Chapter 3
Several Threadfalls came and went; and Kaili started to settle in. Once she had proved to the other lads that she was prepared to work as hard as any of them and having let slip that, like the Boss, she was a Whisperer, she had earned respect in her own right rather than the rather wary distance accorded to Tragen's fosterling, being an unknown quantity. Kaili knew only too well why this should be and could scarcely blame the boys for expecting that someone who would be fostered with an important man like Tragen might be a little on the uppity side.
The well groomed girl Kaili saw at Northfork's paddocks lounging around disconsolately looked like just such a spoiled brat; and Kaili afforded her a scornful look as she rode Darkstar in from her morning exercise. The young jockey swung down from the saddle to lead the runnerbeast into the stable to be rubbed down, her short red curls tossing in the chill wind.
"Boy! Stable boy!"
The voice was piercing and peremptory.
"Are you talking to me?" demanded Kaili.
"Of course I'm talking to you." The girl was shrill. "I'm thirsty. Get me a drink."
Kaili looked at her narrowly.
"See that thing over there? It's called a pump. If you work the handle, water comes out. And I have duties."
The girl goggled, open mouthed and went to slap Kaili. The mare started to shy, and Kaili sidestepped neatly, turning Darkstar away as she did so,, soothing her. The well dressed girl almost lost her balance. Kaili sniffed and led the mare towards the stable once more.
"Where do you think you're going?" screeched the girl. "Don't you know who I am?"
"I know it's more than your life's worth to risk the health of Tragen's best mare." Retorted Kaili over her shoulder. The bitter wind meant she wanted Darkstar under cover as soon as possible to rub her down.
The girl was still screeching when Kaili disappeared into the caverns.
"Handy voice on that 'un" remarked Lin, one of the senior grooms. Kaili grinned.
"Enough to curdle milk" she said.
"She'll try to cause trouble" was Lin's gloomy assessment.
"You really think Tragen cares more for her Rank than for Darkstar?" Kaili scoffed. Lin gave a wry grin.
"Arr, well, happen you'm right at that, Miss Kai. And o' course you be Ranking too and with folks at the Weyr; so that little piece can't pull anything agin you" he added in satisfaction.
Tragen listened to the disjointed and angry tirade of the young Holdergirl as she complained bitterly to her father, interrupting the business transaction rudely. The gist of the complaint seemed to be that she wanted to watch the whipping and punishment of a stupid and insolent red-haired stable lad who cared more for a stupid runner beast than seeing to her needs.
"You hear my daughter!" Holder Vorn turned to Tragen. "She has been greatly insulted! I demand this lad be punished!"
Tragen raised his eyebrows.
"Quite apart from the fact that the description tallies with the trainee jockey who would have been riding my prize mare – whom I should punish for putting the needs of any mere human above the said mare – I fail to see what the minor spats of our respective dependants have to do with their guardians or why any ill conditioned brat should feel she had the right to interrupt our discussions."
"But he INSULTED me!" shrieked the girl.
Tragen looked at her steadily. Her father was still gaping as he realised that Tragen had called his daughter an ill-conditioned brat. Tragen answered the girl,
"Insulted you? By carrying out MY orders on MY lands? That, child, were an insult to ME you give, so watch your tongue. And if my foster daughter chooses to speak her mind to you, are you such a ninny you cannot speak back? But give thanks that your attempt to strike her – if I understood your jumbled testimony correctly – failed, for she'd have thrown you in the dung heap for so unsettling Darkstar."
"SHE? FOSTER daughter?" the voice rose a notch or two and Tragen winced. "You mean she RANKS me?" The querulous voice seemed to gain decibels by the word. Tragen's mouth hardened.
"No. she OUT ranks you" he said tersely. "For she is sister to a Bronze Rider. And, my fine girl" he added grimly "Had she no Rank at all, you'd STILL not see me set punishment to one of my people for doing my bidding and turning aside from their duties at the whims of a spoiled, ill-mannered, idle little good-for-nothing like you. You and your father have both outstayed your welcome. Good day!" his voice shook with suppressed fury as he summoned Callum with a gesture to show the would-be customers out. Tragen might have lost the sale; but if neither could see the necessity of getting a sweating runnerbeast out of a chill wind, he had no wish for any of his stable to join theirs!
Kaili joined Tragen as the two left.
"Did I cause ructions?" she asked
He chuckled.
"Yes; but not as many, I think, as I did. They were both close to apoplexy when I finished telling that little madam what I thought of her."
"You sure must be glad to be independent enough and rich enough to be able to do that" said Kaili thoughtfully. "You don't have to take any crackdust from anyone."
"Yes, it is fortunate" he said seriously. "And I won't deny that I also value the friendship of the Weyr – for that adds to my peace of mind too."
"You know something?" Kaili asked, seriously. "For all the vaunted freedom of my family as Traders moving as they will and Beholden to none, I think that you and your people actually enjoy a greater freedom."
Tragen smiled down at her.
"I certainly like to think so – and try to make it so for my people" he agreed. "Tell me lass" he added "Would you still have acted the same if I'd taken you on as a hand not a fosterling?"
Kaili looked surprised.
"For sure I would, Tragen" she said. "Darkstar had to come first. To tell the truth, being of Rank never even entered my mind at the time. I knew you'd back me as one of your people, I guess, which gave me more confidence, but it was Darkstar's welfare that was me main concern so it was." Her brogue thickened a little.
Tragen clapped a hand on her shoulder and nodded approvingly.
"Then I know I'm doing right" he said. "If everyone knows that I'll back them, I think I must be doing fine" he grimaced suddenly. "The only thing I regret is that that idiot was hinting about needing a new riding beast because he has another that's uncontrollable. I should have liked to have taken the poor beast from him."
"Indeed yes!" cried Kaili. "A man who is ready to use a whip on underlings is equally ready to use it on his poor beasts!"
Tragen pulled a face.
"We can hope he puts it on the market. There's to be a small gather at Highspire Hold soon. It's Vorn's nearest largish Hold: and it's on several trade routes. He'd reckon on having a good chance of getting rid of a beast that's acquired vices to some unsuspecting buyer from a distance away" he nodded sagely. "I know he'd only buy good blood. Even if his stallion is hard to gentle, it'd be good stud."
"And of course you're not soft enough to buy the poor creature because you're sorry for him" grinned Kaili.
"And whatever gave you that idea, Kai-lass?" he said with a straight face. "I'm a hard-headed business man."
Kaili was careful to check the firelizard eggs before leaving for the Gather; but there were as yet no striations and she knew from what she had been taught that they were safe to leave. Only a few people would be attending Highspire's Gather; preparations for Tragen's own Gather and Runnerfair were beginning, and Kaili was glad to escape for a couple of days! The amount of preparation was prodigious, requiring weeks of careful attention to detail. For starters there was the cleaning out of unused caverns and the airing of bedlinen grown musty over winter in presses; for there would be many extra people to accommodate. This was just the start: a subsidiary kitchen located within the caverns must be cleaned and activated, a small fire to dry and warm the chimneys as well as to drive any mustiness from the room lit many days in advance, the precise time it should be kept burning dependant each turn on the prevailing weather conditions and subject to Tranora's experienced knowledge. The older woman explained to Kaili,
"When there's north in the wind, these chimneys draw better and the fire burns hotter; but quicker. We need to heat the chimney slowly. Then we let it cool enough to sweep out the soot when it be dried out enough to come; then we see to heating the hearth and room enough to work in when them dratted traders come wanting food at all hours."
Sweeping the chimney came before cleaning and re-provisioning before the main kitchen team moved in; and Kaili questioned why the kitchen had been already swept out before cleaning the chimney.
"Because I can't abide setting a fire in a room that's all dusty." Tranora replied calmly. "It seems wrong somehow."
Kaili discovered that she hated cleaning chimneys. Grime in moderation did not bother her, but there was a foul taste left in her mouth after brushing out the soft black dangling feathers of soot that clung tenaciously to every surface, including herself. Even the rag Tranora insisted she tie across her face did not keep out the smell and taste as she, as one of the smallest and lithest as well as the most junior, climbed the chimney, brushing back the soot strings to those who were brushing it into bags below, also protected by face rags. Kaili had been glad when she emerged under the raised corbel roof that kept Thread from entering the chimney and tore the cloth from her face to breathe the sweet clean mountain air for a while before descending.
Kaili had thought that the worst must be over; but there were more jobs yet to be done to ensure the comfort of guests who would want to spend the Gather night deep inside caverns in case of Threadfall. Tranora and Marilly came to a necessary truce over the event, and Kaili had found herself at the beck and call of both, made to work out the number of people to be catered for and thus to estimate the number of extra supplies required! That she promised to re stock Marilly's spice cupboard at Highspire did much to mollify that worthy's disapproval of her young trainee taking time off on some errand; but the jolly Tranora winked and told her to enjoy herself!
The ride to Highspire would take only a few hours in the Springtime, for much of the snow had melted. The small valleys were filled with torrents of ice cold meltwater, rushing busily down the mountainside carrying debris, the white foam atop water brown with soil like the whipped klah with cream Calla would sometimes make as a treat for cold dragonriders after a predawn Threadfall at High Reaches. Kaili knew that no beast or person would be likely to survive a fall into the icy rapids, for they would be dashed to pieces by the force of the torrent even if they survived the shock of the cold water. Fortunately the road was well provided with stone bridges of sturdy construction; and she recognised some of Tragen's men checking them for breaches, and mending the road where floodwater had encroached and carried away part of the path. Even so, there were some places where they had to lead their beasts where great bites had been plucked from the path. Kaili had no doubt that Tragen's men would soon mend the road, or Holder Trabin's men; for as they approached Highspire, men she did not know were doing a similar job, if not perhaps quite as well. The damage to the road was not, however, sufficient to radically slow them – a far cry from the full day Tragen had needed to allow when M'gol and Z'kan had accompanied him in the dead of Winter.
It had been a hazy morning when they set out, warmly wrapped against the mountain's chill; and with the promise of bright sunshine later. In that early morning, many plants still glistened, frozen from the night. At altitude the nights were bitter, any heat from the vernal sunshine leaking after dark through the clear air. Kaili breathed deeply the clean scent of the cold air as she rode beside Tragen and reflected how good it was to be alive! The sweet trills of brightly plumed weesweets were all around as the tiny avians fluttered and hopped around the flowers touched by the rays of the sun that had thawed enough to give up their nectar. Occasional alarm calls from flock sentries had clouds of the tiny creatures retreat squeaking from potential predators. Kaili was always pleased to see weesweets after they emerged from their winter hibernations, clustered frozen together in deep caves; they really were a sign of Spring.
Another signal of the improving weather were the little brown coneys timidly emerging from underground retreats to crop the new vegetation; and every now and then the travellers might catch a glimpse of the coney's larger relative, the gontermorrer, all four hind limbs strong and large so that it ran, where the coney with its hindmost limbs the most developed would hop, using all four fore limbs together to land on after a leap from the stronger hind ones. Kaili laughed at the antics of a pair of gontermorrers, doing their own leaping, but using the four strong limbs to go straight up in the air in some ritual display to each other.
"How come wild animals have all got six limbs – if you count wings as limbs – and domestic beasts except those related to dragonkind have just four?" she asked Tragen suddenly.
"I don't know." He replied honestly. "I can't say it ever really occurred to me before."
"It seems so strange." She mused.
"Maybe. But fish be wild creatures too, and they have no legs; and spiderclaws have eight and bugs have all kinds of numbers."
"Mmm, I suppose. You think then that it's coincidence?"
"I really don't know, Kai-lass. And I'm afraid you'd get precious little out of a beastcrafter but a long lecture that boiled down to 'it's always been this way so mind your own business'"
Kaili laughed.
"And you'd rather anyway that I worried about our own beasts than the differences in the wild ones?" she teased.
"No, curiosity is a good trait; and people who don't question get hidebound, and 'tis such almost led to disaster when Thread returned. But try not to get too frustrated when the answers aren't available."
She nodded; and dropped back to check the two three-turn-olds she was leading, broken to carriage and sleigh, that Tragen hoped to sell. It was far too beautiful a morning to waste pondering the imponderable anyway!
As they travelled, they started to see more and more people bound for the same destination. There were carters with goods collected from all around; cotholders out for the day, some with livestock for sale or reed baskets woven in the long winter evenings, bolts of homespum cloth or vegetables, all kinds of homecrafts to help defray the costs of essentials to be purchased at a gather. Some even bartered on the way, a man with some fine seed he had raised exchanging some of it for a good length of blanket wool, for his goodwife had no loom.
"This'll make me a fine cloak for next winter" he said in satisfaction.
Many people nodded to Tragen, or greeted him by name and there were several amongst the better off cotholders and smallholders who were eyeing the runnerstock he had brought; in addition to the carriage beasts Kaili led, there were three good strong Puncheron draftbeasts, strong and gentle. Tragen responded to the greetings of those he knew with more or less cordiality.
The look of horrified dismay, quickly concealed, on his face at one greeting was almost comical, as was the way he so quickly schooled it.
"Tragen! Hallooo! Wait for me – it's lovely to see you!"
The voice was female; and with a mutter that Kaili didn't quite catch, Tragen reined in.
"Zeleika" he greeted her formally. "A fine day. May I present the Lady Kaili?"
Zeleika did something of a double take. Kaili hardly looked like a lady. With her short curls and baggy tunic she looked all the world like the scruffy boy that Holder Vorn's daughter Vorinia had taken her for. Kaili realised suddenly that Tragen was willing her to play along; and she extended her hand in greeting with a good mimicry of the slightly haughty gesture that L'rilly assumed towards those she did not like. Zeleika took the proferred hand a trifle frostily.
"I don't believe I've had the pleasure before" she said. Her voice had a definite edge.
Kaili was blessed with a near eidetic memory; and a chance remark from little Sagarra stirred in her recollection as she digested the older woman's name.
"Correct me if I am wrong, but did you not used to foster with the Lady Rillys?" she asked. All trace of Ruathan burr was gone from her voice.
Zeleika's expression thawed slightly.
"That is correct. You know Rillys?"
"Not well" Kaili admitted honestly. Rillys and her daughter Amrys had visited the Weyr twice since Kaili had been there, mostly to hatch plans with T'lana to help dragonless men like her new husband Corbin. Kaili had liked what she had seen of the quiet, dignified woman; and had heard second-hand tales of her unlikely friendship with the frivolous and impetuous Zeleika from T'lana's irrepressible fosterling Sagarra. The little girl had fostered for some time with her friend Amrys while Rillys had been establishing herself as Lady Warder for the child.
"Have you known Tragen long?" asked Zeleika curiously.
"No, not long." Kaili decided not to specify just how short a time she had known the Runnerholder. "He's an easy man to be swiftly on good terms with though, for we've so much in common" she grinned. "Mostly of the four legged kind with a mane."
"I too own a number of runner beasts" said Zeleika. "I agree it gives one a lot in common with each other" she shot a coy look under her lashes at Tragen that completely passed Kaili by. The girl said,
"There's nothing like riding a good racer, is there?" her face was flushed with enthusiasm. "It's the greatest thrill to be had!"
Zeleika raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, I can think of a few more exciting than THAT my dear!" she said archly. Kaili wrinkled her brow, puzzled.
"CAN you? I can't. Though I guess dragonriders would disagree." She added. "They're entitled to their opinions, I suppose. They're just wrong."
Tragen gave a crack of laughter and Zeleika looked a little unnerved. She said,
"I'd be careful to whom you say things like that, my dear. Rillys for one has Weyr connections you know."
Kaili looked surprised.
"Of course. It's where I met her. And besides, High Reaches people aren't stuffy. They might be surprised if you find dragonback trips a bit of a yawn, but they're not offended."
Tragen put in
"Kaili's brother is a Bronze Rider and her sister stands at the next Impression. She's just defected to the Runners" he laid a friendly hand on Kaili's and gave it a conspiratorial squeeze.
Zeleika looked frankly stunned.
"I'd have thought she was a trifle….young to hope to take a responsible post as Holder's Lady" she said. "I'd have thought you'd be looking for someone more….experienced, Tragen."
Tragen shrugged.
"Kaili puts my beasts above any man. I'd rather see that in any of my people than experience in all the social fal-lals – or in anything else you might be meaning. She understands logistics almost as well as Weyrwoman T'lana."
Zeleika gave a bitter little laugh.
"I see. It's a T'lana substitute you're looking for – right down to the hair colour and the propensity for dressing like a boy. Well, I wish you the best, Tragen – and I hope you don't regret it" she wheeled her runner beast away hastily and rode on, followed by her retinue.
Kaili breathed out explosively.
"Did I read that aright?" she asked. "That you wanted to imply that you were involved with me?"
He gave her an apologetic half smile.
"More or less. Zeleika has been pursuing me determinedly almost since she was widowed. But I CANNOT wed someone who sees her runners more in terms of the marks they represent than for themselves!"
"I should think not!" declared Kaili indignantly. "I can see why you wanted her choked off. Is it true what she said?" she asked bluntly.
"Concerning what?" he asked. "Zeleika has a lot to say and I try not to listen."
"That you're in love with T'lana and are looking for a substitute."
He chuckled.
"Oh I daresay I might have I might have wed Sarel's daughter if she'd not gone to the Weyr, and I daresay we'd have been happy enough, for she loves runnerbeasts and understands them. And surely I'm fond of that fiery little Weyrwoman. But I'm not in love with her" he grinned. "I'd prefer, should I ever remarry, to maintain at least the illusion that I be the senior partner in my own Hold!"
Kaili laughed. As a Queen Rider, T'lana was quite capable of being imperious, and was also inclined to back up senior Weyrwoman Pilgra when that lady gently bullied Weyrleader T'bor!
"She'll find out sometime" she warned. "I don't ever mean to marry. It involves sex, and that has no dignity nor pleasure."
He caught her rein and looked at her seriously.
"And can you say that truly when all you've experienced is rape? As well you might say that Runnerbeasts are vicious because you've once tried to ride a biter."
Kaili looked mulish; but in truth the simile made her think more deeply than L'rilly's comments that she just hadn't met the right man. Tragen did not push the issue; he'd dealt with enough skittish abused beasts bought out from bad owners. The girl had had a bad time; and needed healing. If any of what he strongly suspected were T'lana's plans for him and Kaili came about, so be it. If not, not. He already liked the girl; and if that was some way from love, it were a tolerable start and better than many ranking couples would hope for. Tragen did not believe in pre-empting the future. What would be, would be, and the better for not being forced one way or another!