“To win over your Jepara?” Fiona guessed, smiling once again as she took in Xhinna’s astonished look. Taking pity, she explained, “Well, it wasn’t hard to guess that that would be your next consideration.”
“I don’t think there’ll be any problem in that,” K’dan said, nodding toward the distance. Xhinna turned to see Jepara making her way toward them, a tray in her hands. Xhinna smiled and waved at the queen rider, who smiled back and quickly joined them.
“We were just talking about you,” Fiona said as Jepara sat. The gold rider nodded, unperturbed.
“I’d heard about the other wings,” Jepara said, nodding toward Xhinna. “I gather we’re going to be given more duties?”
“I’m going to form the queen’s wing,” Fiona said. “I’d like you to be my wingsecond.”
“What about Jirana?”
“She’ll be my other wingsecond, responsible for the green queens,” Fiona said, ignoring the look of distate that flashed across Jepara’s face. “But as your wing will have the larger dragons, I’m expecting you and the browns and bronzes—”
“Bronzes?” Jepara interrupted, her voice filled with anticipation.
“J’sarte and the others with dragons his age,” Fiona said. She raised a hand to forestall Jepara, adding, “They’ll have their normal duties, but in an emergency, I’m expecting you to incorporate them into any ‘catching’ we may have to perform.”
“We’re also assigning some of the younger greens and blues—those old enough to fly for short periods—to your exercises,” K’dan added. “They’ll be attached to the various wings, so the bronzes will be able to direct them as you need.”
“Need?”
“Well, you’ve got to practice catching,” Fiona said. “So I figured we could have them stand in. It’d be good exercise for them, as well.”
Jepara nodded, her expression thoughtful. Xhinna wanted to stay, but she’d finished her breakfast and she could feel the looks of R’ney, Danirry, and the rest of her wing on her. Rising, she nodded to Fiona and K’dan, and smiled at Jepara. “I must go.”
“Fly safe,” K’dan said. Fiona echoed him, but Jepara merely waved dismissively, and Xhinna suppressed a chuckle, delighted by the ease with which Fiona had ensnared the difficult queen rider’s attention.
“Catching wings,” Fiona murmured approvingly and then, with a cry that startled everyone she shouted, “Sky wings! Skyleader!”
Xhinna raced out before Fiona could formally pin the appellation on her.
Xhinna was glad she did not make assignments of the new wings until she’d met with their leaders. She had a quick talk with them, outlining their duties and the problems of high sky flight before inviting Avarra and Jerilli to join them for a more in-depth conversation.
Reflecting on the numerous times she and Jirana had ridden in Search, she knew that the odds were more than even that any blue or green rider would be female. The older riders, in a distinct but revered minority, found the change both difficult and pleasing.
“At least I don’t have to look at your old scarred face all the time!” was a common refrain among some of them. Several had been skeptical initially, believing that women wouldn’t be up to the rigors of riding a fighting dragon, but Xhinna had been at the forefront of dismantling that concern. Still, she found herself having to fight the fear that these new wingleaders and their wings had been assigned to her because they weren’t considered good enough to fight in “proper” wings.
When she thought about it, though, she realized that if fighting Thread at the heights worked as well as it had the first time, it would be these six wings that would bear the brunt of fighting Thread for the foreseeable future—not the “proper” wings flying in the thicker, warmer air near the ground. So it would be up to Xhinna to be sure that these wings could meet the challenge.
All the faces were familiar to her. They looked at her expectantly and almost with awe. She’d Searched them; she’d assured them as young girls and women that they could become dragonriders, that there was a hope for them far beyond the dank confines of their dying cotholds and fallow fields. She, Jirana, Taria, and a few others had been the ones to warn them for the first time about between, to bring them forward in time from the end of the Plague years to the lush Western Isle where they had begun new lives.
Warmed by this realization, Xhinna smiled at them.
“I don’t know what you’ve been told, but we’re here to save Pern,” she said, plunging into a recounting of the past several days leading up to the high-altitude battle with Thread.
“So we find the Thread, fall with it until it streams, and burn it out of the sky?” Maleena, the Southriver wingleader, summarized when Xhinna had finished.
“Precisely,” Xhinna said emphatically.
“But—up that high, how do we breathe?” Kalee of Southern Weyr asked.
“That is the problem and why we’re only flying blues and greens up high,” Xhinna said. “The blues and greens are the only ones small enough that the others can safely catch them if they run out of air.”
“I’ve got two browns for wingseconds,” Torra of Western Weyr said. “They’re good flyers; I hate to lose them.”
“You won’t,” Xhinna told her firmly. “One of my wingseconds flies a brown, too.”
“So what does he do?”
“Well, this last Threadfall he flew with us,” Xhinna admitted. “But now, we’ll have the browns form up with the queens and bronzes as catchers.”
“Queens and bronzes?” someone asked, the exact moment someone else echoed, “Catchers?”
“We’re going to start your wings the way we started the others,” Xhinna said as she told Tazith to send in Avarra and Jerilli. “We’ll start by training you on flying higher, then on flying up to the Dawn Sisters—”
“When do we get to fight Thread?” Maleena asked. “We’d started firestone training, but—”
“You won’t stop,” Xhinna told her. “In fact, we’ve accelerated it—” She paused as Avarra and Jerilli entered. “—and we’re working on new tactics.” She waved for the other two wingleaders to take seats and was pleased when they chose to sit supportively on either side of her. Xhinna introduced them briefly and then continued, “I was just saying how we’re going to accelerate our firestone training—”
“I’ve got a plan here,” Avarra said, tapping a slate protruding from the carisak hanging off her shoulder. Xhinna started to say something, but the other interrupted, adding, “And before you ask, I worked it through with Danirry and R’ney already.”
Xhinna nodded. “I was thinking that we could pair each new wing with one of the older wings—”
“That’s inefficient,” Avarra said. “It makes more sense if you take your wing and train them.” She glanced to Jerilli, who nodded. “We can continue the space watch while you’re training them, and then we can start rotating their wings up through the space watch while training with the resting wings.”
Xhinna raised an eyebrow and turned to Jerilli, who nodded.
“Well,” Xhinna said a bit bemusedly, “it appears we’ve got everything all figured out!”
“Not quite,” Avarra said. Xhinna turned to her. “Apparently Jepara and Jirana want to be involved in the altitude training.” She glanced at the other wingleader and rose to her feet, gesturing for Jerilli to precede her. “So, while we’re working ourselves to the bone, we’ll leave you to handle that little thing!”
The three new wingleaders laughed at the dismayed expression on Xhinna’s face.
In the end, it was not as much a “little thing” as Avarra had so blithely surmised, nor was it as big a thing as Xhinna had feared. Partly that was because R’ney and Danirry had already discussed the situation and had several solutions in mind, and partly because, for all her prickliness, Jepara was too eager to be doing something useful to be difficult for long.