Тодд Маккефри: Dragonheart

“Good,” Fiona growled, hating herself even as she said it. “Don’t make it necessary for me to do that ever again.”

As she turned away, Terin rushed past her, crying in sympathy for F’jian’s injuries.

Fiona knew that Terin would be furious at her for days to come, but she also knew that she’d done exactly what was necessary to enforce the discipline of the Weyr. She did not turn back when Terin loudly commiserated with F’jian over his injuries and his hurt pride, but her lips curled upward when she heard Terin kiss him soundly. She had hoped that would happen.

T’mar stepped in front of her, one eyebrow raised questioningly as he glanced back over her shoulder.

“What now, Weyrwoman?”

“Well, they’ll have to be punished,” Fiona said with a sigh. “J’gerd will get extra duties for the next fortnight.”

“And F’jian?”

“Bronze riders are not exempt from Weyr discipline,” Fiona said. “I think I have a special duty for F’jian.”

“And that would be?”

“I think that Talenth and I need to spend more time here,” Fiona said. “And as Terin so often represents the Weyr with the Wherhold, I believe that I shall require F’jian to provide her transport.” Her lips turned upward as she added, “She is trading babysitting duties with Nuella and Zenor for some special trinket.” She paused. “Let him change diapers for a while.”

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 between to far-off destinations. Her attitude toward the Weyr’s remaining browns and bronzes alternated between standoffish and coquettish almost as frequently as T’mar’s moods changed. Through it all, she was still respectful and adoring of her rider, but Fiona began to find herself fearing that she might wake one morning to a dragon inflamed with the mad bloodlust of a mating queen.

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.”