“Couldn’t the fastening have loosened during the journey, Weyrwoman?” Saneter asked, though the elderly harper’s desire to placate the Weyrwoman was stretched as thin as the holder’s temper.
“Then why, I ask you, why–” She set her goblet down so hard on the table beside her that the stem broke and the remaining wine dripped onto the floor. “Now, look what you’ve made me do!” She beckoned to a fat drudge pretending to tidy the surface of the sideboard. “Quickly! Mop it up before it attracts a horde of fly-bys.”
If Saneter hoped that the mishap would distract Mardra, he was quickly disappointed. She never lost an opportunity to aggravate Toric.
When Saneter had been posted to the Southern Hold, Master Robinton had briefed him fully on the situation.
“You’ve been chosen for more reasons than merely trying to ease your joint-ail, Master Saneter,” the Masterharper had said. “I can rely on your discretion and soothing manner, as well as your common sense, to keep me informed of any untoward occurrences.” The Masterharper had paused significantly, his clear eyes meeting Saneter’s. “The Southern Weyr was actually initiated some ten Turns before Threadfall, though that is not general knowledge, and volunteer holders went to assist them. When this Pass started, the Southern Weyr and Hold were temporarily abandoned. Then, as you know, with T’bor as Weyrleader and the ill-fated Kylara as his Weyrwoman, it became an excellent situation where injured dragons and riders could recuperate. You know the more recent history, I’m sure, with the discontent of some of the Oldtimers, and the exile of the incorrigible dissidents to Southern where they could do little harm.
“Toric, who was holding rather an extensive area, elected to stay on. He’s rather well situated, mind you, though there were restrictions put on both the Oldtimer dragonriders who were exiled and any commerce between north and south.” The Masterharper cleared his throat and gave Saneter yet another enigmatic look.
Saneter had been so relieved that he could continue to function as a harper, even in the south, that he would have been willing to do much more than exercise his diplomatic talents.
“Toric puts up with Mardra, T’ton, T’kul—who is, in my opinion, the worst of the lot,” Robinton went on. “He’d have no such autonomy in the north, but I will want to hear what sort of friction develops…if you understand me, Saneter?”
“I do, Master Robinton. I believe I do.”
Saneter often chided himself for his innocence. But a man learned as he lived. Once, when Saneter was just settling in to Southern Hold, Toric’s lovely young sister, Sharra, had mentioned that Mardra fancied her brother, but that Toric wanted nothing to do with the Weyrwoman. Mardra’s attitude toward Toric reflected a deep and vicious antipathy, a desire to humiliate and demean.
“I ask you why, Toric, my queen fire-lizard, who is far more reliable than a watchwher, distinctly informs me that someone was there and crept away.” Having made her point she glared at the Holder, who said nothing, though Saneter could see his fingers alternately clenching into fists and releasing into grasping motions. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you, Toric,” she added, leaning forward on her couch, her bleary eyes and features missing nothing of his attitude. When Toric moved his head fractionally, Saneter could see her deciding on a further insult.
With a harper’s appreciation for valor, Saneter thought sadly of that glorious day when the Oldtimers’ Five Weyrs had arrived. Every man, woman, and child on Pern, saved from certain death by the reinforcements, had been grateful to their wings. He had been a harper at Telgar and had seen Mardra and T’ton, the Fort Weyrleaders, a handsome pair, so pleased with their reception. T’kul, High Reaches Weyrleader, had appeared to be an energetic and knowledgeable leader, if slightly condescending to F’lar and Lessa. After four Turns of dealing with the disaffected Oldtimers, Saneter found their decline increasingly painful to deal with. Mardra had become a raddled, blowsy old woman, constantly wine-sotted; and T’kul, stringy with age and potbellied, spent his time endlessly recounting spectacular Falls which he had seemingly charred with only his dragon Salth’s aid.
“Look at me,” Mardra repeated, command still ringing in her voice, her eyes piercingly intent on the holder. Again his head moved fractionally, and Saneter, judging by the furious set of the Weyrwoman’s lips, suspected that Toric had adopted his very disconcerting habit of seeming to look right through her. “She saw someone. Someone who shouldn’t have been there. Someone who tampered with that sack. Find me that someone! I want to know what he or she took from that sack. Those were Crafthall tithes to this Weyr, and I hold you, all of you—” For the first time she glanced at the other Masters who had been summoned with Toric. “—responsible for any losses. Now hop it out of here!”
There was a murmur of righteous protest from the other Masters—farmer, fisher, herdsman, and tanner. Saneter, too, would have backed any retaliation. Craftsmen had the right to withdraw their services from a holder—and, by law, from a Weyr, though such an extreme action had never been recorded. The harper caught his breath, slightly frightened of the consequences of such an act—they were, after all, in the early years of the Pass—but just when he could no longer stand the suspense, Toric whirled and strode out of the Weyrhall, his heels thudding loudly against the wide floorboards. There was a hint of frightened relief on Mardra’s face. If she realized that there were limits past which she could not go, then the morning had had a positive outcome. Saneter cleared his throat, gave Mardra a brief nod, and followed Toric. If the others could just contain their fury long enough to get out of the Weyr Hall, they would have brushed out of the incident without irrevocable damage. All for some trivial bauble!
Saneter did not let his breath out until he reached the hall entry, just as Toric strode down the broad steps without seeming to touch them. Quickly the other Masters overtook the harper, as much to get out of the Weyrwoman’s presence as to support Toric’s example. Saneter did not consider himself a choleric man, but he was as livid as Toric. The farther the holder got from the Weyrhall clearing the louder his curses grew. By the time he reached the well-trod path skirting the cliffs around the beach, he was bellowing out inventive damnations, his voice rising above the complaints of the others.
“We’re here by choice, not tradition,” Gabred, the Masterfarmer, cried. “Even Kylara was better behaved than that twat!”
“I’d use her guts for bait if I thought fish would take it!” Osemore the Fisher said, his weatherworn hands closed into thick and dangerous fists. “Chain her to the beach and let the leeches eat her.”
“Old baggage,” was Maindy the Herdsman’s contribution. “Useless slug. Salt ‘er, I would.”
“If only they didn’t ride dragons,” Torsten the Tanner said. He shuddered. He was as incensed by the incident as the others, but by temperament he was a cautious man. His words stemmed the flood of invective. When the wounded northern dragons had been quartered at Southern, the holders had become all too acquainted with the agony of a dragon whose rider had died, and the forlorn, gut-twisting keen of those that heralded the dragon’s suicide.
Though Saneter winced at the idea, he was grateful once again to Osemore. Dragonrider inviolability was deeply ingrained in them all—even a renegade holder like Toric. Which was why Toric had had to leave the Weyrhall before a total rupture of discipline occurred. But by Faranth’s First Egg, it had been close. If they had not been in a pass—not that Southern’s dragonriders did more than mount a token flight… Saneter shook his head, deploring the situation.
“Their shipments of who knows what arrive,” Toric began again in a savage tone, “dumped down by their dragons, and suddenly it’s my fault that one sack arrived open. She doesn’t even blinding know what was in it, much less if anything is missing. We’re summoned—summoned like apprentices—”