Her illness depressed everyone.
“You don’t really know how important someone is,” Zulaya said, having come down to reassure herself on the state of the convalescents, “until they’re suddenly… not there!” Her remark quite sank P’tero’s spirits. And Tisha was not there to jolly him out of his depression. But M’leng was, and appeared in the shelter.
“How dare you be so self-centered?” the green rider said in a taut, outraged tone of voice.
“Huh?”
“Tisha’s illness is not your fault. Leopol wasn’t wearing shoes when he was told to, and so his infected foot also isn’t your fault. In fact, it isn’t even your fault that we picked that rock out of all the ones we could have picked. It was bad luck, but nothing more, and I don’t want to have Ormonth upsetting Sith any more. D’you hear me?” P’tero burst into tears. Just as he’d thought: M’leng didn’t love him any more.
Then M’leng’s gentle arms went around him, and he was pulled to M’leng’s lightly bandaged back and comforted with many caresses and kisses.
“Don’t be such a stupid idiot, you stupid idiot! How could I not love you?”
Later, P’tero wondered how he could ever have doubted M’leng.
When the convalescents did return to Telgar Weyr, they found Tisha once more in charge of the Lower Caverns. If her clothes were still loose on her frame, she was tanned from the sea voyage back from the mouth of the Rubicon and looked completely recovered.
Some of the green and blue riders in the wing had freshened up both P’tero’s and M’leng’s weyrs, with paint and new fabrics. The worn pillows had been replaced with plump ones.
“Because Tisha said you’d need to sit real soft for a while longer,” and Z’gal sniggered into his hand. “Lady Salda let us have feathers from the Turn’s End birds.” Then Z’gal’s lover, T’sen, brought an object from behind his back. P’tero stared at it, puzzled. It seemed to be a pad with very long thongs.
“Ah, what is it?” Z’gal went into a laughing fit which annoyed T’sen, who scowled and kept pushing it to P’tero.
To sit on, of course. It’ll fit between neck ridges. We measured.
Belatedly, but as effusively as he could, P’tero thanked T’sen for such a thoughtful gift. It wasn’t so much his bottom that needed padding, but the muscles in the buttocks and down his legs that needed strengthening and massage to get them back in full working order. Of course, M’leng had been assiduous in the massage sessions, but P’tero was now concerned that he’d be fit for fighting when Threadfall began.
M’leng had been wounded in a much better site; he wouldn’t miss a day’s fighting.
There was wine, biscuits and cheese for a small in-weyr party.
M’leng capped the return celebrations by presenting P’tero with a flat, wrapped parcel.
M’leng’s eyes were shining in anticipation as P’tero untied the string, wondering what on earth this could be.
“Iantine’s back, you know,” M’leng said, breathlessly watching every movement of P’tero’s hands.
The other riders were equally excited and P’tero felt a spurt of petulance that they all knew what this was and were dying to see his reaction.
Naturally, the picture was face down when he finished unwrapping.
P’tero was stunned silent when he turned it over and his eyes nearly bugged out of his head at the scene depicted.
“But… but… Iantine wasn’t even there!”
“He’s so good, isn’t he?” Z’gal said. “Did he get it all right? M’leng described it over and over.”
P’tero didn’t quite know what to say - he was so bewildered.
So much of it was what he would have given his right arm to have actually happened. The lion was clawing his backside, M’leng was sprawled under him, and there were more lions climbing up the rock, their vicious intent vivid in their posture, their open mouths showing fangs longer than a dragon’s.
P’tero was posed in an obvious act of defending his lover, his head turned, one arm upraised in a fist aimed at the attacking lion’s head. But that wasn’t the worst of the inaccuracies: both riders were fully clothed.
“P’tero?” M’leng’s voice was quite anxious.
The blue rider swallowed. “I don’t know what to say!”
Where am I? Ormonth wanted to know, evidently viewing it through his rider’s eyes as a dragon sometimes could.
“There!” and P’tero pointed to the dragons high up in the sky, wings straight up in a landing configuration, claws unsheathed, ready to grab the attacker, eyes a mad whirl of red and orange.
“Of course, I was unconscious,” M’leng was saying, “but that’s what Ormonth and Sith would have been doing. Wasn’t it?” And he jabbed P’tero warningly.
“Exactly,” P’tero said hurriedly. And it probably was, although he hadn’t seen it since he’d been looking in the other direction.
“Everything happened so fast it’s almost eerie how Iantine has got it all down in one scene!” The amazement and respect in his voice was not the least bit feigned.
“Now,” and M’leng pointed to the wall, “we’ve even got a hook for you to hang it on.” “Wouldn’t you rather have it?” P’tero suggested hopefully.
“I’ve a copy of my own. Iantine did two, one for each of us,” M’leng said, beaming proudly at his lover.
So P’tero had to hang the wretched reminder of the worst day of his life on his own wall, just where he couldn’t miss it every morning of his life when he woke up.
“You’ll never know how much this means to me,” he said and that, too, was quite truthful.
No-one thought it the least bit odd that he got very, very drunk on wine that night.
Lana’th comes, Charanth told his rider.
“So Meranath tells me,” Zulaya said before K’vin could speak. “He wants to know all about our trip south.”
“I thought he’d given up on that notion to practice on the first Falls in the South,” K’vin said. He tried to sound diffident.
Then Zulaya put a finger across her lips and pointed to the sleeping Meranath, a signal to K’vin to guard his thoughts to Charanth outside on the ledge. He nodded understanding.
“You don’t fool me, Kev,” and then she waggled her finger at him. “You and B’nurrin would give your eye-teeth to be in on the first real Fall - even if it does take place in the South where nothing could be hurt. Or, for that matter, saved.”
“The grubs haven’t spread across the entire southern continent, you know.”
“That has nothing to do with seeing Thread for the first time in two hundred years.”
He answered her droll smile with an abashed grin.
“We don’t need to have the dragons stoked up or anything,” he said.
“Yes, but do you really want to have S’nan reproaching you for the rest of your career? That is, if you have one as a Weyrleader with this sort of antic in mind.”
K’vin gave her a long look. “And don’t tell me you like the fact that Sarrai will be leading a queen’s wing in Falls before you will.”
Zulaya rocked back in her chair just enough for K’vin to realize he had made a palpable hit. She was honest enough to grin back.
“We don’t even know that’s what’s on B’nurrin’s mind,” she said.
That’s exactly what was, however, even after both Zulaya and K’vin enumerated the problems they’d had on that ill-favored excursion to the southern continent. However, almost the first thing B’nurrin did was a repetition of Zulaya’s signal to shield their thoughts from their dragons.