“Of course,” K’dan said at once.
“Who do you have in mind?” X’lerin asked. “I’m afraid that I’ll need all the older dragons—”
“And Coranth is guarding her eggs,” K’dan noted.
“I was thinking of someone else,” Xhinna said. “Someone with his own authority.”
“Oh!” X’lerin said, suddenly enlightened. “Excellent, a marvelous choice.” He nodded firmly. “Go for it.”
Xhinna was already annoyed when she caught up to R’ney a sevenday later. She’d spent most of the past week dealing with various moans, groans, and whines from the young queen riders—not to mention no small amount of time dealing with the obstreperous Jepara. But when his brown weyrling threw clumps of dirt all over her clean clothes, her anger overheated.
“Stop, stop!” she yelled. “By the First Egg, R’ney, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Xhinna!” R’ney cried, rushing around Rowerth’s hind legs and briskly brushing the damp soil off of her. In his haste, he only succeeded in grinding more in. “I didn’t hear you come—I’m sorry.”
Xhinna let out a deep sigh, telling herself that, as K’dan had recently reminded her, the first duty of a leader is to control herself, particularly her temper. Xhinna’s protest that she wasn’t a leader, merely a blue rider, had been met by contemptuous snorts from both X’lerin and K’dan.
“It isn’t the color of the dragon but the force of your personality,” K’dan had told her. X’lerin had nodded in firm agreement. They’d gone on to talk about what it meant to be a leader and how some, regardless of their dragons, were better suited than others—J’keran was the counterexample.
Now Xhinna forced herself to ask more reasonably, “What are you doing?”
“Digging.”
“Digging—why?” Xhinna asked, tamping down more firmly on her temper.
“To see how deep we need to go,” he replied, in a tone that implied that his answer should have been obvious.
“How deep?” Xhinna repeated, wondering if the smither was entertaining some wild notion of making tunnels. If so, she’d remind him right quick about the tunnel snakes.
“To the rock, of course,” R’ney replied. His enthusiasm faded enough for him to gauge the level of her confusion and he flushed. “I’m sorry, I was thinking that perhaps we could level the dirt off the top of the plateau and make our Weyr here.”
“Take all the dirt off the plateau?” Xhinna asked in surprise. She thought for a moment. “How long would that take?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” R’ney told her. “I have to know how far down we need to go and how quickly a dragon can dig before I can do the calculations.” He smiled as if expecting praise for his resolution of two problems in the same operation.
“And where are you supposed to be right now?” Xhinna asked.
R’ney’s face fell. “Taria’s with Razz and Jirana.”
“You left a pregnant mother and a child together with a Mrreow?” Xhinna roared, unable to contain herself. Bekka had only needed one quick inspection of Taria before pronouncing her officially pregnant.
R’ney wilted for a moment, then said mulishly, “The Meeyu is sleeping and they’re on the outside of the cage.”
“Oh,” Xhinna said in an apologetic tone, “sorry.” In an attempt at further apology, she waved her hand at the hole that had provided the dirt still festooning her best riding gear and asked, “So what did you find?”
“I’d only just started, blue rider,” R’ney replied. He was too gentle—mostly—to roar back at her. The few times he had, though, she’d thoroughly deserved it and had, as soon as she’d cooled down, been grateful for his criticism.
“One of the duties of a second,” R’ney had said as he dismissed her apology back then, “is to have the courage to tell his leader when she’s wrong.”
“Keep doing that, please,” Xhinna had told him.
“Is this another of those times when I’m wrong and need to apologize?” she asked now, feeling humbled.
R’ney thought about it for a moment and then shook his head. “No,” he said, “this is one of the times when you should bite my head off and feed it to the Mrreows for endangering our young.”
“Okay,” Xhinna said. “By my count, then, we’re about even.”
“I don’t keep count,” R’ney told her. “But if I did, I’d say that I was in your debt from the first.”
“Well, then, I’d say that now we’re even because I was keeping count,” Xhinna told him drolly.
The brown rider gave her a steady look, then snorted and shrugged, shaking his head.
“But, digging out all the dirt, is that really possible?” she asked.
“It’s certainly possible. It’s only a question of digging.”
“But how much and for how long?”
“I was trying to find out,” R’ney reminded her. Xhinna shrugged an apology and gestured for them to move to the front of the small brown dragon.
“How’d you get Rowerth here, anyway?” Xhinna asked. “Coranth?”
“Taria offered to ferry him in exchange for my supervision of her and Jirana when they were with the Meeyus,” R’ney said. “Rowerth wanted some exercise, and K’dan had mentioned that the dragons use their back legs to launch themselves, so I thought digging …”
“It might be a good idea for the hatchlings to get out more,” Xhinna said. “And we’ve enough dragons now that we could bring them to the shore. They like prancing in the water.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” R’ney confessed. “I planned to ask Taria to have Coranth bring Rowerth to bathe when we were done. I figured we’d get dirty.” He glanced down at his own tunic and flicked a clod of dirt off it.
“Could Tazith help dig? He’d be faster,” Xhinna asked.
R’ney shook his head. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but—” He paused as Rowerth began furiously scooping out more dirt with his hind legs. The little brown—not quite so little anymore—was clearly thrilled with the play he’d been asked to do.
“I’d already calculated the baseline for Rowerth, and I’d have to recalibrate for Tazith,” R’ney said. Xhinna raised one eyebrow at him and shook her head slowly in the way she’d come to realize made the smith remember that she hadn’t his smithcraft training. R’ney sighed.
“It’s easier this way,” he said simply. She shrugged and stood back, watching until she got bored.
“I’ll check on the others,” she told him, heading off to the Mrreow cage. Tazith begged to stay behind, entranced by the little brown’s play.
“Talk nicely with R’ney and he might let you join in later,” Xhinna called with a wave toward her blue. Tazith rumbled wistfully and craned his neck down by the brown rider, faceted eyes whirling a light green as he hoped to charm the smither.
“Not yet, Tazith,” R’ney said, reaching up idly to scratch the blue’s eye ridges. “Let’s let Rowerth see what he can do first.”
Jirana was awake when Xhinna got to the cage. She was just outside the bars, leaning in with one arm to pet the nearest Meeyu. Xhinna broke into a run when she saw her and tackled the child, scooping her up and rolling her out of the way.
“Never do that!” Xhinna cried as Jirana burst into frightened tears. “You can’t trust the Mrreows!”
“I was only petting it,” Jirana cried. Taria woke up at the commotion and looked over in alarm.
“I must have dozed off,” she said in apology. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the tableau. “What are you doing with Jirana?”
Xhinna explained quickly and Taria shook her head. “They wouldn’t hurt her.”