Undebran was arguing with Petia again. Yarrow watched them while she sat at table. The servants were watching too, from beyond the dais, but she had a close-up view. The topic was a familiar one; they'd been arguing about Yarrow's impending nuptials for several days.
"She needs to go off," Petia said forcibly. "I can't stand having her here -- look at her! What would the Weyrleaders think if they saw her? I'm sure it's the reason nobody from Southern Weyr has come in ages, not except that Green, and we all know what those are good for..."
No, we do not all know, Yarrow thought acidly. She knew better than to try and ask, however. They'd just laugh at her for not knowing something that "obviously everyone understood." Even Mink did so at times.
"My Lady, what if there were an emergency and someone needed to drum for help?" asked the Harper with just as much force -- even more, as he banged a fist on the table so hard Yarrow saw dishes bounce and she could feel the vibration in her ears. "She's getting very good with that drum she has."
This only brought laughter, as Yarrow saw. She ducked her head down as Petia turned in her direction to indicate her. So, she didn't see the rest of the conversation, but she knew it had to be something derisive. That was how it usually ended up.
When she'd waited a proper few minutes, the argument seemed over; Petia was sitting with a triumphant smile on her face, and the Harper looked like he was going to boil over. But they weren't done, she found.
He looked right at the Lady Holder, and said, "the Weyrleaders haven't come, Petia, because they have been in mourning for Lord Toric."
Yarrow blinked. He was a friend of the Weyrleaders? she thought. No wonder Mother and Father came to see what happened to him -- though, didn't he just die..?
That was when Hannin raised his round head and fixed the Harper with a steely glare all his own. But there was something else in that look, which Yarrow couldn't explain. "Don't ever mention that name in this house again!" he said, "and for the record, the Weyrleaders all hated Toric. It's in the logs..." He got up from the table and stomped out of the room, but not before glaring at Yarrow. He pointed for her to leave, too. "This is not your conversation, girl. You wouldn't understand the delicacies of it." He didn't even bother to be sure she was staring at him.
Fine, she thought, shrugging. She'd already done the glows again, helped make the beds with Irina one of the chambermaids, and now she was determined she'd do some drumming. They didn't even care if she did needlework or anything, as she'd learned some parents did -- Mink had made a casual remark to that effect months ago. And much as they stamped and hollered about the drum, she figured they must be too afraid to take a Rider's gift away from someone.
So, she was in her room practicing, when Undabran burst in. Rapidly, the Harper signed to her that she needed to drum the Weyr that he needed a ride -- he was leaving.
Yarrow's eyes nearly bulged out of her head. She shook it vehemently; if he went, she'd have no friends left! But the Harper seemed determined. He signed to her that he had been dismissed, which almost made the girl fall over.
"Tell me what my parents were here for," she signed to him. "Please?"
Undabran sighed visibly, running a hand through brown hair with a trace of pepper. "All right," he said, "only because you will still be here -- I have done everything I could to make sure of that! You need to pick up where your parents -- and myself -- left off. The Harper Hall, and Benden Weyr, believe Lord Toric was murdered."
"A son of his?" Yarrow signed. She'd read a lot at the Hall and there was much in the archives about sons killing parents or plotting as cousins to get hold of prime territory. Fax was a good example. But Lord Fax was long dead, and Hannin was no son of his; as far as she knew, Fax's get were dead.
The Harper shook his head. "We don't know why Lord Toric's sons aren't here," he signed to her, shrugging. "But," he pointed to her, "you need to find out. You are to marry Mink; I convinced Petia that having Harper blood in the family would bring prestige to it no matter who is in it -- sorry, but I had to put it that way. She insists you cannot drum, so you need to now more than ever! And, I'm afraid, there are wifely duties..." he turned red at this.
Marry Mink? she thought. It wasn't as bad as being wedded to old Acorn, but she still doubted -- she hoped -- that the boy would have been her parents' choice. And... wifely duties? She already knew how to do beds -- but then, as the wife of the heir to the Holding, would she need to do so anymore? What was he talking about?
The Harper did not elaborate, however. "Go drum now," he signed, pointing to the tower.
* * *
B'nick answered. Yarrow went out with the Harper to meet the Greenrider and his dragon. Normally, she knew from her lessons when much younger, when a Harper left a post it was proper for the Lord and Lady of the Hold where he'd been stationed to come out as a polite and honorable thing to do. But nobody here seemed to know that.
They do not understand, said Visigoth in Yarrow's mind after their warm embrace.
He fought for me, Yarrow told the dragon, and now I can stay here -- but I have to wed their son. She wrinkled her nose.
Dragons sometimes mate with those they dislike, Visigoth sent her, they mate with the one who is the most powerful, who wins the dragonflight.
And, B'nick added, cutting in, if you ever have a problem with him, I can think of at least five dragons and their riders who'll be here on the instant. Don't worry for your safety.
But she did worry. As Yarrow watched the Harper and his ride lift off, she thought about how alone, how very alone, she now was.
* * *
The marriage of a Lord Holder's son, Yarrow found, was of apparently much more worth than the marriage of a Trader -- it didn't seem to matter that it was the deaf girl, the foundling who was marrying him, as some of the servants put it when they thought she wasn't able to see them talking. Petia went over great amounts of fabric with her, all of it musty -- which then meant that the resentful servants had to wash all of it in the brook. Yarrow got a good amount of complaints in her face.
"...So -- do you understand what marriage means? Such an important marriage?" Petia would ask. "IM-PORT-ANT? Do you see?" And then, after she had become absolutely sure Yarrow didn't, the Lady Holder would go on a ramble about things that Yarrow was sure she wouldn't understand even if she could hear.
Thankfully, Yarrow was the only one there who could drum, and she spent as much time in the tower as she could, now. That was fairly easy; invitation after invitation went to every Hold, Weyr, and Crafthall on the planet, as far as Yarrow could tell. She laughed to herself, wondering who actually would come.
Sure enough, Yarrow was not supposed to check glows or anything like that anymore, Petia told her in no uncertain terms. Instead Yarrow was now -- well, she wasn't supposed to do anything, really, except fill in the log book. "It's a very important job," Petia said firmly. "So you shouldn't feel ashamed -- when I think of how few girls in this place are around suitable for bonding! But then, they don't visit... well, that will change. Do you know, when my cousin was still single, girls were brought from miles around to see him, and for his perusal? Ah, that will be good to see again. You have the hips for it..." she patted Yarrow on the hip, making her flinch at the presumption.
Are people really supposed to just sit back and take this treatment? Yarrow wondered, seething inside, but then she'd taken the nastiness she'd faced before this.
"... oh yes, we'll have some good stock -- legal stock too!" Petia went on as if she had not noticed Yarrow's discomfort. "Why, when I think... but never mind. Toric clearly wasn't a good Holder if he lost this place so easily. So! You will breed the new generation of heirs for this hold, and we will be completely legal again." She stuck her face right in front of Yarrow's. "Don't think I don't know the Harper Hall is suspicious of us -- that is why we had to let that fool Undebran go! Ah, well, if we have to rely on Traders for music -- since they don't even have Gathers here, the last one was at Landing years ago -- then we must. You don't understand a word of this, do you?" She shook her head and patted Yarrow's hip again with a grin. "Well, just as long as you give children..."
Yarrow raced to the drum tower as soon as she could. Maybe there was something to this idea about Lord Toric being murdered after all, she thought. "Legal," what did Petia mean by that? How was she to get it out of the woman? Yarrow had not been trained in spying about, she was just able to learn things and fool others into thinking she wouldn't repeat whatever she might see.
Now, she wondered, once she was up in the drum tower, where to call? The Weyr? That was closest... or what about Cove Hold or Landing? Was there a tower at Landing? she wondered. Finally she drummed the Weyr: Lord and Lady suspicious. They want Hold. Harpers beware.
Hannin grabbed her arm roughly as she was coming down from the tower, so hard she'd have yelled if she could. "WHAT -- WERE -- YOU -- DOING???" he asked, his face very close to hers.
"PRAC-TI-CING," she said firmly into that ugly mug. She wrenched her arm free and walked off, head high.
It was a good excuse, but it was a lie; she hadn't put the "practice" tag on the end of the message so that others would know it wasn't meant to be canon. She could only hope nobody here really understood the drums.