Kindan found his eyes watering and decided that the wind must have changed and blown some of the ash from the fire toward him. He ignored the lump in his heart. He knew how happy Sis would be; he’d heard her say it so many times. And he couldn’t deny that Terregar was a nice man. Still... it would be a lonelier place without his big sister, the sister who’d watched over all the family since their mother had died.
The wind changed, and the freshening breeze brought a new smell—bubbly pies! Kindan’s stomach rumbled as he sought the source of the smell. He started to get up, but a hand pushed him down.
“Don’t think about it,” a voice growled in his ear. It belonged to the youngest of his older brothers, Kaylek. “Dad sent me to find you. You’re to wash Dask now.”
“Now?”
“Of course!”
“But all the pies’ll be eaten!” Kindan protested.
Kaylek was unimpressed. “You’ll get some tomorrow at the wedding,” he said with a shrug. “Mind you clean him properly, or Dad’ll have your hide.”
“But it’s not dark yet!” Kindan protested. Dask, like all watch-whers, had been born with huge eyes that found the light of day hideously painful. Dask’s eyes worked best at night. At night, there wasn’t anything a watch-wher couldn’t see. Many were the miners who owed their lives to the ability of a watch-wher to see a human body under the rocks and rubble of a cave-in.
A larger figure loomed over the both of them. Kindan could tell immediately who it was by the way that Kaylek shied away; Kaylek was always more frightened of their father than Kindan.
“You two are disturbing the meal,” Danil said in a deep voice roughened by an age in the mines. He laid one large hand on Kaylek’s shoulder.
“I told him to go wash Dask,” Kaylek said.
Kindan looked up and met his father’s eyes squarely. Danil returned the look with a slight nod.
“Well, it can wait until after the bubbly pies,” he said. He shook a huge finger at Kindan. “I’m trusting that you’ll do us all proud and make my watch-wher the envy of Crom Hold tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir!” Kindan responded enthusiastically. The dreaded chore suddenly seemed a mark of great trust and respect. “I will.”
Danil kept his hand on Kaylek, saying, “Come along, son, there’s a craft girl you might like to meet.”
Even in the failing light, Kindan could see Kaylek turn beet red. Kaylek, just Turned fourteen and still very wary of his newfound voice and manhood, was quite shy around girls his own age. Kindan managed not to laugh out loud, but Kaylek caught the look in his eyes and glared at his younger brother. Immediately Kindan sobered—for the look threatened retribution.
The smell of bubbly pies teased Kindan’s nose, and he turned to hunt them out. Kaylek’s retribution was sometime in the future—the bubbly pies were right now.
The evening meal in the Camp’s square was still going strong when Kindan started up toward the shed that was Dask’s home. As he walked slowly and deliberately away from the bonfire and the crowd, a small shadow detached itself and followed him.
“Are you going to wash the watch-wher now?” Zenor whispered, panting as he struggled to catch up.
Yes.
“Why didn’t you get me, then?” Zenor asked, his voice full of perceived betrayal.
“You’re here, aren’t you?” Kindan replied. “If I went through the crowd looking for you, Kaylek would have noticed and done something to stop us.”
“Oh.” Zenor didn’t have any older brothers and was completely unused to using guile to get his own way. But because he wanted an older brother just as much as Kindan wanted a younger brother they got along famously—even if there was no more than two months’ difference in their ages.
They were about halfway there when Kindan noticed another shadow trailing beside them.
“What’s that?” he asked, stopping and pointing.
“What?” Zenor answered promptly. “I don’t see anything.”
One of the things that Kindan really appreciated in Zenor was that his friend was a truly terrible liar.
“Maybe it was a trick of the moons,” Zenor suggested, gesturing up to Pern’s two moons, Timor and Belior.
Kindan shrugged and continued onward. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the shadow was still following. He thought for a moment and came up with an interesting notion.
“Who did you talk to, today, at the Harper’s?” he asked Zenor.
Zenor stopped dead in his tracks. So, Kindan noticed with satisfaction, did the shadow. “When?” Zenor asked, his eyes wide.
“When you went from Natalon down to the square,” Kindan said. “I saw you stop and talk to someone—and I’d already seen Jofri in the group when you talked to Natalon, so it couldn’t have been him.”
“Me? When?” Zenor repeated.
Kindan waited silently for him to answer.
“Oh!” Zenor said suddenly as though actually remembering and not rapidly concocting a lie. “That was Dalor.”
Dalor was Natalon’s son, nearly the same age as Zenor and Kindan. Kindan didn’t like the way Dalor took on airs about being the son of the Camp’s founder, but he couldn’t fault the boy otherwise. Dalor was often honest and had stood up for Kindan more than once when Kaylek had been picking on him. Kindan, for his part, had stuck up for Dalor when Cristov, Tarik’s only son, picked fights.
Kindan gave Zenor a measuring look, but before he could ask his next question, Zenor said, “Won’t your Dad be mad if he finds out that I helped wash Dask?”
“So we’d better make sure he doesn’t find out,” Kindan said.
Zenor gestured for Kindan to get moving again. “In that case, we’d better get done before my parents start wondering where I am.”
Kindan considered teasing Zenor more about their shadow, but the look on his friend’s face made him reconsider.
“Okay,” was all Kindan said, starting up the slope toward the shed where Dask was quartered, next to the cothold his father had built.
Dask’s shed was large enough for the watch-wher to lie on his side with plenty of distance from the walls. Straw was piled on the floor. Kindan opened the double doors carefully and chirped a quick note.
“Dask?” Kindan called softly. “It’s me, Kindan. Dad asked me to get you washed for the wedding tomorrow.”
The watch-wher uncoiled from his sleeping position, his head emerging from underneath his small wings and his bright eyes, like huge jeweled lanterns, reflecting the last of the twilight brightly back at the two boys.
“Mrmph?” the watch-wher muttered. Kindan crossed the distance between them quickly but cautiously, murmuring softly, reaching out slowly to scratch the ugly watch-wher on the ridge just above his eye.
“Mrmph,” Dask murmured with growing pleasure. Kindan blew a breath toward the watch-wher’s nose so that Dask would get a good smell of him and recognize him. Dask snorted and blew back. Kindan reached above the eyes for Dask’s ears and stroked them.
“Good boy!” he said. Dask arched his neck and pulled his head out of Kindan’s grasp to look down haughtily at the boy.
“We’re here to wash you,” Kindan repeated. Dask leaned down toward Kindan and blew another breath at him, then raised his head up and looked out past the curtain that had been hung inside the double doors. Kindan realized that Dask had seen Zenor. “That’s right, me and Zenor,” he said soothingly. “Come on in, Zenor.”
“It’s awfully dark in there,” Zenor said, still standing outside the doors.
” ’Course it is,” Kindan replied. “Dask likes the dark, don’t you, big fellow?”
Dask blew an agreeing breath over Kindan’s head and then swiveled his neck to peer curiously toward Zenor.