Chapter 9

Kelia slid into the apprentices' common room after supper.

"Oy, paying type, who invited you?" demanded Amrys.

Kelia giggled.

"I invited myself! I know it's against the rules, but please don't throw me out, Amrys, I have to sound off about that … that …!"

"Fork-faced whackbonk?" suggested Amrys.

"Amrys your language! You've been associating far too much with weyrbrats!" said Kelia, primly. "What on Pern is a whackbonk?"

"Someone you want to sneak up on at the table to go whack to the back of the head so the front goes bonk on the table," said Amrys.

"Oh. Yes, I see what you mean," said Kelia. "And you don't even have to live with her! She objected, my dear, to sharing a dorm with us lowborns! Well, I disabused her of that misconception, I can tell you, because I reckoned we all outranked her, even if only in the brains department!" quickly she passed on the conversation.

"Glad you stood up for Breda," said Amrys. "That'll give her the boost she needs to keep on improving. But I say, Kelia, is it right for you to spread all that to apprentices? It's kind of bitchy gossip and … well, I appreciate you wanting to sound off, but is it worth trying to make her a laughing stock before she's had a chance to shape up? I know I interfered over Marra, but that was because she belongs with us…."

Kelia pulled a face.

"No, scrub, it isn't fair; but she's so feeble and useless and she was quite horribly rude to Breda when she offered to help, and Breda was magnificently dignified over it. We were proud of her."

"If Breda offered to help, she's learning, weyrwoman," said Marra, timidly. "Doesn't that mean that this Fenoria might do so too?"

"Breda had sudden wealth go to her head, which made her worse," said Kelia. "This one has been a pain all her life, and well spoilt. What's happening about that poor kid she half-froze?"

"Keep a secret by the shards of K'len's Sharath's egg?" demanded Amrys.

"Cross my heart and hope for Threadscore if I lie," said Kelia, drawing a cross on her chest in time honoured manner.

Amrys pointed at Molly.

Kelia laughed.

"As nice a little boy-girl as the rest of you. But, child, your hair! Did Amrys hack it off?"

"No, weyrwoman, I've cut off odd lengths when it tickled, as long as I can remember," Molly said.

"I thought it was a little uneven," said Amrys.

Kelia rolled her eyes.

"Sewing scissors," she demanded. "Sit still, kid; I'll take it nice and short and make you even more sexually ambiguous with a weyr-cut like Amrys wears."

Amrys winced over the use of sewing scissors on hair; but they were Kelia's scissors so if she blunted them, it was her problem.

The scissors snipped. Kelia was certainly well versed in hair cutting and style; it had been a hobby of hers to do trims for her cronies in the weyr, and it was a skill that was sought after. Molly had a well-shaped head, and soon her close-fitting cap of gleaming auburn had the opposite effect to what Kelia intended.

Amrys giggled.

"It makes her lots more feminine, not less!" she said. "Brings out the fine bones!"

"Oh well," said Kelia, shrugging, "Chances are she'll see apprentice knots and short hair and assume you're a boy anyway. Doesn't matter; you don't look much like the sort of drudge people like her have which is downtrodden and scraggy. Walk tall, kid; look proud of who you are. That's as much a disguise as anything else, not cringing and scuttling out of the way. You'll be fine. Stick to Amrys. She's an all-right kiddy for a scrubby brat. You keep that in your mouth?" as Amrys stuck her tongue out.

"Oh yes; I'm not old enough to stick it in a wether's mouth," said Amrys, sweetly.

Kelia coloured and smacked the little girl lightly on the back of the head.

"Oy!" she said.

"You got patronising. Got to take you poor paying types down a peg or two," grinned Amrys. "Nice haircut, and appreciated, but put the weyrwoman away do, Kelia."

"Horrid brat," chuckled Kelia, wryly, quickly regaining her composure. "Well, new apprentice kid, whatever your name is, best of luck! We'll try and teach Fenoria manners but I think we're fighting a losing battle, as the proddy Blue said to Ramoth."

She ruffled Amrys' short locks and left.

oOo

Molly was introduced to the other apprentices; to most, just as a new girl who was prevented by circumstances from coming sooner, but more fully to Amrys' own coterie of Brown dormitory boys, and those of upper and lower Bronze.

"The Master will talk to the Masters and Journeymen?" asked Hetel.

"I should think so," said Amrys. "Master Lynger is nothing if not efficient. I'd imagine he'll just tell them she's an older one held back by circumstances, and ask them to bring her on; and they'll think she's been ill like Jerellan was. Faranth knows, she looks skinny enough to have been ill."

Jerellan nodded.

"She's only a little older than I was when I started," he said.

"'Course, you had done a lot at home," said Amrys, cautiously, "But I should think with all of us helping out, Molly, we'd bring you on in the things you haven't done, and you sew most beautifully. And as you're nice to Janika, sitting there helping her with her dolly's clothes, it makes us even more inclined to help you." Molly was dressing one of Janika's wooden dolls as a grandee of Telgar Hold.

Molly flushed.

"I never had a doll," she said, yearningly, "and Lady Fenoria didn't care for any of her toys well. I took a broken doll out of the midden, one that she'd thrown out, and she called it stealing and had me thrashed, even though its leg was broken and she didn't want it."

"Oh Molly! You must share my dolls!" cried Janika. "Oh! Why are you crying?"

Molly had dissolved into tears.

Hard, shrewd and cynical her outer rearing might be, but so spontaneous a gesture had just broken through her guard.

"I … I guess no-one's ever been so kind to me before!" she sniffed.

The girls all hugged her; the boys patted her arm with faintly embarrassed expressions. Girlish emotions were not something they knew how to cope with!

Janika tucked her hand into Molly's.

"I'll ask my grandmother if she'll foster you too," she said. "She fosters me, 'cos I'm an orphan," her own eyes filled with tears, "and I'm the daughter of her own little girl, but she's awf'ly good at cuddles."

Molly sniffed hard.

A lifetime starved of affection, and now gentleness all round! It was hard to cope with, without breaking down completely!

She did break down later, in Otaysa's room, where, at the promptings of Janika, that worthy took her to discuss her fostering.

Otaysa rocked and cuddled her as if she was a child no older than she had been when wrested from her mother; for somewhere inside, that eight-turn-old child had never been permitted her full development. The other girls were in bed already when Otaysa brought Molly back, and tucked her in with a kiss; something Molly could only barely remember her own mother doing!

"And now," said Janika, drowsily, "I have two sisters, 'cos Amrys is my honororrory sister too."

"And your honorary sister says, go to sleep, scrub," said Amrys, amicably.

oOo

In Gold dormitory there was less harmony. Fenoria was in trouble for using more than her allotted share of hot water. The apprentices had washed first, as was their right, and were well trained in how much they were permitted.

"It takes time to heat, you know; and in summer, there's a limited amount!" said Kelia, crossly. "Not that it does any of us any harm to wash in cold, but we're allowed lukewarm at night. And, my girl, if you're in the habit of stealing more then your fair share, you won't half cop it if you use water designated for girls coming back stinking from the dyehouse or paint-stained from the printcraft room! They need hot water for those crafts, I assure you!"

"Well, it's a pretty poor concern that can't provide enough!" sulked Fenoria.

"It is enough, for reasonable folk," said Barla. "We don't need hot baths in summer; two buckets each is sufficient to take the chill off. It'd be a profligate waste of fuel otherwise, and believe me, we need all the fuel we can get in a High Reaches winter. You low-landers are so soft!"

Telgar Hold was well to the north; and its winters were often as sharp as any to be found in the High Reaches, but they were not, generally, so long.

"We have cold winters too!" snapped Fenoria.

"Yes, but only really cold from the eleventh month to the third," said Barla. "We can be under snow from just into the ninth month right through to the fifth in a long winter; and from tenth to fourth is quite normal."

"I don't believe it!" gasped Fenoria.

"You call lie on me?" Barla's light blue eyes flashed icy fire. "How dare you!"

"Fenoria, I suggest you apologise," said Kelia. "Words spoken in haste without meaning them are understood. Barla speaks no more than the truth, as I can testify."

"And I," said Rulene, "Though my own Hold is on the more temperate plain of Nabol; but we know something of how the rest of the High Reaches fares."

"And I guess I've heard enough stories of how H'llon wrote to his mother for more winter woollies," said Indeela, with a giggle. "It's going to be a shock for a soft Lemosian like me, I guess! And you, too, Breda; you hail from temperate zones, don't you?"

"I'm knitting long underwear, I can tell you!" said Breda. "And I'll be in it the minute summer passes!"

Breda's knitting was indifferent, and she actually intended to buy long underwear, but she was shrewd enough to have a sense of the dramatic.

"Well, if it is true, I apologise," said Fenoria, huffily.

"Not acceptable," said Kelia.

"What?"

"The apology is for calling Barla's honesty into account; a conditional apology implying that you still disbelieve her is insufficient," said Kelia.

"Why should I?" said Fenoria.

"Am I, or am I not, the head of this dormitory?" demanded Kelia. "For as I patently am, you do it because I expect you to maintain harmony by showing some decency. Great Eggs, girl, you haven't the manners of a Keroonian porcine herder!"

Fenoria flushed angrily.

"Well, I apologise for calling your honesty to account, Barla," she said, "But I can't see any manners from you, Kelia! You've done nothing but insult me!"

"Oh, childish tit for tat!" said Kelia, cheerfully. "You insult me, my friends, this rather excellent Hall, and you expect to get off without being taken to task for it?"

Actually, that was what Fenoria expected!

She was used to giving her tongue unbridled rein, saying what she liked about whomever she liked. Except, of course, her Uncle Larad and her cousins; the three male cousins were quite grown up and one of them a dragonrider! Bonna was younger, closer to Fenoria in age; but she was an artist and lived in her own world, and she and Fenoria despised each other cordially and avoided each other. Almost everyone else Fenoria considered beneath her, save her other close relations, and so passed comment accordingly, unchecked and with impunity.

Kelia watched the play of thwarted anger across the younger girl's features.

"I remember Kylara – just," she said, quietly. "She must have been beautiful, once, but she was always so irritable it robbed her of her looks. And she was getting lines where she frowned a lot. You look a whole lot like her; except she'd have scorned to let herself go and put on excess weight."

"Are you implying that I'm fat?" demanded Fenoria, missing the point of the rest of Kelia's speech.

"No, not yet; just a trifle porky," said Kelia.

"Porky?!" screeched Fenoria.

"Only a little," said Kelia, "and you've no muscle to speak of; it makes you look flabby."

"Flabby?!" the screech was higher.

"Here, steady on," said Kelia, "you go any higher and you'll shatter the windows! You've let yourself go, my good kid, and it's time you got into shape or you'll end up a poor creature like Jora, wallowing like the bloated carcass of a month-dead wherry in a river."

"Who wants to be muscle-bound and skinny, like some drudge!" snarled Fenoria.

"Muscle bound? No, I've no desire to stand for a dragon and end up becoming brawny like the likes of Lessa of Benden," said Kelia, with heavy irony, since Lessa was accounted one of Pern's beauties, "but no muscle at all is uglier than too much; and you so have made me realise that enough exercise is necessary to remain pretty! I'd hate to end up looking like a fat white grub."

This time Fenoria's shriek was undecipherable and loud enough to bring Otaysa to the door.

"Girls!" she said. "Really! There are little girls trying to sleep next door – who is responsible for that ill-bred noise?"

"They're unfair to me!" wailed Fenoria.

"Oh?" asked Otaysa.

"Kelia said I'm porky and flabby and looked like a fat white grub!" she said.

There was shocked silence; telling tales was as taboo for the big girls as for apprentices.

"Actually, I said I didn't want to look like a fat white grub," drawled Kelia, "fearing that happening without reasonable exercise. But if Fenoria saw a resemblance in herself already …"

"That will do, Kelia," said Otaysa. "Well, Fenoria, I did warn you that people might express blunt opinions. Kelia, instead of pointing out the child's unfortunate physical shortcomings so unkindly and bluntly, you should help her overcome them. After you have risen tomorrow, you can take her for a brisk walk to see the scenery."

"I'm usually on sweep, Otaysa; doesn't that supersede?" asked Kelia.

Otaysa nodded.

"Of course; but when you've washed up, you can take her out, there'll be time for a nice half hour walk up to the hold and back, it's less than a mile, just a gentle stroll to get her started."

Fenoria stared in horror.

"You can't make me! I've never walked so far in my life!"

"Then it's about time to start, dear, for the good of your health," said Otaysa. "After all, we don't want Lord Larad thinking we neglect you! Oh, and girls, remember tomorrow that the hot water is reserved for those who walk sweep to wash off the stink of agenothree; the rest of you will wash in cold and no hot to make it lukewarm."

"Yes, Otaysa," other voices chorused.

"Wash in cold water?" Fenoria was horrified.

"Yes, why not? It's lovely weather, and you don't need hot unless there's extra to wash off," said Otaysa.

"But why can't the drudges heat some more for me – us?" demanded Fenoria.

"Because they have better things to do than wait on silly little girls who are not invalids and do not need mollycoddling," said Otaysa. "Now get into bed do, and stop bellyaching!"