"Now, Sean…" Sorka began, ready to defend Torene.

"Don't ‘now, Sean' me, woman," he said. She glanced quickly over her shoulder to test his mood and decided that she could speak bluntly. "She's right, for all I think she's a tad young to be so… so beforehand."

"There isn't an ounce of malice in Torene Ostrovsky," Sorka said staunchly.

"I haven't suggested there was, lovey," he said. Scattering his boots, he pulled her by the waist onto his lap. "But it's obvious we'll have to move quickly on this, now that the ball's rolling."

He laid his head between her shoulder blades as he often did, not amorously, but because he was better at using gestures than words and had many ways of expressing his love for her.

"Have you decided who will lead the new Weyr?" she asked, covering his hands on her waist with hers and leaning into the close embrace.

"Weyrs," he said, giving her a final hug before he gently put her back on her feet.

"Weyrs?"

"Yes. Plural." He rose and, stripping off his shirt as he walked toward their bathing room, gestured with his head for her to follow.

"We've more than enough dragons, with three clutches hardening, to populate three, maybe four Weyrs…"

"Torene's dream site, Big Island, that crater in Telgar's holding, and where else?"

He paused on his way through their bedroom long enough to step out of his pants and heavy socks, and ball them up to throw into the laundry basket.

"We've got two other choices, one down on that mid-eastern peninsula and another up in the High Ranges, the crater with all those spiky peaks. But, to make the necessary improvements even in the east coast place, we'll need to monopolize the remaining functional stonecutters…"

"Is there enough fuel?"

"Fulmar Stone's got all of ‘em rigged to run off generators." Sean grinned at Sorka as he stepped into the steaming bath. Having a copious supply of thermally heated water was one of the luxuries he enjoyed. The excess water ran off down the pipes that helped keep the Weyr warm. Far underground the water went through a filtering system and returned, cleansed, to the reservoirs, to be pumped up again. Other pipes brought drinking water from the cisterns that were kept topped up by mountain streams.

"But the actual cutting surfaces are wearing out."

"True, but Telgar's trying to make replacement abrasives that'll slice rock. There're enough industrial diamonds near Big Island to give us a fair approximation of the cutting surface. ‘Tany rate, I dealt with the Ierne group. They get the second east coast cave system and give us a workforce to make our own adaptations." He grinned both with pleasure as he sank to his chin in the warm water and with an understandable pride in the success of his machinations. "With them there, and in a fertile area, they'll have enough to tithe to the new Weyr."

"You thought all this up?"

He opened his eyes and grinned at her, suddenly boyish. "Hell no, your old man gave me the wink and the nod, and stood by me while I fought it all out with Lilienkamp." After Paul Benden's death the previous winter, Joel Lilienkamp had been voted into the management of Fort Hold. He was, in some ways, much harder to listen to in the further disbursement of people—whom he regarded as renewable resources—and of irreplaceable material, which the colony had to conserve.

"You mean, you weren't hunting south with the others?"

He nodded once and then shook his head and began vigorously soaping himself. "Nope. Carenath made do nicely with an injured bullock that had fallen into a crevasse that your father said we could have. I didn't want any more rumors to circulate than necessary." He grimaced. "There seem to be enough."

She had to wait until he had ducked his head to clear the soap suds from his hair before she asked the next question.

"Who're to be Weyrleaders?"

He gave her an enigmatic smile and she knew why he was going for three new Weyrs: that way he'd avoid any complaint of nepotism. The young people who had been born on Pern, especially those orphaned by the Fever eight years ago, were quick to make that charge when the children of still living fathers and mothers were promoted more often than any from their numbers. Mihall expected to become a Weyrleader. Sorka knew that, and she knew that Sean was aware of those aspirations even though their eldest son never made any allusions to his hope. Indeed, he pointedly did not, scrupulously serving as Wingleader, helping to train weyrlings as part of the duties of his rank, and, except when Brianth lifted in a mating flight, never stepping out of line on any matter, despite his relationship to Sean and Sorka. "Because of it," Sean had once said to Sorka.

So Mihall, if Brianth flew a senior queen designate, would reach the objective he had set himself from the moment he had stood on the Hatching Ground at twelve, the youngest ever to Impress a bronze. There had been mutterings about that among older candidates, but Sean's answer had been firm. "The dragon chooses. Mihall could have been left standing."

There'd been a few private words between the new bronze rider and his father, the Weyrleader, but Mihall had never once taken advantage of the relationship. In his group of weyrlings, he had almost been shunned for trying too hard, for always doing more than was necessary and showing up the others.

If Sean had been self-contained and private as a boy, Mihall was doubly so. Her own firstborn and she didn't really know or understand him, Sorka thought… and yet, she did.

The boy had been mad about dragons as soon as he was old enough to understand what his parents did, and despite being mainly raised by his grandparents and with his own siblings, he spent as many waking hours as he could up at the Weyr, making the long hike by himself if there was no one to escort him.

"We've got twenty mating queens—discounting you, because no one flies Faranth but Carenath—" He cocked a stern finger at her, provoking her to grin smugly. "And the three injured…"

"Porth can fly," Sorka objected on Tarrie's behalf.

"But she doesn't fly long enough to have a good clutch."

"Tarrie's got experience managing Weyr problems," Sorka said staunchly, knowing how often she'd relied on her friend during her pregnancies or when the children were too ill for her to cope with all that went to running a Weyr.

"All perfectly true, but I mean to start the new Weyrs with young leaders who'll see their group through the rest of the Fall: who can pass on what we had to learn the hard way."

"So how will you determine these young leaders?"

"Figure it out, love," he said, and slipped once more under the surface of the hot bath water.

"You would!" she said to the ripples that floated soap down the outtake pipe.

Three Weyrs? My word, she thought with relief and a certain amount of awe. Jays, when Sean let go, he let to with a vengeance. Young leaders! That made excellent sense, and there were enough. Any one of those who were currently Wingleaders could manage a Weyr: they'd been thoroughly indoctrinated by Sean, with emphasis on safety and tactics. Even the Wingseconds would make good leaders. Too bad the blues simply hadn't the stamina to keep up with a queen. At that, there were only two Wingseconds. And she didn't see either Frank Bonneau or Ashok Kung as Weyrleaders. Nice enough young men, but better as subordinates than leaders.

But that meant, and she found herself clutching the bath sheet under her breasts in relief, that Mihall would most certainly be one of the new Weyrleaders—one of three, so no one would be able to accuse anyone of nepotism. Besides, as everybody had been told repeatedly, the preference of the queen and her rider had to be reckoned with. Sorka allowed herself a small smug smile. There wasn't a girl in the Weyr who wouldn't be proud to have her queen flown by Brianth and to be able to stay in Mihall's company as his Weyrwoman. Ah, but would her handsome red-headed son, who had shown himself as willing to bed a holder as a rider, be willing to settle to one? The Weyrleadership had to be stable, or the Weyr would be disrupted. What behavior Sean would condone in his son in his current capacity would alter once Mihall became a Weyrlead. It was time for the boy to settle anyway, she thought firmly, and on the end of that, decided she would not interfere with a word to the wise to him. Mihall was man enough now to recognize a need for fidelity.