“That’s the message, Lord Toric. And those left at Great Bay Hold are the most shiftless, indolent lot I’ve ever seen.” Garm did not hide his disgust.
“That is not allowed!” Toric exclaimed heatedly.
“I agree, sir, so I sailed directly back here. No sense leaving good supplies for those lazy lugs. I knew you’d want to take appropriate action.”
“Indeed I do, Master Garm, and you will reprovision your ship immediately for an afternoon sailing.” Toric stalked to the magnificently embellished map of his Holding, which now took up one whole wall of his workroom.
“As you say, sir.” Garm knuckled his brows and exited hastily.
“Dorse! Ramala! Kevelon!” Toric’s roar echoed down the corridor after Master Garm.
Dorse and Kevelon arrived at a run, to find the Lord Holder writing a note, his fury evident in the bold, hurried letters scrawled across the narrow sheet.
“That ingrate, Denol, has mutinied on the Great Bay and is claiming my island as an independent, autonomous holding,” he told them. “This is what comes of assigning lands to any rag, tag, or scum. I am informing the Benden Weyrleaders of the course I intend to take, and I expect their cooperation.”
“Toric,” Kevelon said, “you can’t expect dragonriders to take punitive action against people—”
“No, no, of course not. But this Denol will soon see that he cannot maintain his position on my island!”
Ramala entered the room. “A message just in from Breide at the Plateau, Toric.”
“I don’t have time for him right now, Ramala.”
“I think you’d better, Toric. They’ve discovered storage caves full of ancients’—”
“Ramala,” Toric snapped, frowning irritably at his wife. “I have present concerns. That wretched crop picker from South Boll has occupied my island and intends to make it his. The Weyrleaders…”
“The Weyrleaders will be at the Plateau, Toric. You could combine—”
“In that case, I shall send this message to them there. Ramala—” Toric thumped the table with his fist. “This is far more important than any scraps and shards left behind by the ancients. This is an arrant challenge of my authority as Lord Holder and cannot be permitted to continue.” He turned to Dorse. “I want all the single men aboard the Bay Lady by midday, with suitable supplies of weapons, including those barbed spears we’ve been using against the big felines.” Then, waving Dorse out, he rolled up the two messages, which he handed to Ramala. “Give these to Breide’s fire-lizard and send it back to him. Kevelon, you remain here in Southern to manage things. I can trust you.” Toric gave his brother a warm embrace and then returned to study the map, focusing on the threatened island.
Never had Toric expected to be challenged in his own Hold, and by a jumped-up drudge of a crop picker. He would pick him over, so he would!
“Denol, you say?” the Master Harper exclaimed. “A crop picker from South Boll?”
There was such amusement in his voice that Perschar, who was busily sketching the scene around the collapsed cave roof, looked up in surprise.
Breide gave him a quelling stare. “My remarks were addressed to Master Robinton,” he said haughtily, gesturing with his free hand for the artist to go back to his business. He handed Toric’s message to the Harper.
“Well, that’s a facer for Lord Toric, to be sure,” Perschar went on, ignoring Breide.
The Harper grinned. “I don’t think Lord Toric will be over-faced, however. A man of his infinite resourcefulness will soon put matters right. And the diversion at this particular moment in time is fortuitous.”
“Yes,” Perschar replied, a speculative gleam in his eye. “You may be right at that.” He resumed his deft quick lines, a broad smile on his face.
“But Master Robinton,” Breide went on, mopping the sweat running down his temples. “Lord Toric has to be here.”
“Not when matters of Hold importance come up abruptly.” Robinton turned to Piemur, who had listened with great interest, especially since Breide was so patently distressed. “Ah, here comes Benden,” the Harper added, pointed skyward. “I’ll see that the Weyrleader gets his message from Toric.” He nipped the other roll from Breide’s hand before the man could protest, then walked across the well-trampled field to greet F’lar and Lessa.
More ladders had been lowered and a quantity of glowbaskets placed below to enable the Weyrleaders and Craftmasters to explore easily. A number of people were already doing just that, and the Masterharper and the Weyrleaders joined them.
It was then that Piemur noticed Jancis coming down. “Hi, there,” he said. “We’re not supposed to go off on our own, so how about I go with you?” He helped her down the last step.
“I’m here officially,” she said with a grin. She opened her shoulderbag to show him a board and writing materials. “To measure and diagram the corridors before you get completely lost.” She handed him a folding measuring stick. “You just got seconded to help.”
Piemur did not mind in the least. “The door’s back this way,” he said. “I think that would be a good starting point.” He cupped his hand under her elbow and guided her in the right direction.
While she was diligent about measurements, both took time to peek into crates and examine a variety of the stores.
“Mainly things that they either had plenty of or didn’t immediately need,” Jancis remarked, looking through a large case of encrusted soup ladles and jumping back as one disintegrated in her hand.
“You always need boots!” Piemur replied. “And they’re in an excellent state of preservation. I make this chamber twenty paces by fifteen.” They had moved some distance from the original chamber, through interconnecting caves, some of which showed evidence of having been reshaped and squared off.
“How could they manage to shear through solid rock like a carver through roast wherry?” Jancis asked, running one hand over an archway.
“You’re the smith. You tell me.”
She laughed. “Even Grandfa can’t figure that one out.”
“You haven’t actually worked metal, have you?” Piemur finally blurted out, unable to contain himself any longer. She was not a fragile-looking girl, but neither did she have the bulging muscles of most male smiths he knew.
“Yes, the Crafthall required me to, but not the heavy stuff,” she answered absently, more intent on measuring the archway than on his questions. She gave him the measurements. “There’s a lot more to smithing than working hot metal or glass. I know the principles of my Craft, or I’d not have walked the tables.” She cocked her head at him, the dimple appearing with her grin. “Can you craft every instrument a harper plays?”
“I know the principles,” Piemur said with a laugh and then held up the glowbasket to see into the next chamber. “What have we here?”
“Furniture?” Jancis added her glows to his, and the dark shadows took on form, light shining off smooth metal legs. “Chairs, certainly, tables, all of metal or that other stuff they used so much of.” She was running knowledgeable hands down legs and across surfaces.
“Hey, drawers!” Piemur exclaimed, wrestling with a tier down one side of a desk. “Look!” He held up a handful of thin cylinders with pointed ends. “Writing sticks? And these?” He held up clips and then a transparent stick, a nail thick, a finger wide, and more than a handspan long, both edges covered with fine lines and numerals. “What standards were they measuring by?”
He gave her the stick, and she turned it over and over. “‘Handy enough, since you can see through it,” she remarked and then put it in her shoulderbag, making a notation on her diagram. “Grandfa will want to see it. What else have you found?”
“More of those useless thin plaques of theirs. If all the drawers are full of th—” He stopped complaining as he opened the deepest drawer and saw the neat arrangement of hanging files. He removed one. “Lists and lists, on that film of theirs. And color-coded—orange, green, blue, red, brown. Numbers and letters that don’t mean a thing to me.” He passed the file to her and picked up another one. “All red and all crossed out. Records my Master wants, and records I can now give him! For all the good it does.”