Dragongirl

TWENTY-ONE

Fiona smiled as she spied a glint off the red-blond hair of the figure walking through the entrance into the Hatching Grounds as the last rays of sun filtered through the Weyr Bowl that night.

“I figured you’d be here,” she called out, waving Terin over to her, not worried about disturbing the group of weyrchildren clustered nearby—they were not sleeping, too excited at the prospect of the Hatching the next day; most likely, in the morning.

“F’jian sent me,” Terin said, her tone mixed with anger and fear. She gave Fiona an anxious look. “But I’m too young!”

“You’re not much younger than I was when I Impressed Talenth,” Fiona said. “And you’re older than both Xhinna and Taria.”

“But they didn’t Impress a queen.”

“I don’t think age chooses color,” Fiona replied, chuckling.

Terin glanced around nervously, even as baskets of glows were turned over to add their illumination to the dimming light. “There are a lot of girls here!”

“I’m not sure that all of them are hoping for queens,” Fiona said.

“Why not?”

Fiona laughed. “You’d think every girl would wish to ride a gold, but I think, with Xhinna’s example, some have realized that they could actually fight Thread.”

“Queens fight Thread.”

“In the queens’ wing,” Fiona agreed. “When there are enough of them, and at a relatively safe level.”

Terin frowned at her. “I read the Records at Igen—”

“You did?” Fiona asked. “When?”

“When you were off gallivanting around or stuck in exile as watchqueen,” Terin snapped in reply. “And I read enough to know that those queens in the queens’ wing, while not chewing firestone, weren’t exempt from scoring and injury.”

Fiona nodded, surprised that the youngster had taken note—it was not something often mentioned. Fiona suspected that part of that was because the Werywomen traditionally kept the Records—they certainly edited them!—and did not want to make the dangers of the queens’ wing too apparent to any nervous Weyrleader.

“Still,” Fiona said, conceding Terin’s point with a shrug, “it’s not the same as flying in a fighting Wing.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Terin said, swiveling her head to gaze at the ranks of smaller eggs set not so close to Tolarth’s watchful gaze. Fiona could follow her thinking, her indecision as the temptation of flying firestone together with F’jian formed in her mind, and could see the slight shake of her head when Terin decided that she’d prefer to be a queen rider.

“You’ll make a great weyrwoman, Terin,” Fiona told her.

“You act as if the eggs’ve already hatched!”

Fiona shrugged, reached closer, and patted the younger woman on the shoulder. “If not this time, then certainly sometime.”

“It would be perfect if it were now,” Terin said, turning back to Fiona as she continued softly, “but I was really hoping it’d be one of yours.”

“Well, if the egg hatches and the queen comes toward you, don’t tell her!” Fiona teased.

Sleep came with difficulty, for the youngsters and the Candidates were all too anxious to do more than toss and turn, causing Fiona to reconsider her decision of allowing weyrfolk to sleep on the Hatching Grounds. What she got was fits and starts and even giggles and mutterings from the youngsters, until she finally lost her temper and shouted at them. She regretted it instantly, but she was too out of sorts to show any contrition.

Apparently her outrage worked. The gathering quieted down enough for her to get some moments of sleep before she woke up again, later, grumbling.

“What makes you think they’d sleep any more in their own rooms?” Terin asked, stifling a yawn even as her bright eyes flicked toward the queen egg, straining for any signs of motion.

Dawn had come and light was creeping into the Hatching Grounds, changing the eggs from indistinct grayish blobs into blurs of various colors, some greenish blue, some bluish green, some brownish bronze, others copper brown—none, save the queen egg, identifying with any certainty the color of the dragonet still slumbering inside.

From the distance of Talenth’s weyr, Fiona heard her queen rumble cheerfully, a noise returned with both greater volume and greater enthusiasm by Tolarth where she lay curled up, the queen egg protectively within her grasp.

“You have done marvelously!” Fiona called to the queen. Tolarth regarded her with complacent green-swirling eyes.

They will do, Tolarth said in an agreement tinged with some hidden certainty, as though these dragonets were destined to save all Pern.

As will ours, Talenth added with the same sort of smugness that made Fiona agitatedly wonder how the dragons could be so certain—they barely remembered yesterday, how could they predict tomorrow?

The bronzes started humming and Fiona felt, on a level below her own senses, an exchange between Tolarth and Talenth that resulted in her own queen suddenly bursting into the air above them, startling all the weyrfolk and the bronzes as she winged her way in deftly to take a place close to Tolarth—nearly exactly where she’d lain before with her own clutch.

Careful! Fiona called warningly.

I always know where I am, Talenth assured her, her smug tone still quite evident.

She gets it from you, Fiona heard Lorana say with a mixture of amusement and affection.

I suppose she does, Fiona said, turning to wave and smile at her queen. She looked at the gathered weyrfolk, saw the youngsters stream off to the viewing stands, spotted the Candidates quickly donning their white robes, tossing their nightclothes to those passing up to the stands—it all looked terribly well managed. Fiona turned toward Terin and gave her a calculating look.

“What?” Terin asked innocently, her own white robes neatly tied with a belt.

“Still the headwoman,” Fiona said, shaking her head and smirking. Terin returned the smirk with a grin.

“Well, it wouldn’t do for Tolarth’s first Hatching to be marred by confusion and disarray.”

“Not to mention that I probably wouldn’t allow anyone to sleep on the sands again,” Fiona said.

“Not to mention that!”

Fiona waved Terin away. “Go! You’re supposed to be there!” She spotted T’mar as he broached the Hatching Grounds’ entrance and waved to him.

Who’s with you? Fiona asked Lorana as she spied Kindan and a knot of weyrlings entering, taking positions so quickly that Fiona was certain that Kindan had given them all assigned positions and duties. She waved at Xhinna as she climbed up to the group of youngsters in the stands, even as she plotted a route back to the weyr and Lorana; she wouldn’t leave her on her own.

Bekka is here, Lorana replied. Though, even without you and this, I’ve got every dragon in the Weyr ready to answer my slightest call.

And well they should! Fiona said. It was clear from Lorana’s response that she was not feeling left out of the proceedings and any concerns about Bekka she thrust from her mind, recalling that that youngster had grown up attending birthings with her midwife mother.

Fiona’s previous declaration that Bekka should stand on the Hatching Grounds had been charred by the girl herself. “As if I don’t have enough to do already!” Bekka had declared.

As for Lorana, the question of her returning to the Hatching Grounds as a Candidate had evaporated with the news of her pregnancy.

Someone stepped close to her and Fiona reached her hand out without turning, knowing that T’mar’s rough fingers would twine over hers. She could see Kindan in the distance, noted that he had not put on Candidate robes and snorted to herself.

“He can’t possibly believe that a lack of robes will deter his dragon!” she exclaimed to T’mar. The Weyrleader shot her a sidelong glance, but said nothing.

A crack suddenly hushed all other noise. Eyes searched for the hatching egg, ears heard the second crack and zeroed in—a brownish egg in the center.

Fiona tensed, wondering if she should move forward to help, but T’mar’s hand tightened on hers.

“They know what to do,” he said, nodding in the general direction of the Candidates. Among them, Fiona noted with approval, stood H’nez and Jeila; surrogate for the hatching eggs’ larger parents.

Moving separately, circling back and forth behind the Candidates, the wingleader and weyrwoman ensured that the hatchlings found their partners, guiding human and dragon alike as they made their way to Impression.

Fiona cried with delight as Terin stood boldly in front of the queen egg, her eyes intent, her expression determined. The queen egg burst into shards under the pounding blows of the dragonet inside. The movements were so quick that it was hard to know who was more eager—queenling or headwoman—but in the instant the gold was free from her shell, she was thrusting her head toward Terin’s outstretched arms and creeling in delight as the green-eyed girl became her one and only partner forever.

Fiona heard T’mar beside her make an indeterminate noise and elbowed him sharply just on principle. He dodged the worst of it, giving her a grin before turning toward Terin and shouting, “What’s her name?”

“Her name is Kurinth!”

“It was over too soon,” Fiona lamented as she recounted the details to Bekka and Lorana later.

“And Kindan didn’t Impress?” Bekka asked, still shocked at the revelation.

“Kindan didn’t Impress,” Fiona said. She noticed that Lorana kept her expression carefully neutral.

“Well, at least we’ve got twenty-one more weyrlings,” Bekka said. “And another queen.” She rushed on, “And soon Talenth and Tolarth will rise again and there’ll be more eggs on the Hatching Grounds.”

“There will,” Lorana agreed. Fiona flashed her a concerned look, for Lorana’s tone was on the chilly side of neutral, but she decided not to make an issue of it.

“And you,” Bekka said, turning back to the ex–queen rider, “will be having your baby at nearly the same time.”

“So you’re hoping Kindan will become a father and a dragonrider at the same time?” Lorana asked the youngster in surprise.

“It’s been done before,” Fiona told her, adding with a grin, “Besides, it’s not as if he won’t have plenty of help with either!”

Lorana allowed a smile to play across her lips but said nothing and, not long after, feigned fatigue to send her companions away.

“‘Rest, eat, pee’—that’s what my mother said pregnant mothers do,” Bekka prattled on confidently as she and Fiona made their way back to the Kitchen Cavern. Bekka swiped a fresh roll from one of the bakers with an impudent grin before darting away to find Birentir and update the Weyr Healer with her reports.

Fiona lingered, looking for Shaneese or Mekiar, feeling a growing unease even as the sounds of the weyrlings drilling outside in the Weyr Bowl provided a comforting distraction to her cares. She found herself a seat near the hearth and looked wistfully toward those working there until one took pity on her and brought her a pitcher of juice—juice!—and fresh rolls.

At least in her time with Lorana and Bekka she’d managed to fill in some of the gaps of her knowledge of pregnancy and could now safely ascribe some of her current feelings to the changes going on in her body.

The catalog of strange pains and feelings was growing, and she found Lorana’s half-gloating commiserations completely understandable, given the other’s more advanced pregnancy. She made a note to herself once again, and forgot it just as quickly, to pin Bekka down and track down the meaning of the few raised eyebrows the young healer had made when Fiona had been describing her physical state. Clearly there was nothing that concerned her or Bekka would have immediately contacted Birentir—or probably her own midwife mother—but still … there was something that caused the younger girl to take note.

“Make sure you drink a lot,” Bekka piped up suddenly, rushing on her way through to some new errand. “And, if you can, cut down on the klah.”

She was gone before Fiona could question her and the distraction was enough to drive her other worries from her mind.