Chapter !4
It turned out that Imbelline only knew Jaysan slightly; though he was as T'rin had surmised her cousin in some degree. Neither was quite sure what degree; and neither did they care much, being happy enough to call each other 'cousin' and delight in a shared love of music and throwing themselves into Weyr life. Jaysan was closer in age to Garald, the older of the two weyrbred apprentices; and T'rin was glad to see a friendship starting there, for Garald's brother was closer in age to Lyseder and Garald felt a lack of older boys other than F'lim. And F'lim was not only several turns senior, and Impressed, but far advanced when compared to the rest!
"F'lim's almost ready for promotion to Journeyman really" T'rin commented to L'gal. the Acting Master nodded.
"The problem there is that we cannot send him to the Harper Hall to confirm – because of Berith" L'gal said. "I'd like too to give him a little longer – and see Berith to a turn old. F'lim has too many duties as a weyrling to undertake those of a Journeyman too, a new task on top of all the new skills he needs to learn to catch up with his clutch mates, and keep up. Let them fly, and then we'll see. He's steady enough not to let his Harper duties interfere with going Between" he grinned at T'rin winking broadly. R'gar had been teasing his foster son that if he had a tune in his head he's do better to call of a scheduled lesson than go Between with Renpeth, with only half a mind on the task. Though R'gar's tone had been light, there had been some real concern in his single eye; and T'rin had promised him earnestly to put all his mind to it when he and Renpeth started going Between for the first time. L'gal had overheard the conversation and, knowing T'rin's propensity for tuning, kept R'gar's warning alive by gentle teasing!
T'rin nodded in answer to L'gal's assessment of F'lim's steadiness. The boy was musical but showed no real desire to make up tunes, being content with those of other people.
"Yes, it's hard juggling all the dates" agreed the young journeyman. "We're all lucky to have supportive friends who consider our other jobs important enough to help us out with juvenile dragons" he added seriously; for it was something he DID appreciate. High Reaches valued all its crafters and there was never any shortage of help from other riders and from youngsters to those who had to balance craft and weyr duties. And judging by comments from visiting riders, this was not universally true of all weyrs. But then, as T'lan had said, other weyrs did not spend their leisure time so profitably as did the folk of High Reaches, which gave the lazy creatures the time to stick their unwanted noses in and make fatuous comment about the business of others like a bunch of silly holder girls. She had said it to a Brown Rider from Fort who had gone off in high dudgeon, laughed out of the weyr by any riders who happened to overhear, and T'bor had supported her thoroughly when N'ton had ventured a mild comment on the subject!
L'gal saw his smirk and knew exactly what he was thinking!
"We are lucky here" he said. "And lucky too that our apprentices who are Impressed are a dedicated group of youngsters who work at their lessons despite voracious young bellies and serious lessons to prepare them for fighting Thread. You and T'arla have less to do in terms of physical care for Renpeth and Frith, but you've got formations to learn."
T'rin shrugged.
"That's the easy part. I wrote a fugue – I started from my dragonbabe fugue – that follows the formation change and T'arla and I whistle it to ourselves to keep position. Some of the others of our hatching think we're crazy; but it works. B'lova and J'nara have been using it too, and they agree."
L'gal chuckled.
"If it works, use it" he said. "You might teach it to me – I might find it useful too!"
T'rin flushed, pleased.
"I'd be delighted!" he said. "I've not played it to you before because I'm putting together a piece to cover Impression to fighting Thread, a long piece; it's a little ambitious but it's all fitting together well so far."
"I'd like to hear it nonetheless" said L'gal "Just to follow how it goes. Because I'm nosy; and because Master Domick was my special master too."
T'rin grinned self consciously!
F'lim had not the slightest idea that his superiors were discussing his possible promotion: it had not occurred to him that he might in any way deserve it! Besides, he had heard that once Impressed, apprentices never progressed any further; and if he envied T'rin at all that he had made Journeyman before Impression, his love for Berith dispelled any real regrets he might have had and he felt it a fair exchange! Especially as he was able to continue his studies – a little haphazardly with a small dragonet to care for – here. Being senior apprentice meant a lot to him, and he wore his tassel with pride. He was glad that T'arla, his senior in turns, did not resent his being senior over her. F'lim, like T'arla an individualist, had had to unlearn much of what he had learned from talented, but untutored family. He found her a remarkably pretty girl as well as talented; but she was so plainly smitten of L'gal he never even attempted to flirt with her!
Imbelline was another matter; and F'lim was fascinated by her vocabulary. He approached her after lessons one day, after she had been describing – unflatteringly – a marksman who had visited the weyr and tried to cheat the harper apprentices. They had given him short shrift, and Imbelline got voted spokeswoman by the other junior apprentices to describe the incident to T'rin and L'gal.
"I never heard such beautifully rounded terms in all my life!" he grinned. "'Inept, inutile and in trouble if you continue to infest our weyr with your iniquity' indeed – I could listen to you speaking for hours!"
Imbelline smiled shyly back.
"Alas, I am uncertain that I could, with any degree of certainty, maintain a verbose flow for so considerable and extended a period" she said, twinkling at him.
F'lim chuckled.
"Priceless!" he said. "HOW you must have irritated those idiots you were living with!"
"It did become a habit after a while, though" Imbelline admitted. "I can cease the production of carefully crafted verbiage, but it actually takes a little effort now!"
"And you're in the right place for people who actually enjoy it" said F'lim. "Like I enjoy listening to D're in full flow when he exaggerates that Ruathan brogue of his. But, um, I'd not like to ask D're out" he flushed. "I, er, I don't really know yet how weyrfolk do this, but as you're recent too and understand the rules of life I know, I, er, wondered if you'd consent to walk out with me" he went a deeper red.
Imbelline stared, a little panicked.
"Oh! Oh, but I – I'm too young for that!" she exclaimed, starteled out of her usual complexities. "I – I'm only Turned thirteen, you know!"
F'lim flushed deeper yet.
"Oh! Is – is that all? You seem so….mature. Can I …..may I be friends then and ….and see how it goes later?"
Imbelline shot him a shrewd look.
"Would this be by any chance concerned with the possibility, however remote it may be, of my chance of Impressing at the anticipated hatching?" she asked. Her tone was a trifle snippy.
F'lim blushed again.
"No, actually I'd forgotten you were a candidate" he told her truthfully. "I just wanted to go out with someone who was also a Harper, for I'd find it difficult to think of anything much to say to someone who didn't share my – well, my life!" he waved his hands expressively. "And you're the most intelligent girl I've ever met…..except Kullana who's only a kiddie anyway as well as being too intelligent to the point it quite frightens the life out of me" he added candidly.
Imbelline blinked, taken aback by his honesty.
"I – I'd have to think about it" she said. "We are friends anyway, aren't we? We're both harpers and logicators. I just don't want any excess complications right now of any romantic entanglement; I feel myself unequal to the turmoil of adolescent excesses. Besides, I'm too plain and I don't see what you might see in me" she finished illogically "For I'll tell you straight, my Rank scarcely counts."
F'lim snorted.
"Nuts to your Rank! And I surely would like to do something violent to those –those CRAWLIES who've had the hurting of you!" he said indignantly. "They've taken away all your sense of self worth! Sure, there are prettier girls, superficially at least; but you've intelligence, girl, and you've fine eyes that shine with cleverness and mischief, and when you laugh you have a dear little dimple at the side of your mouth that pops in and out which any man might want to kiss…..when you were old enough to want him to!" he finished hastily.
Imbelline blushed deep red and swallowed hard.
"I'm not seabred" she said in a small voice "I- I'd like time to be childishly silly, because Ipominea and I never before had the chance to. If….if you'll wait, we'll see. And if you find someone else, I guess such things were not destined in any case. I'm sorry."
F'lim smiled and touched her arm in a friendly gesture.
"Then I'll stand your friend for now" he promised "and, as you say, we'll see. I guess I'm not really old enough to settle down properly myself anyway; for I'm not Turned fifteen yet. And there was I thinking shame on my temerity for chatting up an older woman!" he winked at her.
Imbelline chuckled.
"And because you are a senior apprentice I imagined you to be weighted with years and prematurely middle aged and maybe nearly twenty" she said.
"I believe I have some time to turn before I achieve that level of incipient decrepitude" said F'lim gravely.
Imbelline giggled; not something she had ever previously found occasion to do! At least, reflected F'lim, it was more a delicious gurgle than the sort of giggle one associated with a lot of girls!
"It DOES sound silly talking like that, doesn't it?" she said cheerfully of his mimicry of her style.
"I love listening to you" said F'lim sincerely. "Silly? Sometimes, yes. But delightful, nonetheless!"
Their friendship was cemented; and, T'rin declared, like to drive everyone else to grey hairs as they vied for particularly long winded and erudite periods of speech!
"It's a harmless hobby" said L'gal. "They'll either grow out of it or weyr together."
"Mmm" said T'rin "Because no-one else would have either of them!"
Candidates came in rather haphazardly between the Flight and the clutching; no-one knew how many eggs Segrith would lay, but it did not stop some riders going on Search! Or for that matter, bringing in those they felt deserved the chance as soon as there were eggs. T'lana for one never discouraged this, feeling as she did that the dragons deserved as wide a choice as possible; and had she had her way as many as four times as many candidates as eggs would be presented or more. It was purely a matter of logistics and housing candidates that limited numbers really; especially as it was the right of any youth to stand three times on the hatching grounds, and to wait out turns too between attempts if they desired: that with a large number of candidates to be presented would have stretched weyr resources in terms of places to sleep the youngsters if nothing else! T'lana's idea was to work the candidates hard so that those who went for a soft option were rapidly scared off, to whittle away the numbers of those unlikely to Impress and present quality and quantity in a balanced proportion to the dragonets. Most riders however waited in traditional fashion until Segrith laid her twenty four eggs – including a Gold one! – before going to fetch their candidates.
One of these candidates was weyrwoman J'nara's sister Caralara. T'rin was protective of J'nara; most dragonriders had a built in urge to be protective of women amongst their clutchmates even more than other weyrwomen – save the senior weyrwoman for whom all dragonriders felt a special bond – and T'rin always felt almost as particularly brotherly towards B'lova, J'nara and T'arla, especially now their affair had ended, as he did for his own sister Sh'rilla and his fostermother T'lana. J'nara had broken away from her own kin to come to the Weyr; and T'rin was half sceptical of the chances of her brother Jeneel, almost out of age already, and her buxom sister. He did not intend to have much to do with either of them, despite his fondness for J'nara.
Caralara had other ideas. She was fond of music; and certainly aware of T'rin's good looks and unattended status. T'rin did not advertise his affair with Allessa, feeling it would embarrass the shy woman; and Allessa was happy in that state of affairs!
Caralara covered her nervousness in a different way to the diffident J'nara; she was inclined to gush. And T'rin was much dismayed when the voluble candidate cornered him.
"Oh Blue Rider Journeyman!" she said, breathily, advancing upon him, bosoms – as T'rin later described it – akimbo. "You have no idea how much I admire you and your musical skills!"
T'rin knew he was good; and played for the entire Weyr several times a sevenday after supper. He also knew that there were only a handful of people who appreciated just how good he was: and most of his apprentices did not yet fall into that category. Indeed, if there were more who could fully appreciate him than L'gal, F'lim, T'lana and – he had to admit – Kullana, he would be surprised. He felt the familiar desire to disengage himself from this incipient conversation that usually engulfed him when confronted by such gushing Ranking girls as he encountered when out of the Weyr, out for flirtation with a handsome Harper – or handsome Rider. So he assumed a forbidding voice.
"Probably not" he answered her comment. He did NOT know how much she admired him; and nor did he care. However, the fact that her eyes looked like she had been slapped made him feel a little guilty, even whilst he admonished himself as too soft hearted. The girl made another determined effort.
"It – it was suggested to me that you should hear me play and sing that I might apply to be an apprentice" she looked at him with the eyes of a young canine pleading for caresses.
T'rin suppressed a shudder.
He hated having to deal with hopeful harpers who had an exaggerated idea of their own ability. Yet she had said 'it was suggested'; and presumably by someone in the Weyr. J'nara would have talked to him first, and asked him to listen covertly if she felt her sister could well do with training; the sensitive Green Rider would not raise anyone's hopes. One of his own apprentices would surely have spoken first to him too. Therefore the person who had made the suggestion was untrained; and either had a good ear but no desire to be a harper themselves, or had no ear and spoke to flatter. Or maybe, he reflected wryl, wanted the girl provided with a skill to keep her out from underfoot.
In the last, T'rin was partially correct; the suggestion had come from Elexa, who, as a Ranking Lady had received rudimentary musical training, enough to recognise some talent in Caralara; and who felt the girl would be more comfortable having a profession, and would them be tired enough not to talk the rest of the candidates half Between!
T'rin nodded to Caralara. He could scarcely refuse to hear her at least.
"Very well" he said, stifling a deep sigh. "Bring any instruments you own to the Harperweyr teaching room after your afternoon duties."
He could see by her look – and the fact that she was carrying some awful travesty of a gitar – that she had hoped to be tested right away. But if SHE had no duties, he, T'rin did!