F’lon grinned and took a deep breath. “You’ve no idea how good it is.” He slapped his friend on his back. “But I’ll fly you anywhere you need to go, m’friend. Are you still singing?”
“Baritone now,” Rob said with some satisfaction. “You? Not that it matters if you’re a bronze rider.”
“Oh, it matters,” F’lon assured him with sufficient emphasis to reassure. “Dragons like music, and I guess I’m baritone too.” He did a descending scale in what Robinton professionally appraised as a light if pleasant voice.
“You’re right – baritone. Too bad I’m not also a rider.”
F’lon’s expression changed as he caught the wistful note in his friend’s voice. “There’ve been so few clutches that there were a lot of weyrbred to stand on the Hatching Ground. S’loner decided not to Search. Happens sometimes that way.” F’lon’s rueful smile was genuine. “You’d’ve made a good rider.” Then he paused, his eyes unfocusing briefly.
I will talk to you, Robinton, if you wish me to, said a voice in Robinton’s mind: a voice that had F’lon’s intonation and texture.
The double surprise, that Simanith was speaking to him and in F’lon’s voice, caused Robinton to stumble on the steps. Grinning, the rider helped him regain his balance.
“Maybe it’s a poor substitute, Rob, but the best I can do for you,” F’lon said.
“Simanith sounds like you,” Robinton managed to remark.
“Does he?” F’lon considered this. “I hadn’t noticed. We only hear them in our heads, after all, and not really out loud. Anyway, you can talk to him any time you want.”
“Thanks, I will. When I can think of something appropriate to say.” “You will,” F’lon said with great certainty.
Silvina was waiting at the small dining-room door and escorted them in. Robinton introduced his friend to Lorra. Though not as flustered as her daughter, she was clearly pleased to dispense hospitality to a dragonrider.
“I sent a messenger to your mother, Rob, because I know she’s mentioned Falloner – excuse me, F’lon – as one of her pupils.”
So a very cordial hour followed Merelan’s entrance. All the cakes and most of the biscuits were consumed, and F’lon promised to fly Merelan anywhere on Pern she wanted to go whenever she needed transport. Then she had to excuse herself to give a lesson, but she saw F’lon and Robinton to the entrance, where she assured F’lon she’d take him up on his offer.
“That is, if you’re allowed,” she said, glancing up at the tall young rider with a mischievous look in her eyes.
“I don’t have much else to do. Even this’, he told her, gesturing around the Harper Hall court, “is sort of work. We have to know how to get to any place on Pern, so actually, this is seen as a legitimate visit. I can come as often as I like.”
F’lon had increased his assertiveness, Robinton noticed, exchanging a knowing glance with his mother.
“You can drum me if I’m needed,” F’lon said, awarding Rob another of his affectionate punches before he leaped to Simanith’s raised forearm and vaulted from there to the bronze’s back.
“He’s very much the rider, isn’t he?” Merelan murmured to her son as they both waved farewell. “What a charming lad.” “You used to call him a devil, Mother,” Robinton said chidingly.
“Shortening his name will have made no change to his essential nature, love. In fact, it’s probably compounded the problem,” she said tersely. “But I like it in him that he would honour that promise to you.” She gave his arm a final squeeze and a gentle push towards the workroom and his interrupted session.
Master Gennell did pause on his way to the head table to enquire if the visitor had been Robinton’s friend at Benden Weyr. Robinton apologized for the interruption.
“No need, lad, not when a dragonrider favours you with his company.”
Petiron, whose rehearsal had been interrupted by the dragon’s arrival, scowled at him, but Robinton looked away as if he hadn’t seen. It wasn’t as if he had asked F’lon to visit. He disliked being discourteous to anyone, especially his own father, but he had learned painfully that anything he did annoyed his father, even when he did nothing. He tried not to remember things his roommates had said about their fathers, and special things their fathers had done for – and, more importantly in Rob’s eyes, with – them.