between times. He even talked about how his most recent timing loops had been to provide P’raima with narlbark – first the knowledge of it, and then, when the Southern Weyrleader had no longer been able to source the herb through L’dro, how M’ric had used his copy of the Madellon Weyrleader’s signet ring to procure it for him.

“But there’s one loop you haven’t talked about,” C’mine said, when M’ric’s litany finally came to an end. “You were there at Madellon the day that Shimpath Hatched and Saren was left standing. You were there, because you came to save me.”

M’ric looked at him steadily. “The Weyrwoman asked me about that,” he said. “I told her I didn’t know anything about it. That wasn’t a lie.”

“Then you haven’t done it yet,” said C’mine. “You still have that loop to close.”

“Was it definitely me?” M’ric asked, and when C’mine nodded, “How old did I look?”

Thinking back to that traumatic day was hard. C’mine tried to make himself, but the details were blurry. “I…don’t know.”

M’ric looked away. After a minute, he said, “The funny thing with timing loops is that they make you invincible.”

“Invincible?”

“If you have a loop left open, then nothing on Pern can stop you closing it. Whatever happens to you, for good or for ill, you have to complete the loop. Whatever obstacles are in your path, eventually, you’ll overcome them. Time won’t let anything prevent you from doing its work.”

A loop left open. C’mine felt a chill settle over him. “You talk about time as if it’s…”

“Alive?” M’ric asked, when C’mine couldn’t find the word. “Intelligent?” He paused. “Malevolent?”

“But time just is,” said C’mine. “It can’t be evil.”

“Maybe not evil,” said M’ric. “Evil implies intent. No. Time…time is like Thread. Mindless. Implacable. And lethal. You can’t argue with it or reason with it. Stay out of its path and it won’t hurt you. Get in its way, and it will eat you alive.”

“Then you’re saying that everything is pre-ordained?”

“No,” said M’ric. “We just can’t change what’s already happened.”

“But tomorrow hasn’t happened yet,” said C’mine. “The things you know about the rest of the Interval…about the Pass…they haven’t happened yet. They’re in the future, not the past. We can change them. We can –”

“We can’t!” M’ric gripped the bars of his cell so hard his knuckles went white. “Don’t you get it? There is no future between now and the moment I left the Pass to time it back here. Those hundred and fifty Turns are all in the past. My past. We can’t change anything that I know is going to happen in them, and if we try, then we’ll only get more people killed! Believe me, I should know!”

“I don’t understand…”

“Darshanth does,” said M’ric. “Ask him. Ask him what happens if a dragonrider tries to change the events of the past.”

The past cannot be changed, said Darshanth. He spoke even before C’mine had framed the question to him. It will not be changed. It must not be changed.

“What if you try?” C’mine asked, but he already knew the answer.

You will be stopped, said Darshanth. Time protects itself.

“Time protects itself.” M’ric said the words at the same time as Darshanth. He leaned closer to the bars. “That’s why I couldn’t tell the Weyrwoman any of this. She can’t know. No one can know. No one but you.”

“But why me?”

“Because Darshanth understands the rules,” said M’ric. “He’s gone between times, with intent, and survived. He knows he can’t change anything, and he knows what will happen to you if you try. He can protect you by preventing you, however he can.”

C’mine thought about his disastrous attempt to return to Hatching day, his desperate final bid to prevent C’los’ murder. “That’s why Darshanth wouldn’t take me back to the right Hatching. He knew I was trying to save C’los…to change the past…”

“He was protecting you,” said M’ric.

“He took me to the day Shimpath Hatched instead,” said C’mine. “The day Saren failed to Impress. He did something…he made me forget who I was…he made me forget I was a dragonrider. But I wouldn’t have tried to change that, M’ric. I wouldn’t have tried to deprive Valonna of Shimpath, not even to help Saren.”

M’ric shook his head. “You and he were there twice. If the you of that time had become aware of the future you, that could have changed the past. And the echoes of doubling up in close proximity are catastrophically damaging. I think you already know that. Darshanth was shielding you from harm in every way he could.”

I am your dragon, Darshanth said, unbidden. I love you.

C’mine fought the lump in his throat. “Then it wasn’t my fault that Saren didn’t Impress?”

M’ric’s eyes flickered. “Not your fault,” he said. “You were always there twice, timed back from now, with knowledge from the future. The outcome of that Hatching was always fixed. Sarenya could never have Impressed. Valonna was always going to become Shimpath’s rider.”

“Then I am to blame, for going?”

“No. You had to go, because you already had. You had no choice. The events of that day were a fixed point.” M’ric hesitated, then leaned down and unthreaded the lace from his left boot. He held it horizontally in both hands. “We think of time running in a straight line, like this, from the past to the future, and for most people, that’s how it works. Except for dragonriders. We can move in time in non-linear ways, jumping to points in the future and the past.” He looped the lace back on itself, so one end touched the middle. “But every time a dragonrider travels from the future to the past, carrying foreknowledge with him, the fabric of time becomes…rigid.” He tied a knot in the middle of the lace. “Events become fixed by the presence of future certainty. Instead of representing an infinite flow of possibilities, affected by chance and circumstance and free will, that moment becomes locked into one certain outcome, unchangeable in any way. The more significant the foreknowledge, the bigger the knot, and the more constrictive it will be on the events that follow. And the greater the risk to anyone who tries to avert them.”

“But you said that Darshanth would protect me…”

“He can protect you,” said M’ric. “Trebruth can protect me. They’re both time-aware. They’ve both come close to changing things, and pulled back from the edge. They understand what’s at stake. But they can’t protect anyone else.” He leaned forwards, gripping the bars again, and his eyes were terrible. “Like Weyrleader Xh’len, when I told him everything I knew about the future. Like my weyrmate, who died the day after I told her where I really came from. Like my children, who died because they should never have been born.”

C’mine couldn’t look at him any more. He rose from his chair and turned away, struggling to take everything in, struggling to comprehend the vast cosmic implications of everything M’ric had told him, struggling to apply the moral of the time-stranded brown rider’s story to his own unhappy experience with travel between times.

Then he turned back to face the cell. M’ric was on his feet, leaning against the bars, his face a haggard mask of despair. “Has any good ever come of timing?” C’mine asked.

M’ric looked at him for a long and terrible moment, and then he said, “Carleah.”

The name rocked C’mine. Carleah. “I timed it back to Long Bay,” he said. He could feel his throat choking as he spoke. “I told myself where she was being held. I met myself…” His brain and his stomach roiled at the memory of that ghastly instant of self-recognition, when he’d looked into the eyes of his own future self, when he’d reached out to touch him, when the presence of two C’mines and two Darshanths in the same place and the same time had come so close to breaking his mind and destroying his dragon’s.

“I protected her, too,” M’ric said. His voice was rough. “I knew three Madellon weyrlings would die. I couldn’t prevent that. But I could make sure that she wasn’t one of them. And again, when she was abducted from Long Bay. I made sure T’rello would find her and Tarshe before anything could happen to them.

C’mine felt himself wobble. He put his hand out and caught himself on the bars before his legs went out from beneath him. He looked at M’ric, and for a moment it was as if his vision had doubled. The M’ric who had confessed to being the manipulative hand behind a dozen plots, a dozen schemes, a dozen deaths, shared space with the M’ric who had railed against his role as time’s helpless pawn. The brown rider who had sent T’kamen hurtling into a future not his own blurred with the brown rider who had himself been displaced violently from his own time. The man who had aided P’raima’s rise to terrible power overlapped with the man who had twice deflected death from C’los’ only daughter. C’mine blamed him and pitied him, hated him and bled for him, could not forgive him, and could not have repaid him. And the burden of responsibility that he bore weighed dreadfully upon him. However guilty M’ric was, he didn’t deserve what H’ned wished upon him.

“What should I do?” he asked at last. “H’ned wants to sentence you to Separation. Valonna begged me to find a way for her to avoid that. But if I can’t tell them what you’ve told me…”

“I’d rather be Separated than cause another death,” said M’ric. It was a brave statement – as brave as it had been when first he’d declared it – but the strain was showing on him now. “I can’t take the risk of anyone else finding out what I know about the future and trying to change it.”

“But Separation!” C’mine protested. “Trebruth doesn’t deserve –”

He bit the phrase off: suddenly, dreadfully conscious of every selfish thing he’d done that his own dragon hadn’t deserved, and every unselfish thing he thought he’d done for someone else’s sake that had in its own way hurt Darshanth.

“Trebruth doesn’t deserve to be sacrificed for the sake of anyone,” said M’ric. “Yet he insists he will endure it, if he must.” He smiled, painfully. “It only shames me more, to know how unworthy I am to be his rider.”

“I don’t think any of us are so worthy,” C’mine said sorrowfully.

They sat together in silence for a moment, united in grief and guilt.

Then C’mine said, “You have to confess. About T’kamen.”

M’ric raised his head. “You know I can’t.”

“You have to,” C’mine said. “H’ned believes you murdered him, and if you won’t speak in your own defence a Justice will find you guilty.”

M’ric closed his eyes. He put his face in his hands. For a long moment he simply sat there like that. Then, finally, he straightened. “I am guilty,” he said. “And it’s time I admit that and accept the consequences.”

“You didn’t kill T’kamen! If you say you did, you’ll be Separated for certain! Even if you won’t give evidence to defend yourself, you have to make H’ned prove what you did. At least that way there’s a chance that the Justicers won’t rule against you.”

“Pleading guilty is the only way I can keep everyone else safe,” said M’ric. “If this goes to a hearing, the truth will come out. It’s unavoidable.”

“But I thought Trebruth already resisted Shimpath’s compulsion,” said C’mine.

M’ric shook his head. “Not exactly. But it’s not Trebruth who’s the problem.” He fixed C’mine with a regretful look. “It’s you.” He smiled slightly. “I’ve just told you everything. H’ned will make you a witness against me.”

C’mine sat back, appalled. “Then why did you tell me?”

“Because I had to tell someone,” said M’ric. “At least you’ll know that I didn’t kill T’kamen.”

“Then you were always going to plead guilty?”

“It was nice to think, for a while, that I might be able to squirm out of it,” said M’ric. “But this is one Thread I can’t dodge any more.”

“There has to be a way…some point of Weyr law…”

“I’m no expert on Weyr law,” said M’ric. “Much less Madellon’s laws.”

“But you can ask for someone who is to be your Advocate,” said C’mine. “There are riders –”

“No.” M’ric’s refusal was flat. “They couldn’t defend me if they don’t know the truth. And I can’t tell anyone else the truth. You’re the only rider at Madellon with a time-aware dragon, C’mine.”

“But I can’t –” C’mine began, and then stopped as a new realisation struck him with such force that his head nearly swam. “No I’m not!”

M’ric looked at him sharply. “You’re not what?”

“The only rider at Madellon with a time-aware dragon,” said C’mine. Hope washed over him, giddying in its intensity. “There’s someone else!”

Chapter seventy-five: T’kamen

No one talks about the correlation between a fighting dragon’s age and the death rate. Not R’lony, not S’leondes.

Plot it on a graph, and for the first few Turns it’s as you’d expect. The high attrition rate for first and second-Turn dragons falls off gradually as they gain experience in the Wings. If a dragonpair survives their first three Turns fighting Thread, their chance of surviving the next three is pretty good.

And then the death rate spikes, and spikes hard.

An eight- or nine-Turn-old dragon is no slower or weaker than a five-Turn-old. The opposite, in fact. We know from Strategic that a dragon’s prime Turns don’t truly begin until he’s around ten, and can last – his rider’s vigour permitting – until he is well into his forties.

Why, then, this sudden sharp incidence of fighting dragon mortality between the ages of eight and ten?

They carved the answer on the Wall. And it makes me sick every time I pass by.

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Weyrwoman Dalka

26.12.10-26.13.09 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

Dalka raised her eyes from her work to fix T’kamen with an incredulous stare. “I don’t recall inviting you in.”

“You wouldn’t,” he said. “You didn’t. But since you left the door open, and since I can’t go anywhere quietly these days, I thought you’d had notice enough that you could shut me out if you really wanted to.”

She seemed to consider his logic for a moment. Then, with a lithe shrug, she turned more fully in her chair. “And to what do I owe the honour of your eminent society, Marshal? Business, or…” Her nostrils flared. “Well, it wouldn’t be the other, would it?”

She flung it down between them with disgust, like a dragon throwing down a wherry that was less than fresh. T’kamen was almost glad that she had. This confrontation was inevitable, and it was better to burn out a burrow before the Thread had gone too deep. “I don’t want you as an enemy, Dalka.” He braced himself and continued, “I don’t want you as a lover, either.”

Dalka didn’t recoil, as he’d feared she would, but her tone when she replied was icier than between. “You’ve made that abundantly plain.”

“I don’t think I have,” T’kamen said. He shifted his weight from his standing leg to his cane and back again. “Can I sit down?”

“Do as you please. I can’t command you one way or the other.”

T’kamen seated himself without comment. “It’s not fair,” he said, after a moment. “What our dragons do to us. What they compel us to do.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s very disagreeable for you bronze and brown and blue riders,” said Dalka. “All those riders you’re obliged to bed, even when you find them repulsive.”

“I don’t find you repulsive, Dalka,” he said. “You’re a beautiful and sensual and passionate woman. A formidable woman. A powerful woman.”

“Don’t patronise me,” Dalka said. “You took what you needed and then you left. And now you have the temerity to come back looking for more, thinking I’ll believe your promises a second time.”

“I don’t think that’s me you’re talking about,” T’kamen said.

Dalka dismissed the suggestion with a flick of her head. “I might as well be. Different colour, same lying song.”

“Things aren’t as different as some people would have it,” T’kamen said. “Leadership flights might have gone out of fashion with the Interval, but the Weyrwoman is still the fulcrum on which the Weyr’s choice turns.”

“Oh, yes,” Dalka said. “My power and influence know no bounds, at least until I’ve served my purpose.”

“And I’m not serving yours?” T’kamen asked, needled by her contempt. “At Ista you said you wanted a leader with vision for Madellon. Was that true? Or were you really just after a Marshal you could control? Or a new lover to pit against your old ones?”

She shot him a look  both wounding and wounded from her hard black eyes. “You were supposed to be different.”

“I am different,” said T’kamen. “That’s why I don’t want you as a weyrmate. I want you as a partner.”

“A partner,” said Dalka. Her voice dripped suspicion.

“I didn’t sleep with my first Weyrwoman, after Epherineth flew her queen. She was young, and very inexperienced, and still half in love with my predecessor. Some bronze riders wouldn’t have let that stop them moving into her weyr – out of tradition, or to present a united front, or just to exert control over her.”

“She wasn’t beautiful, then?” Dalka interrupted. “This Valonna?”

“She was…” T’kamen paused to frame his thoughts. “She was very pretty. Blonde. Fragile. And terrified of me.”

“And she rode a queen?” Dalka asked, her incredulity thinly veiled.

“She’d been badly treated,” he said. “She had it in her to be a true Weyrwoman to Madellon. I saw glimmers of it, before…” He sighed. “She was beautiful. But I’d have made her miserable if I’d forced myself on her.”

Dalka’s lip curled fractionally. “How tremendously noble of you.”

“I don’t mean it like that,” said T’kamen. “I wasn’t about to set up home in her weyr. She’d have hated me for it, and we’d never have been able to work together. That was more important to me than marking my territory. And it still is.”

Her sceptical gaze flickered. “And what work is it that you had in mind? Unless, like the majority of riders in this Weyr, you’re labouring under the impression that I don’t do enough already.”

“Hardly. R’lony’s office is full of documents in your handwriting. But the records of tithe negotiations never mention you.”

“I can’t take Donauth out of the Weyr for as long or as often as that would require. The other dragons need her more than R’lony’s tithe talks need me.”

“If flying her straight everywhere were your only alternative, I’d agree,” said T’kamen.

“Donauth will never be able to go between,” Dalka said. “She’s too…she’s not young enough.”

“If all goes as I hope it will in the next couple of sevendays, Epherineth soon won’t be the only dragon capable of giving her a lift wherever she needs to go. Whether that’s to argue over the quality of harness leather with the Tannerhall, or to facilitate the trade of what Madellon has for what it doesn’t at the other Weyrs of Pern.”

Dalka was far too perceptive to miss his implication. “You want me to negotiate with Reloka?” She laughed, short and hard. “I’m the last person on Pern she’d welcome to the conference table.”

“Ista has fire-lizard eggs,” said T’kamen. “Until we find another source, they’re the most valuable commodity on Pern. And once my riders start going between and prove that Pass dragons can, every other Weyr on Pern will want to get its hands on Ista’s lizard eggs – by fair means or foul. Reloka bargained with me from a position of desperation. Next time, we won’t have nearly so strong a hand to play.”

“Reloka bargained with you because she’s her mother’s daughter,” Dalka said caustically. “She and I have always shared many things. Most of them unwillingly. She’ll refuse me to spite me. You’d do better to treat with her yourself.”

“But what Madellon can offer her doesn’t belong to me,” said T’kamen. “Donauth’s eggs are Donauth’s. Only she, and therefore you, should be able to trade them away.”

Dalka’s eyes widened slightly, as though he had just suggested something outrageous. “They belong to Madellon,” she corrected him. “Not to me.”

“Madellon has three Weyrleaders,” said T’kamen. “S’leondes, me, and you. And I know that Epherineth wouldn’t dare tell Donauth what she can or can’t do with her eggs, so you can bet your last mark that Karzith won’t want any part of it, either.”

“S’leondes won’t let me trade dragon eggs for fire-lizards,” said Dalka. The colour had rushed to her cheekbones. “You know just how much he likes the idea of dragons going between.”

“Then let him stand up in front of his six hundred fighting riders after my twelve have all gone between successfully and tell them he’s not going to authorise any more trades,” said T’kamen. “See how well that goes down with his devoted acolytes. S’leondes might not like the way the winds are blowing now, Dalka, but even he isn’t powerful enough to defy them.”

“You want to bring him down so soon?”

“I want to make him see reason. I don’t like S’leondes, but his innovation saved the Weyr – the Weyrs – when all conventional Thread-fighting strategies failed. He had the vision and the audacity to imagine a new hierarchy when the traditional one failed. He was a force for change at a time when change was needed. He just needs to be shown that this is another time for farsightedness.”

Dalka shook her head. “S’leondes isn’t the revolutionary he was twenty Turns ago. He’s built his own establishment. He won’t be a party to tearing it down.”

“I don’t want to tear anything down. I don’t want to be S’leondes’ enemy. I’d sooner we were allies. But dragons weren’t meant to live like this. Or, more importantly, to die like this.” He rose from his seat to extend a piece of paper to her. “Which brings me to this.”

Dalka took the document. “Donauth’s last clutch,” she said, glancing at the list of names. Then she looked up at him. “Is there a problem with it?”

T’kamen touched the notation at the top of the record. “This.” Then he ran his finger down the first column that ran the length of the list. “And these.”

“DO-SP-26,” Dalka read. “That’s the clutch designation. Donauth’s spring Hatching of the 26th Turn. And these are the identification numbers for each dragonet. DO-SP-26-GR-3/5. The third green out of five to Hatch from this clutch.”

“El’yan explained what the numbers meant,” said T’kamen. “I don’t want them to be used any more.”

“What do you mean?”

“They reduce a living dragonpair to an anonymous string of numbers and letters,” said T’kamen. “And the clutch to nothing more than one of many.”

“Every Madellon dragonrider has an identification number,” said Dalka. “R’lony started using them Turns ago as a way to keep track of our dragonpairs. Even you have one.”

That threw him slightly. “Do I?”

“ME-AU-26-BZ-1/1.” Dalka shrugged. “You were considered a transfer.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” T’kamen said, disconcerted. “It’s degrading.”

“Why?” Dalka asked, sounding mystified.

“We’re defined by our names,” T’kamen said. “Dragons and riders. The first thing a dragonet does when he chooses his rider is name himself, and the rider – if he’s male, at least – changes his name too. These things are important. Sacred. They connect all dragonriders to each other. They remind us that we’re all the same.” He tapped the clutch designation again, more emphatically. “These, too. They turn something life-changing and profound into a string of meaningless symbols.”

Dalka looked thoughtful. “What do you suggest we use instead?”

“In my time,” T’kamen said, “each weyrling class was given a name. Something inspirational. Evocative. We were the Highflyers.”

“The Highflyers,” said Dalka, in a drawl.

“It gave us an identity,” T’kamen said. “Something to honour, and to be proud of.” He turned to look out of the big window that faced out towards the Lower Caverns, in the direction of the Wall. “It seems like the only time the names of Madellon dragonriders are honoured now is when they’re dead. There’s too much emphasis on glory in death, and not enough on the living.”

Dalka shifted in her seat. “What do you want me to do?”

T’kamen nodded his head towards the pictures that covered every inch of Dalka’s workroom walls. “I want you to draw them.”

She looked taken aback. “The weyrlings?”

“Not just the weyrlings.” T’kamen made a gesture to encompass all of Madellon. “The whole Weyr.”

Dalka stared at him as though he were quite mad. “All of them? Seven hundred dragonriders?”

“I’m not expecting them overnight.”

“But you’re expecting them nonetheless?”

“Eventually,” T’kamen said, refusing to let her incredulity deter him. “They should be honoured now, as the living, breathing individuals they are – not only when they’re dead and a name carved into a wall.”

Dalka still looked appalled. “Do you have any idea how long it would take me to draw every rider in this Weyr?”

“Then recruit some artists to help you,” said T’kamen. “Oversee their work. Make it a special honour for any rider whose portrait you draw. Make having survived more than five miserable sharding Turns be the criteria. Dalka, there are fighting riders out there more intent on dying nobly than living usefully. The attitude is ingrained in them even before they Impress. They’re told riders die young, so they expect to die young, and then they do die young. We could trade ourselves down to rags for enough fire-lizards to help every dragon in this Weyr go between, and there’d still be riders convinced they’ll be cowards if they’re alive at twenty-six!”

For an instant, Dalka seemed to quail beneath the force of T’kamen’s frustration, her expression stripped of its usual haughty languor. She lifted her head. “You’re right,” she said, in a tone unlike any other T’kamen had yet heard her use. The smile on her lips didn’t match the sadness in her eyes. “Sometimes we’re so concerned with the new dragons we breed, we don’t pay enough attention to the ones we already have.”

“Not nearly enough,” said T’kamen. “And one thing hasn’t changed since my time. Queens have always been judged on their productivity above everything else. I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t think it recognises the pastoral role a queen has to play in a Weyr.”

“Pastoral?” Dalka asked, her usual acerbity resurfacing. “It may have escaped your notice, but I’m hardly a nurturing matriarch.”

“Maybe you’re not, but Donauth is. And it’s not just bronze dragons who respond well to a queen’s attention. I’d never advocate Donauth and Levierth flying in a Queen’s Wing like in the old Passes…”

“I should hope not.”

“…but having one of them fly with the Seventh for part of each Fall would give heart to the Wings.”

“And honour to the Seventh,” Dalka pointed out sardonically.

“The Seventh could do with some honour,” said T’kamen. “R’lony might have found duty its own reward, but that’s not much comfort to veterans who’ve been serving in obscurity for Turns, or young riders who’ve been told that no one who flies in the Seventh will ever amount to anything.”

Dalka didn’t reply for a long moment. “I think you’ve already done more to prove that a fallacy in the last Turn than any other rider ever has.”

T’kamen began to react to her irony before he realised that she was sincere. “Will you help me?” he asked. “Will you be my partner in this?”

She rose abruptly from her seat. She went to the window and stood there for long moments “Why are you here?” she asked, at length. “Why did you come here, now? Why not to twenty Turns ago, or thirty, before the Pass began? Why now?”

Something in her voice told T’kamen she didn’t expect him to answer, but he did anyway. “I don’t know,” he replied, half honestly. The truth of his connection with M’ric was a secret he still wanted to protect. He didn’t think that the arbitrariness of it would have satisfied Dalka anyway. “It wasn’t my choice.”

“If it had been your choice,” she said, “and if you’d known that by leaving your own time you would change the future of Pern for the better…would you have come?”

T’kamen wondered if he’d ever be able to take a compliment from Dalka at face value, though he doubted he’d have many opportunities to find out. “You’re crediting me with something I haven’t yet done.”

“Assume that you will,” she said impatiently. “Humour me, T’kamen. Answer the question.”

It was almost shameful how easily T’kamen came to his answer. He hesitated a moment before he spoke it, wondering what Dalka expected him to say – wondering what she wanted him to say. “No,” he said. “I would have considered the price too high. I would have said that the distant future could look after itself.”

“Then you’d still go back, if you could?”

T’kamen had to bite off the affirmative that sprang from his heart to his lips. “I can’t,” he said instead. “I don’t. And neither of us can change that. What’s done is done.”

“What’s done is done,” Dalka echoed. “And if you could undo it?”

He looked down at his twisted and crippled leg; he thought about Epherineth’s mutilated face; he saw in his mind M’ric’s mother’s grief, and R’lony’s devastation, and Leda’s despair. It made him too melancholy even to dissemble. He shrugged. “I would.” Then he took a deep breath and said, “But dwelling on impossibilities won’t make me happier or wiser. You play the hand you’re dealt, or you don’t play at all.”

Dalka’s eyes narrowed, though whether in approval or disappointment, T’kamen couldn’t have said. She looked at him for a long time. “Then I’ll play it with you,” she said, and extended her palm to him – not in a lover’s yearning reach, but in the time-honoured offer of mutual consent. “Where do we start?”

Relieved beyond his ability to quantify it, T’kamen clasped her wrist. “With peace,” he said. “I need you to help me mend some fences.”

Dalka asked him to give her time to talk S’leondes round into dealing with him, and although T’kamen granted her request, he did so reluctantly. He had plans – for the Unseen, for the Seventh, for Madellon – and dealing with the Commander via intermediaries wouldn’t do for long.

Still, his first two Falls as Marshal went uneventfully enough, although between El’yan’s capable management of the plan R’lony had left, and the conventional Eighth Pass deployment of the Seventh’s dragons, T’kamen suspected that the change in leadership made no difference to Tactical. He and Epherineth still flew their station at the mid-level, watching for dragons in trouble; G’bral made a better job of organising the muddled flame-crews than T’kamen had thought he might; and if G’less was still diffident about commanding the browns of the watch division, then it was nothing time and familiarity wouldn’t solve.

Some problems, though, weren’t likely to go away by themselves, no matter how much time T’kamen gave them.

He’d had it easy when he’d become Weyrleader in the Interval. L’dro had been only too keen to leave Madellon, and in the couple of sevendays between deposal and departure T’kamen had just left his defeated rival alone.

But R’lony wasn’t going anywhere, and T’kamen couldn’t afford to look like he was afraid of dealing with his predecessor. While he’d moved quickly to appoint riders like G’less and El’yan to positions in his own administration, there were enough brown and bronze riders still loyal to R’lony that he could cause strife within the Seventh if he chose. T’kamen hoped to persuade R’lony to choose differently – and without Dalka’s intervention, which would certainly be more provocative than placatory.

He found he’d underestimated R’lony’s capacity for bitterness.

Assuming that the former Marshal would respond better to civility than compulsion, T’kamen had B’nam deliver a politely-worded invitation for R’lony to join him in his weyr for a cup of wine. That seemed like a less confrontational way to reconcile with a deposed leader than to summon him to his office. He paid no attention to B’nam’s sceptical mutters about R’lony’s likely response. B’nam had been sullen and intractable ever since T’kamen had openly declared his opposition to R’lony’s leadership, and the best way to deal with youthful hostility was generally to ignore it.

B’nam came back with the invitation still sealed and unopened, and a tersely-worded report that R’lony wasn’t interested in either his wine or his society.

Next, Epherineth bespoke Geninth, asking him to have his rider come to the Marshal’s office an hour before T’kamen’s evening meeting with his section leaders. That, T’kamen thought, would show that he didn’t regard R’lony as simply another subordinate to be sent for at his convenience, but a rider to whom he owed due deference for his seniority and service.

R’lony still hadn’t turned up by the time El’yan and T’kamen’s other officers began to arrive for their conference.

He didn’t muster for inspection, for drill, or even for Fall. He was conspicuous only by his absence from Madellon’s common areas. Geninth had taken to dwelling exclusively within his cavern, so it was difficult to know at a glance if R’lony was even in the Weyr or not, and Epherineth reported with meaningful neutrality that Geninth was often sleeping when he queried him. T’kamen was loath to barge into anyone’s private quarters uninvited – he was too often disturbed in his own weyr to wish that inconvenience even on R’lony – but as the days passed, and the former Marshal continued to refuse all contact, T’kamen’s patience began to run low.

“He’s trying to provoke you,” El’yan told him, as they sat one evening over the familiar diversion of a chessboard.

“He’s succeeding,” said T’kamen, reaching to move his remaining Wingleader.

“Don’t –”

T’kamen froze, his fingers not yet touching the chess-piece.

“– let him, I was going to say,” said El’yan, chuckling, “though I’d strongly recommend you not expose your Weyrleader that way, either.”

T’kamen retrieved his hand. “I play worse when I’m aggravated, don’t I?”

“Most people do,” said El’yan. “R’lony’s trying to bait you into losing your temper and doing something unwise.” He smiled. “Remind you of anything?”

“I wish I hadn’t had to goad him before Donauth’s flight,” T’kamen said. He moved a Star Stone, and had the satisfaction of seeing El’yan nod judiciously. “He might have stomached Epherineth winning if I hadn’t made it so personal.”

“Or he might not have relied so completely on Dalka’s support,” said El’yan, “and we might be sitting in a different room, wearing different shoulder-knots and having a different conversation. That match is done, T’kamen. You won because you took control of the board. Now R’lony’s trying to play you like you played him.”

“He’s sharding lucky I haven’t just had Epherineth command Geninth to obey and be done with it.”

“He’s more aware than anyone that you could, and that you haven’t,” said El’yan. “But that’s a flame you can’t un-breathe. You’ll have humbled a proud rider who’s served Madellon faithfully for thirty Turns and a brown who sired half the dragons in this Weyr. You turn R’lony into a victim and yourself into a bully, and you already walk a fine line there, given Epherineth’s colour.”

“But if I keep doing nothing about his attitude, I look ineffectual,” said T’kamen. “He knows that, too. He’d probably sit in his weyr alone for the rest of the Pass if he thought it would spite me to do it.”

“Scored if you do, scored if you don’t,” said El’yan. He contemplated the board. “Of course, he can’t really be sitting alone in his weyr all the time.”

“Dalka’s not seeing him,” said T’kamen. “At least she says she hasn’t. I haven’t been keeping tabs.”

“I don’t mean Dalka,” said El’yan. “But no dragonrider can completely isolate himself. Geninth has to hunt and be bathed. R’lony has to eat.”

“I haven’t seen Geninth at the lake or on the killing grounds since before Donauth’s flight,” said T’kamen. “And no one’s seen R’lony in the dining hall. I suppose his tail –”

He stopped.

El’yan grinned. “There’s always a third way,” he said, moving his Wingsecond. “Check and mate,” he added apologetically.

T’kamen was cross-hatching the predicted footprint of the following sevenday’s double Fall on the chalkboard in his office when Epherineth reported, Geninth incoming.

The warning – and the interference provided by Dannie, on duty in the anteroom outside the Marshal’s office – gave T’kamen enough notice to seat himself behind his desk and open several books to the appropriate pages. By the time R’lony – with much ranting – succeeded in getting past Dannie, T’kamen was ready for him.

R’lony blew into the room like a summer storm, all heat and thunder. “You can’t do this!” he shouted, without so much as closing the door behind him. “You don’t have the right!”

“R’lony,” T’kamen said. He aimed for a pleasant tone, but he’d never been a good actor, and it came out with the quiet satisfaction he felt at finally forcing R’lony’s hand. “Why don’t you sit down.”

R’lony looked about half a second away from kicking over the chair T’kamen indicated. “I won’t sit down,” he said instead. “I’m not some shaffing cripple who can’t stand and face you!”

“Well, I am a shaffing cripple,” said T’kamen, “so you’ll forgive me if I don’t get up.” He looked past the fuming R’lony to where Dannie was hovering in the doorway. “It’s all right, Dannie,” he said, “you can shut the door.”

“Sir,” she replied smartly, and complied.

T’kamen didn’t think he could have chosen a more appropriate member of the Unseen for the small show of allegiance. The significance of Dannie – a green rider who would have credible claims on a Wingsecond’s braid when she returned to the Wings – obeying the Weyrmarshal would not be lost on R’lony, who hadn’t commanded any fighting rider’s obedience in a long time. “All right, R’lony; what’s the problem?”

“The problem?” R’lony looked at him as if he were mad. “The problem? Epherineth just refused Geninth permission to leave the Weyr! You don’t have the authority to ground me! And you can’t take my tailman away either! I was the Marshal for twenty-one Turns! You have no right!”

T’kamen responded by reaching for one of the books he’d prepared. “‘The tailing privilege may be extended to riders of Wingleader and Wingsecond rank in the fighting Wings,’” he read, “‘and of Marshal and section leader rank in Strategic Branch, and also with the special permission of the Commander or the Marshal in other exceptional cases.’”

“Don’t you read that regulation back to me as if I didn’t write it myself!” R’lony said. “Turn the shaffing page! Read what it says there!”

T’kamen did. “‘Riders formerly of Wingleader, Wingsecond, Marshal and section leader rank may continue to enjoy the tailing privilege upon retirement from active service on the condition that they served at least five Turns in the qualifying rank or above.’ Is that the part you mean?”

“Twenty-one Turns!” R’lony shouted. “You’ll sharding well reassign D’kestry back to me! And tell that scar-faced bronze of yours he can go between and stay there if he tries to stop Geninth leaving again!”

“Epherineth was enforcing the new orders that the watchdragons are obeying,” said T’kamen. “Or, I should say, the old orders that haven’t been followed as strictly as they should be in recent Turns.”

“Old orders? If you think you can drag up some ancient Interval precedent…”

“I didn’t have to look that far back,” said T’kamen. He pulled across another book of Weyr law. “This codicil is dated only to the fifteenth Turn of this Pass. ‘All riders leaving the bounds of the Weyr on any business save Threadfall shall wear full insignia identifying their colour, rank, and posting. Riders failing to display complete, up-to-date, and visible rank insignia shall be challenged by the watchdragon and compelled to don correct insignia before being cleared to leave Madellon.’” He glanced at R’lony’s shoulder, bare of all rank cords. “You’ll just need to comply with that directive before the watchdragon can clear you to leave.”

“Fine,” R’lony said, thrusting out a blocky hand. “Give me a brown rider’s knot. In that bottom drawer, unless you’ve already thrown everything of mine on the midden.”

“I’m not a wasteful man, R’lony,” T’kamen said. He opened the drawer, took out a tangle of rank braids, and unravelled a plain two-strand cord of brown and indigo from the snarl.

“Give it to me,” R’lony told him, gesturing impatiently with his fingers. “I don’t have time for this nonsense.”

“Colour, rank, and posting,” said T’kamen, consulting the regulation. He reached back into the drawer for a hank of grey cord. He unwound a length of it and twisted it quickly around the two strands. “To show you’ve retired.”

R’lony gave him a look that would have withered Thread. “Don’t patronise me.”

“It’s still not complete,” T’kamen said, “but once I’ve finalised your new assignment you’ll be able to add an appropriate strand to indicate your posting.”

“Posting?” R’lony spat the word out in a burst of saliva.

“To whichever Hold or Hall you’re serving as a watchrider.”

R’lony blinked, then laughed. “You can’t assign me as a watchrider. I was the Marshal –”

“For twenty-one Turns,” T’kamen agreed. “Yes, I know.” He pulled yet a third book towards him. “But in those twenty-one Turns, you might have kept a closer eye on Madellon’s duties to its protectorate. Of the…” he checked the record, “…thirty-four holdings that are guaranteed a permanent watchrider under the Charter amendment of Interval 157, two are currently unmanned. The last thing I want is for Welford Hold, or the Minehall at High Cliffs, to withhold tithe because Madellon hasn’t been holding up its obligations under the Charter.”

A flush had started up R’lony’s neck, scarlet in contrast to his silver beard. “So with all your grand performance as the heroic Weyrleader of old,” he said, with boiling contempt, “it’s petty clerkship and words on rotting hide that you’ll use to bring me low.”

“I didn’t want to have to bring you low at all,” T’kamen said. “I still don’t. But if you won’t eat your pride willingly, then I will feed it to you, and I won’t care how much it sticks in your throat on the way down.”

R’lony stared at him with pale eyes full of hate. “You filthy snake. I never thought I’d meet a rider I loathed more than S’leondes.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” said T’kamen. “Madellon still needs you. You can –”

“Needs me,” R’lony said, slurring the word into an insult. “If Madellon needed me, it wouldn’t have thrown me away for a lying piece of shit like you. I gave my life to this Weyr, and this is how it’s repaid me. Madellon can go shaff itself!”

“It’s not personal, R’lony,” said T’kamen. “It’s never been personal.”

“Whershit,” R’lony spat. “You made it personal. And you didn’t even want her. You took Dalka away from me, and you didn’t even have the decency to want her.” His whole face had gone crimson with fury. “At least S’leondes doesn’t just sleep with her for power!”

T’kamen recoiled slightly at that. R’lony bared his teeth at him in an appalling grin. “You thought I didn’t know? You thought I was a stupid blind fool as well as a cuckold? No. Even when S’leondes thought he was being so clever, thinking he was going behind my back, thinking he was getting one over on me, bedding my weyrmate when I wasn’t there. I knew. I’ve always known. I’ve lived with Dalka for thirty Turns. I know what she wants. I know what she needs, and I’ve always let her have it. It’s the price I’ve paid for loving her, and I’ve paid it again and again.

“But you,” he went on, looming over T’kamen’s desk. “You poisoned her against me. You made her question me, when I’ve always been good enough for her before. I look at her now and I see contempt in her eyes. Contempt that you put there. You’re like Thread burrowing underground, undermining everything above you, so convinced that you know better, that you’re right, that you can’t even see that you’re going to bring the whole shaffing world down on your head! You have no idea how delicately balanced we are between survival and destruction, T’kamen! You come barging into my Madellon, putting ideas in the head of my weyrmate, upsetting the balance that I’ve spent three decades keeping from collapsing in on itself, and you tell me that it’s not personal?”

“It isn’t,” T’kamen said, with genuine regret. “It never was.” Then he let his face harden. “But I’m Marshal now. Like it or not, you will recognise my authority.”

“Your authority,” R’lony said. “I hope you choke on it.” He snatched the shoulder-knot with its binding of grey cord from the desk. “Send me to the shaffing mine-hold, for all I care. Anywhere I don’t have to look at your sanctimonious face.”

T’kamen didn’t stop him from leaving. He just let him go. A moment later, Dannie put her head inquisitively around the door. “Sounds like that went well.”

He laughed briefly. “Better than I expected.”

Dannie’s face was a picture. “What were you expecting?”

“Physical violence didn’t seem like it would be out of the question.” T’kamen pushed the books of law he’d used to bludgeon R’lony to the side of his desk and pulled the Fall map back to the centre. “You can close the door,” he added.

But he’d barely reminded himself of where he was with the plan when his door banged open yet again. “Dannie –” he began irritably.

It wasn’t Dannie. Dalka strode in, looking dire. She didn’t close the door behind her, either. “T’kamen. We need to talk.”

“Faranth,” he muttered. He rubbed his eyes. “Dalka, there’s nothing I can do about it. We both knew it was going to happen.”

She halted abruptly. “You – what?”

“R’lony,” T’kamen said. “He wasn’t going to give in gracefully. The mine-hold will –”

“R’lony?” Dalka demanded. “Between with R’lony, T’kamen! Donauth just had word from Chrelith.”

“Chrelith?” T’kamen asked. “Ista?”

“Of course she’s at Ista!” Dalka snapped, with a severity that was harsh even by her tart standards.

“What’s happened?” T’kamen asked, suddenly gripped by concern. “Is it Ch’fil?”

“No. Three of their riders with fire-lizards went between.”

“Faranth,” T’kamen said. “And? They did it?”

“No, T’kamen. They didn’t do it.” Dalka’s face was a taut mask. “They died.”

Chapter seventy-six: L’stev

Any rider facing a Justice is entitled to appoint an Advocate – an expert in Weyr law – usually a senior bronze rider, junior queen rider, or the Weyr Singer. The advice provided by this individual is completely confidential, and an Advocate may not be called upon or pressured to give evidence against the rider to whom he provides counsel.

– Excerpt from Madellon Weyr’s Legal Code

100.05.19 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

“Faranth’s tits,” said L’stev, at last.

It was the first thing any of them had said for several minutes, ever since M’ric had finished speaking and gone silent. L’stev had looked incredulously from him to C’mine and back again several times, expecting one of them to admit that it was all some elaborate prank they were playing on him.

He’d heard plenty of tall tales in his time. The simple ones were always the most credible. Those that meandered through increasingly fanciful twists and turns were much easier to spot, as weyrlings not as clever as they thought they were tripped over the tangles of their own fabrication. The story M’ric had woven was as intricate and convoluted as any L’stev had ever heard, and yet M’ric had never faltered in an account that had been, at times, so mercilessly self-loathing that L’stev had almost flinched from the brutality of it.

Now, he sat looking at the two riders, their expressions unhappily sober, and fought to resume the sceptical grimace that the morning’s revelations had eroded gradually from his face.

He’d agreed to be M’ric’s Advocate straightaway. There were four or five riders at Madellon with a firm enough grasp of Weyr law to be called upon for expert counsel when someone was facing a Justice, but all bar L’stev himself were senior bronze riders. He could understand why M’ric had asked for him instead. He’d have done the same in his place. And a Justice was a very serious matter, with potentially very serious consequences. Over the Turns, L’stev had been asked to Advocate for riders half a dozen times, and he’d never refused a request, no matter how grave the alleged crime. Regardless of what M’ric might have done, he was entitled to the confidential advice of someone who understood Madellon’s laws.

The rumour mill had it that M’ric was in serious trouble, but speculation on the nature of his crimes was focused on the part he might have played in Sh’zon’s illegal participation in the Peninsula’s leadership flight. There were whispers that timing was involved. L’stev had sensed there was more to it than that. But even he, a member of Madellon’s Council, hadn’t heard the full extent of the charges M’ric was facing until C’mine had brought him to his weyr – under the guard of two Wingseconds – to ask for his help. Even then, he couldn’t have imagined the colossal, cosmic scale of M’ric’s claims.

Claims, said Vanzanth, dismissively. It was the first time he’d given an opinion since M’ric had begun his tale.

L’stev knew what he was getting at. Still, he resisted it. So you’d have me just accept all this at face value? Not question a man who may or may not be telling the truth now, but who’s certainly made a career of lying in either case?

You’ll do what you want, said Vanzanth. But he’s not lying about time.

That time protects itself, said L’stev. The words, even spoken silently, gave him a reflexive chill.

We both know that’s true.

It doesn’t mean he isn’t lying about anything else.

You don’t want to believe him, said Vanzanth. But you do.

Vanzanth was always right, but L’stev balked at the idea of giving in so easily. He wouldn’t be so credulous. “You’re asking me to swallow a lot,” he said. “Not least that it’s possible for a rider to go between more than a hundred Turns to a future that hasn’t happened yet.”

“It has happened,” said M’ric. “For me.”

“So you say,” said L’stev, but he understood the concept. If M’ric was telling the truth, the Eighth Pass timeframe to which T’kamen had travelled wasn’t a future, with all the uncertainty that the word implied; it was the future, an inevitable consequence of M’ric’s own timing.

“T’kamen often talked about you,” said M’ric. “He wasn’t impressed with my Weyrlingmaster by comparison.”

L’stev eyed him with refreshed cynicism, recognising the strategy. Flattery never had moved him. “He wasn’t, was he?”

“He told me about a time when he slipped a few hours as a weyrling, coming back from Birndes Hold, and you made him stay in the barracks when all the rest of the class had moved out.”

“That did happen,” said C’mine.

“Yes, and it’s in the records of your class. Anyone could have looked that up.”

M’ric frowned slightly. His eyes went distant. Then they focused again. “B’ward,” he said. “You asked T’kamen to take him on after he graduated. He was sickly, and no one else wanted him. He had some sort of reaction to grains.”

That gave L’stev more of a pause. “Everyone knows B’ward doesn’t eat bread or cereal,” he said, but less certainly. He did remember encouraging T’kamen to take a chance on B’ward, but it hadn’t been a formal recommendation. It wouldn’t have been written down anywhere. It could still have been a lucky guess.

Vanzanth snorted on the ledge outside, loudly enough that both M’ric and C’mine glanced towards the archway.

“All right, all right,” L’stev said, though he wasn’t sure if he was more annoyed with his dragon or with himself. “I’ve agreed to Advocate for you, M’ric, so for the sake of argument I suppose I’ll have to believe you.” He scowled, then added, grudgingly, “Faranth knows, if you were going to invent a story, you’d have come up with something that made you look a little less guilty.”

“I am guilty,” said M’ric. “Of almost everything H’ned has accused me of, and some other things he hasn’t. But I didn’t kill T’kamen.”

“Well,” said L’stev, reaching for a document that the two riders had brought up with them, “I don’t expect murder will be the charge anyway. There’s no body and the dragons never keened for Epherineth, so there’s no actual evidence that T’kamen’s dead at all.” He looked down the list of charges. “Huh. Provision of a false visual.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” said C’mine.

“It’s bad enough,” said L’stev. “They’re going for with deadly intent. That’s as serious as murder. It still carries Separation as a potential sentence.” He scanned down the rest of the list. “And these others. Treason. False representation. Treason again – oh, against another Weyr. Timing for personal financial gain. Timing for personal political gain. Theft. Assault – assault?”

M’ric had the grace to look embarrassed. “I knocked H’ned down.”

“Any particular reason?”

“He insulted T’kamen.”

L’stev sighed. “I always took you for a level-headed fellow, M’ric.” Then he frowned at the charge list. “But that one’s really the least of your concerns. Even putting aside the false visual, these other accusations are serious enough to get you sent to Westisle for the rest of your life. And the treason charges – given everything P’raima did, and the farce that Sh’zon made of the Peninsula leadership flight – an argument could be made for Separation for those, too.”

“But they can’t prove that M’ric was working with P’raima,” said C’mine. “P’raima’s dead.”

“True,” said L’stev. “And the evidence of the signet ring and the hidden ledger is circumstantial, although if they ever crack the cipher –”

“They won’t,” M’ric and C’mine said together.

“Listen at the pair of you,” L’stev said disgustedly. “Well, P’raima being dead won’t help, since you confessed your involvement with him to C’mine, and C’mine will certainly be called as a witness.” He glared at M’ric. “If you’d just come to me first.”

“I didn’t know you were safe,” M’ric said. “T’kamen suspected you’d done some timing, but that’s alone isn’t enough.”

L’stev narrowed his eyes at C’mine. “And I suppose I have you to thank for dragging my name into this?”

“When you told me about your children,” C’mine said. “The ones who –”

L’stev cut him off. “I know which children you mean. And yes, we timed it then, and yes, we tried to stop it happening.”

“We?” M’ric asked.

L’stev furrowed his brow. “Three of us,” he said. “Me. P’keo. And Sh’ror.”

“P’keo was Weyrleader,” C’mine said. “Who’s Sh’ror?”

“Another bronze rider,” said L’stev. “Another…father.” He could feel his nostrils flaring. “We’d all lost children to that blighted illness.”

M’ric cocked his head. “He died, didn’t he? Trying to change what had happened.”

L’stev met his suddenly knowing look. A part of him wanted to refuse to confirm the guess out of sheer stubbornness. Another part of him dispassionately connected Sh’ror’s fate with what M’ric had said about riders who tried to change the past. And the part of him mostly closely in tune with Vanzanth simply accepted what they had known all along. “They’d traced the illness to a remote holding in southern Jessaf,” he said. “A candidate was Searched from there. They thought it was one of her younger siblings who’d brought the sickness to Madellon, when they came to watch the Hatching. Sh’ror’s mission was to go to that holding and prevent that candidate from being Searched in the first place.”

“But it didn’t work,” said M’ric.

“We’d agreed we wouldn’t risk trying to jump back to the time we’d come from, after we’d tried to change things. We’d planned to wait it out at Little Madellon until we’d caught back up with our own present. P’keo and I met there as we’d agreed. Sh’ror never turned up.”

“Did you ever find out what happened to him?” asked C’mine.

“Once we were back in the right time, I asked the candidate if she knew anything,” said L’stev. “A weyrling, by then. She said that a bronze dragon had come to the hold and landed on the fire-heights, but only a few minutes later he’d screamed and gone between. They found his rider in the hold’s courtyard. He must have fallen from the heights – three, four dragonlengths. Just about every bone in his body was shattered.

“They ran up their dragon banner. They expected someone to come looking for a missing dragonpair. But it was more than a sevenday before a sweepdragon responded to the banner, and it was the height of summer. The body… They’d had to bury it. And the sweeprider didn’t know of any missing bronze.” He paused. It had been such a long time since he’d thought about Sh’ror. Then, heavily, he went on. “The sweeprider was T’reno.” He looked at C’mine as he said it.

“Oh, Faranth,” C’mine said, sounding sick.

M’ric looked sharply at him. “What?”

“Givranth,” C’mine said. “T’reno’s green. She’s Search sensitive.”

“Of course she is,” M’ric said. He didn’t sound surprised; only sad. “It’s not just that Sh’ror couldn’t stop that candidate being Searched. The fact that he timed it back there – that he died there – was the only reason a Search dragon went there at all.”

“Time protects itself,” said C’mine.

“Who was the green rider?” M’ric asked. “The girl, I mean. The candidate.”

L’stev had to search his memory. Then it came to him. “Schanna,” he said. “Etymonth’s rider.”

For a fraction of an instant, M’ric’s face went slack. Then he composed himself so swiftly that L’stev wondered if he’d even seen the expression at all. “You understand, then,” he said. “The past won’t be changed.”

L’stev let his breath out through his nostrils. “I’ve always known that.”

“And anyone who gets too close to changing it –”

“Will come to a sticky end,” L’stev said.

“Unless their dragon is aware of time,” said M’ric. “Trebruth won’t let me do anything that would change the past. Darshanth took C’mine to the wrong Hatching so he couldn’t prevent C’los’ murder. And Vanzanth…”

“Vanzanth stopped me,” said L’stev.

It had been Turns since he’d thought back to that dark time in his life in any detail. Now, as he let the old memories resurface, he recalled his own mission. He’d gone to warn the Weyr Healer of the time, Master Firland, about the illness that would carry off three out of every five children under ten Turns old. He’d been armed with the knowledge of the herbs that Firland’s future self had eventually found most efficacious in the treatment of the sickness. If Sh’ror’s attempts to prevent the infection reaching Madellon failed, then L’stev’s efforts would at least arm the Weyr against it.

He remembered how the precious knowledge of those medications had slipped from his mind when he’d confronted Firland. He remembered stumbling over his words – slurring them, almost – as he struggled to explain himself. The Weyr Healer was always a busy man, and Master Firland had been impatient with time-wasters. He’d suggested crisply that L’stev go and sleep off whatever intoxication had brought him babbling to the infirmary, and that he should come back in the morning if he needed a hangover remedy.

Tongue-tied and thick-headed, but knowing he’d failed, L’stev had left the infirmary and headed for the crèche. If he couldn’t stop the sickness getting to his children, then he’d get them away from the sickness, and between with everyone else. At the entrance to the crèche he’d paused, letting the cacophony of childish chatter wash over him. He’d sought, amongst the throng, Lirenzy, five Turns old; Eravan, just three. He’d seen them. That last sight of them both: alive, laughing, playing, had imprinted on his mind as if carved there in stone. I can save you.

And then vertigo had broken over him in a dizzying wave. Something had snatched at his stomach – panic, fear, dread – like the mixed terror and relief of realising he had been standing at the brink of a bottomless chasm, a hair’s breadth from stepping blindly off it. He’d turned and staggered away, his intent diffused in the fog of his time-addled perceptions, the chance to avert tragedy gone forever.

It was you, wasn’t it? he asked Vanzanth. I wasn’t just slow and stupid because I’d timed it too close to myself. It was you. Stopping me from changing the past.

The past will not be changed, said Vanzanth. Time protects itself. And I protected you.

L’stev closed his eyes for a long, painful moment.

When he opened them, he said, “Your fire-lizard is the key, isn’t it?”

“T’kamen made the connection,” said M’ric.

“But nobody did before,” said L’stev. “I suppose few enough dragonriders have fire-lizards…” Then something new struck him, and he screwed up his face. “Oh, blight it all. G’dra. G’dra had fire-lizards. That’s how he and Kinnescath made it through between eventually when the other weyrlings didn’t. His shaffing fire-lizards found a way.” He held his head. “But too late. Too late.”

“If where I’m from comes out at the Justice,” said M’ric. “When I’m from. Someone could make the connection between G’dra’s fire-lizards and mine. But if that connection had been made now, in the Interval…”

“Then T’kamen wouldn’t have needed to figure it out a century from now in the Pass,” said L’stev. “So no one could have intuited fire-lizards as a solution to the between problem before then, and if anyone did –”

“Then they couldn’t have survived long enough to make the knowledge public,” said M’ric.

C’mine completed the logic. “Anyone who makes that connection – anyone who isn’t one of us – is in terrible danger.”

“Valonna,” said M’ric. “H’ned. Whoever’s appointed as Presider. All the Justicers.”

“But you must have some idea of what happens to Valonna, at least,” said L’stev.

“Madellon’s records were destroyed. What T’kamen and I found in the Peninsula’s records was fragmentary at best. And I never did get my hands on the Chronicle of the Seventh Interval. The Masterharper kept that very secure. There are things I do know about…” M’ric hesitated. “About what will happen to certain people, certain riders. But not Valonna, or most of the bronze riders likely to be selected as Justicers. I can’t take the risk of anyone else falling foul of time because of me.”

“Shimpath already tried to force the truth from Trebruth, didn’t she?” L’stev asked.

From M’ric’s wince, it hadn’t been a pleasant experience. “Yes.”

“I’d like to know how it’s even possible that a brown could resist a queen,” L’stev said, “but that can wait. I’m your Advocate, so I can’t be made to testify against you.” He looked at C’mine. “You’re the problem. As always.”

“That isn’t his fault, L’stev,” M’ric said.

L’stev fixed him with a piercing stare. “Faranth,” he said. “You sound exactly like –”

“T’kamen,” said C’mine.

“Don’t get all misty-eyed on me,” L’stev told him, in a growl.

“I can’t help it,” C’mine said. “He was like a brother to me.”

“He was like a father to me,” said M’ric.

L’stev glared at them both. “Fault isn’t the issue. What C’mine knows now is just as dangerous as if it came directly from M’ric.”

“But can’t we just explain to Valonna why I can’t testify?” C’mine asked.

“I don’t think it’s Valonna you need to convince,” said M’ric.

“You’re right,” said L’stev. “H’ned’s the one driving at this. Not helped by the fact you attacked him, but I’m not sure it would change anything if you hadn’t. He’s only just been confirmed as Regent, which is a tenuous way for any bronze rider to find himself in the Weyrleader’s seat. So he means to use you to draw a line under the whole sorry business of the last few months, and show what a decisive leader he’s going to be.” He grunted with disgust. “Shaffing bronze riders. Always having to piss in the corners.”

“Then I’ll lie,” said C’mine. “If it’s a choice between risking lives and lying, then I’ll lie.”

“You can’t lie for shit, C’mine,” said L’stev, “and Shimpath would get the truth out of Darshanth whether you liked it or not. No. If you’re questioned under a Justice, the facts will come out.”

“Then I have to plead guilty to everything,” said M’ric. “It’s the only way to protect everyone.”

“Everyone but you, M’ric,” L’stev said. “Faranth; T’kamen was a bad influence on you, wasn’t he? He was always much too quick to martyr himself.” He frowned. “But you’re right. You will have to plead guilty to everything.”

“But L’stev –” C’mine protested.

L’stev held his hand up to silence him. “You’ll have to plead guilty to everything,” he repeated. “The trick is to change what you’re being asked to plead to.”

L’stev had settled himself comfortably into the chair opposite the Weyrleader’s desk, and was gazing interestedly around the office, when H’ned strode in through the archway from the ledge. “Sorry to keep you waiting, L’stev,” he said, with the air of a man who wasn’t particularly sorry at all. “You know how it is. Always someone after a piece of the Weyrleader’s time.”

“I’m sure,” said L’stev, narrowing his eyes to read the Winglist on the black wall behind H’ned’s desk.

H’ned noticed the subject of L’stev’s attention. “I’ve been thinking of making some changes,” he said. “There are a few Wingseconds who ought to be Wingleaders. Twelve Wings aren’t really enough.”

With some effort, L’stev didn’t raise a sceptical eyebrow. “You’ll have some grumbles if you skim riders from every Wing to make up a new one.”

“Oh, not every Wing, L’stev,” said H’ned. “But there are some Wingleaders who could stand to lose a rider or two in a good cause.”

T’gat’s Wing was one of the targets, L’stev noticed, as he regarded the board with new understanding. He suppressed a snort. He wasn’t there to pass judgement on the new Weyrleader’s appointments. “I’m here about M’ric.”

“I thought you might be,” said H’ned. He seated himself behind the desk in the new chair: deeply padded and richly carved on its arms and back. “I understand you’ve agreed to Advocate for him.”

“That’s correct,” said L’stev.

“Don’t worry, L’stev, I won’t take it personally,” said H’ned. “I’m glad Madellon has riders willing to advise on these occasions.”

“Beats having to call in a Harper,” said L’stev.

“Very much so,” said H’ned. “It’s Weyr business; best we keep it that way.”

“No argument from me on that score,” said L’stev. “The less the world at large knows about dragonrider crime, the better.”

“Better yet that the world at large doesn’t even know dragonriders are capable of being criminals,” said H’ned.

“Indeed,” said L’stev. “Though you and I both know that dragonriders are just as capable of wrongdoing as anyone else on Pern.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far, L’stev,” said H’ned. “But cases like M’ric’s damage all of our reputations; don’t you agree?”

“You’ll not lead me to condemn him that way, Weyrleader,” L’stev said, with the thinnest of smiles.

“I suppose not,” said H’ned, with a laugh. “Though I’m sure you’re honest enough to concede that he’s in very serious trouble.”

“That I’ll give you,” said L’stev. “Have you selected a Presider?”

“P’keo will sit,” said H’ned.

L’stev shook his head. “That won’t be acceptable, Weyrleader.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ll be calling him as a witness.”

“P’keo?” H’ned looked baffled. “What could he possibly have to add?”

“I’m sure you appreciate, Weyrleader, that I can’t disclose any details of M’ric’s defence,” said L’stev.

“Well, that’s very disappointing,” said H’ned. “That would leave…”

“F’yan, as the next most senior Council member,” L’stev said, when H’ned hesitated.

“Uh, yes, F’yan,” said H’ned, with a wince of distaste. “And is he an acceptable Presider?”

L’stev let himself smile. “Very acceptable, Weyrleader.”

H’ned looked sharply at him, as if trying to discern why L’stev would want F’yan as Presider. “Are there any other Council members you’ll be calling?” he asked. “So I can exclude them from the ballot when the Justicers are selected.”

“Let me get back to you on that,” said L’stev. “I have a rather long list of witnesses.”

“How many witnesses are we talking about?” H’ned asked.

“Twenty-five to thirty. At present.”

“Twenty-five to –” H’ned blinked. “Faranth, L’stev, this could take days!”

“Sevendays, most likely,” L’stev agreed. “And that’s just for M’ric’s defence. I can’t speak to how long you expect your case to take.”

“But that’s ridiculous!”

“Ridiculous?” L’stev asked. He let his tone harden for the first time. “A capital case with a rider standing accused of crimes including treason against two Weyrs and the disposal of a Weyrleader? I don’t call that ridiculous, H’ned. I call it the very opposite of ridiculous.”

H’ned sat back in his chair. “Yes, you’re right, of course.” He took a breath. “I just hadn’t thought…the time it’s going to take…I have so much to do, now I’m Weyrleader…”

“So does the Weyrwoman,” said L’stev. “So do each of the bronze riders who’ll be serving. But you can’t imagine that you could possibly entertain anything but the most stringently-observed Justice when the lives of a man and his dragon hang in the balance. However disruptive it may be to Madellon’s day-to-day functioning for the next several months, this Justice must be heard fairly. You’ve brought twenty-two separate charges against M’ric, and each one must be considered on its own merits.”

He saw H’ned mouth the word months. “What if I dropped some of the lesser charges?”

L’stev folded his hands in his lap. “Which charges were you thinking of?”

H’ned frowned. “Well, the assault charge, for one. I mean, no one was really hurt, I suppose; only my pride. I don’t suppose it would really matter if I were to forgive that one.”

And you’d be spared the humiliation of admitting to four Council bronze riders that M’ric knocked the snot out of you, L’stev thought. “I don’t suppose it would. That would take – oh, a day or so off proceedings.”

“What about the timing charges?” H’ned asked. “The business with him making marks on the runner races –”

L’stev shook his head soberly. “Regardless of M’ric’s guilt or innocence, any suspicion that the Weyr was protecting riders engaged in a gambling scam would go down very poorly with the wagermen.”

“But how would they even know about it?” H’ned asked. “I haven’t contacted any of the affected wagermen yet.”

“I’m afraid I have,” L’stev replied. “You see, M’ric had a regular wagerman with whom he placed the majority of his bets; I’ll be calling that man as a witness in his defence.”

“Shard it, L’stev! What were we just saying about keeping this business quiet from the world at large?”

“Under ideal circumstances,” said L’stev. “These circumstances are less than ideal.”

He watched H’ned’s brow furrow more and more deeply. L’stev felt a little sorry for him. Very few riders would have been equipped to argue Justice procedure with any of Madellon’s legal experts. T’kamen would have been just as frustrated. “Well, what do you suggest?” H’ned asked finally.

“It’s not for me to make suggestions to you, Weyrleader,” L’stev said. “My role is to act as Advocate for M’ric.” He paused, then said, “No one would think you any less competent if you were to ask another rider to try this case in your stead.”

He’d pitched his tone just right. H’ned bristled at the veiled implication that he wasn’t capable of trying his own Justice. “No,” he said curtly. “That won’t be necessary.”

L’stev let him stew for several more minutes. Then he said, “I do have one suggestion.”

“What?”

“I might be able to persuade M’ric to make a deal.”

“A deal? What sort of deal?”

“He pleads guilty to the majority of your charges.” L’stev saw H’ned’s pale eyes light with vindication, and went on, sharply, “And you take Separation off the table.”

“Absolutely not.” H’ned snapped the words out. “He killed T’kamen. The Weyrleader. I can’t and won’t let that pass.”

“Provision of a visual with deadly intent has to be proved, H’ned,” L’stev said.

“And I’ll prove it!”

“Will you?” L’stev asked. “To the point that three other bronze riders will accept the proof, when they know what the consequences are for M’ric?”

“If you’re so sure I can’t prove it, why are you trying to make a deal?”

“Because you’re going to be Madellon’s Weyrleader for the next two Turns at least,” said L’stev. “If you drag the Weyrwoman and four senior bronze riders through a month-long Justice and you can’t nail M’ric for the most serious charge, you look ineffectual at best, spiteful at worst.”

“You’re telling me you’re doing this for me?”

“You can believe it or not,” said L’stev. “But it’s the truth. Do you think for a moment that Valonna will find against M’ric when she knows the punishment is Separation? A Separation that she and her queen have to impose?”

“She can abstain if she wishes,” H’ned said. His nostrils were flaring white. “I only need a majority of four-to-one.”

“That doesn’t leave you much margin for error,” said L’stev. “And have you considered who might end up sitting on the Justicer bench? After you, P’keo and F’yan are removed from the pool, there are only nine other Council bronze riders who could be selected. Can you rely on every one of those nine ruling your way?”

“I thought you liked T’kamen. Why are you so intent on protecting his killer?”

“Because I don’t believe M’ric killed him,” said L’stev.

“M’ric did something to him,” H’ned said. “If he didn’t, why would Trebruth resist telling Shimpath? He’s hiding something terrible, and I’ll have the truth, L’stev, if I have to have Shimpath squeeze it out of Darshanth and C’mine!”

“If you believe that Darshanth and C’mine know the truth, why do you think they’re covering it up?” asked L’stev. “C’mine and T’kamen were closer than brothers.”

“C’mine’s judgement has been suspect ever since C’los died,” said H’ned. “M’ric’s been lying and cheating and manipulating people for Turns. Poor confused C’mine is just his latest victim.”

“Poor confused C’mine,” said L’stev. “C’mine whose judgement has been suspect for months.” He fixed H’ned with his blackest stare. “Your star witness.”

The instant when H’ned’s fervour broke under the weight of the realisation that he’d been outmanoeuvred gave L’stev far too much satisfaction. H’ned sat back down in his chair, seething with a rage made hotter by its impotence.

“Provision of a visual with malign intent,” L’stev said, into the furious silence. “He’ll plead guilty to everything else as charged, and you Exile him to Westisle for the rest of his life. No drawn-out Justice, no witnesses, and you can keep the whole business quiet.”

H’ned didn’t reply for several minutes. He just stared into space with his jaw clenched. “Fine,” he said at last. He sounded like the word cost him dearly. “Exile.”

L’stev rose from his seat. His knees cracked as he moved, and he grimaced at the pain. He suddenly felt very old. “Thank you, Weyrleader. I’ll go and inform M’ric.”

Chapter seventy-seven: T’kamen

A holder looks at a dragon’s teeth and talons, and fears what it might do.

A Lord Holder looks at a dragon’s rider, and fears what he might not do.

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Masterharper Marlaw

26.13.10-12 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR, JESSAF AND PERANVO HOLDS

Beaunath is hit, said Epherineth, and with no further warning he and Fetch plunged them between.

They emerged in the ash-filled sky beneath the Wings. “Where?” T’kamen shouted, over the din of battering wings and roaring flames, craning his neck upwards.

Then he saw how the formations were rippling outwards from the dragon falling like a stone in their midst, where the Wings were layered thickest. I can’t get to him, said Epherineth. No airspace.

Having to wait for a Threadstruck dragon’s plummet to carry him clear of the Wings was hideous. The glimpses Epherineth shared with T’kamen – images shared by the dragons dodging out of their wingmate’s way – described the horror in sickening flashes. Silver coiling around a lashing tail. Yellow-white eyes stretched too wide in agony. Wingsail tattering to lace.

A blue tumbled, screaming, out of the bottom of the stacked Wings, already more Thread than dragon.

Epherineth folded his wings and dived after him.

Easy, T’kamen told him, wincing against their steep descent. There’s nowhere safe to grab him.

Epherineth just grunted as he bore down on the falling dragon. Be still! he said, stretching out all four limbs, and the instant his claws framed Beaunath’s stricken form, he swept them between.

Do we have him? T’kamen asked, through the frigid chill.

He got his answer, racing heartbeats later, when they emerged over Madellon’s lake. Beaunath’s limp body drooped in Epherineth’s talons. Epherineth shook him, hard, showering pieces of frozen Thread into the water below. We have him, he said, but grimly. He covered the distance to the Dragon Healers’ station with two short sweeps of his wings, and set the blue dragon carefully down on the swept stones.

But Beaunath toppled over onto his side. His jaws worked futilely for air, his nostrils flaring. His collapse, and the latticework ruin of his wing, exposed the hole that Thread had eaten through his ribcage.

As Healers ran to pull Beaunath’s rider down from his neck, the blue’s chest expanded, but not with breath. The Thread that had burrowed into the chest cavity had found some protection from the cold of between amidst the wretched dragon’s internal organs. Restored to the warmth of the world, it was resuming its pitiless consumption of Beaunath’s twitching flesh, eating him alive from the inside out.

“Epherineth!” T’kamen shouted.

Epherineth was already coming about. Even as the Healers dragged Beaunath’s screaming rider clear, Epherineth sank his talons into the blue dragon’s flesh. He jerked Beaunath’s writhing form roughly off the ground, beat his wings once for height, and went between.

When they emerged again, Epherineth’s talons were empty, and the mourning keen for Beaunath was rising from the throats of the few dragons around the Weyr.

We were too late, said Epherineth. He landed hard on the shore of the lake and thrust his forepaws into the water, splashing vigorously.

“Faranth, are you Threaded?” T’kamen released his safety and slid down his dragon’s shoulder with no thought for his leg, landing knee-deep in shallows that were turning cloudy with ichor.

It’s not mine. Epherineth lifted his left forepaw from the water, and then extended it towards T’kamen, shuddering with revulsion. His hasty ablutions had washed most of the blood away, but he hadn’t been able to dislodge the grisly rags of recognisably blue hide that remained snagged in his talons.

T’kamen dug the shreds of hide out of Epherineth’s shivering claws with his fingernails, breathing shallowly, and trying to keep his breakfast down. “You did everything you could.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

T’kamen looked up from his work. Gusinien was approaching from the direction of the Dragon Healers. “What?”

“Is he all right?” Gusinien asked. “Is he hurt?”

“He’s fine,” T’kamen said. “What did you say?”

Gusinien shook his head. “Beaunath,” he said. “Tishurth, earlier. Meicrath and Aismith last time. You shouldn’t have brought them back. You should have let them go.”

Every name was a dragon T’kamen and Epherineth had rescued, or tried to rescue, in Fall. “I don’t understand,” he said. “We lost Beaunath, but…”

“Tishurth won’t see another morning,” said Gusinien. “Meicrath won’t fly. Aismith won’t walk. You’re saving them for what? To be broken and crippled for the rest of their short and painful lives? We can’t fix them, T’kamen. You should have let them die.”

T’kamen took a step back, stumbling against Epherineth’s forearm. “We have to get back to Fall,” he said, but Gusinien’s words, so plainly spoken, had shaken him.

Concentrate, Epherineth told him, when T’kamen twice missed his footing on the painful climb back up to the neck-ridges. Fall is nearly over. You can worry about him later.

Monbeth supplied the visual they needed to jump between back to the Fall. T’kamen signalled acknowledgement to O’sten as Epherineth turned to resume his station beneath the Wings.

It had just begun to rain when the shout came down from above that the Fall had dribbled to its conclusion. A few of the lowest-flying dragons still emitted the odd burst of flame as the last stray Threads reached them, but above them the greens and blues of Madellon’s fighting Wings veered wearily off from their formations, turning for home.

Tell the Wingleaders of the Fourth that they need to divert to Merlake if they want to eat, T’kamen said.

Epherineth passed the message on. Manyath’s rider isn’t happy. She wants to know why they can’t go to Ishon Hold with everyone else.

Ishon doesn’t have enough stock on hand. If Querenne wants her dragons to eat, it’s Merlake or nothing.

She’s still not happy.

Faranth, Epherineth. I’m too tired for this whershit. T’kamen wiped his sleeve across his goggles, where the spitting rain was smearing a film of greasy ash across the glass. Tell her she can take it up with me back at the Weyr.

I will tell her so.

Below them, bunker dragons were chewing firestone as they wheeled in place to join in the clean-up. A glance back along the flightpath showed the usual palls of smoke rising from burned-out burrows – not the worst T’kamen had ever seen, but not good. The fire-crews would be combing back over Fall’s footprint for hours before they could expect anything to eat. Is there any word on Netraceth?

She has lost most of the wing.

Of the seven rescues they’d mounted during the course of the Fall, it was the one T’kamen had most feared would end badly – at least until Beaunath. Netraceth had already been badly Threaded when Epherineth had dragged her between. And Hybalth?

The neck score looked worse than it was. He will recover.

Any bodies?

One. Mestinth.

T’kamen let out his breath. Let’s go and get that done.

Epherineth flew back along the path of Fall, passing along each section leader’s comments on the action as they reported in. The worst logistical failure was that the bunkers had run out by the final half hour of the Fall, leaving some fighting dragons having to hoard their remaining stone. Br’lom had got into an argument with several Wingleaders, insisting that any dragon needing to re-stoke so close to the end of Fall must have been wasting flame. G’reyan’s Ginth told Epherineth that his rider wanted to speak to T’kamen about the issue as soon as they returned to Madellon. Pass it on to El’yan, he told Epherineth. Though I don’t see how we could have added even one more bunker to this Fall, with the strike over the border to handle tomorrow morning. How many catches did the Aid section make?

Six, said Epherineth. Three wing injuries, two firestone burns, one over-flown.

Anyone need urgent transportation back to the Weyr?

Epherineth paused. Kondrath is worst. But the Dragon Healers have his burns under control. They don’t want to risk his hide between. He’ll return to the Weyrstation for treatment.

Other injuries?

I don’t have that information.

T’kamen always asked, but the Wingleaders didn’t report their casualties directly to Epherineth. He never got an accurate summary of how well the fighting Wings had taken a Fall until he returned to the Weyr. He had a rough impression from the Seventh’s actions, though. Only three dead, but one more fatally wounded, and as many as twelve others who might be out for months, if not permanently. The thought made his already-aching head throb.

I have a visual on Mestinth, said Epherineth. Tetketh is with her.

All right, said T’kamen. Take us there.

He felt the lacing of Epherineth’s mind and Fetch’s, like a hand-clasp, and they went between.

They emerged again over the familiar grim sight of a dragon’s corpse. It was impossible to tell exactly how Mestinth had been Threaded. She was barely even recognisable as a green. Her broken body still smoked where dragon-flame had incinerated the Thread infestation that had killed her; her hide was black and crisp. T’kamen didn’t want to look too closely, but he made himself take in the bent, burnt form of the rider, still strapped to the dead dragon’s neck.

Tetketh, F’sta’s blue, and a second blue T’kamen didn’t recognise were waiting behind Mestinth’s corpse. Bussarth, Epherineth supplied, as he landed beside them dwarfing both smaller dragons. Then he added, His rider was Mestinth’s rider’s clutch-mate.

T’kamen winced. He used the moments it took for him to dismount from Epherineth, pull down his cane, and push up his goggles to prepare himself. It wouldn’t be the first time that a grieving friend or relative had confronted him over his failure to save a loved one.

But the young man standing with F’sta seemed to be dry-eyed as T’kamen approached. “Blue rider,” T’kamen said, with a stiff nod. “I’m sorry about Mestinth and your –” He didn’t know Mestinth’s rider’s name, nor even if the green rider had been a man or a woman. “Brother,” he said, hoping he’d guessed correctly.

He had. The blue rider snorted. “Don’t be. I won’t miss him.”

“E’ban!” F’sta said, horrified.

“Well, I won’t,” said E’ban. “J’ban was always a bastard to me, right from when we were kids.” He paused, then said grudgingly, “I’m sorry for Mestinth. She deserved better.”

“They both did,” said F’sta.

“You didn’t know him,” said E’ban. “But never let it be said that I’m a wher like he was. Don’t just dump them between. Take them to Little Madellon.”

That did give T’kamen pause. He and Epherineth had interred many dragons between in the last few months; no one had asked him to take a body to Little Madellon before. “Why?”

E’ban folded his arms. “He was in the Commander’s Wing; what do you expect? If he wants to go someplace to rot for all eternity, who am I to argue?”

“J’ban flew in the Commander’s Wing?” T’kamen asked.

“And didn’t he just love to lord that over me,” said E’ban. He stared at the cooling corpse of his brother’s dragon. “Well, which of us is still standing, huh, Jerby? That’s right. Me.”

“If Little Madellon’s what he wanted, then we’ll take them there,” said T’kamen.

Tetketh and Bussarth helped Epherineth with the gruesome work of lifting Mestinth’s remains into a chain rig. T’kamen was still more disturbed by E’ban’s callousness. “How could he have hated his own brother that much?” he asked F’sta.

“J’ban was kind of a tail-fork,” said F’sta. “Always putting E’ban down, even before he got assigned to the Third. Always bragging about how he’d been tailman for the Commander and how E’ban wouldn’t ever even get a Wingsecond to tail for.”

T’kamen sighed. If the dead green rider had been one of S’leondes’ former tails, the Commander would be in an even worse mood than usual. He wondered if S’leondes would deign to come and accuse him of failing to save E’ban to his face: that, or complain that the six fighting riders of the Unseen were being wasted, sitting back at the Weyr and doing nothing.

It would be hard to argue with him if he did. Everyone had been spooked by the disaster with the Istan riders – T’kamen himself included. He’d suspended training with the Unseen and their fire-lizards for a couple of days out of respect, but he’d been dismayed by how grateful most of his riders had been for the respite. Even Fraza and Dannie, who were the most competitive of the Unseen, seemed relieved to be off the hook. T’kamen knew he needed to get them all back in training, and rebuild their confidence, and he knew he needed to do it soon. He just wasn’t sure how he could when his own confidence in the fire-lizard project had become so fragile.

Four Pass riders had tried to go between with the help of fire-lizards now, and all of them had failed. Well: M’ric must ultimately have succeeded, but his journey back to the Interval had been fore-ordained. He hadn’t been able to do it under controlled conditions in the Pass. And Epherineth, for all that he needed Fetch’s help to navigate between, was an Interval dragon, Hatched and trained long before the problem with between had first reared its head. Neither he nor Trebruth could be held up as evidence that Pass dragons just needed a fire-lizard’s assistance to go between safely. No such evidence existed.

What if I’m wrong?

The question kept T’kamen awake at night. He didn’t dare speak it aloud to anyone: not Dalka, not El’yan, not Ch’fil at Ista; certainly not to any of the Unseen. If he allowed his conviction in the fire-lizard solution to weaken, the project was over. The Unseen would never go between if they didn’t believe it was possible. Madellon would lose faith in him. S’leondes would use the failure as a stick to beat him with. T’kamen was surprised he hadn’t already, although the fact that the three dead riders were Istan had helped him a little there. He hated to think of their deaths in such bluntly political terms; equally, he knew he no longer had the luxury of doing otherwise.

But the question still haunted him. Epherineth couldn’t help. He didn’t know, any more than any of them did, if the fire-lizard connection was a universal solution. He had no mystical dragonish insight to offer. He would only say, It works for me, and T’kamen would remark caustically that perhaps Epherineth was special, and Epherineth would reply that of course he was. The exchange was comforting only because it was familiar, not because it was helpful.

Once Mestinth’s body was secure in the rig, T’kamen dismissed F’sta and Tetketh back to the Weyr. Epherineth took off, circled once to build some momentum, then swooped low over Mestinth’s chain-wrapped remains and snagged his claws into the mesh. With a heave, he got his grisly load aloft.

They stayed at Little Madellon only for the length of time it took Epherineth to carefully disentangle Mestinth from the chain net. T’kamen did look around for any evidence that Alanne’s fire-lizards had returned, and even made a pass through the cavern where Ryth’s skeleton still lay, gathering dust now with no one to tend it. He didn’t expect to find anything there, as he hadn’t on the previous half dozen occasions when he’d visited Little Madellon to look for eggs. Alanne’s fair, no longer compelled by their owner’s powerful mind to stay or lay in that inland place, was long gone. T’kamen stood looking at the old bones, wondering if he’d crippled himself and maimed Epherineth for nothing.

On his shoulder, Fetch whistled in outrage, and then bit him hard on the ear.

Lord Dako signed the bottom of the document and rose from his seat. “Thank you, Weyrmarshal. This is more than fair.”

T’kamen was a little taken aback. He resisted glancing at El’yan, beside him, for insight. “Thank you, my Lord. Jessaf’s tithe to the Weyr continues to be very generous.”

Dako darted him a quick, furtive look at that, which T’kamen couldn’t decipher. Then he smiled, too brightly. “Of course, Weyrmarshal. We are, as ever, Madellon’s most devoted supporters.”

“I have no doubt,” said T’kamen. Then something occurred to him. “Will you be joining us at Levierth’s upcoming Hatching?”

Dako’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Joining…you?”

That reaction baffled T’kamen too. “A tradition from my time,” he said. “All of Madellon’s Lords Holder were welcomed to the Weyr on the occasion of a Hatching.”

“I see, I see,” said Dako. “It’s only that my daughters – well, a dragon’s never been interested in them before – but I thought perhaps you meant…”

T’kamen suddenly grasped the source of Dako’s fear in a rush. He’s afraid that we’ll Search one of his children. He would have liked to promise Jessaf’s Lord Holder that Search would pass over his children, but caution stopped him. This was his first time dealing with a Pass Lord and he didn’t want to give anything away without discussing it with El’yan. He settled for a vague reassurance. “I’m sure the Search riders will find enough candidates in your outlying holdings without needing to deplete the Hold Proper.”

“I’m certain they won’t be disappointed,” said Dako, almost crumpling with relief. “Please, won’t you and your dragons take refreshment while you wait for them to return?”

I am hungry, said Epherineth.

T’kamen suddenly felt like he was exploiting the Hold’s generosity. “Thank you, but they’ll eat when we return to the Weyr,” he said. “Perhaps a cup of klah, though?”

“He could afford a couple of cows, you know,” El’yan remarked, as they stood in the Jessaf Hold courtyard sipping their klah. “Just like he could afford to give you that fancy knife you turned down.”

T’kamen touched the hilt of M’ric’s old hunting blade where it rode on his belt. “I don’t need a new knife,” he said, “fancy or otherwise.”

“Not used to the Holds being open-handed, are you?”

“I had to fight tooth and nail for everything in the Interval,” T’kamen said. “This kind of generosity seems…unnatural.”

El’yan regarded him with his deceptively rheumy eyes. “Since you turned down our dragons’ dinner, what do you say to a little wherry hunt?”

Epherineth, who’d been put out by T’kamen’s refusal of Dako’s herdbeasts, lifted his head interestedly.

“Where did you have in mind?” T’kamen asked.

“Nowhere far,” said El’yan. “Just have Epherineth follow Ayarth.”

As they crossed the courtyard to their dragons, T’kamen noticed how the Holdfolk largely ignored them. Not even senior rank knots merited much respect if they showed brown or bronze. But then, he thought, between old El’yan’s peg leg, and his own halting cane-assisted limp, neither of them looked very heroic.

There was nothing much wrong with Ayarth, though. Epherineth followed El’yan’s old brown, matching a speed that would have been respectable for a much younger dragon. He could have outpaced Ayarth in moments had he so desired, but there was no need for that. Epherineth, at least, had nothing to prove.

It was overcast enough that T’kamen couldn’t be sure of the sun’s position in the sky, and he’d stopped carrying a compass since Epherineth had started going between again, so he had no idea where they were going until they arrived. Even so, he didn’t recognise the line of roofs and towers that interrupted the horizon half an hour’s flight out of Jessaf. That itself wasn’t unusual. Many of Madellon’s holdings had changed dramatically since T’kamen’s native time, and many more hadn’t been built until late in the Interval. But as they drew closer, and the details became clearer, T’kamen realised that their destination wasn’t a new hold, or even an old one that had been expanded since he’d last seen it.

It was Peranvo Hold.

Peranvo had once been the richest Hold in Madellon territory: the unrivalled centre for the production and trade of luxury goods in southern Pern. White clay-beds of surpassing quality enabled the manufacture of ceramics so delicate they were even exported to the north; natural deposits of vermilion and lapis supplied pigments for the dyes and paints and glazes used by every Hold and Hall in the south; and above all, its deep rich soil and cool climate provided optimum growing conditions for the acres upon acres of flax fields from which Pern’s finest linen thread was spun and woven. The wealth of exceptional resources had attracted crafters of every kind to Peranvo in the Interval. Weavers and dyers, tanners and potters, smiths and stonemasons: the Craft quarter had always thronged with artists and artisans creating items of matchless quality and beauty. Peranvo had prospered, and five generations of Lords and Ladies had flaunted their wealth by adding towers and turrets to the original keep of the Hold, each grander and more vividly-painted than the last, and furnishing them with the very best of the luxurious goods that its Craft population turned out. It laid on the most extravagant Gathers on Pern, and if its vendors struck the hardest bargains anywhere outside of Bitra, then the buyers were generally too pleased with the quality of what they had bought to complain.

T’kamen had known that the Pass had not been kind to Peranvo. It was marked on the maps with the symbol for wild wherry, and he’d assumed it was a mistake until Ch’fil had confirmed, in passing, that Peranvo was no longer populated. T’kamen hadn’t given it any further thought. He’d had other things on his mind. And while he’d seen Holds a shadow of their former selves – denuded Kellad chief among them – he’d never seen anything like this.

The towers that had once thrust so proudly into the sky were crumbling. The tallest of them all, rising from beside the original, oldest part of the Hold, showed a gaping hole part way up its height, and its masonry was blackened and scorched. The windows that had once blazed with lead-latticed stained glass were empty, like the hollow eye-sockets of a skull, and almost every window-ledge was fringed with the debris and filth of roosting wherries. The sprawling flax fields that had been at the heart of the Hold’s Interval prosperity were gone. All T’kamen could see was Thread-blighted earth.

He turned on Epherineth’s neck to look at El’yan on Ayarth’s with blank incomprehension.

El’yan simply made the arm signal for down.

“What in the Void happened here?” T’kamen demanded, even before the dragons had landed outside the ragged outer wall of the Hold.

“Well,” El’yan said. He dismounted stiffly, though through age, rather than on account of his wooden leg, which seemed hardly to inconvenience him. “That’s a story. Let’s take a walk.”

The great bronze doors that had once barred entry into Peranvo’s Great Hall were gone. The archway yawned empty. “Is it safe?” T’kamen asked.

“Safe enough, so long as you don’t go poking at things,” said El’yan. “The dragons will keep most of the wherries on the wing.”

T’kamen loosened the hunting knife in its sheath. Then he limped forwards, through the doorway.

The darkness at the edges of Peranvo’s abandoned Great Hall contrasted starkly with the sunlight flooding in through the great lanterned skylight that dominated the centre of the room. Every pane of glass had been broken, and the heavy shutters that should have closed out light and Thread alike were long gone, looted from the Hold’s ruins along with the bronze doors. T’kamen paused to let his eyes adjust to the light. The fabulous frescoes that had once lavished the walls and ceiling had disappeared beneath layers of soot and dirt. The floor was thick with filth – ashes, mould, vermin scat, the bones of small animals – and the nauseating, acrid stink of dead Thread. That chilled T’kamen to the bottom of his dragonrider’s soul. Madellon hadn’t flown Fall over Peranvo since the earliest days of the Pass. There wasn’t much greenery left for it to eat outside, and dead Thread broke down and washed away quickly in sunlight and rain. But Thread had penetrated Peranvo’s unprotected interior, and its blackened remains added to the litter that befouled the place.

He stepped into the puddle of light beneath the ruined cupola and extended the tip of his cane to prod at a Thread-shell. The black cinder collapsed, releasing a fresh stench. “I remember this Hold when it was beautiful.”

“So do I,” said El’yan. “Beautiful and decadent. Some would say arrogant. Some would say it got what it deserved.”

“Nowhere deserves this,” said T’kamen. “The people who lived here –”

“Defied the Weyr,” said El’yan. He walked forward to join T’kamen in the pool of light. “And were taught a lesson about where the power truly resided once the Red Star began to blink in Pern’s skies.”

“A lesson,” T’kamen repeated.

El’yan looked around. “Let’s go back outside,” he said. “I’d sooner not tempt a snake to sink its fangs into the one ankle I have left.”

They left the Great Hall through a side entrance, into what T’kamen recalled as the West Courtyard. The floor there had once been patterned in a riot of coloured mosaic tiles: floor and tiles both were hidden now beneath a thick layer of dirt. A fountain had once played at the centre of the courtyard, and its circular shape was still there, but the copper pipes that had fed it had gone to the looters, and the bowl itself was filled to the brim with detritus. Ruined pieces of statuary – too heavy to be carried off – stood in the corners, frozen and forlorn, like forgotten guests at a party.

El’yan stumped over to the fountain and sat down on its raised edge. T’kamen followed him, more slowly. Then he asked, “What happened?”

“It was the flax fields,” said El’yan. “They were the beginning of the end. Them, and Lord Ortan, thinking he could force the Weyr’s hand.” He laced his fingers in his lap. “Madellon began to demand bigger livestock tithes towards the end of the Interval. The dragon population had been rising steadily for Turns, but in the last decade or so, with the queens rising twice a Turn, we had a lot of hungry dragonets to feed. Most of the Holds had been converting arable land into pasture, but not Peranvo. Ortan didn’t want to give over his precious flax fields to cows. He banked on being able to trade with his neighbours to fulfil Peranvo’s livestock obligations to the Weyr. He just didn’t realise how the coming of Thread would kill the demand for luxury goods on Pern. Nearly overnight, or at least within the first Turn or so. When suddenly you’re dipping into your winter granaries to feed your holders before midsummer’s even out, wearing the latest fashions and eating off a new dinner service every other month apparently doesn’t seem so important any more.

“Those early Turns were a shock to everyone. We all thought we knew how we’d have to tighten our belts. We didn’t have a clue. The Holds had spread so much, and we didn’t have the dragon power to defend everything. So the call went up that all the Holds would have to consolidate, to reduce their liability. Dragons were dying trying to protect crops that just weren’t important enough to save. And high-quality flax? There’s no linen on Pern worth more per yard than a dragon’s hide.

“But Ortan. Ortan balked when he was told to raze his fields. He refused. The Weyr had a responsibility to protect the Holds, he argued: a sacred responsibility, and one written down in the Madellon Charter. He had a copy of it, all done on Peranvo’s best linen paper, all got up in fancy calligraphy and coloured illustrations. Peranvo wasn’t obliged to tithe, Ortan said, if Madellon wasn’t going to protect it like it ought.” El’yan shook his head. “He was quite the gambler, was Ortan. Dice and cards. But not much of a poker player, because he never dreamed that, when he disobeyed the Weyr’s orders, and refused to tithe, the bold new Commander of the fighting Wings would call his bluff and decline to protect Peranvo’s lands at all.”

It took T’kamen a moment to connect the dots. “S’leondes?”

“All eighteen-and-a-half Turns of him,” said El’yan.

“Faranth,” said T’kamen.

“The first Fall that hit Peranvo without any dragons to burn it destroyed half the flax crop,” El’yan continued. “The second took most of what remained. Ortan couldn’t have capitulated to the Weyr if he’d wanted to. By the third, Ortan wasn’t Lord Holder any more. His own guards removed him from power – through the window of the big tower where he had his apartments. The Hold was sacked and robbed, and ultimately set on fire. And Madellon had made an example out of Peranvo that resonated around the entire continent. Any Hold that defied the Weyr would be on its own, Charter be blighted. And if anyone still held to the old beliefs that green and blue riders couldn’t wield power, it set them right of that notion, too.”

T’kamen sat, blinking, on the edge of the fountain. The ruin all around them was graphic evidence of the terrible destruction that Thread – and Ortan’s pride – and S’leondes’ ruthlessness – had wrought upon Peranvo. It brought into focus why Dako had been so desperately eager to please him. And yet he still couldn’t quite grasp what had happened. “Why was it never resettled?”

“How could it be?” El’yan asked. “The fields were sterilised by Thread. All these towers and follies weren’t built to hold up to being gutted by fire. And then there’s the ghosts of Lord Ortan and his family, still haunting that tower.”

“Ghosts, El’yan?” T’kamen asked.

El’yan shrugged. “At the very least, it’s unlucky.”

T’kamen got up from the fountain. He walked around the courtyard, looking at the statues without really seeing them. A flight of shallow steps led from the courtyard to a terrace; he walked slowly up them, placing his feet carefully. More shattered sculptures – the fantastic carvings that had once protruded from each tower corner – littered the terrace, but a chipped stone bench had avoided most of the damage. T’kamen made his way carefully to it and sat down. The tallest tower rose crookedly to his left; the fireheights to his right, but the slender bridge that had once connected them had collapsed: a dragonlength’s empty space yawned between them. He looked up at the top of the tower, and tried not to imagine Lord Ortan scrabbling at the garishly-painted blocks in a vain attempt to cling on as his angry guards tossed him from the window.

And then he thought about what S’leondes had done, and wondered if, in his place, he would have done the same thing.

His first reaction: No. No: he, T’kamen, would never have condemned a whole Hold to destruction for the crimes of its Lord Holder. He would never have made Holdless the hundreds of people who called Peranvo home – workers, crafters, families. Children. He would never have turned a Hold whose name had once been a byword for beauty into a monument to the Weyr’s unassailable Pass-time authority.

And yet. And yet.

T’kamen had dealt with Lords Holder in the Interval who grudged every last ounce of the harvest that disappeared into a tithe wagon. For two hundred Turns, Madellon’s holders had treated with the Weyr from a position of strength, never having known the deprivations of life under the Red Star. Those attitudes, from Holders required over the last Turns of the Interval to give more and more to support more and more dragons, ran deep. Locked up safe in their stone Holds, as Madellon’s dragons flung themselves recklessly at Thread in their defence, it would have taken a severe lesson indeed to teach them the error of their entrenched, entitled ways.

I serve my Weyr in the best way I can. It doesn’t always allow me the luxury of a clear conscience. Dalka’s words sounded in his head again. Had she said the same thing to S’leondes? Probably. But did S’leondes feel the weight of what he’d done to Peranvo Hold on his conscience? That, T’kamen didn’t know. Perhaps S’leondes had done the right thing. Perhaps the fall of Peranvo had been the object lesson all of Pern needed to fall in behind the Weyr at a time when dragonriders couldn’t afford to bicker back and forth with the Holds over the tithe they needed to function.

A shadow fell suddenly over T’kamen, and he looked up. Epherineth soared over the ruined Hold, a black shape against the overcast sky. He had a limp wherry in each forepaw. He landed atop the fire-height, throwing his catch down with satisfaction and folding his wings.

T’kamen stood up. Epherineth, should you be –

As he spoke, the stones of the fire-height made a long, drawn-out grumbling sound.

For an instant, Epherineth froze, an almost comical expression of concern on his face.

Then the fire-height gave way beneath him.

Epherineth made a scrambling half-leap from the roof. The surface collapsed as he jumped, masonry falling in on itself with a terrible grinding roar that threw up a cloud of dirt. “Epherineth!” T’kamen shouted, and then coughed, choking, half-blinded as dust and bits of stone rained down.

When the dust cleared, Epherineth was clinging to the tallest tower.

He peered down at T’kamen from the precarious perch he’d found there, at full stretch: one hind foot planted on a crumbling decorative archway below, one forepaw gripping an ornate merlon high above. With his scarred face, he could have been one of the fearsome carvings that had once decorated Peranvo’s roofs. His eyes were whirling a startled orange, and dust had turned his hide a greyish shade. T’kamen…

But the stonework to which he clung was already groaning, and as T’kamen watched in horror the merlon began to tear free of its crenellation. Epherineth shook his forepaw free of the collapsing masonry and lunged for a ledge higher up. His tail lashed frantically as he struggled for balance. T’kamen grasped with sudden certainty that if Epherineth fell, he wouldn’t be able to catch himself. There wasn’t room for him to spread his wings. The broken pillars and shattered walls below where he hung looked like an eagerly open mouth full of jagged teeth.

A chunk of stonework came free beneath Epherineth’s groping talons. He twisted to evade its ponderous tumble, losing the grip of all but his right forepaw. He hung there, his hind feet scrabbling for purchase, and then a huge section of the rotting tower wall broke away all at once and he fell helplessly backwards.

And then he disappeared.

T’kamen stared, struck dumb, as blocks and bits of stone bounced and tumbled down the wall of the tower from the massive gap where Epherineth had been clinging.

Hours later – or so it seemed – Epherineth reappeared, high above Peranvo. He had something in his forepaws. It took T’kamen a moment to realise it was the slab of masonry from the tower.

He didn’t know how he got down the steps so quickly, or how he managed to run on his game leg, all the way to where Epherineth was alighting meekly, well beyond the treacherous ruins of Peranvo. “You idiot!”

Epherineth looked unsure about what to do with the piece of wall. He put it down, and carefully pushed it away from himself, as if it might spontaneously attack him. I didn’t know it would collapse.

“What sort of stupid shaffing stunt do you think you were pulling landing on that roof?” T’kamen shouted. “You call yourself a bronze? Stupid shaffing idiot!”

Then his knee, as if remembering it was crippled, went out from under him, and he sat down hard against Epherineth’s elbow. “Stupid shaffing idiot,” he said under his breath.

Epherineth turned his head down towards him.

Fetch came fluttering down from his usual perch, chattering happily to himself at how heroically he’d helped Epherineth to jump between out of danger. T’kamen put his hand up to the little brown. “At least one of us is sensible.”

Ayarth asks if we are all right. Epherineth sounded embarrassed.

“Tell him we’re fine,” said T’kamen. “Just stupid.”

Fetch objected.

“Except for Fetch. He’s not stupid.”

I’m sorry, T’kamen. I didn’t mean to scare you.

“I know. But if you’d been any other dragon…”

He left the sentence unfinished, but not the thought. If you’d been any other dragon, you wouldn’t have been able to go between to save yourself.

And that thought led naturally to another. If dragons could still go between, Peranvo wouldn’t have fallen.

How many people had died in the razing of the Hold? How many had been left Holdless? How many people had S’leondes left to their fate to guarantee submission to the will of the Weyr? How many people were crammed into Holds across Pern now: afraid of Thread, afraid of famine, afraid that their children would be taken for the Weyr to face short and brutal lives as fighting dragonriders? How many had died when half the north had been abandoned? How many dragonriders died every day, throwing themselves between Thread and Pern in a futile war of attrition that could never truly be won?

Hundreds. Thousands. Lives without number, human and dragon.

How many had been lost to T’kamen’s crusade to restore between?

Three dragonpairs. Four, including M’ric, but M’ric didn’t count. Three dragonpairs. Six lives.

They’d lost more than six lives in the first two hours of yesterday’s Fall alone.

S’leondes had been willing to spend lives in the service of the Weyr – in the service of Pern – and from the ashes of that sacrifice an eighteen-Turn-old blue rider, barely a weyrling, had risen as Pern’s saviour.

I serve my Weyr in the best way I can. It doesn’t always allow me the luxury of a clear conscience.

Maybe fire-lizards weren’t the answer. Maybe T’kamen was wrong. He wasn’t infallible. Nor was Epherineth. He’d just become graphically aware of that. And maybe the Unseen would pay the price if T’kamen was wrong. Maybe more than just the twelve of them would pay.

Maybe T’kamen had to be prepared to spend lives in the service of Pern, too.

He pulled himself up, using his cane for support. His bad knee complained, and he winced, knowing he’d pay for his haste tomorrow. “Come on, Epherineth. Back to Madellon. And tell Bularth to have the Unseen ready for inspection first thing in the morning.”

Epherineth paused, relaying the message. Bularth asks why.

“Because they’re going back into training,” said T’kamen. “I’m going to get dragons going between again if it kills them.”

Chapter seventy-eight: C’mine

Dragonriders have a bad reputation when it comes to their relationships with other human beings, and so they should. A dutiful husband will consider his wife’s wishes in all things, a loving father will care for the well-being of his children before anything else, and an honest lover will strive for fidelity and trust in all his courtships; but a dragonrider cannot – must not – commit to any such priorities.

A woman can find another husband. A child can be cherished by other parents. A lover can seek other companionship. But no one on Pern – no other person who lives or has lived or will ever live – can replace a dragon’s rider. A dragon cannot divorce his rider as a spouse could; he will never grow up, leave home, become self-sufficient as a child should; he will never lose interest or patience as a girlfriend might. A rider who places the needs of friends or family above, or even on a par with, those of his dragon is unfit to be a dragonrider.

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Weyrleader O’ret

100.05.23 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

M’ric looked up hopefully from where he was stuffing clothes into a pack. “Is she coming?”

C’mine took a breath. “No,” he said at last. “She said she doesn’t want to see you.”

It wasn’t quite true. If I ever have to look at his face again I think I’ll be sick, were the exact words Sarenya had spoken, when C’mine had asked her if she would see M’ric one last time before he went to Westisle. He didn’t think M’ric deserved the whole of the truth.

M’ric sat down on the edge of the bed, looking at his hands. He’d been so resolute, so matter-of-fact about his fate, since L’stev had come back with the news that H’ned had accepted the deal. Now, for the first time since the threat of Separation had passed, C’mine saw the strain breaking through that stoic façade. “She must despise me.”

C’mine wanted to disagree, wanted to reassure M’ric that no, Sarenya didn’t despise him, but that was a lie too far. “She wouldn’t if she knew the truth. Or even if she knew that you were protecting her by not telling her.”

“Protecting her,” said M’ric. “That’s what Kamen asked me to do. To protect her.”

“You are,” said C’mine. “You have.”

“Not well enough. She’s…” M’ric let the word hang for a long while. Then he met C’mine’s gaze. “Has she told you?”

“About her pregnancy?” C’mine asked.

Even the word seemed to cause M’ric pain. “Then it’s confirmed.”

“I don’t know,” said C’mine. “She said it’s too early to tell for sure.”

“But she’s…going ahead with it?”

“It’s her decision, M’ric.”

“I know. I know. I just wish…”

M’ric didn’t finish the sentence, and C’mine didn’t finish it for him.

“He asked me to look out for you, too.”

“Kamen?”

“He said not to let you do anything stupid.”

“He laid an impossible charge on you, then,” C’mine said, with a lightness he didn’t feel. “Not even Kamen could stop me being stupid.”

“It’s not your fault, you know. The timing. You didn’t have a choice.”

“It’s not the timing I regret,” said C’mine. “It’s what I’ve done to Darshanth.”

I forgive you, said Darshanth.

M’ric turned his head slightly in the direction of Trebruth’s ledge. “Dragons are very forgiving.”

“Even a dragon’s forgiveness has to be earned,” said C’mine, to both of them.

Not mine.

“I’ll have plenty of time with Trebruth to do that,” said M’ric. “But Saren…” He rose abruptly and crossed the weyr to a cabinet. He opened the top drawer. “Will you give her this?”

C’mine looked at the slip of hide M’ric proffered. “What is it?”

“A letter of credit with the Smithcrafthall at Taive Hold.” Irony shaded his voice.  “My ill-gotten gains.”

“How much is it worth?”

“Not enough,” said M’ric. “But I want her to have it. And…and this. For my…for her child.”

The second document was a tightly-rolled scroll, sealed with wax. “She might not accept either of these,” said C’mine.

“Would you hold onto them for me anyway?”

C’mine tucked note and scroll into the inner pocket of his jacket. “I will.”

The sound of another dragon landing on the ledge outside made them both look up. Vanzanth, said Darshanth, and a moment later L’stev came into the weyr.

“You ready?” he asked. “They’re waiting for you in the Council chamber.”

M’ric looked around the weyr. “I guess I am.”

“I got hold of the current roster for Westisle,” L’stev said. “Two Benden green riders, a brown from Telgar, a Peninsula blue, and the Southern bronze.”

“The bronze is R’maro,” said M’ric. “The blue would be…D’rend? D’rand? He was Exiled…it must have been ten Turns ago.”

C’mine didn’t ask what he’d done. The very fact that D’rend or D’rand had ended up on Westisle spoke eloquently enough of the gravity of his offences.

“You’ll be transported immediately the hearing’s over,” said L’stev. “So if there’s anyone else you want to say goodbye to, it’s now or never.”

“I’ve said all the goodbyes I’m going to,” said M’ric. “But I want to thank you.” He came across, holding out his hand. L’stev, slowly, grasped it. “Both of you,” M’ric went on, extending his hand to C’mine. “For everything you’ve done for me.”

“The Wingleaders are outside,” L’stev said. “They’ll take you up to the Council chamber.”

M’ric nodded. He squared his shoulders. He looked very dignified in his dress wherhides. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Not you,” L’stev said, when C’mine made to follow him from the weyr.

“But –”

“It’s a closed Justice. You won’t be allowed in.”

“Can they stop me waiting outside?”

L’stev looked at him. “You’re doing yourself no favours, being seen with M’ric.”

“I’m not the only one who doesn’t think he’s guilty,” said C’mine. “The Ops Wing –”

“The Ops Wing are showing solidarity with their Wingleader,” said L’stev. “You’ll just antagonise H’ned even more by siding against him.”

“That doesn’t matter to me.”

L’stev sighed. “I suppose it doesn’t. All right. Wait outside, if you must. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The hearing that sealed M’ric’s fate took less than fifteen minutes, though to C’mine, it seemed like hours.

The door of the Council chamber opened abruptly, and he jumped up from the bench outside where he’d been waiting. R’yeno and E’dor, who’d escorted M’ric inside, escorted him back out again. They didn’t have to manhandle him. Even the cords that bound M’ric’s hands behind his back seemed unnecessary. M’ric walked compliantly between them with his head down and his eyes on the ground. He had entered the chamber wearing the full insignia of a Madellon Weyr Wingsecond. Now, his shoulders were bare of epaulettes and rank cords, and only a straggle of severed threads remained where the diamond badge of Madellon had been torn from his sleeve. He didn’t raise his head as he was marched past C’mine. He didn’t react at all.

L’stev followed him out. His face was no more grim than usual, but he caught C’mine’s eye as he passed.

“…glad the unfortunate business didn’t take long,” V’stan was saying to P’keo as they left the Council chamber.

“…think we can all agree that justice was served…”

“…don’t want to dwell on it…”

Valonna and H’ned were the last to emerge: she looking drawn, he insistent. “But you got your way, Weyrwoman,” said H’ned. He halted when he saw C’mine. “Was there something you wanted, blue rider?”

“No, sir,” C’mine said.

H’ned studied him for a moment with those pale eyes, as though believing that, if he only looked hard enough, he’d discern for himself whatever truths M’ric had told C’mine. “Be about your business, then.”

C’mine resisted the urge to look at Valonna. “Yes, sir.”

Shimpath says that her rider thanks you for being here, said Darshanth.

Tell her I’m only sorry I couldn’t do more.

L’stev was waiting at the bottom of the steps that led up to the Council chamber. “At least it was quick.”

“Then no one…”

“What?” L’stev snapped. “Jumped up to offer him a reprieve with some convenient last-minute evidence?” Then he cast C’mine an uncharacteristically contrite look, and muttered, “Sorry. Those sanctimonious tail-forks just put my teeth on edge. The way they went on, you’d think no bronze rider ever ran afoul of a Justice. M’ric did well, though. Didn’t rise to it even when H’ned tried to provoke him. Didn’t say a word but that he had to.” L’stev shook his head. “Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. You’d think they’d get the idea after the first half dozen times.”

“They took his insignia,” said C’mine.

“That was the only time I thought he might crack,” said L’stev. “Just for a minute, but it hurt him when H’ned ripped the badge off his sleeve. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me. If everything he told us is true, Madellon’s his home as much as it’s yours and mine.”

“Do you really still doubt him?”

L’stev made his most graphic grimace. “I wish I did. That way I’d feel some sort of comfort in knowing that he’s got thirty miserable Turns ahead of him.”

That made C’mine feel wretched. “At least he’s still got Trebruth.”

“There’s that,” said L’stev, but he sounded wearily unconvinced. “Faranth, I could use a drink.”

“So could I,” said C’mine.

L’stev gave him a long, measuring look. “Do you think that’s wise?”

“I don’t…” C’mine began. “I’m not…” He stopped.

“You’ve been different, these last few days,” said L’stev. “Since this business with M’ric. More together. More yourself.”

“He said the timing wasn’t my fault,” said C’mine. “M’ric. He said I didn’t have a choice.”

“And you believe that?”

“I don’t know.”

L’stev’s eyes drifted to C’mine’s shoulder, as bare of rank insignia as M’ric’s. “What are you going to do now?”

C’mine took a breath. “Jenavally came to see me. The watch post at Teller Hold is vacant.”

“It did her good,” L’stev said. His tone was neutral. “But she had friends at Teller. Her son’s father.”

“I left my family behind when I was Searched,” said C’mine. “I couldn’t go back to that.”

“Teller’s not a bad post,” said L’stev. “But I don’t know it would suit Darshanth, being apart from other dragons. You’re both better when you have someone else to worry about.” He paused. “There is an alternative.”

Something leapt in C’mine’s chest. “You’ll take me back?”

L’stev frowned. “Not to my barracks.”

C’mine’s surge of hope died as quickly as it had erupted. L’stev frowned more severely. “Don’t look like that,” he said. “You know you’re too compromised to work with these weyrlings again. That’s not your alternative.”

“What, then?”

L’stev regarded him contemplatively. “How do you feel about the cold?”

It wasn’t that cold at the High Reaches. Darshanth came out of between into a sunny summer sky several degrees warmer than the one they’d just left. The brown on watch at the eastern end of the seven spindles challenged him courteously enough and, when Darshanth explained their business, directed him to land near the weyrling barracks.

Two greens were sunning themselves on the south-facing terrace outside: B’reko’s Milth and a slightly smaller dragon. As Darshanth backwinged to land nearby, he said, Milth’s rider asks that we bear with him for a few minutes.

C’mine hadn’t been waiting long at all when B’reko and a young green rider emerged from the barracks door. “Always know where I am, R’keed,” B’reko said, and clapped the lad on the shoulder. Then he stared at Darshanth with a puzzled expression. “Been starving your dragon, C’mine?”

“I –” C’mine looked at Darshanth, really looked at him. He knew he’d been in better shape, but he hadn’t let himself see the truth: the greyness of his colour, the dullness of his hide, the laxness of his muscles. He thought about saying, he hasn’t had much appetite, but that would have done Darshanth a disservice. Darshanth’s appetite wasn’t the problem. C’mine’s neglect of him was. “I need to do better.”

“Have a herdbeast!” B’reko shouted at Darshanth. He gestured down the Bowl. “Go!”

“That’s very generous of you, Weyrlingmaster,” C’mine said. “But he’ll eat back at Madellon.”

“Not generous. Don’t like to see a dragon that bony. Losing weight just looking at him.” B’reko turned and bellowed at the green beside Milth. “Helinth! Show Darshanth the paddocks!”

Helinth blinked, and looked for an instant like she’d refuse B’reko’s command. Then Milth swivelled her head towards her, and the younger green started guiltily.

You’d better follow her, C’mine told Darshanth.

B’reko was shaking his head. “Unruly madam,” he said. “Not two hours first mated. Thinks she owns the place. Greens.”

Milth snorted a lazy objection to that.

“She’s still a weyrling, then?” C’mine asked.

“Helinth? Not for much longer. Thank Faranth. Last of the clutch to rise. Glad that’s all over with. Whole bunch a pain in my ass.”

“L’stev said you have a new clutch on the sands.”

“Mm. Mm. Kerpath’s, though. Not Oradenth’s. Oradenth’s dragonets, always the biggest pain in the ass. Kerpath’s less so.” B’reko considered it. “Marginally. Come. Come and see the clutch.”

C’mine matched B’reko’s rolling stride as the Reaches Weyrlingmaster started towards the entrance to the Hatching ground. He looked around the Weyr as they walked, comparing it to Madellon. It was smaller, more round to Madellon’s oval, and its distinctive spires spoke to a more explosive formation. There were more buildings in the Bowl – several the size of small holds – and the entrance to the Hatching cavern, in the northern face of the Bowl beneath the spires, was much larger. The dragons were larger, too. Darshanth was about the average size for a Madellon blue, but the Reaches blues C’mine could see on Rim and ledges and by the lake were almost all bigger than him.

The queen and bronze within the Hatching cavern were both deeper shades of their respective colours than C’mine was used to seeing: she almost brassy, he not much lighter than a brown. “Kerpath,” said B’reko. “And Lenneth.”

C’mine’s knowledge of the north’s current political status extended just far enough that he knew the dragons were High Reaches’ senior pair. “Weyrwoman Veranne and Weyrleader N’veag…”

“Been at this long enough to know to leave their dragons to it,” said B’reko. He nodded in response to the look Kerpath aimed in his direction. Neither she nor Lenneth looked at all concerned by their presence. Indeed, she shifted deliberately to the left to reveal, with a certain theatrical flourish, her clutch.

C’mine stopped in his tracks. The gleaming hemisphere of a queen egg rose above the others.

“Problem?” B’reko asked, noticing his hesitation.

Shimpath’s egg and Berzunth’s were the only two gold eggs C’mine had seen Hatch. The memories of both those days made him flinch. “There’s a queen.”

“Mm,” said B’reko. “Fort-bound, probably, once she’s grown. Don’t need another here.”

C’mine made himself put aside his instinctive unease. “She’ll need a rider who can handle being uprooted, then. Someone worldly. Probably not Weyrbred.”

“Probably not,” said B’reko. He tucked his hands behind his back, rocking slightly on his heels. “Where would you look?”

“My northern geography isn’t very strong.”

“In broad terms.”

C’mine considered it. “Maybe the younger daughter of a Holder. One who’s been fostered out somewhere else.” He searched his memory. “Is Nabol near the Reaches-Fort border?”

“It is.”

“I might start there. There must be fosterlings with knowledge of both territories.”

“Interesting,” said B’reko. He gave no indication of whether or not he thought C’mine’s suggestion was a good one. “You favour high-born queen riders?”

“Not necessarily,” said C’mine. “Darshanth Searched…”

He stopped. Darshanth had Searched two candidates for queens, neither of them of noble birth. Again, the shadow of those two Hatchings passed over him. “Madellon’s Weyrwoman is the daughter of a Holder. No one ever seriously expected her to Impress. But our weyrling queen rider was brought up in her family’s exile.”

“High Reaches hasn’t flown Search in Turns,” said B’reko. “Don’t mean we haven’t had candidates in from outside. Course we have. Siblings of our riders. Unwanted waifs. Pretty girls. Pretty boys. But. Chosen because they’re desirable. Not because they’re likely. Sensitivity, not a strength of the High Reaches bloodline. Last Hatching, some of the pairings…” He made a rocking gesture with his hand. “Plenty of candidates. Not many for the dragonets to choose from. Not enough with the capability. Makes me nervous.” He pointed at the clutch. “Eighteen dragons there. Not convinced I have half that many prospects.”

“L’stev said you might find Darshanth’s Search sensitivity useful,” said C’mine.

B’reko looked at him. Then he touched both of his own shoulders, where Madellon riders – most Madellon riders – wore epaulettes. “What happened there?”

“Didn’t L’stev say?”

“I’m asking you.”

C’mine wondered what L’stev had told the other Weyrlingmaster. “My –” he began, and then stopped, thinking.

His world had gone to pieces when he’d lost C’los. L’stev had known that when he’d taken C’mine on, and he’d known it when he’d dismissed him. T’kamen had known it, too, when he’d discharged C’mine from the Wings. They’d both made allowances for his grief. And C’mine had overstepped the limits of both their patience. He couldn’t keep claiming C’los’ murder as an excuse for the things he’d done. Sooner or later he had to take responsibility for his own actions.

“I’ve made some bad decisions,” he said. Still, he instinctively wanted to cite C’los’ murder, but he made himself resist. Perhaps B’reko knew and perhaps he didn’t, but if he was anything like L’stev, his patience for bereavement as an excuse wouldn’t be limitless, either. “A lot of bad decisions in a very short space of…time.”

B’reko didn’t react to the fractional hesitation before that last word. He rested his chin on his chest. “Problem with being a Weyrlingmaster. Mistakes you make, very public.”

C’mine sighed. “Yes.”

“Have known L’stev a long time. Trust his judgement. Doubt we’d disagree on many things.”

C’mine squared his shoulders. “I understand.”

B’reko chuckled. “Don’t think you do. He’s already sent me some candidates. Have stood more than once and not Impressed. Some people would call them failures.” He shook his head. “I call them people who’ve had to pick themselves off. Dust themselves off. Carry on even though they’ve failed in front of everyone. People like that deserve a second chance.” He pointed a thick finger at C’mine. “You deserve a second chance. Won’t get that at Madellon. Won’t get that any place where everyone knows everything you’ve ever done. Need to leave it behind. Start fresh. Be the rider you want to be. Not the one everyone assumes you still are.”

C’mine looked at the shining curve of Kerpath’s golden egg. “I need to talk to Darshanth.”

“You do.” B’reko made an expansive gesture. “Take your time.”

C’mine climbed up into the tiers and sat on one of the stone benches overlooking the sands.

It wasn’t the first time he’d thought about leaving Madellon. He’d made quiet enquiries to Igen a few months after C’los’ death, when waking up each morning in the weyr they’d shared had seemed unbearable. Igen had been short of blues – its sole queen didn’t lay many – and he and Darshanth would have been welcome there. Ultimately, he’d decided that leaving Madellon would be worse than staying. But things had been simpler then.

Be the rider you want to be. Not the one everyone assumes you still are. B’reko’s words had weight and resonance. C’mine of Madellon was C’los’ grieving weyrmate, T’kamen’s friend, Valonna’s confidant. L’stev’s failed assistant and Carleah’s unreliable parent. M’ric’s unlikely champion and an unexpected thorn in H’ned side.

You are C’mine, said Darshanth. You are a blue rider. You are my rider. Nothing else matters.

You’d leave Madellon? C’mine asked. To come here?

The herdbeasts are fatter.

Darshanth.

I’ll go wherever you want to go. Here or Madellon or another Weyr. It doesn’t matter so long as I am with you.

No, Darshanth. You’ve been letting me put what I want first for too long. What do you want?

Darshanth was silent for a long time. Other dragons, he said at last. Greens to chase. A Wing to fly in. Candidates to Search. Dragonets to teach.

You want to teach weyrlings?

He was quiet again, but not for so long. Dragonets can no longer go between. They will not be able to go between again for a long time. Trebruth and Vanzanth and I are the only dragons who know this. No other dragon knows. No other dragon can know. Only us. We have a responsibility. He paused again, and then added, To Pern.

C’mine would have laughed at the portentousness of the remark had Darshanth not been so completely serious. Most dragons don’t concern themselves with the future.

Most dragons don’t have to.

He thought about what L’stev had said. You’re both better when you have someone else to worry about. It was true. Worrying about M’ric had given C’mine something to do, someone to help – even if M’ric wasn’t a rider he’d known very well. Perhaps because of it. Caring too much was the problem. He’d timed it to save – or try to save – the people closest to him. He’d risked himself for C’los and Carleah. He’d have done it for T’kamen, too. For Valonna. For Sarenya.

For Darshanth’s sake, he had to learn to stop caring about other people so much.

Chapter seventy-nine: T’kamen

People wonder why I’ve never wanted to be Senior. Levierth is, after all, the only home-bred Madellon queen; she’s older than Donauth, and we’ve both been here longer than Dalka. Before Harrie stepped down, she did ask me if I should like to be Weyrwoman after her. For all that we pretend that the succession is decided by our dragons’ mating schedules, I doubt a queen has ever abdicated without first making sure that her favoured successor will be next to rise. But I believe it was a courtesy to me, as Weyrwoman Second; Harrie knew quite well that I had no interest in being Senior. I lack the ambition; I lack the hunger; I lack the passion for power and politics.

Where I am deficient, Dalka is excessively endowed, and some would think that cause for friction between us. No. We have always complemented each other. She commands and I nurture. Donauth has favourites and Levierth loves widely. Dalka draws the eye and I – funny, dowdy old Lirelle – watch unobserved.

Neither of us is blind to the risk to ourselves, and to our queens, represented by Madellon’s fertile greens. Neither of us is oblivious to S’leondes’ zeal to dispense with the larger dragon colours entirely. Neither of us is so selfish as to place our own interests above the good of Pern.

Dalka has walked the fine line between Marshal and Commander ever since Madellon split into Strategic and Tactical branches. She has steadied the ship that is our Weyr a hundred times in a hundred ways. She has stayed S’leondes’ hand as often as she has R’lony’s, and she has done it, always, in private consultation with me.

And still she will not tell me what it was she saw in T’kamen the very first time she met him that makes her trust him so.

She has put aside R’lony, who – for all her dalliances, all her frustrations – was, and is, the great love of her life. She has danced as close as she dares to open defiance of S’leondes, even knowing that her power as Weyrwoman derives as much from his endorsement as it does from the colour of Donauth’s hide. She has even extended the hand of friendship to Reloka in the pursuit of T’kamen’s ambitions, and no one knows better than I how deep and bitter that rift runs.

But if Dalka trusts T’kamen, then I must trust him too. She and I are the Weyrwomen of Madellon. We have no one else, truly, but each other.

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Weyrwoman Second Lirelle

26.13.20 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

Levierth’s clutch had the decency to Hatch on a Thread-free day, and in spite of everything, T’kamen resolved to make a point of celebrating it.

The Unseen looked askance at the blackboard when they came in for their morning briefing. “Nothing for the afternoon?” B’roce asked.

“The clutch could be breaking shell by then,” T’kamen said. “There’s no point starting a drill when it’ll be interrupted halfway through.”

When his riders exchanged doubtful looks, T’kamen frowned. “What?”

“We wouldn’t usually stop just for a Hatching,” said Kayrin.

“Well, you’re going to today. And I want to see you all there. No excuses.”

He knew why they were reluctant. It wasn’t that the novelty had worn off – although between Donauth, Levierth, and the fertile greens, Madellon did have a Hatching of some sort most months. But T’kamen didn’t believe any dragonrider could be unaffected by the sight of dragonets choosing their partners, and that, he sensed, was the problem. Bronze and brown Impressions were still considered disappointing – if not outright ignominious – while the vast majority of new blue and green riders would be needed to replace the fallen as soon as they were old enough. It made Hatchings too unhappy a reminder of Pass Pern’s brutal attrition rate.

T’kamen could understand why no one wanted to get too emotionally attached to weyrlings who would probably be dead within five Turns. It sprang from the same root as R’lony’s insistence on dealing with Madellon’s forces in the abstract, as numbers and statistics, not flesh and blood. The pain and grief of losing a dragonpair could be made less if you were willing to divorce yourself from them as living beings. But just as the schism between colours had damaged the Weyr, so did the deliberate rejection of the common ties that bound every dragon and rider to every other. Madellon wasn’t just divided between Strategic and Tactical. Each fighting Wing was its own clique, its members devoted to each other at the expense of any outsiders. The whole Weyr was nothing but clans and coteries, a cluster of micro-societies separated by how they differed from each other, instead of a sprawling web of individuals connected by all they had in common.

It had to change. It would change. Because he would change it.

He chivvied every Seventh rider he saw into agreeing to come to the Hatching. He asked his blue and green riders to bring their friends. He passed it about the Weyrfolk that anyone not occupied in vital work should come and be welcome in the Hatching cavern. He had Dalka speak to the Headwoman about preparing a more lavish spread than usual for the evening meal, even if it couldn’t quite be called a feast so close to Turn’s End, and he got Tawgert to ask Madellon’s assortment of musicians to play. He even persuaded El’yan to run a book.

By late afternoon, when Epherineth reported that Levierth’s eggs were actually rocking, the Weyr was moderately abuzz.

The flow of people converging on the Hatching Ground wasn’t quite a flood, but it was more than a trickle. Epherineth followed two blues in via the high-level access, and there were more dragons behind him. As they descended towards the edge of the stands, T’kamen gauged the number of people taking seats, and was pleasantly surprised. More than half the tiers were full. Even at capacity, the Hatching Cavern couldn’t have accommodated all of Madellon’s folk, much less its dragons, so it wasn’t as if the whole Weyr was there, but the turnout was still gratifying.

It pleased him nearly as much to find that the Unseen had bagged the two prime tiers behind the grander seats where the Weyrleaders had always sat in his day. H’juke and Tr’seff stood up to get his attention as he made his slow way over, although it was hardly as if he could miss the two rows of riders whose shoulders were adorned with flapping, excited fire-lizards.

“I’m glad to see you all came,” he said, and then noticed the one missing member of the Wing. “Or nearly all.”

“Yaigath caught a green,” said Z’renniz. “B’nam said he’d be here once they were done. We’ve swapped shifts. I’m on for you now, and he’ll do the night watch.”

B’nam had turned even more surly since T’kamen’s argument with R’lony, but as long as he was still civil to his wingmates, it didn’t matter. “All right.” He turned to limp down to the seats where Dalka, Lirelle, and K’rod, whose brown had sired Levierth’s clutch, were waiting. Then he turned back to the Unseen. “Keep your lizards under control. I don’t know how excited they might get, and I don’t want them upsetting Levierth or the hatchlings.”

Even as he said it, fire-lizards began to subside to shoulders. Fetch whistled approvingly next to T’kamen’s ear at the demonstration of obedience, and T’kamen nodded to his riders, pleased.

“Quite the crowd,” Dalka remarked, as he took the empty seat next to hers.

“Yes, Levierth is rather pleased,” said Lirelle. “It’s been Turns since there were so many people here to see a Hatching.”

“T’kamen’s paying them all in hard marks,” said Dalka. “He plans to make it all back wagering. Don’t you, Marshal?”

“At the odds El’yan’s offering?” T’kamen asked. “There aren’t enough marks in Madellon.”

Across the Sands, the Weyrlingmasters were giving last-minute instructions to the candidates for Levierth’s clutch. T’kamen wondered what was going through their minds. Standing for an Eighth Pass clutch was a different prospect to the one he’d faced in the Interval. “Tell me about the kids,” he said. “What’s the proportion, Weyrbred to Holdbred?”

“About the usual,” said Dalka. “A third, two-thirds. All but the youngest of ours have been passed over three or four times at least already.”

“That’s no bar to Impression, Dalka,” Lirelle told her. “My youngest stood seven clutches before Gliarth chose him.”

“Sometimes it takes that long before a boy accepts the colour he’s meant for,” said Dalka, acerbity thinly cloaked in blandness.

Lirelle didn’t seem to notice the jab. “And did you Impress first time, T’kamen?”

“I did.”

She sighed. “It’s so hard to imagine any of us being that young.”

“It wasn’t as long ago for some of us as you, Lirelle,” said Dalka.

T’kamen just stopped himself from wincing. “It was a long time ago for me.”

“I’ll bet you made a lovely candidate,” said Lirelle. “All fresh-faced and eager.”

As I recall, you had a black eye, said Epherineth.

T’kamen’s smile was for that remark rather than Lirelle’s. “Have you settled on a name for this class?”

“I thought I’d see how they come out, first,” she replied. “I never named a child before I saw him to know what would suit. And I –”

She broke off, her gaze moving beyond T’kamen.

The shadow that fell over them both belonged to the Commander.

“Dalka. Lirelle.” S’leondes paused, waiting for T’kamen to look up at him. “Marshal.”

“Commander,” T’kamen replied, too surprised to hide his incredulity, as the Commander kissed first Lirelle’s hand and then Dalka’s.

“I didn’t think to see you,” said Lirelle, with frank disbelief.

S’leondes sat down beside T’kamen. Even seated, he towered over him, and the massive forearm he draped over the arm of the chair made T’kamen’s look puny. It was, he realised, the closest he’d ever been to the Commander. It would have been easy to feel intimidated by his sheer physical size, let alone the palpable force of his personality.

He is still only a blue rider, said Epherineth.

“I knew I’d find the new Marshal here,” said S’leondes, in response to Lirelle’s remark.

T’kamen refrained from observing that he hadn’t been making himself hard for the Commander to find. If S’leondes was finally prepared to talk to him, he wouldn’t be churlish about how long it had taken him to do it. He did wonder why he’d chosen now to approach him, in full view of half the Weyr. S’leondes and R’lony had always kept space between themselves even when duty required them to appear together in public. The simple fact that the Commander had seated himself beside him made T’kamen cautiously optimistic. “El’yan and G’reyan have been handling the transition very ably between them,” he said. It hadn’t occurred to him until very belatedly that the two riders were father and son. “But I’d hoped you and I would be able to speak directly about how the Seventh Flight can better serve Madellon.”

“With your predecessor not ten days out of the Weyr yet, T’kamen?” asked S’leondes. He sounded savagely amused. “His seat must still be warm.”

“I bear R’lony no ill will, S’leondes,” T’kamen said. His use of the Commander’s name was as deliberate as S’leondes’ use of his. “But time is a limited resource. It can’t be wasted in the cause of protecting his feelings.”

“A limited resource,” S’leondes repeated. “That’s an interesting observation, for a man who’s cheated time’s natural order.”

T’kamen wasn’t sure if S’leondes meant that as insult or compliment. Side by side as they were, he couldn’t study his expression to tell. “Not by design.”

“So it would seem,” said S’leondes. “I can’t fathom why a rider in your position would have chosen to land in this Turn.”

“That being so, I’m here now,” said T’kamen.

“You mean to make your mark.”

It was too pointed to be anything but a challenge. T’kamen sidestepped the obvious retort that he already had made his mark. “What rider of vision doesn’t?”

“And is that what you are?” S’leondes asked. “A rider of vision? What does Weyrmarshal T’kamen’s vision for Madellon look like?”

T’kamen was forestalled from answering by the sudden thunderous cracking of the first of Levierth’s eggs. The Hatching cavern didn’t go silent, as it would have in his day, but the chatter of conversation did drop off a bit as eyes turned to the Sands.

There were perhaps forty candidates for Levierth’s thirteen eggs. The oldest and the youngest were probably Weyrbred – those who had failed many times but not yet given up on Impression, and those only just old enough to stand. A rider had to be fifteen to fly in the fighting Wings, so putting anyone younger than thirteen to a clutch was thought wasteful of an entire Turn of a dragon’s fighting capability. Those under the age to stand weren’t even allowed in the Hatching cavern. It struck him as incongruous how concerned Madellon was with not squandering a dragon’s earliest flying Turns, when so few dragonpairs lasted into veterancy.

Two eggs fractured nearly at the same moment, depositing a pair of squealing green dragonets onto the sand. From the corner of his eye, T’kamen noticed S’leondes relax fractionally. He suspected he wouldn’t have reacted quite the same way had a bronze Hatched first. “Our visions don’t have to be in opposition, Commander,” he said, as the two newborn dragons made for the waiting candidates. “I only want what you want. To protect Madellon’s territory at the minimum cost to Madellon’s dragons.”

S’leondes didn’t reply for a moment. T’kamen wondered if he would dispute the convergence of their goals. “By returning to the old ways.”

“By restoring between,” said T’kamen. “Not by setting bronze and brown riders above blue and green.”

The first green chose her rider, almost pouncing on her in her eagerness. The second was still nosing along the line of candidates. A third egg rocked so hard it toppled over and shattered, leaving a dark blue dragonet looking startled in the wreckage of his shell. T’kamen felt Epherineth’s pleasure in the young dragons as if it were his own, and almost missed the Commander’s response.

“The one leads to the other,” said S’leondes, apparently unmoved by the first Impression. “History tells us that. The larger always subjugated the smaller, until this Pass.”

He spoke evenly, but T’kamen could sense the indignation that underpinned his words. He phrased his response with care. “Dragons have a hierarchy that they find most natural. We don’t have to let it dictate how we conduct ourselves.”

“Dictate,” said S’leondes. “Isn’t that what bronze riders did for untold centuries, when dragons could go between?”

“You could make a case –”

“And how often did a bronze rider become Weyrleader not through his own fitness for the role, but because his bronze was the luckiest dragon in the sky that day?”

Too often, T’kamen could have admitted, but he didn’t want to say it. “A bad Weyrleader wouldn’t stay in the role for long,” he said, not quite truthfully.

S’leondes must have detected the lie. “And yet whoever replaced him would still be a bronze rider, still selected almost arbitrarily from a limited pool of eligible men.”

T’kamen watched as a lad stepped boldly out in front of the blue. The dragonet hesitated, almost recoiling. The boy dropped to a knee in front of him, never taking his eyes off the blue’s. For a long moment dragonet and candidate locked gazes with each other, a stare curiously more like a battle of wills than a meeting of minds. Then, at last, the boy’s determined posture relaxed, and he whooped with exultation as the dragonet butted his chest. “It was always believed that bronzes chose the most likely leaders for their riders.”

S’leondes laughed. “And a dragonet moments old knows how the unformed boy of fourteen Turns he chooses for his rider will turn out? Dragons aren’t prescient, T’kamen. Leadership arises where there is need.”

“There we can be in agreement,” said T’kamen. He was frustrated by how S’leondes kept boxing him into defending tradition, regardless of how nearly a Turn in the Pass had altered his Interval sensibilities. He wished he could confront S’leondes’ wrong-headed insistence on prioritising green and blue rider pride over even their lives directly. But he held those retorts in check. He couldn’t afford to break the tenuous line of communication by saying everything he really wanted to say.

He turned his attention back to the sands for a moment. Three more greens and another blue were roaming the Sands in search of riders. Then, as T’kamen watched, a larger egg broke open to reveal a glistening brown dragonet.

It was fascinating to observe the candidates’ reactions. Some of them moved back straight away. Others took a moment to follow that example, perhaps influenced by the overt show of aversion. But several of the eldest candidates actually stepped forwards, plainly intent on Impressing regardless of the unfashionable colour of the dragonet in question.

“The best candidates self-select,” said S’leondes. “There’s no bar to what a green or blue rider can achieve now. Whatever stigma there was to being the rider of a small dragon in the past no longer prevents the best and bravest from Impressing the fighting colours.”

What he hadn’t said rang clearly in T’kamen’s ears: that candidates who would stoop to Impressing bronze or brown dragons, knowing they could never achieve fighting rank, were far from the best or bravest. He supposed, in a perverse way, it was true. A Weyrbred candidate of seventeen or eighteen Turns must have been passed over many times by blue and green hatchlings. Continual rejection by dragons of the two colours held in most esteem would cause anyone to doubt their own worthiness. “I’ve known brave riders of every colour,” he said. “And craven ones of every colour, too.”

“You won’t find any cravens in my Wings, T’kamen,” said S’leondes.

T’kamen stopped himself from replying no, because most of them die before they’re old enough to be scared. The brown dragonet that had been looking uncertainly from one end of the candidate group to the other staggered forwards to thrust his head into the hands of a boy who had suddenly stepped forwards out of the line. “And what about him?” T’kamen asked, nodding towards the new brown rider. “Is he not brave for Impressing the dragonet no one else wanted, even when he could have waited for a blue to come along?”

“That depends on your definition of brave,” said S’leondes.

T’kamen risked a glance sideways. The Commander’s long face was etched in grim lines. Perhaps he was thinking of the son who’d disgraced himself by Impressing a brown. “What about M’ric?” he asked. “No one could dispute that he was courageous.”

A muscle moved in S’leondes’ jaw. “He died a fighting rider’s death,” he said, “but he couldn’t have known when he Impressed that his dragon would be small enough to fight.” Then he turned to T’kamen for the first time, fixing his tawny eyes on him. “You have no patience for the significance we place on size.”

“Patience?” T’kamen asked. “That’s not the word I’d use. I understand the importance of small dragons, in the circumstances of this Pass. I appreciate how single-mindedly you pursued speed and agility as the pivotal traits of your breeding programme. I admire how you, personally, revolutionised Thread-fighting in the early Turns of the Pass when the old ways proved inadequate.”

He paused. S’leondes didn’t fill the silence. His nostrils were flaring slightly as he absorbed T’kamen’s words.

“But I also know that a man of your farsightedness can see when the landscape is changing,” T’kamen said. “The newest weyrling can see it. Riders of every age and colour. You know how many volunteered to Impress fire-lizards and join the Unseen. With another dozen fire-lizards from Ista –”

S’leondes didn’t let him finish. “Yes. Let’s talk about Ista.”

T’kamen wished he hadn’t mentioned the name. He didn’t want to talk about Ista. He was sick of talking about Ista. “What happened there was an avoidable tragedy.”

“Avoidable,” said S’leondes. He sounded grimly amused by the word. “I’m sure it would be a great comfort to the Istan leadership, who find themselves a full three percent worse off for fighting dragonpairs, to know that what happened there was avoidable.”

“It’s not intended as a comfort,” T’kamen said. “It’s the truth. Those riders had been told their fire-lizards weren’t old enough; they’d been told not to experiment on their own; they’d been told to wait for me –”

“To wait for you,” S’leondes repeated. “Weyrmarshal T’kamen of Madellon. You placed a toy in their hands, expounded on its virtues, and you expected those fearless young riders to wait.”

T’kamen thought it was rich for S’leondes to describe them as fearless, given the epithets the Commander usually reserved for northern riders. “Between isn’t a toy,” he said. “And I’ve never described it as one. It’s a blade. Any blade can cut both ways.”

“Seems to me it’s a blade with no hilt and no crossguard,” said S’leondes.

“That’s why I needed to be there,” T’kamen said. “Epherineth could have pulled them out –”

“But you weren’t there,” said S’leondes. “Now three dragonpairs are dead, and you’re no closer to proving that this wild wherry chase of yours has any point at all. Has any native Pass dragon yet actually gone between successfully with a fire-lizard’s help?”

It was a rhetorical question. They both knew it. “You would know if they had, S’leondes,” T’kamen said. He didn’t add, And not from me. Any such news would have reached the Commander’s ears long before T’kamen could have delivered it himself. “And I haven’t asked them to try yet. Their fire-lizards are the age Fetch was when he first piloted Epherineth between, but I’m not going to force them before they’re ready. It’s as much about confidence and belief as technique. They’ll rebuild their courage.”

“Courage they have,” said S’leondes. “At least the fighting riders among them. But then no one doubted the Istan riders’ courage, and look where that got them.”

“They had courage. They lacked caution. Between demands both. And there’s no shame in checking your safety line twice.”

“Some would say that demonstrates a lack of faith.”

“No dragon masters flight the first time he takes off. The same applies to going between.”

“A bad landing isn’t generally fatal,” said S’leondes. “You’re playing with far higher stakes.”

“I’ve never pretended otherwise,” said T’kamen.

S’leondes fell silent, though T’kamen knew he hadn’t convinced him. He sensed that the Commander wasn’t to be convinced. A man who spent the lives of his riders so brutally in Fall would hardly be concerned about the loss of a few more in the pursuit of between, except that he feared and resented the changes that restoration of the dragons’ ability to teleport would wreak on the Weyr – the Pern – that he had shaped in its absence.

All but the last two eggs had Hatched. Green and blue dragonets, and the one brown, were bolting down meat at the edge of the sands. The remaining candidates tightened their circle around the final two, and as they did, both eggs cracked nearly at the same moment. T’kamen almost laughed aloud. The larger shell gave way to the struggles of a blue dragonet, his hide soaked to near black with egg fluid. The smaller, unintuitively, revealed a bronze, though he must have been crammed tight within his egg: as he shook out his wings, he expanded dramatically, dwarfing his brother. A curious murmur went up from the watching crowd as the two hatchlings fought themselves free of egg casing and shell shards, and T’kamen was struck again by the incongruity of a Hatching in which the emergence of a bronze was cause for muttering, not celebration.

T’kamen made a final attempt to persuade the Commander. “Look at those two, S’leondes. As things stand – as things have had to be, these last two decades – that blue has a life expectancy of about five Turns, and that bronze can look forward to half a Pass of hauling tithe and firestone around the territory. Status and honour aside, is it right that two dragons should have such unfairly divergent futures? It doesn’t have to be that way. Give them fire-lizards and training, and you give them the most powerful weapon in any dragon’s arsenal. That blue will be able to dodge Thread. That bronze will be able to collect tithe in minutes. And they’ll both be able to get to wherever Thread is falling at a moment’s notice. There’ll be no need to supply and staff the Weyrstations. No need to impoverish our holders with the livestock tithe. The North can be reclaimed. Pern will prosper again.

“And the revolution won’t happen overnight. It could be six months before I even have this first group of riders ready, and a single fighting Wing of twelve won’t make much difference. Twelve dragons able to go between would be better employed in support roles than in the Wings, at least until there are more of them – and that will take time. Perhaps in two or three Turns, if we can establish a good supply of fire-lizards from the North, we could begin fielding Wings of dragons who can go between in Fall. But there’ll be dragonpairs who can’t go between still fighting in the formations you developed and perfected until the end of the Pass.”

On the sands, the blue swerved and turned his head up towards his chosen rider. The boy’s delighted cry rang out in harmony with the dragonet’s joyous bugle. The bronze dragonet, meanwhile, had nosed up the row of candidates, dismissing one after another. Fewer boys had stepped away than had from the brown, but the hatchling didn’t seem grateful for the reception. He kept searching and searching, peering intently into one face after another before moving on.

S’leondes still hadn’t replied. T’kamen forged on. “I don’t intend to tear down what you’ve built. I have no desire to supersede you, to usurp your position or challenge your authority.” He nearly said that he regarded S’leondes as an asset, not an obstacle, and bit his tongue, reflecting that in many ways he was still the entitled Interval bronze rider that the Commander accused him of being. “I’m not a threat to you.”

“I never considered you one,” said S’leondes. It could have been a compliment or an insult. “I believe you are a man of sincerely-held convictions. A man not easily deterred from following the path you believe is the right one. Which is more than I could ever say for your predecessor.”

T’kamen was loath to speak ill of R’lony, even in the cause of sealing an alliance with S’leondes. “R’lony served the Weyr for a long time, in the best way he knew how. I can only hope to serve as long and as faithfully.”

“Yes,” said S’leondes. “I have no doubt of that.”

The bronze lurched to a halt in front of a lad of fifteen or so. The boy took an instinctive step back, blinking, but only one. Then he stepped forwards again, though his knees seemed to give out from under him as he did. “Ipanath,” he said, and then, shouting, “Ipanath! His name’s Ipanath!”

There was an awkward pause, as if the assembled riders and Weyrfolk were unsure of how to respond to the elated cry – indeed, to an Impression that would ordinarily have been regarded as an unfortunate one, to the pairing of a dragonet whose hide made him a relic of old times, a redundancy that would have to be fed and maintained despite its limited usefulness to Pass Madellon.

Then, across the Sands, someone stood up in the tiers. “Good job, Greilen!”

The crowd didn’t leap to its feet as one to celebrate the new bronze rider. But behind where T’kamen and S’leondes sat, H’juke and O’sten were the first to rise and cheer, and the other members of the Unseen Wing just after them, and then, in twos and threes and little clumps, other voices rose in solidarity.

“The landscape is changing,” said S’leondes. He spoke so neutrally that T’kamen couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with the statement or merely weighing it up. For a remarkable moment, he thought S’leondes would add his congratulations to the boy who’d Impressed the bronze. Instead, the Commander turned to him, rising, and T’kamen had to grope hastily for his cane to stand. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, Marshal. I hadn’t been certain of you. Now I think I am.”

That sounded more positive than T’kamen had expected. “Perhaps we could have a conversation in a more formal setting before next Fall. I’d like to make some changes to the way the Seventh deploys, but I’d value your opinion. And I have some thoughts on the training schedule for our weyrlings.”

“Our weyrlings,” said S’leondes. “Yes. Of course.”

T’kamen had to crane his neck to look at the Commander as they clasped wrists – S’leondes’ massive hand enveloping most of his forearm – but he was too aware of how good it looked to the Weyr for Commander and Marshal to be seen in concord to mind. “Commander S’leondes.”

“Marshal T’kamen,” said S’leondes, with what could have been the beginnings of a smile.

It was late when Dalka drifted into T’kamen’s office, languidly and unchallenged – B’nam had quit his post outside early, claiming other errands. She seated herself without asking on the edge of T’kamen’s desk, and accepted with equanimity the request he put into the brief flick of his eyes upwards from his work.

Energised by his promising conversation with S’leondes, T’kamen had been reviewing all his deployment plans for the Seventh, searching for any flaws that the Commander might find in them. It wasn’t that he sought his approval. He’d been on the end of too much of S’leondes’ scorn to subscribe to the hero-worship that the fighting riders lavished upon the Commander. But he believed now, more than ever, that the most direct path to his goals for Madellon led through S’leondes, not around him. It could take decades for him to implement his plans with the Commander actively opposing them. An alliance seemed a far more pragmatic approach.

He wondered if Dalka had come to dissuade him. She had been so fervent in her desire for him to overthrow both R’lony and S’leondes. Perhaps that had only been the complex feelings she had for both riders speaking. The thought of assuming the Commander’s role as well as the Marshal’s filled T’kamen with equal parts relish and terror. While, historically, a Weyrleader would have been expected to manage both strategic and tactical decisions, the rigours of a Pass without between made the idea far more daunting than it had ever been.

T’kamen was only just beginning to grasp the complex equations needed to calculate the resources required to fight any given Fall. It wasn’t a simple matter of eyeballing the predicted footprint and estimating eight Wings or ten or twelve. The fielding of every dragonpair – fighting or otherwise – had to be justified and weighed against the conditions. Simply deploying dragons to the location of Fall was a major operation when every single dragonpair must fly there straight and be sufficiently fed and rested to perform. If a second Fall was due over the territory soon after the first, the Weyr’s forces must be even more carefully managed to avoid overflying. T’kamen hadn’t yet had to negotiate a two-Weyr Fall, but a cross-border strike was more complicated again, usually requiring discussions between Madellon and either Starfall or the Peninsula to agree the handover line. And the deployment strategy even for a straightforward single Fall striking exclusively within Madellon’s territory could be wildly different from Fall to Fall depending on its predicted duration; variations in weather, season, or time of day that could affect the width of the corridor and density of the Thread; vagaries of the territory whose profile could create thermals that might disrupt the way Thread fell.

T’kamen had seen enough Falls now to know that R’lony hadn’t always got it right. Sometimes there weren’t sufficient fighting dragonpairs to cover a very dispersed Fall, resulting in more casualties and more burrows; sometimes there were more dragons than required, which was a waste of the resources needed to field them. The Seventh bunker dragons were often overstocked with firestone, which was better than being undersupplied, but led to the chronic back and wing complaints that many of the largest dragons suffered from. He suspected that many of the logistical issues stemmed from a lack of communication between S’leondes and R’lony. R’lony’s records, characterised as they were by the use of identification codes rather than names, showed no detailed understanding of the individual dragonpairs that comprised each fighting Wing. That was probably as much a consequence of S’leondes’ contempt for R’lony as R’lony’s hatred of S’leondes, and it was top of T’kamen’s list of things to change. Recombining the two leadership roles of Pass Pern still seemed to him to be the optimal solution, but given his own total lack of fighting experience, it wasn’t an ambition he thought would do Madellon – or him– any favours.

He was so absorbed in his work that, when Dalka finally tired of waiting for him to finish and addressed him, he’d nearly forgotten she was there. “I didn’t think he’d make such a show of harmony in the Hatching Ground today. You must have made an impression.”

“So to speak,” said T’kamen, meeting her coolly amused gaze. “Perhaps R’lony’s departure has put him in a generous mood.” Then he winced, internally, for mentioning the name.

Dalka sensed it even if she didn’t see it. “R’lony’s made his bed,” she said. “A Turn or so stewing out at some hole of a Minehold will give him some perspective. Then he’ll come crawling back.” She raised an eyebrow. “Have I shocked you again?”

“He was your weyrmate for a long time,” said T’kamen.

“And in all that long time I never managed to jolt him out of his rut,” she said. “It took you to do that. It’ll do him no harm to spend time away from the Weyr. And who knows; perhaps I’ll even miss him.”

T’kamen shook his head; half in disbelief, half in admiration. “What will you do in the meantime?”

“What, or whom?” Dalka asked, and then laughed. “That was unkind of me.”

“Whom is none of my business,” said T’kamen.

She regarded him thoughtfully. “You mean that, don’t you?”

T’kamen leaned back in his chair. He noticed he’d been stroking Fetch absently where the little brown was sleeping in a curl around the inkwell. “Who flies Donauth next has no bearing on this office,” he said. “I don’t need to demand your fidelity to protect my position, and I have no right to it in any case.”

“As I have no right to yours,” Dalka said dryly. “Though you haven’t made up with your little green rider.”

T’kamen sighed. “She deserves more than I can give her.”

“That sounds like an excuse.”

There was nothing T’kamen could say to that that wouldn’t make him sound unkind or weak, so he didn’t say anything.

“Who did you leave behind?” Dalka asked. “It wasn’t your queen rider. So who was she?”

That was a question T’kamen didn’t want to answer, but when he didn’t, Dalka prompted him slyly, “Or was it a he?”

He had to smile at that. “She,” he admitted.

“Just checking,” said Dalka. “Who was she? A green rider? Another queen rider?”

It was curious how the ache for Sarenya was twined now with the pang T’kamen felt when he thought about M’ric. “She didn’t ride a dragon.”

“But Weyrfolk? Holder? Crafter, then.”

Dalka was good at reading T’kamen’s non-responses. “Beastcraft.”

“She was a cow-girl?”

T’kamen detected both scorn and incredulity in Dalka’s tone now that she had a scrap of the truth. He thought about saying that Sarenya was more than that, that she’d been a journeyman with prospects for Mastery; that she’d been a candidate and should have been a queen rider. He said instead, “I’d already lost her.”

“She died?”

“I drove her away.”

“I see.” Dalka’s face was unreadable. “But you did love her.”

Again, T’kamen couldn’t answer.

And again, he didn’t need to. Dalka looked disappointed. “And here I was thinking your heart had been broken by some great romantic tragedy, when the truth is that you’ve just always been wedded to dragon and duty to the exclusion of the women in your life.”

“The one gets in the way of the other,” said T’kamen.

“Which way around?”

“Does it matter?”

Dalka acknowledged the truth of that with a little shrug. “Wedded or not, you should go to bed. Cold and lonely though it may be.”

“Neither, in fact,” T’kamen said. “My wingmen see to that.”

Dalka widened her eyes in mock outrage. “I knew you were taking advantage of those young men and women.”

“My terrible secret is out.”

She snorted delicately. “You wouldn’t be the first rider to add bed-warming duties to his tailman’s schedule.”

“Not really my style,” T’kamen said.

“You should try it,” Dalka told him. “You might like it.”

“They have enough reasons to be wary of me at the moment without adding another one.”

Dalka contemplated him with an inscrutable expression. “Have more faith in yourself, T’kamen. I do.”

“Faith?” T’kamen asked. “You mean belief in something you have no good reason to believe in?”

She laughed. “Donauth thinks she’s carrying a gold egg.”

“It’s only been three sevendays,” said T’kamen. “She can’t possibly know that yet.”

“How do you know? Are you a queen dragon?”

“Not the last time I checked.”

“Then you should have faith that she knows what she’s talking about. Just like her rider does.” Dalka eased herself off the edge of the desk. “Good night, T’kamen.”

He did work on a little longer after Dalka had glided off to her own rest, or her current lover – whichever awaited her in her weyr – but he did so feeling strangely unburdened by her teasing.

When he did dismount from Epherineth outside their weyr, it was well into middle watch. There was no other dragon on their ledge, which was no surprise with B’nam on the night shift. Most of the Unseen took their pseudo-tailing duties seriously enough that they slept in his weyr if they had overnight duty, but B’nam was the last person who’d have offered him that kind of respect.

T’kamen’s weyr showed all the small signs of the brown rider’s regard for him – Epherineth’s couch unswept, crumbs still on the table where food had been grudgingly cleared up, clean clothes still piled on his bed instead of neatly put away. “Faranth, I’ve got used to being waited on,” he said ruefully, looking around his less-than-immaculate quarters.

Fetch hopped off his shoulder and went straight for the dish beside his basket on the hearth. His outraged whistle when he found it empty made T’kamen grin. “You can take it up with Fury tomorrow, Fetch.”

The sheepish look that Fetch threw him was telling. He had chivvied and scolded the younger lizards ever since they’d hatched, but in the last few days T’kamen had noticed him deferring to the bronzes, B’nam’s Fury among them. He bent awkwardly to run his hand over Fetch’s head. “They’re growing up, aren’t they?”

There was at least klahbark in the crock that had been almost empty that morning, though when he made himself a mug, it tasted faintly sour. Trust B’nam to bring him klah from a barrel that damp had got into. Deliberately, T’kamen assumed. B’nam knew how to provide a good service; any rider who’d ever been tailman to a senior officer did. “Surly little shit,” he said, draining his cup without enjoyment and putting the mug down. He made a mental note to ask whomever was on duty in the morning to replace his klahbark supply.

He shouldered through the curtain into his sleeping chamber, stifling a yawn. He shed his clothes and dropped them in a pile, then let himself fall onto his bed. He turned the glow-basket to shut out the light, then stared up at the ceiling, listening to the soft sounds of Epherineth settling himself on his couch and Fetch’s sleepy mumbling.

He thought he’d lie awake thinking, as he so often did these days: thinking about Fall, thinking about the Unseen, thinking about between. He had so much on his mind these days.

But he was wrong.

“Look at you,” said C’los. “You’ll never make a Weyrleader, looking like that.”

T’kamen looked down at himself. The rakishly-patterned shirt nearly hurt his eyes: red and purple, full-sleeved, open at the neck and cinched in at the waist with a bright blue sash. “Faranth,” he said, appalled, and looked at Epherineth.

His dragon looked back at him. He was wearing the same clothes as T’kamen, and he wasn’t a dragon. He was T’kamen’s double in every way except for the blue glow of his eyes, and the terrible scar that split the right-hand side of his face nearly in half. Don’t look at me. This was always your fault.

“You have to look the part,” C’los insisted. “Like this.” He gestured to himself with a flourish. He was wearing the white robe of a candidate, and Indioth, not yet quite as tall as his waist, was nuzzling at his knees. “It’s what’s on the outside that counts, Kamen. Always has been.”

“But that’s not right,” he objected, still staring at his disfigured Epherineth-self.

“Right, wrong; it doesn’t matter,” said C’los. “The only thing that matters is how you present yourself. It doesn’t have to be true. Oh, stop that, you,” he told his dragon crossly. “Go and bother someone else.”

T’kamen tugged at the ridiculous shirt. “I remember wearing this.”

“No one else does,” said C’los. “No one that matters. You can always be someone else, you know. You already are.”

“I’ll always be me,” T’kamen said.

“Underneath it all,” C’los agreed. “But no one’s going to look beyond the outside of you, looking like that.”

Indioth butted at T’kamen’s knee. He looked down, but C’los’ green dragonet had turned into a blue. “Is that what I’m meant to do?”

“Probably,” said C’los. “Or not. You should pay more attention to him.”

“He’s not my dragon,” T’kamen said. He looked across to where Epherineth had been standing, but his dragon-self had gone. “Stop it,” he told the blue dragonet. “What do you want?”

“You just take it for granted that everyone thinks like you do,” said C’los. “Just because you shed your skin when he found you. You’re a bigger sap than Mine.”

The blue put his head down and rammed his poll into T’kamen’s knee. He staggered backwards and sat down hard. “Stop that!” he shouted, gripping his leg with one hand and trying to fend off the determined dragonet with the other. “Los, make it get off me!”

“Not mine to command, Kamen,” said C’los.

“I already have a dragon!” T’kamen told the blue. “I can’t Impress you too.”

The dragonet opened its jaws wide and hissed at him. Then it snaked its head forwards, caught T’kamen’s hair in its teeth, and ripped…

…dragging him into wakefulness, or some facsimile of it that came with a thick, deep grogginess and a bad taste in his mouth, like a hangover without the pain. The pain was reserved for where a fire-lizard was trying to pull a clump of his hair out by the roots.

“Get off, Fetch,” he said, pushing away his assailant. “Off me! Faranth!” Then, as he grabbed at the fire-lizard, he realised it wasn’t Fetch. It was too small, too slender. He fended it off with one hand, rubbing his stinging scalp with the other, trying to orient himself, trying to work out why someone else’s fire-lizard was attacking him.

Then he realised that there was a commotion outside: voices raised, dragon and human. He groped for his dragon. Epherineth?

Epherineth was still asleep. T’kamen pushed himself partly upright. It was dark in his weyr. “What’s going on?” he asked aloud, hoarsely.

The sound of running footsteps was almost a welcome relief. Less so was the frantic shout of his name. “T’kamen!” It was H’juke’s voice. “T’kamen, where in the Void are you? T’kamen?”

Then H’juke burst through the curtain into T’kamen’s sleeping room. The blue fire-lizard – Fathom – that had been pulling out T’kamen’s hair squealed and swooped across the room to land on his shoulder.

“What is it?” T’kamen asked. He realised suddenly that there were tears tracking down H’juke’s face. “What’s happened?”

“Didn’t you hear?” H’juke asked. “Faranth, T’kamen, didn’t you hear her screaming for you?”

Epherineth was coming slowly, sluggishly awake.

“We all did,” said H’juke. He was weeping openly. “She was lost. She needed you, and you weren’t there. You said you’d always be there to catch us.”

“Who?” T’kamen demanded. “What’s going on.”

“Fraza and Spalinoth,” said H’juke. “They went between. And died.”

Chapter eighty: Sarenya

Many women leave their homes for the Weyr. Very few ever return. Is that because, once accustomed to the freedoms and liberties of the Dragonweyr, most women would not want to give them up – or because, once tainted by the morals of dragonriders, most Holds would not have them?

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Masterharper Gaffry

100.05.28 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

“Go on, Sleek,” said Sarenya, “go to C’mine. Go to Darshanth’s rider. You know who he is.”

Sleek had tilted his head quizzically when Sarenya had pushed the message slip into the holder on his leg. Now, though, he offered her an image of Darshanth, with the shading of emotion that indicated his approval of a fellow blue, albeit one a thousand times his size.

“That’s him,” said Sarenya. “Go to C’mine and Darshanth and let them have my message.”

Sleek chirped with what might have been comprehension. He launched himself from the table-top where Sarenya had set him, circled her head twice, and then disappeared between.

Sarenya looked at the space where he’d been for a moment, wondering if he’d complete his task this time.

Then she leaned down to pick up the last basket of her belongings. She carried it out to the storage room and set it down on top of two others like it, checked again to make sure she’d written her name clearly on top of all three baskets, and then closed and locked the door.

“You’re all set?”

She turned. Jarrisam was standing in the doorway to the common room. “I have a few errands to run around the Weyr,” she said. “But my room’s clear now. Hannser can start moving his stuff in if he likes.” Then she remembered the set of keys still in her hand. She held them out. “You’d better have these back.”

Jarrisam took them. “You’re travelling very light,” he said, looking at the set of saddlebags Sarenya had left leaning against the wall.

“It’s not as if I’ll be roughing it. It’s main routes all the way from Kellad to Peninsula South. I’ll find a trader caravan to join once I’m in Peninsula territory, and there are plenty of holds and runner stations I can stop at.”

“You know how bad it can get through Gartner if it snows badly –”

“I’ll be through there long before it snows,” Sarenya said, “and back at the Hall by midwinter. And if it gets really bad, I have Sleek to carry a message.”

Jarrisam looked as sceptical at that idea as anyone who knew the blue fire-lizard’s ash-brained nature might. “I wish you’d reconsider. There have to be half a dozen riders who’d give you a lift, and you could have Bovey sent on with a runner drive in the spring –”

“We’ve had this conversation, Sam.”

“– what if he goes lame on the road –”

Sarenya waited for him to stop.

“– or if you run into Holdless bandits, or…” He trailed off. “Will you be all right?”

“I’ll be fine, Sam,” Sarenya promised him. “Really.” Then, to distract him onto a different preoccupation, she asked, “When’s the new Master supposed to be arriving?”

“No later than the end of the sevenday. And we still don’t have word on who it’s to be. Another Hall pariah, I imagine.”

“Who else would they send to a Weyr?” Sarenya asked wryly.

Jarrisam looked at her. “You’ll make your Mastery, Saren.” He said it without any trace of condescension. “They’ll have you sweat blood for it, but you’ll make it anyway.”

“Thank you, Sam,” she replied, sincerely, though she didn’t agree with him. “And don’t let the new guy push you around. Madellon’s Beastcraft couldn’t run without you.” Something else occurred to her. “Oh. I left a recommendation for Ingany on M… on the Master’s desk.”

“You talked to her?” Jarrisam asked.

“Last night,” said Sarenya. “She took some convincing that she could make it in the Craft, but if the new Master isn’t too much of a sexist wher, I think she’ll do well. You might need to keep reminding her that girls can be Beastcrafters, though.”

“I’ll do that.” Jarrisam looked fiercely torn for a moment. Then one side evidently won out. “Saren…why didn’t you take the post at Kirken?”

He’s always been sceptical of female Beastcrafters. Arrense’s remark about Master Benallen rang again in Sarenya’s mind. “It just didn’t seem right. I think Master Benallen only offered me the job as a favour to Arrense.” And he’d send me back to the Hall in disgrace the minute he realised I’m pregnant.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” said Jarrisam. “What if the Hall doesn’t have anything you like?”

“I’m sure there’ll be something,” Sarenya said lightly. She picked up the fourth basket, the one full of record hides. “I should get these errands run, if I hope to be on my way by lunchtime.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to have one of the apprentices take that back over to the infirmary for you?” Jarrisam asked.

“I have to see Master Vhion anyway. I can manage.”

Still, her arms were hurting by the time she’d carried the heavy basket of records across the Bowl to the dragon infirmary. She hadn’t realised just how many hides she’d borrowed from the Dragon Healer until she’d had to pack them all up. Now that she was leaving, the hours she’d spent reading studies and reports on dragon pathologies seemed like wasted time.

There were no dragons in the infirmary. Each bay had been swept clean, sanded, and its trough neatly overturned. Sarenya put the records down on Vhion’s desk and turned back to look over the echoingly empty cavern, stretching her aching arms. She walked over to the bay where Sejanth had spent most of the last Turn of his life. No trace of him remained there, and in his absence, the medicinal tangs of redwort and numbweed had finally triumphed over the sick-dragon stink that had pervaded the cavern for so long.

She heard footfalls and turned. Master Vhion was coming out of the stock room, carrying a bucket in each hand. “I was just about to walk over to the cothold to find you,” he said, setting down his burdens. “I was worried you’d slip away without saying goodbye.”

Sarenya wished she could have done exactly that. She’d refused Jarrisam’s suggestion of a leaving party to avoid too many uncomfortable farewells. But there were those she couldn’t bring herself to dodge, and Vhion was one of them. “I filed all your apprentice notes back in order,” she said, patting the basket of records she’d carried from her quarters.

“You needn’t have gone to that trouble,” said Vhion. “Though my next apprentice will thank you.”

“You have someone lined up, then?” Sarenya asked.

“I’d rather hoped you might recommend a likely sort from amongst your apprentices, if there’s one going spare.”

Sarenya thought about it. Jarrisam had managed to delay the cull of Madellon’s Beastcraft apprentices in the light of Arrense’s loss and Tebis’ disgrace, but the reprieve wouldn’t last forever. “Dorvan might be interested,” she said. “He knows as much as he’s going to learn about the beasts at the Weyr, but he doesn’t have Hannser’s ambition to travel.”

“Dorvan,” Vhion repeated. Then he said, “You have my letter of reference?”

“I do, and thank you for writing it, Master.”

“Would that I hadn’t needed to,” he said, with a sigh. “Would that Arrense could have written it himself. But I fancy I know what he’d have said about you. I hope I’ve done you both justice. And you must write, once you’re settled.”

“I will,” she promised, knowing that she wouldn’t, and knowing that Vhion knew it, too.

But although that would have been as good a parting as any from the Master who had shown her such kindness, she still hesitated to leave the infirmary, feeling that her business there was yet unfinished. It took her a moment to realise why. “Do you believe in ghosts, Master?”

“Ghosts?” Vhion asked. “Do you mean the vengeful spirits the young ones like to tell tales about, passing through walls and groaning balefully?”

“No,” said Sarenya. “The sort that usually stay quiet, just out of view. The sort you catch out of the corner of your eye sometimes. The sort you think aren’t really there until you look up and see them looking back at you.”

Vhion followed the line of her gaze. “Ah. I’m afraid that kind of ghost is quite real.” He regarded her thoughtfully. “Is that why you’re leaving?”

“It’s part of it.”

He folded his hands across his stomach. “Ghosts don’t haunt places, Saren. They haunt people.”

“I’m not so sure.” She looked at the place where Sejanth was not, and at the place beside him where D’feng wasn’t, either. She looked towards the entrance of the infirmary where the bloodstain that had been scrubbed into nonexistence was still fresh and red with the memory of C’los’ murder, and his shade, and Katel’s, stood silently just out of sight. She thought about the ghost of Arrense, standing in every shadowy corner of the cothold. “This place is full of them.”

“You will take very great care of yourself, won’t you?” Vhion asked.

“I will, Master.”

Shimpath was not on her ledge when Sarenya went to find the Weyrwoman. She was up on the Rim, capturing the rays of late autumn sunlight that could be found there. But Valonna was in her office, and when Sarenya ventured inside, she rose immediately from her work. “Sarenya. I’m so glad you came.”

“I wouldn’t have left without coming to see you, Weyrwoman,” Sarenya replied.

Valonna stepped around her desk. “Call me Valonna.”

“I –” Sarenya began. “Valonna.”

Valonna smiled. “I still can’t persuade you to take a dragon-ride back to the Hall?”

“Thank you, but no. I’ve already made my travel plans, and the Hall doesn’t expect me for several sevendays. Hopefully they’ll have found a new assignment for me by then.”

“You’ll find a letter of credit waiting for you once you get there. Master Arrense’s outstanding stipend.” Valonna took a pouch from a drawer in her desk and extended it to her. “And some small marks, for your journey expenses.”

Sarenya swallowed. “You’ve been too generous to me, W- Valonna. My uncle’s marks…the runnerbeast…”

“I wish I could do more,” Valonna said, “for all that your service to the Weyr has cost you.” Then she gave a little start, as if remembering something. “Oh. I found this. I thought you would want to have it.” She lifted a tattered shoulder-knot from atop one of the piles of slates on her desk and held it out to Sarenya.

Sarenya took the braid carefully in both hands, tracing the familiar untidy two-strand twist with her eyes, touching the gaps where a third cord had been removed from the weave. “Most people would just have made themselves a new knot.”

“He wasn’t most people.”

Sarenya couldn’t think of a response to that.

“Is there anything else of his that you’d like?” Valonna asked. “I packed up all his things before H’ned moved into his weyr, but I haven’t taken them to the lower caverns yet. If you wanted to look through…”

“No,” Sarenya said. She gripped the shoulder knot tightly. “This is…this is enough.”

Valonna regarded her with an expression Sarenya couldn’t read for a long moment. Then she said, “He left behind something else. Will you walk down to the caverns with me?”

Sarenya hesitated. She really wanted to complete her farewells and get out of Madellon, but something in her still resisted the notion of being discourteous to the Weyrwoman. “Of course, Valonna.”

As they left Valonna’s weyr, the muffled bang of another small explosion echoed across the Bowl from the south-eastern quadrant. Dust puffed from the mouth of the cavern the Weyr Mason was excavating, and habit made Sarenya glance across to the beast paddocks. The animals in the killing pens, short-term residents of the Weyr at best, were fleeing in panic to the farthest reaches of their paddock; the milk cows, phlegmatic by nature and desensitised to trauma by daily exposure to dragonkind, hadn’t even raised their heads.

Valonna noticed Sarenya’s preoccupation. “I’d feared the explosions would disrupt the Weyr terribly, but no one seems to turn a hair any longer.”

“I suppose the extraordinary quickly becomes commonplace, with time and familiarity.”

“I suppose it does,” said Valonna. Then, with determined cheer, she said, “But Master Gerlaven is progressing much faster than he’d expected. The natural hollows under that part of the Weyr are more extensive than he thought. We’ll have a large new cavern to service all the weyrs on that side of the Bowl. Madellon will look quite different when next you’re here.”

Sarenya didn’t expect she’d ever return to Madellon, but she said, “I don’t doubt it.”

They continued down into the main complex of the lower caverns, the maze of glow-lit passages and rooms that Madellon’s original builders had carved out from the stone of the old volcano. Valonna nodded and smiled to the people they encountered: Weyrfolk, almost all of them, with hardly a dragonrider to be seen. They passed the back entrance to the kitchens – a hive of activity even mid-morning, as the cooks and their many helpers worked to produce the noon meal for over a thousand people. They went deeper, past the craft quarters, the workshops, the mending rooms, the laundries. Valonna led with the sureness of a woman who knew her domain well – who had come to know it, Sarenya realised, only in recent months, and still gloried quietly in her newfound knowledge. Valonna had changed. Insist though Shimpath’s rider might that Sarenya call her by her given name, Valonna had never been more emphatically the Weyrwoman.

And it struck Sarenya suddenly how ill-suited she would have been to this enclosed, windowless, stuffy warren; how she would have hated the never-ending work of managing Madellon’s accounts and resources, its supplies and logistics; how she would have chafed at the strictures of Weyrwomanhood as much as she would have relished its freedoms. Shimpath chose wisely, she thought, and even without saying the words aloud, acknowledging the truth of them was a strange catharsis.

Then they emerged into a wider passageway, with a carpet runner on the floor, and Valonna led the way through into the colourfully painted and brightly lit crèche.

Sarenya hesitated in the doorway for a breath. Did Valonna know about her pregnancy? Had Isnan or C’mine told her? Had she herself inadvertently let slip? Was this Valonna’s way of persuading her to reconsider leaving?

No. Isnan and C’mine weren’t that indiscreet, she wasn’t that careless, and Valonna certainly wouldn’t be that crass. Still, stepping into the heart of the Weyr’s complex, efficient child-care operation gave her an odd shiver of what might have been.

As they waited for the crèche mother to quiet a fractious baby, Valonna told Sarenya about Madellon’s child-rearing facilities. There were different areas, of course, each suiting the needs of children of different ages, from those still with milk-mothers all the way to the oldest children on the verge of assuming adult responsibilities. There were teaching rooms where Madellon’s young learned their letters and their ballads, sums and geography and history. There were play areas with toys and games and chalk-boards to draw on. All but the youngest were assigned chores – pulling weeds, changing glows, running messages – and as each child grew, his foster-mother would be charged with identifying and nurturing his interests and aptitudes. Some would become candidates and perhaps dragonriders, more would settle into roles as part of Madellon’s non-rider workforce, and a few would leave the Weyr entirely, and Valonna spoke with quiet conviction of how she was determined that no child of Madellon should ever want for choices in his life. Sarenya admired her aspiration, but she still wondered why the Weyrwoman had brought her here.

Then the crèche mother turned from the child she had been tending. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Weyrwoman.”

“Not at all, Nerra,” said Valonna. “I hope the little boy isn’t too distressed.”

“Oh, he’s teething,” said Nerra, “the poor hatchling. His little cheeks are bright red.” She shook her head. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“I wonder if we might see Yara’s fosterling,” said Valonna.

“Etyschan?” asked Nerra.

“No, the older lad. Tymodan.”

Nerra looked surprised by the request. “He’s down for a nap, but you could steal in to see him if you wanted. Was there a problem…?”

“No, no,” said Valonna. “No problem. It’s only for his father’s sake…”

Nerra nodded. “I understand. Well, come with me.”

The room to which she led them was dim but not dark, the glow-baskets turned down to cast a gentle radiance. Sleeping mats were spaced evenly on either side, each one host to a dozing child. Nerra made brief eye contact with the woman watching over the sleeping youngsters and then, soft-footed, led Valonna and Sarenya to one of the mats.

The boy curled asleep around the tangle of his blanket was maybe three Turns old. He wore the soft sand-coloured tunic and trousers that was the uniform of the Weyr’s children, and hugged a battered toy to his chest, a stuffed animal sewn from scraps of brightly-coloured fabric. Under different circumstances Sarenya wouldn’t have looked twice at him. But Valonna had brought her here, and as Sarenya looked at the little boy asleep on the mat, and noticed the darkness of his hair, and the stubbornly spiky way it grew, the Weyrwoman’s intent became suddenly and perfectly clear.

Sarenya was grateful both for the dim light and the need to speak quietly; even so, she heard her own voice roughened with emotion. “Who’s his mother?”

“A green rider,” said Valonna. “He was conceived during a flight. I don’t think T’kamen even knew about him.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sarenya said. She felt moisture gathering at the corners of her eyes as she looked at the sleeping child. His features were soft and relaxed, but she would have wagered everything that he had his father’s dark, determined eyes. “All that matters is that he’s here.”

She didn’t trust herself to speak again until after they’d left the crèche behind, and were almost out of the lower caverns. “Will he be told who his father was, when he’s older?”

“If he asks,” said Valonna. “Every Weyrborn child is entitled to find out who his parents were, if he doesn’t already know.”

They stepped outside, into the Bowl. It had begun to rain, and Sarenya stopped beneath the overhang. “You’ll speak well of T’kamen to him, won’t you?”

“I will,” said Valonna. She reached out to clasp Sarenya’s wrist. “He’ll know he’s the son of a Madellon Weyrleader.”

Sarenya look down at the Weyrwoman’s hand – still fair to her own tan, but ink-stained and strong. On impulse, she gripped Valonna’s other wrist. “Thank you.”

“Take care on your journey, Sarenya,” Valonna said. “And good luck in your new post.”

Sleek came sailing down out of the drizzling sky, vibrant against the drear, as Sarenya crossed the Bowl back towards the Beastcraft cothold. She held up her arm for him, and he landed with his customary accuracy. His leg, Sarenya noticed, still bore the message tube, with no evidence that he’d tried to scratch it off. “Did you go to Darshanth?” she asked, investigating the tube. The message she’d placed there was gone, although there was nothing in its place. Then Sarenya realised why. Darshanth was behind the cothold, his head and wings visible above the roof of the snug building. “You did go,” she said, delighted. “What a clever boy!”

C’mine was leaning against his dragon’s shoulder when Sarenya came around the corner of the cot. He stood straighter when he saw her. “Sleek brought your message. I knew you’d get there with him.”

“You can always rely on a blue to get there eventually,” Sarenya said. “You didn’t have to come down. I’d have come up to you.”

“Darshanth wanted to say goodbye,” said C’mine.

And for all that Sarenya was sure of her path, and firm in her belief that Arrense had been right about the effect dragons had on her, that simple statement nearly undid all her resolve. She turned to C’mine’s blue, putting her hand on his forearm, intensely conscious that it might be the last time she ever touched a dragon. “Darshanth. You’ll look after Mine, won’t you?”

Always and always, Darshanth replied. Then he moved his head very delicately, so the side of his nose pressed against her cheek. And you must take care of yourself, Sarenya.

Sarenya closed her eyes, just for a moment, taking in the feel of his soft, soft muzzle against her face. “That’s what everyone’s been saying to me this morning,” she heard herself say. “That I’m to take care of myself.” She opened her eyes to look at C’mine. “That’s what I’m doing. Taking care of myself.”

“I know, Saren.” C’mine’s gaze was full of compassion. “I still wish you’d let us take you to the Beastcrafthall. Especially since…”

“I’m pregnant, Mine, not sick,” Sarenya said, when he didn’t complete the sentence. “I’ve talked to Isnan and he says I’ll know if my body wants me to stop.”

“If it does,” said C’mine, “you send Sleek to me, and we’ll come and get you.”

“I will,” Sarenya said. “I promise.”

“Only,” said C’mine, “you’ll have to make sure he knows how to get to High Reaches.”

“High Reaches?” Sarenya asked. “High Reaches in the north?”

“You’re not the only one who needs to move on from Madellon.”

“Too many ghosts,” Sarenya said, and then caught herself. “Mine, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –”

“It’s all right, Saren,” he told her. “And you’re right. Too many ghosts.” He made a face that was half smile, half grimace. “I owe it to Darshanth to make a fresh start for us somewhere else, and the Weyrlingmaster at High Reaches needs good Search dragons.”

“Valonna will miss you,” Sarenya said. “Nearly as much as I will.”

C’mine smiled, a more genuine expression this time. “I’m only ever a dragon-ride away.”

Sarenya caught herself stroking Darshanth’s forepaw. She made herself stop, though she left her hand on his massive wrist. “Did you know that Kamen had a son?”

“You mean Schanna’s little boy?”

“Then T’kamen did know?”

“Probably not. He and Schanna didn’t get on at all, for all that Epherineth made a habit of flying Etymonth at least once a Turn.”

“Even though they didn’t like each other?”

“Their dragons disagreed,” C’mine said. “And sometimes it’s a rider’s job to put his dragon’s wishes before his own.”

“I’m glad they did. I’m glad Kamen left something of himself behind. I just wish…”

C’mine didn’t jump in to fill the space her hanging sentence left.

She glanced downwards, once. “I wish I could tell my child his or her father was a Weyrleader of Pern, not an exiled criminal.”

C’mine looked suddenly torn. “Don’t…don’t be too hard on M’ric.”

Sarenya took a slow deep breath against the sudden stab of outrage. “He sent T’kamen between,” she said. “He tried to make me lose my pregnancy. He lied about everything he’d done, everything he was.” Darshanth rumbled gently, and Sarenya realised that she’d clenched the hand she’d laid on him into a fist. “I can’t forgive him, C’mine. I don’t know how you can.”

“There were…” C’mine stopped, then started again. “He did what he did for a reason. If I was allowed to tell you…”

“I don’t want to know,” said Sarenya. “I don’t care why he did it. It doesn’t make it all right.”

“I understand,” C’mine said softly.

Sarenya stared at nothing for a moment. Then, hating herself for saying it, and in doing so betraying that she did care, she said, “I’m glad he wasn’t Separated. Trebruth didn’t deserve that. T’kamen wouldn’t have wanted a dragon hurt on his account.”

“He loved you so much,” said C’mine.

She looked at him sharply.

“Kamen,” C’mine said. “There was never anyone else he loved like you.”

“He had a funny way of showing it sometimes,” Sarenya said, and then wondered if C’mine would think her callous for saying it.

He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. So it had always been with C’mine, that most compassionate and empathetic of souls. They hugged for long minutes, a curiously three-cornered embrace, with Darshanth’s solid warmth pressing against both their shoulders, and if C’mine still felt thinner and less hale than Sarenya would have liked, then she had to hope – had to believe – that his resolution to put Madellon behind him would be the first good decision he’d made after a long succession of bad ones.

In that, she thought, they were very alike.

“Goodbye, Mine,” she said.

“Not goodbye,” he said. “Never goodbye. Only until the next time.”

The rain was coming down harder, bouncing off Darshanth’s hide, by the time he lifted deftly off. Sarenya went back inside the cothold for a final time.

It was empty. All the apprentices were out on their duties. She did notice, through the wide-open door of her former quarters, a heap of unsorted clothes and boots piled on top of her bed. She smiled to herself at the evidence of Hannser’s keenness. She took her foul-weather cape down from the rack in the boot-room.

She slid the pouch of marks Valonna had given her, and T’kamen’s old wingrider shoulder-knot, into the left-hand saddlebag, pushing them down under the packet of travel food she’d already stowed there along with her map and Vhion’s reference and her good hoof-knife and the other useful oddments she might need on the road. The right-hand bag contained a change of clothes, bandages for Bovey’s legs, numbweed. She hefted the saddle packs in one hand to check their balance, and reflected that Jarrisam was right: she was travelling light. It was strangely liberating.

She’d fed Bovey first thing, skipped him out and put him back in his stall rugged so he couldn’t get himself dirty again. He was chewing hay when she came into the stable-yard. She stopped and looked harder at him. Someone had braided his mane in neat show-plaits. It made her smile. “Ingany?” she guessed aloud, but no one responded. Winner’s bridle was missing from the hook in front of his box, so Ingany was probably out on her rounds.

Habit made her walk the stables one last time. She touched each nose that a runner presented to her, and patted Timor’s uncaring grey rump. Every stall was clean, every runnerbeast hayed and watered. Everything was as it should be in this small enclave of Madellon Weyr that was the domain of beasts and Beastcrafters rather than dragons and dragonriders.

Everything would be fine.

She tacked up Bovey, making sure the saddlebags lay comfortably against his sides. She rolled his rug as tightly as it would go and strapped it behind the saddle.

She realised she’d left her canteen hanging on the back door of the cothold. When she went to retrieve it, she stood looking at the duty blackboard – or, rather, at the gaps on it, where Arrense’s name and Tebis’ had been. She deliberated over wiping her own name from its space, and decided against it. Sam would do it later.

There was still no one in the yard when she returned. Sarenya tied the canteen to the pommel of Bovey’s saddle and then led him out into the drizzle. She swung up onto his back, adjusting her oilskin cape. “Come on, Sleek,” she called to her fire-lizard, who was sheltering in the hay-store. “Time to go.”

She could have made one final circuit of the paddocks, to wave goodbye to the apprentices. She could have looked up at the Bowl as she rode towards the exit tunnel, committing its dragons and riders to memory. She did neither.

The steward at the tunnel gate nodded her past without really looking at her. Bovey jogged and pulled, spooky as ever in the passageway. Sarenya couldn’t blame him for being bothered by the confined space, but she held him to a walk until they emerged out from the crushing, oppressive weight of the caldera of Madellon Weyr.

Then she let him go.

She never looked back.

Chapter eighty-one: T’kamen

Have I made a mistake?

The notion that I could have made such a gross error of judgement in supporting T’kamen is something I can’t even share with Donauth. I sit here, writing this, thinking this, while she sleeps with Epherineth’s clutch growing inside her. She would not allow me to question our path. Her opinions have always been absolute: right or wrong, black or white. They cannot help me in this greyest of times.

I hadn’t planned to set T’kamen against S’leondes yet. It’s far too soon. T’kamen needed time to establish himself as Marshal, to prove the worth and veracity of his work with the Unseen, to grow in the Weyr’s esteem. Then, and only then, could he hope to challenge S’leondes for Madellon’s loyalty. Now, his hand has been forced. He must face the Commander before the eyes of the whole Weyr, in a contest he knows nothing about, with the deck stacked against him. And if he loses…

If he loses, we’ve all lost.

– Excerpt from the personal diaries of Weyrwoman Dalka

26.13.25-26.13.27 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

There was no Fall due over Madellon’s protectorate for three days. The sky was clear and blue. Epherineth sat on his haunches on the ledge, and the light pouring in over the Rim of Madellon Weyr limned his iridescent hide with molten gold. T’kamen paused in the archway to look at him, struck as if by a fist to the chest with awe for the dragon who had chosen him for his rider so long ago, with love for him, with pride in him.

And then Epherineth turned his head to look at him, and the illusion of perfection was ruined by the reality of the right side of his face: his upper lip split in a permanent snarl, his lower eyelid drooping downwards, his once flawless hide ridged by the puckering scars where flesh and skin had been stitched back together.

T’kamen spoke aloud, softly, as if that could hide his words from his dragon. “I couldn’t even protect you.”

It wasn’t your fault, T’kamen.

He was no more specific than that; not that it mattered. T’kamen had long ago rejected the notion of absolving himself of blame whether Epherineth meant his own maiming, or Fraza’s death.

Dalka had said the same thing. “It wasn’t your fault,” she’d told him the previous day. “You couldn’t possibly have been watching all of them, all of the time. The stupid girl had been told and told again, and still she did it. In the middle of the night, when she knew you’d be asleep. It wasn’t your fault.”

“She was my responsibility,” T’kamen said. “And I got her wrong. I underestimated her.” He paused, his head swimming with the number of times he’d underestimated someone. “I misjudged her need to excel. I should have known, after Ista…”

“Stop claiming ownership of every bad thing that happens on Pern,” said Dalka. “I’ve never known a man so intent on hoarding blame for everything to himself. You glory in making a martyr of yourself. You wallow in it. Why don’t you just stake yourself out for Threadfall and be done with it?”

“I don’t know that many people would stop me if I did.”

Dalka pinned him with a contemptuous glare. “Now you’re being absurd. Anyone would think you were the first Wingleader ever to lose a rider. Unless, that is, you intend to disband the Unseen yourself, call off your between programme, and tell the whole Weyr that you were wrong to dream of a better future for Pern. Because if so, you’d be better off doing it now, and spare us all the trouble of the Arbitration!”

T’kamen hadn’t said aloud what was in his mind, because Dalka would have thrown that back at him too, and he’d felt bruised enough. But now, as he moved alongside Epherineth to look out at the hatefully beautiful day, he did say it. “Maybe a dream was all it ever was, Epherineth. Maybe I was wrong to think that I could find a way to give between back to the dragons of this time. Maybe I’ve been as blind and stubborn as S’leondes says.”

Stubborn, yes. But not blind. We have always looked before we leapt.

Epherineth made jokes so rarely that T’kamen wasn’t certain he’d meant it as one. Then Epherineth bumped his muzzle against his shoulder. You cannot let yourself doubt the truth of what you do, T’kamen.

“Even if I’m wrong?”

If you don’t believe it yourself, no one else will.

“I don’t know if I do believe it any more, Epherineth. M’ric. Those Istan riders. Now Fraza. Maybe S’leondes is right. Maybe dragons of the Pass really can’t go between any more.”

Trebruth’s rider went between to the Interval.

“But what if he only made it back because he had to, because he already had?”

He was still a dragon of the Pass.

“But I can’t prove he made it back,” said T’kamen. “And even if I could…”

He left wordless the strong resistance he still felt to the idea of revealing M’ric’s time travel to anyone, much less to Madellon at large. Epherineth shared it anyway. Before you can think of proof, he said, you must first have faith.

T’kamen thought about what he’d said to Dalka about faith the night before Fraza’s fatal accident. Belief in something you have no good reason to believe in. “Faith isn’t a virtue, Epherineth. It’s a weakness.”

Perhaps, said Epherineth. But so is doubt.

Many things had changed in the Turns between T’kamen’s native time and the Eighth Pass. The laws of the Weyr were no exception, but the structures that underpinned them had endured. A rider who transgressed within the hierarchy of the Wings could expect to face a Discipline. Crimes against individuals or the Weyr itself were tried and punished in a Justice. And when disagreements occurred that could not be settled, the principles of Mediations and Arbitrations had long been established to resolve them.

Any Weyr resident could petition the Weyrwoman to open a Mediation to settle a private dispute, and they often did. Disagreements over property, custody, and conduct that fell outside the remit of either a Discipline or a Justice were heard by a panel of three neutral Weyr residents, selected by the presiding queen rider. Both sides must abide by a unanimous verdict, but either party could appeal to the Weyrwoman’s higher authority if one of the Mediators disagreed with his fellows. Madellon’s Archives groaned with the records of dozens of Mediations, few of them concerning anything more serious than former weyrmates quarrelling acrimoniously over the division of their mutual possessions.

The Arbitrations that convened when ranking riders disagreed on matters that affected the Weyr at large were far less common. In the twenty-six Turns of the Eighth Pass so far, there had been only three Arbitrations at Madellon Weyr, invoked when the Weyrleaders couldn’t agree on an issue of critical importance. All three had been disputes between S’leondes and R’lony. All three had gone to S’leondes.

T’kamen had never witnessed an Arbitration. In his day, they could only have been invoked if a Weyrleader and Weyrwoman had been deadlocked on some issue, each unable to overrule the other. There’d been rumours in his early Turns as a dragonrider that L’mis, the Weyrleader of the day, might bring one against Fianine, but it had never happened. Everyone agreed that the rumours alone had annoyed Fianine enough that she’d specifically prevented L’mis from retaining the Weyrleadership the next time Cherganth rose.

The three-way sharing of power between Commander, Marshal, and Weyrwoman at Pass Madellon should have made the Arbitration obsolete. Any issue on which three parties had a say should always be resolvable by simple majority, if not unanimous accord. The fact that R’lony and S’leondes had put their discord before the Weyr to settle three times made the precariousness of Dalka’s position clear at last in T’kamen’s mind. A Weyrwoman’s power was a shadow of what it had once been. When small dragons were prized over large, and even a handful of fertile greens could lay as many eggs between them as a queen produced in a Turn, a queen’s breeding potential had less value. The instinctive reverence that the dragonriders of T’kamen’s native era had felt for the rider of any queen dragon no longer existed. No one revered funny old Lirelle at all, treating her with an exaggerated courtesy that verged on condescension. And the respect Dalka commanded among the riders of her Weyr was accorded her less because she was the chosen of a queen and more because the Commander willed it so. Without S’leondes’ favour, however covertly bestowed, Dalka would wield even less influence. It was little wonder that Dalka had cultivated S’leondes’ passions so assiduously, even as she shared R’lony’s weyr; less that she had devoted so much energy to courting T’kamen, once she’d sensed his star on the rise; and least of all that she would not abandon the publicly neutral position that had served her so well for so long even when her private loyalties had become increasingly partisan. For all her talk of faith and vision, Dalka only backed winners when they were already certainties.

And T’kamen’s victory in the Arbitration was a long way from certain.

On some level he’d always known it was coming. S’leondes had been opposed to between from the start. While T’kamen and Epherineth had been dragging dragonpairs between to save them from certain death, and hauling cargo across the territory in moments rather than hours, and generally making themselves indispensable in ways that threatened no harm to anyone else, S’leondes had been powerless to criticise T’kamen’s work with the Unseen. Now that the deaths of five dragonpairs had cooled the widespread enthusiasm for between training, S’leondes had made his opposition to it public. To the strictest letter of Weyr law, he should first have established that he and T’kamen were irreconcilably at odds on the matter. In reality, S’leondes hadn’t even asked T’kamen to cease the project and disperse the members of the Unseen back to their Wings. It was probably a good thing he hadn’t. T’kamen had loathed himself enough in the immediate aftermath of Fraza’s death that he might have given in. It would have spared him the coming ordeal of the Arbitration, but he wouldn’t have liked himself any more for running away from it.

The format was nearly the same as a Mediation. S’leondes would argue his side before the Weyr: namely, that T’kamen’s between project should be terminated. T’kamen would make the case for it to continue. There would be a panel of thirteen arbiters: all dragonriders, chosen by lot. By definition, the outcome of an Arbitration affected every rider in the Weyr, and selecting arbiters without an interest in the outcome would be impossible. To diminish the possibility of an arbiter panel biased too heavily towards one party or the other, each side was entitled to dismiss up to three of its members, who would then be replaced, again by random draw. The arbiters wouldn’t be chosen until the hearing began, so neither party would be able to persuade, bribe, or intimidate the riders in whose hands the Arbitration rested – at least not directly. The verdict of the majority of the arbiters was binding, and there was no recourse to any higher authority. In an Arbitration, the will of the Weyr, expressed through those thirteen riders, was the highest authority of all.

It was an elegant solution to the stalemate that ensued when a Weyr’s leaders couldn’t agree. It aired the issue in contention before any member of the Weyr who cared to attend, and it gave ownership of the judgement to the people it would affect. It also put T’kamen at every possible disadvantage. He’d never been involved in an Arbitration. He’d never even seen one. S’leondes, meanwhile, had argued three and won three. He was an experienced and gifted public speaker. And any random selection of thirteen dragonriders would skew heavily towards greens and blues. T’kamen had no doubts about how most of Madellon’s Tactical riders would lean.

There was nothing he could do about the composition of the panel, or about S’leondes’ experience, or his own lack of the same. Instead, T’kamen used the time he had to study the Commander’s previous Arbitration form. It was straightforward enough to find the records in the Archives. The official transcripts had been taken down word-for-word by the Weyr Singer, while Dalka – in the non-interventionary role demanded of her during an Arbitration – had documented each judgement in crisp, dispassionate style.

The first of the three Arbitrations, Wingsecond S’leondes vs Weyrleader R’lony, concerned the division of Madellon’s riders into Tactical and Strategic branches in the second Turn of the Pass. T’kamen experienced a curious sense of disconcertion at the titles. It was unbelievable that S’leondes had only been a Wingsecond when he’d overthrown the traditional hierarchy, and equally unbelievable that R’lony had still been Weyrleader at the time. The record didn’t say, but T’kamen suspected that R’lony had been made to give up the use of that title shortly after the arbiters returned their majority of ten to three in S’leondes’ favour.

The next record was dated slightly over a Turn after the first. Flightleader R’lony (Strat.) vs Flightleader S’leondes (Tac.) documented R’lony’s attempted opposition to S’leondes’ intention to cease flying Fall over Peranvo Hold. The transcript went on and on, with both parties delving into the minutiae of the contract that defined the responsibilities of Weyr to Hold and Hold to Weyr. T’kamen skimmed past most of the wrangling over Charter law, but he felt the same powerful sense of wrongness about Madellon’s abandonment of Peranvo as he had when El’yan had taken him there. Perhaps some of the arbiters had felt the same way, because the verdict was less emphatic than before. S’leondes still carried it, though: eight to five.

A gap of some sixteen Turns separated the second record from the third. The hide was cleaner, the ink fresher, and Dalka’s account markedly more terse. Weyrmarshal R’lony vs Weyrcommander S’leondes had been heard in the wake of the mass defections of Reloka, Chrelith, and forty-seven brown and bronze riders to the north. The penalty for defection had been increased to immediate, permanent Exile to Westisle for any defector who returned to Madellon’s territory, but R’lony’s dispute with S’leondes had centred on Reloka. S’leondes had proposed that Chrelith and her rider would be exempt from Exile, but that Reloka would be confined indefinitely to her weyr and Chrelith’s interactions strictly monitored to prevent her from exerting her influence on any other Madellon dragon. R’lony had disagreed. If Chrelith’s rider were ever to be persuaded to return to Madellon, he’d argued, Reloka must not only be given amnesty, but pardoned of her original crime of defection. To threaten her with any curtailment of liberty would certainly convince her to stay in the north.

The transcript of R’lony’s remarks in the course of that Arbitration was littered with increasingly frequent swearing as the hearing proceeded. T’kamen wasn’t surprised. The fact that Reloka was R’lony’s daughter, and Chrelith Geninth’s, made it an intensely personal issue, and S’leondes took full advantage of that vulnerability. He chose his words to provoke R’lony into progressively more impassioned outbursts until, by the end of the hearing, R’lony was nearly incapable of coherent speech. His arguments, so cogent at the beginning of the hearing, fell apart as he lost his composure, and S’leondes emerged with a majority of eleven to two.

It all made for discouraging reading. Clearly, valid points alone wouldn’t be enough to convince the arbiters to decide in T’kamen’s favour, and while he thought – hoped – he was a more compelling speaker than dour R’lony, he was under no illusions that he had S’leondes’ charisma or presence. He would need more than a rational argument if he were to have any chance of swaying the arbiters to his side.

He wished the most vain of wishes: for C’los’ political shrewdness; for Ch’fil’s plain-spoken counsel; for M’ric not to be gone; for Fraza not to be dead.

He would have laughed at the futility of it all, had he the heart.

H’juke brought him breakfast on the morning of the Arbitration. T’kamen regarded the sausage and eggs and toast laid out on his table without enthusiasm, but he knew he’d need it to get him through the day. Still, he delayed starting in on the grease and stodge until he’d finished his second cup of klah.

“I’ll lay out your blacks,” H’juke told him. “Did you want me to send Wista up?”

“Wista?”

“To give your hair a trim. You’re looking shaggy. She’s already been to S’leondes.”

T’kamen had put a hand self-consciously to his hair. He lowered it. He wondered if he should be heartened that the Commander was making an effort. It suggested that T’kamen’s cause wasn’t as hopeless as it seemed. “No,” he said. “If it goes against me based on how much I’ve combed my hair, so be it.”

He meant it as a joke, but H’juke looked at him anxiously. He’d always been very literal. “Do you think it will? Go against you?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t still be here.”

H’juke went on with the air of one too preoccupied to listen well. “Because O’sten heard a rumour that if S’leondes wins, he’ll have our fire-lizards taken away.”

“Taken away?” T’kamen asked.

“Put down,” H’juke said. “Destroyed.” He bit the words off, as though he nearly couldn’t bear them. “So we won’t be able to keep trying.”

T’kamen glanced at the padded shoulder of H’juke’s jacket, conspicuously absent its fire-lizard passenger. “You’ve sent Fathom away?”

“We all have,” H’juke said. “I’ll have Bularth scare him away if I have to. For good. Better that, than…” He set his jaw. “I won’t let them hurt him.”

“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” said T’kamen.

His tone must have been less than reassuring. H’juke darted a sideways look at him. “What will you do? If it goes against you?”

“I’m not thinking about that,” said T’kamen. It was a blatant lie. He’d thought plenty about what he’d do if the Arbitration went S’leondes’ way. He just hadn’t made any decisions yet.

“Will you defect?” H’juke asked. “Go to Ista?”

“Shut your shaffing mouth.” It hissed out of him, angrier than he’d expected. H’juke looked taken aback. “Whatever else happens, I’m still Madellon’s Marshal. I won’t abandon my Weyr.”

“I didn’t mean –” H’juke protested, and then went on, chagrined, “I’m sorry, T’kamen. It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“Couldn’t you do more good figuring out between at Ista, than wasting your time running Strategic here where S’leondes won’t even let you try?”

“Running Strategic isn’t a waste of my time.”

“But it is,” said H’juke. “Anyone could run it. Only you know how to get our dragons going between.”

T’kamen was torn for a moment between gratitude and shame. “Such faith you have in me,” he said, and didn’t mean it as a compliment.

H’juke didn’t notice. “We could go now,” he said. He spoke quickly and quietly. “You and me. There’s time before the Arbitration starts.”

“Go,” said T’kamen. He wasn’t sure what H’juke meant. “Go where?”

“Out,” said H’juke, gesturing vaguely. “Of the Weyr. We want to do it, T’kamen. Bularth and Fathom and me. We want to go between.”

T’kamen looked at him, horrified.

“I don’t mean on our own,” H’juke continued. His eyes were shining with enthusiasm. “We’re not reckless, like…” He caught himself before he said Fraza. “That’s why you’d be there. To pull us out if we got it wrong. But we want to do it, T’kamen. To prove to the Commander – to prove to everyone – that you’re right.”

T’kamen took a deep breath. “No, H’juke,” he said. Then, as the young bronze rider began to protest, he said, “No. That’s an order. Absolutely not.”

H’juke’s face fell. “But we can do it. I know we can. And if you have evidence…”

“No,” T’kamen said. “I’m not going to use you to score a point off S’leondes. This Arbitration isn’t about evidence. It’s about ideology. Mine, and the Commander’s. If I can’t convince seven out of thirteen dragonriders to believe in my vision, my path, over his, then no amount of evidence is going to change their minds. I have to show them I’m more worthy of their trust than he is.”

It was a moment of such clarity that he was briefly staggered by it. Epherineth approved. Now you understand. I proved my superiority in flight. Now you must do the same on the ground.

“But how are you going to do that?” H’juke asked unhappily. “He’s the Commander.”

“I don’t know,” said T’kamen. “But I have to try.”

The sweepriders reported a warm air mass moving in from the west, and G’less, whose Elsterth had an excellent weather-sense, predicted thunderstorms by evening. But when Epherineth took T’kamen the short distance across the Bowl to where every bench, chair, and stool in Madellon had been set out in front of the speakers’ platform, the afternoon could not have been hotter, or drier, or more expectantly, airlessly still.

That wasn’t to say that the riders and Weyrfolk who had claimed every last one of those hundreds of seats were still. They were anything but. The buzz of anticipation wouldn’t have been out of place at an Interval Hatching. It was the dragons filling the weyr ledges at that end of the Bowl, three and four of them crowding some of the best vantages, that made T’kamen truly aware of the gravity of the occasion. Dragons usually paid no attention to human constructs like law. The fact that so many were taking an interest in T’kamen’s dispute with S’leondes spoke to the deep significance between had to dragons as well as their riders. Everyone cared about this Arbitration.

The arbiters were already there, seated in two rows at the side of the dais. Dalka had done the ballot to select them from the Weyr’s rider population that morning, with T’kamen and S’leondes both in attendance. The first thirteen names out of the box wouldn’t have been too bad, but the Commander exercised his right to exclude three names he didn’t want – two of them brown riders. T’kamen used his own objections to weed out the worst candidates, but by the time Dalka had drawn fresh names to replace the discards, he wasn’t much better off. The final panel included the assistant Weyrlingmaster S’hayn and S’leondes’ own Wingsecond G’reyan. There were two Strategic riders – ancient P’rally, and V’larr, a Seventh blue – and Kayrin, one of the Unseen, had been drawn as the final replacement. The others were all Tactical riders with varying amounts of loyalty to S’leondes. It was about as balanced a selection as he could have expected, but the sight of the thirteen riders who would decide his fate – none of them looking certainties to support him – he felt unease twist his gut.

Have faith, Epherineth reminded him.

T’kamen left his hand on his dragon’s shoulder for just a moment longer than necessary as he dismounted. Epherineth had landed close up to the dais, so he didn’t have far to walk. Two lecterns stood upon the platform. A chair and a small table had been placed behind each one; a mug and pitcher of water sat on each table. Between them, at the back of the platform, Dalka sat at a larger table, with Weyr Singer Tawgert beside her. Donauth herself sat behind the dais, and Epherineth took up his place on her left.

The stage was all set; the only player remaining to make his entrance was the Commander. As T’kamen put his notes on the lectern and poured himself water from the jug, he wondered if S’leondes was harming his own case by turning up late to the Arbitration he had invoked. No, he decided. S’leondes was simply making a show of his power. He had every rider in the Weyr, Dalka and T’kamen included, waiting breathlessly for him.

I could command Karzith to come down, Epherineth suggested.

You’d probably better not.

Karzith did come a moment later, without Epherineth’s persuasion. It struck T’kamen, as S’leondes’ blue made his descent towards the dais, that he still reacted to dragons like the Interval rider he was. Karzith seemed comically tiny beside Donauth and Epherineth, like a weyrling beside adults. T’kamen had to remind himself that most of the watching riders wouldn’t see their Commander’s fighting blue the same way. To them, Epherineth was grotesquely oversized.

S’leondes dismounted from his dragon and stepped up to his lectern with the easy, loose-limbed stride that T’kamen still envied. He had no notes. He placed his hands on the wooden stand and looked intently out at the assembled dragonriders. Then he turned slightly to face the arbiters. His tawny eyes sought and found faces, and he nodded slightly to a chosen few. As he did, and without even commanding it, the buzz of conversation faded into an expectant silence punctuated only by an occasional cough from a rider, and the odd grate of talon on stone from a dragon.

Dalka rose from her seat. Her face was composed into sharp lines. “Riders of Madellon.” Her voice carried well on the still, close air. “Commander S’leondes has invoked an Arbitration against Marshal T’kamen. The arbiters before you will hear the case for both sides and decide for the Weyr.

“Commander S’leondes, what motion do you bring before this Arbitration?”

“That the Marshal’s attempts to teach Madellon’s riders to go between are unsafe and misguided,” S’leondes replied, “and that for the good of the Weyr the training programme should be terminated.”

Unsafe and misguided made T’kamen want to clench his teeth, but he resisted the urge.

“Marshal T’kamen,” said Dalka. Her tone betrayed no hint of personal opinion. “Do you contest the Commander’s assertion?”

“I do contest it, Weyrwoman,” T’kamen replied.

“Very well,” Dalka said. She maintained her careful neutrality as she spoke. “Commander; as you have brought the Arbitration against the Marshal, you may open your case.”

“Thank you, Dalka,” S’leondes said, with the least inclination of his head.

He stepped out from behind his lectern, moving to the centre of the dais. T’kamen had expected that. The records noted that S’leondes had done the same in each of his prior Arbitrations, while R’lony had remained stubbornly in place. But as the moments passed, and S’leondes didn’t begin, T’kamen began to wonder if something was amiss with his opponent. S’leondes stood with his head down, as if steeling himself. The faintest murmur of query started amongst the watching riders.

Then S’leondes raised his head. He looked at the panel. “Forgive me,” he said. “I’ve found this matter very difficult. Very painful. Each time I harness my thoughts to grapple with it, the loss hurts me again. It hurts me that I must stand here in front of you all and rip the scab from a wound not yet begun to heal; that I stand here compelling you to Arbitrate when I know that the loss is as raw and personal for at least some of you as it is for me.” He took a breath. “Green rider Fraza was my wingman. She was my tailman before that, and of all the many riders who have served in that capacity she was among the bravest, the most honest, and the most talented. Her death is a blow to Wing and Weyr, and a tragedy to me personally. I’m a father of sons, and only sons. Fraza was the nearest I’ve ever come to having a daughter. And now I have no daughter.

“We fighting riders are no strangers to bereavement. There’s not a green or blue rider here who hasn’t lost friends and wingmates, lovers and children, to Thread. It’s what binds us together and what sets us apart. We know the dangers we face when we fight Thread, and we fight it anyway, knowing that if we die, we die as dragonriders should: in battle; protecting Pern; making a difference. Knowing that we do not die in vain.” S’leondes paused again. His face contorted. “Fraza died in vain.”

I knew he was going to say that, T’kamen told Epherineth grimly. He wanted to refute the point, but the rules of the Arbitration forbade him. He had to stick it out until S’leondes completed his opening argument.

“She died in vain,” S’leondes continued, “striving to achieve something that she could not reasonably expect to have achieved – something that no reasonable leader would have asked of her. She’d been led to believe that Impressing a fire-lizard would grant her dragon the ability to go between. And trusting to that fallacy – trusting to the rider who had assured her of its veracity – she tried, and failed, and lost her life.

“It could have been prevented.” He said it simply and starkly. “I could have prevented it. But, like most of you, I wanted to believe that between was within our reach. I wanted to believe that our dragons could reclaim their old ability to go from place to place in a heartbeat. I wanted to believe, even when all the evidence warned against it. The loss of M’ric, after all, could have been an anomaly; he was never the rider that Fraza was. But when we heard about the Istan riders who had put their faith in their fire-lizards to guide them safely between, and found that faith fatally misplaced, I should have known. I should have acted. I should have put a stop to the folly before someone got hurt. But I didn’t, and Fraza paid the price for my desire to believe that T’kamen was right.

“Dragons can no longer go between and come out the other side. This is fact, not belief. The notion that fire-lizards are the key to safe navigation is unfounded, unproven, and unethical. Between is closed to the dragons of the Pass, and whatever loophole Epherineth exploits to flout that prohibition, it is exclusive to him. Epherineth was Hatched in a different era. He cannot be held up as a standard for our dragons to meet – not in any sense. It’s absurd to think that since he can go between, our dragons can do the same, when the opposite has been so tragically proven.”

S’leondes held up a hand. “Let me pre-empt something I’m certain the Marshal will argue.” He didn’t turn towards T’kamen as he spoke. “He’ll argue that it has not been proved that dragons cannot go between. He’ll argue that only a positive outcome can be proven. Theoretically, he’s correct. But how many dragonpairs have to die between before he’ll admit that he was wrong? How many lives will he sacrifice to his pathological need to be right? How many M’rics and Frazas have to die before he’s willing to concede that his solution was only ever a wild fantasy?

“I don’t use that word – fantasy – to insult the Marshal. I use it because the dream of salvation through between is something we’ve all –” S’leondes gestured to encompass the entire audience, “– all been guilty of indulging. Because it would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it, if the Marshal were right, and the secret to going between were as simple as every rider Impressing a fire-lizard.” He stopped. “But as I’ve been obliged to examine my motivations in allowing T’kamen to pursue this course of action, I’ve been forced to face some other truths. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that fire-lizards are the key. No one here can have forgotten why we stamped out fire-lizards in the south in the first place. How many among us would truly be happy to sully the bonds we share with our dragons with these scavengers? How many of us could stomach, without prejudice, living in close quarters with a creature who would just as soon gorge upon a fallen dragon’s flesh? How many of us could endure the presence of hundreds of squabbling, spying, thieving fire-lizards at Madellon?”

T’kamen tried not to bristle visibly. The only fire-lizard I’ve ever known to steal anything was Agusta. Fetch certainly never has.

I wouldn’t let him, said Epherineth.

“Consider as well,” said S’leondes, “that fire-lizards are no longer a resource native to Madellon’s territory. We were thorough when we eradicated them from our shores. It leaves us reliant on the north for lizard eggs. The north, with all the many injuries the dragonriders of that continent have done to us over the Turns – and to add insult to them, the mere twelve eggs that the Marshal obtained from Ista came at the steepest of prices. As if Ceduth’s stolen eggs weren’t enough, Ista demanded Donauth’s entire next clutch in payment for those dozen fire-lizards. How many dragon eggs will Ista’s leaders demand for the next consignment of fire-lizards?

“And one promise even the Marshal has never made is that all dragons would be able to go between with the help of fire-lizards. We are, all of us, familiar with the cut-off point. So what of the dragons who cannot go between at all because they are already nine or ten Turns old? What place would they have in this new world of younger dragons going between? What reward would it be to veterans who have survived Fall for a decade or more, only to become part of an underclass? Every Wingleader in this Weyr, and more than two-thirds of the Wingseconds, rides a dragon already too old to ever learn to go between. T’kamen’s vision would make all that experience, all that talent, obsolete. How is that fair; how is that just?

“It isn’t fair. It isn’t just. None of what T’kamen has been trying, and failing, to achieve values fairness or justice. The logic is flawed; the benefits questionable; the price too high. M’ric and Fraza spent their lives in payment for a false promise.” S’leondes crossed the dais to stand directly before the panel. “Arbiters. I’m asking you to intervene before any more young riders of Madellon are compelled to throw their futures into the furnace of this bronze rider’s vanity.”

Silence accompanied S’leondes as he retraced his steps across the platform, but as he sat down in the chair behind his lectern, an excited buzz of conversation leapt instantly into being amongst the assembled riders.

Dalka allowed it for a count of ten before she rose. “This Arbitration will have silence,” she said, and though she didn’t raise her voice, Donauth must have echoed it. T’kamen felt the ripple of a queen’s force through Epherineth. The hum of conversation died down again. “Marshal T’kamen,” said Dalka, “you may open your case.”

T’kamen put his hand to his cane and rose from his chair. He glanced at the notes resting on his lectern, but he knew he couldn’t deliver his argument from there. Instead, he limped slowly over to stand in front of the arbiters, scanning their faces as he did. G’reyan and S’hayn looked just about as hostile as could be, as did the two green riders sitting either side of them. P’rally was frowning, V’larr looked grave, and Kayrin troubled. “I’m not –”

“Shame on you!” someone in the audience bawled.

Donauth growled, and the murmur that had followed the scream quietened immediately. T’kamen tried not to let it rattle him. He went on as if nothing had happened. “I’m not going to try to outdo the Commander’s tribute to Fraza,” he said. “Nor to persuade any of you that my grief for her equals or exceeds his. Those of you who know me, and who knew Fraza, know my feelings.” He met Kayrin’s gaze as he spoke, and was gratified to see her straighten and nod slightly.

“What I will say of Fraza is this: she was a volunteer. So were the eleven other riders who have Impressed fire-lizards and trained with me these last sevendays. They were all chosen from a pool of well over a hundred riders who believed so strongly in the benefits of being able to go between that they were willing to overcome their distaste for fire-lizards, and to master the fear that’s drilled into every dragonpair on Pern in this Pass. Fraza knew it was dangerous. She knew what had happened to M’ric – her clutchmate and her wingmate. And still she believed that the benefits of restoring between to dragonkind made the pursuit of it worth the risk.

“The Commander has disputed if it’s even possible for Pass dragons to go between safely. I maintain, despite how he pre-empted the point, that the case is not yet made either way. Fraza’s attempt to go between last sevenday was premature. I hadn’t yet passed the riders of the Unseen – or their fire-lizards – ready to try going between at all – much less without even Epherineth standing by to pull them out if necessary. S’leondes’ assertion that it isn’t possible has no basis in fact. It hasn’t been given a chance.”

T’kamen took a breath. Most of the arbiters were still studying him with stony expressions. He forged on. “Fire-lizards are the key to going between – or, in truth, to navigating safely between. The Commander cites the eating habits of wild fire-lizards as one bar to their acceptance in the Weyr. I will say now, and the riders of the Unseen will confirm this: no Impressed fire-lizard has or will ever scavenge from the remains of a dragon. The Commander cites bad behaviour – fighting and stealing – that no well-trained fire-lizard would exhibit. And while it’s true that we’re reliant on the north for fire-lizard eggs, that’s a short-term problem. It would only take a couple of queens to supply Madellon with all the eggs it needs.

“None of these objections are compelling enough to outweigh the benefits of having dragons who can go between. I’m almost reluctant to list them, because to me they’re so obvious, but I’m not unaware that I come from a different culture when it comes to between.

“Let me, as a Strategic rider, put fighting aside for the moment. It takes about three hours to fly straight from here to Kellad Hold, and the average dragon will need to eat a couple of wherries when he gets there. But a dragon who can go between can be at Kellad in a matter of moments, home again minutes later, and need no extra feeding to do it. Imagine being able to collect fresh tithe from our outlying Holds, instead of only whatever can be dried or salted down. Imagine being able to go between to meet Thread when it starts falling, instead of slogging out to a Weyrstation the night before. Imagine being able to jump back to the Weyr immediately afterwards, instead of facing a long flight home when you’re already tired.

“And imagine being able to dodge Thread.” T’kamen paused to let that one sink in a moment. He knew that talking about the fighting Wings was dangerous, that S’leondes would certainly haul him up for overstepping his boundaries, but it was important. “Imagine being able to blink back into formation after you’ve chased a piece down. Imagine being able to call in a fresh dragonpair to replace a casualty, a fresh Wing when the Fall is long and everyone’s tired. Imagine how much more Thread you’d be able to burn if you didn’t know that the slightest strike would mean being eaten alive.

“And then imagine what that would mean to the people of Madellon’s protectorate. What it would mean to the people of Pern. It’s not just that dragons could burn more Thread out of the sky and leave less to ravage crops and pastures. The extra beasts dragons need to eat when they’re forced to fly straight everywhere wouldn’t be needed. The burden of tithe would be hugely reduced, alleviating the deprivation and poverty that blight every Hold in Madellon’s territory and beyond. Everyone on Pern wins. Everyone.”

T’kamen took another breath. His mouth was dry, and he would have welcomed a drink, but his water was where he’d left it, on the table behind his lectern, and he didn’t dare break the momentum of his argument by limping slowly back to get it. Some of the more moderate fighting riders on the panel looked like they almost believed him; even G’reyan was frowning thoughtfully. S’hayn’s distrustful expression hadn’t changed, though. He wasn’t for persuading.

“I’m not insensible to the issue of older dragons,” T’kamen went on. “I realise that it may not be possible to grant between to every dragonpair. I know it isn’t fair that officers and veterans, the most valuable and experienced riders we have, will be excluded from many of the benefits of between. But denying young dragons between just to maintain equality isn’t fair, either. The fact that the ability of dragons to go between atrophies with age is a phenomenon none of us can control, not an injustice imposed by choice. As time goes on, more dragons will become veterans because between allowed them to survive long enough.

“And this is where the Commander’s thinking and mine differ so dramatically. The fighting Wings deal in tactics, in the short term, in the here-and-now. But the Seventh Flight concerns itself with strategy. Restoring between isn’t tactical. It can’t be done overnight. Even with the best of luck it could be Turns – even decades – before the dragons of Pern can take full advantage of between as they did in Passes gone by. This is a long game, not a quick fix.”

He paused, thinking, and then spoke words he hadn’t planned. “A long game,” he repeated. “It seems sometimes as if that describes my life. I was born midway through the Seventh Interval. I was displaced a hundred and twenty-six Turns from my native era to come here. I didn’t choose to come. Some other force moved me, like a playing piece on a chessboard. But I can’t believe – won’t believe – that my being here has no meaning. I can’t accept that I was taken from my own era, my own Weyr, from the people I loved, simply to exist here in the Eighth Pass without a purpose. I’m here for a reason. I’m here to make a difference. Let me make it. Let me bring back between.”

He hesitated a moment before the arbiters, then turned to cross the dais back to his seat. The sound his cane made as its bronze-shod tip struck the surface seemed impossibly loud.

Then S’leondes rose from his place. “Some other force,” he said. His tone was incredulous, and his spread his hands as if to include everyone in his disbelief. “It troubles me, that the Strategic branch of Madellon Weyr could have fallen under the control of a rider with so monstrous an ego, so titanic a burden of self-importance.” He pointed at T’kamen, looking out at the audience. “This man – this bronze rider – believes he’s come to save us all. To save us all!”

Someone in the audience laughed, and a ripple of nervous titters began to spread.

T’kamen clenched his jaw. “That’s not –”

But S’leondes was already speaking over him. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, T’kamen’s not even been here a Turn, but he’s hardly been idle. He’s spent every moment of his time with us trying to claw back the relevance that he lost when he abandoned his own time. Any attention, it seems, is better than none, when you’re a Seventh Interval bronze rider in a Pass where your sense of self-entitlement no longer has an outlet.”

Here it comes, T’kamen thought. He’d known that S’leondes would make it personal. He braced himself.

“So what passes for making a difference, in T’kamen’s world view?” S’leondes asked. “Well, let’s see. How about showing a casual disregard for the safety of those entrusted to him? Let’s not forget that before the quixotic pursuit of between claimed M’ric’s life, T’kamen put him in harm’s way at Little Madellon. And M’ric might have got away with it, but T’kamen’s own dragon wasn’t so lucky.” S’leondes looked meaningfully at Epherineth, lifting his hand to mime a scar down his own face. “How about traumatising Alanne, a dragonless woman who never asked for anything but to be left alone – a woman who died still sobbing about the cold-hearted bronze rider who’d slaughtered her companions? How about flouting the prohibitions laid on him at his Discipline by using young riders to tail for him even when he was expressly forbidden to ever take a tailman again?” S’leondes shook his head. “I believe I may have hit on it. What T’kamen characterises as making a difference, any other rider would call breaking the law. Having his bronze intimidate smaller dragons. Aiding and abetting a defector. Colluding with Ista, and trading away dragon eggs not his to trade. Not to mention allowing Epherineth, a bronze, to fly a queen. It’s difficult to find a law this man hasn’t broken while he’s been in the Pass. But it all goes back to the same defect of personality that defines T’kamen: his inability to accept that anything he does could possibly be wrong.

“It explains his hypocrisy. It explains how he can admonish his riders for being careless with their passions while, himself, repaying a young green rider’s faithfulness with staggering cruelty. It explains how he can claim to respect our ways one moment, and seek to remould Madellon to his own satisfaction the next.

“And it explains his breathtaking capacity for bare-faced lies.” S’leondes said that with a perverse kind of satisfaction. “Because even as he’s made his case to you today, he’s misled you – consciously, deliberately, and for his own self-serving ends. T’kamen would have you believe that between is a panacea, a solution to every problem that Pern faces. He’d have you believe that a world in which every dragon can go between is something to be pursued at all costs. And it’s a lie, and he knows it, and still he has the temerity to stand here before the Weyr and claim it as the truth.

“The way T’kamen states it, no dragon ever died a premature death in the old days. A lie. Between or not, dragons still died. Dragons died because of between. The attrition rate of weyrlings at the Peninsula Weyr in the Seventh Interval ran at almost twenty-five percent. Nearly one in every four weyrlings died trying to master between, and this was in the days when every dragon was naturally capable of it. One in four. If we lose one weyrling in twenty, we consider that a failure.

“T’kamen claims he was a leading advocate for the rights of green and blue riders at a time when the only riders who mattered rode browns and bronzes. Another lie. If he was such a champion of the underprivileged, why did no blue or green rider become even a Wingsecond until Starfall Weyr was founded? What evidence is there that T’kamen did anything at all for what he calls the ‘junior’ colours?

“And how can we believe for an instant his assertion that the restoration of between wouldn’t result in a return to the bad old ways we’ve fought so hard to overturn? Because – make no mistake – T’kamen dreams of brown and bronze dragons flying in the fighting Wings once more. And when dragon hierarchy is allowed to rule supreme, which it always does when dragons of all colours fly together, there’ll be no room for blues and greens to lead. No brown or bronze dragon will tolerate being commanded by what they consider a lesser colour. Green and blue riders will be relegated to the rank and file, suppressed there regardless of their abilities, as they have been throughout Pern’s history.”

S’leondes raked the assembled dragonriders with a glance. “I know there are those of you here who’ve been won to T’kamen’s cause. I know there are riders among you who believe you owe your lives to his intervention. And I cannot refute that there are dragons and riders who would not be here today had Epherineth not snatched them between in Fall.” Then he gestured, with a wide sweep of his arm. “And there some of those lucky few are.”

There was a rustle as every rider, arbiters and otherwise, turned to look in the direction S’leondes indicated.

“Meicrath,” the Commander said, pointing to a grey-toned green on one of the ledges above the dragon infirmary. “Epherineth saved her life, but not her wings. She’ll never fly again. Not to fight, not to mate.” He pointed to a blue whose head was swathed in bandages. “Nageth. Hit in the face by a wingmate’s flame. Epherineth brought him back to the Weyr, but even our best Dragon-healers can’t repair his burned-out eyes.” He shifted his arm again. “Kujonth. A tangle took off the last six feet of his tail. He’ll never be able to control his defecation again.” S’leondes lowered his arm. “This is what T’kamen considers salvation. Living crippled, disfigured, disabled. Each of those dragons will need treatment for the rest of his life; and for what? They’ll never be able to fight; some of them will never fly. They’ll be a burden on the Weyr, a drain on our resources. They should have been allowed to die gloriously in Fall like the heroes they were, rather than living on as the damaged shells of what they used to be.

“And that’s what T’kamen, in his self-righteous blinkers, cannot see. He hasn’t saved these dragons. Between hasn’t saved them. It’s condemned them. Those riders, those dragons, would never have chosen to live this way. And perhaps T’kamen – crippled as he is, maimed as his dragon was as a result of his bad decisions – believes he’s done them a favour, but it’s a hollow boon. He’s not the one who’ll be washing out Nageth’s empty eye sockets with redwort twice a day for the rest of his life. He’s not the one who’ll have to watch as Meicrath crawls along the ground in the parody of a mating flight. No. T’kamen’s done the easy part, claimed credit for their deliverance, and then left them to their fates without a backward glance. This is a man whose entire legacy as a Weyrleader is defined by how he abandoned Madellon when it needed him most. He can’t be trusted. He cannot be trusted.”

T’kamen had tried not to let the accusations get to him. He’d tried to let them wash over him. But as he rose to defend himself, he knew he was shaking: not just with anger, but with the nauseating knowledge that at least some of what S’leondes flung at him was true. Epherineth’s touch on his mind steadied him, but only just.

“I’ve never claimed to be infallible,” he said. His voice was rough; he tried to even it out. “I’ve made mistakes.” Even as he said it, he winced at the admission; true though it was, it was what S’leondes wanted. “And a wiser rider than me once said that serving your Weyr doesn’t always allow you the luxury of a clear conscience. My conscience isn’t clear. M’ric weighs on it. Fraza weighs on it. And for all the harm Alanne did Epherineth and me, I regret any part that we played in her…”

And something that S’leondes had said about Alanne clicked in T’kamen’s mind.

“…death.” T’kamen finished his sentence unevenly. He stared at nothing for a moment as the pieces shifted into a configuration at once so implausible and so inescapable that he nearly couldn’t accept it.

Then he looked at S’leondes. “You killed Alanne.” He spoke quietly, for the Commander’s ears only.

S’leondes looked back at him, his expression so blank, that for a moment T’kamen questioned the conclusion he’d drawn. “What?”

“Weyr Singer.” T’kamen addressed Tawgert over his shoulder without taking his eyes off S’leondes. “Would you read back what the Commander just said about Alanne?”

“Certainly, Marshal,” Tawgert said, after a moment. “Let me just find…”

S’leondes’ expression was flatly incredulous. “You’re accusing me…?”

“The Commander said, ‘How about traumatising Alanne,’” Tawgert read from his transcript, “‘a dragonless woman who never asked for anything but to be left alone – a woman who died still sobbing about the cold-hearted bronze rider who’d slaughtered her companions?’”

“How do you know what Alanne was sobbing as she died?” T’kamen asked S’leondes.

“I…don’t…” S’leondes was suddenly as rattled and off-balance as T’kamen had ever seen him. “I mean, I wasn’t; I…”

“Faranth,” T’kamen said, hardly believing it himself. “You did it, didn’t you? You killed her.”

For a moment, S’leondes’ expression was stricken – perhaps more for having made the slip that had exposed him than for the terrible act to which it tied him – and then his face clouded with rage. “How dare you,” he said, and then, roaring, “how dare you!”

“Then you deny it?” T’kamen asked, though he was sure now; as sure as he’d ever been about anything. Alanne’s death, so soon after Fetch had piloted Epherineth between for the first time, had put an end to Madellon’s only source of fire-lizard eggs. Killing her was a brutally logical play for a man who wanted no part in fire-lizards or between. He’s cunning, but he’s not subtle.

“Deny it?” said S’leondes. “Deny what? The false allegation of a desperate man, slung at me like a handful of mud?”

“If it’s not true, then deny it,” T’kamen said steadily, though the angry stirring of the watching riders threatened to drown out his words. “Deny it here, in front of Donauth, and have her verify that you speak the truth. Deny it, S’leondes!”

“I deny it to my Weyr,” S’leondes said, and stepped forward to the front of the dais. “I deny it to my riders, not to a queen. I deny it to the riders who know me, the riders who trust me.” He spread his hands to the audience. “Who do you believe? This man, this bronze rider, who has left death and devastation in his wake since the moment he arrived in our Pass? Or the rider who liberated you all from the tyranny of colour hierarchy, who has been your leader and your servant and your champion, who has wept and sweated and bled for you all these twenty Turns? Who do you believe, Madellon? Who do you believe?”

“S’leondes!” someone screamed.

“S’leondes!”

“Commander!” That shout came from the arbiters’ panel.

“S’leondes!”

“S’leondeeeees!”

Then a young rider rose from the front row. He raised his hand to point at T’kamen. “Traitor!”

“He’s no traitor!” someone else shouted.

“Traitor!”

“Liar!”

“He killed her!” the first boy screamed.

“Murderer!”

The descent into chaos had happened so quickly and so completely that T’kamen was dazed by it. Not every rider was screaming for T’kamen’s blood, but that made it worse. Shoving matches were breaking out in little knots across the audience as his supporters and S’leondes’ came to blows.

“Stop this!” T’kamen shouted out at the sea of riders. He looked across at S’leondes. The Commander was watching the bedlam with an expression of tremendous satisfaction. “For Faranth’s sake, S’leondes, put an end to this!”

“It is ended, T’kamen,” S’leondes said. “And I think you’ve lost.”

Donauth reared from her place behind the dais, screaming out a cry so forceful that every dragon in the Bowl shuddered with the power of it. The tussling riders broke off as she spread her vast golden wings. “That’s enough!” Dalka shouted. “This is an Arbitration, not a brawl!”

“Dalka’s right,” said S’leondes. “It seems like it’s time for the arbiters to make their decision.” He looked at the panel. “Will you find for me…” He turned to gesture at T’kamen. “Or for him?”

“Arbiters,” Dalka said. Her voice shook slightly with the strain. “Please rise, those of you who find in the Commander’s favour, for the termination of the between programme.”

There was only the slightest pause. Then S’hayn leapt to his feet, with G’reyan a breath behind him. The two green riders who had eyed T’kamen with such disapproval were next, and then, one by one each of the remaining fighting riders rose to their feet. In instants, the only arbiters still seated were P’rally, V’larr, and a wretched-looking Kayrin.

It was all over.

Chapter eighty-two: T’kamen

If dragonriders aren’t meant to fight, why do we teach our weyrlings how?

For self-defence, of course. Just because a rider has been told not to fight – and just because the Teaching Ballads strictly forbid any holder from attacking a dragonrider – doesn’t mean either party will obey.

There was a time in Pern’s history when knife duels between riders weren’t uncommon. They were considered to be an acceptable resolution for the most bitter disagreements between dragonriders. How better could a rider prove his conviction than by putting his life, and his dragon’s, at risk in its name?

Those were more primitive times. Now, the mechanisms of Weyr law – the Discipline, the Justice, the Mediation, and the Arbitration – have replaced the mindless injustice of the duel, just as Exile and Separation have replaced staking out as the punishment for capital crimes. For what civilised man prizes physical might over reasoned argument, sober consideration, and self-evident truth?

– Weyrlingmaster D’hor, Weyrling Training Manual, volume three

26.13.27 (26TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

T’kamen knew he shouldn’t have been surprised.

S’leondes had won every Arbitration he’d ever fought out of sheer force of popularity. It had been a foregone conclusion that he’d win this one, too. It still made T’kamen’s stomach lurch. The arbiters had made their judgement, and he had to abide by their decision.

He gathered himself. The loser of an Arbitration was required to concede to the victor. Stiffly, he limped over to face the Commander in the centre of the dais. S’leondes was smiling slightly. T’kamen wanted to smash the expression off his face. “You killed Alanne,” he said softly. “Your acolytes might believe that you’re the greatest dragonrider who ever lived, but that doesn’t make you any less a murderer.”

“Don’t be a sore loser, T’kamen,” said S’leondes. “It doesn’t look good on you.” He seized T’kamen’s wrist and yanked him so hard towards him that his shoulder nearly dislocated. “Besides,” he said, for T’kamen’s ears alone, “you don’t give me enough credit. Poisoning that old loon was easy. Getting M’ric in the path of the tangle that put him out of his misery was much harder. And as for the sheer persistence it took to get Fraza to lose herself between…” S’leondes’ teeth flashed, and his fingers bit into T’kamen’s forearm. “Go on. Repeat what I just said for the Weyr to hear. See how long you last as Marshal after that.”

Then S’leondes released him with a shove. T’kamen staggered. As his weight went onto his game leg it crumpled under him, and he dropped to one knee.

“No need to kneel, T’kamen,” S’leondes said, as though graciously, turning to the audience. “But I accept your concession.”

T’kamen hardly heard him. His ears, his mind, his entire being, rang with the appalling truth of S’leondes’ gleeful admissions.

Alanne.

M’ric.

Fraza.

Never underestimate what your opponent is prepared to do in the pursuit of victory, El’yan had told him.

S’leondes is cunning, but he’s not subtle, Dalka had said.

And T’kamen had heeded neither of them.

He heaved himself upright and hobbled the few steps back to his chair. He’s a dragonrider, he said, numbly, to Epherineth.

He is also a man. With a man’s capacity for fear and hate and rage. You have known all those things yourself, T’kamen.

But you wouldn’t let me kill Katel, T’kamen said. You pulled me back from that brink. Why didn’t Karzith stop S’leondes?

Karzith is not me. S’leondes is not you. You are my rider. My partner. My equal in all things. You cannot hide from me or lie to me. You cannot force your will upon me. You cannot make me believe what you know is not true.

I would never want to!

Not all dragons are as fortunate as me. And not all dragonpairs are partnerships.

Unbidden, the image of the lad who had Impressed that first blue dragonet of Levierth’s clutch floated up in T’kamen’s mind: his intent face, his fierce eyes, the unswerving conviction in the set of his jaw that he would Impress the dragon he wanted. Man and dragon fully matched. The words of that ancient ballad had never seemed so inapt. They’re Impressing the wrong dragons. That boy should have been a bronze rider. He’ll dominate that blue.

Yes. Epherineth’s tone was gentle. You would have overwhelmed a blue, too. As Karzith is dominated by his rider.

Then Karzith has no power to stop S’leondes the way you stopped me?

Karzith is not the equal of his rider. He believes what the Commander tells him, and has not the will to question his decisions. I cannot stop you from doing anything. As you cannot stop me. But we are equals. We are alike in strength. We are together in all things, in all ways. And together we always know what is the right thing to do, even when it is not the easy thing to do.

What do we do, Epherineth? T’kamen asked. Their conversation had taken a span of seconds; S’leondes was still speaking, describing how the between programme would be dismantled, the Unseen reassigned, the fire-lizards chased off or put down. He’s won the Arbitration. He’d won before we even started. The way these shaffing riders love him…

They wouldn’t love him if they knew what he truly is, said Epherineth.

You saw how they turned on me when I accused him of killing Alanne. They didn’t want to believe it. Dalka told me not to attack him personally. He knows he can’t be beaten in a popularity contest. That’s why he rubbed my nose in it just now. T’kamen put his hand to his face, stricken. Faranth, Epherineth. He killed Alanne so we wouldn’t have access to more fire-lizards. He made Fraza go between, knowing she wasn’t ready. He got M’ric and Trebruth Thread-struck… And all because he was afraid of how it would harm his legacy if dragons could go between again!

Epherineth said, He must not be allowed to win, T’kamen.

I don’t know what I can do to beat him! He has control of the board, and me in check. I can’t think of any move I can make that won’t end in a mate.

Epherineth exuded puzzlement for a moment, and then said, But you are not playing chess.

He seldom sought refuge in draconic literal-mindedness. Don’t be so sharding obtuse, Epherineth, said T’kamen. You understand what an analogy is.

Yes. I do. And you are still not playing chess with Karzith’s rider. Epherineth paused. You are playing poker.

T’kamen sat, thunderstruck, for a moment.

Epherineth was right. T’kamen had approached this clash as a chess match. S’leondes had been playing poker all along. The Commander didn’t have a hand, and he knew it. But a good poker player didn’t need good cards. See how long you last as Marshal after that. It was the ultimate bluff. Give up now, before I destroy you utterly.  Because that was what S’leondes wanted: to make T’kamen fold while he still had something to play for. While he still had something to lose. It was how the Commander had played R’lony for all those Turns: driving him to submission rather than obliteration, limiting his power by threatening him with the complete withdrawal of it. T’kamen had often wondered why S’leondes hadn’t pushed harder to depose R’lony entirely. Now he knew. A rival crushed made space for a new threat to arise, but a surrendered enemy would never be truly dangerous. R’lony had surrendered because he’d still had too much to lose, and S’leondes’ dominance of the Weyr had been left unchallenged.

And suddenly something from an age ago, a lifetime ago, unearthed itself in T’kamen’s mind. I think you’d be a better poker player if you didn’t lose confidence in the strength of your hand.

We still have a lot to lose, T’kamen told Epherineth. My rank. Your queen. Our reputation. Our lives, if we fail, and S’leondes follows through on his threat. He could have us Separated.

It’s as I said, said Epherineth. We always know what is the right thing to do. Even when it’s not the easy thing to do.

T’kamen was overwhelmed, briefly, by awe for Epherineth’s courage. A lesser dragon might have been brave through lack of comprehension; Epherineth understood completely the potential consequences of what T’kamen planned, and he supported it anyway. Epherineth was the high card, the ace in the hole. The card T’kamen had known he couldn’t play. The card he now must play, though the gamble could ruin them both. How do we do it?

Make him lie, said Epherineth. And then catch him in it.

T’kamen took a breath.

Then he rose. “I don’t.”

S’leondes had still been talking. He broke off and looked around, blinking in genuine surprise. “What?”

T’kamen advanced to face him. His knee felt even weaker than before, but he ignored it. “I don’t concede, S’leondes. I don’t recognise your authority to question mine. You’re a confessed murderer and not fit to hold any rank, least of all Commander.”

The reaction of the crowd, far from the outrage at T’kamen’s earlier accusation, was mutedly baffled. S’leondes’ response was nearly as equivocal. T’kamen could see him trying to figure out his angle. “The Arbitration is over, T’kamen,” S’leondes said, after a moment. “Whatever baseless accusations you care to hurl at me, the arbiters’ decision is final –”

“The Arbitration was brought under false pretences,” said T’kamen. “You forfeited the right to wear the Commander’s knots when you committed your first murder. Only the Commander or the Marshal can invoke an Arbitration, and you’re neither.”

The assembled riders began to stir again, the mutters of consternation growing in volume. Then S’leondes held his hands up to them. “No,” he said. “Let the bronze rider say his piece. Dalka!” He pointed to her. “Donauth may impose upon Karzith to verify that I speak the truth!”

Dalka was looking alarmed, but behind her, Donauth mantled her wings, and then cried out, an imperious affirmative.

S’leondes turned back to T’kamen, smiling. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes. “Go on, T’kamen. Tell Madellon about your fevered fantasies of my many heinous murders.” The I dare you went unspoken.

“You killed Alanne,” T’kamen said, “or had her killed.”

“I didn’t kill Alanne,” S’leondes said. “I didn’t have her killed. I had nothing to do with that tragic woman’s death.” He looked slightly towards Donauth. Her eyes were narrowed as she regarded Karzith, but she didn’t contradict S’leondes’ claims. “You see? Why would I wish any harm on a poor dragonless woman?”

“Because she had fire-lizards,” T’kamen said. “She was found dead the same day that Fetch piloted Epherineth between for the first time, the day we discovered that fire-lizards were the key to restoring between to dragons.”

S’leondes laughed. “Alanne’s death happened sevendays before I even knew about that supposed link. I was as surprised as anyone when Epherineth rescued Suatreth in Fall!”

T’kamen hadn’t thought of that. He felt sweat trickling down his temple. He didn’t dare distract Epherineth from his intense concentration. “You knew,” he said. “You had an informant.” His mind raced, trying to fit the pieces together, and then his guts lurched. He darted a sideways glance towards Dalka. Surely she couldn’t have been reporting to S’leondes…

And then the smallest twitch of S’leondes’ expression, the least upwards curl of his lip, betrayed his delight.

Not Dalka, T’kamen realised, heartsick.

“M’ric,” he said, and saw S’leondes’ features freeze. “M’ric was your informant all along. He told you what I was trying to do. He told you when Epherineth and I went between.”

“Ridiculous,” said S’leondes. “M’ric was your tailman. Everyone knows that.”

T’kamen shook his head. He advanced a hobbling step on S’leondes. “M’ric was your eyes on me. He was for months.” Then two dots connected in his mind. “That’s why you assigned him to your Wing. Why else would you allow a brown rider into Tactical, if not to reward him for services rendered?”

“I did no such thing,” S’leondes said, but something had shifted the tiniest bit in the space between them, in the air that surrounded them, in the ground beneath their feet. “And what makes you think I’d want to spy on a bronze rider?”

“You’ve always seen me as a threat, S’leondes,” T’kamen said. “Ever since the moment you witnessed Epherineth and me arriving in this Pass, that morning at Madellon West.” He knew it was too much to hope that Dalka would support him in that claim, and she didn’t fail to disappoint, but he saw the flicker in S’leondes’ eyes. “You’re afraid of me. And you’re afraid of between.”

“I’ve flown over two thousand Threadfalls, and you dare call me a coward?” S’leondes snarled.

“You’re afraid of between,” T’kamen repeated. “You’re afraid of the emptiness of the void. You’re afraid of the cold, devouring darkness of it. That’s why, as Fraza told me, you always sleep with a glow-basket open.” He took another halting step towards the Commander. “Or will you deny that, too?”

S’leondes was shaking his head. “All lies,” he said, but some of the certainty had seeped out of his voice.

“You’ve opposed the restoration of between from the start,” T’kamen said. “You’ve feared how it would break the grip you have on Madellon. You’ve put the preservation of your legacy above the preservation of lives. You’d rather see hundreds of dragonpairs die than risk any damage to your legend as the saviour of Pern.” T’kamen paused, feeling his lip curl in a snarl. “And you’ve killed to make sure it never happens!”

“No,” S’leondes said. “No. That’s not true.”

Karzith whined.

It was the softest sound, barely a whistle from the blue dragon’s throat, but it gave T’kamen fresh impetus. Is it working?

Keep making him lie, Epherineth told him grimly.

That was the key. Karzith couldn’t lie to Donauth, but S’leondes could lie to Karzith – at a cost. Each time S’leondes was forced to suppress the truth to his dragon, it put strain on them both. That strain was beginning to lever open the cracks in S’leondes’ impervious façade, but if Karzith collapsed before his rider did, all would be lost.

“You killed Alanne,” T’kamen said. “You killed her because she could provide us with fire-lizards. But that wasn’t enough. M’ric had Impressed Agusta. A queen. You couldn’t risk her clutching.” He paused half a beat. Each link in the chain was falling into place now, running far ahead of his words. “So M’ric had to die, too. It should have been easy, setting him up to get killed in Fall. But he was too good, wasn’t he? Too quick and too clever. So you used Fraza, the wingmate he loved. You put her in danger, knowing M’ric would risk himself to save her. And that’s exactly what he did.”

Complete silence had fallen across the Weyr. The whispers had died away. No one spoke, no one moved. The dragons on their ledges could have been carved from stone. “This is…” S’leondes said, and then coughed. “This is whershit. This is all whershit.”

Sweat had broken out in beads on his forehead, but behind him, Karzith looked far worse. He was going greyer by the minute, his eyes fading out to frightened yellow-white. T’kamen felt sorry for him, trapped as he was between a queen’s fierce attention and his rider’s desperate blocking. A dragon could be broken by such conflicting pressures. Stay with him, Epherineth.

I am, Epherineth replied, but his voice was strained, and T’kamen realised how much it was costing him to shore up Karzith’s strength unnoticed, to take some of the oppressive weight of Donauth’s and S’leondes’ will off the beleaguered blue, and to prevent either stress from bleeding through to T’kamen.

“But even getting M’ric killed wasn’t enough to make it go away, was it?” T’kamen asked. “Because we found more fire-lizards. Riders started losing their fear of going between. A hundred dragonriders volunteered to Impress a fire-lizard. You could feel your grip getting weaker and weaker with every passing day. Even the tragedy at Ista couldn’t stop it. It was just too distant, too remote. You realised that if you were going to put an end to the Unseen, you needed a catastrophe much closer to home, quickly, before someone succeeded, and I was proved right.”

“No,” S’leondes whispered.

He is very close now, Epherineth told T’kamen. His voice was laboured.

T’kamen gathered himself for a final push. “And that’s why you made Fraza go between, wasn’t it? You used her need to be the best and the brightest, the top of her class, to coerce her into the jump between that killed her. When I’d told you it was too soon, when you knew she wasn’t ready. When you knew she’d fail. When you knew she’d die. Fraza. A green rider. One of your own. The nearest you’ve ever come to having a daughter.”

S’leondes was streaming with sweat now. The glitter in his eyes had turned to a fever shine. “I didn’t…never wanted to…didn’t want to have to hurt her…”

Something broke, violently, like a steel cable snapping. T’kamen felt it through Epherineth; they flinched together, as though physically struck. Karzith uttered the most hideous wail of loss and betrayal and horror, rearing up on his hind legs, his wings half spread, his jaws agape. And S’leondes collapsed to his knees, clutching his head, as the dam he’d built against his dragon’s scrutiny finally burst, and Karzith’s horrified awareness flooded into him like a tide.

Even after everything S’leondes had done, T’kamen felt sorry for him as he knelt there, broken and shuddering, but there was no room left for mercy. “Confess, S’leondes,” he said roughly. “Confess to what you did.”

S’leondes raised his head. His eyes were bottomless pits of despair. “What…did you do…to my dragon?”

“Nothing,” T’kamen said. “Epherineth only lent him the strength to break through your deception.”

“I was protecting him,” S’leondes whispered. “He wouldn’t have understood…the things I had to do…”

“Then you admit it? You killed Alanne? M’ric? Fraza?”

S’leondes drew in a shuddering breath. “Yes. I killed them.”

The words fell like stones into a still pond for a span of moments.

And then the silence that had held sway over the Weyr was shattered by a thousand voices, raised in horror and rage and disbelief.

“He killed them!”

“He admits it!”

“He’s a murderer!”

Over all of them, Donauth trumpeted her outrage, and hundreds of dragons answered her with furious bugles of their own. Karzith behind the dais, seemed to collapse in on himself, covering his head with his wings. And no one spoke out for S’leondes. He knelt suddenly friendless and alone before T’kamen, staring out at the Weyr. “But I did it for you,” he said. He sounded dazed, as though he couldn’t believe that his riders had turned against him so quickly. “Don’t you see that I did it all for you?”

And then something T’kamen had experienced only a handful of times in his life happened. An alien voice intruded on his mind, forcing its way jaggedly and discordantly into the consciousness he shared with Epherineth.

It was Karzith.

He means to kill you.

It wasn’t the warning itself that saved T’kamen. His body reacted before his brain processed the words, recoiling physically with a rider’s reflexive aversion to a strange dragon’s voice. And as he flinched backwards, the thrust of the blade S’leondes drew and drove towards him missed its mark. The point of the knife struck T’kamen’s belt-buckle and deflected, slicing him above the hip instead of sinking into his guts.

As he staggered, he met S’leondes eyes, and saw there was nothing left there. “Score you between,” the Commander said hoarsely. He surged to his feet. “At least I can take you with me.”

There’d been a time when T’kamen would have backed himself for every sliver of a mark he owned against any opponent in a fight. Not because he was particularly big or particularly strong, because even as a lad he’d been neither. Nor because he was unusually quick, or well-trained, or even naturally talented. No one had ever taught him to spar, and all of his experience had come from scraps – friendly and otherwise – with the other boys and young men of the rough-living trader train that had provided both home and identity for his first seventeen Turns. And he’d only ever set foot in one of the civilised, refereed, canvas-floored boxing squares that hosted the best fighters of Hold and Hall at Gathers once, and then for less than two rounds before he’d been disqualified – and ejected – for his conduct.

Because he didn’t win his fights because he was stronger or faster or even better than the men who stepped into the unlicensed sand-floored fighting rings that inevitably sprang up at the murky edges of every Gather and trading conclave. He won them because he’d thought nothing of throwing dirt in a man’s face, or gouging his eyes with his thumbs, or kicking him in the head once he was down to keep him there.

This wasn’t a fist-fight. S’leondes wasn’t the lard-tub guardsman type who’d so often looked at an arrogant trader boy and seen an easy mark. T’kamen wasn’t the light-footed young buck he’d once been.

But he still remembered how to fight dirty.

S’leondes jabbed at him with the knife. He had tremendous reach. T’kamen swayed backwards to avoid the blow, and the knife-tip caught in the front of his jacket. Quickly, he twisted to snag it. It didn’t pull the blade out of S’leondes’ grip, but the yank sent his wrist wide. In the instant of unbalance, T’kamen drove his elbow backwards.

A shorter man would have felt that elbow in the mouth. S’leondes took it in the upper sternum. He grunted, then grabbed at T’kamen. “Have to do better than that.”

T’kamen caught S’leondes’ left hand in his right. The Commander’s fingers were thick and strong. He bent them back with a sharp tug of his wrist.

Only the index finger broke. T’kamen felt the bone snap before he let go. It was enough to make S’leondes howl. “Faranth…shaff!”

T’kamen took the opportunity to back up a couple of steps. He didn’t dare draw his own knife. He couldn’t compete with S’leondes’ reach. He raised his cane in his right hand, holding it out like a sword. “This is what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? How many times have you tried to kill me, S’leondes?”

“You wouldn’t…shaffing…stop!” S’leondes forced the words from between gritted teeth. “If you’d just given up. But you had to be stubborn. You had to keep trying. Everything I’ve worked for. Everything I’ve built. You’d tear it all down. All of it!”

“You sound like R’lony,” T’kamen said.

He couldn’t have chosen a more perfectly honed insult. S’leondes’ golden eyes widened. “That worm,” he said. “That mewling coward. That weakling, paper-shuffling excuse for a –”

He lunged again. T’kamen blocked the knife with his cane, barely turning it. He almost tottered, and he saw S’leondes look down at his crippled leg, unsupported even by the stick. He couldn’t let him knock him off his feet. If S’leondes got him on the floor, he wouldn’t get up again. “You nearly did it.”

“Did what?”

“Stopped me.” T’kamen laughed. It was true. “One setback after another. One failure after another. I should have known there was more than bad luck behind it.”

“You shouldn’t even be here!” S’leondes shouted. “I tried to give you a way out! I tried to give you a way home! Who do you think gave M’ric the painting from the Harper Hall? I didn’t want to have to kill you, T’kamen! I just wanted you out of my Weyr!”

“Your Weyr?” T’kamen asked, snarling the words. “Yours? And you call me entitled. You should have been a bronze rider.”

S’leondes roared and rushed him, the knife outstretched. T’kamen shifted his upper body, not much. Enough. S’leondes’ charge clipped his shoulder. It sent T’kamen spinning, but he didn’t fall. S’leondes staggered past, trying to check his momentum, and T’kamen struck hard with his cane at the back of his knee, exactly where he knew, from his own bitter experience, it would hurt the most. S’leondes teetered, throwing out his arms for balance, but it wasn’t enough. His leg gave out under him, and he went down with the sound of a falling tree. The knife skittered away across the stones.

“You’ve never cared about this Weyr,” T’kamen said, advancing on his fallen foe. “You’ve never cared about your riders. You’ve never cared about Karzith. You’ve only ever cared about yourself. S’leondes, the saviour of Pern.” He turned the epithet into an insult. “And between with who had to die to mould your legend. And not just Alanne. Not just Fraza. Every rider who asked your blessing before he took his eight-Turn-old dragon between to face a pre-emptive death. Every rider who killed himself so his crippled dragon wouldn’t have to shame him in your eyes. Every rider who threw himself needlessly in front of Thread so his name would be carved in glory on the Wall. Every holder of Peranvo who starved or froze to death because you put your dragonrider’s pride before your duty to Pern!” He advanced faster, heedless of the pain in his leg, heedless of the throbbing numbness of the wound in his side. “All that blood is on your hands, S’leondes! All of it!”

S’leondes crawled to his knees. He stared up at T’kamen, and those angry gold-flecked eyes had gone nearly black, the pupils dilated, as though to reflect the darkness of between he had so feared, the darkness of the ambition that had consumed him.

He snatched, fast as a striking snake, for the knife at T’kamen’s hip. M’ric’s knife. The hunting blade that T’kamen had carried ever since M’ric and Trebruth had gone between: long and sharp and deadly.

Then S’leondes turned it on himself.

Everything stopped. T’kamen looked down at S’leondes – his rival, his enemy, the murderer of people he had loved – and saw what he intended. Both big hands were firm on the haft of the knife. S’leondes would not miss a second time.

And T’kamen had been here before, with a man he hated, a man who had hurt him, at his feet. It had been by moonlight, last time, and by roaring water, last time, and last time the man had been Katel, clinging to a cliff edge in the final moments of his life; the life T’kamen could have saved, the life he had refused to save, the life he hadn’t wanted to save.

It would have been so easy to let it happen again.

No, he and Epherineth said, together.

He wrapped his fingers around the handle of his stick, feeling the snarling, scarred dragon head imprint upon his palms, and swung the shaft of the cane in two short, hard arcs.

The first struck S’leondes’ doubled hands. The knife flew from them, turning over and over in a silvery blur.

The second, backhand of the first, cracked him across the temple.

As S’leondes toppled sideways, stunned, the world came suddenly back to life. People were screaming. Dragons were screaming. Karzith was screaming.

But Karzith lived, and so did his rider.

T’kamen threw his cane aside and dropped hard on top of S’leondes. He felt the air whoosh from the Commander’s lungs as his knee caught him in the sternum. He pinned the bigger man’s shoulders with his hands and his weight and the sheer force of his will, and he held him there.

S’leondes’ lips moved, though he had little breath left to speak. “Why…stop me?”

T’kamen looked down at S’leondes’ slack, glazed face. Then he looked up. He looked over at Karzith, drooping with relief. And then he looked at Epherineth.

“Because I love my dragon more than I’ll ever hate you.”

Chapter eighty-three: Carleah

The holders of Speardike are now fully aware of the importance of a good narlbark harvest come next spring, and Master Berro – he has against, my better judgement, been reinstated in his rank – has been posted to the Hold to oversee the care of the black narl bushes. However dubious I am about his personal integrity, Berro is an excellent botanist, and I’m confident he will ensure a stable supply of narlbark resin for as long as it remains necessary.

My crafters and I are continuing our study of the felah formula. I am concerned – as are the Southern herbalists who worked on it for the late Weyrleader P’raima – about the long-term side effects of felah usage, and it is the opinion of the Masterhealer that the Hall should make a thorough study of the riders affected by it at all three southern Weyrs. To that end, Weyrwoman, I hope you will permit us continued access to yourself, as well as to your weyrlings Tarshe and Carleah, so that we can monitor your health.

In spite of the nefarious purposes for which felah was employed by Weyrleader P’raima, I also believe some considerable good may come of it as a beneficial treatment for dragonriders. In our experiments so far we have already discerned some promising applications for a combination of felah and other herbs, including as a sedative that, when administered to a rider, could also safely sedate that rider’s dragon, without exposing him to the known toxic effects of fellis derivatives on the draconic constitution.

– Extract from a letter from Master Healer Shauncey to Weyrwoman Valonna

100.06.02 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Carleah swiped a final, infinitesimal speck of dust off Jagunth’s couch, and then stepped back, surveying the space. It was clean. Not even L’stev could have found any fault with how she’d left it. The bedframe, stripped of linens and mattress, almost gleamed under the last coat of polish she’d given the worn wood. The ropes that criss-crossed the frame were taut and dark with wax. The dragon couch was still damp from the vinegar scrubbing she’d given it. The three-drawer chest between bed and couch was clear of everything except the pungent herb bag that would discourage vermin, and the trunk at the foot of the bed stood open and empty with its key standing in the lock.

She had only to finish writing the welcome note that the next weyrling assigned to the billet would find there, tucked into the top drawer. Carleah sat on the edge of Jagunth’s vacated couch and picked up the slate with its half-written message. She rested it on her knee and dropped her eyes to the first few lines she’d already written.

Dear New Weyrling

Congratulations on Impressing your dragon and joining us as a Green Rider of Madellon Weyr. (I shall assume you are a green rider, as gold eggs are so rare that the chance of you being a queen rider is extremely slim, and as this is the Girls’ Barracks, you must be a new lady rider. If you are not, get out of the Girls’ Barracks you filthy boy!)

She paused. Technically, the reader of the note could be the rider of green, gold, or blue. By the time anyone read the note, T’gala’s secret would surely be widely known; should she perhaps allude to the fact that she, Carleah, had been an early party to the knowledge that girls could Impress blue dragons? She thought hard about it, then decided that she should be circumspect. L’stev would be reading all the messages, and she’d hate to be made to rewrite hers.

As you are reading this letter your dragon is probably asleep. And you probably wish she would wake so you could hear her speak to you again. L’stev will tell you to enjoy the peace when your dragonet sleeps, because when she is awake she will want to eat or to bathe, and you will do very little in the first few sevendays of your life together except feed her and bathe her and pick up her poo. L’stev will tell you that you have your whole lives to talk nonsense to each other.

Carleah furrowed her brow over how to finish the paragraph for a moment. Then she wrote decisively.

HE IS WRONG and you can tell him I said so.

Here are some other things that you might find helpful:

1. The small bathing room on the right has the hottest water.

2. Measure hide for harness twice before you cut it.

3. If your dragonet has not pooed for a day DO NOT wait for her tail to get thick before you tell someone. IT WILL BE MUCH WORSE IF YOU WAIT.

4. Don’t ever let any rider of another colour tell you that you’re worth less just because you are a green rider.

Carleah tipped her head back for a moment, rubbing the crick in the back of her neck that craning over the slate was creating. She let her eyes move over the space that had been hers for the last Turn, thinking about everything that had happened while she’d been there.

Whether you are Weyrbred, or Holdbred, or maybe the Craftbred daughter of a dragonrider, like I am, here is one last thing. You should forget everything you thought you knew about what it means to ride a dragon, because it is probably wrong. Yes, even if you are Weyrbred. We are all told about the privilege and the honour of riding a dragon. We all listen to songs of the glory and courage of dragonriders. Those stories and those songs cannot capture more than the merest glimpse of what it is to be the chosen of a dragon of Pern. The reality is much more wonderful and terrifying and demanding than a non-rider will ever, ever, ever know.

Good Luck and Clear Skies

Carleah, green rider of Jagunth

She re-read what she’d written, decided it would do, and put the slate in the top drawer of the chest beside the cot. Then she picked up the last bag of odds and ends that she’d gathered from her space, glanced a final time around the echoingly empty barracks, and headed outside.

Jagunth was waiting there in a patch of sunlight, her wings fanned to catch every possible ray. Ready to go? Carleah asked.

Yes. Jagunth dipped her shoulder. She’d only started to have to do that in the last couple of sevendays. All the greens were experiencing a growth spurt, but Jagunth had put on nearly three hands in height in a month, and she was almost as tall as some of the blues.

Carleah tied her carry-sack to one of the rings on Jagunth’s harness and then swung up. You remember where our new weyr is?

Jagunth only hesitated a moment. Where Berzunth is?

Carleah strapped in, patting her dragon’s fore-ridge. Yes. But you’ll learn where it is without her soon.

Berzunth, already up on the high ledge, was as good a reference point as any, Carleah supposed. Jagunth warbled a greeting to her queen sibling as she backwinged to land neatly on the far end of the ledge. Berzunth hummed acknowledgement. Tarshe’s voice, slightly muffled, came from the weyr entrance. “That you, Carleah?”

Carleah unstrapped her carry-sack and went inside. “I found your hairbrush,” she reported as she walked through the dragon chamber. “It was down the back of Berzunth’s old couch.”

Tarshe came out of the sleeping alcove that she’d chosen. “Brilliant. Thanks. You all cleared out of the barracks now, then?”

Carleah nodded. “It feels strange,” she said. “Like the end of an era.”

“Beginning of a new one,” said Tarshe. “One where we have our own space.”

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t move into one of the queen weyrs,” Carleah said. “You’d have had twice this much room. And you wouldn’t have had to share!”

“Would have meant kicking out one of the senior Wingleaders,” Tarshe said. “And then he’d have kicked a more junior Wingleader out of his weyr, and he’d have kicked a Wingsecond out of his, and…” She shrugged. “Half a Turn’s time, some of the new weyrs in the south east’ll be ready, and me taking a queen’s weyr won’t be so disruptive.”

Carleah wasn’t completely convinced by Tarshe’s argument. But she couldn’t deny that she’d been pleased – and maybe even a bit flattered – when Tarshe had asked if she wanted to weyr-share with her. L’stev insisted that everyone who didn’t ride a queen had to share while they were still weyrlings, and Carleah had been dreading the prospect of having to bunk with Kessirke. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her, but she was just so shelling childish sometimes. She and Jardesse would have more fun together anyway. They’d be able to braid each other’s hair and talk about boys. Carleah found herself rolling her eyes at the thought.

But you think about boys, too, Jagunth pointed out.

Before Carleah could reply, Tarshe said, “Sorry, Carleah. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help overhearing what Jagunth just said.”

“Oh,” Carleah said, and tried to keep the affront out of her voice. “Did you.” Jagunth, you need to be more careful with how you think to me!

“Like I said, I’m sorry,” said Tarshe. She sounded sincerely apologetic. “It’s the narlbark. It seems to have made me more sensitive than I was before. Maybe I don’t need such a strong dose any more.”

Carleah was still annoyed – not just that Tarshe could hear her dragon, but that she’d heard such an unedifying remark on Jagunth’s part – but she decided to let it pass. “You still haven’t told the Weyrwoman yet, have you?” she asked. “That you can hear dragons other than Berzunth.”

Tarshe shook her head. “Don’t want anyone else knowing, least till I’m not a weyrling any more.”

“Is that why you asked me to weyr with you?” Carleah asked. She said it without rancour or accusation – at least, not much.

“No,” said Tarshe, and then, after a moment, “well, maybe it was part of the reason. But not because I don’t trust you. Because I do.” She shrugged, a little awkwardly. “It’s hard, not having anyone to talk to who gets it. Berzunth thinks I shouldn’t give a watch-wher’s tail who knows. She doesn’t get that I’m still an outsider here.”

“No you’re –” Carleah began, and then stopped. Tarshe had been honest; she should do the same. “All right, you are, still. Only a bit. Mostly because of your accent.”

“Not much I can do about that.”

“You’re going to be a weyrwoman,” said Carleah. “The Weyrwoman, one day. You’ll never be just another rider.”

“I know,” Tarshe said. She sounded genuinely sad. Then she pointedly changed the subject. “Everyone else is cleared out of the Barracks now, then?”

“From our side, anyway,” Carleah replied. “I don’t know about the boys.”

“Chenda and Adzai still mardy with each other?”

Carleah laughed. “Yes. I’d love to be a trundlebug on the wall in their weyr.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Tarshe. “Like a wher and a wherry in a box.”

“They both asked L’stev to change,” Carleah said. “He wouldn’t let them. I think he’s enjoying it.”

“He would, the sick old wher,” said Tarshe. “I’m not surprised he wouldn’t let T’gala and S’terlion weyr up together, though. Walked in on those two in the harness room this morning. Guilty as snakes in a tangle.”

“He didn’t balk at Sol and Maris sharing, though, and everyone knows they’re a thing.”

“He trusts them not to get stupid,” said Tarshe. “S’terli and T’gala, not so much.”

“It’s the idea of Djeth flying that green that I can’t get over,” said Carleah. “I mean, what rider wants some baby bronze humping her dragon?”

“Not this rider,” said Tarshe.

“Nor this one,” said Carleah. She sat on the end of her new bed, a pile of clothes in her lap, and said, “But I suppose our dragonets aren’t really babies any more, are they?”

“Berzunth is,” Tarshe said, with a tolerant smile for her queen. “The biggest baby of the lot.”

“It just doesn’t seem so long ago that I’d wake up and find Jagunth had crawled up onto my bed in the night,” Carleah said.

“Thank the stars Berzunth never did that,” said Tarshe. “Even at her littlest she’d have squashed me flat.” She nodded towards the ledge. “Jagunth can’t be so far off her adult size now.”

“L’stev reckons she’ll put on another five or six feet in length by the time she’s grown.”

“Berzunth has more like twenty to go,” said Tarshe. “If I’m lucky, and she doesn’t go as big as Shimpath.”

“Oaxuth’s going to be the big dragon of the clutch, I think,” said Carleah. “If he’s ever going to grow into his forepaws, anyway. They’re massive.”

“He’s mature enough to chase now, too,” said Tarshe.

Carleah flicked her a speculative look, but Tarshe had her back to her, organising underclothes in the top drawer of her new chest. “You and R’von…?”

“Ha!” Tarshe turned with alacrity. “I don’t think so, Carleah. He’s a daft little boy. And a bronze rider. And…”

“…Bronze riders are all insane,” Carleah said along with her, their old refrain. After a moment, she asked, “Have you heard from your cousin?”

“Nah. Kawanth checks in with Berzunth once in a while, but they’re so involved with Rallai and the Peninsula.”

“Was that always his plan?” Carleah asked. “To become Weyrleader at the Peninsula, even though he wasn’t entitled?”

Tarshe shrugged. “Don’t know. Probably.” Her mouth twitched in a partial smile. “He promised me I’d ride a queen one day, you know. He’d been promising me that for Turns.”

“My da promised me I’d be a dragonrider too,” Carleah said. She looked above Tarshe’s bed, where she had hung the cross-stitched sampler, a gift from Valonna herself, that commemorated Berzunth’s Hatching day. “Except he never promised me a queen. But I wouldn’t change Jagunth for anything on Pern.”

“Course you wouldn’t,” said Tarshe. “Faranth knows, the time it takes to clean a sharding queen should be enough to put off anyone with a whit of sense.”

Carleah was still looking at Tarshe’s sampler, the shape of a dragonet picked out in shades of yellow thread. Her own sampler had spent the last Turn stuffed in her bottom drawer. When the Weyrwoman had given it to her, a few days after the Hatching, Carleah had still been too distraught to appreciate it; even sevendays later, the reminder of the best and worst day of her life had been too painful. She picked up the sack that she’d emptied her drawers into, rummaging around until she felt the distinctive texture of the cross-stitch. She pulled it out, and made a face. Valonna’s careful handiwork was rather crumpled from the abuse it had suffered. Carleah tried to smooth it flat, without much success. Then she held it in her two hands, looking at the words that had been lettered there. Leah, rider of green Jagunth.

Tarshe came over and sat down beside her. “Leah,” she said, reading the name. “That’s what everyone used to call you before you Impressed. I always thought it was strange that you made your name longer, not shorter.”

Carleah shook her head. “I’m from Kellad. Everyone there shortens to the last part of their name. My mum’s proper name is Lerobyn. My da’s was Carellos.” She traced the letters with her fingertips. “I didn’t want to just be ‘Leah’ any more. To not honour him with my name.”

“I didn’t realise,” said Tarshe. “I understand, now, why you get so angry when someone calls you Leah.”

“No one does any more, except my mum and…” Carleah paused. “And C’mine.”

“You still haven’t gone to see him?” Tarshe asked, with a gentleness Carleah hadn’t expected.

Carleah didn’t speak for a long time. C’mine had left her a message, asking her to come and see him, but she hadn’t. She was still too angry with him for ignoring her for so long. She was still too afraid that seeing her would be the worst thing for him. “Something broke in him, when my da died,” she said softly. “It broke, and it’s still not mended. L’stev says he’s fragile. Like a pot dropped on the ground. You can glue the pieces back together, but it’ll always be cracked. And if it comes apart in your hands…”

“C’mine wouldn’t hurt you,” Tarshe said. “Faranth. You should go and see him.”

“But L’stev –”

“Between with L’stev, Carleah. Next to your dragon, there’s nothing on Pern more important than your family.” Tarshe caught her arm for emphasis. “No matter who they are. No matter what they’ve done. Trust me. I know.” She squeezed Carleah’s arm. “Go and see him.”

So Carleah did.

First she located Vanzanth, who was sunning his old bones up on the Rim, and had Jagunth find out by innocent enquiry that L’stev was in conference with the Weyrleader. Then she had Jagunth set her down a quarter of the Bowl away, and then sent her back up to the ledge with Berzunth. She made her way to C’mine’s weyr, the weyr that has been his and her da’s, by the most indirect route she could plot, walking casually past the beast pens as though she were selecting an appropriate wherry for her dragon’s dinner before crossing even more casually to the wall of the Weyr, and taking elaborate care not to look up at where Darshanth lay on the ledge of his weyr until she was almost in his shadow.

Then, abandoning all pretence, Carleah sprinted up the steps. She didn’t dare stay out there for the Weyr to see for long enough to greet the blue dragon properly, so she dashed inside, whispering as she passed, “Tell him I’m coming, Darshanth.”

For once, Darshanth heeded her. C’mine was already looking over his shoulder where he crouched over a crate on the floor as Carleah walked through the archway from Darshanth’s sleeping chamber. “Leah,” he said, and straightened up.

Carleah stopped in the archway, taking in the scene in the time it took for C’mine to turn to face her. Sacks on the floor, stuffed full. Boxes on the table. Shelves and cabinets empty and open. She hadn’t been shocked by Darshanth’s appearance; he’d been dull and listless for sevendays. She wasn’t shocked by C’mine’s either; the picture she’d built up in her mind of how thin and grey he had become actually surpassed the reality. But she was shocked by what she’d found him doing. “You’re leaving?”

The accusation, spoken with as much outrage as hurt, made C’mine flinch. He was holding a plate in both hands. Carleah was almost disappointed that he didn’t drop it. C’mine set it carefully down on the table. Then he didn’t seem to know what to do with his empty hands. He let them fall by his sides. He didn’t deny Carleah’s charge; how could he, when he stood red-handed amidst the evidence of it?

“Where are you going?” she demanded, taking an angry step towards him.

After a long moment, C’mine said, “High Reaches.”

“High Reaches?” Carleah repeated the name with disbelief. “High Reaches? What in Faranth’s name do you want to go to High Reaches for?”

“Carleah –”

She ignored him. “There’s nothing at High Reaches but snow and ice and…and…more snow! You hate the cold!”

“The Weyrlingmaster –”

“Oh, between with the sharding Weyrlingmaster!” Carleah shouted. “Score and scorch and shaff him! I don’t care what he’s said, you can’t leave Madellon just because he says so!” And then her distress broke through her anger. “You can’t leave, Mine!”

How C’mine made his way across the room without barking his shins on a crate, Carleah didn’t know, but he did. If she’d been a little younger, or a little less changed by the events of the last Turn, she might have sobbed into his chest when he put his arms around her. But she was fifteen now, and she’d been kidnapped, drugged and almost killed. She didn’t sob into C’mine’s chest. She beat on it with her fists. “You’re running away,” she told him, with equal parts rage and disgust. “You’re running away. You coward.”

That shook him too. C’mine turned from her, raising his hands to his head, stricken. Then he sat down hard on the couch. “I can’t stay, Leah,” he said. “There’s nothing here for me at Madellon any more…”

“What?”

“…nothing that doesn’t cause me pain,” he finished, against her cry of outrage.

“Pain makes you stronger!” Carleah shouted, and then regretted it; it was one of L’stev’s favourite profundities. “Everything worthwhile is painful!” That was better, even if it was lifted from a stupid Harper ballad. “He was my father! I loved him too!”

It was as close as she’d ever come to accusing him of claiming to have loved C’los more than she did, but if C’mine recognised the implication, he didn’t rise to it. “Carleah, sweetheart,” he said. “It’s not – not just – C’los, anymore.” He pressed the back of his fist to his forehead, anguished. “I’ve done things. Hurt people.”

“What things? What people?”

“I’ve burned every bridge here I had,” he went on, not answering her. “L’stev doesn’t trust me with the weyrlings. I’ve disappointed the Weyrwoman. Every rider at Madellon knows I’m a mess. Darshanth and I will never fly in a fighting Wing here again.”

“That’s nonsense!” Carleah declared, without much conviction, and then demanded, “What makes you think the High Reaches would be any different?”

“It’s a fresh start,” C’mine said. “Away from everyone and everything that I’ve done wrong here.” He shrugged, one-shouldered. “They need Search dragons. Weyrleader N’veag’s willing to give me a chance to prove I can make something of myself again. I’ll never get that at Madellon, Carleah. Nor at any other Weyr in the south. I have to put distance between myself and this continent.”

“And between yourself and me,” Carleah whispered. “Jagunth can’t go between, Mine. I’ll never see you again!”

C’mine looked wretched, and then he said, “For now, I think that’s for the best.”

“How can you say that? You don’t have the right to tell me what’s best for me any more!”

“Not just what’s best for you,” C’mine said. “What’s best for Darshanth.” He sat staring at nothing. “What I did, when I learned you’d been taken, at Long Bay…”

He fell silent. “What you did?” Carleah asked, and then fear of losing him made her lash out. “You fainted. That’s what the other weyrlings say. You didn’t do anything.”

C’mine met her eyes wordlessly, and Carleah recoiled a bit from the depth of reproach there. “What did you do?” she asked, chastened, and then, more urgently, “What did you do to Darshanth, C’mine?”

For a moment, she thought he’d tell her, and then he shook his head. “I put you before him,” he said. “Like I’ve been putting C’los before him. Putting myself before him. I can leave the Weyr, and it won’t be any the worse for me going. I can leave you, and you’ll be fine too. You and Madellon both will be better off without me.” He took a shuddering breath. “But I can’t leave Darshanth. And he can’t leave me. So I have to take him somewhere where I can earn back the right to call myself his rider.”

All of Carleah’s resistance failed her at once. “But I’ll miss you,” she whispered.

This time, when C’mine put his arms around her, she didn’t attack him. She just stood in the circle of his embrace, fighting back the tears. “You’re so like him,” C’mine said after a long moment. His voice was shaking too as he looked down into her face. He didn’t have to look down far, Carleah realised; she was almost of a height with him now. That shocked her.

“I want you to have something,” C’mine said.

Carleah watched him pick his way back across the room, but it wasn’t until he actually put his hand on C’los’ gitar that she believed it. C’mine lifted the instrument from its stand. He held it in his hands for a moment, looking down at it. Then, mutely, he turned and held it out to her.

When Carleah had been no older than eight or nine, she’d got her hands on her father’s gitar. Growing up in the Harperhall as she had, the idea of any instrument being off-limits was alien to her; the expensive and fragile ones were locked up safely away from the children, and any instrument that a youngster might come across was fair game to be picked up and played with. Carleah, visiting her father and his weyrmate at Madellon, had spotted C’los’ gitar, and – attracted as much by its elegant beauty as by the prospect of playing it – taken it from its rack.

It was the last time she’d touched it. She’d hardly placed her fingers on the neck, creating the softest ripple of sound from the strings, before C’los noticed what she was doing and snatched his gitar out of her grasp. “That’s not for you!” he’d shouted at her. “Never touch that! You could break it!”

Carleah had cried, and C’mine had intervened, as he always had when Da was too sharp with her, and then C’los had apologised, but not before he’d repeated his admonition that she wasn’t ever, ever to touch his gitar. “Two Turns of saving to have Master Naverik make this for me, girl,” he’d told her. “Two Turns! No one touches it but me, you understand?”

Now, as C’mine held out her father’s precious gitar to her, the old reluctance to transgress came over her again. “I can’t,” she said, resisting the urge to put her hands behind her back.

“He’d have wanted you to have it,” said C’mine. “You should have had it months ago. Take it. Please.”

Hesitantly, Carleah obeyed. She read the inscription on the back of the headstock. For when even you can’t find the right words.

She sat down suddenly, the gitar resting on her knee, curling her fingers around the inlaid fretboard. As it had that first and last time, Turns ago, it shimmered with unplucked sound at her touch. She stilled the strings with her hand. “It’s too good for me, Mine. I’m not a Harper.”

“Neither was Los,” C’mine said. It was the first time Carleah had heard him speak her father’s name in a long time. He leaned down to take something else from one of the boxes on the floor. “It didn’t stop him playing. Or writing.”

He held out a sheaf of hides to her. Carleah carefully laid the gitar down on the couch to take them from him. They were songs, notation and lyrics penned in good ink in her father’s clearest hand. C’los had never been shy about showing off his compositions, and Carleah recognised some of them. Brush You Off and Still Waiting. Midsummer Night was a love song. Tipsy Lizard was a silly ditty he’d written to make her laugh. But as she leafed through, she found songs she didn’t know, tunes she’d never heard: Tailwind, The Dawning, More Of Us. Hearts Of Fire wasn’t even finished, and others were no more than a few lines of lyrics with chords scribbled beneath them.

She tore her eyes away from the work of her father’s clever mind. “You should keep these, Mine.” She touched the notation for Midsummer Night. “He wrote most of them for you.”

“No.” C’mine spoke with finality. “I can’t play them. I can’t even bear to hear them. They should be played and heard. Just not by me.”

Carleah looked up at him despairingly. “You’re really leaving, aren’t you?”

“Sweetheart. I have to.”

She laid C’los’ music down, and picked up his gitar again. She ran her thumb across the strings. “It’s in tune,” she said, and placed her fingers for the first chord of Still Waiting. It had been nearly a Turn since she’d last held a gitar, but her hands hadn’t forgotten what they knew. She played the chord, and her fingers moved of their own accord to the next one.

“Leah,” C’mine said. There was sharp pain in his voice. “Please don’t.”

“One song,” Carleah begged. “Just play one song with me. Even if you never play another one again. Please?”

Slowly, as if it were the most difficult thing he’d ever been asked to do, C’mine lifted his own long-scale four-string gitar from its stand. Dust puffed from it in clouds of neglect as he handled it, and the first notes he struck were sour. Carleah thought he might change his mind and give up. But C’mine’s gitar, while not as refined as C’los’, not as valuable or fragile, had a robustness of its own. It was only a moment before the old mellowness thrummed from strings and wood, underpinning the brightness of the simple chords Carleah played on her father’s beloved gitar.

Knew you were out there

I knew it all along

Stars shining someone else’s morning

My time had to come

Turn towards the east, wait for the sun to rise

Day after day the darkness lay upon my eyes

Blind before you

Blinded by you

I was waiting for the sun

And if you hadn’t come

I’d be there still

Still waiting for your dawn

Still waiting

Tarshe wasn’t there when Carleah returned to their weyr, carrying C’los’ precious gitar and his equally precious music. For that she was glad. She didn’t want Tarshe to see her face, to see that she’d been crying. She didn’t want to talk about it to her. There were times when even a dragonrider needed human interaction. This wasn’t one of them. Carleah sat down in the circle of Jagunth’s forearms, leaned her head back against her chest, and wept.

By the time Tarshe and Berzunth did come back, hours later, Carleah’s fingers were burning, and her throat was nearly raw, but she’d done all her crying.

“Did you talk to him?” Tarshe asked, from Berzunth’s neck-ridges.

Carleah nodded, frowning over the tricky chord change in the middle of Settle The Bet. “He’s transferring to High Reaches.”

“Transferring? Permanently?”

She nodded again, missed the chord change again, and scowled. She gripped her left hand with her right, massaging the cramping muscles.

“You all right?” Tarshe asked.

“I just haven’t played in forever,” Carleah said. “My fingers are killing me.”

She knew it wasn’t what Tarshe meant, and she knew Tarshe knew, too. Still, she took the hint. “You play really well.”

“I don’t,” Carleah said. “Not as well as my da did, anyway. This was his.” She tried the change a third time and smiled when she got it right.

“You sound pretty good, to me,” Tarshe said. “Look, some of us are getting together at the west hearth in the dining hall for a drink to celebrate moving out.”

“A drink?” Carleah asked.

“We’re senior weyrlings now,” said Tarshe. “L’stev’s letting us have some wine. And to mix with some of the other riders. Do you want to come?” She hesitated just a breath before adding, “T’rello’s going to be there.”

It was one of the few things that could have made Carleah look up from what she was doing.

“He asked if you were going to be coming down.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Tarshe agreed gravely.

Carleah blinked. T’rello had been acting oddly around her: sometimes paying her almost too much attention, sometimes ignoring her completely. She liked him – of course she did: he was handsome and talented and a Wingsecond. She wasn’t sure she liked not knowing how he really felt. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be toyed with by a bronze rider. By any rider.

She shook her head. “Not today,” she said. “Tell him…maybe another time.”

Tarshe looked surprised, but then her mouth curved in a small, approving smile. “I’ll tell him,” she said. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I’m going to be fine,” Carleah told her earnestly.

But you like Santinoth’s rider, Jagunth said, when Berzunth had gone.

Carleah stroked her dragon’s chin. There are more important things than that.

She’d spread C’los’ music out around her, some hides draped over Jagunth’s forearms. One of them caught her eye, the notation for one of the songs she’d never heard: More Of Us. She pulled it towards her. “This is just What We Have To Do,” she said, reading the score. “Da wrote this Turns ago.” She fingered the first few chords, and then sang the familiar chorus.

Come the call, come the Fall, you know we will give our all

Fly and flame and sear and spiral, we know what we have to do

Bronze and queen, brown and green, blues complete the winning team

Thread will fear us coming near us, we know what we have to do

Jagunth said, That is a good song for dragons.

“Da never liked it,” Carleah said. “He said the tune was worthy of better lyrics.”

Then she turned the hide over, and found them.

Feels like we’re undervalued, feels like we’re overlooked

There’ll come a time when we won’t take it

We’re green and blue united, we want our history book

Our share of glory and we’ll make it

Time to rise up, time to shut the lies up, time to light the skies up

You can never keep us down

’Cause there’s more of us than you

And you know it’s true

We are proud, we’re unbowed, we are closer to the ground

Got the wind beneath our sails and there’s more of us than you

We are green, we are blue, we’re the best that ever flew

Disrespect us at your peril, ’cause there’s more of us than you

We’re done with condescension, we’re done with disregard

We won’t be treated like we’re nothing

The blues and greens are coming, you should be on your guard

We’ll play our hand and we’re not bluffing

See our faces, this is where the pace is, kick over the traces

You will never keep us down

’Cause there’s more of us than you

And you know it’s true

Won’t be long, we are strong, this is our defiant song

Tired of being in your shadow and there’s more of us than you

We are blue, we are green, we’re the best you’ve ever seen

So oppress us at your peril, ’cause there’s more of us than you

You won’t keep us in our place

You can’t match our speed or grace

We are green, we are blue, we’re the best that ever flew

Disrespect us at your peril

’Cause there’s more of us than you

Carleah looked at the hide, startled. She’d always known her father had believed passionately in more equitable treatment for the riders of the junior colours. She knew that T’kamen had become Weyrleader in part because of the support of green and blue riders, support C’los had nurtured and encouraged for a bronze rider committed to more equal rights for all Madellon’s dragonriders, regardless of colour. But the song in her hands wasn’t just a protest; it was a rallying cry, an inflammatory call to arms for green and blue riders to rebel against the established hierarchy of the Weyr. It would have been a lighted match to the firestone bunker that Carleah knew Madellon had been in the Turns before T’kamen had become Weyrleader.

It’s a song that Da wrote, she told Jagunth. A very angry song.

Why was he angry?

Because he was a green rider, and green riders weren’t treated well when he was alive.

Oh. Jagunth thought about that. Will you sing it to me?

Carleah almost refused. The words were too strong, the sentiment too rebellious. The thrust behind them was indisputably accurate. And the tune drove the song with relentless momentum. It was even more compelling, even more catchy, as a revolutionary anthem than it was as a simple Threadfighting chant.

She looked up from the song in her lap, out across Madellon Weyr. Green dragons filled more weyr ledges than all the other colours combined: greens of every shade, from the palest jade like Jagunth through grass and leaf and sea greens to the deepest emerald hues. Most that were not green were blue, from cerulean to cobalt, azure to indigo. Only occasionally did a brown or bronze hide intersperse the bright shapes of the junior colours, and most of those big dragons occupied the prime low-level weyrs, with all their accompanying benefits of ground access and private bathing.

“You were right, Da,” she said aloud. “It isn’t fair. There are more of us than them.”

Then she grinned, and put her fingers to the gitar.

Chapter eighty-four: T’kamen

The stories of powerful men end in only two ways: death or disgrace.

– Harper truism

27.01.15 – 27.02.05 (27TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR AND THE HARPERHALL

T’kamen moved his Weyrleader to put the white Weyrwoman into mate, and at last, El’yan tipped her over to acknowledge defeat. “Well played, T’kamen.”

T’kamen let out a long breath that he seemed to have been holding for hours. “Faranth, El’yan. That was brutal.”

“It was brave,” said El’yan. “Sacrificing that first Weyrleader of yours was the move that won you the game. I don’t think you’d have made a play like that a few months ago.”

T’kamen looked at the few pieces of his black set that remained beside his Weyrwoman on the board – one Wingleader, one Star Stone, and the Wingrider that had, against all odds, traversed the full width of the board to become a Weyrleader. They were hugely outnumbered by the clutter of vanquished chessmen that El’yan had taken during the game. “I still lost more than I won.”

“Even with the finest strategy in the world, no one ever won a chess match without losing pieces,” said El’yan. “There is no perfect game, T’kamen. No bloodless way to win. All that matters is who’s still standing at the end.”

T’kamen smiled wryly. “Are we still talking about chess?”

“There’s no victory without cost. But you don’t need me to tell you that.”

“No,” T’kamen said. “I don’t.”

A sevenday had passed since the Justice that had determined S’leondes’ fate. He had confessed to every charge laid against him: killing Alanne to wipe out Madellon’s only population of fire-lizards; arranging M’ric’s death in Threadfall to remove his queen Agusta as a source of new eggs; coercing Fraza into a fatal trip between to force an Arbitration to terminate T’kamen’s training programme. He also admitted to drugging T’kamen’s klah on the night of Fraza’s death to ensure that he and Epherineth wouldn’t be able to save her and, almost as an afterthought, to attempting to poison T’kamen before his first trip to Ista. If any rider had questioned the magnitude of S’leondes’ guilt before the Justice, there could be no doubt of it afterwards.

But T’kamen could take no satisfaction from S’leondes’ total surrender, because the Commander who had schemed and connived and murdered in his quest to maintain his grip on Madellon was gone. The man who confessed his sins before Madellon’s Wingleaders and Flightseconds was a shadow of that rider. The strain of lying to his dragon, the shock of having his twisted fabric of lies torn apart, and Karzith’s despair at the betrayal of their bond, had snapped something in S’leondes’ mind. His eyes were blank and vacant, his voice a distant monotone. And he reacted with only mild confusion when Lirelle, serving as Presider, handed down his sentence.

That was the only point during the Justice when T’kamen spoke up. If S’leondes had denied the accusations made against him, T’kamen would have been called to give evidence. S’leondes’ confession rendered such testimony redundant. But as the principal surviving victim of S’leondes’ crimes, T’kamen had the right to speak at his Justice, and he did so.

Under Weyr law, a dragonrider who committed murder was punishable by Separation. He would be exiled to one island in the Western Ocean and his dragon to another, and they would be forbidden to see each other again. In T’kamen’s era, blue and green riders had been exempt from Separation, but that was no longer the case. S’leondes had done more than enough to warrant it.

But Karzith hadn’t. Karzith, T’kamen argued, had been oblivious to his rider’s crimes. Karzith was innocent of them. Karzith had suffered enough.

He didn’t know if his plea actually swayed the Justicers, or if they had never truly intended to follow through on their threat of Separation. He supposed it didn’t matter. S’leondes and Karzith were sentenced to life Exile on Westisle. They left Madellon quietly with a heavy escort. The process of removing their names from Madellon’s records had already begun.

Yet however little pleasure T’kamen had taken in exposing S’leondes, however he’d refrained from vindictiveness in seeing him punished, however sincerely he’d lobbied for the commutation of the former Commander’s ultimate sentence – nothing could stop half the Weyr hating him anyway.

He’d been almost grateful for the first Threadfall after the Justice. The return to routine made most of Madellon’s riders snap out of the shock of losing S’leondes. G’reyan took over as Acting Commander, and for all that he had been S’leondes’ loyal second for many Turns, he didn’t allow whatever personal enmity he felt for T’kamen cloud their professional interactions. But the Fall itself was a bad one, and not only because of high winds and poor visibility. Some fighting riders seemed almost to want to get themselves killed. Some of the dragonpairs Epherineth dragged between to safety actively resisted being saved, and one green rider shrieked abuse at T’kamen when he went to the Infirmary to visit her afterwards: wishing every vile fate upon him and his dragon; screaming that they should have let her die in peace. To the best of T’kamen’s knowledge, she had no special connection to S’leondes, neither wingmate nor tailman nor lover; she was just one of the many fighting riders who couldn’t forgive T’kamen for destroying the Commander they had idolised.

The notion that one of those young riders might seek personal vengeance for S’leondes’ disgrace didn’t seem far-fetched. T’kamen stopped having meals delivered, ate nothing that he hadn’t taken personally from the communal dishes in the dining hall, and persuaded Fetch – with difficulty – to refuse any food but that which he offered him himself. And while he would never have asked for it, he found that he could never go more than a dozen steps from weyr or office without H’juke or F’sta or Z’renniz trailing him watchfully. He could have asked them to stop, but he knew they would disobey him. Having bodyguards was bad enough without the added insult of demonstrating that he was powerless to dismiss them.

“Buck up, T’kamen,” El’yan said, nudging him out of his thoughts. “If you dislike winning so much, you can comfort yourself with the thought that I’ll probably beat you next time.”

They’d begun a new match when the Weyr Singer took his place on the platform in the corner of the dining hall. “Any requests?” Tawgert asked, running through chords as he tuned his gitar.

There was a murmur of interest, and then people began shouting out suggestions.

“Morning Sweep.”

“No, do, Kick Over The Manger.”

“More Of Us.”

“March Of The Wings.”

“All right, all right,” Tawgert laughed. “I’ll get through as many of these as I can.”

T’kamen was only half listening, but the introductory bars the Weyr Singer struck tickled his memory, making him pause in his contemplation of the chessboard. “What’s this tune?” he asked El’yan. “It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.”

El’yan cocked his head slightly to listen. “It’s an old one. It was popular at the beginning of the Pass, before S’leondes became Commander. I’d be surprised if you’d ever heard it.”

T’kamen frowned. “The chord progression…”

Then Tawgert began to sing.

Feels like we’re undervalued, feels like we’re overlooked

There’ll come a time when we won’t take it

We’re green and blue united, we want our history book

Our share of glory and we’ll make it

Time to rise up, time to shut the lies up, time to light the skies up

You can never keep us down

’Cause there’s more of us than you

And you know it’s true

We are proud, we’re unbowed, we are closer to the ground

Got the wind beneath our sails and there’s more of us than you

We are green, we are blue, we’re the best that ever flew

Disrespect us at your peril, ’cause there’s more of us than you

It took until the chorus for T’kamen to recognise the melody. He rose from his place, seizing his cane. At the next table, H’juke leapt up, ready to shadow him. T’kamen waved him away. He reached the harpers’ platform just as Tawgert finished the song. “What in the Void was that?”

Tawgert looked at him over his gitar, surprised. “It’s just an old protest song, T’kamen,” he said. “I didn’t think it would upset you –”

“I’m not upset,” said T’kamen. “But what you just played – that’s a song called What We Have To Do. The lyrics are different, but the tune…the chord changes…”

Tawgert leaned on his gitar, looking intrigued. “Then the melody was re-used from an earlier song?”

“The earlier song was never…he would never…” T’kamen reordered his thoughts, and started again. “Who wrote this version?”

“More Of Us?” Tawgert asked. “I don’t recall…let’s see, do I have the notation…” He rummaged in the racks that stood at the rear of the platform, and came up with a score. “This is it,” he said, perusing the hide. “Music and lyrics are credited to…C’los and Carleah.”

T’kamen felt his throat tighten. He took the score from Tawgert, handling it gently, although it must have been a copy, several times removed from the original. “Carleah,” he said. “She must have found it in his weyr. C’los never did like the original lyrics he wrote.”

“C’los was the rider who taught you gitar,” said Tawgert. “Of course. I knew I knew that name from somewhere. And Carleah…?”

“His daughter,” T’kamen said. “She was a weyrling when I left my time.”

“I’d always assumed Carleah was a Harper,” said Tawgert. “She was the Weyr Singer, you know.”

T’kamen felt himself smiling. “The Weyr Singer. Los would have been so proud of her.”

“This isn’t the only song of theirs that’s stood the test of time,” said Tawgert. “I’m sure there’s another one here somewhere…” He rifled again through the collection of music, and then pulled out a second score. “A-ha! And how appropriate. Midsummer Night.”

T’kamen took the hide, running his eyes over the familiar notation. “Faranth. I used to play this with them. It was C’mine’s favourite.”

He stood lost in the memory for long moments. Then Tawgert held out his gitar to him. “Play it now?”

“No. There’s something else I need to do.”

It was late at the Harperhall, but that was good. Under cover of darkness, fewer people would notice them. Even old Bienath only opened one rheumy eye and barely snorted acknowledgement when Epherineth appeared above the fire-heights.

The journeyman behind the desk in the entrance hall was the same grey and lean Harper who had been on duty the first time T’kamen had visited Kellad with M’ric and Ch’fil. “Marshal T’kamen,” he said, rising hurriedly from his stool.

“Don’t get up, journeyman,” T’kamen told him. “Is the Masterharper here? I know it’s late.”

“He’ll still be up,” the journeyman replied. “Would you like me to…” He looked askance at T’kamen’s cane. “…send a runner?”

“No need,” T’kamen said. “I’ll make my way up there myself.”

It was a long, lonely climb through the silent Harperhall to Master Marlaw’s study. T’kamen paused on a galleried landing halfway up a staircase to rest his leg. A dusty set of pipes hung in an alcove there, their varnish crazed and darkened with age, above an equally dusty plaque that read: Multiple pipes belonging to Master Torve, 1st Masterharper of the South. T’kamen looked at pipes and plaque for a long time before he resumed his climb.

Despite the late hour, and T’kamen’s refusal of a runner to precede him, the Masterharper was waiting for him. “Marshal,” Marlaw greeted him. “An unexpected honour.”

“You don’t seem surprised to see me,” said T’kamen.

“I always knew you’d be back,” said Marlaw. Then he shrugged. “And I saw Epherineth land. It’s hard to mistake a dragon of his size. Can I offer you a glass of wine, Marshal?”

“Just T’kamen,” he said, “and thank you. Not too strong.”

Marlaw went to the decanters on his sideboard. “You’ve been busy since we last met.”

T’kamen lowered himself gingerly into one of the Masterharper’s comfortable armchairs. “Passingly.”

“You’ve come for the Chronicle, haven’t you?”

“I want to know what happened to the people I knew.”

“I understand.” Marlaw set a cup of wine at T’kamen’s elbow, then turned to a cabinet behind his desk. The history book was as substantial as T’kamen remembered. Marlaw put it down with a thump, but left his hand on the cover. “Make me one promise. When you’ve finished here, tell me your story, so that a hundred Turns from now, some other Masterharper can sit at this desk with the mystery of Weyrleader T’kamen unravelled.”

“My story isn’t finished,” said T’kamen.

“When it is, it’ll be too late for you to tell it.”

T’kamen nearly smiled. “All right.”

Marlaw took his hand off the book. “I hope you find what you need.”

T’kamen pulled the heavy Chronicle of the Seventh Interval towards him. The engraved leather tab still marked the page he had read before, and he turned straight to it. Once again he scanned down the short paragraphs that narrated his brief tenure as Weyrleader of Madellon and, at the bottom of the page, the paragraph that he’d never finished.

Breeding influence of dragon

Epherineth’s lasting contribution to the bloodlines of Madellon’s dragons was limited by the fact that his queen daughter Berzunth –

T’kamen steeled himself, and turned the page.

– transferred to Southern Weyr in I7/104, where her rider Tarshe became Weyrwoman following the death of Southern’s then-Weyrwoman Karika (see page 145, Weyrwoman Karika, Southern Weyr). However, as Berzunth’s first queen daughter, Seihath, became in turn the founding queen of Starfall Weyr in I7/122 (see page 518, Weyrwoman Halling, Starfall Weyr), and given the notable fecundity of both queens, Epherineth nonetheless became one of the most significant and dominant southern continent sires of the Seventh Interval.

Something eased inside T’kamen’s chest, a stricture he hadn’t even known was there until it no longer was. He sat back in his chair. His face ached, and he realised he was grinning. Epherineth. Your line did live on.

Epherineth had never been a verbose dragon, but it was rare for him to be entirely lost for words. T’kamen could feel him struggling to articulate the emotions that were flooding through him. Southern and Starfall, he said, at last. My daughter and my daughter’s daughter.

I’ve never been sure if dragons put much importance on legacy.

Most dragons don’t, Epherineth said. But I’m not most dragons.

T’kamen turned his attention to the final paragraph of his entry in the Chronicle.

Succession

In the immediate aftermath of T’kamen’s disappearance, Wingleaders H’ned and Sh’zon served as joint Deputy Weyrleaders for Madellon (see page 315, Seventh Interval Regency, Madellon Weyr). Following Sh’zon’s return to his native Peninsula Weyr, H’ned was confirmed as Weyrleader Regent in I7/100. However, in I7/101, Wingleader T’gat became the next Weyrleader of Madellon when his Muzzanth caught Shimpath in her third mating flight.

“T’gat?” T’kamen asked, so startled he said it aloud. “T’gat became Weyrleader?”

“That surprises you?” asked Marlaw.

“He was always just so…” T’kamen paused to find the right word. “Nondescript. Madellon was never short of ambitious bronze riders, and T’gat’s about the last one I’d ever have expected to become Weyrleader.”

“He must have risen to the challenge,” said Marlaw. “He was Weyrleader for twelve Turns.”

“Faranth.”

T’kamen leafed through the Chronicle, picking up as he did an overview of the major political events of the Interval. He would have liked to know more about the conflict between Madellon and Southern that resulted in Weyrleader P’raima’s death. He was fascinated by the revelation that Sh’zon’s illegal participation in a Peninsula leadership flight had resulted in that Weyr become the first on Pern to elect its Weyrleaders. And he was gladdened, more than he had realised he might be, when he read Valonna’s entry, and discovered how the shy and diffident young queen rider he had known was remembered as a confident, just, and far-sighted Weyrwoman who had led Madellon through a period of turbulence and upheaval.

But the Chronicle was limited in scope, dealing as it did only with the major political players of the Seventh Interval, and by the time T’kamen had read far enough that none of the names were familiar any more, he knew that he hadn’t really come back to the Harperhall to find out what had happened to H’ned or Sh’zon, or even to Valonna and Tarshe. He rubbed the back of his neck, aching from craning over the tome.

“You didn’t find them, did you?”

He looked up. Marlaw was regarding him with the same knowing expression he’d worn the first time T’kamen had visited him. “Who?” he asked, deliberately obtuse.

“The ones who mattered to you, but not to history.”

A journeyman Beastcrafter. A blue rider who’d lost his way. And a brown rider who shouldn’t have been there. Had he really expected to find any of them in the Chronicle of the Seventh Interval? “No,” he said. He closed the cover of the book, and pushed it back across the desk. “Maybe it’s better that way.”

“I can make enquiries,” said Marlaw. “The Hall’s resources are at your disposal.”

“You’ve already been more than generous,” said T’kamen. “I’m not here under the Weyr’s auspices.”

“It has nothing to do with the debt we owe the Weyr, T’kamen,” said Marlaw. “Some debts are even greater than that.”

T’kamen looked at him.

“You were a Weyrleader of Pern at a time when that was the greatest honour any dragonrider – any man – could aspire to,” said Marlaw. “You had power and influence and respect. You had friends. You had lovers.” The Masterharper’s eyes never stopped searching T’kamen’s face as he spoke. “And you left all that behind. You came more than a century through the Turns to a time not your own, to a Pern in ruins, and to a Madellon that no longer cared about bronze riders or Weyrleaders. You could have yielded to the expectation of your new society, sunk into the ignominy decreed for a dragonrider of your colour in the Eighth Pass, become the anachronistic relic of a time everyone believed to be past. But you didn’t. You dared to hope. You presumed to dream. You risked everything, defied everyone, to pursue something better, not just for yourself or your Weyr or for dragonriders, but for Pern. And you’ve paid for every inch of ground you’ve gained; by Faranth, have you paid, in coin of shame and heartbreak, in your dragon’s blood and your own. But you’ve never surrendered: not to the pressure of your peers, not to the hopelessness of a task never before attempted, not to the despair of what you had lost and what you continued to lose. You became the figurative implacable force, and proved that S’leondes was not quite as immovable an object as he or Madellon or Pern had once believed. You never stopped believing, never stopped trying, never stopped daring, regardless of the cost.” Marlaw paused in his oration, his eyes bright with intensity. “Faranth, T’kamen. The debt Pern owes you!”

T’kamen looked aside, discomfited by it all. “Pern doesn’t owe me anything,” he said. “I haven’t succeeded yet. Epherineth’s still the only dragon in the Eighth Pass who can go between and come out again. The Unseen…” He stopped before admitting that he’d lacked the heart to ask his riders back to begin training again, with the wound of S’leondes’ disgrace still so fresh. Marlaw probably knew – he was, like any Masterharper, very well informed – but there was still a difference between tacit knowledge and explicit disclosure.

“Epherineth,” Marlaw said softly. “It would be a travesty to underestimate his significance in your story, wouldn’t it?”

“My story is his story, Masterharper,” T’kamen said. “Without Epherineth there is no T’kamen. Everything you credit to me is at least half his doing.”

“Your partner in all things,” said Marlaw.

T’kamen shook his head. “Some riders talk about their dragons as their partner or their brother or their best friend. Epherineth is all those things, but he’s more than that. There’s no place where I stop and he begins, no thought I could have that he can’t hear, no emotion I feel that he doesn’t feel. He’s not me, and I’m not him. I’m a man; he’s a dragon. But we’re together. Always, in every way. There’s no way to separate us. None at all.”

“Then he’s aware of what we’re talking about now?” asked Marlaw.

“Aware,” T’kamen said. “Just not very interested.”

Marlaw looked intrigued. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with a rider whose dragon was listening in before.” Then his eyes shifted to Fetch, riding T’kamen’s shoulder. “And your fire-lizard? How does he fit into your union?”

T’kamen thought about how the slender thread of Fetch’s consciousness had crept almost shyly into the bond he shared with Epherineth. “He’s connected to Epherineth through…” And even as he said it, it slipped into place in his mind with such ease that for a moment he was astonished he hadn’t thought of it before. “Through…me.”

That’s why the other dragons have struggled, Epherineth said, as the realisation struck him at the same moment. They are not connected.

Marlaw was watching T’kamen with a fascinated expression. “You look like a man who’s just had an epiphany, T’kamen.”

“I have,” T’kamen said. He reached for his cane and got up. “Pern may yet owe me that debt.”

He went to Audette at first light. C’rastro, the Weyrlingmaster, still hadn’t forgiven him for Epherineth’s intimidation of Prerth, and probably never would; bypassing him entirely in favour of his assistant might not have been the most politick approach, but Audette had always been much the most fair and sympathetic member of the Weyrlingmaster’s staff.

She was overseeing the morning feeding of Levierth’s latest dragonets. “Marshal,” she greeted T’kamen as he approached. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“You train them to block, don’t you?” T’kamen asked, without preamble. “As soon as they’re born. You teach the weyrlings to block them out.”

Audette looked taken aback for a moment, but she quickly regained her poise. “We call it filtering, not blocking,” she said, “but yes. We train all our riders to maintain a degree of detachment from their dragons’ emotions. With our riders Impressing so young, it makes things much easier for them to cope with.”

“Then S’leondes’ deception of Karzith –”

She pressed her lips together. “What he did was a perversion of what we teach.” She spoke quietly, so her voice didn’t carry to the nearby weyrlings, but there was no equivocality to the disapproval in her tone. “He held himself completely apart from Karzith, and fed him outright lies. It’s no wonder the dissonance broke that poor dragon.”

“But he was just taking the technique to an extreme,” said T’kamen. “The fundaments are the same. You teach riders to dampen the connection with their dragons.”

“You know how young dragons and riders can feed off each other’s emotions. When we’re losing dragonpairs every Fall, the cycle of grief can be hard to break.”

“I think the blocking – filtering, whatever you want to call it – is the reason why Pass dragons have so much trouble going between even with the help of fire-lizards,” T’kamen said. “When Fetch pilots Epherineth between, they don’t communicate directly with each other. They go through me.”

“And you were never trained to filter him out at all,” said Audette.

“We were taught a few exercises,” said T’kamen. “I never had much interest in learning them.”

“You must have been a joy to your Weyrlingmaster.”

“But I think the filtering is hampering the ability of the fire-lizard to pilot the dragon. They have to fight to get through the rider’s blocks, and by the time they have…”

“It’s too late,” Audette finished for him. She looked pensive. “It does seem logical. Fraza was a most assiduous student of everything she was taught as a weyrling. M’ric too, for all his flaws.”

“I need the Unseen to overcome that training,” said T’kamen. “I need them connecting with their dragons completely. But I don’t have a good enough grasp of what it is they need to overcome.”

“You want my help,” said Audette.

“I do,” said T’kamen.

She looked at him strangely. “You don’t have to petition me for help, you know,” she said. “You’re the Marshal of Madellon.”

“I’d rather have your help of your own free will than compel you to provide it out of obligation, Audette.”

She looked at the group of weyrlings, riders and dragonets alike bloody to the chops with raw meat. “Between has always had its own risks, hasn’t it? Even in your day. S’leondes wasn’t lying about that.”

“He wasn’t,” T’kamen said. “When I was a weyrling, we lost two out of eighteen pairs learning to go between. It is a dangerous tool. But I’m convinced it’s worth the risk.”

“You don’t need to persuade me, T’kamen,” Audette said. “I’ve never been in any doubt about the benefits of restoring between.”

“Haven’t you?”

“We’ve become too concerned with ourselves, we dragonriders,” she said. “Too self-serving. We’ve forgotten that we’re here to serve Pern. To protect Pern. I fear that our forebears would be disappointed in the job that the Weyrs of the Eighth Pass have done so far.”

“Losing the north,” T’kamen said.

“Losing the north,” said Audette. “But you don’t even have to go that far to see where we’ve failed. I was Searched from Peranvo Hold, you know, before the Pass began.” The pause she left was full of regret and guilt and frustration for the fate of that once-mighty Hold. “Dragons need between, T’kamen. Pern needs between.”

“Then you’ll help?”

Audette regarded him with the steady serenity that had always distinguished her. “I haven’t seen you training with the Unseen since before the Arbitration. Have Dannie and B’roce and the rest of the fighting riders agreed to continue?”

“Not yet,” said T’kamen. “I’m hoping to persuade them to put the greater good before their personal dislike for me.”

“They don’t dislike you, T’kamen,” Audette said. “They resent you for bringing down S’leondes. But mark my words: they resent him more, for failing to live up to their expectations of him. The difference is that you’re still here to be a target for their anger, and he’s not.”

T’kamen glanced over his shoulder. Tetketh and Bularth were sitting near Epherineth, and their riders were loitering not far away. Watching his back. “Being a target is starting to wear on me.”

“There are two things you could do worse than to learn from S’leondes,” Audette told him. “The first is to reward loyalty. He was always good at showing appreciation for the riders who put themselves out for him.” She paused. “At least until he started murdering them.”

T’kamen laughed mirthlessly. “And the second?”

“Don’t ever be unworthy of their devotion.”

“That’s a tall order.”

“I didn’t say it would be easy.”

He digested that in silence for a moment. “Will you help me, Audette?”

“Yes,” she replied, immediately this time. “I will.”

“Was S’leondes evil?”

Epherineth had warned T’kamen that Dannie was on her way into the weyr, but her opening demand was still blunt enough to be surprising. T’kamen put aside the chart he’d been studying to give her his full attention. “Do you think he was?”

“H’juke does,” she said. “B’roce thinks he wasn’t right. In the head.” She made a looping gesture around her ear with one finger. “Crazy.”

“Does anyone have any other alternatives, besides bad and mad?” T’kamen asked.

“He’d have to be one or the other, to have…done what he did.”

“Then you don’t think he could have been…” T’kamen paused, and then said, awkwardly, “…sincerely misguided?”

The look Dannie gave him was flatly incredulous. “Is that a joke?”

T’kamen relented. “I don’t think it’s as simple as calling him one or the other. I think he was desperate. I think he was genuinely afraid of what restoring between would mean for Pern – for the Pern he knew, the Pern he’d helped to build.”

Dannie set her jaw. “Bronze riders shouldn’t be the leaders just because they’re bronze riders.”

“No, they shouldn’t,” said T’kamen. “But if S’leondes had been born in my time, he would have Impressed a bronze.”

“You’re judging Karzith because he’s a blue –”

“There’s nothing wrong with Karzith,” said T’kamen. “Faranth knows, some of the finest and bravest dragons I’ve ever known have been blues. But S’leondes should never have Impressed a dragon as mild as Karzith. He wanted a blue, and by force of will, he got one. But Karzith was never his equal in that partnership in the way that Epherineth is my equal. And Lusooth yours.”

Dannie shifted uncertainly, as if unsure if that was a compliment or a slight. “So you agree with B’roce,” she said. “You think the Commander wasn’t right in the head.”

“I think there was a…discordance to him,” said T’kamen. “Like a gitar badly tuned. Remember what I said at the Arbitration about serving the Weyr?”

“That it doesn’t let you have a clear conscience,” said Dannie.

“I think S’leondes believed he was serving the Weyr,” said T’kamen. “And while he could keep Karzith from knowing the truth, he had no conscience to stain.”

“A dragon isn’t a conscience, T’kamen.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “One’s the voice in your head that tells you right from wrong, and the other…” He sighed. “S’leondes could justify his actions to himself. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to justify them to Karzith. If Karzith had known what he was doing, he’d have stopped him.”

She looked at him.

“I don’t believe that S’leondes was evil or crazy, Dannie,” T’kamen said. He wasn’t sure he believed what he said. He did believe it mattered that he said it. “But I do think he was wrong.”

“He was our Commander,” she said, and for the first time since T’kamen had known Dannie, she sounded every bit the very young woman she still was.

“I know,” T’kamen said

“And he killed Fraza.”

“I know.”

“What do you mean, I know?” Dannie shouted. “Why aren’t you angry? He killed M’ric and Fraza! He tried to kill you! And what if one of us had managed to go between? He’d have killed us! You should have let him be Separated! He deserved to die! You should have killed him!”

“Killing him wouldn’t have achieved anything, Dannie,” T’kamen said. “Nor would Separation. It wouldn’t bring Fraza or M’ric back.”

“It would make me feel better!”

“No,” T’kamen said. “It wouldn’t.” He looked at her until she couldn’t hold his gaze any more. “It wouldn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I once let a murderer die when I could have saved him,” said T’kamen. “I let him die out of anger and spite. I let him die because I wanted him dead. And it haunts me still.”

“Was he a dragonrider?”

“No.”

“Who did he murder?”

“My oldest friend.”

“Another bronze rider?”

T’kamen smiled, though it hurt him to do it. “A green rider.”

Dannie stared at him. Then she turned away to look towards the archway to Epherineth’s chamber. She stood there for a long moment, her body language betraying her turmoil. Finally, she turned back towards him. “You want to start training again.”

“Yes.”

“To prove S’leondes was wrong?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

“But it will prove S’leondes was wrong, won’t it? He’d shaffing hate it, wouldn’t he?”

“Most likely.”

Dannie looked at him. She nodded. “I’ll talk to the others.”

They didn’t prove S’leondes wrong the next day, or the next. No habit could be broken overnight, least of all a habit ingrained from the earliest days of weyrlinghood.

“I should have known,” T’kamen said to Audette one morning, as they walked between the dragonpairs of the Unseen, observing as riders and dragons bent their wills to breaking down the barriers that impeded their communication. “That little green dragonet, when I was first working my Discipline in the Barracks. Her rider was too good at keeping her out.”

“We start them on it as soon as they Impress,” said Audette. “It’s seemed the kindest way for a long time. I appreciate why you’ve taken such a strong stance with C’rastro over it now, but we’ll have a lot more upset weyrlings and distressed dragonets to console in the next few Turns.”

“Not just weyrlings, based on what we’ve seen from this lot so far,” T’kamen said wryly.

“A few extra toilet breaks and some lapses in table manners are the least of our worries,” said Audette. She looked meaningfully in Dannie’s direction. “Her green’s going to rise by the end of the day, and the way some of the male riders have been jostling around her, it could get ugly.”

“Over a green flight?”

Audette shrugged. “They aren’t used to feeling their dragons’ low-level arousal all the time like they’re beginning to now. It’s making them all revert to randy teenagers. Well, those of them who aren’t still randy teenagers anyway. I don’t suppose it’ll help when those fire-lizards are old enough to start mating, too. Faranth help us; this lot will be doing nothing but weyr-hopping for sevendays.”

The distracted behaviour of the Unseen riders as they began to experience their dragons’ physical and emotional states more directly had one upside. It proved that Audette’s patient work with them was having the desired effect. The riders who were most often gripped by hunger pangs not their own, or who suddenly excused themselves to the necessary like half-trained infants, were those who were finding it easiest to throw off their conditioning.

T’kamen couldn’t have done it without Audette. It wasn’t just that he lacked an understanding of Pass training techniques, although that was part of it. Audette’s involvement blunted the wariness that some of the fighting riders still harboured towards T’kamen for his part in S’leondes’ downfall. And he hadn’t realised how mediocre a teacher he was until his clumsy attempts to instil comprehension in his students were contrasted with Audette’s finesse. L’stev, he reflected, had been right to refuse him a place on his staff all those Turns ago. He was no Weyrlingmaster.

But even Audette could only take them so far. She had no fire-lizard; her dragon was far beyond the age when her ability to go between had atrophied. When the time came, the burden of expectation would fall once more onto T’kamen’s shoulders.

It was a foul morning. It had been pouring all night as wave after wave of driving rain hit Madellon from the south west, and the bedraggled state of the riders who reported in from the morning sweeps was mute evidence that there was more to come.

“Bularth says he feels like he’s never going to be dry again,” H’juke said, as he heaved a sandbag into place across the mouth of T’kamen’s weyr. Epherineth’s ledge hadn’t flooded yet, but many others had, and H’juke, unasked, had arrived with everything he needed to build a barricade.

“Hatching ground?” T’kamen suggested.

“He tried,” H’juke said glumly. “It’s full of fighting dragons, all crammed in like fish in a keg.”

“It had to do this on a rest day, didn’t it?” T’kamen asked Epherineth aloud, as H’juke went back outside to get another couple of bags. “It couldn’t rain on a Fall day for a change.”

Epherineth was curled disgruntledly on his couch. I don’t want to stay in here all day.

H’juke came back in with two more sandbags slung over his shoulders. He dropped one at the end of the row he’d already started, then stopped in a pose of crucial expectation. “Achoo!”

He was nearly drowned out by Bularth’s simultaneous explosive sneeze from the ledge outside. “Faranth, Juke,” T’kamen said. “Are you coming down with something?”

“It’s not me. It’s Bularth. The rain gets up his nose, and every time he sneezes, I do too.” He dumped his second sandbag and then went out for more. “Achoo-hoo!”

T’kamen turned to look at Epherineth.

Epherineth angled his head down to look back at him.

“H’juke,” T’kamen said, when he came back in again. “Do you have plans for the rest of the day?”

“Not really. Did you need me to do something?”

“How would you like to go somewhere dry?”

“I don’t think there is anywhere dry within a two-hour flight,” said H’juke. “It’s pouring from Jessaf to Kellad.”

T’kamen nearly laughed at his guilelessness. “It won’t be raining at Ista.”

“At…Ista?” H’juke let the last sandbag slide gently from his shoulder. His eyes searched T’kamen’s face, first with incredulity, and then with gradually more excitement. “You mean…”

“You’re ready, Juke. You understand the theory. You have for sevendays. Fathom’s the best-trained fire-lizard in the fair. And there’s nothing interfering between you and Bularth any more.”

“But…” H’juke said, then stopped, as if trying to come up with an objection. T’kamen waited. “I thought for sure you’d ask Dannie,” he said softly, after a moment. “I thought you’d want…”

“A fighting rider to be first?” T’kamen asked, when H’juke trailed guiltily off. “It would probably be the wiser course, wouldn’t it?” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Scorch the wiser course.”

H’juke looked caught between alarm and delight, but his training brought him down on the side of caution. “The others will go mad.”

“They’ll have their turn soon enough,” T’kamen said. “Someone has to be first.” He thought about what Audette had said, about the lessons he could learn from S’leondes. Reward loyalty. “And it should be you, H’juke. You’ve been a part of this from the beginning, ever since Ch’fil lent you to me. I’ve leaned on you so hard, and so often, and you’ve never complained. You do a dozen things every day to make my life easier, and if I haven’t recognised you for it, then that’s my fault, not yours. You’ve been steadfast through all the turbulence I’ve caused, when so many others haven’t. And I haven’t forgotten what you offered to do before the Arbitration.” He put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You weren’t ready then, but you are now. The name that history remembers as the first Eighth Pass rider to go between and come out safely should be yours, H’juke. You’ve more than earned that honour.”

For an alarming moment, T’kamen thought that H’juke was going to burst into tears. His eyes were huge and shining with emotion. And not just emotion, T’kamen realised. Devotion.

“When I Impressed Bularth, I…” H’juke’s voice was choked. “They told me I’d never amount to anything. They told me I’d always be a burden on the Weyr. Because I was just a bronze rider.”

“From one bronze rider to another,” said T’kamen, “I’m telling you now: they were wrong.” He gripped H’juke’s shoulder, hard. “Come between with me to Ista. Ch’fil will be glad to see you.”

“Yes,” H’juke said, at last. His voice was choked. “Yes, sir! Yes, Weyrleader, sir!”

Chapter eighty-five: L’stev

A Weyrlingmaster’s decisions, more than any other rider’s, resonate down the Turns long after he himself is dead and gone.

– Excerpt from Weyrlingmaster D’hor’s personal diaries

100.06.04 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON WEYR

Vanzanth usually woke early, disturbing L’stev whether he liked it or not, but the brown dragon was still enjoying his sleep when Crauva’s movements disturbed L’stev.

Sixty today, he thought, in the unusual moment of privacy.

Then he flung his arm over his face against the light of uncovered glows, and complained, “What sharding time do you call this, Crau?”

“Time to get up,” she replied serenely, from the direction of the bathing room.

L’stev uncovered his face long enough see how much light was coming through the archway. “Is it even morning watch yet?”

“For the last half an hour.”

“Middle of the sharding night,” L’stev grumbled.

“Go back to sleep, you grumpy old man,” said Crauva.

L’stev wondered if she knew how accurate that sobriquet was today. Probably not. He didn’t like to mark his Turndays. “No good,” he said. “I’m awake now.” He propped himself up on an elbow, looking blearily across the room. Crauva was buttoning her blouse. Another missed opportunity, L’stev said to Vanzanth.

As Vanzanth woke, much of L’stev’s drowsy lethargy left him. It was difficult to stay sleepy when his dragon was awake and alert. Too early, Vanzanth complained.

Tough titties. “Don’t see why you need to be down in the caverns at this hour anyway,” L’stev said. “Can’t Nelya open up for breakfast?”

“Her foster son’s sick,” said Crauva. “If she had any sleep at all last night it’ll be a wonder, and I won’t have the morning’s bake ruined for want of someone with their wits about them in the kitchens.”

“I could live with a burnt roll or two if it meant I got an extra half an hour of your time,” L’stev told her, with a hopeful grin.

“Half an hour?” Crauva came back over to the bed, laughing. She bent to kiss him, then deftly dodged his grab. “You know that’s not nearly enough, brown rider.”

L’stev gave her his dirtiest chuckle. He watched the Headwoman move around his weyr. “Can do this more often, now the kids are out of the barracks.”

“You’ll want your other quarters aired out, won’t you?” said Crauva. “I’ll send a girl.”

“Sooner you didn’t,” said L’stev. “None of your girls know how I like things.”

“Then you may do it yourself. I’m too busy to be your serving woman.”

“The door’s there,” L’stev said, gesturing towards the archway.

“Boil your head,” said Crauva. Then she paused in her bustle. “It only seems five minutes ago they Impressed. And not much longer than that when Rastevon was keeping me up all night with a fever.”

“He’s given me a sleepless night once or twice since he Impressed, if it’s any comfort,” said L’stev.

“You’re too hard on him. It’s not his fault he’s your son.”

“I’m hard on all my bronzes,” L’stev insisted. He scratched at his chest hair. “For all the good it’s done them, over the Turns.”

“You’re too hard on yourself, too, Stev.”

“At least I’m consistent. You want Vanzanth to give you a ride down the Bowl?”

“That would be nice of him.”

By the time Vanzanth had delivered Crauva to the lower caverns – and returned with a basket cupped carefully in his forepaws – L’stev had heaved himself grudgingly out of bed. “What’s this?” he asked, taking the basket.

She asked me to wait.

L’stev eyed the basket suspiciously, hoping it didn’t contain something that would alert Vanzanth to the occasion of the day. He opened it, and chuckled. Inside were two rolls, slightly singed around the edges, and a note that read, Half an hour!

He ate them leaning against his dragon’s shoulder, looking out at the Bowl as Madellon came slowly awake. The early morning chill made smoking plumes of his breath and Vanzanth’s. “How’s that tooth feeling today?”

Vanzanth rolled his tongue around his mouth. It still aches.

L’stev caught his lower jaw and pulled it down towards him to inspect it. “This one?” he asked, poking at the last molar on the left.

Yes. Vanzanth’s voice even sounded muffled.

The great blocky tooth, bigger than L’stev’s fist, was deeply fissured, but no more so than any of the others. He’d dug out every last grain of stone from between Vanzanth’s teeth the night before with a pick, but the gum still looked puffy around the painful tooth. “I’ll ask Vhion to take a look,” he said. “Chyilth can demonstrate chewing technique today.”

I can chew on the other side.

“These are the only teeth you’ve got, Vanzanth. Stupid taking any chances with them. Unless the idea of drinking pre-chewed wherry out of a bucket appeals to you.”

Will you be doing the pre-chewing for me?

L’stev let his dragon’s jaw go. “Vhion,” he said firmly.

He didn’t miss the morning ritual of touring through the barracks to make sure all the kids were up. Unlikely though it seemed, some weyrlings were able to sleep right through the thunderous noise of half-mature dragons crashing about. Still, rousting all his charges out of their furs now they were scattered throughout the Bowl in their own weyrs presented challenges of its own.

Challenges aplenty lay ahead. L’stev always worried about his weyrlings, but the Wildfires had more on their plates than most. He picked out a couple of the half-grown dragons, still asleep on their weyr ledges, and tried to reconcile everything he knew about their riders with the notion of a Wing comprised solely of them. Any of the bronzes had the makings of a leader. H’nar would be the obvious choice, and being H’ned’s son certainly wouldn’t harm his prospects so long as his father occupied the Weyrleader’s weyr. K’ralthe was cleverer, if not so well-liked. And even R’von had begun to show hints that he was ready to brush the chip from his shoulder and conduct himself as a man should.

How sentimental of you, Vanzanth observed.

I didn’t ask for your opinion.

Still, it was uncomfortable enough when he dispersed his charges out to the care of experienced Wingleaders; the thought of leaving them as a unit, even under a likely leader like H’nar, made L’stev deeply uneasy. Even the most precocious bronze riders usually did at least a Turn as a wingrider, and several more as a Wingsecond, before taking on their own commands. Wingleaders who accepted freshly-graduated bronze and brown riders into their Wings did so in the tacit knowledge that they would be expected to mould those young men into the leaders they might one day become. If H’nar became Wingleader of the Wildfires straight out of weyrlinghood – and L’stev was resigned to the likelihood that H’ned would push hard for his son to be put first – who would be responsible for his development? How would he learn without experienced Wingseconds to show him how a Wing really worked? L’stev had performed that duty himself many times over his Turns as a Wingsecond – scraping the sharp edges off prideful young bronze riders who thought they knew everything. He hadn’t always succeeded, but a couple of his protégés weren’t complete disappointments to him.

Sentimentality again, said Vanzanth. What’s the matter with you today?

Shut your snout.

The weyrlings still ate breakfast together in the barracks hall. A’len turned up as they were finishing their meal. “Everything under control?”

“Shouldn’t it be?” L’stev asked.

“A couple of the blues are watching Faseth rather intently.”

L’stev looked hard at the weyrling blue riders until he identified the offenders. “J’kovu!” he barked. “C’seon! Get your dragons’ minds off that green and your hands where I can see them!”

Kessirke, sitting next to J’kovu, looked appalled. “Oh, yuck!”

The two boys looked suitably horrified – albeit more for being caught with their hands in their pants than for the actual offence of them being there. L’stev sent them off to wash up, ordering them to use extra soapsand while they were about it. “I’d forgotten how much I hate them at this age,” he muttered to A’len. “If it’s not precocious dragonets humping each other’s legs, it’s their riders doing the same.

“It can’t be easy, being fourteen with a Turn-old dragon,” said A’len. “I’m glad I was older when Chyilth started humping legs.”

L’stev snorted. “Get them started on their first chew. I’m taking Vanzanth to Vhion. That tooth’s still bothering him.”

“Is Carleah assigned to the Weyrwoman with Tarshe today?”

“No,” said L’stev. “She’s bright enough that she won’t fall behind for missing a few mornings, but I don’t want Jagunth skipping too many more chewing sessions. Pay them some extra attention, would you?”

“Will do.”

A’len was a steady pair of hands, L’stev thought, as he rigged Vanzanth’s harness for the short glide over to the infirmary, but he didn’t know that he fancied him for his assistant long-term. L’stev liked him, personally, very much. He was competent and reliable, and the weyrlings respected him. There was still something missing. A’len lacked a certain intuition, the knack a good teacher had for understanding where a weyrling was struggling and finding a way to correct it. He’d been a Harper apprentice in his youth – a background he shared with many of the riders L’stev had tapped as his assistants over the Turns – but the fact that the Hall had let him go for Search without a struggle spoke to what potential he’d shown to his Masters. He was a good Wingsecond, even an excellent one, and L’stev thought that that was probably what he should remain.

You’re not being fair to him, you know, Vanzanth told him.

“What makes you say that?”

He’s a perfectly good Assistant Weyrlingmaster, but that isn’t the standard you’re holding him to.

“Oh, isn’t it?”

It is hard to see how anyone else could ever compare to you.

“I’m not comparing him to me.”

Your patience, your wisdom…

“Vanzanth.”

Your dashing good looks…

“Are you done?”

The way your knees crackle when you dismount…

L’stev waited.

I’m done now.

He buckled in and checked the safety. “Sarcasm is a base sort of wit, Vanzanth.”

I’m a base sort of dragon.

“I’ve noticed.”

Vanzanth launched himself from the ledge above the barracks. You could have done better.

And whose fault is that?

He turned his head slightly, dropping his jaw. Mine!

Vanzanth had always enjoyed taking credit for ruining L’stev’s prospects. There’d been three bronzes in his clutch, and none of the riders they’d chosen had been – or were – particularly special. The question of whether one of those bronzes might have chosen L’stev had been rendered moot by the fact that Vanzanth had got to him first.

Dragonriders liked to talk up how a hatchling always chose exactly the right person, as if there were only one possible rider for any dragon, one possible dragon for any rider. L’stev found that idea positively absurd. Dragonets could only choose from the candidates they were offered, and sometimes there wasn’t even much choice. The idea that a dragon could only be Impressed by its one true rider was laughable. L’stev didn’t even believe that any given candidate was meant for a specific colour, let alone a specific dragon. More so with girls, perhaps. Most girls were either green-types or queen-types, without much nuance in between. Most male candidates, though, straddled two or more colours on the spectrum in terms of their suitability. The vast majority of the boys L’stev stood as candidates were in the blue-to-brown range. He was seldom unduly worried about colour fit with his browns and blues. But while plenty of candidates said they’d be delighted to Impress whatever dragon chose them, L’stev couldn’t think of many dragonriders who’d have been happy with any colour. The difference between a blue and a green was much more fundamental than a single degree of hierarchy. And while the prestige range, brown-to-bronze, was a common aspiration, and a reasonably forceful candidate was as likely to Impress one as the other subject to what Hatched on the day and in what order, the step up in expectation and responsibility from brown to bronze was just as dramatic.

But hatchlings didn’t discuss amongst themselves who was best suited to whom. There was some evidence that a strong personality could influence a unborn dragonet through focused attention on its egg, which was why L’stev monitored the contact his candidates had with a hardening clutch closely, but once hatchlings began to break shell, anything could happen. The old saw that a bronze Hatching first was a good omen was only common sense: the first hatchling had the whole complement of candidates to choose from, theoretically guaranteeing a strong match. Conversely, the dragonet who Hatched last must make the best of what remained. L’stev didn’t think it was a coincidence that bronzes like Epherineth, Izath, and Santinoth had Hatched early in their clutches; Pierdeth, Peteorth, and Alonth had all been late dragonets.

Vanzanth had been the second hatchling out of his clutch. He often claimed that he’d only chosen L’stev because he’d been in his way, but L’stev remembered that day well, and he remembered how purposefully the plain-coloured, snub-snouted, unremarkable-looking hatchling had made for him. He’d seen it many times since: a determined brown poaching a lad who’d been tipped for bronze before any such dragonet had a chance at him. Once Impression was made, that was that.

L’stev had never felt any resentment about his own Impression, nor taken any pride in the retrospective hunch that he would have been a bronze rider under only slightly different circumstances. It was all far too long ago for either bitterness or conceit to have any meaning. From time to time, he and Vanzanth discussed how things might have been different had that plain brown hide been flecked gold-green, but they always came to the same conclusion: wondering about what might have been was an exercise in futility.

Still, L’stev thought that most riders probably had an optimum colour – not necessarily the one they thought, or even the one they rode – even if they could have Impressed up or down the scale from where they had. Most everyone who could hope to Impress a dragon would have one colour that best matched their personality, without either limiting their aspirations or obliging them to strain beyond their abilities. The thought brought him back to A’len. He was as natural a brown rider as L’stev had known: authoritative, reliable, not too ambitious. Natural brown riders almost always made much better Wingseconds than bronze riders did, in the main because they were free of the expectation that the subordinate rank was merely a stepping-stone to a Wingleadership of their own.

A brown rider who should probably have Impressed a bronze was a different matter. In L’stev’s experience, such riders went one of two ways. They either chafed at the constraints of their dragon’s colour, second-guessing their Wingleaders and causing discord in the Wing, or they found a way to channel their abilities in a more productive direction.

If you can call what we do productive, said Vanzanth.

We’ve had our moments, L’stev told him.

Vanzanth huffed air from his nostrils as he backwinged to land outside the infirmary. Now do you understand why you’re not being fair to Chyilth’s rider?

I’m certain you’ll enlighten me.

You think he lacks ambition.

L’stev dismounted, ignoring how his knees protested loudly when he hit the ground. “I think that’s a good attribute in a brown rider.”

In a brown rider who isn’t you.

“The Weyrlingmaster can’t afford to be passive.”

Then you think the Weyrlingmaster should always be a bronze rider?

“You know I don’t. B’reko’s probably the best Weyrlingmaster on Pern, and he’s a green rider.”

But he’s not a typical green rider.

“That goes without saying.”

He exceeds what is expected of his dragon’s colour.

“B’reko has always been excessive.”

But Chyilth’s rider does not.

“Do you think he would have made a good bronze rider?”

Hinnarioth’s rider wouldn’t have, either. Nor Brenth’s. Yet you had no argument with them as your assistants.

“I’m biased against other brown riders,” L’stev said. He glared at his dragon. “So stake me out for Thread.”

Vanzanth ducked his head under the archway into the infirmary. You are, but that’s not why you don’t want Chyilth’s rider as your assistant.

“Why don’t I, then?”

You know why.

L’stev was forestalled from answering by Vhion’s hail. “Hello, Vanzanth!” The Dragon Healer heaved himself out of his seat. “And good morning, L’stev. Something I can help you with?”

“Yes,” said L’stev. “Can you give me something for a dragon with a terminal case of being a smart-arse?”

“Terminal?” asked Vhion.

“Because if he doesn’t stop sassing me soon, I’m going to kill him.”

Vanzanth snorted, and Vhion grinned. “I’m afraid there’s no known cure for that, L’stev.” He folded his hands. “What can I really do for you?”

“He has a painful tooth,” L’stev said. “The last molar on the left.”

“Let’s have a look,” said Vhion. “Would you ask him to lie down in the second bay, there, and rest his chin on the block?”

Vanzanth obliged without needing to have the instruction relayed as Vhion took out the leather case that contained his dragon-sized dental tools. L’stev didn’t like to look at them too closely. They made him shudder. Instead, he glanced around the infirmary. “Quiet today?”

“Quiet every day, since Sejanth passed,” said Vhion. “I haven’t seen much of your weyrlings this last sevenday or so.”

“That could change,” said L’stev. “One of them’s bound to bite their tongue or singe their own forepaws sooner or later.”

“I’ll make sure we have fresh aloe salve ready,” said Vhion. He pulled a stool up alongside the block where Vanzanth had laid his head. “If you could ask him to open up?”

Vanzanth did, and Vhion eased a wedge of padded leather between the brown’s teeth to keep them open. He began to examine the offending tooth from all angles using a long-handled mirror. “Did you ever get to the bottom of your Southern blue weyrling?” he asked conversationally. “The young lady?”

“Consequence of Southern refusing to Search for Faranth-knows how many Turns,” said L’stev. “No different to greens choosing boys, I suppose.”

Vhion selected a hook-ended pick from his toolkit. “Can we expect to see girls Impressing Madellon blues, then?”

“Doubt it,” said L’stev. “We always have far more boys than girls. No need for a blue to start getting creative with his choice.” He sighed. “Though I suppose, once it gets out that the thing is possible, we might get the odd girl who sets her heart on a blue. Because my life isn’t shaffing complicated enough already.”

Vhion chuckled, and then, when his probing made Vanzanth flinch suddenly, said quickly, “My apologies, Vanzanth, is that sore?”

Very.

L’stev relayed his dragon’s response. “He was chewing stone most of yesterday,” he said. “I gave his teeth a good dig out last night, but I must have missed something.”

“Hm,” said Vhion. “I don’t think you necessarily did.” He moved his stool around to the far side of the block to examine the teeth on the other side. Vanzanth twitched again, less violently, when Vhion scraped at the last molar that side.

I thought you told me it only hurt on the left!

It hurts less on the right.

L’stev drove his fist irritably against his dragon’s shoulder. “What’s the matter with him, Vhion?”

“Nothing,” the Vhion replied, “or, at least, nothing pathological. His teeth are wearing down, that’s all. Once the surface layer of the tooth is abraded away, the soft tissue inside starts to become exposed, and that can be quite painful.”

As much as L’stev knew about dragonets, having been Weyrlingmaster for sixteen Turns, his knowledge of the afflictions that troubled older dragons was no better than that of any other rider. “What can we do about it?”

Vhion tugged the wedge out from between Vanzanth’s teeth. Vanzanth closed his jaws with a snap. “There’s a paste that will encourage the production of a replacement layer of tooth enamel. You’ll need to have him refrain from chewing firestone for several sevendays while that takes effect. And when he kills, it would be better if he swallowed what he eats whole instead of crunching the bones.”

Crunching the bones is the best part, Vanzanth complained.

You’ll do as you’re told.

You’d better start pre-chewing that wherry for me.

“It’s nothing to be unduly worried about, L’stev,” said Vhion. “Tooth wear isn’t an uncommon complaint among dragons of Vanzanth’s age. Let me go and see if we have any of that paste in the storeroom.”

If there was a phrase a dragonrider wanted less to hear, L’stev couldn’t think of it. Dragons of Vanzanth’s age. Vanzanth was only forty-two. Staamath, the oldest bronze in the Weyr, had been forty-seven when he’d flown Cherganth in her final flight to produce Shimpath. Forty-two was no age at all, L’stev thought irritably. He was old. Vanzanth wasn’t.

Then L’stev looked at his dragon, really looked at him, and saw him as Vhion must: an older brown dragon, his neck thickening, his hide shading to green at the joints and ridges where it was thinnest, the flesh of his jaw and the underside of his throat drooping with the inexorable gravity of the passing Turns. Vanzanth turned his head slightly to meet L’stev’s scrutiny. The outermost facets of his eyes were almost imperceptibly misted with the first cloudy signs of creeping blindness.

Oh, don’t look at me like that.

I hadn’t noticed, Vanzanth.

Noticed what? That I’m not as young as I used to be? Like rider, like dragon, L’stev.

You’re eighteen Turns younger than me. You shouldn’t be ageing just because I am.

Vanzanth snorted emphatically enough to make the tails of L’stev’s bandanna flap. Why should you have all the fun?

Vhion came back then with a bucket of off-white paste. “Here we are, L’stev,” he said. “If Vanzanth would just open his mouth again…”

L’stev watched closely as Vhion demonstrated how to apply the substance to the top surfaces of Vanzanth’s back teeth. “And I do this every day?”

“Twice a day,” said Vhion, wiping his hands on a rag. “And, if Vanzanth could try to refrain from licking it off…”

Vanzanth had been exploring his newly coated teeth with his tongue. He stopped obediently as Vhion spoke. Tastes like dirt.

Don’t eat it, then. “Thanks, Master,” he said to Vhion. “I’ll go and break it to A’len that he’ll be the one washing firestone stink out of his clothes for the next month.”

“And I’ll make sure we have plenty of aloe on hand,” said Vhion, “though I hope we won’t need it.”

Chyilth was demonstrating proper chewing technique using training cake when Vanzanth overflew the training grounds on the way back to his ledge over the barracks. The weyrling dragons and their riders were watching intently from either side. Berzunth’s silver-gilt hide was conspicuous by its absence. She and Tarshe had taken part in the Wing formation drills that had comprised much of the weyrlings’ training so far, but they were spending less and less time with the class. Even so, L’stev wouldn’t give up responsibility for either of them until he had to. He’d let Valonna be thrust into the Weyrwoman’s chair far too young; he wouldn’t see Tarshe made to take up the mantle of Weyrwoman Second until he thought she was ready. Although, he mused, as Vanzanth settled onto his ledge, Valonna had come farther in the last Turn than he would ever have predicted. The thought nearly made him smile.

He was taking off Vanzanth’s harness when he paused. “It’s my Turnday today. My sixtieth Turnday.”

He expected his dragon to say something sarcastic, but Vanzanth just looked at him. I know.

“I could drop dead tomorrow.”

Vanzanth continued to gaze at him, his expression inscrutable.

L’stev looked down at where A’len was holding a piece of training cake in one hand and gesticulating to the weyrlings with the other. “And A’len would become Weyrlingmaster, whether he liked it or not.”

He wouldn’t like it.

“But he’d do it anyway, because he’s my current assistant, and the obvious candidate to step into my shoes.”

And because the fitness of a brown rider to step from Assistant Weyrlingmaster to Weyrlingmaster wouldn’t be questioned.

“Which a green or blue rider’s would,” said L’stev. “Legitimately or otherwise.”

Darshanth’s rider could have been a great Weyrlingmaster, said Vanzanth. If things had been different.

“If things had been different,” L’stev agreed. He found a speck of rust on the second buckle of Vanzanth’s aft neck-strap and scratched it off with his thumbnail. “If I die tomorrow, Madellon gets a poor Weyrlingmaster by default, and everything we’ve worked to establish in the weyrling barracks these fifteen Turns goes to shit because I didn’t train a competent successor.”

You’d better not die tomorrow, then.

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

You never know.

L’stev let his eyes wander the Bowl walls, settling on one dragon after another. “You know what’s really galling? If things had gone differently, M’ric would have made a very interesting candidate for Madellon’s next Weyrlingmaster.”

Another brown rider? For shame.

L’stev ignored him. “Who better to prepare our weyrlings for a Pern without between?”

That’s up to us, isn’t it?

“I thought you’d decided I was practically dead.”

Practically. Vanzanth tilted his head. We know what’s to come.

“And we can’t do anything about it.”

Can’t we?

“Are you suggesting I could go to Blue Shale, bring back a clutch of fire-lizard eggs, and get the Wildfires going between with their help?”

No, said Vanzanth, with more than a hint of force.

“Because if I did, T’kamen wouldn’t need to figure out the fire-lizard connection a hundred Turns from now.”

Because if you did, you’d be stopped, said Vanzanth.

“By time.”

By me.

That was about as chilling a thing as Vanzanth had ever said. “What, then?” L’stev asked. "If we can’t change the future M’ric came from, what can we do?”

Vanzanth spent several moments considering that, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth. Smooth its way, he said at last.

“Smooth its way?”

As Trebruth and his rider did.

L’stev snorted. “With the best of intentions, Trebruth and his rider did some pretty appalling things.”

They did what they had to do, knowing what they knew. We know less. We can do more.

“That makes absolutely no logical sense.”

It does to a dragon.

“So we can’t fix between,” said L’stev. “Whatever’s gone wrong with it, it’s going to stay broken until the Pass.” Then, thinking about it, he added, “It’s still broken then, isn’t it? The fire-lizards are just a way around. Not even a patch.”

I think, Vanzanth said, that maybe between was never meant for dragons.

L’stev almost recoiled at the remark. “What do you mean?”

We’re too…big. Too…conscious. Too aware. We intend too much. To a fire-lizard between is…possibility. To us – to dragons and our riders – between is what we will it to be.

“Are you saying that dragons broke between?”

I don’t know.

“Vanzanth, are between and time the same thing?”

I don’t know.

“Time protects itself,” said L’stev. “Between protects itself.” The concept was slippery to his comprehension, however hard he tried to grasp it. “This is giving me a headache.”

And you thought you had a morning off from the weyrlings.

L’stev was grateful for Vanzanth’s recourse to sarcasm. “They’re never going to go between,” he said, taking refuge in something he could understand. “T’kamen’s not coming back.” He shook his head. “I wonder how he’s doing, in the Pass. In a Pass where bronzes have been overthrown by greens and blues!”

That gave extra to credence his beliefs about Impression, he thought. According to M’ric, the future Weyrleader was a blue rider, and all the fighting Wingleaders rode blues and greens. Traditional wisdom had it that only bronzes and browns chose leader-types as their riders. L’stev snorted. Traditional wisdom was a crock. Dragons chose who they chose. They weren’t infallible, or clairvoyant, or even particularly sensible.

Evidently not, said Vanzanth. Or I wouldn’t have chosen you.

“We put too much stock in colour, Vanzanth,” said L’stev. “Too much reverence on a bronze hide. Maybe M’ric’s colour revolution is what Pern needs. Maybe electing Weyrleaders makes more sense than letting mating instincts decide.”

I vote for me, said Vanzanth.

L’stev looked down at his weyrlings. He looked at Berzunth, sitting beside Shimpath on the Weyrwoman’s ledge. He saw for a moment, as though through the lens of a dragon’s time-sensitive perceptions, the generations that would follow them in an unbroken line, through queens and bronzes, through browns and greens, to a scarcely recognisable Pass a hundred Turns from now.

“There’s so much to be done, Vanzanth,” he said. “And we’re not getting any younger.”

But you’re not dead yet.

“Not quite.”

Then we still have time, said Vanzanth.

L’stev looked down at the training grounds. He looked around the walls of the Bowl. He looked up at the dragon-crowned Rim.

Finally he looked at his dragon, and Vanzanth looked back at him with clouded eyes.

“Yes,” he said, and pushed his knuckles lightly against Vanzanth’s cheek. “We still have time.”

Chapter eighty-six: T’kamen

When a volcano erupts, no one stops to ask why.

– Harper expression

27.02.09 - 27.02.24 (27TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

ISTA AND MADELLON WEYRS; BLUE SHALE SEAHOLD

“We’ll sabotage the beaches if we have to,” said Reloka. “We’ll smash every clutch and poison every fire-lizard we find.”

“You won’t do that,” said T’kamen.

Reloka turned a stare on him that her mother would have been proud of. “Try me.”

T’kamen bought himself a moment to think with a sip of water, cool with the ice he’d brought to Ista himself in a gesture of appeasement.

The news had travelled fast. Even if H’juke had been able to contain his exhilaration when he and Bularth and their pilot fire-lizard Fathom had burst out of between into the clear blue sky over Ista Weyr, it would have been impossible to preserve the secret once each of the other ten members of the Unseen reproduced the feat themselves in quick succession. The raucous celebrations in Madellon’s dining hall that night had lasted long into the small hours of a morning that dawned clear of the torrential rain that had besieged the Weyr for days. T’kamen had, with an effort, avoided the worst excesses, though his jubilant riders had cajoled him to match them drink for drink. He didn’t mind their overindulgence. It meant they’d be safely insensate the next morning, leaving him free to deal with the consequences of their achievement.

The queens of Pern’s other Weyrs began to inundate Donauth with messages before the first day was even out. The communications ranged – if an outraged Dalka was to be believed – from barely courteous to outright rude as each queen requested or demanded that Madellon share its newly-proved expertise with her own Weyr’s dragonpairs. Donauth had never been the most even-tempered of dragons, and she responded to the harassment of her peers with somewhat more hostility than T’kamen would have liked. Madellon’s twelve between-capable dragonpairs, she insisted icily, were just that – Madellon’s – and no other Weyr on Pern had any entitlement to them whatsoever.

Donauth wouldn’t be placated, not even by Epherineth – she was becoming visibly egg-heavy now, with a clutch that looked closer to twenty eggs than her customary ten, and she blamed him for her discomfort – so T’kamen, with Dalka’s agreement, called instead upon Lirelle and Levierth to smooth the feathers Donauth had ruffled. Levierth was delighted to be asked to help. T’kamen had her communicate the same message to each of the other Weyrs: that Madellon would share its knowledge with Pern, but not prematurely. They might have proved that Eighth Pass dragons could go between, but the riders of the Unseen Wing were like weyrlings in their understanding of a skill as dangerous as it was valuable.

The responses Levierth had back were more grudging than understanding. T’kamen wasn’t surprised that the other Weyrs were impatient. In their position, he’d be desperate to get his hands on such a game-changing power, too – and unnerved by Madellon’s exclusive possession of it. But Madellon had a right to be jealous of its secrets. He had a right. Restoring between had come at a high personal cost. He believed, as strongly as ever, that all of Pern was entitled to what he had won so painfully, but not for free.

But not every Weyr agreed with him.

Three days after the Unseen completed their first trips between, Levierth received a furious communication from Chrelith. Ista’s sweepriders had encountered foreign dragons on the beaches along the Nerat peninsula: southern dragonpairs, looking for fire-lizard eggs.

“I’m not unaware of the irony,” Reloka said, when T’kamen’s pause went on too long. “The raiders become the raided. But we only ever raided to survive. This…pillage…by the south is unconscionable. If we can’t be guaranteed the sovereignty of our own shores, then we will take the most extreme measures. If I have to go down in history as the Weyrwoman who set dragon against dragon to protect Ista’s rights, then I will.”

“It won’t come to that, Reloka,” T’kamen told her. “I won’t let it.”

It was an arrogant thing to say, and it gave him pause, still, that Reloka didn’t question it. Instead, she said, “I don’t have the dragonpower to protect what’s left of Ista from Thread and those beaches from marauders, T’kamen.”

“Did they get many eggs?”

Reloka looked like she was debating the wisdom of telling him. Then she said, “Three clutch sites that we know of have been plundered. Completely stripped. We don’t have many records on fire-lizard husbandry, but what we do have says that a wild queen will desert a clutching ground if she feels it isn’t safe. There’s no telling where those queens will lay next time. It isn’t just those nests we’ve lost. It’s the ones that would have been laid there in the future. Our records allude to a way to entice queens back to clutch sites that they’ve abandoned, but they aren’t specific. We haven’t found so many nests that we can afford to ruin them!”

T’kamen had grown so accustomed to seeing nearly every Istan rider’s shoulder adorned with a fire-lizard that it hadn’t occurred to him that even Reloka’s supply could be limited. “Do you have any idea where the dragons you saw were from?”

“Only that they were too small to be northern.”

“They weren’t from Madellon. That much I can promise you.”

“I’m sure that makes you feel better.” Reloka spoke with anger, but her desperation showed through it. “T’kamen.” She didn’t quite plead. “They’re all we have. They’re the only hope Ista – the north – has. If the south just steals our eggs, without payment, without recompense of any kind, we’ll never rebuild. You have to see that.”

“Madellon didn’t take those clutches, Reloka,” T’kamen said. “I can’t pay you for them –”

“I’m not asking you to!”

“Then what do you want?”

“For you to make the other Weyrs see sense!”

“I don’t have that kind of power –”

Reloka laughed over him, loud and hard and incredulous. “You don’t have that kind of power?”

“I don’t even command the loyalty of my own Weyr,” said T’kamen. “I’m just the Marshal. And a bronze rider. And still an outsider. I can’t tell the other Weyrs what to do. I don’t have the influence.”

“Faranth, T’kamen,” said Reloka. “Ch’fil told me you could be dense. I didn’t believe him.” She leaned forward in her chair. “You’ve not even been in this time a Turn, and look at what you’ve done. You’ve replaced my father. You’ve won over my mother. You’ve toppled the Commander of Madellon Weyr. You’ve restored between to dragons, and hope to Pern. And you think you don’t have any influence?” She threw back her head and laughed again. “You have all the influence. You have every Weyr on Pern desperate for your help. You’re still the only man on the planet who knows the secret of between. Whoever looted our beaches knows that. They may have fire-lizards, but they still need you.” She stopped. Her light eyes, R’lony’s eyes, shimmered with emotion. “And we need you,” she went on, softly. “To advocate for us, for Ista and the north. You’re the only one who can. You were a Weyrleader once. Please, T’kamen. Be a Weyrleader again. Be the Weyrleader Pern needs.”

“It was the Peninsula,” T’kamen said as he limped back into his office, unbuckling his flying helmet with one hand.

El’yan looked up from his work. “They’ve admitted it?”

“No, but they couldn’t hide it. The place is lousy with newborn fire-lizards.” T’kamen tossed his helmet onto his desk and ruffled his fingers through his flattened hair. “Estrinel tried to sell me a song about them finding clutches on their own beaches.”

“I suppose it’s not outside the realms of possibility,” said El’yan. “They do have a lot of coastline.”

“I don’t think so,” T’kamen said. “Fetch gets pretty excited whenever he gets wind of a strange fair around, and he didn’t react like that at Southern. No lizards there. Nor Starfall.”

“You didn’t accuse Estrinel directly?” asked El’yan.

“I’m not that hopeless a statesman, El’yan.” T’kamen sat down behind his desk with a wince. “I told her what I told the other Weyrs. That it’s in all our interests to approach the issue of fire-lizard supply with a long-term view, not a short one. I told her that the other Weyrs were concerned about the incursions into Ista, and ready to demand that I withhold my expertise from any Weyr allowing its riders to trespass where they aren’t welcome or take what doesn’t belong to them.” He allowed himself a smile. “And I did mention that Epherineth and I would be making random visits to Nerat personally to keep an eye out for the offenders.”

“I’ll wager that turned her pale.”

“It did,” said T’kamen. “I’m hoping it’ll scare her enough that they’ll suspend their raids, at least until we can get everyone committed to an agreement.”

“The Conclave is on, then?” El’yan asked.

“As soon as we can agree a date,” T’kamen said. “Probably the end of next sevenday, by the time we can all find a Thread-free day.”

“Good,” said El’yan. “It gives us plenty of time to refine our strategy.”

“I’m glad you think so,” said T’kamen. “It doesn’t give me nearly as much time as I’d like.” He met El’yan’s quizzical look. “My hand isn’t that strong. Madellon might have lost all its Interval records, but Southern and the Peninsula haven’t. Once the other Weyrs realise that a clear channel between dragon, rider, and fire-lizard is the real hurdle they have to overcome, they’ll figure the rest out themselves. My value as Pern’s authority on between becomes non-existent, and I no longer have any influence to exert over them.”

“I take your point.”

“Going between in one place and coming out somewhere else isn’t enough,” T’kamen said. “It’s just a faster way of getting from one place to another. And once you’ve seen it done a few times, it starts to look like anyone could do it. It starts to look easy.” He paused. “I need the Unseen to make it look hard.”

And so they trained.

Secrecy was paramount. If they were to astonish the Weyrs of Pern with spectacle, no one outside the Unseen could know what they were doing. T’kamen didn’t have to tell his riders not to talk about it: they all delighted in the mystique. They began in the small hours of the morning each day, before the Weyr was awake, disappearing without fanfare, and returned just as quietly after dark most evenings.

He had already been taking them between to the Holds and Halls of Madellon territory, building up their store of visuals, but absolute jumps weren’t impressive enough. They concentrated instead on blinking in and out, first individually, then in pairs and trios, and finally as a full twelve-dragon Wing. As the young dragons – and their fire-lizard pilots – developed their awareness of each other, they flew in increasingly close formation with decreasing margin for error. In that, the fighting dragons had the advantage. They were already trained to fly in close proximity to each other. The bronzes and browns found it more difficult, but no rider who had once been part of the Seventh asked for any leniency. They practised jumping into and out of the formations they’d flown so often in straight flight, disappearing in one pattern and reappearing in another, leapfrogging each other from front to back and back to front. They even practised patterns that were more flashy than practical, blinking out in sequence one colour at a time and reappearing in reverse order.

T’kamen drew the line only when it came to fire. Introducing flaming to the high-risk manoeuvres they practised would have been reckless in the time they had available. The Unseen riders complained and cajoled, but T’kamen wouldn’t be moved. He wanted his Wing’s display to be spectacular, not suicidal, and they were already flying close to the edge of what was safe.

But he pushed them hard – as hard as he dared – and they rose to every challenge.

“I’ve found another box!” Jillan shouted from a back corner.

T’kamen looked up from the map he’d been trying to decipher. “An old one?”

“Think so. It’s dusty enough.” The journeyman emerged from the back of the stacks with a web-encrusted crate in his arms. He set it down atop the pile of similar boxes and wiped a thick layer of dust away from the index. “‘Fire-lizard anatomy and husbandry. I7/113-120.’”

“That sounds promising,” said T’kamen.

“I’ll take it outside and give it a proper dust,” said Jillan. “Just a mo.”

A shaft of sunlight briefly intruded into the dim Archives, and T’kamen sent a thought to Epherineth, up on the Blue Shale fireheights. I envy you.

I know.

Is it warm back at the Weyr?

Not as bright as it is here, but Monbeth says it’s pleasant to have a day to do nothing but sleep in the sun.

I envy him, too.

Giving the Unseen the day off on the very eve of the Conclave had been Audette’s idea. “They know their manoeuvres as well as they’re going to, and they’ll perform better for having a break,” she told T’kamen. “And you should take the day for yourself, too. Smarten yourself up. You’re looking ragged.”

“I’ll be in my new dress blacks tomorrow,” T’kamen protested, but Audette had insisted he at least get out of Madellon for a few hours’ respite from Conclave preparations.

It was a relief to be away from the Weyr. It had been Turns since Pass Madellon had played host to more than an occasional informal visit from one of the other Weyrs, let alone all of them, and Dalka was insistent that Madellon show itself at its best. They’d gone through more soapsand and oil in ten days than they had in the previous three months. And every pair of hands that could wield mop or broom, paintbrush or polish-cloth, had been ruthlessly drafted into Headwoman Kanessa’s army of cleaners. T’kamen couldn’t deny that Madellon looked as sparkling clean as he’d ever seen it, in Pass or Interval, but the smell of new paint gave him a headache, and he was tired of tripping over buckets every time he walked three paces from his office.

But while the riders of the Unseen were spending the balance of their day off relaxing with their dragons, T’kamen was spending his in the dusty, dingy Archives of Blue Shale Seahold, looking for fire-lizards.

Master Tennegin of the Blue Shale Beastcraft had been more willing than able to help. “We have more knowledge of ways to eradicate fire-lizards than we do on how to find them,” he said apologetically, when the Hold’s steward delivered T’kamen to him. “It’s been a long time since we had any expertise on their care, I’m sorry to say.”

“What about records?” T’kamen asked. “Blue Shale was the centre of the fire-lizard trade in my time.”

Tennegin got that fascinated, slightly unnerved look in his eye that T’kamen had come to expect when he made reference to his origins. “Records we may have, but I can’t speak to their legibility. It’s not likely they we re-copied once fire-lizards fell out of favour. A waste of good paper, you know. But you’re more than welcome to explore the Hold’s Archives. If they’re anywhere, they’ll be there.”

Jillan, the journeyman in charge of Blue Shale’s Archives, had taken enthusiastically to the challenge of unearthing the Beastcraft’s forgotten fire-lizard knowledge in spite of the limited success of their first forays into the Archives. Tennegin’s warning that the old documents might be hard to read had already proved well founded. The first boxes they’d found dated back sixty Turns or so to when the wild fire-lizards of southern Pern had begun to scavenge the washed-up corpses of dragons denied a resting place between, and those records had not kept well. They found more rot and mildew than hide in some of those boxes, and T’kamen wondered if the crafters who had stored them so haphazardly had done so believing that the knowledge they contained, documenting how the fairs had been poisoned, would never have any relevance again.

But the crate Jillan brought back inside, having swept off the accumulated dust of a century, had been sealed around the edges of its lid with wax. “This is how these are supposed to be stored,” Jillan said, as he took out a sharp little knife. “With the humidity this close to the ocean and all. But I doubt this box has been opened since it was first closed.”

He slit the wax around the edge of the box with an expert hand and lifted off the lid, then peered inside. He grinned. “This is more like it.”

“No rot?” T’kamen asked.

“No rot. But handle these gently. They’re more than a hundred Turns old.”

The scrolls Jillan began gingerly to remove from the box had darkened over time, but they unrolled smoothly, their vellum still supple despite their age. The first one T’kamen opened described how to predict the colour a fire-lizard egg would yield, which could be done crudely by assessing its size and weight and texture, and more accurately by taking a scraping of the shell, mixing it with something called a solvent, and testing the acidity of the resultant solution. That was some way beyond T’kamen’s comprehension, and he set it aside. The next record was a comparative study of the suitability of different fire-lizard colours to different roles. It warned against queens for all but the most experienced handlers, recommended blues as pleasant companions, and mentioned that browns were the most reliably trainable, even over bronzes, which could be too easily distracted by nearby mating flights.

He set that one aside too and glanced over to Jillan, who was engrossed in a scroll of his own. “Any maps?”

“No,” Jillan replied, “but look at this. The colour, the clarity. It’s amazingly well preserved.” He put the scroll down in front of T’kamen. “These must all have been the work of Masters to be recorded this handsomely and stored this carefully.”

It was an anatomy, a detailed and beautiful study of a fire-lizard’s physiology, drawn from all angles and labelled with the names of each anatomical feature. As T’kamen unrolled the record, the exterior studies gave way to more grisly diagrams, hide peeled back to reveal the muscular structures of the fire-lizard physique, and those in turn removed to expose the internal organs and the skeletal system. There’d been a time when he would have found the depiction of a fire-lizard’s insides unsettling – even disturbing – but he’d seen the corpses of too many dragons now to be upset by a mere picture.

The final portion of the scroll described the differences between the acknowledged subspecies of fire-lizard, and as T’kamen read, he sat up suddenly in his seat.

Of the two subspecies known to have populated the southern continent, only one remains – the Settler or South Range fire-lizard, which can be found along much of the coast of the southern continent. A second southern subspecies, the Bay fire-lizard, went extinct in I7/34.

Settler and Bay fire-lizards were most easily distinguished from each other by the differing arrangement of the claws on their forepaws – Settlers have five-fingered forepaws with opposing thumbs, while Bays possessed three-toed pincer-like forepaws.

The Northern fire-lizard is more closely related to the Settler than the Settler is to the Bay, with the five-digit Settler hand configuration, but possesses anatomical features that set it apart as its own strain: a larger and stockier body, a more refined muzzle and less pronounced stop, increased posterior wingsail anchorage, and a longer tail with eleven true ridges against the Settler’s nine.

Epherineth absorbed that for a moment. Fetch has eleven ridges on his tail.

I’m almost certain all the lizards we saw at the Peninsula did, too, said T’kamen. Which means they’re Northerns, and we can prove Estrinel was lying about where they came from. He carefully re-rolled the record. “I’d like to have the loan of this one,” he told Jillan.

“I think you might want to look at this, too,” said Jillan. “Didn’t you say you were interested in getting queens to return to nesting sites they’d abandoned?”

T’kamen reached for the half-unfurled document that Jillan proffered. Controlled clutching: ensuring consistent laying behaviours in queen fire-lizards. His fingers touched the hide at the same moment as he scanned the title. And in that moment, his eyes took in not only the words themselves, but the shape of their black imprint on the age-browned vellum, and his hands felt the texture of a scroll that had lain forgotten and untouched in a box for a hundred Turns, and mind and body resonated together in a chord like the pure, soaring, heart-breaking keen of a dragon in pain.

The breath went out of his lungs. The strength would have left his fingers, too, except that he could not drop the fragile, precious, priceless document that he held in them. They felt numb as he rolled through the scroll, until at last, at the very bottom, his eyes found the confirmation that his heart didn’t need.

Epherineth said nothing. Epherineth knew there was nothing to say. He was there, as he was always there. But for once, his presence and immediacy, his total understanding of T’kamen anguish, didn’t lessen the pain. Epherineth hurt with him and for him, and the sharing deepened rather than staunched the wound.

T’kamen was aware of Jillan as the Harper asked him – bemusedly at first, and then with greater concern – if he was all right. He just didn’t put any importance on it. He rolled the scroll tight again, and tucked it inside his jacket, next to the cold dead stone in his chest that had once been his heart.

He limped out of the darkness of the Blue Shale Archives into sunlight that had no right to shine so brightly. Epherineth was landing in the Seahold courtyard, with the scantest concern for the people who scattered before him. His eyes were nearly grey with sorrow.

T’kamen didn’t stop to lean against Epherineth’s head for comfort. There was no comfort to be had there. He climbed slowly and stiffly to his place between the neck-ridges. Habit alone led his fingers to buckle the fighting strap. He left the safety to dangle. It lashed wildly between Epherineth’s arms as he heaved aloft.

“Just take us home,” he said, into the buffeting wind that ripped at his unprotected eyes and tore at his hair, and the silent scream of between was a numb relief.

But at no point as they hung in the null space did T’kamen think that Fetch would find them any destination but the Madellon of the Eighth Pass, the broken, battle-scarred, sundered Weyr that was their prison, the empty stone weyr that was their cell. No shred of hope remained to him that Epherineth would reach for another Madellon. There was no home now. It was gone, chewed between the teeth of time, ground to dust, lost forever.

Epherineth landed on their ledge, heavy and graceless. T’kamen released his harness and slid down. He hobbled inside. He had left his cane at Blue Shale, his helmet and goggles and gloves too. He had neither ability nor desire to care. He could feel the scroll pressing against his chest like the hilt of a blade lodged there. He pulled it out and looked at it, and wondered that blood didn’t pour out with it. He set it down carefully on the table.

There was most of a bottle of brandy in the back corner of a cupboard. El’yan had left it there once and never reclaimed it. T’kamen didn’t drink brandy. He didn’t like brandy. He went to the cupboard and got down the bottle and a cup. He put them both on the table next to the scroll.

Will it make it hurt less? Epherineth asked.

“A little,” T’kamen said.

Then drink.

He slopped brandy into the cup. It was probably good stuff. It could have been wher piss for all he cared. He drank it in a single gulp and set the cup back down. He waited for it to light a fire in his stomach. He hadn’t eaten since the morning. But no fire began. His belly was as cold and empty as a burned-out hearth. He put more brandy in the cup and drank that, too, but it wasn’t until the third shot that he began to feel, not fire in his stomach, but smoke in his head.

He pushed cup and bottle far away and, with his fingertips, lifted the scroll towards him.

It was the way she’d always made her qs, with the odd little tail looping back on itself. But for that he might not have recognised her hand at all. He unrolled the vellum, the best-quality hide too expensive to use for anything but preserving the most valuable knowledge to the future. There it was, her q, every time she’d written queen. He touched each one lightly. He didn’t read what she’d written. He just looked at the words, and touched the qs. Halfway through the scroll his eyes leapt to a blot, black and glaring, an offence against the care and penmanship. Farther still he found a smudge where an inky finger had left its mark. The lines and whorls of the fingerprint were still distinct. He pressed his own fingertip to it, straining, as if the touch of his fingerpad to the phantom of hers could bridge the century and more that separated them. And then he turned again to the final span of the scroll, where the names of each Beastcrafter whose work was cited in the text were inscribed with proper credit, and to the last line, where the author of the record had signed her own name with a flourish.

Master Sarenya of the Beastcraft, I7/118

The tear that dripped onto the vellum missed desecrating the ancient autograph by the breadth of a hair. T’kamen looked at it, appalled. And then he realised that tears were streaming down his face and he pushed himself back from the table. He lifted his fists to his eye-sockets, and heard a terrible groan, and realised it was her name, coming from his own throat. He lurched to his feet, and then crumpled to his knees. He wept. He wept as he had never in his life wept before, in wrenching, hacking sobs that burned his throat and twisted his stomach and crushed his lungs. He wept for everything he’d lost. He wept for everyone he’d lost. And when his body could weep no more, and protested instead in shuddering gasps that caught like hooks beneath his sternum, he fell over onto his side and lay curled on the floor, his knees drawn up towards his chest. He lay like that for a long time, and the tears dried like scars on his face.

Some time later – minutes, hours, days – he struggled back to his knees. He swayed there a moment, his head both light and heavy, his mouth hot and dry, his abdomen aching as though he’d been punched hard and repeatedly. He felt for the edge of the table, and then for the bottle. It snugged into his hand like the cold, hard, comfortless friend it was.

Then he really got drunk.

“T’kamen?”

It came from far away, or much too close. One or the other. Both. He didn’t care. He ignored it.

“T’kamen, are you all right?”

If he ignored it long enough it would probably go away.

“T’kamen, are you –”

“Off me.”

There was a pause. Then, “But T’kamen, you’re –”

“Get off me,” he said. “Don’t shaffing touch me.”

“But –”

“Touch me I’ll shaffing kill you.”

It went away.

“Is he asleep?”

“Is he alive?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“He was like this when I left him.”

“He looks sick.”

“He’s not sick. He’s drunk.”

“He never gets drunk.”

“Did someone drug him?”

“He’s not drugged. He’s drunk. Can’t you smell it?”

“But why’s he drunk? Why now? Of all days!”

“Maybe that’s why. The pressure’s finally got to him.”

“He wouldn’t do that. Not to us, not to Epherineth.”

“You saw Epherineth. He’s out cold.” A pause. Curiously, “Does this mean if we get drunk, our dragons do too, now?”

“What are we going to say to Dalka?”

“We have to tell her.”

“No way.” Flatly.

“What do you mean, no way?”

“You don’t grass.”

“It isn’t grassing, B’nam. He’s sick –”

“For the last time, Dannie, he’s not sick, he’s drunk. You don’t grass up your officer for being drunk.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had an officer who was.”

“Lucky you.”

“I thought you didn’t like him.”

“Still doesn’t mean I’d grass on him. Back me up here, Juke.”

“I don’t want to get him in trouble.”

“He’s already in trouble. Look at him. He looks like a double-Fall’s worth of firestone ash. He’s not going to be fit to fly in the morning. He’s not going to be fit for anything. We have to tell Dalka.”

“No we don’t.”

“Faranth, B’nam!”

“We don’t. Juke, give me a hand with him.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Sober him up.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You think I don’t know how to handle a drunk?”

“He threatened to kill Juke just for touching him!”

“Drunks say that stuff all the time. It’s whershit. Come on, Juke.”

It had all been like the buzzing of so many insects, annoying and insignificant, but now, as footsteps approached, he lifted his head a fraction. “Get lost.”

“Faranth, he is awake.”

“You’ve had too much to drink, T’kamen. We’re going to get you cleaned up.”

“Shaff. Off.”

“This is hopeless.”

“Shut up, Dannie.”

“Come on, Kamen. The Conclave starts in a few hours. You have to be ready for it.”

“Don’t care about the Conclave. Between with the Conclave.”

“Yes you do. This is what you’ve been pushing us so hard for. All the other Weyrleaders are coming. All the Weyrs of Pern.”

“Void take the Weyrleaders. Void take Pern.” He ran his tongue around the dry, sour hollow of his mouth, and said, “Let it burn for all I care.”

“You don’t mean that, T’kamen. Look, you’re upset, we get it. But however bad it is, we can’t fly without you tomorrow. We want you there. We need you there.”

“You need me there, do you?” he said, and raised his head from where he’d propped it in the crook of his arm. He glared at the three of them through the blear of his gummy eyes. H’juke, Dannie, B’nam. “You shaffing want me? Well what about what I shaffing want? Did anyone stop to wonder about that? You think I wanted to come here to this Thread-ridden Pass? You think I wanted to sweat and bleed and puke my guts out trying to make things better for this shit-heap of a planet? I never wanted any of this. I never shaffing asked for this. So you can take your we want you and you can shove it up your ass.”

All three riders looked shocked, none more so than H’juke, but T’kamen didn’t care. “Now shaff off.” He lowered his head back onto his forearm and closed his eyes.

“We didn’t ask to fly ourselves nearly to death for the last two sevendays, either.” The indignant voice was Dannie’s. “You can’t put us through that and then desert us at the last minute. We’ve worked too hard. It’s not fair.”

“Nothing in life is shaffing fair,” he rasped. “There’s no prize for winning. No reward for doing the right thing. No shaffing compensation for what you lose.”

“You’re not the only one who lost something!” Dannie cried. “Fraza and M’ric lost their lives!”

“M’ric!” T’kamen shouted, as though volume could crowd out the pain that lanced him. “Don’t even say that name! The treacherous shaffing snake… He was the spy the whole time…I trusted him and he betrayed me with every shaffing breath. And I sent him to her!” The enormity of it reared up over him like a mantling dragon, vast and terrible, dwarfing him beneath its shadow, and for a moment he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe.

“Is he talking about Fraza?” he heard B’nam ask the others.

“And for what? What have I bought by being here? A better future?” He laughed, savagely mocking of himself. “For who? Not for me. For riders who despise me? For Weyrs who’d rather tear each other apart than protect Pern? For a planet that doesn’t care? What do I have to show in return for crippling myself and mutilating my dragon and everyone I ever cared about being dead for a hundred Turns?”

And as if expelled from his body in the voicing of that terrible truth, the rage went out of him. The despair that it left had not the strength to support him. He crumpled beneath the weight of his grief. “Oh, Faranth. She’s gone. Saren. My Saren.”

He didn’t know how long they left him curled there in the crushing fist of his devastation. But he didn’t fight when they did come for him. Strong arms heaved him upright; sturdy shoulders held him up; deft hands laid him down. They gave him water; they put a cool cloth on his brow; they covered him with a blanket.

As many times as he woke that night, thrashing or crying or puking, someone was always there to hold him down, to wipe his mouth, to hold a cup to his lips: compassionate, vigilant, forgiving.

Morning arrived too soon, and with it a suffering so distinct from what had come before that it was nearly a relief.

“Dalka’s coming,” B’nam told him. “We’ve told her that we think you had some bad fish at Blue Shale, and Juke’s taken away everything with booze or sick on it from last night, so hopefully she won’t figure it out.”

T’kamen had to let the pain pass before he could reply. Every word B’nam spoke was like a hammer blow on his skull. “Thank you.” His voice was hoarse as much from vomiting as from anything else; there at least the story would hold up.

“Finish all of that,” B’nam told him, pointing at the bowl of cereal congealing in front of him. “You can’t have willowsalic on an empty stomach. I’ve laid out your new blacks. The buttons are stiff, so if you need help with them, you’ll have to call one of us up.”

T’kamen picked up his spoon slowly. “You’re leaving.”

“Have to get Yaigath ready,” said B’nam. “Tr’seff and F’sta gave him a once-over in the lake at first light when they did theirs, but I need to do the finish. Eat that, don’t just look at it.”

T’kamen raised the spoon obediently to his mouth. The cereal tasted of nothing, but it was smooth and cool enough that it didn’t hurt too badly going down. “Epherineth…”

“I already told you, we’ve done him,” B’nam said. “You need to pay attention to this stuff, or Dalka will know. R’lony was much better at hiding a hangover than you are.”

“B’nam,” T’kamen said, and then stopped, just looking at him.

The young brown rider avoided his bloodshot gaze. “He wasn’t the first drunk I had to look after,” he said. “I swore he’d be the last.” He got up. “I’m going.”

B’nam had crossed almost all the way to the archway out when he stopped. “Who’s Saren?”

T’kamen looked at him sharply. The too-sudden motion made his head spin.

“You kept saying the name in your sleep. Some girlfriend?”

Slowly, T’kamen said, “The woman I loved.”

“Thought so,” said B’nam. “I had one of those.” He paused. “She’s dead, too.”

T’kamen was still staring at the place where he had been when Dalka arrived.

“Faranth, they weren’t exaggerating, were they?” she asked as she strode in. She was already dressed in her blacks. “You look dreadful.”

“I’ll manage,” T’kamen said.

“You’ll have to. The Peninsula will be here before noon, and the others won’t be far behind. You picked a fine time for this, T’kamen. You’re in no condition to fly.”

“I can always fly.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not going to impress anyone with a display of projectile vomiting. You’ll have to cancel your demonstration. It won’t do if you’re not there to greet the other Weyrleaders when they arrive, and you should still make the opening address in the Council chamber, but I’ll take the lead after that.” She frowned at him. “What was the excuse they’ve come up with? Bad seafood?”

T’kamen looked at her wordlessly.

“Did you really think I couldn’t tell food poisoning from a hangover?” she asked. “I was weyrmated to R’lony for nearly twenty Turns.”

“I had no idea he was a drunk.”

“Most people didn’t. He’d had a lot of practice hiding it. You, on the other hand, are clearly a rank amateur.”

“I said some unforgivable things to my riders.”.

“Good for you. You can nurse that pain along with your headache.”

T’kamen regarded her with dull dismay. “Aren’t you going to ask…”

“…what set you off?” Dalka interjected. She shook her head. “Make yourself presentable. I’ll speak to H’juke about the display.”

“Not H’juke,” T’kamen said. “Dannie.”

Dalka looked surprised, but she shrugged. “All right. Dannie, then.”

T’kamen slowly finished his breakfast. He’d already had one bath – H’juke and B’nam had shoved him, protesting, into the pool when they’d woken him up – but he had another anyway. He was grateful that he didn’t have to shave. His hands were still shaking badly enough that he’d have cut his face to tatters.

Finally, he put on the dress blacks: the darkest brown leather, with stripes in Madellon’s indigo down the outer seams of the trousers, and the extra-length jacket lined and faced with the same signature colour. His rank knots had been sewn onto the left shoulder. But it wasn’t until T’kamen looked at himself in the piece of mirror-glass propped up in his bathing room that he noticed the final addition to his new jacket. Two stars gleamed upon each of the epaulettes that had been threaded onto the shoulder buckles, and the anachronistic silver insignia of Madellon’s Weyrleader had been outlined in gold.

It occurred to him that he hadn’t seen his fire-lizard since the previous day. Is Fetch with you?

You know how he hates strong smells. He is with the fair.

They were the first words they’d exchanged in hours. Even Epherineth’s voice, silent though it was, made T’kamen’s head jangle with pain. He didn’t reply. Instead, he limped through the archway into his dragon’s chamber.

Epherineth lay upon his couch, shining. That he had been bathed spotless, and oiled from nose to tail-tip, was no surprise. But the deep, burnished patina that shimmered over every inch of hide represented the work of many hands for many hours. Even at his fittest, T’kamen had never brought so lustrous a sheen to his dragon’s skin.

There were eight of them, Epherineth said apologetically. It took a long time.

T’kamen reached out to touch his shoulder, almost in disbelief that the bronze hide he had scrubbed and oiled so many hundreds of times over the Turns could be polished to such an intense mirror shine. Then he pulled his hand back, afraid of ruining the finish that his riders had laboured so hard to produce. He lowered himself to the floor instead, putting his back to the edge of the stone couch.

You’ll get your wherhides dusty.

“They’ll brush off.”

They both sat there. After a minute, T’kamen put his hand up. Epherineth’s nose was there to meet it.

Donauth’s rider is right. You aren’t fit to fly today.

“I’m not fit for anything,” T’kamen said softly.

Epherineth paused. Is there any of that brandy left?

“It won’t help.”

I didn’t say it would. But if you’re going to spend today wallowing in self-loathing, I’d rather you were unconscious for it.

It might have been the most withering thing Epherineth had said to him in their sixteen Turns together. “I said things last night that I should never have said.”

You were upset. And you were drunk.

“That doesn’t excuse me for saying them.” T’kamen exhaled all the breath from his lungs. “Or change the fact that I meant them.”

Some things can be true without being all of the truth. It hurts you that Trebruth’s rider was not loyal. But it only hurts you because you loved him, and because you feel that if you had done better by him then he would not have needed to be disloyal.

Epherineth’s logic sliced through the conflicting anger and guilt as only one who had seen them from the inside out could. “I failed him.”

There was nothing else you could have done.

“I failed my riders, too,” T’kamen said. “Today should have been their day more than anyone else’s. And even after everything I said to them, they still mopped up my puke, and lied to cover for me, and did all this for you. I threw their loyalty in their faces, and they still gave it back to me. They don’t deserve me. I don’t deserve them. Faranth; Pern doesn’t deserve them.”

They are dragonriders. Dragonriders have always served Pern. As you have always served Pern.

“This isn’t my Pern, Epherineth. There’s nothing of mine here. I have no legacy to protect.” He found emotion constricting his throat again. “The Pern I loved died a long time ago.”

Gently, Epherineth said, You knew she was gone.

“Knowing isn’t the same as knowing.” He leaned his head back against the unkind stone, staring at the shadowy recesses of the ceiling. “I should be happy for her. She made her Mastery. She went on without me.”

Would you rather have found out that she hadn’t? Epherineth asked.

“No.” T’kamen smiled bitterly. “Yes.”

He’d never been able to lie to his dragon, but Epherineth challenged neither answer as a falsehood.

They sat together for a while longer. Then, after a time, Epherineth said, Brush yourself off, T’kamen. The other Weyrs are coming.

Chapter eighty-seven: Valonna

I’ve run out of time.

I can see it in the Healers’ faces, as they gather at my doorway. I can see it in P’raima’s shoulders as he argues with them in low, angry words. But most of all I can feel it. This thing – this creature of pain and death that has been consuming me from the inside out – has almost finished its work. I can scarcely bear to go an hour without fellis, and soon I’ll drink from that cup for the last time. I scratch these words to you with a hand that can hardly grip a pen.

But I have to tell you what I did, Karika. Because it was our fault. It was us. And you must warn the others. You must warn the other queens that what we did – what they might one day try to do – is forbidden.

We tried to save them. We tried to undo what we knew had been done. We tried to change the past, and the past would not be changed. We should have been destroyed, as P’raima and Tezonth would have been destroyed, in our place. But Grizbath is a queen. Grizbath’s will was strong. Grizbath would not bow to time.

But still, always, time protects itself.

– Excerpt from a letter from Weyrwoman Margone to weyrwoman Karika

100.06.07 (100TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

MADELLON AND PENINSULA WEYRS

When the queens of the south came to Madellon, Ranquiath was not among them. Sirtis, Rallai explained, had excused herself on account of a frightful headache. Valonna expressed her regret for Sirtis’ indisposal and asked Rallai to pass on her wishes for a speedy recovery. Rallai thanked her for her concern, promised to do just that, and held Valonna’s eye for just half a second longer than strictly necessary.

They had more urgent matters to discuss than Sirtis’ gracelessness. Karika laid Margone’s letter before them with shaking fingers, and they all bent their heads over it, reading the spidery, tortured words in silence.

Tarshe, blunt as ever, was first to speak. “I don’t understand. What did Grizbath do?”

“She tried to save Southern’s weyrlings,” said Rallai. “Karika’s classmates. The ones who died between.”

“But what’s wrong with that?”

“She tried to change what had happened,” said Valonna. “To undo what we knew had been done.” She placed her finger on the words.

“Then she timed it,” said Britt.

Tarshe still looked baffled. “But Darshanth’s timed it. And Trebruth.”

“They couldn’t change anything,” said Valonna. “L’stev says that a dragon who gets too close to changing something when timing will either pull back at the last moment, or…”

“Die,” said Rallai, simply.

“Time protects itself,” said Valonna, and she could see from their reactions that each of the other queen riders had just heard those terrible words from their dragons.

“But it’s different when it’s a queen,” said Karika. “Like…like…”

“Like the sea against a rock,” said Britt. She made an evocative gesture with her hands. “Most dragons would be washed away, but a queen…”

“Forced the wave to break,” said Valonna.

Tarshe frowned. “But between being broken was what killed those weyrlings. How could it be broken before Grizbath tried to change what happened?”

“Because she did try,” said Rallai. “I know,” she said, when Tarshe shook her head. “The logic of timing has always baffled me, too. The notion that effect can come before cause seems to make no sense, but…” She lifted her hands helplessly.

“Then this could have happened at any time in Pern’s history,” said Britt. “Just one queen trying to change the past, and the…stuff…of between…tears?”

“But she still didn’t succeed,” said Tarshe. “She didn’t save the weyrlings.”

Yes, she did, said Shimpath. Just not here.

Shimpath? Valonna asked.

All four of the others suddenly wore the same perplexed expression that she imagined was on her own face. “Did anyone else’s queen just say…” Britt asked.

“…that she did?” Karika finished doubtfully.

“Oh, Faranth, I feel dizzy,” Tarshe groaned.

Valonna did, too. It was as if her mind were repelled by the very otherness of Shimpath’s remark: unable to even begin to comprehend it on some fundamental level.

“Then this was Southern’s fault,” said Karika.

“It wasn’t anyone’s fault,” Rallai told her. “Margone didn’t know what would happen. She was just trying to protect her weyrlings.”

“But if she hadn’t –”

“She did,” said Rallai, “and none of us can change that.” She fixed each of the young weyrwomen with a stern look. “Especially now we know the consequences.”

“Faranth,” said Britt. “So this is why between’s broken.” She looked around. “Does anyone have any idea how to fix it?”

“Maybe it’ll just…sort itself out?” Tarshe suggested.

“It’s a pain in my tail,” said Karika. “Megrith and I have to piggyback on a bronze if we want to go anywhere.”

“I have no idea what we can do about it,” said Valonna. Then she put her hand to her brow as another wave of vertigo swept her. “Ohh…”

“I think we should all have a drink,” Rallai said firmly. “I think we should drink to Margone’s memory. She did what she did with good intentions.”

Valonna poured wine, and when they all had glasses in their hands, she raised her own. “To Margone and Grizbath,” she said. “And to never letting our queens try to do what they did.”

“And to letting the northern queens know, too,” said Rallai. “Faranth knows what might break if another queen tried to do it.”

They all emptied their glasses rather quickly, shuddering.

Valonna was glad when no one wanted to discuss the headache-inducing concept any longer. Rallai had brought copies of the Peninsula’s lineage charts, as Karika had brought Southern’s, and everyone seemed relieved for the distraction. “So Tynerith isn’t Ipith’s daughter,” said Tarshe, flipping from one page of the Peninsula record to another.

If Rallai still felt any residual sensitivity about that, she didn’t show it. “She’s actually Ipith’s granddaughter,” she said. “Tynerith’s sire, Solstorth, came from Ipith’s fourth clutch. But Tynerith favours her dam in looks.”

“Ranquiath and Ipith aren’t that closely related,” said Britt. She spoke with a relaxed confidence that did her great credit, Valonna thought. “Ranquiath was out of Haeith, the old queen; Ipith is a daughter of Eindanth, by a Benden bronze. And Haeith and Eindanth were only half-sisters.”

“The Peninsula bloodlines are very diverse,” said Karika.

Valonna tried not to look too sharply at her. She was grateful when Tarshe said, “Are you thinking that’s good or bad, Kar?”

Karika levelled a baleful look at her. “I’m not P’raima.” Then she shrugged. “It’s just not going to be easy to convince Southern’s bronzes to accept the need to outcross.”

“Not to cast any aspersions on your queen, Weyrwoman,” said Britt, “but it doesn’t take much more than a glance at Megrith’s pedigree to see the issue.”

Karika snorted. “You don’t have to mince words, Britt. I know I ride the most inbred queen on Pern. I know it’s a wonder she doesn’t have two heads or her tail stuck on the wrong way.”

She spoke with bravado, but there was fragility beneath the toughness. Valonna said, “Madellon’s bloodlines are rather monolithic themselves, Karika.”

“And close line-breeding isn’t at all unusual in Interval dragon populations,” Rallai added. “Nor detrimental, for the most part.”

Karika looked unconvinced by their reassurance. “Tezonth was Megrith’s sire and grandsire. Every Southern dragon under thirty is his get. When it’s time for Megrith to mate, I want her to have some choice beyond her brothers and uncles.”

The maturity of the statement was only slightly undermined when Tarshe said, “Not a single home-grown bronze rider you fancy at all, then?”

“Oh, shut up, Tarshe!” Karika snapped.

Valonna covered her mouth with her hand, pretending a cough, to hide her smile.

“The problem,” Karika said, still glaring at Tarshe, “is that no one’s had a serious chance at becoming Weyrleader for three decades, and now that P’raima’s gone every bronze rider thinks it’s his turn. I’m still a weyrling; Megrith’s still a juvenile; we can’t impose our will on the bronzes like we could if we were older. And I can’t just declare Megrith’s maiden flight open. That has to be approved by the Council. I checked.”

“That rule isn’t unique to Southern,” Rallai commented, with a self-deprecating shrug.

“Guess it’s understandable,” said Tarshe. “No one likes a foreigner coming in, knowing nothing, and telling them how to do things.”

She spoke lightly, though Valonna detected the defensiveness in her tone. “Then we should act now, while we have time before Megrith’s first flight,” she said. “An exchange of dragons would benefit all our Weyrs, and you wouldn’t have to get Council approval to open her flight to bronzes of different origins if they’re already stationed at Southern.”

“But I would have to convince some Southern bronzes to transfer away,” said Karika. “And Southern hasn’t been a welcoming place to outsiders for a long time.”

“You know your bronze riders better than anyone, Karika,” said Rallai. “Find out which of them would welcome a change of scene and a different queen to win. Or which don’t rate their chances against the strongest of Southern’s bronzes, but fancy themselves good enough to outfly Madellon or Peninsula dragons. Those are the ones you can convince to transfer out. And as for the inbound transfers – well, you can certainly suggest that any Southern rider who feels threatened by a foreign bronze must be lacking something himself.”

They all snorted a bit at that.

“Madellon has a few younger bronze riders who wouldn’t be deterred by a Southern reception,” said Valonna.

“I’d best get a chance to veto, Weyrwoman,” said Tarshe, with a touch of asperity, and then, when the other queen riders looked askance at her, “What? They’re Berzunth’s bronzes, too.”

“I was thinking T’rello and Santinoth –”

“T’rello?” Tarshe asked. “You’d break every Madellon girl’s heart from the caverns to the barracks if you sent him away.” She paused, then went on, “What about B’mon? Do you want him, Kar?”

Karika’s expression was hard to read. “He’s only twenty-one.”

“Is that a point in his favour, or against?” asked Britt.

Karika furrowed her brow. “Both.”

Tarshe nearly hooted. “B’mon it is! Pack his bags, Weyrwoman, he’s going to Southern!”

“Shut up, Tarshe.”

“Don’t I get a vote?” Britt complained. “A twenty-one-Turn-old bronze rider who isn’t a complete swine? Can’t we have him, Rallai?”

Rallai laughed, and Valonna couldn’t keep her expression stern either. “There’s also E’dor, and maybe A’keret,” she went on determinedly.

“Not E’dor,” Tarshe said firmly, with a wag of her finger. “He’s almost halfway a possibility.” Then she looked at the Madellon lineage chart. “You’ll wipe out every bronze rider under thirty at this rate.”

“It’s as I said, Tarshe,” said Valonna. “Madellon’s lines are quite limited. Shimpath was by Staamath; so were Epherineth and Pierdeth. Even Berzunth only has one set of grandparents. An outcross to Peninsula or Southern would do the blood good.”

“Madellon’s founding dragons were a varied lot,” said Karika, tracing the lines back to the top. “Ista, Telgar, High Reaches, Benden. Even an Igenite bronze back here. But no Fort.” She looked up. “All of Southern’s original dragons were Fortian.”

“There’s a little Fort in the Peninsula lines,” said Rallai, “but we’re mostly Benden and Igen. We’ve always had at least two queens, though, and they tend to breed dragonets true to their own matrilineage.”

“Madellon seems to bottleneck here,” said Tarshe, putting her finger on the generation three levels above Berzunth’s. “Pequenth and Snarth. There’s not a single bronze who doesn’t have them on at least one side, and most have them on both. And they were parents to Staamath and Cherganth.” She looked up. “You’ll not have much choice if you want to avoid a bronze of Staamath’s get, Weyrwoman.”

“What about these ones, by Pelranth?” asked Britt. “Sewelth, Redmyth, Peteorth – oh, and H’ned’s Izath!”

Valonna managed to avert the twist of distaste that her lips wanted to make. She wasn’t oblivious to the fact that H’ned’s bronze was one of the better matches available for Shimpath among Madellon’s home-bred population. Neither was H’ned. “As much as I appreciate you match-making for me,” she said, “Shimpath’s next flight is a long way off.”

Rallai saved her from having to obfuscate any more than that. “Tynerith’s will be next,” she said, “in less than a Turn. And perhaps the Peninsula isn’t so much in need of new bloodlines, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt for a few Madellon or Southern bronzes to join the pursuit in our junior flights.”

“Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m thinking that exchanging queens would be a better way to mingle the bloodlines than just moving bronzes around,” said Tarshe, thoughtfully. She shrugged when Valonna looked at her. “Not that I want to go anywhere, Weyrwoman. I don’t. But even if you throw a dozen foreign bronzes into a mating flight, there’s no guarantee any of them’ll win. More likely a home-bred will want it more.”

“It’s sound reasoning, Tarshe,” said Rallai. “I just don’t think our Weyrs are ready for that quite yet. Perhaps in a few Turns, when things have settled down again.”

“Will they settle down, though?” asked Karika. She shifted in her seat, and went on, “Do we want them to settle down? I mean…” She furrowed her brow again. She was going to give herself premature wrinkles, Valonna thought. “Megrith and I can’t order anyone around while we’re still weyrlings. But there’s no one who can order us around, either; not really. The bronze riders at Southern spend half their time arguing amongst themselves to decide who’s in charge this sevenday, and the other half mincing around me, trying to figure out how to suck up to their thirteen-Turn-old future Weyrwoman without looking like they fancy little girls.”

Tarshe and Britt both made sympathetic noises of disgust.

“But in a Turn or so, we won’t be weyrlings any more, and we’ll still have a while before Megrith rises for the first time and some bronze rider gets to be a real Weyrleader,” Karika went on. “And isn’t that the same for all of us?” She looked between Rallai and Valonna; not exactly excluding the two younger weyrwomen, but consciously – perhaps rightfully – positioning herself as the equal of the two Seniors. Valonna was too admiring of the adolescent girl’s spirit to be offended by the presumption. “Because a Weyrleader isn’t really a Weyrleader until his dragon’s won the senior queen, is he?”

“That’s not completely true, Karika,” said Rallai. “Weyrleader K’ken has been appointed by the other bronze riders of the Peninsula. He rules with the same authority that a traditional Weyrleader would wield.”

“He’s not in your weyr, though, is he?” Karika asked.

“Karika,” Valonna said reproachfully. Candour was one thing; prurience was another.

Rallai didn’t rise to the remark. “That isn’t important,” she said. “The Weyrleader doesn’t have to be your lover. He doesn’t even have to be your friend, though it helps if you don’t loathe the sight of each other. H’pold and I didn’t share many views, or a bed very often, but we always supported each other for the good of the Weyr. I believe the Peninsula’s riders respected that more than they would have celebrated a love-match.”

“But that’s not the point,” said Karika. “When a bronze flies a queen, he’s beaten her. Outflown her. Outdone her. Proved he’s better than her. A bronze rider becomes Weyrleader because his dragon has dominated the senior queen – and that makes him think he can dominate the Weyrwoman in the same way. And the Weyr lets him – even respects him for it – because he’s forced his superiority on the most powerful dragonpair there. And it’s wrong.”

A chill went through Valonna. She’d never thought of it in quite those terms before. By Rallai’s suddenly strained demeanour, she hadn’t, either. “You never met Weyrwoman Fianine, Karika,” Valonna said, rather uncomfortably. “I don’t believe any bronze ever flew Cherganth that she didn’t choose.”

“But she couldn’t choose not to choose,” said Karika. “Could she?”

The girl was a study in duality: old beyond her Turns, young beyond belief; adamant with self-certainty and desperate to be corrected of the conviction she knew was true. Valonna knew, because she had been Karika. Never so bold; never so brave; never so outspoken in her fears; yet she had been her, as every rider of a queen – every rider of a female dragon – had been her. She thought about L’dro, whom she’d believed she had chosen; she thought about T’kamen, whom she had not. She thought about what Fianine had told her about responsibility and duty and compliance, and almost she repeated those pitiless words to the child who sat staring at her with eyes as hard and black and brittle as flint. She thought about all the things riders told each other about the price they paid for the love of their dragons: the pithy and the patronising, the flippant and the facetious, the comforting lies and the painful, naked truths; and none of them were the right answer to the question this defiant, scared, courageous woman-child had asked.

It was Tarshe who replied. “There’s no answer to that, Kar. Not a good one, anyway. Shards; I spent most of my life on a stupid little island, and even I know there’s not an answer any of us would like to hear.” Her expression darkened for a moment in a way that put Valonna startlingly in mind of Sh’zon. “And if you think felah is the way out, you’re wrong. No mating flight can be as bad as what that poison does to you.”

“Tarshe’s right,” Valonna said, seeing Karika draw herself up to respond, and interrupting before the debate became heated. “There’s no answer that doesn’t simply require us to accept the injustice as the cost of being a queen rider, or to bear the hardship in the name of the greater good. Some things we must accept, and some things we must endure.”

She looked from face to face: Tarshe, Britt, Rallai, and finally back to Karika. “But you’re right too, Karika. It’s wrong.” Saying it aloud – even here, amongst those women of Pern most sympathetic to the notion – gave her an odd thrill of rebellion. Her thoughts tripped far ahead of her. H’ned wore the Weyrleader’s knots, but he was still only the Weyrleader Regent, in the Weyr’s mind and in Valonna’s; neither she, nor they, would accept him until he and his bronze had exerted their sexual dominance over every other dragon of Madellon. What barbaric way was that to choose a leader – and yet, sickeningly, Valonna realised that she was complicit in her own oppression. She had accepted as truth that the only fit leader of a Weyr was the man whose dragon had subdued the senior queen, regardless of his other qualities; she had accepted it down to her bones. She had seen for herself how a formidable Weyrwoman could be despised for the very strength that made a Weyrleader desirable; how a Weyrleader dominated by his Weyrwoman must be a figure of pity, if not outright derision. It was wrong. It was wrong.

“Then let’s make it right,” said Britt. The freckle-faced girl – she would never be a beauty, and those who tried and failed to win her favour would surely despise her for that unforgivable flaw – spoke as calmly and plainly as if she were proposing a change to a dinner menu, not the toppling of a centuries-old tradition of government. “None of our Weyrs will have a proper Weyrleader –” she put heavy irony on the adjective, “for at least a Turn. Doesn’t that give us – or, well, you, Weyrwomen – an advantage?”

“A Weyrwoman’s power is tied to her dragon’s mating cycle,” said Rallai. “My influence has always been at its lowest straight after a leadership flight, when my Weyrleader hasn’t needed to worry about winning my favour again for two or three Turns.” She was regarding Britt with a pensive expression. “But not this time.”

“K’ken’s only there because he was the next in line,” said Tarshe. She glanced at Valonna. “Same with H’ned. The other bronze riders had to confirm them both because they hadn’t won the Weyrleadership in the traditional way. Can they un-confirm them, if they don’t like them?”

“Even a traditional Weyrleader can be removed by the will of the Weyr under exceptional circumstances,” Valonna said.

“Only by unanimous decree of the Council,” said Rallai. “But a Weyrleader Regent is confirmed by simple majority, and can be ousted the same way.”

“Which makes K’ken and H’ned’s positions pretty precarious,” said Tarshe. “Until their bronzes actually win a senior flight, they could get chucked out by the Council.”

“K’ken knows his position is temporary,” said Rallai. “Essienth isn’t up to flying a queen.” She sighed. “Which is a shame.” She saw, as they all did, Tarshe’s eyes narrow slightly. “That’s not a slight against Sh’zon, Tarshe. Sh’zon would make a fine Weyrleader. And will, in two or three Turns, when Kawanth flies Ipith legally. But K’ken is very experienced. He might not command the admiration of a traditionally appointed Weyrleader, but I don’t believe there’s a rider at the Peninsula who questions his competence to lead, or his dedication to the Weyr.”

“I’ve always thought it’s a shame about Essienth,” said Britt. “I like K’ken.”

“He must be forty Turns older than you!” Tarshe exclaimed.

“I don’t like him like that!” said Britt. “But you know how it is with most bronze riders. Even the crusty old ones look at you thinking their dragons could fly your queen.”

“That’s not helpful, Britt,” Rallai told her, with a glance at Karika.

“Wouldn’t that be a better way to choose the Weyrleader, though?” Karika asked. She’d been quiet for a time, and now that she spoke up, her voice was grave. “The bronze rider who’s actually good at it, not just the one whose dragon happened to be fastest that day?”

“Probably,” said Rallai. “But that would take even more power away from us as Weyrwomen. You shouldn’t underestimate the influence that our preference can have on the outcome of a flight. The Weyr’s choice is a powerful force, but it’s only one of several.”

“Maybe that’s what we should do, then,” said Britt, “and I’m meaning ‘you’ again when I say ‘we’.” She looked rueful. “But, I mean, we should use the time between now and the next senior flights to decide who the best Weyrleaders would be for each of our Weyrs, and then try to make sure that those riders have everything in their favour.”

“You mean, we five queen riders decide for all our Weyrs?” Tarshe asked.

Valonna thought about reminding Tarshe that there were six southern queen riders, but she hated to interrupt the discussion.

“Why not?” asked Britt. “We’re the ones who have to work with them. Shards; bronze riders come and go, but we’re there for life!”

“What if you all decide that my Weyrleader should be someone I don’t like?” Karika asked.

“Don’t be daft,” said Tarshe. “Why would we do that?”

Karika still looked suspicious. “And what about you two? You’re not Weyrwomen. Do we still get to choose which bronzes fly your queens?”

Tarshe and Britt looked at each other. “We could have more influence over the bloodlines that way,” Tarshe pointed out, a bit doubtfully. “Improve the breed.”

“Sirtis isn’t going to be keen,” said Britt. “I don’t think she’d much care about our opinion of who should fly Ranquiath.”

“I think you’re all getting a bit ahead of yourselves with this,” Rallai interjected gently. “You’re not going to overturn the social order of Pern in an evening.”

The weyrlings subsided good-naturedly enough, though Tarshe especially had a speculative look in her eyes.

Valonna sent all three young women off to fetch fresh klah – as much to remind them that they were all still weyrlings as to give herself and Rallai some private time to talk. “What have we started?” she asked, only half in jest.

“I doubt that we’re the first Weyrwomen of Pern ever to talk about taking more power into our own hands,” said Rallai. “Though I don’t know that the southern Weyrs have ever been so universally lacking in Weyrleaders before.”

“Will Sh’zon be looking to take over the Regency from K’ken once he’s served his sentence?” Valonna asked.

Rallai looked pensive. “If you’d asked me a sevenday ago, I’d have said yes,” she said. “And I think that’s what K’ken had in mind anyway, when he made him Deputy. Even contesting Ipith’s flight illegally didn’t harm Sh’zon’s popularity that much.”

“But now?”

“The business with M’ric has hurt him,” said Rallai. “His standing at the Peninsula, of course; but Sh’zon himself, too, personally. He’s always been at pains to say that they weren’t friends, but he trusted M’ric. Having that trust shattered…it’s shaken him. It’s shaken all of us who knew him. I always liked M’ric, but to think that all these Turns he’s been timing it… I don’t suppose you’ve been able to decipher his journal?”

Valonna shook her head. “I don’t think I want to know all the details,” she said. “Enough that he’s safely on Westisle where he can’t do any more harm.”

“I only wish we could have uncovered what he was doing before he lost you your Weyrleader,” said Rallai. “I feel responsible for that, Valonna. No matter where – when – he came from, he was a Peninsula rider for twenty Turns, and we sent him to you.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Valonna told her. She smiled wanly. “And it was Sh’zon we thought would be trouble.”

“He still is,” said Rallai, with a sigh.

Valonna met the other Weyrwoman’s eyes. “But you love him.”

“I do,” Rallai replied, and then added gently, “It’s not a crime for a Weyrwoman to love.”

“I didn’t mean…!”

“I know you didn’t,” Rallai said, but she watched Valonna expectantly.

Valonna wrestled with the words. “I loved L’dro,” she said at last. “Or thought I loved him. No. I did love him.” She felt herself making a grimace at the thought of it. “He was…unkind, and dishonest, and greedy. I know that now, but I couldn’t see it then, because I was in love with him. And if I’d been a green rider, or even a junior queen rider, it wouldn’t have mattered – but I wasn’t. I was the Weyrwoman, and I inflicted his selfishness and prejudice on Madellon. Because I loved him.”

“You were – what – fifteen, when Fianine died?” Rallai asked. “Fifteen, and Holdbred. You expect too much of your younger self, Valonna. It’s no fault of yours that Shimpath’s maiden flight was decided by the heart, not the head. Shards, Valonna; every rider should be able to share her first flight with someone she loves.”

“But Shimpath’s matings don’t belong to me,” Valonna said. “They’ll always be leadership flights. And if I let my heart influence who wins her…”

“You don’t have to let it,” said Rallai. “It’s not a foregone conclusion.” Her eyes went distant. “Kawanth won Ipith’s second and third flights. Junior matings, both of them. Her fourth flight, just after Larvenia stepped down, was our first as senior. Everyone assumed that Kawanth would win again and Sh’zon would become Weyrleader.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“Because I realised Shai wasn’t ready. He was still too angry, too impulsive. The Peninsula couldn’t afford a Weyrleader like that. I couldn’t afford a Weyrleader like that.”

“Then you chose H’pold?”

“Oh, I’ll not deny that H’pold could be a slimy tunnel-snake,” said Rallai, “but he was a respected Wingleader, and a competent Weyrleader.” She shrugged. “Maybe not so competent that he should have had a second term, but there were a great many worse choices.”

“H’ned’s a respected Wingleader,” said Valonna. “He was T’kamen’s deputy, and if Shimpath were to rise tomorrow, I think the Weyr would want Izath to win. But…”

“Is it him personally?” Rallai asked. “You can’t bear the thought of having to share a flight with him?”

Valonna shook her head. “If it were only that…no. I can’t bear the thought of him as Weyrleader. He’s too much like L’dro.”

“Really?” Rallai asked. She looked surprised. “He seems much more courteous, at the least. More – dare I say – grown up.”

“He’s not crass like L’dro,” Valonna said. “He’s not…aggressive, at least not openly.” She paused. “He hides it well. But I think he believes, really believes, that riding a bronze makes him superior. He doesn’t respect the junior colours, and when someone crosses him, or injures his pride…”

Rallai made a face. “Is he Weyrbred?” When Valonna nodded, she went on, “It’s common for Weyrbred bronze riders – Weyrbred riders of all colours, really – to believe rigidly in the hierarchy. I suppose when you’ve been brought up surrounded by dragons in a culture of bronze is best, you’re more keenly aware of colour distinctions than we Craft- and Holdbred types.”

“I don’t want Madellon to have another Weyrleader who thinks that way, Rallai,” Valonna said. “But if the Weyr wants him…”

“It’s like I said to Karika,” said Rallai. “You need to cultivate your bronze riders. Use the time you have before Shimpath’s next flight to figure out who would be a better Weyrleader – and who you could live with.” Then she smiled, and said, “Why do you think I sent G’kalte to you?”

“He’s a brown rider, Rallai!” Valonna said, despairing. “He can’t ever be Weyrleader!”

“Exactly,” said Rallai. “A Weyrleader can’t be seen to tolerate a rival in his Weyrwoman’s weyr, but a brown rider isn’t a rival. And you’ll never have to give him up because his dragon tried and failed to fly yours, the way I had to give up Sh’zon for so many Turns. The way I might have to again, if Kawanth doesn’t fly Ipith the next time.” She caught Valonna’s stricken look. “It might seem convenient to have your Weyrleader and your lover be the same man, but it doesn’t always go as smoothly as that. Life’s never quite so neat and tidy.”

“Messiness, and complication,” Valonna said, smiling. “The real price of being a Weyrwoman.”

Rallai laughed. “Of course, Valonna. Why else do you think queens only choose girls?”

The staccato report of H’ned’s boots on the steps to Shimpath’s ledge warned Valonna of his mood before he came into view. “Why didn’t you tell me they were leaving?”

Valonna looked up from the documents she was filing away. “I didn’t realise you needed to know, H’ned.”

“You should have told me,” he said. “I know I wasn’t welcome at your little supper party, but you might have let me see the other Weyrwomen off.”

“I didn’t think you’d want to be interrupted,” said Valonna. “I know how busy you were today.”

“Interrupted,” H’ned said, with a snort, as he crossed to his own desk. “You try getting a Flight drill to run to plan with five queens on the Rim inducing them all to show off.”

Izath was showing off more than any of them, said Shimpath.

Valonna kept her face blank of any reaction to her queen’s remark. “I’m sorry they were a distraction. We’ll be meeting at Southern next time.”

H’ned paused in the act of picking up a hide from the pile Valonna had placed there. “Next time?”

“It does the weyrlings good to spend time in the company of other queen riders,” said Valonna. “Especially Karika.”

“I don’t like the idea of Tarshe being exposed to Southern’s ways,” said H’ned. “Or some of the Peninsula’s, for that matter. They have peculiar ideas about what is and isn’t beneath a dragon’s dignity.”

Valonna ignored the barely veiled accusation that she had been over-exposed to Peninsula ways. She and H’ned had already had a number of brief, polite, but inharmonious conversations about offering cargo conveyance to Madellon’s Holds and Halls. “Tarshe is far too strong a character to be easily swayed by anything harmful,” she said instead, though she couldn’t resist adding, “She is, after all, a queen rider.”

That’s what worries him, said Shimpath, even as H’ned made a noncommittal hmph.

Are you listening in to the Weyrleader? Valonna asked, half scolding.

I don’t need to do that to know what Izath’s rider – Shimpath still refused to refer to H’ned as ‘the Weyrleader’, much less by his actual name – is thinking.

A thought occurred to Valonna then, and she said, casually, “We were discussing the possibility of moving some bronzes between our three Weyrs, to mingle the bloodlines.”

That got H’ned’s attention. “Oh?”

“I wondered if you had any thoughts about which of our bronze riders would be open to transferring to Southern or the Peninsula.”

The gleam of delight that leapt into H’ned’s eyes stayed there only briefly, but it shone there long enough for Valonna to recognise it. “Well, let me see,” he said, and then paused as if he were giving the matter serious thought. “E’dor might welcome a change. Or V’stan: he’s been moaning about the weather since the first frosts, same as he does every Turn; maybe Southern’s climate would suit him better.” He thought a moment longer, then said, “T’gat, maybe.”

The careful nonchalance with which he mentioned the last name betrayed him. Valonna hoped she was better at concealing her intentions. “I’d thought perhaps B’mon or T’rello…”

“T’rello?” H’ned asked. “He’s still a boy. Let him grow up a little before we think about packing him off to another Weyr.”

He thinks Santinoth isn’t a threat? Shimpath’s huff of affront was audible through the stone wall. Santinoth is twice the bronze Izath is.

He’s also your son, Shimpath, Valonna pointed out.

Precisely.

“Speaking of transfers,” said H’ned, “I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed when it comes to the matter of your brown rider G’kalte.”

He spoke lightly, as if the issue were of no moment. Valonna raised her eyes from her work to look at him. H’ned deftly avoiding meeting them. “What do you mean?”

“He seems to have gone cool on the idea,” said H’ned. To his credit, he kept any pleasure he felt out of his voice.

“Cool?”

“Reading between the lines, Valonna, I think it’s an issue of rank,” said H’ned. “He implied that a demotion would be difficult for him to accept, and I don’t have a Wingsecond slot to offer him.”

Both statements were so incongruous that, for a moment, Valonna couldn’t absorb them. G’kalte, quibbling over rank? That didn’t fit her knowledge of the brown rider at all. She seized instead on H’ned’s second assertion. “But S’herdo still doesn’t have a junior Wingsecond, and you said you didn’t like any of our unranked brown riders for the job.”

“He doesn’t,” H’ned said. “And I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I like G’kalte for it, either.”

“I’ve seen his recommendations,” Valonna said. “He’s had nothing but praise from his current Wingleader.”

H’ned’s composure was fraying. “It’s not that simple. S’herdo won’t hear of taking on a Peninsula rider.”

“S’herdo’s the most junior Wingleader in the Weyr! You’re the Weyrleader, H’ned! Wingsecond appointments are yours to make!”

That seemed to put some steel into H’ned’s spine. He jerked his eyes up to meet hers. “And a fine Weyrleader I’d be if I didn’t listen to the concerns of my Wingleaders. As it happens, I agree with S’herdo. Given what happened the last time a Peninsula brown rider was appointed as a Wingsecond –”

The implication was breathtakingly offensive. “You’re comparing G’kalte to M’ric?”

“The parallels –” H’ned began.

Valonna wouldn’t let him finish. “You’re comparing a brown rider who has been nothing but a friend to Madellon to a liar, a cheat, and a criminal, because he happens to come from the same Weyr?”

“Same Weyr, same rank, same colour of dragon!”

“So all Peninsula riders are criminals?” Valonna demanded. “All Wingseconds are treacherous? All brown riders are dishonest?”

“Approving his transfer at all would look bad!” H’ned shouted. He’d risen from his seat. “It would make me look bad!”

Valonna found she was on her feet, too. “For not tarring one brown rider with the same brush as another? For judging a man on his own merits? For –”

“For letting in a foreign rider who only wants to come to Madellon so he can get into your shelling furs!”

In the awful silence that followed, Shimpath asked, low and steady, Should I step on Izath?

Valonna took the breath that H’ned’s final unfiltered outburst had banished from her lungs. No, she told her queen, with careful certainty. This is my Fall to fly.

H’ned’s face had frozen in an expression of terrible self-awareness. The knowledge that he had gone too far was inscribed on his features as though printed there in deep black ink.

“You have no right, H’ned,” Valonna said quietly.

“Weyrwoman, I –”

Valonna gestured him to silence with one hand, and H’ned nearly bit off his tongue.

“I’m a hostage to my queen’s needs,” she said. “And I submit to them, gladly. But I won’t be made a prisoner of your insecurity. I’m not accountable to you for who I –” she almost said love, and then, hating to use the word in H’ned’s earshot, amended it “– take into my weyr. My affections are my own, to give as I will. Or to not give.” She didn’t glare at him, but somehow, despite the difference between them in height, she seemed to be looking down at him. “You’ve made it clear that you desire me, H’ned. Whether that desire is genuine, or a reflection of Izath’s longing for Shimpath, or merely a bronze rider’s stratagem, I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t desire you.”

Emotions flickered over H’ned’s face – outrage, humiliation, despair – but he said nothing.

“L’dro made a weapon of his power, and used it on me,” she went on. “That won’t happen again. I won’t permit it.”

H’ned flinched on the word permit.

“And you know I won’t. You know you can’t force your will on a queen rider who won’t be cowed. So you target your bitterness against a rider whose fate you can dictate.” She despised him with her eyes. “Do you know how pitiful it makes you? That if you can’t have me, you’ll see to it that no one can?”

H’ned found his tongue. “I didn’t,” he said thickly, “that is, I only…I only wanted to protect you. Protect Madellon.”

“And how do my private affairs endanger Madellon?”

“You’re the Weyrwoman. Your affairs are never private. People will talk. Behind…behind your back. Like they talked about Fianine.”

Valonna laughed out loud. “If people speak of me as they spoke of Fianine,” she said, “then I’ll know I’m doing things right.” She walked past him, to his desk. It took only a moment of rummaging to find the document, marked with the ochre-and-grey seal of the Peninsula, that bore G’kalte’s transfer request. She slapped it down on top of all the other work. She took a pen from the holder, dipped its nib in ink, and then turned and held it peremptorily out to H’ned. “Sign.”

H’ned just looked at her: baffled, uncomprehending. “But –”

“Sign,” Valonna repeated, more firmly, and when he still hesitated, she set her jaw. “We don’t have to be friends, bronze rider, but you don’t want to make me your enemy.”

H’ned took the pen from her hand. He looked rattled. The signature he scratched onto the hide was untidy, but legible.

Valonna struck a match and held the flame to the end of a stick of Madellon’s indigo wax. She dripped a blob onto the vellum, then held her hand out to H’ned. “Your seal.”

“Valonna, this is –”

“I’ll stamp it with my own if I have to,” she told him softly. “Beside your signature, it’ll have the same legal weight.”

H’ned’s nostrils flared. He knew as well as Valonna did how that would look. With a curtness that verged on the petulant, he took his seal – a stamp, not a ring, and made of ceramic – from his pocket. He drove it into the wax hard enough to smear the viscous substance into twice the required size. “Are you satisfied?”

Valonna plucked the document from beneath his hands. The wax would be a few minutes in setting. “T’kamen asked me to be discreet.”

“T’kamen’s dead,” H’ned said sullenly.

“My promise to him isn’t.”

H’ned stared at her: mulish now, his earlier shock curdled into resentment. Valonna knew, suddenly, that he would never forgive her. “If Izath had flown Shimpath, things would be different.”

He said it flatly, but something about the statement made Valonna’s skin crawl. She looked at him anew, really looked at him, and wondered if she’d underestimated him.

No, said Shimpath. Because Izath will never fly me.

Not trusting H’ned enough to leave the signed and sealed transfer approval in his possession, and it being too late in the day to send a despatch rider to the Peninsula, Valonna kept hold of the hide. She put it first in the locked bottom drawer of her desk, but when she had to make her evening pass through the Lower Caverns, and worrying that H’ned might somehow have obtained a copy of the key, she moved it into the padlocked chest in her sitting room. Even then, she was relieved to find it still there when she returned.

But even as her concern that H’ned would find a way to thwart G’kalte’s transfer receded, other fears surfaced. The document authorising G’kalte’s move to Madellon said nothing about rank. It wasn’t unusual for riders moving Weyr to accept a lesser posting, and yet… He implied that a demotion would be difficult for him to accept. H’ned’s words troubled Valonna. Would G’kalte balk at being knocked down to wingrider? The thought that he could be so concerned with status was baffling. He seldom made reference to his rank at all, except to say that he’d been able to resume his full Wingsecond’s duties once production of the felah counter-agent had restored his full rapport with Archidath. And yet… It was no small thing to hold rank at the Peninsula, where competition for even a junior Wingsecond’s knots was fierce. G’kalte would have had to fight to achieve it. And G’kalte, the grandson of a Lord Holder, might feel more keenly than most the need to prove himself in the Weyr. The more Valonna thought about it, the more it rang true.

He seems to have gone cool on the idea.

That remark of H’ned’s echoed with horrible resonance in her mind.

Because things had gone cool, hadn’t they? G’kalte’s visits had become less frequent, and while Valonna had distractedly put that down to other things – the completion of the antidote; H’ned’s confirmation as Weyrleader; the terrible business with M’ric – she hadn’t paused to consider if G’kalte’s wish to transfer had been sincere, or simply the impulsive consequence of that joyous evening when they’d both had their dragons’ consciousness returned to them.

If G’kalte had changed his mind, then Valonna had antagonised H’ned for nothing.

She felt the old shadow of uncertainty creep over her, the old cramps of fear and doubt roil in her stomach, the old desire to ignore the problem, pretend it didn’t exist, and keep herself occupied elsewhere growing.

No. That’s not what we do any more.

Valonna thought at first that the assertion had come from Shimpath. It hadn’t. Her queen was asleep.

She rose from the armchair in her sitting room, setting aside the cross-stitch she’d been sewing. The first watchdragon hadn’t yet come off duty, but middle watch couldn’t be far away. It would be the absolute dead of night at the Peninsula.

Valonna nearly laughed aloud. She had told H’ned she’d be discreet. Yet a queen could never be inconspicuous. Madellon’s dragons would know if Shimpath left, even when most of them were asleep; the Peninsula’s dragons would certainly notice a foreign queen arriving in their midst, whatever the hour of the night.

She gave her dragon a mental nudge. Shimpath?

Shimpath, always quick to rouse, came alert with alacrity. What is it?

Can you wake a dragon without alarming him?

Of course. Who would you have me wake?

Valonna told her.

Darshanth glided noiselessly down out of the inky sky above the Peninsula Weyr. He must have announced himself to the watchdragon, because the glow-lit shape on the Rim didn’t challenge them, but the only sounds Valonna heard from her place on the blue’s neck were the soft flutter of his trailing edges, and the rushing of the night wind, and the booming of the ocean on the rocks far below.

Few dragons were awake so deep into the night watches of the Peninsula, and of those who were, fewer gave Darshanth more than a cursory glance before returning to their own sleepless preoccupations. But as Darshanth kited easily towards the ocean-facing wall of the Bowl, a pair of eyes suddenly lit up, sleepy-green and slow.

C’mine turned in front of Valonna, putting his mouth close to her ear so she could hear him. “You didn’t warn Archidath you were coming?”

“I didn’t dare,” Valonna told him.

“Well, he knows now.”

Darshanth set down on Archidath’s ledge. Archidath had only poked his head out of his sleeping chamber, so there was plenty of room. Valonna let C’mine release her safety-strap and then slid down Darshanth’s shoulder. She was prepared for the ground to meet her feet faster than it would after dismounting from Shimpath; still, she grasped Darshanth’s harness for a moment to steady herself.

“Will you be all right?” C’mine asked. In the darkness he was only a shadowy shape, peering down from his dragon’s neck. “Do you want me to come in with you?”

“No, C’mine, thank you,” she said. “Though…would you wait?”

“Of course, Valonna.”

She didn’t let herself pause to gather herself. Valonna headed towards the gleaming lamps of Archidath’s eyes, and beyond them, the faint light from inside G’kalte’s weyr.

“Archidath,” she said, as she made herself small to pass by his quizzically-angled muzzle.

Archidath’s smell washed over her, layered and evocative; at its base the spicy odour all dragons shared; over that the subtle maleness of his colour, more musky and less sweet than Shimpath’s natural scent; the salt tang of the sea; finally the faint perfume of the oil G’kalte used on Archidath’s harness. Breathing in the complex, lovely blend made Valonna’s chest constrict long moments before she grasped that it was the smell of G’kalte himself.

And then the light coming from within the weyr dimmed as G’kalte stepped into the archway. “Valonna?”

His voice was sleepily baffled, and Valonna was suddenly gripped with chagrin for arriving so late, and unannounced. “I’m so sorry, G’kalte,” she said, “I…”

“Oh, shells, it really is you! I thought Archie was pranking me! Are you all right? Is something the matter?”

“No, no, nothing’s the matter, I just, I have your transfer document.”

“My…transfer document?”

The flat incredulity made Valonna wince. “I shouldn’t have come. I’ll come back in the morning…”

“No, that’s not what… Why don’t you come in?”

Archidath huffing a breath through his nostrils made Valonna jump. “If you’re sure you don’t mind…”

She followed G’kalte through the archway. He twitched open the glow-basket by the entrance, flooding his weyr with light. They both recoiled a bit at the sudden brightness, blinking at each other.

“I’m sorry I –”

“I shouldn’t have –”

They both spoke at once, and both stopped at once. Then G’kalte said, “You first, Valonna. Please.”

She took a breath. “H’ned has approved your transfer request. I had him sign and seal it, and it’s all in order, only…”

G’kalte was watching her face closely. His hair, Valonna noticed, was sticking up untidily on one side of his head. “Only?” he asked, in a voice as sober and grave as she had ever heard from him.

“Only I know it’s not what you want,” said Valonna, and then, in a rush, “It’s only a wingrider assignment, and I know how important your knots are; I know how it must matter to you, being Coffleby’s grandson; I know I should have argued harder with H’ned to agree a like rank for you at Madellon, but he was so resistant to the idea of your coming at all, and so prickly about what falls to him now he’s Weyrleader, and so shelling vindictive that it was all I could do to make him agree to the transfer at all without getting Shimpath to lean on Izath.”

She stopped herself. G’kalte was blinking at her with more than just sleepy startlement. “You pressed H’ned to authorise my transfer,” he said carefully, as though seeking to understand completely Valonna’s meaning.

“He was going to refuse it if I hadn’t insisted. He said that when he met with you…”

“What did he say?” G’kalte asked, when she broke off.

Wretchedness knotted in Valonna’s chest. “He said you’d gone cool on the idea,” she said, and looked slightly away from him. She couldn’t bear to be looking straight into his eyes as he either confirmed his reduced appetite for the transfer or, worse, lied about it.

G’kalte did neither. “I can’t blame him, for putting it to you that way,” he said. He sounded slightly choked. “I can’t blame him at all.”

Valonna looked at him in silent plea.

“He asked me my intentions,” said G’kalte. “Not with regard to you – nothing so direct. But he asked about the extent of my ambitions. He asked if I expected to be promoted over Madellon bronze riders. I said I had no expectation of anything, and he asked if my pride was so paltry that I wouldn’t fight to keep what I had already won.” He sighed. “I wasn’t sure if he was talking about my rank, or… He provoked me – I can’t deny that – but not into outright untruth.”

Valonna discovered she was holding her breath. She found her voice. “What did you say?”

“That I was proud enough of my rank at the Peninsula that, if I wasn’t welcome at Madellon, I’d find it hard to justify giving it up.” He winced as he said it. “Now I say it back to you, it sounds so pompous, but it didn’t at the time. H’ned asked what sort of welcome I hoped for, even as a Wingsecond, and that was more pointed.” He stopped and, not looking at Valonna, said, “I didn’t really have an answer to that.”

“I don’t understand,” Valonna said.

“The last time we spoke,” said G’kalte, “when H’ned was set to be confirmed as Weyrleader, you told me that you had to give him every chance to establish himself. I didn’t mark it as significant at the time; but then…”

“You thought I meant to take him into my weyr?” Valonna asked, and then, realising, “He told you I had?”

G’kalte squinted in an expression of discomfort. “He let me believe it was at least a possibility that you would.”

“But you couldn’t have thought –” Valonna said, “you couldn’t think that I would –”

“I didn’t know what to think,” said G’kalte. “He’d got the question of my rank and your intentions so snarled together that I wasn’t sure of anything…anything except for my feelings for you.”

Valonna was finding it harder to catch her breath. “G’kalte,” she said, and then couldn’t think of anything to follow.

Now he met her eyes, though his voice vibrated almost imperceptibly. “The demotion doesn’t matter. Rank doesn’t matter nearly so much to me as you do. I was asleep tonight when Archidath woke me and said you were here on a blue dragon, but I might just as well have been awake, and thinking about how unbearable it would be to transfer to Madellon not knowing if you thought of me in any way the same I think about you.”

His words were clumsy, but the sentiment behind them wasn’t. Valonna caught her hand up to her mouth as he spoke.

“And now you come here, in the middle of the night, with my transfer approval in your hand, telling me that you faced down H’ned to get it signed, and I…” G’kalte broke off. He ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up even more wildly. “And now I’m terrified.”

“T-terrified?” Valonna whispered.

G’kalte eased half a step closer, no more than that, as if not to overstep the bounds he himself could hardly believe were fading away. He lifted a hand almost to Valonna’s face and then stopped. “Terrified,” he said. “Because I’ve never kissed a woman whose dragon could eat mine in three quick bites.”

Absurdly, joyously, despite her own terror, and the shaking of her hands, Valonna laughed. “But Shimpath doesn’t really mind you!”

“She doesn’t?” G’kalte’s exclamation was at once almost comically surprised and delighted, and then a smile broke on his face like a sunrise over the horizon. He laid his fingers on Valonna’s cheek, and his voice went hoarse. “Then that makes this easier.”

He kissed her.

And Shimpath, distant though she was at Madellon, roared with approval so loudly in Valonna’s mind that, in any other circumstance, she would have feared that her queen had woken every dragon in Madellon Weyr, on the southern continent, or indeed, across all of Pern itself.

Chapter eighty-eight: T’kamen

Mission accomplished!

– Message from Weyr Singer Tawgert to Masterharper Marlaw

27.02.24 (27TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

The Starfall delegation arrived headed by an elderly queen whom T’kamen realised must be Donauth’s dam. Ignia, her rider, was a straight-backed and silver-haired lady in her eighth decade whose features still carried the traces of what must have been an astonishing youthful beauty. The old weyrwoman peered intently into T’kamen’s face when introduced to him, and he feared she would comment on the nature of his malady. He was relieved when she merely apologised for the absence of Starfall’s Senior Weyrwoman. “Hidmath is due to rise, and Ekarri thought it best not to inflict her upon the other queens. Ourath and I will have to suffice.”

T’kamen assured her that her presence was equally welcome, and G’reyan remarked gallantly that his own Ginth must owe her fine conformation to Ourath, being her grand-daughter, but Dalka greeted the older Weyrwoman with the thinnest veneer of courtesy covering her obvious loathing. “I take it you weren’t close,” T’kamen said to her, when Wingseconds had escorted the Starfall riders to the weyrs that would accommodate them for the two days of the Conclave.

“It’s just a good thing Donauth hasn’t clutched yet,” said Dalka, and when T’kamen and G’reyan both looked askance at her, she added darkly, “Once a queen has a taste for something rich, she never loses it.”

The hostility between Dalka and Ignia wasn’t the only old enmity that became apparent as the senior riders of Pern’s Weyrs greeted each other for the first time in the anteroom off the Council chamber. Southern had always borne the brunt of the northern Weyrs’ raiding, the Peninsula had lost many riders to Fort, and Igen and Starfall shared a long history of discord that seemingly stretched back into the Interval. The north-south divide had already been made explicit both by the relative size of each continent’s dragons – Fort’s queen was only fractionally smaller than Epherineth – and by the composition of their delegations. Each southern Weyr was represented by the triumvirate of Weyrwoman, Commander, and Marshal that S’leondes’ early-Pass revolution had made the norm. The three northern Weyrs, still led by the more traditional partnerships of Weyrleader and Weyrwoman, were at a numerical disadvantage.

It made for an awkward gathering. The northern riders clustered together, as if for mutual protection; the southern did the same, but more in solidarity against Weyrs that had been perceived as the enemy for so long. It fell to Madellon to bridge the yawning divide between the two sides. But G’reyan, for all his tactical competence, was no politician. He started talking to Starfall’s Commander C’strar about the next cross-border Fall: shop-talk that served too narrow a purpose to be a good use of valuable Conclave time. And Dalka, put on the defensive by Ignia’s unexpected and unwelcome presence, was prickly and acerbic, when the charm she could project would have served Madellon’s ends far better.

T’kamen still felt terrible. The willowsalic he’d had after breakfast was wearing off, gradually robbing him of even the least respite from his pounding head and roiling gut. The keenness of the anger he’d felt towards himself earlier had been replaced by a dull hopelessness that was no lighter a burden. He had no real heart for diplomacy. And yet the thought of watching the Weyrs of Pern tear themselves still farther apart through the Conclave that was supposed to heal the rifts between them filled him with an even greater sense of despair.

He mustered every bit of determination that remained to him. He knew the Starfall and Peninsula riders only slightly, from liaising with them over cross-border Falls, and most of the others not at all, but he began at one end of the room and resolved to make it to the other, crisscrossing between northern and southern Weyrs, trying to foster communication where there was none, even through his thumping headache and bleak mood.

Only Ista saw through it. “The shaff happened to you?” Ch’fil asked, when they crossed paths. “You look like what a dragon sicks up after Fall.”

“Bad fish,” T’kamen said dourly.

Ch’fil eyed him sceptically, but Reloka was less interested in T’kamen’s unhealthy appearance than she was in the riders from the Peninsula. Weyrwoman Estrinel, her Commander Feyara, and the Marshal J’born all sported fire-lizards on their shoulders. “She doesn’t even have the decency to try and hide them,” she said, staring at Estrinel across the room. “She’s like a thief who’d steal your jewels and then expect compliments for how well they look on her.”

El’yan had turned up in T’kamen’s weyr just before the first Weyrleaders had arrived with the Beastcraft record on fire-lizard strains in one hand and T’kamen’s cane in the other. “These were on your desk,” he’d said. “Thought you might need them.”

The evidence that one of the Unseen had gone between to Blue Shale for no other reason than to look for T’kamen’s missing cane put another knife of guilt into his chest, but he’d been grateful for the return of both items. “Leave Estrinel to me,” he told Reloka.

Her light eyes measured him doubtfully, but then she acquiesced with the slightest nod. “If you were anyone else, T’kamen… I’m not accustomed to relying on a man to solve my problems for me.”

“Well, that’s just lovely,” said Ch’fil.

T’kamen nearly smiled.

He found less to smile about when he found J’born deep in conversation with Southern’s Weyrwoman Lori. “Yes, yes, I’m certain we’ll be able to come to an accommodation on supply,” the Peninsula Marshal was saying. “Proportionate, you understand, to our own needs, but once our greens start clutching… Weyrleader!” He greeted T’kamen with exaggerated heartiness.

“That isn’t necessary, J’born,” T’kamen said.

“Oh, nonsense, T’kamen,” J’born said expansively. “You’ve earned it, even if only as an honorary title. All those riders you’ve saved, the villains you’ve rooted out, rediscovering between…now, when are you going to let us all in on the knack?”

That made T’kamen’s heart sink. “There’s a little more to it than a knack.”

“No doubt, no doubt, but the sooner I can get my riders between ready, the happier they’ll be.”

“If you’d forgive us a moment, J’born,” said Lori. She smiled briefly at the Peninsula rider as she took T’kamen’s arm and led him away from the other Marshal. “I’m anxious that Southern isn’t left behind, T’kamen. I don’t want my Weyr to be the last one on Pern without between capability, but the price J’born is asking just for first refusal on his Peninsula-bred eggs is extortionate.”

There was no point even asking if Lori had spoken to Reloka about buying fire-lizard eggs from Ista. “I understand your concerns, Weyrwoman,” T’kamen told her wearily. “I’m hoping we’ll be able to address the issues surrounding Pern’s fire-lizard supply to everyone’s satisfaction over the next couple of days.” He cast about for a way to disentangle himself. “You’ll excuse me. I should attend to Weyrwoman Ignia.”

Ignia was staring in T’kamen’s direction, her brows knit as though she were trying to solve a puzzle, but he didn’t go to her. Instead, he caught G’reyan’s eye across the room, and motioned with his head towards Dalka, and a moment later the three of them convened near the archway.

“Starfall knows that the Peninsula’s fire-lizards were stolen,” Dalka said. “They don’t care, so long as they can get their hands on some themselves.”

“I suspect the same of Southern,” T’kamen said. “And no one from the south is interested in talking to anyone from the north.” He looked at Dalka. “You’re not surprised.”

“Not even slightly,” she said. “We need to move this into Council. You need to be prepared for things to go badly, T’kamen.”

He sighed. “I’m always prepared for that.”

It took time to pry some of the Weyrleaders away from the wine and refreshments in the antechamber, and more time to get everyone seated at Madellon’s Council table in accordance with the seating plan Dalka had worked out, and even more time for the grumbles of those who disliked their nearest neighbours to subside. From his own seat at the head of the table, T’kamen let Dalka and G’reyan settle the room. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that sixteen of the most powerful dragonriders on Pern should be so awkward to wrangle, but he lacked the strength for it.

He lacked the strength for much. His head was thumping, his gut felt like it wasn’t wholly committed to holding onto what he’d had for breakfast, and the too-bright light from the glows in the Council chamber hurt his eyes. He wanted nothing more than to go and lie down somewhere dark and quiet and be left alone. He limped through his opening address, thanking the Weyrleaders for coming, and making some remarks about cooperation and reconciliation and the greater good that would have rung false even had he delivered them with conviction instead of weary necessity.

“Very fine words, T’kamen,” said C’strar, “and no one here disputes the potential value of what you personally have achieved. But it is just that – potential. Knowing that it’s possible for dragons to go between again is one thing; having the means to do it is another. And Starfall Weyr has not the means.”

“Nor Southern,” said H’roo, Southern’s Marshal, “and it seems a great injustice that some Weyrs should enjoy preferential access to the resources required, while others equally in need are held to ransom for the same.”

“If you want to speak of injustice…” Reloka began, glaring across the table at Weyrwoman Estrinel.

“I can assure you…” Estrinel said at the same moment, leaning towards H’roo.

“Enough,” T’kamen said tiredly, as everyone began to talk over each other.

“Enough!” Dalka echoed him, more sharply, when no one listened. The room subsided, but not without several glares flung in assorted directions.

“Everyone needs fire-lizards,” T’kamen said. “And everyone will get access to fire-lizards.” He found Reloka’s eyes across the table. “Weyrwoman Reloka.”

“Ista has the only native population of fire-lizards on Pern,” Reloka said. “The only native population,” she repeated, when Estrinel drew herself up indignantly, and the other Weyrleaders glanced at the fire-lizards that the Peninsula riders carried on their shoulders. “And we are willing to share that resource with the other Weyrs. But not –” she turned her head deliberately to look at Estrinel, “– for free.”

Estrinel put a protective hand up to the bronze fire-lizard on her shoulder. “What is it you’re implying, Ista? I can promise you that the Peninsula’s fire-lizards are –”

“Weyrwoman Estrinel,” T’kamen said. “Northern and southern strains of fire-lizards are as distinguishable from each other as northern and southern bloodlines of dragons. Before you continue, I’d suggest that you investigate carefully the true origin of the fire-lizard eggs that came into your possession recently.”

Estrinel closed her mouth with a snap. She lifted her chin just a fraction. “The riders who found our fire-lizard eggs swore they were from Peninsula beaches. I had no reason to doubt their word.”

“Perhaps you had best re-examine their claims, Peninsula,” Reloka said, with chilly control. “If the riders responsible for stealing eggs and damaging the few nest sites that we’ve been trying to protect are rogue Peninsularites, I’m sure you’d want to discipline them very severely indeed for endangering such a precious and limited resource, and for bringing their Weyr into disrepute.” She paused. “We have fire-lizards. We’re willing to part with them, for the good of Pern, and for a fair price. But we will not tolerate having them stolen.”

“This is a little rich, isn’t it, Weyrwoman?” asked H’roo. “Coming from Ista, of all Weyrs? You’ve been stealing from us for Turns, and now the boot’s on the other foot, you have the audacity to cry foul?”

The Peninsula’s Feyara said quickly, “Good point!” and several other riders murmured in support of the argument.

Reloka’s nostrils flared; T’kamen thought she’d never looked so much like her mother. “Ista never took anything it didn’t need to survive.”

“We’re all trying to survive,” said H’roo. “Ista’s no different from the rest of us –”

“Have you been to Ista, H’roo?” Ch’fil asked sharply.

The Southern rider recoiled slightly. “Well, no, I –”

“Then shut your mouth.”

“No Weyr has lost more to Ista’s need to survive than Madellon,” Dalka said, before H’roo could retort. Her eyes met Reloka’s as she spoke. “No Weyr. But I have been to Ista. And what passes for existence there bears no resemblance to the fat, soft, grub-safe life of a Southern dragonrider.”

“We’re getting away from the point,” said T’kamen. “The fire-lizard beaches are in Istan territory; the fire-lizards belong to Ista. Weyrwoman Reloka has every right to demand that Ista’s ownership of an Istan resource is respected.”

“The fire-lizards should belong to Pern!” said J’born. “They’re too valuable to be controlled by a single Weyr!”

“And Kendan Hold’s firestone has twice the potency of any other stone on Pern,” Ch’fil shot back, “but I don’t see the Peninsula giving up its claim on it!”

“I say we put it to a vote,” Feyara said. “For the good of Pern, Ista shouldn’t get to control the fire-lizard supply.”

“Seconded!” H’roo cried, leaping to his feet.

“Sit down, Commander, Marshal,” T’kamen told the two riders. “There will be no vote. Ista’s Charter-given sovereign rights are not up for grabs.”

“Says who?” Feyara demanded. “Southern’s with me!” She looked at the Starfall delegation. “What do you say, Starfall?”

Starfall’s Marshal and Commander exchanged glances; Ignia was still gazing thoughtfully at T’kamen, apparently unconcerned by the vehement argument going on around her. T’kamen raised his voice, though it made his headache worse. “I said sit down, Commander,” he told Feyara.

“Madellon has no authority –”

“I’m not speaking for Madellon,” T’kamen said, and the flatness in his voice cut through the din. He got painfully to his feet, bracing himself with both hands against the table. “I’m speaking for myself. T’kamen. Epherineth’s rider. The Weyrleader of Pern.” He smiled, half in self-mockery, half in derision of how they had bestowed the title on him as if it carried no weight at all. “You want to go marauding into Ista and take all their fire-lizard clutches for yourselves? Go ahead, if it makes you happy. But any Weyr – any Weyr,” he added, and didn’t exclude Dalka or G’reyan from the excoriating glare with which he swept the table, “– that colludes in the theft of a fire-lizard egg from Ista will have to figure out how not to kill its riders between by itself, because I won’t be shaffing training them!”

He knew he should have regretted it even before he’d finished, just as he knew he should probably say something to soften his declaration, but his head hurt and his gut hurt and his heart hurt, and he was tired of the whole mendacious lot of them. Abruptly, he sat down again, dropping his head into his hands. He heard, but did not see, Dalka suggest quietly that they break for refreshments, and he didn’t lift his head as the Weyrleaders of Pern scraped back their chairs and filed out, but he did hear some of the murmurs of uneasiness and discontent as they passed.

“…not a well man…”

“…not reasonable…”

“…need him anyway? We have our own records…”

“…more interested in the fire-lizards…”

“…how hard can it be…?”

Would you ask H’juke if he could bring me some more willowsalic? T’kamen asked Epherineth, when everyone had gone.

He is already on his way.

Is Donauth’s rider as angry with me as I think she is?

It’s hard to tell. All the queens are on edge. Epherineth paused. Stratomath says that Chrelith is grateful to you, though.

“T’kamen?”

He raised his head out of his hands, wincing as the light stung his eyes again. “Juke,” he said, as the young bronze rider entered the Council chamber. “Thank Faranth.”

“Bularth said Epherineth sounded pretty dire,” H’juke said. “How are you feeling?”

“About as good as I look.”

H’juke poked around the pitchers of water on the table until he found one that was still hot, then poured a cup full, and crumbled willowsalic into it from a packet. “Eat this first,” he told T’kamen, handing him a chunk of journey-cake. “The sweetener will help.”

T’kamen chewed through the square of oats and dried fruit, then gulped down the cup of willowsalic in two bitter swallows. “Thank you.”

“How’s it all going?” H’juke asked.

“I don’t think they’re very impressed with me,” said T’kamen. He forced a smile. “I don’t blame them. I haven’t been very impressive today.”

“That’s not your fault,” H’juke told him.

He laughed faintly. “Of course it is.” He sobered. “I’m sorry we can’t fly the demonstration today. That’s my fault too.”

“They should still do the basic formation jumps.” Dalka spoke from the doorway.

H’juke stood up straight from where he’d propped himself on the corner of the Council table.

“Without you,” Dalka went on.

H’juke slid his eyes sideways to T’kamen.

T’kamen looked at Dalka. Her eyes were flinty, her lips compressed in the thin line that never augured anything good. “All right,” he said. “The basic formation jumps.” He thought, but didn’t say, that Epherineth could still pull a dragon out if something went wrong.

“Go and get the Wing ready now, bronze rider,” Dalka told H’juke. “We’ll come out onto the terrace to watch before we go back into Council.”

“Yes, Weyrwoman,” H’juke replied. He glanced again at T’kamen.

“Now, H’juke,” said Dalka, and he fled.

“I’m right here, Dalka,” T’kamen said, when H’juke had gone. “You don’t have to take it out on him.”

“I rather fear that if I took it out on you, I’d rip you in half,” said Dalka. “Which would be no more than you deserve.”

T’kamen didn’t even try to mount a defence. “They’re so sharding petty, Dalka. They can’t see beyond the walls of their own Weyrs.”

“I don’t disagree,” she said. “But you can’t threaten them the way you did, looking the way you look, and expect to be taken seriously. No one’s worrying because you’ve said you won’t train them unless they fall in line. They’re all still talking about fire-lizards.”

T’kamen exhaled hard and thought about dropping his head back into his hands. “They’re like children, desperate to play with matches when they’ve never even seen fire.”

“That being so,” said Dalka, “if we’re to salvage anything of this Conclave then you need to come downstairs and show your face.”

The journey-cake and willowsalic between them had taken the edge off T’kamen’s headache. He reluctantly levered himself out of his seat and followed Dalka from the Council chamber.

But they had barely stepped outside when they encountered Ignia. Dalka stopped. “Did you get lost on the way back from the facilities, Ignia?”

“Do stop being such a bitch, dear,” Ignia told her. “It’s bad for the complexion.”

Dalka went crimson. T’kamen wondered if anyone had ever spoken to her that way before. He supposed that Ignia was one of the few who ever could. “Weyrwoman,” he said, trying to head off the trouble before it escalated, “will you let me escort you –”

“It wasn’t until you lost your temper that it came to me,” she said, ignoring him. “What with the beard; and you’d looked so pale and peaky until the anger flushed you. I couldn’t think who it was you put me in mind of.”

“Ignia!” Dalka said sharply.

“And I see it now,” Ignia went on. She put her softly wrinkled hand to T’kamen’s brow. “I see it.”

T’kamen was too surprised to pull away. “Weyrwoman Ignia,” he said, at a loss. “I don’t know what…”

She turned her head towards Dalka without taking her eyes off T’kamen’s face. “You haven’t told him, have you, dear?”

“Hasn’t told me what?” T’kamen asked, bewildered.

“Who you are,” said Ignia.

“Stop it,” Dalka said, and to T’kamen’s blank shock, there was a catch in her voice, and tears in her eyes. “Stop it, Ignia. Don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what?” Ignia asked. “He has a right to know.”

What’s she talking about? T’kamen asked Epherineth, but his dragon was as mystified as he. He looked from one Weyrwoman to the other. “What do you mean, who I am? Who am I supposed to be? Dalka?”

He’d never seen her so distressed. Her face had gone white and drawn, her eyes huge, and she snatched at his arm, as if to pull him back from the edge of an abyss. “I couldn’t let you know,” she said, almost pleading. “You have to understand, T’kamen. You’d have left if you’d known.”

“What are you talking about?”

Dalka bit her lip, like a distraught girl. Then she whirled. The door of her workroom was the next along from the Council chamber. She flung it wide and disappeared inside, leaving it open behind her.

T’kamen and Ignia followed Dalka into her room, that sanctuary of decadence and comfort, its walls filled with the works of her brush and pen. Dalka was kneeling beside one of the cases where she stored the pictures that didn’t make it onto the walls. She pulled out a sketchbook, its edges beginning to curl and yellow with age, and tore through pages of crackling paper. “Here,” she said, thrusting the pad at him, and then glared up at Ignia. “I hope you’re happy now!”

T’kamen took the sketchbook.

His own face looked back at him. The pencil lines that spidered the page described the spare lines of jaw and nose and cheekbones, the dark arch of eyebrows, the stern stare of eyes that he saw in the looking-glass each morning. He almost dropped the sketchbook in surprise. “You drew me,” he said, and then something M’ric had said to him, months ago, came back in a rush. You know Dalka has a drawing of you.

“Yes. I drew you.” Dalka’s breath hissed from her lips. “Thirty-five Turns ago.”

T’kamen blinked. His eyes found the date on the page. I7/191. “I don’t understand.”

Dalka didn’t rise from the floor. She knelt there, as if in supplication. Her hair hung around her face. “When I was a young weyrwomen, I was made to spend hours in the Starfall Archives. I hated it.”

“It’s the traditional way for a queen rider to learn her Weyr,” said Ignia, blandly.

Dalka glared up through the curtain of her hair. “I hated it,” she repeated. “So I found any and every way to spend the time I was locked in that loathsome room doing anything but reading and sorting and copying records.

“There were pictures on the wall. Paintings, oil on skybroom. The luminaries of Starfall Weyr: Weyrwomen and Weyrleaders and Weyrlingmasters. Not pretty, most of them. The people or the paintings. But infinitely more interesting than mouldering tithe lists and dusty old Wing reports. So instead of copying records, I copied portraits. Over and over again, some of them. But not this one.” She put her hand on the sketchpad T’kamen still held. “This one I got right the first time.”

“I still don’t understand,” T’kamen said. He felt like he was being made the punchline of a joke. “Why was there a portrait of me in Starfall’s Archives? I’ve never been to Starfall. It didn’t exist in my time. I never even had a portrait done as Madellon’s Weyrleader.”

“Not as Madellon’s Weyrleader,” said Dalka. “But as Starfall’s founder.” The pause she left was almost imperceptibly short, the logical leap it represented impossibly long. “That’s why I couldn’t let you know, T’kamen. If you’d known, you’d have gone back, and we needed you too badly.”

Gone back. The words echoed in T’kamen’s ears and in his head, bouncing off the inside of his skull, reverberating, overlapping, rising in volume and intensity until they became a roar. Gonebackgonebackgonebackgoneback…

“I never went back,” he said. He felt his lips move with the words, but he couldn’t hear them through the clamour in his head.

“Not as T’kamen.” Dalka’s words floated against the background racket. Gonebackgonebackgoneback. “But you did go back. You became this man. M’dan. You became the first Weyrleader of Starfall. You went back. You will go back.”

He thought his head might burst with confusion, with hope, with disbelief, with fury, with every emotion in seething turmoil, and then –

No, said Epherineth.

“No,” said Ignia, at the same moment.

T’kamen lifted his head. He was on the floor beside Dalka. He didn’t remember going to his knees. “What?”

“What?” Dalka echoed.

Ignia stretched out her hands, laying one upon each of their heads, as if in benediction. “No, she said, kindly. “Oh, Dalka. Is that truly what you believed? Is this why you harnessed your fortunes to this bronze rider? Because you thought he was M’dan as yet unformed? Because you believed his greatness was pre-ordained?”

Dalka looked up at Ignia, wide-eyed and pleading. “This is him,” she whispered. “You’ve seen the portrait! This is him!”

“I’ve seen the portrait,” Ignia said. “I’ve seen it every day for nigh on fifty Turns. And I know what’s missing from it that you’ve forgotten in the thirty-five since you copied it.” She lifted her hand from Dalka’s head to touch the blankness over the shoulder of the rider who wore T’kamen’s face, the negative space that no artist would have left unfilled. “You never did like to draw the dragons.”

Dalka stared at the page. “I remember,” she said. “His dragon…”

“Arkandeth,” said Ignia. “A bronze, like Epherineth. But his face…”

“He had no scars,” Dalka recalled. Then she insisted, weakly, “But T’kamen would never have had him painted from the right, where his scars would show.”

“Even if that were true, Dalka,” said Ignia, “I have seen Epherineth’s face, and once, long ago, when I was very young and he was very old, I saw Arkandeth’s. And they are not the same. Epherineth is not Arkandeth. T’kamen is not M’dan.”

T’kamen had listened dully to their debate. His head still rang, but despairingly now, the clamour modulated to a minor key. You knew it wasn’t true.

How could we ever be anyone but who we are?

“Then M’dan –” Dalka began, and then stopped.

“The resemblance is striking,” Ignia agreed.

They both looked at T’kamen. He looked back at them without comprehension. “What?”

“You said you never had any children!” Dalka accused.

“I haven’t,” T’kamen said blankly. “I didn’t.”

Ignia snorted dismissively. “Oh, and I suppose your dragon never flew a green?”

T’kamen, said Epherineth. There was creeping delight in his voice. Your line lived on, too.

He knelt there on the floor of Dalka’s workroom, battered physically, bruised mentally, feeling as tossed about by revelations as a weyrling in a hurricane. “I had a son?” he said. The words tasted strange, unfamiliar, as he tried them out. “I had a son who Impressed a bronze dragon and became a Weyrleader of Pern?”

“You had a son,” Dalka said. There was a peculiar tone to her voice. “And he had a son. And that son had a son…”

T’kamen suddenly knew where she was going. He shook his head, flatly incredulous. “No.”

“You knew he was dragonspawn,” Dalka said. “You knew his father was a blue rider. You knew he claimed ancestry to the first Weyrleader of Starfall.”

“No. He couldn’t have been. He was just bragging…” T’kamen stared down at nothing, until the gleam of gold on the smallest finger of his left hand made him focus. The Madellon signet ring, whose silver duplicate had been the family ring of…

“M’ric,” he said, shaken to the core. “He was my…my grandson?”

“Several-times-great grandson,” said Dalka. She seemed to have recovered some of her poise. “That much I knew the moment I first saw you.”

T’kamen was too disoriented to challenge her for withholding even that. “My grandson,” he said. Jettisoning the greats didn’t make it seem any more real. He felt like he was in a dream.

As Trebruth was my grandson, said Epherineth.

“T’kamen,” Dalka said, and her cool hands gripped his wrists. For an instant T’kamen was reminded of that night, sevendays ago, when those same hands had scratched his flesh, first in passion, then in anger. But Dalka’s touch now asked no such intimacy of him. “I’m sorry. To tell you this now, with him already lost…”

“M’ric wasn’t lost, Dalka,” he said. “M’ric went where he was meant to. When he was meant to.”

Dalka’s eyes widened as she grasped the meaning, if not the full truth, of his words. But then, abruptly, Epherineth said, Ginth pleads for you to return to the other Weyrleaders. Her rider is frantic.

G’reyan’s green must have relayed the same message to Donauth at the same moment. Dalka’s expression reflected first surprise and then a flicker of amusement. “G’reyan never was much of a politician,” she said. “I suppose we’d better go and rescue him.”

The ordeal of the Conclave had been flung so far from T’kamen’s mind that it took him a minute to reorganise his thoughts. He felt wrung out, and yet the whirl of emotion and shock seemed to have wiped the hangover from his brain. Perhaps that was just the willowsalic. It still pained him to struggle to his feet. He leaned down to pick up the cane he’d dropped, and then he offered his hand to Dalka.

“I can get up myself,” she told him, and she did, rising with the sinuous grace that was her signature.

“I never had any doubt about that,” said T’kamen.

Dalka’s mouth curled in that sly smile of hers, but as she turned to face him her eyes found something in his, and she stilled. “You found her, didn’t you?” she asked. “That’s what set you off last night. Your cow-girl.”

“Sarenya,” said T’kamen.

“Did she have a good life?”

“I hope so.”

“You won’t ever let there be anyone else, will you? Not Leda, and not…anyone?”

Slowly, T’kamen shook his head.

“I thought so.” Dalka seemed diminished for a moment. Then she turned her head to look at Ignia. The old Weyrwoman was sitting on the day-bed, watching them both serenely. “You just had to stir the pot, didn’t you?”

“I’m old, and Ourath doesn’t rise any more,” Ignia said. She swung her thin legs like a delighted girl, just once. “I take my pleasures where I can.”

The prospect of having to referee a match between the two queen riders filled T’kamen with dismay. “I’ll go and liberate G’reyan. Weyrwoman.”

He made as hasty a retreat as his stiff-legged gait allowed, but as he left, he heard Ignia say, “What will you do now, Dalka?”

“Now?”

“Now that you’ve realised your Weyrleader isn’t the Weyrleader you thought he was. It’s one thing to fly recklessly when you’ve a safety tether. Another when that tether has been cut loose. And your T’kamen has been flying very recklessly indeed today.”

That was as much as T’kamen heard as he made his halting way down the stairs. He paused at the bottom. For a few moments, a handful of heartbeats, the span of a jump between, he’d glimpsed the shining notion that they could go home. Glimpsed it; desired it; lived it, mind and soul, before it had been snatched away from him again.

What good would it have done? Epherineth asked. What good could we have done, going back, knowing what we know? We could not have changed the past of this present. Time protects itself.

That truth resonated through them both like a chord, purely struck. So did the realisation that followed: how they would have chafed against their powerlessness to bring about change; how they would have been forced to follow the road that connected past and future without detour or deviation; how they would have remained prisoners in the implacable web of cause and effect that had snared them.

And the revelation that followed nearly sent T’kamen to his knees. Everything that had happened from the moment a young brown rider had arrived in the Seventh Interval, flung backwards through the Turns to a time not his own, until the moment in the Eighth Pass a century and a half later when that same brown rider had begun his journey through time, had been foreordained. Nothing could have been changed in those intervening Turns to prevent the fulfilment of that implacable, impossible, inevitable loop through time. For a hundred and fifty Turns, Pern itself had been the captive of pitiless, immutable Time: robbed of agency, of self-determination, of any free will.

Pern was free now. It had been free since the moment M’ric had vanished from the Pass: the loop begun, the imprisonment ended. Everything that had happened since then had been shaped not by the need of Time to preserve its own fabric, but by the will of Pern’s people, for good or for ill.

As it should be, said Epherineth.

They couldn’t change what had already happened. They couldn’t undo the injustice that had been done to an unwitting Pern for so many Turns. They couldn’t avenge the wrongs that Time had wrought.

But maybe they could stop it happening again.

T’kamen wasn’t blind to the irony. Pern had barely been liberated from Time’s clutches for a few months, and now, for the first time in almost a century, dragonriders had the power to ensnare it again. Dragonriders, travelling between times, had unwittingly created the loops that had constricted Pern. Dragonriders, unwittingly, could do it again.

Dragonriders had to learn to know better.

We will teach them.

T’kamen didn’t know if he said it or Epherineth did. He did know that it didn’t matter.

What mattered was the Conclave. What mattered was Pern’s Weyrleaders, assembled at Madellon for the first time in decades. What mattered was that they, T’kamen and Epherineth, had the opportunity to lead the dragonriders of Pern onto a path that branched and diverged and disappeared over the horizon of the future, heading who-knew-where.

Tell Dannie to assemble the Unseen, he told Epherineth.

He made one short trip to his office and then limped briskly into the reception room, buttoning his jacket one-handed. “Weyrleaders,” he said, not slowing his determined pace as he swept through the room, “if you’d follow me.”

Dalka caught up with him as he headed towards the glass door that opened onto the terrace. “What are you doing?” she demanded under her breath.

“Leading by example,” T’kamen told her.

Outside, Epherineth had landed on the gravel of the training grounds. Beyond him, the eleven dragons of the Unseen Wing waited in in a line that angled away from the terrace, facing into the wind, ready to take off.

Their riders approached T’kamen in equally perfect line, matching stride with parade-ground precision. They were as immaculate as their dragons in their dress blacks, their helmets under their arms, their fire-lizards on their shoulders. They stopped as one and saluted. “Weyrleader, sir,” said Dannie, raising her voice, so the Weyrleaders who had come out onto the terrace behind him could hear. “Unseen Wing, reporting for flight.”

From his pocket T’kamen drew the shoulder-knot he’d brought from his office: indigo for Madellon, green for Dannie’s Lusooth, bronze for her fire-lizard Fleet, gold for the Unseen. He saw her mouth open in astonishment as he unfastened the old braid from her shoulder strap and replaced it with the new. “Acknowledged. Wingleader.”

As the Unseen riders either side of Dannie thumped her wordlessly on the arm, T’kamen moved along the line to H’juke. He took another knot from his pocket, indigo-bronze-blue-gold. “Wingsecond.”

“Yes, sir,” H’juke said, hardly whispering.

T’kamen turned away from him before the newly-minted Wingsecond could start to cry. He addressed Dannie. “Epherineth and I will be joining you, Wingleader.”

This time, Dannie let no flicker of surprise cross her face. “Yes, sir. We’re honoured, Weyrleader, sir.”

T’kamen gestured for his riders to break formation and gather around him. “You’ve all gone far beyond the call of duty,” he said, for their ears only. “For the past sevendays and months, but today especially. I let you down, and I’m sorry.”

There was an awkward pause. The Unseen riders looked at each other. Then Dannie said, “I think I speak for all of us when I say that we’re just glad to have it proved that you are actually human. Sir.”

A laugh rippled around the circle of riders, and Tr’seff said, “Because we were wondering.”

“All too human,” T’kamen said. He felt unworthy of their forgiveness.

Then Dannie looked at H’juke, and on his other side F’sta nudged the bronze rider forwards. “We know what you’ve given up for us, Weyrleader,” H’juke said. “We know you didn’t have to come here and give us back between. It’s not right that you had such a hard time doing it, or that you got hurt, and Epherineth…and… Well, we can’t make it better.” H’juke said it clumsily, self-consciously, tripping over his words. “But we can…we wanted to…oh, Faranth, can’t we just show him?”

“Unseen!” Dannie yelled. “Left…bend!”

In unison, as if they had been anticipating the command, the dragons of the Unseen Wing turned towards them.

On the terrace behind them, the Weyrleaders of Pern exclaimed in surprise. Epherineth made a startled little rumble in his chest.

And T’kamen just stared.

The eleven dragons of the Unseen had been painted. No. Tattooed. Each face bore a jagged stripe from right eye to upper lip, each alike, each matching precisely the line of the scar that rent Epherineth’s face. They’d been freshly done, tiny beads of ichor still wet where bronze and brown and green and blue hide had been punctured to take the black ink that would forever disfigure them.

Not disfigure, said Epherineth. Distinguish.

T’kamen had no words.

But Epherineth did. Epherineth the silent; Epherineth who never made a sound he didn’t have to, Epherineth who had endured without complaint as much pain and loss and ignominy as T’kamen. Epherineth threw back his head, the scars rippling on his face. He bugled, pure and deep, and the Unseen opened wide their jaws and clarioned back at him in exhilarating harmony.

T’kamen wanted to stagger. He wanted to sit down. His ears rang, and his eyes blurred, and his heart hurt. And then he looked at his riders, his Unseen, at their grins and their shining eyes.

“Come on,” he said roughly. “Let’s show Pern how real dragonriding is done.”

Epilogue: A Loop Left Open

It’s been almost a Turn now since the bronze rider succumbed to the fever. Almost a Turn since we piled stones carefully over his corpse on the headland he and the bronze claimed for so long as their own. Almost a Turn that we’ve been alone.

A queen will come soon. We both long for that day, for the sight of another dragon, for the sound of another voice; even when that dragon will crush our defiance with a glance, and the voice will speak only to renew our sentence.

We endure, as we have all these long Turns. As we must. For us there can be no easy release, no quick and merciful end to our imprisonment. Neither summer sickness nor winter privation can carry me off. No fall from the slippery rocks will drown me; no wound gone sour will poison my blood.

We will not be permitted to die here.

And so I plan.

Time is still our master. Time has not yet finished with us. Time protects itself.

Time, I have to hope, will let us make things right, one day.

117.01.27 (117TH TURN, SEVENTH INTERVAL)

BLUE SHALE HOLD

Cass was measuring out feed, and wondering if she’d need to pry open the new barrel of alfalfa, when all the fire-lizards basking in the early morning sunshine on the roof of the stables sat up in a sudden commotion of fluttering wings.

She ducked out from the overhang of the eaves just in time to see the blue dragon appear in the sky above the main Hold. His far-off bugle of greeting, and the equally distant response from old Kimdanth on the fire-heights, carried well even across the miles between Blue Shale proper and the snug runner-hold that nestled back from the ocean cliffs.

Tolland, sweeping the yard, leaned on his broom. “Is that –”

“Darshanth, yes,” said Cass. She threw an extra half scoop of barley into the last bowl to make up for the missing alfalfa, then started around the yard, pushing insistent runner noses out of the way as she hung a feed bowl over each door. “I should go and tell my mum. Can you do the water for Teller Boy and Following Wind?”

“Yes’m,” said Tolland.

He didn’t quite tug his forelock. Mum had been trying to break him of the habit, at least when it came to the other apprentices. They’d teased him for it mercilessly when he’d first come up from the Hold, and Tolland was shy enough already.

Cass saddled Missy. She’d nearly grown out of the little mare: her stirrups hung almost below Missy’s belly. Mum had said that they could look for a new pony for her at the next Gather. It was a tempting prospect, but Cass had been carefully non-committal about it. She knew what her mother was trying to do, and it wasn’t going to work.

As she swung up, she whistled Handy down from the stable roof. He glided obediently to her shoulder and poked her ear with his nose before folding his wings. “There’s a boy,” Cass said, scratching him under the chin. Handy was always immaculately well behaved. Mum hadn’t needed to insist on that. Cass wanted no accusations that she couldn’t care for a fire-lizard properly.

She could have sent him ahead with a message, but she wasn’t sure exactly where the string was. Darshanth had gone to the Hold instead of straight to the runner-hold, so there was plenty of time. Besides, for all her ambitions, Cass still enjoyed riding. If she closed her eyes, and breathed in Handy’s scent, she could almost imagine she was aboard a dragon, not a pony; flying, not running.

Cass pulled Missy up when they crested the ridge behind the hold, scanning the valley for the string. On a sunny summer day, Mum said, there was no view to beat it. The white rails of Blue Shale’s racecourse marched up the slope to the east, overlooked by the viewing stands that stepped into the hillside all the way to the winning post. To the west, the pastures were full of just-shorn sheep. Between the two, the uphill gallop wended like a parched yellow ribbon up the steep incline, the grass worn away by summer heat and many sets of sharp-edged hoofs.

Mum was astride her old hack at the edge of the gallop, about two-thirds of the way up the hill. Lord Zendan was beside her, sitting less easily on the new black mare that had been terrorising the stable hands at the Hold proper. They were watching a pair of runners coming up the gallop towards them: a couple of Zendan’s unraced two-Turn-olds, being prepared for their maiden races.

Cass waited for the pair to pull up at the top of the gallop, raising a hand in greeting to their riders as they circled their snorting colts. Then, as they began to walk back down the side of the track, she nudged Missy after them.

Mum saw her coming, and Cass obeyed her brief glance, reining in her pony at a polite remove from where Lord Holder and Master Beastcrafter sat their runners.

“…ready in time for the Gather?” Zendan was asking.

“Blue Shore will be, barring disaster,” Mum said. “Blue Harbour I’m not as confident. He’s still a real baby. I’d rather wait and enter him at one of the minor meetings.”

Zendan didn’t look completely happy – he never did – but he nodded. “Shore will go in the six furlong?”

“For his debut,” said Mum. “He’s bred to get a mile and a half, but I don’t like to step them up too soon.”

“I’ll trust your judgement,” said Zendan. He looked over at Cass. “I’d best get back to the Hold.”

“Please don’t hold your mare in on my account,” said Mum. She patted her runner’s shoulder. “I don’t think poor old Bov could keep up with her these days.”

Zendan nodded and wheeled his runner. The black mare sprang away sharply enough to almost pull his arms from their sockets and galloped towards the ridge, shaking her head the whole way.

Cass heeled Missy over towards the edge of the gallop. “He doesn’t ride well enough for a runner that hot.”

“You can keep that opinion of our Lord Holder to yourself,” Mum said. She glanced after Zendan, and added, “But rather him than me. What are you doing here? Everything all right in the yard?”

“Everything’s fine,” said Cass. “But Darshanth’s over at the Seahold.”

“At this hour?” Mum asked. She frowned as she looked down the gallop to where another pair of runners was cantering up the hill. “You’d think they’d want to enjoy a few more lie-ins.”

“I bet they’re on Search,” said Cass. “I bet Tynerith’s laid her clutch.”

Mum waited for the runners to flash past in a thunder of hoofs. “It’s soon yet for that,” she said, with careful blandness. “But I’m sure Mine will tell us.” She raised her voice. “That’ll do, Gerray. Take them back.”

The lad on the bay colt touched a finger to his cap in acknowledgement. He and the other work rider turned their mounts downhill. They’d go home via the long route, letting the runners cool down, and walking through the stream at the bottom of the valley on the way. There was nothing better than salt water for a runner’s legs, and Mum exercised the string on the long flat western beaches at least once a sevenday, but the stream-water did them good, too. Mum, though, turned her gelding back towards the ridge, and Cass urged Missy to follow.

“If she has, though,” she said, “and they’re short of candidates, and there’s a gold egg –”

“You’d better hope there’s not,” Mum said. She met Cass’ accusing stare calmly. “I don’t know how many times I’ve told you this. You’re only twelve, and you know how the Weyrwoman feels about very young dragonriders.”

“You always say that,” said Cass. “Like it’s the Weyrwoman who doesn’t want me to Impress –”

“No one doesn’t want you to Impress,” said Mum.

“– or as if I wouldn’t want a dragon unless it was a queen –”

“It’s a matter of having possibilities,” said Mum. “If there’s not a queen egg, it’s green or nothing –”

“Or blue,” Cass said, though she knew perfectly well that there were only two female blue riders.

“You’re too young, Cassejan, and that’s that.”

“You let Saker go when he was twelve.”

“A sevenday before his thirteenth Turnday.”

“You treat him differently because he’s a boy!”

“Because it is different for a boy,” Mum said. There was steel in her voice, but concern in her eyes, as she looked down at Cass from her tall hack. She softened her tone. “Everything’s different for boys in this world, Cass. Don’t let the fact that I’m a Master convince you otherwise. I just want you to have a chance to be you before you think about wedding yourself to the Weyr. To see a bit of Pern. To do other things. It’s not such a bad life we have here, is it?”

“I suppose,” Cass said, grudgingly.

“Come on,” said Mum. “Race you to the top?”

“Race? Bovey’s five hundred Turns old!”

“And your feet are nearly dragging on the ground,” Mum completed their familiar exchange. “Which makes us about even!”

She kicked her chestnut on, and if Bovey didn’t quite surge forward like Lord Zendan’s mare, then he could still run gamely enough to give Missy, with her tearaway speed, a good race to the top of the ridge: Mum’s Sleek and Cass’ Handy flying in their wake.

Darshanth had landed behind the stables by the time they walked their blowing runners back into the yard. He was a regular enough visitor to the runner-hold that most of the animals had become desensitised to him. Mum said that was an advantage in race-runners, which had to learn to be calm in all kinds of circumstances. Cass herself had seen runners from other holds frothing and rearing at even the distant sight of dragons before a race, while theirs simply ignored them.

C’mine was in the yard with a mug of klah in hand, talking to Tolland. Cass wondered, with a sudden flare of intense jealousy, if he meant to Search him. But as she and Mum dismounted, C’mine set his mug down and came to greet them. “There’s my girls,” he said, and caught Mum in a one-armed hug. He held the other hand out to Cass, and she bundled gladly into the cuddle.

“Go and say hello to Darshanth,” C’mine told her, planting a kiss on the top of her head.

Cass extricated herself from the hug and ran around the corner of the stable block. As often as she saw C’mine’s blue, he was always pleased to see her. Darshanth lowered his handsome head, and when Cass ran up against him to hug his muzzle, he closed the circle of his forearms around her. “Love you, love you, love you!”

I love you too.

When Cass returned to the stable yard, Mum and C’mine both had bacon rolls from the table that Merrana, the hold-keeper, set out for the lads and riders every morning. Cass helped herself to her own roll, and wandered back across the yard to join them. They were deep in conversation, and Mum’s expression was unusually stern. “What is it?” Cass asked. “What’s happened? Has Tynerith clutched?”

“No,” said C’mine. “She has another ten days at least to go.” He looked at Cass. “I’m sure you grow an inch every time I see you.”

“You only saw me last sevenday!”

C’mine laughed. “I know!”

He went to ruffle her hair, as he always did. Cass dodged, as she always did. “Just because you don’t have any any more,” she complained, although she barely remembered a time when C’mine had had any hair at all.

He shook his head ruefully, and stroked Mum’s hair instead. “It’s a cruel, cruel daughter you’re bringing up here.”

“She takes after me like that,” said Mum, but distractedly.

Cass looked from one to the other. “What is it?”

C’mine and Mum exchanged a look.

“What’s Saker done now?” Cass asked, with an exaggerated sigh. C’mine was always bringing news of some trouble that Sakerren – Cass still couldn’t get used to thinking of her brother as S’ker – had got himself into.

“Never you mind,” said Mum. “Go and get ready for your lessons.”

“I have to go to lessons this morning?” Cass asked, crestfallen. “But C’mine –”

“Can’t stay long,” said C’mine. “Darshanth will give you a ride down to the Hold.”

Cass sighed, although arriving for Harper Garynal’s morning classes on Darshanth always won her a few envious glances. “All right.”

She raced through a wash and a change of clothes. She would have been content to wear her old riding clothes all day, but Mum insisted that a Master’s daughter should look as respectable as any of the Hold’s highly-born fosterlings. She hunted in vain for her good shoes for several minutes before she remembered that she’d left them in the tack room. In her socks, she descended the stairs from the apartment on the upper floor of the runner-hold where she and Mum lived.

“…my fault really.”

Cass paused, one hand still on the bannister. C’mine’s voice was muffled by the door of Mum’s office – the closed door of Mum’s office – but Cass had always had very sharp ears.

“Oh, don’t start with that again,” said Mum. Then she added, “Though you’re right this time. It is your fault. I thought we’d agreed you’d wait until he was older before you gave him that blighted letter.”

“He was having a terrible time of it,” said C’mine. “We always knew it would be difficult for him once it got out whose son he is. He looks –”

“Just like his father,” said Mum, as sharply as Cass had ever heard her.

“More and more every day,” said C’mine. “No one pays too much attention to weyrlings until they’re about ready to graduate, but when the Wingleaders were inspecting the class, and H’ned laid eyes on him…”

“That old bastard,” said Mum, with a snort. “Hasn’t he retired yet?”

“You should have seen his face,” said C’mine. “It was like he’d seen a ghost. By the next day it was all around the Weyr. M’dan wouldn’t even speak to him, and they’ve been inseparable since they Impressed.”

“He should have gone to Southern,” said Mum. “He was never going to get an even hand at Madellon.”

“Would you really have wanted him so far away?”

“No,” said Mum. “I just wish he didn’t have that shadow over him. I wish he hadn’t been exposed like this.”

“You never hid it from him.”

“Sometimes I think I should have.”

Cass went very still, straining to hear every word. Even she knew that her brother’s father was a dragonrider who’d been Exiled to Westisle before Saker had even been born, but she didn’t know the details. It wasn’t a subject you brought up with Mum; not ever.

But C’mine just said, “I thought his father’s letter would give him some answers. I didn’t think he’d do anything rash.”

Mum’s retort was laced with sarcasm. “This is my son we’re talking about?”

“Saker’s never been stupid. Bold, but not stupid.”

“And yet he –” Mum stopped. “What did he do?”

C’mine sighed. “We still don’t exactly know. They were gone for most of a sevenday, but they had leave the first two days; it was that long before anyone realised they were missing.”

“Faranth, Mine; and you’re only just telling me now?”

“We knew nothing had happened to Sormoranth or Arkandeth.”

“I’ve heard that one before.”

“They’re both fine, Saren. In disgrace, but fine.”

“And the queens haven’t got it out of them?”

“That’s just it. Their dragons won’t talk. We think they’ve been silenced.”

“Silenced?”

“By another queen.”

“Another…what?”

“It makes sense,” said C’mine. “Not even Arkandeth could have broken Tr–”

“Don’t say that name,” Mum said, in a suddenly brittle tone.

“I’m sorry,” said C’mine. “But the lads can’t have been acting alone. They’d need a queen to lift the compulsion on an Exiled dragon.”

Mum didn’t answer for a long moment. When she did, she spoke almost too softly even for Cass’ keen hearing. “Then he’s escaped?”

“He’s not on Westisle any more.”

“Where’s he gone?”

“Nobody knows.”

“Faranth, C’mine!” Mum sounded stricken. Cass almost never heard her use C’mine’s full name to his face. “After everything he did? And no one’s trying to find him and put him back where he belongs?”

“He was there seventeen Turns, Saren. Seventeen Turns on that barren rock.”

“He took T’kamen away from me. If it had been C’los he’d killed –”

“He didn’t kill T’kamen,” said C’mine.

Mum went silent again. “You’ve always said that,” she said at last. “And I’ve never understood why.”

“I wish I could tell you,” said C’mine.

“What’s going to happen to the boys?”

“They’ll have a few privileges revoked, stand some cold watches. The Weyrleaders can’t really prove they did anything wrong, apart from going missing for a sevenday. D’cars is no martinet, and Valonna doesn’t want to antagonise the other Weyrs by accusing another queen rider of breaking someone out of Exile.”

“And Saker’s all right? In himself?”

“Now that he and M’dan are friends again. He’s always been resilient. You’ll see him in a few sevendays, if you come to Tynerith’s Hatching.”

“You know I won’t, Mine,” said Mum, without rancour.

“And you know I’ll never stop asking,” said C’mine.

“We won’t be seeing so much of you when the clutch Hatches, will we?”

“I don’t know,” said C’mine. “I have high hopes for R’von as my assistant. And if we’re going to talk about riders resembling their fathers; Faranth, but it’s like L’stev’s back from the dead, seeing him stalking around the barracks.”

“L’stev would be proud,” said Mum. “Of both of you.”

Neither of them spoke again for a while. Cass wondered if she should stay to see if they said anything else interesting. Then, suddenly, C’mine said, “I should get back. And I promised Cass that ride down to the Hold.”

Cass fled for the safety of the tack room before she was caught listening at the door.

C’mine was waiting beside Darshanth when she came out of the runner-hold, good shoes on and slate under her arm. “Leg up?”

“I can get on myself, you know,” Cass said. Darshanth promptly drew himself up so his shoulder was higher than Cass’ head. She stuck her tongue out at him, and he dropped his jaw in a grin. “At least, I can if your dragon doesn’t act like a horrible watch-wher!”

Darshanth huffed with tolerant indignation at that. C’mine touched his elbow, and the blue dragon settled back down again. “A couple more Turns and you’ll be taller than me,” said C’mine. “And I’ll miss not giving you a boost up.”

“A couple more Turns, and I’ll have my own dragon,” Cass countered. “If Mum ever lets me.”

“She’s right about you being too young,” C’mine said. “Don’t worry. There’ll still be dragons by the time you’re old enough to stand.”

“There’d better be,” said Cass. She let him leg her up onto Darshanth’s neck. She snapped her tethers onto the secondary rings on his neck straps, then fastened the safety as C’mine had taught her when she was tiny.

C’mine swung up behind her, buckling in his own lines and then checking hers. “Anyway, you don’t want to leave your mum on her own too soon, do you?”

“She does miss Saker,” said Cass. “And you. Sometimes I wish –”

She was interrupted by Darshanth’s take-off. The force of it pushed Cass back against C’mine. He put his arm around her as Darshanth spiralled upwards over the runner-hold.

The flight to the Hold Proper was over too soon. Cass glanced up at the third floor as Darshanth landed neatly in the courtyard. Sure enough, her classmates were watching at the windows. That cheered her up.

“What do you wish?” C’mine asked, as he undid the safeties.

Cass had almost forgotten her half-finished thought. “Oh,” she said, sliding down Darshanth’s shoulder. “That we could all just go and live at the Weyr with you.”

“I don’t think there’d be room for all the runners,” C’mine told her seriously.

“Mum doesn’t just train runners,” said Cass. “Master Terroc said that she’s one of the top experts on fire-lizards on the whole of Pern.”

“That’s why Blue Shale’s the best place for her,” said C’mine. “There aren’t many fire-lizards at Madellon.”

Cass grinned up at him. “But dragons are just big fire-lizards!”

She whirled to run before C’mine could pretend to be cross with her. She wasn’t fast enough. Darshanth lunged and caught the back of her jacket in his teeth, jerking her up short. “Let go of me!” Cass complained, and when Darshanth deliberately bit down harder, his eyes whirling merrily green, she turned an imploring look on C’mine. “Make him let go!”

C’mine was laughing as he jumped down from Darshanth’s neck. He disengaged Darshanth’s teeth from Cass’ jacket, pushing his dragon’s nose away. He tugged the jacket down, straightening it out. “Serves you right for calling him a fire-lizard. Now give me a kiss and go to your lessons. And be a good girl for Harper Garynal.”

“I will,” Cass said, stretching up on tiptoe to kiss him. “Thank you for the lift.”

She’d already started away when C’mine said, “Love you.”

Cass glanced back over her shoulder to look at C’mine and Darshanth. She smiled, knowing that her classmates were still watching. “Love you too, Dad.”

39.04.23 (39TH TURN, EIGHTH PASS)

MADELLON WEYR

“If you survive your first day, you’ll be fine,” Lehanna had said, with a knowing grin, and the words kept going through D’kedu’s mind, mantra-like. Survive today and you’ll be fine. Survive today and you’ll be fine.

You will, Covanth told him.

It wasn’t as if Lehanna hadn’t left everything in good order when she’d handed over. T’kamen’s weyr was spotlessly clean; all his harness was still shining from its last greasing; and when Covanth had asked Epherineth if he needed anything, the great bronze had replied peaceably that he didn’t. But that still left D’kedu with the Weyrleader’s office to gate-keep, his schedule to mind, and all his mundane needs to fulfil. “If he’s busy, he won’t eat unless you literally put food in front of his nose,” Lehanna had said. “And he’ll complain if you do that when he preoccupied with something, which is most of the time. Don’t let that stop you. He barks, but he doesn’t bite.”

T’kamen had indeed been preoccupied when D’kedu had brought him his breakfast, mid-morning. He’d been at Benden most of the last three days, and he hadn’t yet readjusted to Madellon time. That was something else Lehanna had warned D’kedu he’d find challenging: the need to keep appointments across multiple timezones. The row of clocks on the office wall, each showing the current time at one of the other Weyrs of Pern, had to be wound daily, and synchronised with the clock at the Smithcrafthall every other day. That was laborious, as Covanth couldn’t reach as far as the watchdragon at Taive Hold, but D’kedu wasn’t about to let that interfere with his duties. Tr’seff drilled it into them from when they were candidates that colour was no barrier to anything, and D’kedu hadn’t won the privilege of tailing for T’kamen by making excuses of his dragon’s natural limitations. He’d set aside an hour of his own free time later to go to Taive, introduce himself to the watchrider there, and arrange a relay of the accurate time via the watchdragon at Gartner Hold. It wouldn’t be his last such excursion. Lehanna had told him he’d need to make friends with people all over – not just riders, but Craft and Holdfolk too. Wherever T’kamen went, D’kedu had to smooth the way for his visit. The knowledge that he and Covanth and Mirka now had the liberty to go anywhere on Madellon’s business without asking permission from the Weyrlingmaster was both daunting and exhilarating.

But the thought that he was now responsible for the smooth day-to-day running of the Weyrleader’s life still made D’kedu nervous. Almost every name on the roll of honour that hung upon the wall above his new desk belonged to a rider who’d gone on to great things since tailing for T’kamen. Lehanna had promised to leave him alone unless he needed her – and she’d left so many helpful notes, tucked into desk drawers and between the pages of records, that D’kedu didn’t think he would. But that didn’t stop any of her predecessors from finding the time to stop by and inspect the newest addition to their esteemed ranks during that seemingly endless first morning. “It’s traditional,” Lehanna had warned him. “The old tails. They’ll try to break you, first opportunity they get. Just remember that you work for T’kamen, not them.”

So he had his response ready by the time Marshal Gr’len came storming up to the office, insisting on seeing T’kamen at once. “I’m sorry, sir, but he’s asked not to be disturbed until after forenoon.”

“Are you refusing me entry, weyrling?”

“Yes, sir,” said D’kedu. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Gr’len scowled down at him, and so did the pilot on his shoulder. “Who do you think you are, boy?”

D’kedu held himself a bit more rigidly. “The Weyrleader’s tail, sir.”

Gr’len growled, “T’kamen’s tail, and don’t ever forget it.” Then he grinned. “You might want to ask if there’s anything you can do in his stead, the next time a senior rider comes up here, though.”

“I’ll remember that, sir,” D’kedu said gratefully. Then he added, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No,” said Gr’len, laughing. “Just inspecting the new meat.” And he clapped D’kedu on the shoulder.

D’kedu repelled seven further would-be interlopers, including three more of T’kamen’s former tailmen. He respectfully accepted half a dozen letters and documents, and read each one carefully before sorting it into one of three piles – Urgent, Important, and Information Only. Lehanna had told him that he should probably put most things in the Important pile at first, until he learned to distinguish between what mattered and what didn’t.

He did leap instinctively out of his chair when the Weyrwoman paid a visit. “You must be the new tail,” she said. “Is he still asleep?”

D’kedu tried not to let the fact that T’kamen actually was taking an hour’s nap on the couch in his office affect his face or his tone. “He’s asked not to be disturbed,” he recited. “Is there something I can do for you, Weyrwoman?”

Dalka eyed him sceptically. “I swear you get younger every Turn. Your dragon wasn’t one of ours, was he?”

“No, Weyrwoman,” said D’kedu. “Covanth is out of Loxteth.”

“That’s the next best thing, I suppose.” She stared at him a moment longer. Then she tossed a sealed note onto the desk in front of him. “Well, weyrling; when T’kamen wakes up, give him this and tell him that we think we’ve found another sensitive, but he’s going to need to move fast unless we want Southern to claim her. And don’t repeat that to anyone, you hear?”

“Yes, Weyrwoman,” said D’kedu.

“And especially not to weyrwoman Yannise or weyrwoman Pleira; understood?”

“Yes, Weyrwoman.”

Dalka narrowed her eyes at him, then turned and stalked away.

D’kedu put the document on the top of the Urgent pile. Even he knew that the news of another sensitive was critically important. The egg shortage meant that some weyrlings weren’t Impressing their pilots until more than a Turn into training delaying their graduation into the Wings. There’d only been fifteen eggs available for the twenty-three dragonpairs of Inferno Class when they’d begun their between training. D’kedu had been lucky to get one of them, but like any rider with a green pilot, he was painfully conscious of how fragile she was. Greens got egg-bound and died all the time, and without Mirka, Covanth couldn’t go between. D’kedu didn’t want to end up grounded like so many riders did when they lost their pilots, especially now, when fighting riders got priority over weyrlings for replacements. If Madellon had found another girl who was sensitive to dragonkind, that was another girl able to persuade a queen pilot to lay her eggs where they could be found.

The clock hands ticked over onto noon. By five minutes past, D’kedu was beginning to wonder if he should go in when the office door opened. He stood up as T’kamen rolled out. “Weyrleader, sir!”

“When I say don’t disturb me until noon, that means when it gets to noon I want to be woken,” said T’kamen.

“Yes, Weyrleader,” D’kedu said, chagrined.

“And quit with the Weyrleadering. I have a name.”

“Yes, T’kamen, sir.”

T’kamen wheeled himself deftly alongside D’kedu’s desk, one-handed, to survey the documents piled there. “What’s this?” he asked, picking up the sealed note on the Urgent pile.

“From the Weyrwoman, sir,” said D’kedu. “She says there’s word of another sensitive in Southern territory.”

“And she’ll be wanting to start a war with Eslayn to snatch her, I suppose,” said T’kamen. “It would have to be Southern, wouldn’t it?” He broke the seal on the document and scanned it, his dark eyes moving quickly. “Faranth. I need to put this fire out. Is there anything else?”

“Nothing urgent I don’t think, sir,” said D’kedu. “Notices from Starfall and the Seacraft, the Peninsula’s casualty list from their last Fall, and our eastern territory forecast.”

T’kamen swept all three piles of documents into a single stack and dropped them on his lap. “I’ll take a look.” He glanced up at the clock above D’kedu’s desk. “I’ll be an hour at least with Dalka. Why don’t you go and get something to eat?”

“Yes, sir. Can I bring you anything, sir?”

“No. That’ll do for now.”

D’kedu took a deep breath as T’kamen wheeled briskly down the corridor towards Dalka’s workroom, feeling a little bruised by his brusqueness. Covanth crowded closer in sympathy. He is a very important man, he offered.

I know, D’kedu said. I just… He took another breath, then squared his shoulders. It’s fine.

The dining hall was packed with riders. D’kedu’s new shoulder-knot would have let him jump the queue at the serving hatch, but he didn’t think he should take advantage when he was only there for himself. He waited in line for noodles and sauce, then turned to find himself a place at a weyrling table.

“Kedu! Kedu! Over here!”

J’ret’s shout carried over the hubbub of the lunchtime crowd. D’kedu moved gratefully in the direction of the tails’ table, close to the officers. “I’d forgotten I’m allowed to sit here,” he confessed, stepping over the bench to sit beside J’ret.

“Sit here?” J’ret echoed. He joshed D’kedu with an elbow, almost making him spill noodles down his wherhides. “You’re Lord of the table now!”

Several of the older tails snorted tolerantly. “Don’t get ideas,” said the girl on J’ret’s right. “You might be T’kamen’s, but you don’t have seniority.”

“Oh, and you do, Ederra,” said another boy, who was feeding noodles to his pilot.

“Was here before you, T’yanden; will be here long after you’re gone,” Ederra said serenely.

“Eddie, the career tail,” said T’yanden. He offered his hand to D’kedu across the table. “T’yanden. Danateth’s rider. I tail for Flightleader H’juke.”

“Ederra, Cenkoth’s,” said Ederra, leaning past J’ret. “And I belong to weyrwoman Pleira; permanently, since Cenkoth’s got a duff wing and is never going to fight!”

“D’kedu, Covanth’s rider,” D’kedu introduced himself in turn. “I tail for –”

“T’kamen; yes we know,” said Ederra. “Have you had a morning?”

“A little bit,” said D’kedu.

“The old tails started beasting you yet?”

“How did you know?”

“I’ve seen his tails come and go,” said Ederra. “It’s always the same story. So, any juicy gossip from his desk?”

D’kedu thought immediately of the news Dalka had brought – and her command not to tell anyone. Everyone knew that the two junior weyrwomen, Pleira and Yannise, were locked in a bitter rivalry to be named as the next Senior Weyrwoman – and that Dalka, who was just as bitterly opposed to accepting that Donauth wouldn’t rise again, hated them both. “Nothing really,” he said. “How’s your first morning gone, J’ret?”

“Oh, I have it easy, N’gon’s only a Wingsecond,” said J’ret. “And he’s just –”

Epherineth asks you to go to his rider immediately, Covanth said abruptly. In the Weyrwoman’s office.

“Shards!” D’kedu swore.

“Summons?” Ederra asked. She waved her hand at D’kedu’s startled look. “Go on, go. You don’t keep him waiting.”

D’kedu ran all the way back to Command. “I’m here, T’kamen, sir,” he panted as he rushed into Dalka’s office.

T’kamen was sitting in his chair with a document in his hand – the eastern forecast D’kedu had passed to him. He looked up from it. There was a curious expression on his face. “I need you to harness Epherineth and Covanth.”

“Of course, sir,” said D’kedu. He hesitated. “Where are we going, sir?”

T’kamen’s eyes dropped back to the document. “Fiver Hold.”

“I wonder what they’re going to call it now,” said Dalka. She was standing on the far side of the room, her arms folded. Her face was almost as unreadable as T’kamen’s.

“All these Turns it’s taken,” said T’kamen. Then he looked at D’kedu. “Well, weyrling?”

“Yes, sir,” D’kedu said quickly, and fled.

Harnessing Covanth was the work of moments. Rigging Epherineth seemed to take forever. “Harness goes on same as any other,” Lehanna had told him. “You get used to the size difference, and Epherineth will make it easy on you. Don’t let his face scare you. He’s really just a big softie.”

D’kedu had practised putting harness on a bronze – Covanth’s clutchmate Meroganth – so Epherineth’s size didn’t faze him. But there was a big difference between handling a juvenile bronze he’d known from a hatchling and touching the Weyrleader’s own dragon. His fingers fumbled over every strap, and stepping up onto the forearm that Epherineth offered him seemed a gross insult. Finally he tightened the last buckle, and stood back to examine his handiwork doubtfully.

“He says it’s fine.”

D’kedu hadn’t even heard T’kamen approach, but there he was. “I’ll get better at it, sir.”

“I know you will,” said T’kamen. “Now you can help me on.”

That was something else D’kedu had practised. Mostly, he was there to steady and support T’kamen as he got up from the chair. The Weyrleader wasn’t a big man; still D’kedu understood why his tailmen had to be tall and strong. T’kamen gripped his shoulder as he transferred his standing weight to his left, good leg, and though his lean, lined face gave no sign of discomfort, D’kedu felt it in the convulsive strength of the hand that clenched on his arm.

Epherineth pressed himself almost flat to the ground and, with grim, silent effort, T’kamen pulled himself up between the ridges. He settled his braced leg in place with only the faintest of winces, and looked down at D’kedu. “All right. Get on.”

D’kedu vaulted up to Covanth’s ridges as he had a thousand times before, and only then realised how crass it was to make an exhibition of his able-bodied athleticism.

“Don’t feel bad.” T’kamen spoke only just loud enough for his voice to carry between their two dragons. He was almost smiling as he looked down from his high seat on Epherineth’s neck. “There was a time, a couple hundred Turns ago, when I could do that.” Epherineth turned his head towards him with an unmistakeable expression of scepticism, and T’kamen drove his knuckles reproachfully against the fore-ridge. “When he was about half grown, anyway. What I’m saying, D’kedu, is that you should enjoy your youth and your fitness while it’s still yours. Don’t suppress it on my account.”

“Yes, sir,” said D’kedu, feeling worse than ever.

“Faranth, Epherineth,” T’kamen said, addressing his dragon. “These first few sevendays when they’re scared of me are always a shaffing pain in the ass.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said D’kedu.

“You probably will be,” said T’kamen. “Let’s go to Fiver. And have Covanth take a fresh visual from Epherineth. It’s changed.”

Mirka had already taken up her position on Covanth’s fore-strap. D’kedu let himself relax as his dragon shared the visual from Epherineth and T’kamen’s pilot Fetch with both of them. He’d only been to Fiver once, when his class had been learning the visuals for Madellon’s easternmost holdings, and it took him a moment to notice what was different.

Can you see the way through? he asked, as he’d been taught.

We see it, said Covanth.

On Epherineth’s mark.

They emerged from between in the same formation they’d gone in: three dragonlengths to Epherineth’s left. The crisply autumnal chill that had been in the air at Madellon was replaced with a warm, dry, dusty breeze, and the sun was farther west in the sky. Below, along the ridge that backed Fiver Hold, the rock spires that gave the Hold its name thrust like outstretched fingers into the sky.

But one of them was gone. The second spire of the five was conspicuous as a missing tooth by its absence. Epherineth glided silently over the remaining columns, craning his neck down to look, and Covanth looked too. It fell over, he remarked to D’kedu, and sure enough the rock that had comprised the column lay in an untidy snake on the ground, fractured into sections like the vertebrae of a spine.

Epherineth circled above the fallen spire half a dozen times. Then, finally, he veered towards the Hold, and Covanth followed dutifully after him.

D’kedu helped T’kamen down from his dragon, well shielded from view by Epherineth’s bulk. Lehanna had warned D’kedu against being too quick to talk his arm. “He’ll tell you if he wants you to do that,” she’d said. “Don’t ever assume he can’t manage. Just be there to help if he can’t.”

So D’kedu followed a respectful pace behind T’kamen as the Weyrleader walked stiffly out past Epherineth towards the entrance to the Hold. It was strange to see T’kamen on his feet. At the Weyr, with the ramps and smooth floors that had been laid for him, he could move around quickly and easily in his chair, but very few places on Pern had such level surfaces. Seeing him walking – slowly, painfully, and leaning hard on his dragon-hafted cane – D’kedu could understand why T’kamen used the chair.

He searched his memory for the name of Fiver’s Holder, and recalled it just as a weather-beaten man came out of the Hold to greet T’kamen. Holder Terihf. “Weyrleader T’kamen,” he said. “This is an unexpected honour.”

T’kamen gripped the wrist offered to him. “It’s good to see you, Terihf.” He gestured with his head towards the ridge. “What happened?”

“It came down before first light,” said Terihf. “The frost this morning probably did it in the end. It’s been precarious for a long time. Frankly, we expected it to fall Turns ago.”

“Before first light,” T’kamen repeated. “And you’ve not had any…visitors?”

“Several, actually,” said Terihf. “I sent a runner to the watchrider at West Gully presently it happened. We’ve had dragons coming in all morning to get a sight.”

“There’ll be more,” said T’kamen. “Every Weyr will need to take the new visual. No one else has stopped?”

“No, they’ve just popped in and popped out again,” said Terihf. “Were you expecting someone?”

T’kamen cocked his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you mind if we stay a little while?”

“It’s Fiver’s pleasure to have you here,” said Terihf. “Can I offer you something to eat or drink? A cow for Epherineth and your man’s young blue there?”

“Thank you, but no,” said T’kamen. Then he almost laughed. “Cows, Terihf? Fiver must be doing well.”

“Thanks to you,” Terihf said, with an embarrassed smile. “Peranvo’s ordered so much stone, I’ve had to hire more men.”

“Credit Dannie for that, not me,” said T’kamen. “She’s the one who authorised the resettlement. I don’t have much say in how Madellon territory is run these days.”

Terihf laughed, a polite exclamation of scepticism. “Nonetheless, Weyrleader, Fiver is grateful. And please, if there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask.” He nodded to D’kedu. “Blue rider.”

T’kamen walked slowly to the edge of the courtyard and looked up at the ridge with its depleted row of spires. D’kedu looked at them, too, trying to figure out their significance to him. Lehanna hadn’t told him anything about Fiver. He thought hard, worried that he’d forgotten some crucial fact.

“What do you know about Westisle, D’kedu?”

He almost started at the direct question. He rapidly re-ordered his thoughts. “The penal colony, sir?”

“That’s the one.”

“Not very much, sir.”

T’kamen looked at him. “So you know something.”

D’kedu stood straighter. “The Weyrlingmaster said that we don’t talk about Westisle.”

“But you know what it’s for.”

“Dragonriders who’ve done really bad things.”

“Do you know the names of any of the riders who are there now?”

D’kedu shook his head.

“Have you ever heard of a rider called S’leondes?”

D’kedu thought about it. Then he shook his head again. “No, sir.”

“What about the Commander? Have you heard of him?”

That name made D’kedu go rigid. “Yes, sir.”

“And people wonder why I don’t like being called Weyrleader.” T’kamen was silent for a moment. Then he said, “A rider escaped from Westisle in the middle of the last Interval. Just one. But there’s no record of who he was.”

“Or she,” said D’kedu.

T’kamen looked at him.

“I’m sorry, sir,” D’kedu said quickly.

“Don’t be sorry,” said T’kamen. “You’re right. It could have been a woman.” He looked up towards the spires again. “But I don’t think it was.”

“Was it –” D’kedu began, and then stopped. Lehanna hadn’t given him any advice on how to ask T’kamen about his past. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to ask him that sort of question at all. You didn’t talk about – D’kedu hesitated even to think the word – timing. And T’kamen was the Weyrleader, even if he didn’t like to be called that to his face.

“I don’t bite,” said T’kamen.

“Was it someone you knew, in the Interval?” D’kedu asked.

T’kamen idly put his hand up to Fetch, riding on his shoulder as if he’d been born there. “Master Marlaw’s been like a hound with a bone ever since he stepped down as Masterharper, you know. There’s hardly a sevenday goes by that he doesn’t unearth some old document that mentions someone I knew in the Interval. Barely knew, half the time. Riders I haven’t thought about in Turns. I don’t quite have the heart to tell Marlaw to stop. I think he enjoys finding this stuff more than I do. But for all those passing references to blue and green riders I scarcely knew, Marlaw never found anything on him.”

“Who was he, sir?” D’kedu asked.

“A Wingsecond,” said T’kamen. “And Wingleader of Ops, when I left him, but not by a few months later. T’rello had taken over Ops by the time they dug half of Gartner Hold out of an avalanche in the winter of 100, and there were two new browns in the Wing. And no mention of him. No mention of him anywhere, however hard Marlaw looked. Not even as the father of one of Starfall’s founding riders, and even I made it into that record.”

D’kedu still had no idea who T’kamen was talking about. “Then you think he was…sent to Westisle?”

“I think he was,” said T’kamen, and his gaze moved again to the broken line of spires on the ridge above the Hold. “And I think he escaped. And if you escaped from Westisle, where would you go?” He answered his own question. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t. Every dragonrider on Pern would know you were a fugitive. It’s not a question of where you would go. But when.” He looked up again, at the sky this time. “So where are you?”

D’kedu looked obediently up, but the sky was an obstinately uninterrupted expanse of blue, empty of clouds and dragons alike.

They waited there for a time, in silence. Then, finally, T’kamen exhaled a long breath. “I suppose even he wouldn’t take that kind of risk. Let’s get back to the Weyr. Epherineth.”

On the Fiver fire-heights, Epherineth roused from where he had been dozing in the warm sunshine. He rose to his hind legs, stretching out his wings, and for a moment the vast cruciform of his silhouette blotted out the sun itself.

Then he paused, his immense wings still spread. He cocked his head.

On T’kamen’s shoulder, Fetch suddenly adopted the same listening pose.

Then dragon and pilot cried out at the same time, and T’kamen swore, “Faranth shaffit!”

Epherineth sprang from the fire-heights with a tremendous leap that belied his enormous size. Fetch arrowed up to join him in a blur of wings. D’kedu looked up, shading his eyes with his hand, as the outlines of dragon and pilot merged together, and then disappeared.

“Where did they –” D’kedu began.

“You stupid reckless idiot!” T’kamen shouted. D’kedu nearly cringed away from the Weyrleader’s anger until he realised it wasn’t directed at him. T’kamen’s eyes searched the sky relentlessly for three breaths, six, ten…

And then Epherineth reappeared. D’kedu let go of the breath he hadn’t realised he’d held. For an awful instant he’d thought the Weyrleader’s dragon had gone between for good.

Then he realised that Epherineth hadn’t emerged alone.

T’kamen’s bronze had another dragon in his talons. D’kedu was put immediately in mind of the murals that decorated the dining hall in the barracks: painted scenes of heroism from earlier in the Pass, of blue and green dragons rising alone to fight Thread, of bronzes and browns flying in tireless support, and of a single bronze, greater than all of them, with a wing-scored green dragon safe in his clutches: snatched, as the ballad so famously told, from the void of cold between.

The dragon hanging now from Epherineth’s claws was no green. He was brown, but the greyest, thinnest, smallest brown D’kedu had ever seen. As Epherineth descended to the courtyard and set the small dragon carefully down, the brown’s hind legs went out from under him. He lay in a heap, his wings limply unfurled, panting and exhausted.

The sound of T’kamen’s cane clattering to the ground made D’kedu jump. The Weyrleader’s hand was suddenly on his shoulder, gripping uncomfortably hard. “Bring him a cow,” he said. “Bring him all the shaffing cows.”

D’kedu knew even his mental voice was shaky as he called, Covanth!

Then T’kamen raised his voice. “Report! Faranth blight you, brown rider, report!”

The brown’s rider released his safety and dismounted. He nearly crumpled when his feet touched the ground, just as his dragon had. He had a gold pilot on his shoulder, and she shrieked objection to the impact, dealing him a glancing blow to the back of the head with one wing.

D’kedu felt T’kamen’s fingers bite into his shoulder.

The brown rider approached slowly. He was as ragged as his dragon. His wherhides were worn and shiny with age. The glass of his goggles was cracked and his chin-strap hung loose from a broken buckle. Even his boots were patched and threadbare. He pulled goggles and helmet off in the same motion to reveal shaggy hair, mostly silver, a haggard face, and dark eyes that were both older and younger than the rest of him; and then he stopped, staring at T’kamen.

T’kamen’s hand fell from D’kedu’s shoulder. He took one halting step towards the brown rider and then another. His eyes were fixed upon the old rider’s face. They were suddenly, fiercely, full of tears. “You careless shaffing tail-fork,” he said. His voice shook. “Do you know how long it’s been since Epherineth had to pull a stupid weyrling out of between?”

The helmet dropped unheeded from the brown rider’s hand. “Kamen,” he said hoarsely, and stepped forwards. “Oh, Faranth, Kamen!”

D’kedu watched, mystified, as the brown rider fell suddenly to his knees before the Weyrleader. For an instant T’kamen looked stricken. He put his hand to the side of the brown rider’s head, forcing him to lift it, searching the gaunt, lined face. “Faranth. Faranth.” And then he went heavily to his one good knee, and hugged the brown rider’s head hard to his shoulder. “M’ric, M’ric, what did they do to you?”

M’ric. The name struck D’kedu like a thunderbolt. M’ric, whose name was top of the honour roll outside the Weyrleader’s office. M’ric, who had been T’kamen’s very first tailman. M’ric, who had been lost to Thread a dozen Turns ago, when he was barely out of weyrlinghood. How could this grey old man be M’ric?

For long moments the two riders knelt there, both shaking, both weeping. D’kedu didn’t know where to look. Lehanna hadn’t prepared him for this situation at all. How’s that cow coming, Covanth? he asked, desperately searching the sky for his dragon.

They’re faster than they look! Covanth replied muffledly.

Then, mercifully, T’kamen and the brown rider whom he’d called M’ric and embraced like a long-lost son ceased their fierce hug. M’ric raised his head. “You look older, too.”

“It’s been twelve Turns, M’ric,” said T’kamen. He spoke roughly, as if realising now that he should be embarrassed by his own emotion. “Twelve shaffing Turns. What took you so shaffing long?”

“I was…” M’ric’s mouth formed several silent words. “Detained. For seventeen Turns.”

“Seventeen –” T’kamen bit the word off. “Faranth. You look like you haven’t eaten for sixteen of those.”

“Not to say I wouldn’t be grateful for a bite,” said M’ric. “But if you offer me anything that even looks like a fish, I think I’ll go back between and stay there.”

“Get him something to eat,” T’kamen told D’kedu.

D’kedu was grateful to have something to do. He ran a dozen paces beyond the malnourished brown dragon. Half of Fiver’s holders were standing, staring, on the steps of the Hold. “Food, please, quickly,” he said. “And klah. And wine.”

Covanth came soaring over the heights then with a grey-and-white spotted cow in his grasp. He landed at a polite distance from the brown, then laid his kill down and nudged it carefully towards the drooping dragon with his nose. The brown hummed a croaky thank-you and snagged his claws into the cow to pull it closer.

A woman rushed out from the Hold, darting anxious glances at the three dragons. “More’s coming,” she said, pushing a plate of meatrolls into D’kedu’s hands.

He turned back towards T’kamen and M’ric. They were still kneeling on the ground. It struck him as suddenly ludicrous. But T’kamen suddenly recoiled from M’ric, awkward with his bad leg, and Epherineth whined. As D’kedu approached with the meatrolls, he heard T’kamen ask, “What do you mean?”

“Please,” said M’ric. “I took her from you. I can give you her back. I can send you home.”

T’kamen looked away from him, and for a moment D’kedu saw something surface in his eyes: an ancient yearning, long suppressed. The word resonated like a grumble of thunder, elemental and seductive. Home.

And then the longing faded from his eyes, like a brief spring squall clearing from the sky. “Home is here, M’ric. For a very long time. Home is now.”

“But she’s –”

“She’s fine,” T’kamen said. He spoke more firmly now. Whatever temptation had made him waver had passed. “She doesn’t need either of us. She never did.”

M’ric sat back on his haunches, looking lost. “All these Turns,” he said. “All these Turns I’ve thought about how to make it right…”

“There’s nothing to make right,” said T’kamen. “Everything’s as it should be. And you’re home. You’re free.”

M’ric echoed the word as if it had no meaning to him. “Free?”

“Free to choose your own path,” said T’kamen.

M’ric shook his head. “I don’t even know what that is.”

“That’s the point,” said T’kamen. “That’s the whole Thread-blighted point.”

The two riders stared at each other, and though they didn’t look very alike, D’kedu was suddenly struck by how their fierce dark eyes mirrored each other, black with shared secrets and unspoken knowledge.

“There’s so much I have to tell you,” M’ric began, in a voice that nearly broke. “Saren. C’mine. My son. Yours –”

T’kamen silenced him with a gesture. “And there’ll be time for that.” He spoke roughly again. “There’ll be time for all of that.” He turned his head. “Help me up, D’kedu.”

As D’kedu reached down to help him to his feet, M’ric asked, “Who’s this?”

“My current tail,” said T’kamen. “D’kedu, this is M’ric.” He smiled suddenly, somewhere between a grin and a grimace. “My many-times great-grandson.”

“Five times,” said M’ric, accepting D’kedu’s hand up.

“You knew?”

“I always suspected,” said M’ric. “Dalka showed me her picture of M’dan. I figured out the rest in the Interval.”

“Faranth blight it,” said T’kamen. “Seeing the look of horror on your face when I told you was the only reason I ever wanted to see you again.”

“So do I have to call you granddad?”

“You do that and I’ll send you straight back where you came from,” said T’kamen. “Like I don’t feel old enough as it is.”

“Then what do I call you?” M’ric asked. He touched the braid on T’kamen’s shoulder. “Who are you now?”

“I’m who I always was,” said T’kamen. “I’m Epherineth’s rider. Nothing else really matters.” He limped a couple of paces towards the brown dragon. “Faranth, Trebruth, you need feeding up.”

“He’s the Weyrleader,” D’kedu muttered, affronted despite himself that anyone, even a brown rider back from the dead, didn’t know.

M’ric turned back to him, frowning. “The Weyrleader? Since when did Eighth Pass Madellon have a Weyrleader?”

“Not Madellon’s Weyrleader,” said D’kedu. “The Weyrleader.”

M’ric looked at him, his lined brow creased in a frown.

D’kedu made a gesture with both hands, but even as he did he knew he couldn’t encompass everything T’kamen was, everything he’d done, everything he represented. “He’s T’kamen,” he said, because the name alone would have sufficed for any other man, woman, or child on Pern, any dragon or pilot, every rider or holder or crafter with eyes to see or ears to hear. “T’kamen,” he said again, and heard pride resound in his own voice. “The Weyrleader of Pern.”

Characters of Dragonchoice 3

Seventh Interval Pern

At Madellon Weyr

Weyrwoman Valonna, dragon queen Shimpath

Weyrleader T’kamen, dragon bronze Epherineth

Deputy Weyrleader H’ned, dragon bronze Izath

Deputy Weyrleader Sh’zon, dragon bronze Kawanth

Weyrlingmaster L’stev, dragon brown Vanzanth

Adrissa, the former Headwoman

A'keret, dragon bronze Redmyth, a Wingleader

A'krig, dragon bronze Forlenth, a former Wingleader, retired

A'len, dragon brown Chyilth, a senior Wingsecond

Alyss, dragon green Naimyth, deceased

Ammia, dragon green Trinth

A'min, dragon blue Narvonth

Annami, a child

Anthelle, an apprentice Beastcrafter

Arina, a Weyr girl

Arrense, the Weyr Beastcrafter

A'wor, dragon blue Valezath

Benner, a journeyman Healer

Berro, a journeyman Healer

B'frea, dragon green Grissenth

B'get, dragon brown Herroith, deceased

B'mon, dragon bronze Zintyrath, a senior Wingsecond

B'vel, dragon green Senvarth

B'ward, dragon brown Hishovath, T'kamen's junior Wingsecond

C'desron, dragon blue Yonth

C'dessa, dragon blue Murroveth

Chetyian, a child

Ch'vone, dragon blue Gommeshath, dragonless

C'los, dragon green Indioth, deceased

C'mine, dragon blue Darshanth

C'nune, dragon brown Nabrath, deceased

Crauva, the Headwoman

C'tan, dragon blue Raborth

Dagreny, dragon queen Naventh, a former Weyrwoman, deceased

Demmy, dragon green Caileth

D'feng, dragon bronze Sejanth, a former Deputy Weyrleader, injured

D'hor, dragon brown Defronth, the previous Weyrlingmaster, deceased

Dorvan, an apprentice Beastcrafter

D'ros, dragon blue Dellamorth

D'sion, dragon bronze Calproth, a Wingleader

Edrann, dragon green Parhath

E'dor, dragon bronze Kidbeth, a Wingleader

Eravan, a child, deceased

E'rom, dragon brown Sigith, a former Wingsecond, deceased

Etyschan, a child

F'dronn, dragon blue Wiverth

F'gellin, dragon brown Hestyath, a Wingsecond

F'halig, dragon brown Valth, T'kamen's senior Wingsecond

Fianine, dragon queen Cherganth, the former Senior Weyrwoman, deceased

Firland, a former Weyr Healer

F'jaye, dragon brown Winseth

Fr'ton, dragon bronze Peteorth

F'yan, dragon bronze Vidrilleth, a Wingleader

Galyann, a section leader

Garlan, dragon green Hushith

Gerlaven, the Weyr Mason

Gerra, a kitchen girl

G'pellas, dragon blue Derthauth

G'tab, dragon brown Tyronth

G'vor, dragon brown Argeoth

Harraquy, a steward

H'ben, dragon blue Brenth, a former Assistant Weyrlingmaster, deceased

H'imo, dragon green Colwyth

H'lamin, dragon green Zemmath

Hollie, dragon green Izalonth

H'restin, dragon blue Abroth

H'wat, dragon blue Bharuth

Imarr, a former Weyr Mason, deceased

Ingany, Weyr girl

Ishane, dragon green Kinerth

Isnan, the Weyr Healer

Janina, dragon green Amynth, deceased

Jarnian, dragon queen Haxath, deceased

Jarrisam, a journeyman Beastcrafter

Javerre, a Headwoman's Second

Jenavally, dragon green Hinnarioth, the Assistant Weyrlingmaster and Weyr Singer

J'kel, dragon blue Hozrath

J'red, dragon brown Whalth

J'tron, dragon brown Feolth, Sh'zon's junior Wingsecond

J'zen, dragon brown Galith, senior Wingsecond

Katel, a former journeyman Healer, deceased

K'bin, dragon brown Ruorth

Keva, dragon green Freanth

K'get, dragon blue Eyarth, deceased

Kirosahf, a Headwoman's Second

Kishop, the Weyr Tanner

Laniyan, the Weyr Weaver

Lante, a journeyman Healer

Lenia, dragonet green Kirghath, a weyrling, deceased

Lirenzy, a child, deceased

L'kor, dragon brown Farhioth, a junior Wingsecond

L'mis, dragon bronze Pelranth, a Wingleader and former Weyrleader

Lowenda, dragon queen Pequenth, a former Weyrwoman, deceased

L'pay, dragon brown Tigrinth, a Wingsecond

Magardon, the Weyr Smith

Mannis, the Weyr Tanner

M'dellon, dragon bronze Tiuth, a former Weyrleader, deceased

M'lare, dragonet green Narvinth, a weyrling, deceased

M'lo, dragon green Cassath

M'ric, dragon brown Trebruth, fire-lizard queen Agusta, Sh'zon's senior Wingsecond

M'shen, dragon green Zattenth

Nerra, the crèche mother

Nial, a journeyman Healer

N'dar, dragon bronze Paith, deceased

N'gair, dragon brown Pollenth, a Wingsecond

N'jol, dragon green Kistrith

Ollen, a Weyr boy

Olyden, a journeyman Healer

O'ret, dragon bronze Snarth, a former Weyrleader, deceased

O'zer, dragon brown Jekilth

Pericho, a herbalist

P'keo, dragon bronze Nathronth, a Wingleader and former Weyrleader

Ranoklin, a former Weyr Beastcrafter

R'hren, dragon bronze Staamath, a former Weyrleader, retired

R'yeno, dragon bronze Gryth, a Wingleader

Samianne, dragon green Istronth

Sarenya, a journeyman Beastcrafter, fire-lizard blue Sleek

Schanna, dragon green Etymonth

Segradon, a Weyr boy

S'gal, dragon bronze Avvoth, a former Weyrlingmaster, deceased

Shauncey, a Master Healer

S'herdo, dragon bronze Helvianth, a Wingsecond

Sh'ror, dragon bronze Qualth, deceased

S'ped, dragon green Peyanth

S'rannis, dragon brown Inorath, H'ned's senior Wingsecond

S'rius, dragon blue Padseth

Suzallie, dragon green Othanth

Tahlienne, an apprentice Weaver

Tebis, a journeyman Beastcrafter

T'gat, dragon bronze Muzzanth, a Wingleader

Tiffa, dragon green Ishgarth

T'jest, dragon blue Belserath

T'pial, dragon blue Harveth

T'rello, dragon bronze Santinoth, a Wingsecond

T'reno, dragon green Givranth

Tymodan, a child

V'gyat, dragon blue Egrath

Vhion, the Master Dragon Healer

V'ley, dragon green Orsalth

V'mersin, dragon green Unoth

V'nor, dragon green Karmunth

V'rai, dragon blue Gresath

V'stan, dragon bronze Sewelth, a Wingleader

W'har, dragon blue Larnokath

Yarayn, caverns woman

Y'kat, dragon bronze Laradinth, a former Weyrleader, retired

Z'fell, dragon green Jyelth

Wildfire Class

Adzai, dragonet green Warjenth

B’joro, dragonet blue Lovanth

Carleah, dragonet green Jagunth

Cebria, dragonet green Gawath

Chenda, dragonet green Lirpath

C’seon, dragonet blue Brancepath

G’dra, dragonet brown Kinnescath

H’nar, dragonet bronze Ellendunth

Ivaryo, dragonet green Saperth

Jardesse, dragonet green Kitlith

Jenafa, dragonet green Nedrith

J’kovu, dragonet blue Moth

K’dam, dragonet brown Narwath

Kessirke, dragonet green Irdanth

K’ralthe, dragonet bronze Djeth

Maris, dragonet green Indrahath

M’rany, dragonet blue Rementh

M’touf, dragonet green Atath

N’jen, dragonet brown Danementh

P’lian, dragonet brown Sparth

R’von, dragonet bronze Oaxuth

Soleigh, dragonet green Bristath

S’terlion, dragonet green Nerbeth

Tarshe, dragonet queen Berzunth

W’lenze, dragonet blue Goldevath

Southern weyrlings

B’rode, dragonet brown Jemonth

Jhilia, dragonet green Rioth

Karika, dragonet queen Megrith

L’mern, dragonet bronze Desarth

N’grier, dragonet blue Palth

P’lau, dragonet blue Olanth

Sia, dragonet green Gerilith

T’gala, dragonet blue Heppeth

V’ranu, dragonet brown Laselth

At the Peninsula Weyr

Weyrwoman Rallai, dragon queen Ipith

Weyrleader H’pold, dragon bronze Suffath

Weyrwoman Second Sirtis, dragon queen Ranquiath

Deputy Weyrleader K’ken, dragon bronze Essienth

Weyrlingmaster F’dalger, dragon bronze Zlanth

Artema, dragon green Zovath, deceased

B'reye, dragon bronze Nanleth, a Wingleader

Britt, dragonet queen Tynerith, a weyrling

B'rodd, dragon bronze Gunth, a former Wingleader

B'roggen, dragon brown Joroth

C'eena, dragon bronze Tserth, a Wingleader

D'lane, dragon bronze Hanshuth, a Wingleader

D'worne, dragon bronze Hakadith, a former Weyrleader, deceased

F'dar, dragon bronze Nharrith, a Wingsecond

F'rint, dragon green Ensharth

F'tren, dragon brown Galdiath, a Wingsecond

G'kalte, dragon brown Archidath, a Wingsecond

I'scal, dragon bronze Yerth, a Wingleader

J'deyn, dragon bronze Beregoth

J'gorra, dragon bronze, a Wingleader

K'sorren, dragon bronze Solstorth, a Wingleader

K'tersan, dragon brown Zarpath, a former Weyrlingmaster

Larvenia, dragon queen Haeith, the former Senior Weyrwoman, deceased

L'dro, dragon bronze Pierdeth, a Wingleader

M'roka, dragon bronze Kapriath, a Wingleader

Natarre, the Weyr Singer

N'met, dragon bronze Deakrith, a Wingleader

P'kesker, dragon bronze Swiralth, a Wingleader

P'less, dragon bronze Juhnath, a Wingleader

Rymon, a journeyman Dragon Healer

Sofinda, dragon queen Jiynith, a former Weyrwoman, deceased

S'rebren, dragon green Krodith

Temmal, dragonet green Dath, a weyrling, deceased

T'bret, dragon bronze Wasparth, a Wingleader

Theniya, dragon queen Eindanth, a former Weyrwoman Second, deceased

T'neb, dragon bronze Akalioth, a Wingleader

T'rolf, dragon blue Unnith

Xh'len, dragon bronze Willeth, a former Weyrleader, deceased

Z'denk, dragon bronze Reeth, a Wingleader

At Southern Weyr

Weyrwoman Margone, dragon queen Grizbath

Weyrleader P'raima, dragon bronze Tezonth

Deputy Weyrleader D’pantha, dragon bronze Cyniath

Weyrlingmaster S’gert, dragon brown Horioth

B'nain, dragon blue Sevrieth, dragonless

G'nepi, dragon bronze Hondinth, a Wingleader

K'felia, dragon bronze Jumonth, a Wingleader

O'digy, dragon bronze Aramonth, a Wingleader

Maebell, dragon green Andranth, deceased

R'maro, dragon bronze Maibauth, a Wingleader

Sekara, dragon green Parth

At the Northern Weyrs

A'stay, dragon blue Yigrith, the Weyrlingmaster at Igen Weyr

Balwas, dragon queen Oradenth, the Weyrwoman Second at High Reaches Weyr

B'reko, dragon green Milth, the Weyrlingmaster at High Reaches Weyr

F'rer, dragon bronze Curgith, the Weyrlingmaster at Benden Weyr

G'dorar, dragon brown Fadath, the Weyrlingmaster at Telgar Weyr

K'lay, dragon brown Callonth, the Weyrlingmaster at Fort Weyr

K'letan, dragon bronze Kabrielth, a Wingsecond at Telgar Weyr

N'veag, dragon bronze Lenneth, the Weyrleader at High Reaches Weyr

P'larcus, dragon bronze Tovadinth, a Wingsecond at Ista Weyr

R'keed, dragon green Helinth, a weyrling at High Reaches Weyr

S'main, dragon bronze Derinth, a Wingleader at Fort Weyr

Veranne, dragon queen Kerpath, the Senior Weyrwoman at High Reaches Weyr

At the Holds and Halls of Pern

Arcollen, a sea captain, deceased

Astag, the Lord Holder at Peninsula South Hold

Benallen, a Master Beastcrafter at Peninsula West Hold

Casendie, a holder at Kellad Hold

Coffadan, the younger brother of Lord Coffleby, deceased

Coffleby, the Lord Holder of Long Bay Hold, deceased

Crent, a thug

Ernick, a herder at Kellad Hold

Erric, the Lord Holder at Taive Hold

Fajon, a journeyman Beastcrafter at Blue Shale Hold

Gadman, a herder at Kellad Hold

Gaffry, the Masterharper at Kellad Harperhall

Gellera, an artist

Gorty, a thug

Greflink, a Master Beastcrafter at Rosken Hold

Hennidge, a Masterharper at Kellad Harperhall

Herstone, the son of Winstone at Jessaf Hold

Jauro, a Master Beastcrafter at Southern Hold

Justine, the Lady Holder at Peninsula West Hold

Kaddyston, a Master Beastcrafter at Blue Shale Hold

Kiedracc, the Masterherder

Klauverte, a mineholder, deceased

Krondin, a jockey at Peninsula West Hold

Lady Coffleby (also Gianna), the Lady Holder of Long Bay Hold

Lennig, a herder at Kellad Hold

Merigen, an exile

Meturvian, the Lord Holder of Kellad Hold

Naverik, a Master Harper at Kellad Harperhall

Olham, a Master Smith

Robyn, a singer at Kellad Harperhall

Senyer, a journeyman Healer

Shevran, an exile

Shofia, an exile

Shondan, an exile

Talladon, an artist at Peranvo Hold

Televal, the Holder at Peranvo Hold

Trinsy, a journeyman Tailor

Winstone, the Lord Holder of Jessaf Hold

Yoseller, an itinerant woolman

Zinner, the Lord Holder of Blue Shale Hold

Eighth Pass Pern

Weyrcommander S'leondes, dragon blue Karzith

Weyrmarshal R’lony, dragon brown Geninth

Weyrwoman Dalka, dragon queen Donauth

Weyrwoman Second Lirelle, dragon queen Levierth

A'dry, dragon brown Plumiath

Agarenne, a caverns woman

A'hald, dragon blue Jolyoth, a Wingsecond

Alanne, dragon queen Ryth, a former Weyrwoman, dragonless

Alisker, a woman at Fiver Hold

A'lory, dragon green Jastath

Audette, dragon green Wymsith, an Assistant Weyrlingmaster

Aurel, dragon green Rhosanth

B'neven, dragon green Twibith, deceased

Br'lom, dragon bronze Shadith, the Aidleader

B'san, dragon green Teewith

Cassah, dragon green Thalth

C'don, dragon green Handrinth

Ch'fil, dragon brown Stratomath, the Crewleader

C'pul, dragon bronze Hawrinth

C'rastro, dragon blue Prerth, the Weyrlingmaster

C'strar, dragon blue Shinth, the Weyrcommander at Starfall Weyr

C'terry, dragon blue Kahnath

Dako, Lord Holder at Jessaf Hold

Daizey, dragon green Harlath

Daliddal, a Weyr boy, deceased

D'kestry, dragonet brown Crollonth, a weyrling; R'lony's tail

D'lev, dragon blue Skerith

D'midder, dragon brown Kolkorroth, deceased

D'roven, dragon blue Boskoth

D'send, dragon green Ferrelth

D'vek, dragon brown Tomath, the Stationmarshal at Madellon East Weyrstation

D'wait, dragon blue Aismith

E'ban, dragon blue Bussarth

Ekarri, dragon queen Hidmath, the Senior Weyrwoman at Starfall Weyr

El'yan, dragon brown Ayarth

Eralla, dragon green Sprilth

E'rol, dragon blue Grechanth

E'ster, dragon bronze Vralsanth

Estrinel, dragon queen Kilpinth, the Senior Weyrwoman at the Peninsula Weyr

Fantrol, the Lord Holder of Kellad Hold

Feyara, dragon green Delkiath, the Weyrcommander at the Peninsula Weyr

F'vera, dragon green Trilasiath, a Wingsecond

G'bral, dragon brown Barinth, the Watchleader

G'less, dragon blue Elsterth

Gl'non, dragonet green Sabbith, a weyrling

G'mend, dragon green Ullerth

G'reyan, dragon green Ginth, a Wingleader

Gr'len, dragonet bronze Ipanath, a weyrling

G'sol, dragon blue Drinmath, a Flightleader

Gusinien, a journeyman Dragon Healer

Hallery, dragon green Runiath, a Wingleader

Heche, dragon queen Majuth, a former Weyrwoman at the Peninsula Weyr, deceased

Herony, dragon green Gamranth, a Wingleader

H'roo, dragon brown Shukath, the Weyrmarshal at Southern Weyr

Ignia, dragon queen Ourath, a former Weyrwoman at Starfall Weyr, retired

I'rill, dragonet brown Noozath

Isaga, dragon green Nenath

Jeffran, a holder at Fiver Hold

J'ban, dragon green Mestinth

J'born, dragon brown Delpath, the Weyrmarshal at the Peninsula Weyr

Jillan, a journeyman Harper at Blue Shale Hold

J'lope, dragon brown Toonbith

J'naide, dragon green Nentruth, Wingsecond

Jondren, a Master Harper at the Kellad Harperhall

J'reo, dragonet brown Mimorth, a weyrling

Jweta, dragon green Desrath, a Flightleader

Kanessa, the Headwoman

K'bard, dragon green Wenbeth

K'bell, dragon blue Toliath, a Wingleader

Kheleina, an apprentice Harper at the Kellad Harperhall

K'lem, dragon green Manskith, an Assistant Weyrlingmaster

K'lint, dragon blue Miyath

Kolasch, an apprentice Harper at the Kellad Harperhall

K'yon, dragon blue Contith

Lannira, dragon green Bienath, the watchrider at Kellad Hold

L'argo, dragonet green Deothith, a weyrling

Leda, dragon green Suatreth

Leianne, dragon green Tishurth

L'gran, dragon brown Tagherth, the Stationmarshal at Madellon South

Lori, dragon queen Gindarth, the Senior Weyrwoman at Southern Weyr

L'reky, dragon bronze Gliarth, at Ista Weyr, deceased

L'vorn, dragon bronze Ligarth, a Wingleader, deceased

Marlaw, the Masterharper at Kellad Harperhall

M'dan, dragon bronze Arkandeth, a former Weyrleader at Starfall Weyr, deceased

M'gard, dragon bronze Arwilth

M'gral, dragon blue Ricquenth, a Wingleader at Starfall Weyr, deceased

M'redd, dragon green Alith, a Wingleader

M'terlo, dragon brown Sonorth, at Starfall Weyr, deceased

N'briel, dragonet bronze Stenseth, a weyrling

N'hager, dragon bronze Recranth

N'krie, dragon brown Kedith

N'meru, dragon green Ceduth

N'sen, dragon blue Beaunath

Ondiar, a journeyman Healer

O'paken, dragon green Marieth

Ortan, the Lord Holder at Peranvo Hold, deceased

P'boar, dragon green Hybalth

P'lav, dragon bronze Salionth

P'levan, dragon brown Tazeeth

P'rally, dragon brown Rhugranth

P'solo, dragon blue Idarth

Querenne, dragon green Manyath, a Wingleader

Quinne, dragon green Netraceth

R'don, dragon bronze Chofenth, a Weyrleader at Ista Weyr, deceased

Reloka, dragon queen Chrelith, the Senior Weyrwoman at Ista Weyr

R'ganff, dragon bronze Haggerth, the Bunkerleader

R'lony, dragon brown Geninth

R'nie, dragon blue Gardoth, an Assistant Weyrlingmaster

R'tekon, dragon blue Kujonth

R'varek, dragon green Oridelth

Saffana, dragon green Brenelth

S'dore, dragonet blue Granbith, a weyrling

S'hayn, dragon blue Vendrelth, an Assistant Weyrlingmaster

S'kala, dragon blue Nageth

S'rang, dragonet green Muenth, a weyrling

Stevanti, dragon green Tennatath

Taniel, a Master Healer

Tarlie, a caverns woman

Tavie, dragon queen Belleth, a former Weyrwoman at the Peninsula Weyr, deceased

Tawgert, the Weyr Singer

Tennegin, a Master Beastcrafter at Blue Shale Hold

Terihf, the Holder at Fiver Hold

Th'gare, dragon bronze Inaganth, a Weyrleader at the Peninsula Weyr, deceased

T'shan, dragon bronze Dakanth, a former Weyrleader, deceased

Vellary, dragon green Xasibolth

V'lair, dragon brown Nonrith

V'larr, dragon blue Abenth

V'lerk, dragon green Caliburth

Wista, a journeyman Tailor at Madellon Weyr

W'lage, dragon blue Kondrath

W'ret, dragon brown Sukerath

Yarwell, a Masterwoodcrafter at the Kellad Woodcrafthall

The Unseen Wing

B’nam, dragon brown Yaigath, pilot bronze Fury

B'roce, dragon green Casparth, pilot brown Frenzy

Dannie, dragon green Lusooth, pilot bronze Fleet

F’sta, dragon blue Tetketh, pilot bronze Fandango

Fraza, dragon green Spalinoth, pilot blue Frost

H’juke, dragon bronze Bularth, pilot blue Fathom

I’gral, dragon blue Alvamorth, pilot green Flash

Kayrin, dragon green Mnorth, pilot green Fiasco

O’sten, dragon bronze Monbeth, pilot green Flicker

S’devry, dragon blue Nankinth, pilot blue Flint

Tr’seff, dragon green Franth, pilot brown Finder

Z’renniz, dragon brown Syrolth, pilot green Fierce

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Table of Contents

Dragonchoice 3: Weyrleader of Pern

Acknowledgements

Prologue: Out Of Time

ACT ONE

Chapter one: T’kamen

Chapter two: Sarenya

Chapter three: C’mine

Chapter four: Carleah

Chapter five: Sh’zon

Chapter six: L’stev

Chapter seven: T’kamen

Chapter eight: C’mine

Chapter nine: Sarenya

Chapter ten: T’kamen

Chapter eleven: Valonna

Chapter twelve: T’kamen

ACT TWO

Chapter thirteen: Sh’zon

Chapter fourteen: T’kamen

Chapter fifteen: C’mine

Chapter sixteen: Valonna

Chapter seventeen: T’kamen

Chapter eighteen: Carleah

Chapter nineteen: L’stev

Chapter twenty: T’kamen

Chapter twenty-one. L’stev

Chapter twenty-two: Carleah

Chapter twenty-three: T’kamen

Chapter twenty-four: Valonna

Chapter twenty-five: T’kamen

Chapter twenty-six: Sarenya

Chapter twenty-seven: Sh’zon

Chapter twenty-eight: C’mine

Chapter twenty-nine: T’kamen

Chapter thirty: C’mine

Chapter thirty-one: Valonna

Chapter thirty-two: T’kamen

Chapter thirty-three: Valonna

Chapter thirty-four: T’kamen

ACT THREE

Chapter thirty-five: Sarenya

Chapter thirty-six: T’kamen

Chapter thirty-seven: Sh’zon

Chapter thirty-eight: T’kamen

Chapter thirty-nine: Valonna

Chapter forty: T’kamen

Chapter forty-one: Sarenya

Chapter forty-two: T’kamen

Chapter forty-three: Carleah

Chapter forty-four: Valonna

Chapter forty-five: L’stev, Sh’zon, C’mine

Chapter forty-six: L’stev, Carleah, Valonna

Chapter forty-seven: Sh’zon, Carleah, L’stev

Chapter forty-eight: Carleah, Valonna, Sh’zon

Chapter forty-nine: Valonna, Carleah

Chapter fifty: Sh’zon, Valonna

Chapter fifty-one: Sh’zon

Chapter fifty-two: Valonna

ACT FOUR

Chapter fifty-three: T’kamen

Chapter fifty-four: Valonna

Chapter fifty-five: T’kamen

Chapter fifty-six: Carleah

Chapter fifty-seven: C’mine

Chapter fifty-eight: T’kamen

Chapter fifty-nine: Sh’zon

Chapter sixty: T’kamen

Chapter sixty-one: Sh’zon

Chapter sixty-two: L’stev

Chapter sixty-three: T’kamen

Chapter sixty-four: Sarenya

Chapter sixty-five: Valonna

Chapter sixty-six: Sarenya

Chapter sixty-seven: T’kamen

Chapter sixty-eight: Sarenya

ACT FIVE

Chapter sixty-nine: T’kamen

Chapter seventy: Valonna

Chapter seventy-one: T’kamen

Chapter seventy-two: Sh’zon

Chapter seventy-three: T’kamen

Chapter seventy-four: C’mine

Chapter seventy-five: T’kamen

Chapter seventy-six: L’stev

Chapter seventy-seven: T’kamen

Chapter seventy-eight: C’mine

Chapter seventy-nine: T’kamen

Chapter eighty: Sarenya

Chapter eighty-one: T’kamen

Chapter eighty-two: T’kamen

Chapter eighty-three: Carleah

Chapter eighty-four: T’kamen

Chapter eighty-five: L’stev

Chapter eighty-six: T’kamen

Chapter eighty-seven: Valonna

Chapter eighty-eight: T’kamen

Epilogue: A Loop Left Open

Characters of Dragonchoice 3