Comments and suggestions flew too thick and fast for her to identify the speakers.

"That would be the priority project, so we can get materials and people in and out easily."

"We still have to shift by dragonback. Couldn't send a land expedition when we don't know the overnighting places."

"Kaarvan wouldn't mind a good long sail. He's bored with fishing the Bay."

"Iernans can bring in a lot of their own gear on their ships."

Other riders, eager to contribute, began to crowd in, and Torene, courteously letting people past her, suddenly found herself excluded.

"It's my map," she said under her breath, trying to suppress a surge of bitterness as she took a further step back, nearly stepping on the feet of someone seated behind her.

"It'll be your Weyr, ‘Rene," said a soft, amused tenor voice. She looked down into Mihall Connell's slightly mocking gray-blue eyes. She'd never been close enough to see their color before. "Come the time Alaranth flies," he went on. "She'll fly soon—but you know that, don't you?"

There was no mockery in his tone, and he'd made more of a statement than a question.

"Well, if you intend to be Weyrleader, why aren't you in there, mapping your space?" The moment the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them and bit her lip. "I'm sorry, Mihall."

"Why?" His very regular eyebrows quirked briefly, and his gray-blue eyes, not a trace of mockery in them, met hers once more, his head tilted up at her. "I should like to be Weyrleader. I intend to be Weyrleader. Everyone knows that." The mockery was back. "The question is, how does Alaranth feel about Brianth?"

"Isn't it more how I feel about you?" The words tumbled out before she could stop them, and she shook her head and stamped her foot in annoyance: That wasn't at all what she had intended to say.

Mihall rose slowly until he was looking down at her, an intense expression on his face. "No, it's ultimately the dragons who decide: the one who decides how to fly this queen, and the one who decides who she'll let catch her."

Torene knew now why she hadn't been in his company much. He wasn't at all like the other bronze and brown riders in her "bunch." And knowing the reputation he and Brianth had in "catching" queens, she had deliberately, if unconsciously, avoided being in his company. She also knew the opinions the other queen riders had of him, and those only confused her more. "Polite"? "Quick"? "Deft and considerate"? "Too controlled"? None of those comments fit what she sensed of him.

He knows he is the son of his parents, Alaranth said.

"Yes, he would know that," she said almost sadly, for that couldn't be easy on him. When Mihall politely raised his eyebrows in query, she realized she had spoken aloud. "Brianth," she added, and gave Mihall what she hoped was an understanding smile. From his stunned expression, she found she had only compounded her blunder and he had jumped to the logical conclusion. "Oh, lord, both feet are in my mouth tonight. Do you want a copy of your own when I ask Mother for them tomorrow?" She tried to keep her voice even and pleasant, but to her own ears she sounded irritated.

Mihall inclined toward her. "I'd appreciate it," he said, but all the warmth she had seen—so briefly—in his eyes was gone and they were coldly gray. He stood clear of the chair, and before she could walk away from her embarrassment, he left her.

I could just scream, she told Alaranth. It all came out so wrong, Allie. How could I possibly have said the things I did to him? And the way I said them! Oh, how could I!

There was a long pause when she thought that her dragon was too sleepy to answer.

Don't worry. The voice was not Alaranth's.

Brianth?

He's right. Too late now was Alaranth's not too reassuring reply.

"Where did Torene go?" David's voice rose above the other conversations.

"I'm here," she said, and allowed the alacrity with which the riders parted to let her back in soothe her frustration and self-accusation.

The next morning, having asked the watchdragon to wake her at daybreak, Telgar time, Torene arrived at her parents' cavern just as Sonja was pouring klah. To her daughter's astonishment, she was pouring it into three cups, and there was a third bowl of steaming porridge set at the table.

"How did you know I was coming?"

"How could we not know?" Sonja said, clasping her daughter to her ample bust and joyfully, proudly, embracing her with arms well muscled from a lifetime of mining. "Telgar announces to us there will be four Weyrs, and one of them here."

"Up there," Volodya corrected his wife, pointing north-east, but he rose from his seat and kissed his daughter, hugging her nearly as enthusiastically as his wife had but with some consideration for Torene's ribs. "And you are named to be at the east coast one."

"At Benden Weyr," she said, hoping that at least the name would be a surprise.

"Ah!" Her mother's face lit up and she embraced her daughter again before she mopped a tear from each eye

"As it should be. As it should be," Volodya said, sittig down at the table and beginning to spoon his porridge into his mouth. "Sit! Eat! You will need it."

"So, how many copies do you come for me to make for you?" Sonja asked slyly, giving Torene a little push toward the spare place.

"Oh, Mother!"

"And why shouldn't you, dushka?" Sonja was unperturbed. "Always you are putting yourself behind. And where else is there a replicating machine that works? You will want enlargements, too, of each elevation? How many in all?"

"Mother…" Torene began in protest, and then burst out laughing.

"Sit! Eat!" her father repeated and gestured firmly for her to take her seat. "Copies we can talk of later. Now you will have breakfast with us and tell us news we don't get to hear at Telgar."

When she finally left, stuffed with two bowls of porridge and more klah than she liked to have swirling in her belly going between, she was carrying a plastic tube full of copies and enlargements—more than she would have had the nerve to request. Sonja had blithely replicated four copies of each and every possible angle of the original and secondary surveys of Benden Weyr. Torene reckoned that one reason they were so willing to go over the top was because they were so pleased with that naming.

"No, is for you, dushka," Sonja said, giving her daughter a hard kiss on her cheek in farewell. "We are proud to have queen rider daughter. Keep her safe, Alaranth!"

With her many-faceted eyes gleaming in the shadows cast by Telgar's high mountain peaks, Alaranth turned her head and lowered her forequarters to the ground, as much to aid her rider to mount as to acknowledge the parting.

Who else is to keep you safe? Alaranth said as she turned and dropped off the ledge into the valley below.

Torene laughed at her phrasing, the speed of their descent snatching the sounds away. You sound just like my mother!

We go now to Benden Weyr?

Torene squeezed her eyes, which had filled slightly with tears of pride at the grand sound of the name, and the concentrated on the image of the double-cratered bowl—the bowl of Benden Weyr.

Yes!

She was certain that all that klah and porridge would turn to ice in her belly, but then they were out in the warm spring sunlight, gliding down the Weyr toward the lake.

Good morning to you! Torene recognized Brianth's voice though she didn't see him below, nor any sign of Mihall.

He's on the rim behind us, sunning, Alaranth told her, well pleased that she and Torene had started their own errand earlier than this pair.

Torene's mouth felt dry as Alaranth swung back to the upper crater and lost altitude. She had a view of Brianth, sunning himself on the heights. Backwinging, Alaranth landed neatly on the surface, the breeze from her pinions making the gravel rattle. A man's head peered out from the nearby opening to what Torene thought would be the Hatching Ground. Mihall still wore his flying gear, so he couldn't have been here long, Torene thought.