“Coming, poppet. Old bones don’t move as fast. Been setting your gowns to air. There do be such sweetness from that blooming tree. Aye, the wonder of it, a fellis tree grown to such a size.” Rannelly carried on a continuous monologue once summoned, as if the sound of her name turned on her mind. Kylara was certain that it did, for her old nurse voiced, like a dull echo, only what she heard and saw.
“Those tailors are no better than they should be, and sloppy about finishing details,” Rannelly muttered on, when Kylara sharply interrupted her maundering with the problem. She exhaled on the note of a bass drone as she knelt and flipped up the offending skirt. “Aye and just see these stitches. Taken in haste they were, with too much thread on the needle . . .”
“That man promised me the gown in three days and was seaming it when I arrived. But I need it.”
Rannelly’s hands stopped; she stared up at her charge. “You weren’t ever away from the Weyr without saying a word . . .”
“I go where I please,” Kylara said, stamping her foot. “I’m no babe to be checking my movements with you. I’m the Weyrwoman here at Southern. I ride the queen. No one can do anything to me. Don’t forget that.”
“There’s none as forgets my poppet’s . . .”
“Not that this is a proper Weyr, at all . . .”
“. . . And that’s an insult to my nursling, it is, to be in . . .”
“Not that they care, but they’ll see they can’t treat a Telgar of the Blood with such lack of courtesy . . .”
“. . .And who’s been discourteous to my little . . .”
“Fix that hem, Rannelly, and don’t be all week about it. I must look my best when I go home,” Kylara said, turning her upper torso this way and that, studying the fall of her thick, wavy blonde hair. “Only good thing about this horrible, horrible place. The sun does keep my hair bright.”
“Like a fall of sunbeams, my sweetling, and me brushing it to bring out the shine. Morning and night I brushes it. Never miss. Except when you’re away. He was looking for you earlier . . .”
“Never mind him. Fix that hem.”
“Oh, aye, that I can do for you. Slip it off. There now. Ooooh, my precious, my poppet. Whoever treated you so! Did he make such marks on . . .”
“Be quiet!” Kylara stepped quickly from the collapsed dress at her feet, all too aware of the livid bruises that stood out on her fair skin. One more reason to wear the new gown. She shrugged into the loose linen robe she had discarded earlier. While sleeveless, its folds almost covered the big bruise on her right arm. She could always blame that on a natural accident. Not that she cared a whistle what T’bor thought but it made for less recrimination. And he never knew what he did when he was well wined-up.
“No good will come of it,” Rannelly was moaning as she gathered up the red gown and began to shuffle across to her cubby. “You’re weyrfolk now. No good comes of weyrfolk mixing with Holders. Stick to your own. You’re somebody here . . .”
“Shut up, you old fool. The whole point of being Weyrwoman is I can do what I please. I’m not my mother. I don’t need your advice.”
“Aye, and I know it,” the old nurse said with such sharp bitterness that Kylara stared after her
There, she’d frowned unattractively. She must remember not to screw her brows that way; it made wrinkles. Kylara ran her hands down her sides, testing the smooth curves sensuously, drawing one hand across her flat belly. Flat even after five brats. Well, there’d be no more. She had the way of it now. Just a few moments longer between at the proper time and . . .
She pirouetted, laughing, throwing her arms up to the ceiling in a tendon-snapping stretch and hissing as the bruised deltoid muscle pained her.
Meron need not . . . She smiled languorously. Meron did need to, because she needed it.
He is not a dragonrider said Prideth, rousing from sleep. There was no censure in the golden dragon’s tone; it was a statement of fact. Mainly the fact that Prideth was bored with excursions which landed her in Holds rather than Weyrs. When Kylara’s fancy took them visiting other dragons, Prideth was more than agreeable. But a Hold, with only the terrified incoherencies of a watch-wher for company was another matter.
“No, he’s not a dragonrider,” Kylara agreed emphatically, a smile of remembered pleasure touching her full red lips. It gave her a soft, mysterious, alluring look, she thought, bending to the mirror. But the surface was mottled and the close inspection made her skin appear diseased.
I itch Prideth said, and Kylara could hear the dragon moving. The ground under her feet echoed the effect.
Kylara laughed indulgently and, with a final swirl and a grimace at the imperfect mirror, she went out to ease Prideth. If only she could find a real man who could understand and adore her the way the dragon did. If, for instance, F’lar . . .
Mnementh is Ramoth’s, Prideth told her rider as she entered the clearing which served as gold queen’s Weyr in Southern. The dragon had rubbed the dirt off the bedrock just beneath the surface. The southern sun baked the slab so that it gave off comfortable heat right through the coolest night. All around, the great fellis trees drooped, the pink clustered blossoms scenting the air.
“Mnementh could be yours, silly one,” she told her beast, scrubbing the itchy spot with the long-handled brush.
No. I do not contend with Ramoth.
“You would quick enough if you were in mating heat,” Kylara replied, wishing she had the nerve to attempt such a coup. “It’s not as if there was anything immoral about mating with your father or clutching your mother . . .”
Kylara thought of her own mother, a woman too early used and cast aside by Lord Telgar, for younger, more vital bedmates. Why, if she hadn’t been found on Search, she might have had to marry that dolt what-ever-his-name-had-been. She’d never have been a Weyrwoman and had Prideth to love her. She scrubbed fiercely at the spot until Prideth, sighing in an excess of relief, blew three clusters of blooms off their twigs.
You are my mother, Prideth said, turning great opalescent eyes on her rider, her tone suffused with love, admiration, affection, awe and joy.
Despite her annoying reflections, Kylara smiled tenderly at her dragon. She couldn’t stay angry with the beast, not when Prideth gazed at her that way. Not when Prideth loved her, Kylara, to the exclusion of all other considerations. Gratefully the Weyrwoman rubbed the sensitive ridge of Prideth’s right eye socket until the protecting lids closed one by one in contentment. The girl leaned against the wedge-shaped head, at peace momentarily with herself, with the world, the balm of Prideth’s love assuaging her discontent.
Then she heard T’bor’s voice in the distance, ordering the weyrlings about, and she pushed away from Prideth. Why did it have to be T’bor? He was so ineffectual. He never came near making her feel the way Meron did, except of course when Orth was flying Prideth and then, then it was bearable. But Meron, without a dragon, was almost enough. Meron was just ruthless and ambitious enough so that together they could probably control all Pern . . .
“Good day, Kylara.”
Kylara ignored the greeting. T’bor’s forcedly cheerful tone told her that he was determined not to quarrel with her over whatever it was he had on his mind this time. She wondered what attraction he had ever held for her, though he was tall and not ill-favored; few dragonriders were. The thin lines of Th
read scars more often gave them a rakish rather than repulsive appearance. T’bor was not scarred but a frown of apprehension and a nervous darting of his eyes marred the effect of his good looks.
“Good day, Prideth,” he added.
I like him, Prideth told her rider. And he is really devoted to you. You are not kind to him.
“Kindness gets you nowhere,” Kylara snapped back at her beast. She turned with indolent reluctance to the Weyrleader. “What’s on your mind?”
T’bor flushed as he always did when he heard that note in Kylara’s voice. She meant to unsettle him.
“I need to know how many weyrs are free. Telgar Weyr is asking.”
“Ask Brekke. How should I know?”
T’bor’s flush deepened and he set his jaw. “It is customary for the Weyrwoman to direct her own staff . . .”
“Custom be Thread-bared! She knows. I don’t. And I don’t see why Southern should be constantly host to every idiot rider who can’t dodge Thread.”
“You know perfectly well, Kylara, why Southern Weyr . . .”
“We haven’t had a single casualty of any kind in seven Turns of Thread.”
“We don’t get the heavy, constant Threadfall that the northern continent does, and now I understand . . .”
“Well, I don’t understand why their wounded must be a constant drain on our resources . . .”
“Kylara. Don’t argue with every word I say.”
Smiling, Kylara turned from him, pleased that she had pushed him so close to breaking his childish resolve.
“Find out from Brekke. She enjoys filling in for me.” She glanced over her shoulder to see if he understood exactly what she meant. She was certain that Brekke shared his bed when Kylara was otherwise occupied. The more fool Brekke, who, as Kylara well knew, was pining after F’nor. She and T’bor must have interesting fantasies, each imagining the other the true object of their unrequited loves.
“Brekke is twice the woman and far more fit to be Weyrwoman than you!” T’bor said in a tight, controlled voice.