"Humph? Eh? Yes?" he mumbled, blinking to focus sleep-blurred eyes.

It was too much. Lessa quickly made contact with S'lel's Tuenth, himself just rousing from a nap. Tuenth was quite agreeable.

"Tuenth is restless, must go," S'lel promptly muttered. He hastened up the passageway, his relief at leaving no less than Lessa's at seeing him go. She was startled to hear him greet someone in the corridor and hoped the new arrival would provide an excuse to rid herself of R'gul.

It was Manora who entered. Lessa greeted the headwoman of the Lower Caverns with thinly disguised relief. R'gul, always nervous in Manora's presence, immediately departed.

Manora, a stately woman of middle years, exuded an aura of quiet strength and purpose, having come to a difficult compromise with life which she maintained with serene dignity. Her patience tacitly chided Lessa for her fretfulness and petty grievances. Of all the women she had met in the Weyr, (when she was permitted by the dragonmen to meet any) Lessa admired and respected Manora most. Some instinct in Lessa made her bitterly aware that she would never be on easy or intimate terms with any of the women in the Weyr. Her carefully formal relationship with Manora, however, was both satisfying and satisfactory.

Manora had brought the tally slates of the Supply Caves. It was her responsibility as headwoman to keep the Weyrwoman informed of the domestic management of the Weyr. (One duty R'gul insisted she perform.)

"Bitra, Benden, and Lemos have sent in their tithes, but that won't be enough to see us through the deep cold this Turn."

"We had only those three last Turn and seemed to eat well enough."

Manora smiled amiably, but it was obvious she did not consider the Weyr generously supplied.

"True, but that was because we had stores of preserved and dried foods from more bountiful Turns to sustain us. That reserve is now gone. Except for those barrels and barrels of fish from Tillek . .." Her voice trailed on expressively.

Lessa shuddered. Dried fish, salted fish, fish, had been served all too frequently of late.

"Our supplies of grain and flour in the Dry Caves are very low, for Benden, Bitra, and Lemos are not grain producers."

"Our biggest needs are grains and meat?"

"We could use more fruits and root vegetables for variety," Manora said thoughtfully. "Particularly if we have the long cold season the weather-wise predict. Now we did go to Igen Plain for the spring and fall nuts, berries…"

"We? to Igen Plain?" Lessa interrupted her, stunned.

"Yes," Manora answered, surprised at Lessa's reaction. "We always pick there. And we beat out the water grains from the low swamplands."

"How do you get there?" asked Lessa sharply. There could be only one answer.

"Why, the old ones fly us. They don't mind, and it gives the beasts something to do that isn't tiring. You knew that, didn't you?"

"That the women in the Lower Caverns fly with dragonriders?" Lessa pursed her lips angrily. "No. I wasn't told." Nor did it help Lessa's mood to see the pity and regret in Manora's eyes.

"As Weyrwoman," she said gently, "your obligations restrict you where…" "If I should ask to be flown to… Ruatha, for instance," Lessa cut in, ruthlessly pursuing a subject she sensed Manora wanted to drop, "would it be refused me?" Manora regarded Lessa closely, her eyes dark with concern. Lessa waited. Deliberately she had put Manora into a position where the woman must either lie outright, which would be distasteful to a person of her integrity, or prevaricate, which could prove more instructive.

"An absence for any reason these days might be disastrous. Absolutely disastrous," Manora said firmly and, unaccountably, flushed. "Not with the queen growing so quickly. You must be here." Her unexpectedly urgent entreaty, delivered with a mounting anxiety, impressed Lessa far more than all R'gul's pompous exhortations about constant attendance on Ramoth.

"You must be here," Manora repeated, her fear naked.

"Queens do not fly," Lessa reminded her acidly. She suspected Manora was about to echo S'lel's reply to that statement, but the older woman suddenly shifted to a safer subject.

"We cannot, even with half-rations," Manora blurted out breathlessly, with a nervous shuffling of her slates, "last the full Cold."

"Hasn't there ever been such a shortage before… in all Tradition?" Lessa demanded with caustic sweetness.

Manora raised questioning eyes to Lessa, who flushed, ashamed of herself for venting her frustrations with the dragonmen on the headwoman. She was doubly contrite when Manora gravely accepted her mute apology. In that moment Lessa's determination to end R'gul's domination over herself and the Weyr crystallized.

"No," Manora went on calmly, "traditionally," and she accorded Lessa a wry smile, "the Weyr is supplied from the first fruits of the soil and hunt. True, in recent Turns we have been chronically shorted, but it didn't signify. We had no young dragons to feed. They do eat, as you know." The glances of the two women locked in a timeless feminine amusement over the vagaries of the young under their care. Then Manora shrugged. "The riders used to hunt their beasts in the High Reaches or on the Keroon plateau. Now, however…"

She made a helpless grimace to indicate that R'gul's restrictions deprived them of that victual relief.

"Time was," she went on, her voice soft with nostalgia, "we would pass the coldest part of the Turn in one of the southern Holds. Or, if we wished and could, return to our birthplaces. Families used to take pride in daughters with dragonfolk sons." Her face settled into sad lines. "The world turns and times change."

"Yes," Lessa heard herself say in a grating voice, "the world does turn, and times… times will change."

Manora looked at Lessa, startled.

"Even R'gul will see we have no alternative," Manora continued hastily, trying to stick to her problem.

"To what? Letting the mature dragons hunt?"

"Oh, no. He's so adamant about that. No. We'll have to barter at Fort or Telgar."

Righteous indignation flared up in Lessa.

"The day the Weyr has to buy what should be given…" and she halted in midsentence, stunned as much by such a necessity as by the ominous echo of other words. "The day one of my Holds cannot support itself or the visit of its rightful overlord…" Fax's words rang in her head. Did those words again foreshadow disaster? For whom? For what?

"I know, I know," Manora was saying worriedly, unaware of Lessa's shock. "It goes against the grain. But if R'gul will not permit judicious hunting, there is no other choice. He will not like the pinch of hunger in his belly."

Lessa was struggling to control her inner terror. She took a deep breath.

"He'd probably then cut his throat to isolate his stomach," she snapped, her acid comment restoring her wits. She ignored Manora's startled look of dismay and went on. "It is traditional for you as headwoman of the Lower Cavern to bring such matters to the attention of the Weyrwoman, correct?"

Manora nodded, unsettled by Lessa's rapid switches of mood.

"I, then, as Weyrwoman, presumably bring this to the attention of the Weyrleader who, presumably," – she made no attempt to moderate her derision – "acts upon it?"

Manora nodded, her eyes perplexed.

"Well," Lessa said in a pleasant, light voice, "you have dutifully discharged your traditional obligation. It is up to me now to discharge mine. Right?"

Manora regarded Lessa warily. Lessa smiled at her reassuringly.

"You may leave it in my hands, then."

Manora rose slowly. Without taking her eyes from Lessa, she began to gather up her records.

"It is said that Fort and Telgar had unusually good harvests," she suggested, her light tone not quite masking her anxiety. "Keroon, too, in spite of that coastal flooding."