“It doesn’t seem to affect Kylara,” Lessa said with bitter resentment. She had turned away, watching Mnementh rend a fat buck with such an intense expression in her eyes that F’lar had no difficulty guessing that she’d prefer Kylara thus rendered.
“That one!” F’lar said with a sharp laugh. “Dear heart, if you must model yourself after Kylara to bear children as Weyrwoman, I prefer you barren!”
“We’ve more important things to discuss than her,” Lessa said, turning to him in a complete change of mood. “What did Lord Asgenar say about the Threadfall? I’d have joined you in the meadow, but Ramoth’s got the notion she can’t leave her clutch without someone spying on them. Oh, I sent messengers out to the other Weyrs to tell them what’s happened here. They ought to know and be on their guard.”
“It would’ve been courteous of them to have apprised us first,” F’lar said so angrily that Lessa glanced up at him, startled. He told her then what Lemos Lord Holder had said on the mountain meadow.
“And Asgenar assumed that we all knew? That it was simply a matter of changing the timetables?” Shock faded from her face and her eyes narrowed, flashing with indignation. “I would I had never gone back to get those Oldtimers. You’d have figured out a way for us to cope.”
“You give me entirely too much credit, love.” He hugged her for her loyalty. “However, the Oldtimers are here and we’ve got to deal with them.”
“Indeed we will. We’ll bring them up to date if . . .”
“Lessa,” and F’lar gave her a little shake, his pessimism dispersed by the vehemence of her response and the transparency of her rapid calculations on how to bring about such changes. “You can’t change a watch-wher into a dragon, my love . . .”
Who’d want to? demanded Mnementh from the Feeding Ground, his appetite sated.
The bronze dragon’s tart observation elicited a giggle from Lessa. F’lar hugged her gratefully.
“Well, it’s nothing we can’t cope with,” she said firmly, allowing him to tuck her under his shoulder as they walked back to the weyr. “And it’s nothing I don’t expect from that T’kul of the ever-so-superior High Reaches. But R’mart of Telgar Weyr?”
“How long have the messengers been gone?”
Lessa frowned up at the bright midmorning sky. “Only just. I wanted to get any last details from the sweepriders.”
“I’m as hungry as Mnementh. Feed me, woman.”
The bronze dragon had glided up to the ledge to settle in his accustomed spot just as a commotion started in the tunnel. He extended his wings to flight position, neck craned toward the one land entrance to the dragonweyr.
“It’s the wine train from Benden, silly,” Lessa told him, chuckling as Mnementh gave voice to a loud brassy grumble and began to arrange himself again, completely disinterested in wine trains. “Now don’t tell Robinton the new wine’s in, F’lar. It has to settle first, you know.”
“And why would I be telling Robinton anything?” F’lar demanded, wondering how Lessa knew that he had only just started to think of the Masterharper himself.
“There has never been a crisis before us when you haven’t sent for the Masterharper and the Mastersmith.” She sighed deeply. “If we only had such cooperation from our own kind.” Her body went rigid under his arm. “Here comes Fidranth and he says that T’ron’s very agitated.”
“T’ron’s agitated?” F’lar’s anger welled up instantly.
“That’s what I said,” Lessa replied, freeing herself and taking the steps two at a time. “I’ll order you food.” She halted abruptly, turning to say over her shoulder, “Keep your temper. I suspect T’kul never told anyone. He’s never forgiven T’ron for talking him into coming forward you know.”
F’lar waited beside Mnementh as Fidranth circled smartly into the weyr. From the Hatching Cavern came Ramoth’s crotchety challenge. Mnementh answered her soothingly that the intruder was only Fidranth and no threat. At least not to her clutch. Then the bronze rolled one scintillating eye toward his rider. The exchange, so like one between himself and Lessa, drained anger from F’lar. Which was as well, for T’ron’s opening remarks were scarcely diplomatic.
“I found it! I found what you forgot to incorporate in those so-called infallible timetables of yours!”
“You’ve found what, T’ron?” F’lar asked, tightly controlling his temper. If T’ron had found anything that would be of help, he could not antagonize the man.
Mnementh had courteously stepped aside to permit Fidranth landing room, but with two huge bronze bodies there was so little space that T’ron slid in front of the Benden Weyrleader, waving a portion of a Record hide right under his nose.
“Here’s proof your timetables didn’t include every scrap of information from our Records!”
“You’ve never questioned them before, T’ron,” F’lar reminded the exercised man, speaking evenly.
“Don’t hedge with me, F’lar. You just sent a messenger with word that Thread was falling out of pattern.”
“And I’d have appreciated knowing that Thread had fallen out of pattern over Tillek and High Crom in the past few days!”
The look of shock and horror on T’ron’s face was too genuine to be faked.
“You’d do better to listen to what commoners say, T’ron, instead of immuring yourself in the Weyr,” F’lar told him. “Asgenar knew of it yet neither T’kul nor R’mart thought to tell the other Weyrs, so we could prepare and keep watch. Just luck I had F’rad . . .”
“You’ve not been housing dragonmen in the Holds again?”
“I always send a messenger on ahead the day of a Fall. If I didn’t follow the practice, Asgenar’s forest lands would be gone by now.”
F’lar regretted that heated reference. It would give T’ron the wedge he needed for another of his diatribes about overforestation. To divert him, F’lar reached for the piece of Record, but T’ron twitched it out of his grasp.
“You’ll have to take my word for it . . .”
“Have I ever questioned your word, T’ron?” Those words, too, were out before F’lar could censor them. He could and did keep his face expressionless, hoping T’ron would not read in it an additional allusion to that meeting. “I can see that the Record’s badly eroded, but if you’ve deciphered it and it bears on this morning’s unpredicted shift, we’ll all be in your debt.”
“F’lar?” Lessa’s voice rang down the corridor. “Where are your manners? The klah’s cooling and it is predawn T’ron’s time.”
“I’d appreciate a cup,” T’ron admitted, as obviously relieved as F’lar by the interruption.
“I apologize for rousing you . . .”
“I need none, not with this news.”
Unaccountably F’lar was relieved to realize that T’ron had obviously not known of Threadfall. He had come charging in here, delighted at an opportunity to put F’lar and Benden in the wrong. He’d not have been so quick—witness his evasiveness and contradictions over the belt-knife fight—if he’d known.
When the two men entered the queen’s weyr, Lessa was gowned, her hair loosely held by an intricate net, and seated gracefully at the table. Just as if she hadn’t ridden hard all morning and been suited five minutes before.
So Lessa was all set to charm T’ron again, huh? Despite the unsettling events, F’lar was amused. Still, he wasn’t certain that this ploy would lessen T’ron’s antagonism. He didn’t know what truth there was in a rumor that T’ron and Mardra were not on very good terms for a Weyrwoman and Weyrleader.
“Where’s Ramoth?” T’ron asked, as he passed the queen’s empty weyr
“On the Hatching Ground, of course, slobbering over her latest clutch.” Lessa replied with just the right amount of indifference.
But T’ron frowned, undoubtedly reminded that there was another queen egg on Benden’s warm sands and that the Oldtimers’ queens laid few gold eggs.
“I do apologize for starting your day so early,” she went on, deftly serving him a
neatly sectioned fruit and fixing klah to his taste. “But we need your advice and help.”
T’ron grunted his thanks, carefully placing the Record hide side down on the table.
“Threadfall could come when it would if we didn’t have all those blasted forests to care for,” T’ron said, glaring at F’lar through the steam of the klah as he lifted his mug.