The Renegades of Pern (14 page)

“Yes, I can have design sketches for you, Lady Holder. By this evening?”

“Very good. By evening.”

Thella stood, dropping the quarter in his hand. Then she turned as if struck by a sudden thought and smiled at Aramina. “Didn’t I see you yesterday? With a net full of shellfish?” Why did the girl stiffen and eye her so warily?

“Yes, Lady Holder,” Aramina managed to reply.

“Do you dig every day to fill the family pot?” What did one talk about to timid girls who heard dragons?

“We share what we dig,” Aramina said, lifting her chin proudly.

“Laudable, most laudable,” Thella said, though she thought it rather odd that a girl who had lived holdless would be so touchy. “I’ll see you this evening, Master Dowell. “

“Journeyman, Lady Holder. Journeyman.”

“Humph. With the carvings I’ve seen?” She left the compliment like that. Dowelll’s family would need careful handling. She could hear the woman whispering excitedly to her husband. A quartermark was a lot to a holdless family.

Now where, Thella wondered, was she going to come by seasoned wood, the sort a prosperous holder woman would gift a bride?

She was back that evening and expressed lavish praise for the five designs he showed her. He was a good draftsman and showed a fine range of chair types. She was tempted to do more than just string him along with promise of work in an attempt to gain the daughter’s confidence. Such armchairs would be far more comfortable than the canvas affairs and the stiff benches which were all she currently had. The harp-back design could be easily transported in sections to her hold and then glued together. One design, with a high, straight back, wide, gracefully curved arms, and carved legs and crosspieces, was particularly splendid.

All of a sudden, Giron came striding down in the passageway, flashing her an urgent hand signal.

“Let me have a day or two to choose, Dowell,” she said, rising to her feet and folding the sketches carefully. “I’ll bring these back and we’ll discuss this further.”

She heard the wife murmur anxiously to the joiner. But Giron jerked his head for her to be quick, so she followed him down the next narrow alley.

“Searchers!” he whispered. Then she led him through dim corridors until they were safely out of reach.

Two days later, after she had Giron check to make sure there had already been a search that morning, she returned to Dowell’s place. To her disgust the girl was not there. She discussed wood with Dowell and haggled over price. She finally gave him more than she thought she ought, but as she would probably never have to give over but half, and might even get that back, she could afford to seem generous.

Aramina, she discovered from Brare, had been sent out with the hunters. No one actually said that she had been taken along because she could hear dragons, but it did not take much wit to figure that out.

“How many people know about her?” Thella asked Brare, worrying that if the Weyrs found out about Aramina’s talent, they would snap the girl up, thus ending all of Thella’s grand plans. Her ambitions were great, and she was becoming increasingly convinced that they could not be realized without a guaranteed way of evading the dragonriders.

“Them?” Brare jerked his thumb in a western direction and snorted disbelief. “No one’ll tell ‘them.’ It’d be worth their life here if they did. She’s too useful to the hunters. Have to go much farther out in the hills to find wherry these days. Don’t want to be caught out. I do like a bit o’ wherry meat once in a while.” He sucked in air past gaps in his teeth. Thella rose at once and left.

Over the next few days, Thella tried both to gain the girl’s confidence and to lure Dowell into bringing his whole family to her hold. She and Giron had “found” the required lengths of wood handily enough, cautiously replacing what they stole with inferior planks.

“We’re quiet in the mountains, I grant you,” she told Dowell as she watched him meticulously carving the design on the chair back, the controlled motions of his short-bladed knife almost imperceptible. “But you can’t want your children to remain in this warren. You could finish these chairs in my hold, comfortably. I’ve got a good harper-teacher as well.” She managed not to smile at the thought of her so-called harper’s morals.

“We’re going back to our rightful hold in Ruatha, lady,” Barla replied with dignity.

Thella was surprised. “Across Telgar Plains during Threadfall?”

“The route has been well planned, lady,” Dowell said, intent on his work. “We shall have shelter when it’s needed.”

Thella caught Barla’s slight, almost smug smile and read it as an indication that they were counting on their daughter’s talent.

“Surely not at this time of the year, with winter approaching?”

“Your commission will not take me long, lady, now that I have the wood,” Dowell said. “I shall have it ready for you and still make the journey. Winter comes later to Telgar coasts.”

“Dowell is a journeyman; he practices his craft,” Barla added, defensively. “The stewards sent by Mastersmith Fandarel and Telgar Lord Holder cannot draft him to the mines.”

“Of course not,” Thella agreed fervently, though she felt a jolt of apprehension at the thought of her brother Larad anywhere near. “I’m amazed that Lord Laudey is permitting any interference by outsiders in these caverns.”

“Lord Laudey suggested it,” Dowell said with a mirthless smile.

“I do not blame him,” Barla said gently. “There are many here who could work who don’t. Lady Doris is too kind.”

“A fine generous woman,” Thella agreed, beginning to think that perhaps Barla was the one she should concentrate on.

Giron had informed her that the searching was two-pronged: to sift any information that might lead to the capture of marauding bands and to collect ablebodied people to work at Smithcrafthall and Telgar’s mines. The population of the cavern had noticeably decreased the first night. Sufficient folk, those with families particularly, had volunteered for the Smithcrafthall’s various projects: not just the making of more agenothree flame-throwers and the maintenance of existing apparatus, but some scheme—and Giron was skeptical—of the Mastersmith’s to provide better communications between all Holds, Halls, and Weyrs. Thella did not like the idea of mountain mines being reopened. The unused shafts made ideal refuges. Still, she could always give her scouts miner’s knots to wear on their shoulders. They would then have an explanation for their presence in the shafts.

Just in case one of Larad’s stewards might recognize her, even after fourteen Turns, she elected to keep out of sight. Being confined all day did not improve her temper at all. She had Giron keep one eye on Dowell’s progress, and the other on the girl—and she made plans.

What Thella was waiting for was one of the foggy nights typical of late autumn. With Telgar’s men around, she no longer had the time to talk the family into moving to her hold—not when slipping a little fellis powder into their dinner kettle would sidestep resistance. And the girl was the one she wanted. The others were useless baggage. When they were truly asleep, she and Giron would remove the girl. A few threats of vengeance would ensure the girl’s compliance. She had Giron purchase a third runnerbeast and prepare to leave the area.

She was livid, two mornings later, when Giron came hurrying back to tell her that he had found the woodcarver’s alcove occupied by six elderlies, none of whom understood his questions about the previous inhabitants.

Brare was astonished when he heard—and angry. “Aramina’s gone? She’d no right. There’s to be a hunt today, before the next big Fall. They were expecting her. They need her to help them hunt. And I had my mouth all set for roast wherry.” He shoved his crutch under his arm and was halfway down the passage before Thella realized where he was going.

Giron grabbed her by the shoulder. “No! Guards around. Come.”

“He’ll find out where they’ve gone.”

“He should have
known
they were going,” Giron replied in a savage tone. “It’ll be a warm day
between
before I believe that footless man again.” He started to leave. “They can’t have gone far, not with three children and a cart pulled by burden beasts.”

“Burden beasts?” Thella followed him, not at first realizing that she was. She stopped. “Why didn’t you tell me they had burden beasts?”

Giron halted and swung around to her, disgusted. “You’re not usually slow-witted. You couldn’t have missed seeing the yoke they had chained to an upper.” He grabbed her by the hand. “They’d beasts for the yoke—kept ’em at grass, south of the cavern.”

“Which way would they go then? They couldn’t be mad enough to head toward Ruatha now?”

“I’ll check with the clamdiggers. You get the runners ready. They can’t have gone far, whichever way they went.”

Halfway back to her lair, Thella realized that she had followed Giron’s orders without protest. She was furious with him, and with herself for losing control, and outraged that the meek-mouthed Dowell and his affected wife could have outguessed her. She only hoped he had taken the carved wood with him. She would have those chairs off him or his hide!

“They didn’t strike off east,” Giron said. “The ferryman would have seen them.” He had been running hard and had to lean against the wall to catch his breath. “A train went out of here, three days ago, headed toward Great Lake and Far Cry Hold with winter supplies.”

“Dowell expected to join them?” Thella tightened the cinch on her runner and gestured for Giron to ready his while she tied their supplies to the saddle of the third beast.

“They wouldn’t want to be on their own. You don’t lead the only renegade band in this area,” Giron said, pulling the strap so tight that the runnerbeast squealed in protest.

“Watch that, Giron!” She meant both noise and roughhandling. She did not hold with needless mistreatment of animals. She would have expected better management from a dragonless man—or maybe he was revenging his loss on other animals.

Outside the den, she signalled to him to stop and dismount. As much as she wanted to be on the trail of her quarry, she first had Giron help her replace enough of the debris to ensure that a casual look would see a blocked entrance. She might need that refuge again.

Then they mounted and were off as fast as they could safely move on uphill, stony ground and leading an animal.

The fourth day out of Igen, Jayge had lost all his bad temper. All he had really needed was to get back on the road again, away from holders, away from the shifting and shiftless masses in the low caverns and the constant appeals from the Smithcrafthallers and the Telgarans to “take a hold of himself,” “be useful,” “learn a good craft,” and “make enough credits to bank with a Bitran.”

He
liked
being a trader; he had always liked the open road, setting his own pace, commanding his own time, and being accountable to himself alone for what he ate and wore and where he sheltered. Jayge certainly would not have traded the hazards of life on track and trail, despite the horrors of Threadfall, for a secure life straining his guts and his back to carve rooms in someone else’s hold. The three wretched miserable Turns at Kimmage Hold had been sample enough of holding. He could not imagine how his Uncle Borel and the others could possibly have chosen to remain at Kimmage as little more than drudges. The children for whom they were sacrificing themselves would not appreciate it when they got older. Not Lilcamps with the restlessness bred into the Blood.

Jayge strode out ahead of the train. He was walking point, checking the trail for any obstacles that might hinder the progress of the broad, heavily laden wagons. Their metal roofs made them cumbersome but safe enough—thanks to Ketrin and Borgald’s ingenuity—if the train got caught out in a freak Fall, though that would be very bad trail management indeed. Since that first time, nearly thirteen Turns earlier, neither Jayge nor any other Lilcamp had suffered score. There were, he had discovered since that day, worse things than a mindless burning rain.

Jayge cursed under his breath. The day was too fine to sully by thinking of past problems. The Lilcamps were out and about again. Ketrin was with them on this journey, and they had ten wagons packed with trade goods to deliver to Lemos Great Lake and Far Cry Holds. The train had skirted the danger of the shifting soil, sand, and mud of the Igen River basin, but the track through the sky-broom trees could be even more treacherous.

The great trees, unique to this one long stretch of the valley, had root systems that radiated in a great circle around the trunk to support the soaring limbs and tufted heights. In the misty early morning light the sky-brooms had the appearance of skeletal giants with bushy heads of hair, and abnormally long arms that either reached for the sky or hung to knobby legs.

Only as Jayge passed them could he see the twined trunks; the more there were, the older the sky-broom. The short tufts of spiny leaves flattened out, often hiding wild wherry nests situated too high above the ground for snakes to reach and easily guarded from nest-robbing wherries. Often the crowns of coarse, short leaves would be eaten away by Threadfall. Some of the giants had fallen, leaving jagged stumps jutting high above the extensive plain. Sky-broom was a much-treasured wood, though very difficult to work, or so Jayge had heard from a Lemosan woodsman. Whole branches could be used as support beams in free-standing holds, strong enough to support the weight of a slate roof.

Jayge glanced up to see dragons flying above. The first time his little half-sister had seen the sky-broom trees she had asked if dragons landed on the flat tops. But Jayge found little humor in the innocent question. Even after so many Turns he could not help feeling a certain nervous tightening of his belly muscles whenever he saw dragons in the sky. He shaded his eyes to appraise the creatures.

“That’s not a full wing,” Crenden bellowed reassuringly.

Jayge waggled his hand above his head to indicate that he had not taken alarm; he recognized from their leisurely pace and informal pattern that the riders were probably returning to Igen Weyr from a hunt, their dragons too full in the belly to fly
between.
Then he heard someone shrieking and turned to look behind.