Chapter 16
Of Restin's companions, the one who had claimed no knowledge of his leader's intentions begged to be sent anywhere but his own Hold.
"I'm his half-brother, sir, I've always had to do what he said, Holder Reseder will punish me for letting him take the blame, not me!" he cried.
G'narish was taken aback.
"He only took the blame for what he was CAUGHT doing; that will be made very clear to his father," he said.
"That won't make any difference," said the boy, Reset. "I should have claimed it was my idea."
G'narish was angry.
"In that case, boy, you're almost as much a victim as young Jessenia herself," he said, "and if you've been trained all your life to do what Restin told you, then there's more excuse for you in not letting go of the girl. You need to learn to behave properly; but not here. I'll ask Lord Corman if he'll foster you."
"Oh THANK you, sir!" the terror left the boy's eyes. "I – I'd rather be made a drudge here than go back where Reseder can punish me!"
Bullies often spawned bullies; and when G'narish made request to Lord Corman to take in the lad, he suggested that Reseder too would bear watching.
Corman was glad of the warning, and planned on drawing young Reset out to tell him everything he knew about Reseder!
oOoOo
Jessenia was soon herself again; telling herself firmly that it was nothing to what Leealla had suffered.
She did borrow a piece of paper from the artist, however, to draw her own rather crude portrait of Restin, purely so she could burn it.
"To purge him from my memory," as she said.
Leealla nodded, understanding.
"He may not have had you, but he still inflicted humiliation on you. Sometimes that's worse than the pain," she said. "If I don't Impress, I'll still be Weyrartist, but I'll want to give time to helping girls who have been raped. If you Impress and I don't, will you take me places? I don't quite like to ask a Queenrider like L'issa; it doesn't seem right to use Crysoreth on errands!"
"Of course I'll take you places, if I Impress and your dragon isn't shelled yet!" said Jessenia. "And I bet Crysoreth would be glad to be asked too, before you or I can go between if either or both of us Impress, because dragonriders protect and serve and that counts Queens too. I think you will Impress, you know; you've come on no end, you know. You'd never have DREAMED of whacking a snot like Silaya when we first knew you, to protect even yourself, never mind a friend!"
Leealla grinned, ruefully.
"Like you as physical trainer, I feel assured of my position here, so I don't HAVE to stand," she said, "though I think half the Blue Riders who offer to take me to draw places are hoping to get me in their beds on the offchance I do Impress, for their dragons' sakes."
"I'm glad you still feel confident to ride with them, and that they'll take 'no' for an answer," said Jessenia. "This is how you were meant to be – confident in your craft and ready to meet life head on."
"And an irony that I'm probably better off than if all those terrible things had not happened," said Leealla, with a bittersweet smile. "I doubt I'd ever have come to the Weyr, else; or had the chance to learn real art from an accredited Master!"
"But you TOOK the chances that were offered, and went forward with your life, rather than looking backwards, showing that it is YOU who rules your own life as it is, when given the chance," said Jessenia. "There's enough people who just whine about life's downs and stare back at them so they miss the chance to see the doorways to life's ups. Well, anyway, you're a good friend," she added, embracing the girl warmly.
oOoOo
The chores started becoming easier for those unaccustomed to such hard work – except Silaya, who was still as idle as she could manage.
Bannoria dragged Melvi to Jessenia and friends with the comment,
"Shells, am I lucky in my parents! I wrote to them to tell them so, too! Mel here has had a rotten time of it – go on, Mel, tell Jessenia, she sorts things out!"
"You tell her," muttered Melvi, tears in her brown eyes.
Bannoria did just that, concisely, incisively, and baldly.
Melvi's mother had been widowed when the girl was some eight turns old; a couple of turns later, the widow remarried and her new husband had begun systematically interfering with his stepdaughter, pretending that he loved her to tell her a night time story.
Melvi had told her mother; who had called her own daughter a liar. Her stepfather had promptly raped her to punish her for worrying her mother over how dirty she was, telling her it was her own fault. He tried to prevent her from running to the Weyr, telling her she was too dirty for dragons to choose. Sheer angry misery had made Melvi fail to reach the grade as a Healer Apprentice, something else for her stepfather to taunt her with, saying that only he had any value for her at all.
"Leealla?" Jessenia turned to her friend.
Leealla nodded; and related her own story.
"It crushes you," she said, "and you WON'T Impress unless we uncrush you. And first thing to do is to see G'narish. Is this tunnel snake a healer?"
Melvi shook her head.
"He's a carter to the Healer Hall; the only times I could relax were when he was away carting. But he started suggesting I went with him to learn the trade!"
"I bet he wed your mother to get at you," said Jessenia. "Any half siblings?"
Melvi shook her head.
"No, but – but I saw him looking at some of the new female apprentices at the Harper Hall," she said.
"Shards, my kid sisters are there!" said Carya in lively horror.
"Huh, if he tries it on with Ranya and Raissa they'll cut his parts off," said Jessenia. "He won't be expecting acrobat-trained strength, and they're no idiots; they have a good settled family not some vapid fool mother so pleased to have a man that she can think no wrong of him. Sorry, Melvi, but that's how I'm seeing it."
Melvi hung her head. She could not dispute Jessenia's blunt assessment of her mother.
The girls debated who should be spokesman; and in the end they all trooped off to see Nadira rather than G'narish as supporters to Melvi to give deposition to a Queenrider!
Nadira was saddened, but not as shocked by the revelations of stupid mothers and evil stepfathers as the younger girls had been .
She had heard of such things before.
The Weyrwoman prepared to take a report to Master Oldive, Lord Groghe and Masterharper Sebell, and to ask that something be done about the fellow; which was as far as she might be permitted to go.
She had faith in all three of these worthies to handle the affair adroitly, however!
Lord Groghe was fostering a young girl who had been used brutally by her own father, and persuaded by him that he did it in love, and the irascible old Lord Holder took a dim view of such evil men and women who betrayed the trust of children and destroyed their whole belief structure with their manipulations of what was right and wrong. Groghe promised grimly that the matter would be dealt with expeditiously.
Nadira believed him!
oOoOo
G'narish meanwhile had to deal with Holder Reseder, who came howling in outrage that the Weyr had no right to incarcerate his son for being misled by the overtures of some weyrwhore and that it interfered with the autonomy of Holds.
G'narish eyed him with dislike.
"Firstly," he said, coldly, "the attempted rape of a young girl, using accomplices who held her down, scarcely qualifies as YOUR misrepresented description of the affair. Secondly, I find the term 'weyrwhore' offensive; and so, I suspect, will the girl's uncle, and as I believe Holder Ranyer is a famous swordsman, I suggest you would be a fool to irritate him as WELL as the Weyr. Thirdly, your son was standing as a candidate under Weyr protection and by extension under Weyr jurisdiction. Normally if a candidate transgresses we merely send them home; but some transgressions are too great to stand aside from. The attempted rape of a candidate is a serious matter. In a couple of sevendays' time the girl might be a dragonrider; and then I should have been entitled to send him to the Eastern Isles. You, Holder, are out of line; and I blame you for the boy's inadequate upbringing that led to his strange ideas that he is somehow entitles to hurt boys smaller than him, and rape any girl he feels like. It was NOT his first offence. And he was already heading towards expulsion before he surpassed all his previous offences with his lewd and sluttish behaviour. We do our best to discourage wanton promiscuity in the Weyr; dealing with the proclivities of Green dragons is quite enough without having male, er, whores like your son."
The man was going to be an enemy in any case; G'narish figured that he might as well enjoy himself by insulting him and his son first. Nothing the most diplomatic of Harpers could say would convince the bullying Holder that his son was in the wrong! G'narish was just glad that he had heard of Ranyer as a fine swordsman – Ranyer's father had believed in the threat of Fax though half a continent away, and had the sense to see that his son had been well equipped to fight back – and dropped that fact in as a threat to prevent Reseder from trying to take it out on relatives of Jessenia. With Reset packed off to the protection of Lord Corman it was to be hoped that Reseder would not learn of Jessenia's immediate acrobat family! That they did not venture so far into Keroon was also a comfort; Reseder was not powerful enough to have a long arm.
Reseder was angry at the contemptuous description of his son; and shouted a lot. G'narish waited hopefully for the bull-necked, red-faced bully to attack him, for as an Oldtimer he was less chary about killing than F'lar; but he was out of luck. Reseder was not so lost to reason as to lay hands on, or pull steel on, a dragonman in public in full view of all the Bowl.
The Holdr strode off to his Hold dragon.
It was Dessa the prankster who caught up with him, smiling winsomely.
"Oh Holder! Your son left this behind!" she said demurely, handing him a small box.
The Holder promptly opened it, to Dessa's delight.
She, abetted by Carya, had collected as addled tunnel snake egg, asafoetida and runner dung and mixed the foul concatenation, placing it in the box lined with good Lemos soapstone; and pasted in the lid was a label, saying. 'the stink of bad manners'.
Reseder recoiled from the stink; read the label, and fairly hurled the box at Dessa.
She dodged easily.
"I want that one whipped, Weyrleader!" demanded Reseder shrilly, "I suppose she's the brat who made eyes at my son?"
"Yuk, who would?" said the irrepressible Dessa. "No, I'm not the one he tried to rape, Holder, she's not much more than a child, but we all support her!"
G'narish went to pick up the box and examine it.
"Dear me, Dessa, how rude to be so forthright in your opinion," he said, mildly. "You've stunk the Weyr out worst than Restin himself. You may clear up the mess and sprinkle the area with lavender water," he swung round to Reseder as Dessa murmured demurely,
"Yes, Weyrleader."
"Holder," G'narish's voice seemed to come from between, "how dare you try to tell me how to discipline a candidate in my own Weyr? You come shouting about autonomy yet you seem quite happy to try to flout MY autonomy? I shall put in a report to Lord Corman about your behaviour. The girl played a rather unpleasant practical joke; for your belief that your obnoxious son was within his rights, I would support the entire female complement of the Weyr speeding you on your way by pelting you with addled eggs. Get out; if I see you again, it will be too soon. Get out before you try my patience too far and I withdraw dragon cover from your lands."
That went home.
"You – you wouldn't dare!" Reseder paled at the thought.
"It's your lands and crops you bet that belief on," said G'narish. "I'm not T'kul: but I do expect recognition for what the Weyr does, not insults to dragonfolk and candidates who dare to face what YOU do not: Thread. If you have so little respect for dragonfolk, you may consider living without their cover. Oh, and G'nad," he addressed the young Green Rider, a clutchmate of J'ton, who was the Hold Rider, "You'll get your things from the Hold and return to the Weyr. Holder Reseder no longer receives the courtesy of a dragon stationed at his Hold."
G'nad looked pleased; Reseder was ashen at G'narish's threat to withdraw cover, and was too shocked by that to truly take in that he was losing his convenient means of transport! He climbed onto the Green dragon without further ado, and G'nad was swiftly airborne.
The quicker he delivered the Holder the quicker he might return home to the Weyr!
G'narish had every intention of debriefing G'nad later – and sending the boy to Lord Corman with his report too!
oOoOo
Meanwhile the girls and boys both were taken to view the eggs. Thera led them around her Queen's clutch with V'sheren in attendance to keep order.
All the girls were assembled to file past the Queen egg.
"Excuse me, Weyrwoman," said Silaya, with her sweetest and most winsome smile, "some of these girls have come to stand for Green dragons."
Thera fixed her with a look of dislike. She had Silaya's number.
"Oh yes, there are some girls with a becoming modesty that do not put themselves forward as deserving of a chance; the Weyr thinks that the little Queen should have as wide a choice as possible," said Thera, with almost equal sweetness of tone.
"I do NOT want to view the Queen egg, if you don't mind, Thera," said Nadeena, "No disrespect to Tiralith: but the point of me standing is to get a Green for Tayath, because he'd not fly a Queen."
Thera nodded.
"Understood, Nadeena," she said. "And there are odds that as the twin of a Queenrider you'd be in with a good chance, and maybe confuse her from the one the rest of us have our marks on. You're a lovely coupld, you and B'tin and I really hope you Impress."
Nadeena smiled her sweet smile.
"Thanks, Thera," she said; and held back as the younger ones went on.
The Gold egg was the most beautiful thing Jessenia had ever seen, and her brief curiosity over who Thera and others had their marks on vanished in contemplation of its beauty.
"It's so lovely!" she whispered, bowing her head to Tiralith as she approached the Golden Queen's unhatched daughter.
"Too lovely for you," sneered Silaya, "don't you dare bob forward like that, you're so short I might trip over you."
Tiralith hissed. Silaya took an involuntary step back.
Silaya, can you not even behave on the Hatching Ground?" said V'sheren, irritably. "More and more I begin to think you incapable of taking this chance to be a dragonrider seriously!"
Silaya sulked.
"Are you an idiot, Silaya?" said Jessenia sharply, turning and catching a sight of the truculence in the lovely face. "you have the chance to think loving thoughts at the baby Queen, and all you're doing is projecting bad temper!"
"Mind your own business! What do YOU know?" snapped Silaya.
"Nuts, then," said Jessenia rudely, shrugging. "I just think that it's unfair to the little creature to be anything but calm for her. I'm trying to; for she deserves every chance to find her life friend without waves of bad thoughts interrupting."
"Heh heh, Silaya, you just spoilt your own chances!" gloated Nilis. "Now I'm the only one in with a real chance."
"My! How certain we are," said Geetta, "me, I'd love to fly a Golden Queen, but I'm not rating MY chances next to several MUCH better propositions than you two stuck up pieces; there's five I can think of who came for Greens who have a far better chance – and that's not counting Nadeena – than the rest of us. And like Thera says, one I'd put marks on."
"Oh?" asked Nilis, pointedly.
Geetta laughed.
"Oh, if you can't work it out, I'd say you've not got intuition enough to Impress a Green, never mind a Queen," she said.
"Guess I'm obtuse too, then," said Jessenia, "I'd have said our best was Nadeena, who has just put herself firmly out of it. There's some good types here; but I can't pick out anyone exceptional, though I can feel plenty who have great attitude, but perhaps not quite the level of intuition."
Geetta rolled her eyes; but did not get the chance to answer, because all had now viewed the Gold egg and V'sheren was addressing them.
"Those girls willing to stand for a Green egg, step forward."
Jessenia and her two best friends stepped forward, with Geetta close behind. Lineta hesitated; then joined them, her concerns quieted by G'narish's defence of al his candidates so loudly and publicly!
Tragarra, Falinn, Telara, Dessa, Bannoria. Melvi and Luaysa also stepped forward: Lailla hesitated but hung back.
The strenuous exercises had discouraged her, though the gentle girl had made no protest; and her main objection to standing for a Green dragon was that she would be expected to be closer to Thread than protected on a Queen.
V'sheren nodded; and led the girls through the main cluster of eggs.
"Just move about, viewing them; you may feel a pull. If you do not, it does not mean that you are NOT chosen. Touch the eggs by all means, as you touched the Queen egg."
The girls did as they were bid; and Jessenia quested for the slightest touch and was disappointed.
It was a magical experience however to be on the hot hatching grounds, with those beautiful eggs, all potential dragons, tiny compared to grown dragons, but most of the eggs almost as high as Jessenia herself!