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  She heard the ring in his voice and smiled back at him approvingly.

  "When we cut through traditions before the Oldtimers came forward, we also discovered how hollow and restrictive some of them were; such as this business of minimal contact between Hold, Craft and Weyr. Oh, true, if we wish to bespeak another Weyr, we can go there in a few seconds on a dragon, but it takes Holder or Crafter days to get from one place to another. They had a taste of convenience seven Turns ago. I should never have acquiesced and let the Oldtimers talk me out of continuing a dragon in Hold and Craft. Those signal fires won't work, and neither will Sweepriders. You're absolutely right about that, Lessa. Now if Fandarel can think up some alternative method of ... What's the matter? Why are you smiling like that?"

  "I knew it. I knew you'd want to see the Smith and the Harper so I sent for them, but they won't be here until you've eaten and rested." She tested the fresh numbweed to see if it had hardened.

  "And of course you've eaten and rested, too?"

  She got off his lap in one fluid movement, her eyes almost black. "I'll have sense enough to go to bed when I'm tired. You'll keep on talking with Fandarel and Robinton long after you've chewed your business to death. And you'll drink, as if you haven't learned yet that only a dragon could out drink that Harper and that Smith, " She broke off again, her scowl turning into a thoughtful frown. "Come to think of it, we'd do well to invite Lytol, if he'd come. I'd like to know exactly what the Lord Holders' reactions are. But first, you eat!"

  F'lar laughingly obeyed, wondering how he could suddenly feel so optimistic when it was now obvious that the problems of Pern were coming home to roost on his weyr ledge again.

  Chapter 4

  Kylara whirled in front of the mirror, turning her head to watch her slender image, observing the swing and fall of the heavy fabric of the deep red dress.

  "I knew it. I told him that hem was uneven," she said, coming to a dead stop, facing her reflection, suddenly aware of her own engaging scowl. She practiced the expression, found one attitude that displeased her and carefully schooled herself against an inadvertent re-use.

  "A frown is a mighty weapon, dear," her foster mother had told her again and again, "but do cultivate a pretty one. Think what would happen if your face froze that way."

  Her posing diverted her until she twisted, trying to assess her profile, and again caught sight of the swirl of the guilty hem.

  "Rannelly!" she called, impatient when the old woman did not answer instantly. "Rannelly!"

  "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 Thread 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.

  "You'll pay for that, you scum, you sniveling boy-lover," Kylara screamed at him, enraged by the unexpectedness of his retaliation. Then she burst out laughing at the thought of Brekke as the Weyrwoman, or Brekke as passionate and adept a lover as she knew herself to be. Brekke the Bony, with no more roundness at the breast than a boy. Why, even Lessa looked more feminine.

  Thought of Lessa sobered Kylara abruptly. She tried again to convince herself that Lessa would be no threat, no obstacle in her plan. Lessa was too subservient to F'lar now, aching to be pregnant again, playing the dutiful Weyrwoman, too content to see what could happen under her nose. Lessa was a fool. She could have ruled all Pern if she had half-tried. She'd had the chance and lost it. The stupidity of going back to bring up the Oldtimers when she could have had absolute dominion over the entire planet as Weyrwoman to Pern's only queen! Well, Kylara had no intention of remaining in the Southern Weyr, meekly tending the world's wounded weyrmen and cultivating acres and acres of food for everyone else but herself. Each egg hatched a different way, but a crack at the right time speeded things up.

  And Kylara was all ready to crack a few eggs, her way. Noble Larad, Lord of Telgar Hold, might not have remembered to invite her, his only full-blood sister, to the wedding, but surely there was no reason why she should remain distant when her own half sister was marrying the Lord Holder of Lemos.

  Brekke was changing the dressing on his arm when F'nor heard T'bor calling her. She tensed at the sound of his voice an expression of compassion and worry momentarily clouding her face.

  "I'm in F'nor's weyr," she said, turning her head toward the open door and raising her light voice.

  "Don't know why we insist on calling a hold made of wood a weyr," said F'nor, wondering at Brekke's reaction. She was such a serious child, too old for her years. Perhaps being junior Weyrwoman to Kylara had aged her prematurely. He had finally got her to accept his teasing. Or was she humoring him, F'nor wondered, during the painful process of having the deep knife wound tended.

  She gave him a little smile. "A weyr is where a dragon is, no matter how it's constructed."

  T'bor entered at that moment, ducking his head, though the door was plenty high enough to accommodate his inches.

  "How's the arm, F'nor?"

  "Improving under Brekke's expert care. There's a rumor," F'nor said, grinning slyly up at Brekke, "that men sent to Southern heal quicker."

  "If that's why there are always so many coming back, I'll give her other duties." T'bor sounded so bitter that F'nor stared at him. "Brekke, how many more wounded can we accommodate?"

  "Only four, but Varena at West can handle at least twenty."

  From her expression, F'nor could tell she hoped there weren't that many wounded.

  "R'mart asks to send ten, only one badly injured," T'bor said, but he was still resentful.

  "He'd best stay here then."

  F'nor started to say that he felt Brekke was spreading herself too thin as it was. It was obvious to him that, though she had few of the privileges, she had assumed all the responsibilities that Kylara ought to handle, while that one did much as she pleased. Including complaining that Brekke was shirking or stinting this or that. Brekke's queen, Wirenth, was still young enough to need a lot of care; Brekke fostered young Mirrim though she had had no children herself and none of the Southern riders seemed to share her bed. Yet Brekke also took it upon herself to nurse the most seriously wounded Dragonriders. Not that F'nor wasn't grateful to her. She seemed to have an extra sense that told her when numbweed needed renewing, or when fever was high and made you fretful. Her hands were miracles of gentleness, cool, but she could be ruthless, too, in disciplining her patients to health.

  "I appreciate your help, Brekke," T'bor said. "I really do."

  "I wonder if other arrangements ought to be made," F'nor suggested tentatively.

  "What do you mean?"

  Oh-ho, thought F'nor, the man's touchy. "For hundreds of Turns, Dragonriders managed to get well in their own Weyrs. Why should the Southern ones be burdened with wounded useless men, constantly dumped on them to recuperate?"

  "Benden sends very few," Brekke said quietly.

  "I don't mean just Benden. Half the men here right now are from Fort Weyr. They could as well bask on the beaches of Southern Boll ..."

  "T'ron's no leader, " T'bor said in a dispara
ging tone.

  "So Mardra would like us to believe," Brekke interrupted with such uncharacteristic asperity that T'bor stared at her in surprise.

  "You don't miss much, do you, little lady?" said F'nor with a whoop of laughter. "That's what Lessa said and I agree."

  Brekke flushed.

  "What do you mean, Brekke?" asked T'bor.

  "Just that five of the men most seriously wounded were flying in Mardra's wing!"

  "Her wing?" F'nor glanced sharply at T'bor, wondering if this was news to him, too.

  "Hadn't you heard?" Brekke asked, almost bitterly. "Ever since D'nek was Threaded, she's been flying ..."

  "A queen eating firestone? Is that why Loranth hasn't risen to mate?"

  "I didn't say Loranth ate firestone," Brekke contradicted. "Mardra's got some sense left. A sterile queen's no better than a green. And Mardra'd not be senior or Weyrwoman. No, she uses a fire thrower."

  "On an upper level?" F'nor was stunned. And T'ron had the nerve to prate how Fort Weyr kept tradition?"

  "That's why so many men are injured in her wing; the dragons fly close to protect their queen. A flame thrower throws 'down' but not out, or wide enough to catch airborne Thread at the speed dragons fly."

  "That is without doubt ... ouch!" F'nor winced at the pain of an injudicious movement of his arm. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Does F'lar know?"

  T'bor shrugged. "If he did, what could he do?"

  Brekke pushed F'nor back onto the stool to reset the bandage he had disarranged.

  "What'll happen next?" he demanded of no one.

  "You sound like an Oldtimer," T'bor remarked with a harsh laugh. "Bemoaning the loss of order, the permissiveness of, of times which are so chaotic ..."

  "Change is not chaos."

  T'bor laughed sourly. "Depends on your point of view."

  "What's your point of view, T'bor?"