I know how you like your paints mixed, your brushes cleaned, and even
how to prepare wood or canvas for portraits.” His pathetic stance could
have persuaded almost anyone.
lantine chuckled and ruffled the boy’s thick black hair. And what
would your father do?” Him? He’s winding himself up for Threadfall.” A
discreet question to Tisha had produced the information that a bronze
rider, C’lim, was the boy’s father; the mother had died shortly after
Leopol’s birth. But he, like every other child of the Weyr. had become
everyone’s child, loved and disciplined as the need arose. He doesn’t
half pay attention to me any more.
Which was fair, lantine thought, since Leopol had become his shadow.
Tisha?” Her? She’ll find someone else to mother.” Well, I will ask,
but I doubt you’d be allowed. The other riders think you’ll Impress a
bronze when you’re old enough.
Leopol tossed off that future with a shrug. What he could do now was
more important than what might be three or four years in the future.
D’you have to go?” Yes, I have to go. I’m in grave danger of
overstaying my welcome here.” No, you’re not,’ and Leopol looked
significantly towards the lake where the weyrlings were having their
customary bath. And you haven’t drawn all the riders yet.
Be that as it may, Leo, I’m due at Benden to do the Holders, and that’s
a commission I’ve been owing since I started my training at Hall
Domaize. When you do those, will you come straight back? You haven’t
done Chalkin’s face like he really is, you know, and it isn’t as if you
were doing anyone else out of a place to sleep.” Leopol’s face was
completely contorted now by his dismay. Debera really wants you to
stay, you know.” lantine shot him an almost angry look. Leopol?” he
said warningly.
Aw,’ and the boy screwed his boot toe into the dirt, everyone knows
you fancy her, and the girls say that she’s gone on you. It’s only
Morath who’s the problem. And she doesn’t have to be. Soon as she can
fly, she’ll have a weyr and you’ll have some privacy.
Privacy?” lantine knew that Leopol was precocious but.
Leopol cocked his head and had the grace not to grin.
Weyrs’re like that. Everyone knows everyone else’s secrets.” lantine
hung amid irritation to relief in the information about Debera and
amusement that his carefully hidden interest was so transparent.
He had never thought about loving someone so much that their absence
could cause physical discomfort. He never thought he would spend
sleepless hours reviewing even the briefest of conversations; identify a
certain voice in a crowded cavern; have to rub out sketches of imagined
meetings and poses which his fingers did of their own accord.
He kept close guard on his sketch-pads because there were far too many
of Debera – and the ever-present Morath. Morath liked him, too. He
knew that because she’d told him she did.
That, actually, had been the first encouraging sign he’d had.
He had tried, adroitly, to figure out how significant that might be, as
far as Debera’s awareness of him was concerned. He’d ask while he was
sketching a rider, as if he was only politely enquiring about what was
closest to his model’s heart anyway.
It appeared that a dragon could talk to an yon she/ he wished to.
They did so for reasons of their own, which sometimes they did not
discuss with their riders. Or they did. None of the other weyrlings,
even the greens with whom lantine was now quite familiar, spoke to him.
It was Morath who counted.
Not that the green dragon – who was the largest of that colour from that
clutch – ever explained herself. Nor did lantine ask.
He merely treasured the immense compliment of her conversation.
She did ask to see his sketch-pad once. He noticed the phenomenon of
the pad reflected in every one of the many facets of her eyes.
They’d been bluey-green at the time, their normal shade, and whirling
slowly.
Do you see anything?” Yes. Shapes. You put the shapes on the pad with
the thing in your hand?