“Robinton.t’ His father roared, scowling his amazement.
Robinton risked a nervous glance at his mother and saw her slight smile. Why was his father angry with him? He hadn’t really been doing anything wrong, had he?
“Cortath says he’s enjoyed conversing with your son, Master Petiron,” M’ridin said with a reassuring chuckle. “There aren’t that many children these days who will, you know.”
Robinton’s sensitive ears caught the plaintive note in the tall bronze rider’s voice. He opened his mouth to say that he’d be happy to talk to Cortath any time, when he saw his mother raise her finger in her signal for him to be silent and noticed the deepening scowl on his father’s face. So he looked anywhere but at the adults.
“Out of the way now, boy,” his father said, gesturing urgently.
Robinton scooted off towards the Hall, Libby and Lexey well in front of him, all too relieved to be allowed to leave.
“Goodbye, Cortath,” Robinton said. Seeing the dragon turn his head to follow him, he waved his fingers in farewell.
We will meet again, young Robinton, Cortath said clearly.
“Shards, Rob, you were lucky,” said Lexey enviously.
“And brave,” Libby put in, her blue eyes still as wide as saucers in her freckled face.
Robie shrugged. He was probably lucky he hadn’t been close enough to his father to get a smack for bothering a dragon, but he didn’t think he’d been particularly brave. Though he should not, perhaps, have compared a dragon with a watchwher!
He’d caught the surprised note in the dragon’s voice, and he guessed he was lucky Cortath had deigned to speak with him,
instead of just lashing out with his tail at the presumptuous boy.
“Did you hear what Cortath told me?” he asked his friends.
“They’re leaving,” Lexey said, pointing as the dragons suddenly
leaped skywards. As the great wings swirled up dust and grit from the courtyard, the children hastily turned away to protect their faces. When they turned back, rubbing dirt from their eyes, the dragons had already risen above the high, pitched roof of the quadrangle.
Robinton waved frantically, recognizing Cortath’s bright bronze coat and his passengers, but he didn’t think even his mother was looking down just then. The next moment, all had disappeared and the courtyard looked emptier than ever. He felt oddly sad that the dragon had gone – as if he had missed something very important, but didn’t know what it was. He realized that he didn’t really want to know if his friends had heard the dragon, too. After all, he had been the one who had done the talking, so it was his special encounter. He was not covetous by nature, but some things you kept to yourself, because they were yours, your doing and should be savoured quietly.
If, later, Lorra noticed that Robinton wasn’t as talkative as he usually was with her, she chalked it up to his parents’ absence. At least, his mother’s absence. Though that didn’t explain the odd little happy smile on his face, as if he were enjoying some secret thought. She liked taking care of young Rob. He was no trouble at all, especially when he would, as he did now, take himself to a corner in the kitchen and play on the pipe that was always tucked into his waistband. The tune he played wasn’t familiar to her, but then he was always making up tunes. She didn’t have the time, just then, to find out if he’d made up a new one. But later, as she put him to bed, she asked about it.
“Yes, about dragons,” he said sleepily.
“You were in the courtyard when they came? Of course you were, saying goodbye to your parents,” Lorra said. She snuggled his bed fur up against his chin. “You must play it for me sometime.”
“No, it’s all mine,” he mumbled, and Lorra wasn’t sure if she had heard him right. He usually couldn’t wait to play her a new tune …
because, as she thought with some acidity, she listened even if his father did not. But he was asleep before she could ask him what he meant.
Late in the autumn, when everyone knew that there was a clutch of eggs on the Hatching Sands at Benden Weyr, Robinton met