“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 disparaging 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?”
The Weyrleader regarded the brown rider so long and hard, his face settling into such bitter lines, that he appeared Turns older than he was.
“I told you what happened at that farce of a Weyrleaders’ meeting the other night, with T’ron insisting it was Terry’s fault.” T’bor jammed one fist into the palm of his other hand, his lips twitching with a bitter distaste at the memory.
“The Weyr above all, even common sense. Stick to your own, the hindmost falls between. Well, I’ll keep my own counsel. And I’ll make my weyrfolk behave. All of them. Even Kylara if I have to . . .”
“Shells, what’s Kylara up to now?”
T’bor gave F’nor a thoughtful stare. Then, with a shrug he said, “Kylara means to go to Telgar Hold four days hence. Southern Weyr hasn’t been invited. I take no offense. “Southern Weyr has no obligation to Telgar Hold and the wedding is Holder business. But she means to make trouble there, I’m sure. I know the signs. Also she’s been seeing the Lord Holder of Nabol.”