Chap. 177 Career Change

Chap. 177 Career change

Risal was waiting for him outside the dining hall, as they'd planned to meet for breakfast.

"Good morning! How'd you sleep?" she asked.

He grinned. They'd talked long into the night before. He'd thought that, once he'd get to bed, he'd toss and turn after two hectic days, but, no.

"Like the dead. I got a shower, fed Siskin, lay down with every intention of writing up the days in my journal and didn't wake up until sunrise," he said. It had felt good.

She laughed. "Not surprising, I guess, considering all you've done in the last two days. I couldn't sleep."

"Why? Not comfortable?"

"Oh, no! Hariko is a wonderful hostess, she put me up in a weyr by myself. You have a lot of room here, I'm so surprised! My room was comfortable, warm but not very quiet. I had no idea you had so much nocturnal wildlife around. I kept hearing night songs, I think they're from birds?"

"I know what you're talking about, but I've never discovered what makes those calls. That's something I think I'll start researching," he said.

As they entered the hall, she noticed the large sign next to the doors.

No Firelizards or Dogs in Dining Hall

"What's with this sign?" she asked.

K'ndar laughed. "I've never really had the time to find out, but I imagine it's in response to a hungry fire lizard going for someone's lunch," he said. Siskin was with Raventh at the moment, precisely because of the prohibition. "The problem being, fire lizards can teleport. It's not easy, convincing yours that they need to stay outside," he said.

"Probably the same thing with dogs," she said, as they entered. "They don't let dogs in the hall at Landing, but then, there aren't very many there."

"Same here, it's only been fairly recently that people started keeping them as pets, and even more recently, fire lizards. In fact, one of my friends works here, she has a queen who mated, unbeknownst to anyone. She laid her first clutch in the weyr's hatching sands, right in the same spot as our queen dragon! No one knew where the eggs were, until the kids in the weyr found it, kept it secret, and impressed a whole bunch of fire lizards. It was pandemonium until our Weyrlingmaster decided, big dragons or little 'uns, they need to be trained. Now they're an auxiliary of the Weyrling school, and are used for sending messages and delivering small packages and things. They're quite useful," he said.

He led the way to the end of the line of weyrfolk going through the breakfast buffet.

"I was watching your Siskin. He's quite the character, isn't he?" she said.

"He is. He's as devoted as any dragon," he said.

"I was thinking I'd like one. But at the moment, I don't have the time or the experience to actually handle one. Oh, this smells fabulous! This bubbly pie, it looks fantastic!" she exclaimed.

"I should hope so, I made it," said Lindea, on the other side of the serving line.

"Oh, hi, Lindea!" K'ndar said, looking up to see Lindea's eyes fastened on Risal.

"Good morning, K'ndar. Who is your friend?" she said, her voice frosty. She did not take her eyes off Risal. Risal didn't meet her gaze, but she could feel the freeze.

Lindea looks like a queen dragon, K'ndar thought, and not a happy one. Or an alpha mare, her ears pinned.

"Lindea, meet Risal. Risal, this is Lindea. Risal's from Landing, Lindea, and she wanted to see what our weyr looks like! Risal, Lindea and I have been friends from the first day we got here at Kahrain. Lindea makes the best bubbly pies in the world," he said.

"They look fabulous," Risal said, taking one.

"You're new here, aren't you?" Lindea asked. It sounded like the north wind on a winter day. K'ndar realized she'd not heard a word he'd said. He was about to repeat it when a voice behind K'ndar said, "Hey, there, mate, there's folks behind you waiting for breakfast, too."

"Oops, sorry," K'ndar said, feeling relief at the unexpected 'rescue'. What in the world was wrong with Lindea?

They made their way to a table and sat down opposite each other.

"She's a bit cold, isn't she." Risal said, tucking into her breakfast.

"Not usually," K'ndar said, wondering, "Usually she's cheerful as can be. She's like the sun, usually, warm, friendly, never a cross word from her. I can't imagine what has gotten into her," he said.

She spluttered.

"Really, K'ndar? Are you serious?"

He gawped, completely at a loss of what she meant.

"Um, I…I was, but obviously, I haven't a clue what you're talking about," he said.

"Well, maybe I'm wrong. We females have this sixth sense, especially when it comes to…um, male friends. She's-well, again, maybe I'm reading her all wrong, but she took one look at me and made assumptions. She's jealous," she said.

It was K'ndar's turn to splutter.

"Jealous? Of who? Me?"


"No, you dunce! Me!" she said.

"You? You just met her! She just met you! We're just friends, it's not as if I introduced you as …"

"As a girlfriend?"

No, it wasn't that way!

"Girl friend, not girlfriend. I just met you, Risal! Oh, I don't know WHAT I mean, I'm totally gobsmacked at the concept. Lindea and I, we're just friends. You got 'jealousy' from Lindea, just from a few words?"

Risal laughed. It was the infectious type, one that you couldn't help but join in, even were you the butt of a joke.

"I agree, girl friend, not girlfriend. K'ndar, I've been a female all my life, and there's communication links between us that most men don't seem to know exist," she said. "Sort of what I imagine the way riders and their dragons communicate," she said.

He shook his head. "There's never been any sort of relationship between us," he insisted.

She sighed. She didn't want to get too deep, not this soon, not this fast. He is a nice man, she thought, but he's right, we've just met.

"Oh, maybe I'm just reading her wrong," she said. "Maybe she's just having a bad day. No matter, she's a lovely girl and her pies are…oh my gosh, just terrific," the last came out covered with crumbs.

How in the world could she see that much in just a few words from Lindea? he wondered.

Maybe I need to talk to someone about females.

A shadow occluded the sunlight streaming in. K'ndar looked up, fearing for just a moment it was Lindea. But it was B'rost, holding his breakfast tray high to avoid hitting Risal in the back of the head.

"May I join you?" he asked. The person sitting near Risal looked up and silently moved further away to give him room. HE remembered, very well, who B'rost was.

K"ndar remembered the last time B'rost had joined him for breakfast. That had ended with his nose being broken…but B'rost had changed. A lot.

His eyes met B'rost's and the memories of that incident leaped in both their minds. K'ndar smirked.

"I dunno, B'rost, my nose is all healed up," he said, smiling as broadly as he could, hoping B'rost didn't over react.

"I promise to leave your nose alone," he laughed.

"What?" Risal said.

B'rost sat down next to her.

"Long story, but it ended up with me breaking K'ndar's nose. Hi, I'm B'rost," he said, grinning at K'ndar.

"I know. I'm Risal. I want to hear about your punching K'ndar in the nose, but first-I saw your briefing. You did beautiful work on excavating the skeletons in the cave," she said.

He gawped. "How…you saw it? You were in the briefing? But, wait, no, you saw it here? I’m totally confused," he said.

"Long story, B'rost, to make it short, Risal, here, was working in Flight Ops the first day I was at Landing. Then I brought her here, and then you and me and the others went to the island."

"Fast off the mark, aren't you!" B'rost said, admiringly.

"Not you, too! NO! It's…oh, I give up," K'ndar said, so befuddled he just wanted to go back to bed and start the day all over again.

"He's not fast, B'rost, it was a favor for me," she said.

B'rost didn't believe it, but he kept his opinion to himself.

"So tell me, why did you break K'ndar's nose?" Risal asked, "Why? You worked as a well trained team on the island," she said.

B'rost looked at her. "I've done a lot of growing up in the last six months, Risal. To be bloody honest, I was so jealous of K'ndar I did a VERY stupid thing and punched him. I didn't know why at the time, but now I do. K'ndar was good enough to let me get away with it," he said.

"You punched him out of jealousy?" she said.

"Yes. Boys do that, sometimes, when they can't-or refuse-to communicate," he said.

K'ndar admired B'rost for his honesty. Oh, jealousy, what an ugly feeling, what it makes us humans do.
Lindea? Jealous? This is getting so ridiculously thick and sticky.

"Even so, B'rost, your work in that cave, makes our job at Landing so much easier. It was as professional a piece of work as can be imagined," she said.

"Thank you. I used to be a geologist. When you are excavating a site, like a fossil, or bones, you have to be careful, not to lose or disturb the site, displace the rock or soil. A fossil find is useless if you lose the context of the soil or rock it's resting in," he said.


"USED to be a geologist?" K'ndar said, even more confused, now.

B'rost looked at him.

"I'll always BE a geologist, K'ndar. Like you being a horseman, I was born to it. It's been my passion since I was a kid. I 'borrowed' the cothold's carpentry hammer and hammered on anything I could find until my mother threatened to hammer my head. But, well, K'ndar, it's one of the reasons I was hoping to run into you before I left."

"Left?" K'ndar said, "B'rost, you just returned, what, a month ago?"

"Where did you go? You left?" Risal asked.

B'rost held up his hands. "I know, I know. I'm a feather on the wind, K'ndar, always have been. Here and there, flighty, never landing in the same spot twice. You know me, probably better than anyone other than my mum. But,well, K'ndar, it was Harve's legs. And the bones in the cave. The moment I saw the bones, all cleared of overburden, I had a very good idea what happened to her. Jansen, she couldn't bring herself to say it. Bones and fossils tell stories, if you know how to read them. Do you know what happened to her?" he asked.

Both of them shook their heads. "Not really, but..oh, go ahead. Otherwise I'll be wondering forever," K'ndar said.

"I might be wrong but it was apparent to me that she'd been beaten. Some of the breaks were healed, if badly, that may have been caused by the shipwreck. But other breaks were all centered on her abdomen and surrounding ribs. Others were fresh, unhealed. Meaning, she died of being beaten, or soon afterwards. She was pregnant. I'd bet my best harness Shipfish beat her. I bet he was trying to get her to abort the baby. She escaped him and climbed to that cave, wearing chains AND pregnant, probably to save her baby. She was there, what, 35 days?

I think what happened is, Shipfish found where she was hiding and beat her, and then left, maybe when he learned the baby was stillborn. It didn't come all the way out. It got stuck. She was dying, she knew it, but lived long enough to scratch her indictment of Shipfish on the wall.
If she hadn't, we'd never have known that Shipfish murdered her. And an unborn baby," he said.

The three just stared at each other in horror, their breakfasts suddenly unappealing.

"She climbed that pinnacle in chains AND pregnant," K'ndar said, "and I could hardly do it without," he said, awed at the unknown woman's courage and determination.

"I have a feeling Harve fed her, kept sneaking food to her," B'rost said. "There were marks on the sides of the rock I belayed to, marks from what must have been a chain. I think he climbed up there, in chains, maybe ran a rope or a chain down from it, so she could pull up a basket. As many caves are on that scrap of island, I bet the only way Shipfish could have found her was to follow Harve. I bet he beat the daylights out of Harve when he found out," B'rost said.

The tears started in his eyes, and in K'ndar's and Risal's.

"That shaffing monster," K'ndar said, suddenly furious. "B'rost. We need to go back, hunt him down and kill him, just so I can sleep at night."

"You won't be lacking in help, K'ndar, but..please, I can't. I didn't have the courage to stick him when I had the chance," B'rost said. "I knew what had happened to the woman, none of you did, I could have killed him and later, with the evidence, been cleared. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I just couldn't," he said, in despair. "Even when we had him disarmed and beaten, I was afraid of him."

He sighed. "I've been like this all my life. I was called a sissy because I can't bring myself to kill something any higher than a bug. I can't even hunt! I didn't realize it at the time, but I'm lucky I grew up in a cheesecrafter family, you don't need to kill the cow in order to get her milk" he said, attempting to lighten the conversation. It helped, a little.

"That's okay, B'rost, I know how you feel. But I am betting that all I need do is ask for volunteers to go and I know F'mart will help. I don't look forward to killing Shipfish, but he has it coming," K'ndar said.

"No," Risal said, shaking her head, "Don't, K'ndar. Don't. You all did the right thing. You took away everything he had. I’m not saying he doesn't deserve to be killed. I would like to kill him, too. But don't you see? You did the right thing. You, and B'rost, and the rest? You're all good people. You'd kill him quickly. It'd be over in a moment. That sort of killing, it's too good for the likes of him. Now HE can suffer. He won't ever repent. He's smart, though. He will realize that you had the opportunity to kill him, and didn't. He won't understand that it's because you're better than him, no, he'll feel you did it to torture him. Let him stew in his own mess. I hope he dies slowly and miserably, especially now, as Landing has contacted every Hold and Hall, every Weyr, every port, every harbormaster on Pern, and put the island off limits to everyone. And K'ndar, you told the dolphins. They know, now, too. You did the right thing. All of you," she said.

K'ndar sighed, and then nodded.

"It doesn't feel that way, but you're right. I've had to kill animals to put them out of their misery, I always make it as quick and painless as I possibly can. I want to kill them, not hurt them. But Shipfish? I want him to hurt, for a long time," K'ndar said. He shook his head. "Oh, that poor woman."

He looked up to see Lindea looking at them from her spot on the serving line. She looked desperately unhappy. Oh, this lovely morning has grown so turbulent.

The three looked at each other, but their gazes were inward.

Risal broke their reveries. "You said you were leaving, B'rost? Leaving the Weyr? Permanently?"

B'rost nodded.

"Not nomading again, B'rost? Skyhooting off on a whim? AGAIN?" K'ndar snapped,aggravated.

B'rost shrugged. "Not this time, K'ndar. I liked nomading, K'ndar, it was fascinating, every day a new horizon. We'd close our eyes, spin around and point, and when we'd open our eyes, that's the direction we'd go. But it had its downsides, like not eating regularly, or not being welcomed," he said. "I'll be back, K'ndar, eventually."

"Before you ask why, or tell me not to, listen. I gave a lot of thought to that woman, alone and dying in the cave. I wanted to help her, prevent her pain and death. I looked at Harve's legs, and I thought, I want to fix them. I want to someday see him running around, fast, like a normal boy. I want to be able to say, there goes so and so, she was sick and now she's not and it's because of my help. So, I've decided I'm going to move to the Healer Hall, up north, and learn to be a healer. Of people. I want to heal people, I want to help them get better. And when I'm done with schooling, I'm going to go wherever I'm needed, on Rath. I'll be a nomad healer. My hammer in one hand, my healers bag in the other. The best of three worlds, K'ndar! I'll wander the planet on my dragon, seeing new rock formations while I'm healing people's wounds."