Beside her, T’mar chuckled evilly.
For the next several sevendays, Terin slept elsewhere than Fiona’s weyr.
“You’ve only solved one problem, you know,” Mother Karina said to Fiona late one evening as they tended the hearth together.
Fiona made an attempt to look quizzical, but the old woman was having none of it. With a sigh, Fiona nodded.
“It’s difficult,” she said.
“It always is,” Karina agreed gently.
“I mean, I’ve got a queen and I’m Weyrwoman,” Fiona objected.
Mother Karina smiled unsympathetically. “I’m an old woman and a trader.”
Fiona fumed to herself at that response, and all the while Mother Karina simply waited patiently until Fiona recovered her composure and carefully examined Karina’s words and compared them to her own. At which point her expression fell and she sighed again, her lips turned down ruefully, as she said, “So we’ve got the same problem, only different.”
Karina nodded silently, her eyes gleaming in congratulation of Fiona’s insight.
“But I’m scared!” Fiona blurted in a wail.
“Of course you are,” Karina said, leaning forward to pat Fiona’s hand reassuringly. “That’s natural. You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t.”
Fiona avoided her problem by plunging herself even deeper in Weyr matters, but as sevendays became months and they neared the time when the older dragonriders were due to reappear and the massed riders would return to their proper time at their proper Weyr, Fiona realized that time was forcing her hand.
Terin never quite apologized to Fiona for leaving her, but she did return, although she never spent quite as much time with Fiona after that, preferring to spend most of it in F’jian’s company — that much of Fiona’s plan had worked out so perfectly that she was not at all surprised to find that Terin had given F’jian her hard-earned gold ring as a Turn’s End present. Judging from Terin’s expression the next morning, F’jian’s response had been everything that the young headwoman could desire. As Terin had celebrated her thirteenth Turn several sevendays beforehand — just twelve days after Fiona had herself turned sixteen — Fiona did not feel it necessary to comment to either headwoman or bronze rider on the new arrangement.
For her part, Fiona found herself growing misty-eyed as she caught the sunsets over Igen, the desert all hued with reds and purples in a cloudless sky, the stars suddenly appearing like brilliant jewels visible in an instant, the two moons with their stately progression, the Dawn Sisters waiting to greet her in the early morning or, more often, to find her greeting them in the strange double-day cycles that they had adopted so long ago to manage the unbearable midday heat.
Fiona had found the time to engage Terregar and Zenor in solving the problem of a flamethrower that didn’t require the old firestone.
“The holders would pay plenty for it,” had clinched the argument — she had so intrigued Zenor and Terregar with the difficulties of the project that they only needed the merest incentive for trade to commit themselves wholeheartedly to the project.
Trade flourished between Weyr and Wherhold. Azeez and Mother Karina shrewdly had established a major depot at the wherhold, allowing for a convenient meeting place for the Igen riders and a permanent basis for expansion in the whole central region of Pern.
When Terin was at the Wherhold, Fiona would spend time with Mother Karina and other traders interested in cooking, developing new recipes and perfecting old ones, all the while learning and engaging in the joys of gustatory arts.
But it was T’mar who engaged her attention the most. Since the fight between F’jian and J’gerd, the older bronze rider had treated her differently. Worse, his treatment of her seemed to change and morph almost daily. He would be obsequious one day, disdainful the next, reclusive, fearful, garrulous.
Almost in response, Talenth grew more willful and demanding. She insisted upon being ridden every day and often she would inveigle Fiona to take her for long flights or jumps
The brown and bronze riders all treated her differently, as did the blue and green riders. She could find none among the latter with whom she could bond as she had with F’dan — she missed him dearly — even if they were easier for her to be around than the sometimes overly sensitive bronzes and browns.
Of all of the riders, J’gerd’s behavior toward her had changed the most. At first he had been fearful of her, but then he had sought her out, at first to apologize and later to confide. It had been his heartfelt loneliness — a loneliness with which Fiona found herself keenly sympathetic — that had decided Fiona to encourage the riders to spend more time mingling with the traders and the wherholders.
T’mar had been reluctant to permit the change until he discovered that it was not his decision to make. Fiona had been careful to limit the meetings so that no long-term relationships could form, only to have to be painfully broken when the dragonriders were forced to return to their time, but they had still left plenty of opportunity for dancing, singing, and an occasional heartfelt romance to blossom.
Resigned to her will, T’mar had enthusiastically joined in with the festivities, and Fiona was reasonably certain that there was at least one holder lass who would devoutly regret his leaving.
“We’ll need to start clearing the unused weyrs,” Fiona said to T’mar at their morning meeting. “The older riders will return in the next fortnight.”
T’mar nodded. “I’ve spent some time with J’keran and F’jian discussing how we’ll drill when they arrive.” He paused before adding in correction, “And it’s thirteen days, actually.”
“We shouldn’t linger here,” Fiona cautioned him, accepting his correction with an irritated look.
“We think that we can get enough drill done in seventeen days.”
“Is that enough?”
“It’s all we can afford,” T’mar told her simply.
Fiona narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously.
“Talenth will have three Turns then,” he explained.
“What’s that — oh,” Fiona responded, breaking off in chagrin. “She’ll be ready to rise.”
“I thought you would want to have the largest choice possible,” T’mar told her softly. “She deserves no less.”
It was a moment before Fiona could find her voice. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, that’s very considerate.”
T’mar made a slight half-bow in his chair. “I try, Weyrwoman.” He finished his
“Yes, that seems good,” Fiona agreed, also rising from the table. Karina, who had sat at the far side watching them in silence, glanced from one to the other and shook her head sadly. Fiona noticed and shot her a challenging look.
“You will be leaving in thirty days,” Karina told her, pushing back her chair. “We must get ready.”
Fiona grinned at her. “Last chance for ice!”
The cleaning, as Fiona had expected, was tiring and irritating. None of the riders were pleased with her as they sat for their evening meal, especially faced, as they were, with the knowledge that they would be repeating their efforts in other weyrs for the next sevenday at the least.
F’jian groaned as he stretched after dessert, glancing apologetically toward the Weyrwoman, but he was less out of sorts than many of the others who had not had to do such menial duties for the better part of a Turn.
“We need to leave the Weyr better than we found it,” Fiona reminded, trying vainly to suppress a glower.
“I know Weyrwoman,” F’jian replied apologetically. “It’s just that my muscles forget.”
“It’ll be easier tomorrow,” she assured him.
“Or the next day,” J’keran muttered sardonically from his seat at the far end of the table.
