“Oh, no.” Menolly swallowed the hard knot of dismay. “Not Master Domick!” Even Piemur was careful not to annoy him. “Was Master Domick very…upset?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. But don’t worry, Menolly, I shall use the incident to your advantage. It doesn’t do to antagonize Domick unnecessarily.”
“Not when he doesn’t like me anyhow.” Menolly closed her eyes against a vision of Master Domick’s cynical face contorted with anger.
“How do you construe that?” Menolly shrugged. “I had to play for him yesterday. I know he doesn’t like me.”
“Master Domick doesn’t like anyone,” replied Sebell with a wry laugh, “including himself. So you’re no exception. But, as far as studying with him is concerned…”
“I'm to study with him?”
“Don’t panic. As a teacher, he’s top rank. I know. In some ways I think Master Domick is superior, instrumentally, to the Harper. He doesn’t have Master Robinton’s flare and vitality, nor his keen perception in matters outside the Craft.” Although Sebell was speaking in his customary impersonal way, Menolly sensed his complete loyalty and devotion to the Masterharper. “You,” and there was a slight emphasis on the pronoun, “will learn a great deal from Domick. Just don’t let his manner fuss you. He’s agreed to teach you, and that’s quite a concession.”
“But I didn’t come this morning…”
The magnitude of that truancy appalled Menolly.
Sebell gave her a quick reassuring grin. “I said that I can turn that to your advantage. Domick doesn't like people to ignore his instructions. It is not yourworry. Now, come on. Enough of the morning has been lost.”
He had directed her up the steps into the Hall, and to her surprise opened the door into the Great Hall. It was twice the size of the dining hall, three times the size of the Great Hall at Half-Circle. Across the far end was fitted a raised and curtained platform that jutted into the floor space. Tables and benches were piled haphazardly against the inner walls and under windows. Immediately to her right were a collection of more comfortable chairs arranged in an informal grouping about a small round table. To this area Sebell motioned her and seated himself opposite her.
“I’ve some questions to put to you, and I can’t explain why I need to have this information. It is Harper business, and if you’re told that, you’ll be wise to ask no further. I need your help…”
“My help?”
“Strange as that might seem, yes,” and his brown eyes laughed at her. “I need to know how to sail a boat, how to gut a fish, how to act like a seaman…”
He was ticking off the points on his fingers, and she stared at his hands.
“With those, no one would ever believe you had sailed…”
He examined his hands impersonally. “Why?”
“Seamen’s hands get gnarled quickly from popping the joints, rough from salt water and fish oil, much browner than yours from weathering…”
“Would anyone but a seaman know that?”
“Well, I know it.”
“Fair enough. Can you teach me to act, from a distance,” and his grin teased her, “like a seaman? Is it hard to learn to sail a boat? Or bait a hook? Or gut a fish?”
Her left palm itched, and so did her curiosity. Harper business? Why would a journeyman harper need to know such things?
“Sailing, baiting, gutting…those are a question of practicing…”
“Could you teach me?”
“With a boat and a place to sail, yes…with hook and bait, and a few fish.” Then she laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“Just that…I thought when I came here, that I’d never need to gut a fish again.”
Sebell regarded her sardonically for a long moment, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Yes, I can appreciate that, Menolly. I was landbred and thought I’d done with walking about. Just don’t be surprised at anything you’re asked to do here. The Harper requires us to play many tunes for our Craft…not always on gitar or pipe. Now,” and he went on more briskly, “I’ll arrange for the boat, the water and the fish. But when?” At this requisite, he whistled softly through the slight gap between his two front teeth. “Time will be the problem, for you have lessons, and there are the two eggs…” He looked her squarely in the eye then, and grinned. “Speaking of which, have you any idea what color mine might be?”
She smiled back. “I don’t think you can really be as sure with fire lizard eggs as you can with the dragon's, but I kept the two largest ones for Master Robinton. One ought to be a queen, and the other should turn out to be a bronze at least.”
“A bronze fire lizard?”
The rapt expression on Sebell's face alarmed her. What if both eggs produced browns? Or greens? As if he sensed her apprehension, Sebell smiled.
“I don’t really care so long as I have one. The Harper says they can be trained to carry messages. And sing!” He was a great teaser, this Sebell, thought Menolly, for all his quiet manner and solemn expressions, but she felt completely at ease with him. “The Harper says they can get as attached to their friends as dragons do to their riders.”
She nodded. “Would you like to meet mine?”
“I would, but not now,” he replied, shaking his head ruefully. “I must pick your brains about the seaman’s craft. So, tell me how goes a day at a Sea Hold?”
Amused to find herself explaining such a thing in the Harper Hall, Menolly gave the brown journeyman a dryly factual account of the routine that was all she’d known for so many Turns. He was an attentive listener, occasionally repeating cogent points, or asking her to elaborate others. She was giving him a list of the various types of fish that inhabited the oceans of Pern when the tocsin rang again and her explanation was drowned by shouts as apprentices erupted into the courtyard on their way to the dining hall.
“We’ll wait until the stampede has settled, Menolly,” Sebell said, raising his voice above the commotion outside, “just give me that rundown on deep water fishes again.”
When Sebell escorted her to her place, the girls treated her with a stony silence, emphasized by pursed lips, averted eyes and then sniggers to each other. Buoyed by Sebell’s reassurances, Menolly ignored them. She concentrated on eating the roast wherry and the crusty brown tubers, bigger than she’d ever seen and so fluffy inside their crust that she ate more of them than bread.
Since the girls were so pointedly snubbing her, Menolly looked about the room. She couldn’t spot Piemur, and she wanted him to come help her feed the fire lizards in the evening. She’d better strengthen what friendships she could within the Harper Hall.
The gong again called their attention to announcements; and to her surprise, Menolly heard her own name called to report to Master Oldive. Immediately the girls fell to whispering among themselves, as if such a summons was untoward, though she couldn’t imagine why, unless they were doing it to frighten her. She continued to ignore them. And then the gong released the diners.
The girls remained where they were, pointedly not looking in her direction, and she was forced to struggle from the bench.
“And where in the name of the first shell were you this morning?” asked Master Domick, his face set with anger, his eyes slitted, his voice low but projected so that the girls all cowered away from him.
“I was told to go to—”
“So Talmor me,” and he brushed aside her explanation, “but I had left word with Dunca for you to report to me.”
“Dunca told me nothing, Master Domick,” Menolly flicked a glance beyond him to the girls and saw in their smug expression the knowledge that they, too, had known there’d been a message for her, which Dunca had deliberately neglected to pass on.