Dragonheart

ritual of asking a question that would both alarm and please the older man.

“K’rall?” she called again, looking around the room, her eyes narrowed. She went to the hanging glows and turned them up, glancing around the room. She heard a noise from the lavatory. “I’ll just wait outside,” she called. “Knock on the table when you’re ready.”

She went back outside and waited.

Talenth?  Fiona asked her half-awake queen. Could you ask Seyorth how K’rall is this morning?

Seyorth says that K’rall wants to get the bandages off,  Talenth told her. He says that K’rall is grumpy this morning.

Tell Seyorth that K’rall needs to keep the bandages on,  Fiona replied. There was no point in telling a dragon that the bandages would have to be maintained for at least a month — dragons didn’t remember such lengths well. A month and forever were closely related in a dragon’s mind.

I’ve told him,  Talenth replied a moment later. Why is it that all the bronzes are so polite to me?

It’s because you’re their queen,  Fiona told her, smiling to herself; they had this discussion at least every other day. Talenth was both overjoyed by and slightly nervous about the apparent adulation showered upon her by her fellow dragons.

It’s good to be queen,  Talenth decided. Fiona smiled and shook her head affectionately.

K’rall’s voice interrupted. “When she rises, make sure she doesn’t blood her kills.”

“You haven’t taken off your bandages have you?” Fiona demanded, bustling into the room. His strange reference to Talenth’s future rising made her wonder if he wasn’t also feverish. Although it was also possible that the older rider had said it merely to distract her.

“It itched,” K’rall said, turning to look at her. Fiona had to work hard to school the revulsion out of her expression — the right side of K’rall’s face was a mess.

“Shards!” she exclaimed. “Now we’ll have to redo the sutures.”

Talenth, have one of the weyrlings bring some fellis juice,  Fiona ordered. Whoever’s on duty in the pharmacy.

Turning her attention back to K’rall, Fiona clenched her jaw and took the seat opposite him.

“You’ve got a nasty wound, K’rall,” Fiona told him, examining the mauled side of his face with all the detachment she could muster. “You didn’t suffer just a single burn, you know.”

K’rall lowered his eyes — he was lucky to still have the right one — unwilling to face either the truth or the Weyrwoman.

“If  you behave, you’ll get back the full use of your jaw,” Fiona said. “If not, we’ll be feeding you porridge for the rest of your life.”

“I had to see,” K’rall said slowly, his words slurred. “I had to know.”

“You  had to listen to your Weyrwoman!” Fiona shouted at him, losing her temper. Before K’rall could voice an angry retort, Fiona softened, and reached out to take his hand. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to see you disfigured.”

K’rall raised his other hand toward his face — Fiona grabbed it with her free hand and gently put it back on the table. She shushed him, saying, “You are a dragonrider, you bear your wounds with pride.” She nodded fiercely, feeling both the strength and truth of her words. Whatever her feelings about his personality, Fiona would never deny K’rall’s courage. “If you let me,” she continued, “I will see to it that the damage is slight.”

She saw his eyes light in disagreement and shook her head at him. “Your wounds are not so different from the others’,” she told him. “And I learned enough at the Hold and the Hall to know how to treat them.

“You need rest, you need to keep your muscles still, so that they can grow and recover, and you need to keep the bandages on until the skin has healed.” Fiona found herself marveling at her words and her tone of voice — where had she learned to speak like this? Then she realized: She was speaking like her father had, like Cisca did.

“We must play our part, Fiona,” Bemin had said to her once, on the sad day when they’d buried one of the old Fort guards. “Even when we don’t want to, we must act as though we know all the answers and can do whatever is asked of us.” He had smiled at her as he added, “And, after a while, it is no longer playing.”

Fiona now understood the meaning of those words. She was no longer playing.

She saw K’rall’s unspoken question lingering in his eyes. It was difficult for her to answer.

You must play your part.

“You are a handsome man, K’rall,” Fiona said, not surprised to hear his breath catch or see his eyes rise to meet hers. She met them squarely. “I’m of the age where I notice such things more and more” — she felt heat rising in her cheeks, but she persisted — “and I’ve seen the way some of the women back the Weyr watched you.” She smiled. “I think that won’t change when you get back.”

“You can’t know,” K’rall murmured.

“Nor can you,” Fiona told him firmly. She heard the scuttling of feet moving quickly toward them and heaved an internal sigh of relief that the weyrling from the pharmacy had arrived. “Now finish your breakfast and then lie back down — we’re going to have to redo those stitches and then dose you with fellis juice — you need to rest.” When K’rall opened his mouth again to protest, she threw up a hand. “One more word, bronze rider, and I’ll stitch your mouth shut. By the First Egg, you will  recover fully and you will  obey me!”

K’rall looked ready to protest once more — probably to say that he would never disobey a Weyrwoman — but he must have realized that speaking was just what Fiona had ordered him against doing, because he merely sighed and slowly ate his porridge.

At last Fiona left him, replacing herself with one of the nursing weyrlings under strict orders to let her or Terin know if there was any change in his condition and to keep a good eye on his breathing — she was a bit afraid that she’d been too liberal with the fellis juice.

Fiona felt it was her duty as Weyrwoman to check personally on the wingleaders every day — and she made certain that she checked up on every injured rider or dragon every two days — so her next visit was with N’jian.

The brown rider’s Threaded chest had been a particular worry for T’mar, who fretted that the cold of the long trip between  times might have exposed N’jian to infection, so Fiona kept a careful eye on him during the first days at the Weyr. Fortunately, he seemed to have taken no ill from the journey, but his recovery would be slow and difficult. With the muscles of his chest and abdomen shredded by a strand of Thread that had been frozen just seconds before it would have devoured his innards, N’jian could only rest on his back or left side, and all movement was painful for him.

Fiona wondered if the rider wouldn’t be well-served by floating in a warm bath, perhaps with some healing salts, but she was still sufficiently worried by the state of his wound to want to hold off until he’d recovered more. As it was, he was starting to develop sores on the parts of his body that supported his weight.

Fiona had decided that he could stand long enough to eat breakfast — he didn’t need her to warn him against sitting as standing was a sufficiently painful procedure in itself.

He wore nothing more than a long, loose tunic over his bandages, partly because it was difficult for him to dress and also because that made it easier to tend his wounds.

Fiona schooled her expression into a smile as she decided to inspect his sores today.

“I’m going to want to look at the sores and see what we can do about them,” she said as she entered the room, glancing meaningfully at the weyrling who was already there. Without a word and no visible sign of relief — something that Fiona had had to drill the weyrlings on — the lad left them alone. Fiona had realized from her own thoughts that having wounds examined in private would be less embarrassing than in public, so unless she needed to consult with a weyrling or provide instruction, she conducted her examinations alone.

She went about the inspection with a sense of distraction that she worked to instill into all the weyrlings — they were to show no sign of embarrassment at tending naked flesh. It was hard enough to recover from wounds without being made to feel ashamed of it.

Fiona realized that she had learned some of this detachment from Cisca, some from her father, and also some from her brief time with Tintoval, who managed to profess such a passion for her duties that no one was