Dragonseye (13 page)

“Did he charge you for the use of the equipment?” Zulaya asked, to Iantine’s astonishment.

“How’d you know?” When she only laughed and waved at him to continue his telling, Iantine went on. “So I excavated what I needed in the midden.”

“Good on you . . .” Zulaya clapped her hands, delighted by his resourcefulness.

“Fortunately, most of the raw materials for pigments are readily available. You only have to find and make the colors up. Which I’d have to do anyhow. Master Domaize was good about passing on techniques like that.

“Then I finally got them to accept the miniatures, which weren’t exactly miniature size anymore, by the way, just before the first blizzard snowed me in.” Iantine flushed. His narrative showed him to be such a ninny.

“So? How’d your contract go then?” Zulaya shot K’vin a knowing look.

“I was a bit wiser. Or so I thought,” he said with a grimace, and then told them the clauses he’d insisted on.

“He had you on the drudges’ level at Bitra?” Zulaya was appalled. “And you a diploma’d Artist? I would certainly protest about that! There are certain courtesies which most holds, Halls, and Weyrs accord a journeyman of a Craft, and certainly to an Artist!”

“So, when Lord Chalkin finally accepted his portrait, I made tracks away as fast as I could!”

K’vin clapped him on the shoulder, grinning at the fervor with which that statement came out.

“Not that my conditions improved that much,” Iantine added quickly, and then grinned, “until P’tero rescued me.” His throat kept clogging up and he had to clear it again. “I want to thank you very much for that. I hope I didn’t keep him from proper duties.”

“No, no,” K’vin said. “Mind you, I’m not all that sure why he was over Bitra, but it’s as well he was.”

“How are your hands?” Zulaya said, looking down at him as he washed his itching fingers together.

“I shouldn’t rub the skin, should I?”

Zulaya spoke over her shoulder. “Leopol, get the numbweed for Iantine, please.”

The young journeyman hadn’t noticed the boy’s discreet presence, but he was just as glad he didn’t have to walk all the way to his cubicle to get the salve.

“It’s just the aftereffects of cold,” he said, looking at his fingers, and noticing what Tisha had—pigment under the nails. He curled his fingers, ashamed to be at a Weyr table with dirty hands. And a deep shiver went down his spine.

“I was wondering, Iantine,” Zulaya began, “if you’d feel up to doing another portrait or two. The Weyr pays the usual rates, and no extras charged against you.”

Iantine protested. “I’d gladly do your portrait, Weyrwoman. It is of yourself you were speaking, isn’t it?” That first shiver was followed by another, which he did his best to mask.

“You’ll do it only if you are paid a proper fee, young man,” Zulaya said sternly.

“But—”

“No buts,” K’vin put in. “What with preparations for a Pass, neither Zulaya nor I have had the time to commission proper portraits. However, since you’re here . . . and willing?”

“I’m willing, all right, but you don’t know my work and I’m only just accredited—”

Zulaya caught his hands in hers, for he’d been wildly gesticulating in both eagerness and an attempt to disguise another spasm.

“Journeyman Iantine, if you managed to do four miniatures, two formal portraits, and refresh murals for Chalkin, you’re more than
qualified.
Didn’t you know that it took Macartor five months to finish Chalkin’s wedding-day scene?”

“And he had to borrow marks from an engineer to pay off the last of his ‘debt’?” K’vin added. “Here’s Waine to greet you. But you’re not to start work again until you’re completely recovered from the cold.”

“Oh, I’m recovered, I’m recovered,” Iantine said, standing up as the Weyrleaders did, determined to control the next set of shiverings.

After they had introduced him to the little man, Waine, they left him, circulating to other tables as the Weyr relaxed. There was singing and guitar playing from one side of the room, cheerful noises, above a general level of easy conversation. That was something else Iantine only now realized had been totally absent at Bitra Hold: music, talk, people relaxing after a day’s work.

“Heard you ran afoul a’ Chalkin?” Waine said, grinning and ducking his head. Then he brought from behind his back a sheaf of large-sized paper sheets, neatly tied together, and a handful of pencils. “Thought you might need ’em, like,” he said shyly. “Heard tell you used up all at Bitra.”

“Thank you,” Iantine replied, running his fingers appreciatively over the fine sheets and noticing that the pencils were of different weights of carbon. “How much do I owe you?”

Waine laughed, showing gaps in his teeth. “You been at Bitra too long. I’ve colors, too, but not many. Don’t do more’n basics.”

“Then let me make you a range of paints,” Iantine said gratefully, gritting his teeth against yet another onslaught of ague. “You know where to find the raw stuff around here and I’ll show you how I make the tints.”

Waine grinned toothlessly again. “That’s a right good trade.” He held out a hand and nearly crushed Iantine’s fingers with his enthusiasm. But he caught the paroxysm of almost uncontrollable shivering that Iantine could not hide.

“Hey, man, you’re cold.”

“I can’t seem to stop shivering, for all that I’m on top of the fire,” and Iantine had to surrender to the shaking.

“TISHA!”

Iantine was embarrassed by Waine’s bellow for assistance but he didn’t resist when he was bundled back into his quarters and the medic summoned while Tisha ordered more furs, hot water bottles, aromatics to be steeped in hot water to make breathing easier. He made no resistance to the medication that was immediately prescribed for him because, by then, his head had started to ache. So did his bones.

The last thing he remembered before he drifted off to an uneasy sleep was what Maranis, the medic, said to Tisha.

“Let’s hope they all have it at Bitra for giving it to him.”

Much later Leopol told him that Tisha had stayed by his bedside three nights while he burned of the mountain fever he had caught, compounding his illness by exposure on the cold slopes. Maranis felt that the old woodsman might be a carrier for the disease: himself immune but able to transmit the fever.

Iantine was amazed to find his mother there, when he woke from the fever. Her eyes were red with crying and she burst into tears again when she realized he was no longer delirious. Leopol also told him that Tisha had insisted she be sent for when his fever lasted so long.

To Iantine’s astonishment, she didn’t seem as pleased to receive the transfer fee as he was to give it.

“Your life isn’t worth the fee,” she told him finally when he was afraid she was displeased with the missing eighth mark he’d had to give the woodsman. “And he nearly killed you for that eighth.”

“He’s a good lad you have for a son,” Tisha said with an edge to her voice, “working that hard to earn money from Chalkin.”

“Oh yes,” his mother hastily agreed as she suddenly realized she ought to be more grateful. “Though whyever you sought to please that old skinflint is beyond me.”

“The fee was right,” Iantine said weakly.

“Don’t take on so, now, Ian,” Tisha said when his mother had to return to the sheephold. “She was far more worried about you than about the marks. Which shows her heart’s in the right place. Worry makes people act odd, you know.” She patted Iantine’s shoulder. “She wanted to take you home and nurse you there, you know,” she went on reassuringly. “But couldn’t risk your lungs in the cold of
between.
I don’t think she liked us taking care of you!” She grinned. “Mothers
never
trust others, you know.”

Iantine managed a grin back at Tisha. “I guess that’s it.”

It was Leopol who restored Iantine’s peace of mind.

“You got a real nice mother, you know,” he said, sitting on the end of the bed. “Worried herself sick about leaving until P’tero promised to convey her again if you took any turn for the worse. She’d never ridden a dragon before.”

Iantine chuckled. “No, I don’t think she has. Must have frightened her.”

“Not as much,” and now Leopol cocked a slightly dirty finger at the journeyman, “as you being so sick she had to be sent for. But she was telling P’tero how happy your father would be to have those marks you earned. Real happy. And she near deafened P’tero, shouting about how she’d always known you’d be a success and to get the whole fee out of Chalkin was quite an achievement.”

“She did?” Iantine perked up. His mother had been bragging about him?

“She did indeed,” Leopol said, giving an emphatic nod to his head.

Leopol seemed to know a great deal about a lot of matters in the Weyr. He also never seemed to mind being sent on errands as Iantine made a slow convalescence.

Master Domaize paid him a visit, too. And it was Leopol who told the convalescent why the Master had made such a visit.

“That Lord Chalkin sent a complaint to Master Domaize that you had skivved out of the hold without any courtesy and he was seriously considering lodging a demand for the return of some of the fee since you were so obviously very new at your Art, and the fee had been for a seasoned painter, not a young upstart.” Leopol grinned at Iantine’s furious reaction. “Oh, don’t worry. Your Master wasn’t born yesterday. M’shall himself brought him to Bitra Hold and they said that there was not a thing wrong with any of the work you’d done for that Lord Chalkin.” Leopol cocked his head to one side, regarding Iantine with a calculating look. “Seems like there’s a lot of people wanting to sit their portraits with you. Didja know that?”

Iantine shook his head, trying to absorb the injustice of Chalkin’s objection. He was speechless with fury. Leopol grinned.

“Don’t worry, Iantine. Chalkin’s the one should worry, treating you like that. Your Master and the Benden Weyrleader gave out to the Lord Holder about it, too. You’re qualified and entitled to all the courtesies of which you got none at Bitra Hold. Good thing you didn’t get sick until after Zulaya and K’vin had a chance to hear your side of the story. Not that
anyone
would believe Chalkin, no matter what he says. Did you know that even wherries won’t roost in Bitra Hold?”

Convalescence from the lung infection took time and Iantine fretted at his weakness.

“I keep falling asleep,” he complained to Tisha one morning when she arrived with his potion. “How long do I have to keep taking this stuff?”

“Until Maranis hears clear lungs in you,” she said in her no-nonsense tone. Then she handed him the sketch paper and pencils that Waine had given him his first night in the Weyr. “Get your hand back in. At least doing what you’re best at can be done sitting still.”

It was good to have paper and pencil again. It was good to look about the Lower Caverns and catch poses, especially when the poser didn’t realize he was being sketched. And his eye had not lost its keenness, and if his fingers cramped now and then from weakness, strength gradually returned. He became unaware of the passage of time nor did he notice people coming up behind him to see what he was drawing.

Waine arrived with mortar, pestle, oil, eggs, and cobalt to make a good blue. The man had picked up bits of technique and procedures on his own, but picking things up here and there was no substitute for the concentrated drill that Iantine had had: drills that he once despised but now appreciated when he could see what resulted from the lack of them.

Winter had set in, but on the first day of full sun, Tisha insisted on wrapping him up in a cocoon of furs to sit out in the Bowl for the “good of fresh air.” As it was bath time for the dragonets, Iantine was immediately fascinated by their antics and began to appreciate just how much hard work went into their nurture. It was also the first chance he’d ever had of seeing dragonets. He knew the grace and power of the adult dragon and their awesome appearance. Now he saw the weyrlings as mischievous—even naughty, as one ducked her rider into the lake—and endlessly inventive. None of this last Hatching were ready to fly yet, but some of the previous clutch were beginning to take on adult duties. He had firsthand observation of their not-so-graceful performances.

The next day he saw P’tero and blue Ormonth in the focus of some sort of large class. As he wandered over, he saw that not only the weyrlings from the last three Hatchings were attending, but also all youngsters above the age of twelve. Ormonth had one wing extended and was gazing at it in an abstract fashion, as if he’d never seen it before. The expression was too much for the artist in Iantine and he flipped open his pad and sketched the scene. P’tero noticed, but the class was extremely attentive. What T’dam was saying slowly reached through Iantine’s absorption with line and pose.

“Now, records show us that the worst injuries occur on wing edges, especially if Thread falls in clumps and the partners are not sharp enough to avoid ’em. A dragon can fly with one-third of his exterior sail damaged . . .” and T’dam ran his hand along the edge of Ormonth’s wing. “However,” and T’dam looked up at Ormonth, “if you would be good enough to close your wing slightly, Ormonth,” and the blue did so. “Thank you . . .” T’dam had to stand slightly on tiptoe to reach the area of the inner wing. “Injuries in here are far more serious, as Thread can, depending on the angle of its fall, sear through the wing and into his body. This,” and he now ducked under the wing and tapped the side, “is where the lungs are and injury here can even be . . . fatal . . .”

There was a gasp around the semicircle of his students. “That’s why you have to be sharp every instant you’re in flight. Go
between
the instant you even
suspect
you’ve been hit . . .”

“How do we
know?”
someone asked.

“Ha!” T’dam propped his fists on his thick leather belt and paused. “Dragons are very brave creatures for the most part, considering what we ask them to do. But,” and he stroked Ormonth in apology, “they have exceedingly quick responses . . . especially to pain. You’ll know!” He paused again. “Some of you were here when Missath broke her sail bone, weren’t you?” and he pointed around the group until he saw several hands raised. “Remember how she squealed?”