Cinders [Sakky]

As soon as Q'sis noticed the approaching Green was harness-less, he stepped away from Unath and moved toward the ledge's open space. He hesitated when Pandemoniuth stumbled over the rock fringe, but his long legs carried him into range by the time Tasakhori slipped off her tired fighter. His hand engulfed her arm just below the shoulder as her boots touched the ledge, then he released her again once she stood balanced on the stone. His eyes rose to Pandemoniuth's naked neck, then flicked down to Tasa as he turned back to his own dragon. He lifted his goggles up onto his forehead, rings of cleanliness forming comic circles around his eyes.

Closer to Unath, he could detect a perversion of the dragon's typical spicy aura, as if whatever incense it was born from had been set aflame: burning cinnamon. But the little fire Unath had left in her gut dissipated with the landing of Pandemoniuth, like a show runner shying away from a judge. She snuffled and blinked over at her rider, detecting his intent concern-- but also his confidence that this meeting would resolve the matter, even if he had called on Tasakhori instead of the more suitable J'en. After the fact, Q'sis was not certain why he had gone straight for the woman. There might have been some distrust of the older, male greenrider, the man he knew to be reckless when it came to medicine. The man who had seen himself scarred...and his dragon.

But Tasakhori better? No, the Tanrider assured himself as he stripped his gloves and began unhinging the strap-tightening clasps around Unath's throat. Unath did not speak up on the Weyrlingmaster's behalf, or Pandemoniuth's, opening her eyes a little wider as the Green thumped down with exaggerated lifelessness before her. Q'sis' control of her head and neck abated now that her flame had gone, and the Tan readjusted her muzzle ever-so-slightly so that it pointed toward the tiny dragon. Her eyes did not fall closed again as she watched the guest of her ledge.

Q'sis gave the Weyrlingmaster a silence in which to conduct her own assessment of the dragonet. It was an epic chore to disarm his lifemate of her leather anyway, and some of the steps demanded his attention to keep any of the flat buckles from flopping into his face.

"Up," he commanded at one point, and Unath's small front legs extended just far enough to lift her chest and lower neck off the ground. Q'sis hauled the winding wherhide skeleton away from her body and flexed it into orderly loops, then threw those over the waiting hook. He came back with a couple oil buckets swinging from one arm, noticing Unath was still squatting her foresection for him. He belatedly released her from the posture, then crouched down to start massaging the oil in where the molted harness had gripped her hide.

He did not look up till Tasa made her disappointing inquiry. His green eyes caught the gravity in her brown ones and he raised his eyebrows. "When we flew today she could barely make a flame at first. Then, once she was heavy in the belly with the stone, she managed a small one. But it was hard to get it consistent, then it was hard to get it thick. The ropes could just fall through it, get singed, but not obliterated like they should have been." Q'sis slapped a helping of oil onto Unath's neck. "Got it eventually, but then I could not increase the size." He tried to pantomime a blowing out of greater flames by making a pulling motion away from his mouth, but ended up prodding himself in the lips with his oily fingers. Q'sis executed a shiny frown and looking around his sleeves for a relatively clean spot on which to wipe his mouth off.

The Tanrider ended up rubbing his face at his right forearm, then spitting the excess out onto the stone. He went right back to oiling, but his focus kept to the Greenrider he had summoned. "It's early for their first flame, but I saw the others...some of the others did well. Unath pushed up some kind of liquid at the start..." He shook his head. "Smoked like a Smithhall. Is there some kind of ailment you have not lectured us about yet? Something that Chelo was supposed to bring up." Q'sis' voice took on cold new tones of accusation around the old 'Master's name, then softened again. "I have been following everything. If you said it, I would have heard. I can't ask Unath about it. Unath...doesn't know."

He got back to his feet, scaling his oiling up to the valleys between Unath's neckridges. "Did I overtax her?" he demanded in a hushed variant of his earlier righteousness. "Fed her too much? Didn't have anything to go by but our guts."

Q'sis nodded shortly to the first sign of reassurance, but he was aware that Tasakhori's tone was qualifying, her gaze piercing for her-- well, for Tasa. She was restraining something underneath her kindness besides an annoyance for her Weyrlingmaster duties. The fact that she refused the opportunity to blame him when he so rarely offered his self-doubt to anyone was almost infuriating. Worrying too, because a mistake on his part was explainable and fixable. There would always be a way to improve if the problem rested with him, something he could do.

But Tasa denied any sort of illness either. Not even a reaction to firestone overload. Q'sis had not thought much of the first hypothesis, but the second held in his memory as long as the image of Unath spitting out a gobbet of steaming, dissolving liquid. He circled around the front of his dragon's nose, hand automatically tracing the wrinkles of her muzzle up to her unembellished juvenile eyeridges as he made his way to the other side. The act left a shiny slick of oil outlining the powerful round of the dragon's snout. Unath made a sound unheard by human ears, but easily felt vibrating up through their boot soles. She lifted her head to track Q'sis after his hand departed her headknob, but he forced her to lay back down.

He reached into a bucket with both hands to collect another sacrifice of oil. Even his fingers had softened after so many months working with the dragon oil, though no other miraculous effects occurred, such as the regrowth of his maimed digit's missing portion. Q'sis had once thought on using the oil against the poorly-healed scars coating him arm and leg, to see if it would not restore some of the skin's flexibility. But that creativity was subsequently rejected: a waste of Weyr resources. He planted both dripping hands on the dark tan dragonskin and looked to Tasa, who was indulging him again.

Q'sis squinted at the Weyrlingmaster, not certain she had spoken correctly. That was a common problem with Tasakhori-- well, her dragon, but Q'sis was happy to conflate --and what she was saying made little sense as it was. Never the reserved communicator, all it took was the words "true queens" to summon a silent snarl across his chapped lips. Since Tasakhori had already played audience to his embarrassment over Unath's failure, there was no issue in indicating further weakness:

"I don't understand. Mith wasn't..." The gears stopped again. The subqueens had been shared evenly between the Weyrlings' "wing," and Mith had been elsewhere. Mith was an incomplete reference for Unath, but the one Q'sis had always watched for in the past. Today there had been little room for dragon-gazing, "Thread" in the air. Q'sis switched tacks. "That doesn't make any sense," he clarified. His hands still had not restarted their gentle strokes over Unath's neck. The most alien moment of the evening came when he felt the need to echo a point his Tan had made: "She is a dragon. She is not a queen, so we fight Thread. That is why dragonriders exist-- not to hide in the Queen's Wing with the women."

He tilted his head at Tasakhori. "You said she would get better at it, so she will be able to fight like the rest." The Tanrider's hands still showed no signs of resuming work. "Why would you say that?" Q'sis grumbled. "'Don't make big flames'-- she'll be bigger than all but the consort males." Subqueen was not the only term Q'sis no longer enjoyed. "Bigger dragons always make bigger flames." If his voice sounded heated, it was more over having to rattle out these simplistic concepts to a Weyrlingmaster than out of any concern for Unath's flamemaking. He felt as though the Greenrider was playing prankster, but she was keeping her cool far too well.

Extreme weariness stilled Tasakhori, he noted as an aside to himself. Unath mumbled something about talking to the Weyrlingmaster more. More like this conversation, which was about her, and therefore Unath liked it.

I am always strong, she suggested, and Q'sis' posture adjusted almost invisibly, a little more of his weight leaned on his dragon.

Those were not the women Q'sis had been referring to, and he did not appreciate Tasakhori's rebuke. Incensed already by her claims against his Tan's usefulness, he showed little sign of cooperation with the notion. He watched her, the details of his gaze obscured as the sun was lost, he seeing just as little from her childish face. Spots of red in her hair remained illuminated though, like tiny flames. With the heat of the day's work gone out, the air fulfilled its frigid season, and a crosswind struck the bare bones of the ledge hard enough to rustle the straps hanging in the weyr beyond.

Unath twisted her head to one side to follow Pandemoniuth's roll-over, and stayed in such a position till Q'sis noticed and corrected her. She growled an awkward echo to Pandy's creel of distress, clicking her jaws as the Green balled up. Unath did not feel completely alright, which was a departure from her existence on Pern thus far. Pandemoniuth's noise had not reassured her. The emerald light cleared from the Tan's eyes, and the strained, pale blue that remained whirled faster. Q'sis did not respond to Tasakhori's clarifications, and his gaze wandered, for when Tasa noted her dragon's needs the dark silhouette of his head jerked back toward her as if startled.

"You may go," he answered tonelessly. When the Weyrlingmaster showed herself off, Unath sat up, shaking off Q'sis' still-frozen hands and craning her head after Pandemoniuth. She snipped her jaws together one more time, then much of the speed added to her eyes abated and a richer blue surfaced as she gazed down on Q'sis. The Tan obligingly laid back down, but Q'sis did not resume working till she pushed at him with the tip of her nose. She wrapped her wing around his working area till he was done, protecting him from the growing wind. Her heavy wing-claw grazed his shoulder when he finished, then she got up so her rider could enter his weyr. Unath watched him set down the oil buckets and wipe off his hands, then start to strip his riding leathers in the dark of the cavern. He had not opened any of the entryway glows.

He did not go to sleep immediately like she thought he would. Some of her widely-discussed strength recuperated, Unath moved away from the weyr entrance and began nosing around the rock just outside. The weyr had an odd cut, the gap to the cave inside listing to the right. But above it, piled on wider than her home ledge, was a second protrusion from the Bowl wall that Unath sometimes preferred. She found a notch in the rock and set her wing-claw in it, then began clambering up the stone face to the secondary ledge. Once there, the entirety of the Tan dragonet continued slinking skyward, up the rock.

At one point in her climb, she thought she sensed some sort of disturbance from Q'sis, a distinct but momentary clench of disaster. Unath slipped one claw, but had plenty of other limbs to catch herself with. By the time she had recovered the notion had gone, and she forgot about it as she crested the Weyr caldera. Directly above Q'sis' weyr the Rim was studded with a circle of rocky nubs. A dragon of Unath's size fit into the center pit perfectly-- or she would when she was grown. More importantly, the high wall-top granted her an unimpeded view of the sky and sea outside the Bowl. The sun had not really been gone down on the ledge, but the stone hid its last breaths from the riders. Unath whistled to the distant red farewell of Rukbat.

Another unknown pang raced through her head. But it twanged in her chest too, and she scratched one forearm against her breastbone. She thought the feeling was from Q'sis again, but he was not saying anything, and it was...it was gone again. Unath blinked, looking around her nest to confirm where she was. She noticed a thick white rope snagged around one of the rocks forming the boundary, and stomped over to stick her nose in it. After a few heavy breaths of rope-powder, she sucked air in deep, paused, then sneezed tremendously. The rope twitched with the passing. Unath squealed and seized the end in her jaws, then ripped the rope off the rock and ate it. Q'sis made no attempt to stop her. Unath crept back to the Rim side of the nest afterwards. The Bowl floor was brightly lit so that drudges could sweep and polish away the collapsed storm of white and black debris; that confused her for a time, but she eventually recalled her purpose.

The Tan roared, a cry in the dark just to see if anyone else was there. There was a delay: many tired dragons, many forbidding riders. Post-drill choruses were discouraged. Unath wiggled her wings preemptively, looking back and forth. Inevitably a few voices boomed back, rumbling across the Weyr to the delighted dragonet.

Princess Unath had certainly not fallen asleep in her castle. She was just resting her eyes, see? Eyes that popped open with a confused, glowing yellowy-green cast when Pandemoniuth called to her. Unath spotted the Green coming in very close and mantled her wings over her nest. The other dragon landed beside her anyway, and it took Unath a moment to grasp the concept before she retracted her wings. She and Pandemoniuth together fit snug and warm into the pit.

Hey, she gurgled back, then abruptly coughed up a wet piece of rope. I found rope. But Unath must not have found her rope very worthy: she nudged it out of the nest with her paw, and it dropped away into the Bowl. She rolled onto her side and promptly went to sleep after that.

Q'sis was aware of the Weyrlingmaster's approach before she got close. He heard the dragon wings out on the ledge. The Tanrider had not wrapped himself completely in darkness: there was a glowbasket on his desk, the metal ensconced in a thin colored cloth to give the light the warm honey tint of a fire's light. He had passed beyond wanting to sleep and on to some stage of exhaustion where he remained constantly awake, every new sound and sight sending a shock through his nerves. The glow had been just enough light to keep him from feeling blind, while not inviting him to read or peruse any of the sparse articles in his domicile.

The desk immediately in front of him was blank in evidence of his stagnant existence. Off to the far right rested a piece of paper: a precious map of the island trio that Crescent, Western and Dalibor shared, as well as what portions of the Western Continent had been newly described in the past Turn. The paper was understandably new, like the glowbasket. It had colored ink, and a Craftsman's sigil that Q'sis' hand was currently obscuring. Its only flaw was no fault of its own: a jeweled dagger had been planted point-first into the top margin, biting through into the wood of the desk below. The knife did not appear as new as the other trinkets surrounding the man. There was a scar denting the blade that had never been repaired. It remained unclear whether the knife was used to hold the map in place, or if it had been thrust home more recently.

Tasakhori's earlier choice of words did her no credit now. Q'sis only did her the honor of looking at her when she finally stopped dawdling and creeped into the room. The soot was gone, his hair combed, his new clothing clean and unrumpled. The long Winter boots buckled to the knee spoke to the fact that he had never intended to sleep from the moment he entered the weyr: such attire often came with hidden lacing that was a pain to undo in the dark before bed. His features constricted around his frown, skin drained and the blue tinges under his eyes running dark as bruises. Q'sis' long look at the tiny harbinger of truth did not lessen his new revulsion. His brows wrinkled over his narrowing eyes, a trace of bewilderment winding in somewhere beneath the rest of his expression.

"Go to sleep, Weyrlingmaster," he advised. "Unless there is some duty you need me for."

Q'sis had already gotten over his miraculous ability to upset Tasakhori earlier, and did not regale her frown now with any surprise.

"If my performance suffers tomorrow, then not sleeping was a bad decision," he answered, unphased. "Though I could certainly put more utility to it-- work on my straps." An immature dragon's riding harness was the bane of every Weyrling's morning and evening. The beasts required fresh straps on the month, sometimes more often. It could seem like they would never stop growing. Q'sis closed his eyes at the notion of size, the fireless gigantism afflicting his Tan. When he opened them again the Weyrlingmaster had slinked up to his side, little sound giving her away.

Even women had only two reasons to close on him. For Tasa, one was nonsensical, even if Q'sis' sore, leaden legs were not about to serve him any defense against it. The other reason he had just referred from painfully distant memory and was about to file as likewise implausible when Tasakhori swooped forward to confirm it. Her skinny arms around him were no different from a child's. Q'sis grimaced, shoulders stiff under the Weyrlingmaster's incomplete hold, hands still on the desk. Then she would not let go or go through with whatever it was she wanted to do. He could smell the dragon-spice lingering in her hair.

No sleep tonight was now a certainty. Q'sis attenuated his disapproval accordingly with her separation from him, though his plucked eyebrows accomplished a magnificent furrow when she spoke. Olive eyes searched the diminutive threat leaning on his desk. "When the Watchdragon reports that you came here in the middle of the night, what are you going to tell them?" The generally low nature of the evening was contributing to his expectations, he knew, but he still had to ask: "What do you want?"

He swallowed, watching her as he went over her words again in his head. Pressing his lips together, he considered the possibility that the Weyrlingmaster's intentions were not entirely self-serving. His experience snorted at that, but Q'sis blinked a couple times before graciously extending a less offensive way out: "Unath is the child, not me." The ex-trader reviewed the Weyrlingmaster's frame a second time, and added a little more flatly: "I'm probably older than you." Another uncomfortable pause wafted through. "There's nothing wrong with Unath."

Q'sis had never mumbled in his life, but at those clearly pronounced words he shook his head, shutting his eyes again. "I'll still be there tomorrow," he said when he finally felt like looking at the redheaded Greenrider again. He obligingly turned in his seat to get his legs out from under the desk, then crossed one over the other so he could begin unlacing his boot. "So what's the problem?" As he shifted his legs to get at the other boot, a sharp riding stiffness in his thigh surprised the Tanrider, and he had to stop before he finally pulled his leg up into range. And then he stopped again, resting his left hand over his forehead before he noticed Tasa-- still there despite his best efforts --and quickly returned to the boot-work. "You apologize?" he guessed as he pulled out the lace-strings.

Another impasse of understanding, and Q'sis rubbed the side of his hand against his bearded cheek, waiting for Tasa to give some other reason. But she didn't, and he was left with only concern, even though he had already indicated it was not necessary, and he was an adult. She would have done better to bring him a wine bottle, though it was as yet forbidden. Was that why she had elected to talk instead-- a lack of options? Did Tasakhori take her appointment all that seriously? Q'sis' green eyes reflected specks of glow-light in their corners when he met her continuous scrutiny again. She was trying to figure out what was wrong; he was still trying to figure her angle. But he could say what he thought might satisfy her in the meantime, the most complete answer she could grasp.

"If you stop moving, you die. I am not dead, so I am okay." He looked over his new map, ink so fresh it still appeared to glisten. The shadow of the dagger pinned to the top cut the map in two. "But now there is nowhere to go." Not for a man. And that was where his female audience could never comprehend, nevermind that Tasa could not know as much about the Tans' difficulties as their riders either. The second point was evidenced by her insistence on Unath's perfection, compared to Q'sis' own grudging support-- an article made of love more than fact.

Samael understood Tans, but she was like the other good women: she accepted her place in the Queen's Wing, and her protected status. L'kie understood responsibility, but he had his Blue, and his flame would never falter. Q'sis realized: there was no one else. Well, maybe Qosk. He grinned despite himself at the wicked thought. Yes, Qosk would have known what to do. "Things without purpose aren't allowed to exist," the Tanrider said. He set both boots on the stone floor, the bindings loosened, the leather sagging away from his muscular legs. "I have unlaced," he noted, staring pointedly at the Greenrider. "So I will sleep. Go away." He started to shift his legs back under the desk, then caught himself and stilled them where they remained on complete display for the Weyrlingmaster.

Apparently even this much of a metaphor escaped Tasakhori. Q'sis nearly sighed.

"I am beginning to dislike that term," he replied. "No one is 'okay.' Everyone survives." The ex-trader followed her gesture to the map. "I thought it was pretty," he sniffed, propping his elbow against the table, hand-to-cheek, unimpressed with the Weyrlingmaster's observations. As poor an analyzer as Tasa was, she did like to point out every single plainly presented tidbit as if it were a filament in a web, and he the elusive crawler in the center. "Your persistence reminded me of someone."

She had a rosy, Tasa-appropriate perspective, though he supposed in some respects it was truthful. "Women are born with a purpose," he agreed, pushing back his seat from the desk. The Tideturner frowned, rising from his chair, towering properly over the miniature Weyrlingmaster. His shadow hung ten times taller on the wall. "The Weyr is where they are taken to strip them of that purpose. Tasakhori..." He paused, looking out the doorless exit of the room, to Unath's empty couch and the ledge beyond. Pandemoniuth was not there. She was napping beside Unath on the Rim, out of reach.

So he could not simply haul Tasa out, throw her on the dragon and send her on her way. Besides, Pandemoniuth might not reply to gunning slap on the hindquarters like a runnerbeast would. There was the stair, but it was easiest to get the Greenrider to leave of her own accord. He refocused on her, and after collecting ideas for a moment, scowled. "It takes away their ability to listen, too. I mean what I say, greenrider. You can stay as long as you desire, but I am still going to sleep." His expression lacked its full irritation in Winter, when his grown-out beard erased some of the nuances in the drawing of his cheeks and lips.

He turned around and headed toward the bed, like a good Weyrling. His back to her, he lifted off his shirt. Then he bent down to pull off his boots one at a time, throwing them at the wall. Tasakhori was some sort of stonebred, and they all had nonsensical nudity taboos. Failing that, Tasa's sense of preservation for the protocols of her position would kick in. Glow-light cascaded down his exposed arms, the scarring of his skin raised enough to create its own shadowed criss-crossing texture. "You need to stop...whatever you are doing," he demanded as he pressed his bared feet into the small rug directly beside the bed. He twisted a few rings off his right hand, each as ornately appointed as his golden-hilted dagger. Q'sis dropped them in a trunk at the foot of the bed, leaning so he did not have to step off the rug to do so. "There's nothing..."

The Tanrider unbuckled his belt. He supposed that if this really had been a front for something else, Tasa would make her move now, and he would have far more compelling reasons to evict her by whatever means he felt necessary. He wished he had not put his back to her, even if it communicated his aversion rather dramatically.

"I know. Being a good mother is almost as difficult as being a Weyrlingmaster," Q'sis grumbled. He had become aware that instead of scooting out of the weyr, Tasakhori was avoiding the sight of him by facing a different wall. He exhaled slowly, through his nose, and examined the distance between his rug and the glowbasket he had left on the table as he shuffled his feet out of his pantlegs. He ended up laying down some of the trouser cloth and walking along it till he could reach the basket. He shut the lid tight, and the light that made an offense of his appearance disappeared. He walked back along the pant-leg to the rug. He would never get used to that cold rock under him, or around him.

The ex-trader peeled back the layers of bedfurs, felt for the pillows and blindly arranged them to his liking. "All of you say that...that you would never make for good mothers. Instead you all want to die to Thread, as if there are not enough men for that." His fingers tightened on the corner of one pillow. "Except for me, apparently." He climbed into the bed, shuddering even as he pulled the furs up over his bare shoulders. Shuddering at the change from chill to warmth rather than the other way around. "I'm not saying there is nothing," the Tanrider sighed, as if prepared to give up and give all the information the Weyrlingmaster needed to her. But instead he said: "There is nothing you can do, Tasakhori. Good night."

Q'sis turned on his side, facing the wall even if it was meaningless to do so in the dark. He remained awake, looking around occasionally as if there was something to see. He reached to Unath and got no response. The dragon did not dream when she slept. It was as if she had simply been blown out, quick as a candle-flame. Nothing there.