The Slacktiverse

Last time, Piemur observed an exchange between a dragonrider (T’reb), a Nabol man (Toolan), and an artist the man conned into creating some pictures of a space (Cramb), uncovering a little bit more detail about the plot hinted at in the first chapter. Apparently, the Nabolese help the dragonriders, the dragonriders help the Nabolese capture some land over their border and bring it under their control.

Piemur is also completely morose about his loss of singing voice and feeling aimless while he marks time doing things for Robinton.

Dragon’s Code, Chapter 3: Content Notes:

Also last time, Piemur had trouble hearing all of this because of the extremely loud background music of Yakkity Sax, as he continued to have all sorts of near-discoveries, culminating in his shock causing him to hit his head, get discovered, and have to flee both Toolan and Cramb. Which causes him to lose his hat and have to trudge back to Southern Hold in the hot sun. And it’s this plot-required decision that gets us going.

Toric says hello to Piemur and mentions his lack of hat at the beginning of this chapter, while Piemur leads Stupid to the trough and then starts splashing his own head with the water in the trough. So, y’know, the sort of thing that’s already a sign that Piemur is suffering from something and probably shouldn’t do anything but get cooled down. But because nobody knows this (and because Piemur isn’t going to say anything, which is something finally consistent with the characterization of the other Piemur from the original books), there will be yet more Yakkity Sax playing going on in this chapter. Before we get to that part, however, Toric has news for Piemur about Southern.

“The [time-skipped] sent word yesterday: They’re no longer permitting anyone from outside to enter their Weyr.”
Piemur jerked upright, sending droplets of water flying from his hair. He stared at Toric, his thirst forgotten, a frown creasing his burnt brow as he wondered if this latest development had anything to do with T’reb and the two men he’d been spying on.
“Can you believe it? Mardra and T’kul say that we’ve brought illness to their Weyr,” Toric spat, and Piemur had no toruble hearing the disgust in the Lord Holder’s tone. “Not a word from T’ron, though. His opinion on the matter is anyone’s guess.”

T’ron is still in charge, although Piemur notes that T’ron seems to be leaving most of the talking to T’kul.

It’s such a shame that these dragonriders don’t have any previous accounts of dragons getting sick and needing to be cared for to draw upon. Or, for that matter, any accounts of a raging pandemic and what the best options are for dragons and riders to keep safe from spreading the disease around. There aren’t any songs about heroic dragonriders who discovered vital information about their dragons, and how an entire communication system is built around encoding that information. Or a ballad of some sort about a heroic dragonrider who rushed to deliver inoculation serum to a wide area, seeming to break the boundaries of space and time itself with her speed because that was the best way to stop the disease in its tracks. These things are utterly, completely lost to these people, apparently, including to the people who are the nominal keepers of records and recorders of history in song. (Yes, I’m being harsher on this author than the others, but that’s because this author has had the benefit of having both previous authors available to pick, choose, and otherwise incorporate continuity from.)

“An illness is raging among the dragonriders, halp wat do?” is certainly a well-trod story decision for a Dragonriders of Pern novel, but because this is a Ninth Pass story, I feel like there should be some call-backs here.

Moving forward with the plot, after some physical description of Toric, Piemur voices his thought on Southern:

Even though the Southern Weyrfolk were no longer in favor with Benden Weyr, Piemur didn’t think they were all such a bad bunch. He reckoned only a small group of the Southern [time-skipped] were actually troublemakers, and that other members of the Weyr had stayed on with them out of loyalty.

I still don’t think it’s been fully explained why, other than reverence and awe for dragonriders that Anne’s Piemur never had nor obtained, why this Piemur is suddenly very willing to give the Southerners the benefit of the doubt. Also, the Piemur of Dragondrums, the one who was bullied severely and nearly killed by a “small group of…troublemakers” with either the collusion, assistance, or indifference of everyone else, seems like the last person who would be willing to say that it’s probably just a small group of troublemakers in the middle of a mostly-blameless whole.

Also, I think it’s clear enough for us in the 21st c. of Terra, in watching parliamentary politics, and the fact that we have specific language around bystanders and how they need to be trained to intervene, rather than look the other way, when things go, and especially now having seen the last decade of oppositions that work to obstruct everything when they are out of power, dismantle everything while they are in power, and provide cover for their own when they commit terrible acts, up to and including inciting and encouraging insurrection and violence against members of the government or deliberately withdrawing from international cooperation and accordances so their buddies can profit and the rest of us suffer, we might have a dim view of the idea that there’s only a few bad apples and the system behind them would simply vanish if all the bad individual actors were removed. Piemur was nearly killed by that attitude on Prime Universe Pern.

At this point, I’m willing to say this book is an Alternate Universe of Pern, a Ninth Pass that happened on some other timeline that looks like ours, that has a lot of the samely-named characters, and who might look mostly familiar to us, but are not the same people. Because otherwise we have to believe two mostly opposite Piemurs exist at the same time.

Back to the plot. Having digested the news, Piemur says that he’ll need to send a message with the additional development of the Southern closure of their borders, and Toric tells him not to bother, as he already did it and N’ton and Robintion are alreaedy inbound. Which they are, and Sebell is with them. When Lioth arrives, Piemur has managed to recover a hat, which is good, but there’s no indication that Piemur’s had a rest or recovered from everything he did in the sun.

Toric and N’ton both greet with “ ’Day”, which seems like an interesting contraction, and N’ton addresses both Toric and Piemur as “So’Holders,” so in this Pern AU, there’s a lot more contraction of language, it appears.

N’ton then does an acrobatic dive dismount off of Lioth, something that “filled him [Piemur] with awe even though he’d seen it dozens of times in the past,” proving that even in this alternate world, dragonriders still really enjoy taking risks with their life if they can show off to someone else. And then, from there, we get more of Piemur showcasing his awe of dragonriders, in this loving, almost purple, prose description of N’ton (compare to the significantly shorter description of Toric that I’ve left unquoted if you’re following along):

Standing almost two meters in height, N’ton, like most dragonriders, was supremely physically fit and carried his long, strong frame with a casualness that matched his easy manner and pleasant nature. All dragonriders had an indefinable presence, a strength akin to an electric force that radiated around them. Some folk attributed the dragonriders’ unique energy to the lifelong connection they shared with their dragons, or to their higher-than-average levels of empathy. Whatever its source, when dragonriders entered a room, they often charged the atmosphere with a buzz that could also infect others around them. N’ton, though relatively young, carried himself with an air of maturity as if he were much older than his Turns. His light-blue eyes had one or two creases at the cornersl his symmetric, handsome face bore a striaght nose and strong chin, and he seemed to be utterly unaware of how striking a figure he cut. Piemur had heard women gasp when they saw the Fort Weyrleader for the first time.

And, of course, after a few books where we were able to at least acknowledge the idea that dragonriders have the privilege of being able to be several of the identities on the queer spectrum, we have to remember that it’s the women who are gasping when they see N’ton. Certainly not any journeyman Harpers who spend significant and loving detail on the physique of the Fort Weyrleader.

The other possibility is that the energetic field that Piemur attributes to rumor, or dragons, or empathy, or some other thing might be the dragonriders themselves exuding the Shield of Sexiness, or whichever the relevant game trope is that gets people to do what you want and to listen to you because you’re hammering on their subconscious that you’re the sexiest, strongest, bestest person ever. Like a permanently on Charm Person status or something. Since, y’know, Pern is a world that explicitly acknowledges psi abilities and selects for dragonriders people who have high psi abilities with regard to telepathy and empathy, maybe it’s an unacknowledged, uninvestigated reality of Pern that every dragonrider has at least one rank in Memetic Sex God(dess), and that there are occasionally people like Lessa who have a lot more of it and the ability to control it a lot better, and those people become Weyrwomen, and usually Weyrwomen of legend, through their skill and power.

Which might actually resolve the problem I had about Masterharper Robinton being able to feel Lessa’s powers in Ninth Pass 2.0 – since he’s canonically able to inspire this same sort of sex god status in others, and he can talk to the dragons and they talk back to him, and the reason Robinton’s not a bronze rider himself is because Petiron would never let him go to do it, so basically, I guess we were supposed to conclude that Robinton would have been one of the best dragonriders that ever was, but instead gets to tbe the greatest and sexiest musician that ever way. Lucky for Robinton that he also happened to have perfect pitch and all the other musical talents that Petiron demanded of him in addition to all of this dragonrider power stuff. This would, now that I think about it, possibly also explain what the blue riders are looking for when they go on Search, and with a little worldbuilding, could also explain why the blue dragons and riders are the ones with the uncanny knack for finding candidates – maybe they’re the most sensitive to the Sexy field?

Robinton, a Mary Sue? Perish the thought. But also, this is a disturbingly effective underlying worldbuild and could explain a lot of things, if this were one of the core underlying assumptions that never actually gets expressed anywhere.

We’re getting off-track here, ever so slightly. I’m speculating that Piemur might have the hots for N’ton, if only slightly, and in the world of 2018, that should be a thing that can be said without worry that the readers are going to be upset about it. Or so I think. But instead we have this last line of “no homo, bro” and we have to sigh and grumble about representation again.

After some exposition about the architecture of the place and Toric calling for refreshments, Piemur takes a seat in the shade, only to recognize that he’s got a fierce headache, an upset stomach, and he’s still radiating heat. All of which sound like he should be venting his heat somewhere and trying to cool himself back down before he passes out from heatstroke, but that’s not going to happen because he still has to make his report to Robinton and Sebell before he can go get himself cooled off.

And then we get something like the Menolly-equivalent, but who ran away from the dragonriders, Meria.

Piemur had met Meria on the day she first arrived at Southern Hold. She had left Southern Weyr and, needing shelter—no one on Pern, even on the Southern Continent, would choose to live in the open, under the threat of Threadfall—had sought succor from Toric. As far as Piemur knew, Meria had never offered an explanation as to why she had left the Weyr, which was something Piemur often speculated about.

Except now I want to know how old Meria is, because if she’s old enough to have aged out of the queen candidacy system, she would be an excellent character or learning about what happens to queen candidates after they’re no longer being treated as potential dragonriders. Also, it’s a woman who left the Weyr. We already knew that the men supposedly can leave the Weyr and be Randian supermen wherever they go, but here it appears to be that women who leave have to immediately go find someone to protect them.

(Also, Prime Universe Piemur got Stupid by living through a Threadfall and then went, “Huh, maybe I can do this out here without needing to be in a Hold at all.” And also, Menolly managed it for a while herself. So maybe people don’t choose to do things this way, except Prime Universe Piemur, but there’s nothing in this section of Piemur remembering his own experiences out in the open during Threadfall.)

Toric, when explaining why he’s called the council says “As my message stated, the Oldtimers—my pardon, I meant the Southern Weyrleaders—formally closed their Weyr to us yesterday.” Which, I think this is the first time where anyone has begged a pardon for using that particular nickname. That it’s coming from Toric could be in character, but there’s no indication that Toric is being sarcastic or insincere with this correction, for this or for Toric following up with not being too concerned about the dragons not flaming Thread, because grubs will keep them protected, but he says he’s worried that he can’t send his tithes and there won’t be dragonriders flying over his skies. Robinton asks Toric if he’s informed Benden, and Toric says he hasn’t, not that it would be worth anything anyway.

Prime Universe Toric is a schemer who would be overjoyed to short the dragonriders their tithes for his own profits and tell nobody about it. I can’t imagine him being the kind of person who would willingly invite Robinton or N’ton to his place and give them the opportunity to sniff out any of his schemes while they are in action. So, yeah, this is still weird characterization world. Because there’s no noted insincerity or other kind of indication that Toric is anything other than serious about this, and the Toric I am used to might be brought up short because his rudeness is showing too much, but I can’t imagine Toric offering a sincere beg-pardon for anything involving dragonriders.

Robinton asks for Piemur’s report, but because he’s still heatstruck, he talks about the plot that he discovered and the people he shadowed, but he’s having trouble remembering the correct order of events, how long he spent chasing this thing, and why it relates to being asked about the Southern Weyr. It’s very broken sentence structure, and Piemur is very clearly making an effort to recall events correctly and tie them ogether in a coherent narrative. Sebell seems interested, but Robinton doesn’t, and during the subsequent conversation, Piemur interrupts to press his point, and gets subtly rebuked, apologized for, with the heat blamed, and led off by Sebell to get into the shade so he doesn’t embarrass himself further. A Piemur who hasn’t been heatstruck would be significantly more coherent and able to explain what’s going on to everyone, but instead, he loses his opportunity to convince Robinton and Sebell of the plot that’s afoot, whatever it might be. Because of the timelines and events yet to come in this book, this is because Piemur can’t be spoiling an extremely important event before it comes to pass, but it seems like a contrivance, in this case, meant mostly to make sure the book doesn’t end prematurely.

I am reminded, at this point, that stupid decisions are a regular part of our lives, and so it’s entirely plausible that Piemur brought this upon himself, but it still seems like all of these things are set up in a carefully-orchestrated domino chain meant to make sure that Piemur isn’t taken seriously prematurely and the book can proceed.

In the conference afterward, Piemur tries again to explain what’s going on, but it’s still not coming out any more coherently than it did in the initial conference, and Piemur believes that Sebell doesn’t believe him either. Sebell plays into that with the next assignment he has for Piemur.

Piemur, before N’ton fetched us this morning, the Master and I discussed your role as a scout. This new position the Southern Weyrleaders have taken has changed everything. The Master thinks it might be best if you concentrate on mapping again. You’ve done more than your fair share of scouting for now.”
[…Piemur presses his case, but Sebell asks whether T’reb actually said anything or whether it was Toolan and Cramb speculating, without explaining that making an accusation like that against a dragonrider, without proof, is suicidal…]
“You’ve done good work, Piemur, but I think you may have been out in the hot sun for longer than is healthy. It’s obvious to me that you’re not behaving like yourself. Why don’t you get out of the heat and rest? When you’re ready, the Master thinks you should map the terrain near that steep bluff to the west of here. You know where I mean, don’t you?” Piemur nodded. “You always talk about how much you like climbing, so this should be a welcome task.”

And Piemur gets a lift to the cliffside that he’s being asked to climb and map from N’ton, but it’s not enough to stop the bad feelings.

[…]Piemur had started his journey in an unnaturally foul humor, unable to shake the feeling that Master Robinton no longer valued him, that he’d made a fool of himself in front of Sebell, N’ton, and Toric. Ever since that afternoon it had been hard to keep his spirits on an even keel. He felt as if he didn’t fit in anywhere anymore. Throughout the last fourteen days he’d mentally argued with himself about returning to Southern Weyr to discover more of what the [time-skipped] were planning with the men from Nabol, and every time his better sense won out and he convinced himself not to act contrary to Master Robinton’s orders, he felt like a coward, willing to do anything in order to fit in. Where had his gumption gone? Had he lost so much of his strength of character along with his singing voice that he was no longer able to act on his own?

There’s also that thing where disobeying the direct orders of a superior is much more likely to get you canned or hurt than promoted, could worsen relationships that are already fragile, and could result in serious damage if an unfounded accusation were leveled against people who have the ability to make your life completely miserable. Piemur might be at least subconsciously recognizing that being wrong about this would make him an extremely attractive scapegoat if everything goes entirely pear-shaped, and his self-preservation instincts are kicking in.

That said, this particular train of thought is familiar, at least the part where messing up once means that everyone hates you and no longer wants to have anything to do with you. The bit of “and then I’ll hare off and Show Them All” is less familiar to me, but I understand the idea of desperately wanting to be proven right or at least get back into the good graces of others. This is still Alternate Universe Piemur, though, because he’s thinking about disobeying, rather than just going off and doing it. And we learn that he got advice from his foster-mother, Ama, to follow his instincts when he wasn’t sure what to do. And that the diminutive nickname form of his name is “Pie,” which means I’ve been pronouncing his name completely wrong in my head for this entire series.

As he’s climbing, Piemur hums a tune he used to sing, but one of the jumps doesn’t come easy, because puberty changes still give him an unsettled voice, which aggravates him. Yet again, he feels like he’s been discarded from his Hall because of his voice cracking, but eventually he starts climbing again. Farli appears to try and warn him of something, but the images are all jumbled and Piemur doesn’t get anything about it. Farli then projects a single image of Piemur climbing very quickly, before chittering loudly and disappearing, but Piemur doesn’t understand the import of it until something catches his attention in the periphery. Once he turns to see what it is, he proves Farli right by scrambling up to try and outrun the Thread that Farli was trying to warn him about.

So, we’re splitting Menolly’s origin story between two people, with Meria as the one who ran away from safety and then was brought to another place, and Piemur gets to do the fitting himself into a cave that’s barely big enough for himself. Since he already has a fire-lizard, however, he doesn’t have to try and feed a fair of just-hatched ones. And, as it turns out, Farli is interested in helping defend her bonded human and giving him some additional breathing room.

What was that sound? He could hear something like gushing liquid or rushing air—or maybe a combination of the two. It grew louder. Through his tightly-closed eyelids Piemur could sense an orange glow. His eyes snapped open just as flame spewed in front of the rock face, and Piemur wondered if he was dreaming. Then another burst of fire flared in front of his eyes and, hissing, Farli flew into the cave.
She must have flown off to find firestone when she first caught sight of the Threadfall, Piemur thought in amazement. He knew that fire-lizards, like dragons, could chew firestone in order to breathe flame, but he’d never seen it before.

And, unlike their bigger cousins who had their genes messed with according to someone with extreme views about gender roles, chewing firestone to flame doesn’t affect the fertility of the fire-lizards at all.

After flaming out, Piemur sends Farli to poke N’ton’s fire lizard and relay his location, which allows N’ton and Lioth to come out and otherwise flame a swath through the rain long enough for Piemur to jump from his hiding space and supposedly land on Lioth. Which he does, but Piemur is unable to stick the landing, so N’ton has to grab him by the tunic to keep him alive, and after a frantic quick warp (where we hear the communication between N’ton and Lioth, even though Piemur would not have), N’ton dumps Piemur into the local body of water, saving him from Thread and from falling to his death. Which ends the chapter, as Piemur asks for a moment to recover himself after all of that excitement.

So, yeah, other than also giving us many more reasons to believe this is an alternate Pern out of continuity (or at least out of characterization) with the original series, this particular chapter seems to be mostly there to make sure that the plot doesn’t get spoiled too early and to give Piemur some peril, as well as to continue hammering on the idea that Piemur is awkward and clumsy and all out of sorts with the person that he used to be before his voice cracked and everything changed. If there’s something useful later on in the story from this, that’s fantastic and will give this chapter some usefulness, but otherwise, this doesn’t appear to do a whole lot of lifting toward the narrative in any sort of way.

On the positive side, we’ve made it three chapters, a whole quarter of the story, without any sort of sexual violence done or threatened to anyone! Nor do we have any extraordinarily young characters being pressured into becoming dragonriders and/or young characters engaging in sexual behaviors because their dragons will compel it from them soon enough. (I think we’ve had exactly two women with speaking lines at this point, which is not so great.)

Last time, we resigned ourselves to the idea that this story of Piemur in the South is yet another recasting of the Ninth Pass of Pern, this time transforming Piemur from a scamp who likes to keep secrets, get in trouble, and explore as his own man into a morose teenager who feels adrift and unmoored and still mourns the time when he had a fine singing voice and was the darling of the Harper Hall. You know, before there was a concerted effort to harm and kill him because the boys in the drumheights didn’t like him particularly much.

Dragon’s Code, Chapter Two: Content Notes:

When we last left Piemur, he was following Farli to a spot where a dragonrider and some other men were planning on meeting. The chapter starts with Piemur nearly blundering into the meeting site because he’s trying to follow Farli effectively. This kind of sequence of near-misses is going to follow Piemur through the entire chapter, and I think it’s supposed to either be comedic, or possibly meant as a foil of his awkwardness and feeling out of place in his current assignment.

In any case, having left Stupid and Farli together far enough back from the site of the meeting, Piemur creeps his way back to hear conversations going on between Cramb, who is an artist that is drawing portraits for T’reb, and Toolan, the person who hired Cramb and is acting as intermediary for the deal. After thinking he’s been spotted hiding in tall grasses, Piemur finds a tree to climb, which has a bird in it that draws attention to the area, but neither Cramb nor Toolan is curious enough to investigate what might have disturbed the bird. In proper villainous form, of course, there’s the obligatory part about people thinking when they’re not supposed to.

“I think it’s an odd choice, that’s all,” Cramb said. He licked his lips again, and Piemur suddenly caught himself licking his own lips, too.
“Well, don’t bother…to think, that is!” Toolan said loudly, and then paused before adding, “I know what’s wanted. You’re just here to make a sketch of it, so get to work,” he barked.

Which Cramb does, and Toolan decides to take a nap, because it’s hot and the heat irritates him. Cramb says he’ll have plenty of rest time, since he’s going to rough out something on a slate, then transfer the linework to vellum, and then color it and add detail, none of which sound like they’re going to be done quickly, and then the process will happen all over again when things are dark. So Cramb has been commissioned to make two landscapes for Toolan, who will then presumably deliver them to whomever it is that hired him.

Since there’s no action happening in front of him, Piemur, while trying to stay awake in his tree, reminisces about one of his good days in the Harper Hall, under the direction of Master Domick (who, as we recall, is one of the composers of the Hall and likes making things as technically difficult as he can, seeing the complexity as the proof of musicality), who is, as all the other masters of the hall, completely incapable of teaching without berating his students.

“No, no, no!” Domick had shouted, his voice rising on the last word as he simultaneously smacked his baton off the music stand. “You sound like a herd of shrieking runnerbeasts being devoured by Thread! Read the music score, for pity’s sake! Do not sing the last phrase like that!” The Mastercomposer’s face was turning a disturbing shade of red as he shouted, and the boys and the girls of the choir started to squirm in their places, which only added to their teacher’s obvious ire.

Definitely a revised Pern, here, where there are girls singing in the choir instead of the all-boys-until-Menolly affair that things were in the initial run. (At least, only boys would be in the space where Domick is trying to get them to sing his compositions. There were the girls there for the music lessons and the like, but that was for their marriageability, not for their singing ability.) Anyway, continuing on with this, Domick makes Piemur sing several parts and phrases by himself before passing them off to other singers, who, having heard what they were supposed to sound like, are able to replicate what Piemur sings together, and harmoniously, until the composition finally sounds like what Domick wants it to sound like, with Piemur singing the solo on top of it, until everything winds itself down to the end and the singers are really happy at what they had accomplished. Especially because they were singing in front of Robinton and Sebell, not that Piemur wants us to believe what happened was specifically for that.

Piemur would never forget that moment! He had barely noticed the looks of approval on the faces of the Masterharper and journeyman masterharper, though he was aware that they were pleased. No, Piemur knew his singing voice was perfect, not because of any vanity but because it had been meticulously trained to be just so, and nothing less. He knew, too, that for a little while during the rehearsal he had been the focus of everyone’s attention, but that wasn’t what had been most important to him as a singer. All he’d ever cared about was the satisfaction and inexpressible joy he experienced when singing in a group, joining in with other voices to create one single, superb orchestra of sound. That was what was most important to Piemur. When he sang with a group he felt as if the sound were actually amplifying from inside his body, tingling every cell, and filling him with pure delight.
But now, perched in the tree watching Cramb, he knew singing with a choir would never be the same for him. He wasn’t sure if anything could ever make him feel so passionate again. How time had changed everything!

How time has changed everything, indeed. I’m still trying to square this Piemur with the one we had at the end of Dragondrums, which is probably a lost cause, but I also find it interesting to see how much the narrative here is talking about the joy from performing together (which is, admittedly, pretty awesome), like there’s a point Piemur is trying desperately to refute about the idea that he’s somehow vain or stuck up or somehow that it’s all gone to his head. Perhaps the justification for the bullying once his voice broke ran around these lines, and Piemur is trying really hard not to let the brainweasels in, because they’d have an absolute feast with his current liminal state?

Music about music has allowed enough time to pass that Cramb is now getting to the point where he’s adding colors, and there’s fascination from Piemur at watching the artist work, adding colors to the scenes he’s sketched, not wasting any pigment to fill them both in. Unfortunately, Piemur’s not in a place where he can see the finished products, even though he’s looking at the place that’s being drawn. More plot passes, and eventually Cramb finishes, Toolan has set up the campsite for water, food, and light, and the two of them drop off to sleep, which allows Piemur to drop from his vantage point to go take a piss, and then get some sleep himself. In the morning, T’reb arrives to collect the drawings, with Piemur noting that Beth is not in a good condition, as well as having another near-miss with being discovered because birds come flying out of his chosen tree in a loud way.

T’reb behaves as a dragonrider who is used to being obeyed does, calling Toolan “Tortle,” and when Toolan corrects him on it politely, T’reb calls him “Toober” the next time he addresses him. It’s pretty clear that T’reb doesn’t give a shit about anything other than whether the pictures are accurate enough. He says they are, flings a pouch of coin into Toolan’s face and disappears. What tips Cramb off to the realization that what he was told and what reality is are different is that

Then, without any regard for creases or folds, T’reb roughly stuffed the two drawings into his flying jacket, ignoring the shocked intake of breath from Cramb.
[…why is this important? Well, you see…]
“You told me the dragonrider wanted a painting of this place because it held great sentimental memories for him. You said he wanted to put it someplace prominent in his weyr. Then you told me he wanted a nightscape of the same scene as well! Just what the shells have you gotten me mixed up in, Toolan?” Cramb’s voice was tight, and although he kept his anger under control it was obvious he was furious at the deception.
Toolan’s expression turned devious, and Cramb crossed his arms in front of his chest, glaring at his companion.
“He plans to use this place as a secure hide^mdash;from what I can guess,” Toolan said finally, with a smirk on his lips. “Probably more of the goods that he and that sorry group of [time-skipped] have been trading. It’s why he chose this particular cove, I reckon. It’s hard to reach and nestled among so many other coves that look exactly the same, it’d be easy to bypass or overlook.”

Piemur debates with himself about whether to report back with this information or stick around for more, because what he’s got so far is pretty scant. He sticks around and picks up some additional useful information.

“I can’t tell you any more, Cramb! My cousin sent me down here because I’ve done a few trades with T’reb before. Serra thinks the [time-skipped] should honor the connection they once had with our great-uncle. We all want land of our own, and Serra’s convinced the dragonriders can help us take what they want.”
“So you and your kin are going to hold land of your own?” Cramb asked, shaking his head. Piemur gasped and then quickly clapped a hand over his mouth. Cramb knew, Piemur thought, that lands fit for holding were not easy to come by. They were handed down from kin to kin or, in the rare case of Lord Toric of Southern Hold, [who will be mentioned as accepted but unconfirmed in the next chapter, but I suppose if it’s a formality between him and confirmation, Piemur might star using the title prematurely,] earned from many Turns of brutally hard work. He could only hazard a guess about Cramb, but he was full certain now that Toolan was from Nabol.
“And what are you giving the dragonriders in return?”
“That’s all I can tell you, Cramb, because that’s all I know,” Toolan said, a stubborn note creeping into his voice.
“I bet you know more, Toolan,” Cramb said slowly, his voice taking on a threatening edge as he stepped closer to Toolan. “Spit it out!”
“Serra thinks they can get land across the border from Nabol. That’s all they told me!” Toolan’s tone was final, his right hand cutting through the air like a flat blade.

Piemur is shocked at this, because Crom, the hold of his birth, is across the border from Nabol, and the possibility that people in Crom, possibly even kin, might be hurt causes him to sit up abruptly and bash his head on a tree branch, which finally attracts enough noise that he’s spotted, and then Piemur runs for it, losing his hat in the process. Once he’s gotten away, and realized he’s lost his hat, he goes to retrieve Stupid and go back to Southern. All in the heat and sunshine of the day, apparently, rather than trying to get some distance, find shade, wait things out until it’s cooler and less sunshiney to navigate his way back. He’s got Farli to guide the way, and assuming there aren’t that many runner-tripping hazards to deal with, travel by night should be much easier for everyone. But no, instead Piemur rides Stupid all the way back to Southern in the sun. Which we don’t fully realize until chapter three starts, as chapter two ends with Piemur orienting himself to find where he left Stupid and Farli and heading that way.

Piemur traveling in the sun becomes important for the next chapter, so there’s a plot reason for it, but it’s, well, a stupid reason. The Piemur of Pern from the original would have probably long since figured out that it’s a bad idea to travel during the heat of the day and found someplace to wait it out and move from there, and this Piemur makes a bad choice so that the plot can proceed according to the rails it’s been put on, instead of for reasons that would make sense.

We’re two chapters in, of twelve, and we haven’t had much of substance, just pieces being put into place. At the same time, we haven’t had anything that would be supremely objectionable about the treatment of anybody to this point. I can’t remember the last time we’d made it one-sixth of the way into a Pern book without something seriously problematic happening. If the worst I have to complain about this book is that the characterization of Piemur is wrong for the time that this book is supposedly taking place in, then this author will have done very well for herself.

More next week.

I honestly didn’t know I was going to get this far, and it’s been really neat having you along with me for the ride. This is the currently last known book in the Dragonriders of Pern, and reading some of the promotional material for this book, they’re styling it as the 50th anniversary work, which might suggest this is going to be a one-shot from Gigi, the third and final allowed author to write in Pern. Also, it’s a whole twelve chapters! One of the shortest offerings in the Pernese canon, as a way of letting us down gently, I guess.

Okay, so, it has been just about seven years since Anne died and six or so since Todd published Sky Dragons. In the interim, we’ve advanced all the way through the end of the Obama presidency and are sitting in the middle of the subsequent administration. We’re still a year and a couple months out from the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 and the nightmare that will be, as well as the way in which the entire United States will watch the truth of racist policing played out in front of them, but things are still terrible in the United States and the United Kingdom, almost totally attributable to the politicians in charge and the oligarchs that support them. Let’s see if some actual feminism can permeate this book. Here we go.

Dragon’s Code: Prologue and Chapter 1: Content Notes:

We have a new prologue! This one acknowledges the existence of the Nathi war in the first line, and might be the most effective one of the lot, in terms of storytelling and setting up the understanding that we’ll need to go forward if, by some chance, this book ends up being the very first one that someone picks up as the introduction to Pern. It takes the style of the kind of story you tell children where everything is fine, until a disruption arrives and has to be solved. Once that disruption is solved, everything is fine, until the next disruption arrives, and so the entire prologue leapfrogs its way through the first arrival of Thread, the volcanic eruption, the great migration north, the establishment of the Weyr-Hold-Craft system, the Interval, the return of Thread, the Long Interval that has reduced the Weyrs from six to one, and the return of Thread. It does not mention the return of the time-skipped, although as soon as we get into Chapter 1, they will immediately be relevant, because our main character is Piemur, and the start point for the story appears to be a little bit before the part in the White Dragon where the queen egg gets stolen and Jaxom engages in a daring night raid to retrieve it. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. There’s a choice quote right up front in the Prologue that’s worth looking at:

Pern, as this world was named, was beautiful, habitable, and far enough from the standard trade routes that the colonists felt comfortable turning their backs on the past to build a new future.

And after the arrival of Thread, “Pern’s tenuous contact with the mother planet was broken.” There’s promise here already in the acknowledgment that the colonists were deliberately turning their backs on the future society they lived in to go play at an agrarian pastoral fantasy, and it would be a neat feather in this author’s cap if the wording about leaving the past to build a new future is deliberate, because from the reader’s perspective, Pern has left the future to play in the past instead, and the juxtaposition there is excellent.

Anyway,

even as dragonriders and their dragons fight the valiant war against Thread, dissatisfaction and dissent have begun to simmer in parts of the world…

…and Chapter 1 begins at Southern Weyr with Piemur covering his face and head against the sandstorm that gets kicked up by dragons taking off. Welcome to the Ninth Pass once again. It remains to be seen whether this is Ninth Pass 1.0, 2.0, or Gigi’s very own Ninth Pass 3.0, hopefully making sure that many of the really terrible things (and hopefully some of the more subtle things) about the first two things have been fixed for this run.

The dragons of Southern, however, are not well, and this sounds suspiciously familiar to anyone who suffered through the last author’s books.

Piemur heard the comments the dragonriders called to one another as they took flight; heard, too, the muffled sounds of dragons coughing as they rose higher off the ground. Listening, he wondered—not for the first time—what pernicious ailment still affected the dragons of Southern Weyr, and why the Weyr Healer couldn’t find a remedy to shift it from their lungs.

The last time we had dragons with a cough they couldn’t get rid of, it took Lorana swapping their genes to get rid of it and provide immunity. As I recall mentioning at the time, all that did was reset a clock and that organisms and other infectious agents would, eventually, start evolving a means of infecting the dragons again. Now, I would wonder whether those organisms would end up in a situation where they could infect dragons regardless of which gene combination was start and which one was end. Some other gene combination would be needed at that point, and even then, it’s still just buying time. At least, at this point in the universe. Once it’s been truly determined that there won’t be any more Thread, eventually the dragons will die out when something gets them that they can’t get rid of. As will the fire lizards, unless they’re able to adapt or develop immunity in the remaining time that they have. Which, I suspect they did, because I don’t think any of the fire-lizards ever received any vaccinations, and they’re still around in the Ninth Pass.

Still, we have an infection here in the exiled South that wasn’t there before, and that managed not to spread or deliberately be spread through contact with other dragons. Southern is also apparently a social experiment, if unintentionally:

The [time-skipped] dragonriders had cut ties with Benden, the premier Weyr in the northern hemisphere, effectively alienating themselves from their peers and, ultimately, everyone else. Never in living memory had any group broken free, seeking to go it alone in the hostile environment of Pern without the support of the other elements of their social structure.

This would be an issue, except Piemur said “living memory,” and therefore, neither Aleesa nor Halla gets the chance to stab Piemur repeatedly to remind him of their existence. I think we’re still before Thella, or at least before Thella becomes a notorious figure, so she doesn’t get to stab Piemur either, which I suspect she would really enjoy.

Since we still have the time-skipped present at Southern, the AI hasn’t been discovered yet, and so our most useful point of reference for this book is the end of the Harper Hall trilogy and The White Dragon.

Piemur was here at the behest of his mentor, Masterharper Robinton. He hadn’t started out as a spy. Three Turns earlier, Piemur had been virtually wrenched from his comfortable position in the Harper Hall and sent to the Southern Hold to teach the resident harper the new drum measures, vital for maintaining communications with neighboring smallholdings. But it hadn’t taken long for Saneter to memorize the new measures…and for the Masterharper to task Piemur with a seemingly endless stream of structureless chores, almost all of which were completely outside his training as a singer. If it weren’t for his deep-rooted sense of loyalty to his craft and his mentor, Piemur would have gladly foregone the exhausting and never-ending job of mapping Southern, a vast continent far larger than anyone had ever imagined and, in many areas, actually impassable.

This is not the Piemur I remember, Piemur of Pern, the one who really enjoys being there first and seeing things before others do, the one who would be entirely at ease just mapping and exploring and being by himself, where he doesn’t have to deal with the fact that he and Jaxom both have feelings for Sharra and that Jaxom is going to win eventually, because Jaxom’s a Lord and Piemur’s a Harper. Also, the Piemur I remember for this kind of space is one who enjoys keeping secrets and getting into mischief every now and then. And yet:

Piemur’s most unsatisfying task by far, and the one he found so disturbing to perform, was as a spy: observing and assessing the demeanor and welfare of the dragonriders of Southern Weyr. He gleaned no joy in snooping aroung the noble dragons and their riders, pretending to be someone he was not, visiting the Weyr on one pretense or another while trying to catch every snippet of conversation or grievance he could. It felt grossly wrong to Piemur to behave so duplicitously toward a group of dragons and riders who had spent a lifetime defending the planet. But the Masterharper, in his role as Pern’s custodian of culture and heritage, and the discreet harmonizer of her interconnected social relationships, was anxious to know how the outcasts were faring. He regularly stressed how important it was for Piemur to take note of any little details in the Weyr’s daily life that might be the slightest bit out of the ordinary, and report these. The most trivial snippet could be what helped to reunite Southern Weyr with the rest of dragonkind—and as a Harper, Piemur was trained to observe details.

Cocowhat by depizan

This is not the Piemur I remember, nor the one described in the books that have gone before this one. The Piemur I remember is fiercely loyal to Robinton, yes (and Robinton’s role as a manipulator is acknowledged and foregrounded), but he’s a hell of a scamp who has to repeatedly be told not to be so flippant with the titles of the peerage, even in his own head. This Piemur has suddenly developed reverence for the dragonriders. The goal of bringing the time-skipped back into the fold is certainly one that Robinton would want to have, so as to maintain the frozen state of Pernese society, but Dragondrums Piemur and White Dragon Piemur are a lot less reverent than this one, so we might yet have a Ninth Pass 3.0.

The plot proceeds to have Piemur eavesdrop on a conversation between T’reb and B’naj, where T’reb describes that Mardra is trying to coax Loranth, her queen, off the Hatching Grounds, while Loranth is making very large sounds of grief and Mardra is trying to get Loranth to forget her grief. This strikes Piemur as odd, because there aren’t any eggs available to Southern. So, perhaps we have to re-set our time marker to after Jaxom has already stole back the egg that Southern stole, if Loranth is having grief about a loss and is having trouble with leaving the Hatching Ground. It could also be that there weren’t any viable eggs from Loranth, and there haven’t been in a long while, and Loranth is grieving that she’s never going to get to raise a clutch again. There’s another disaster that might be the cause of the dragon cough mentioned.

“Youre right. Loranth has been off-color since that shaft collapsed when the Weyr was mining firestone. I’m glad I didn’t go with you and the others.”
“We should never have gone on that cursed venture—over half the Weyr was exposed to those noxious fumes.

Noxious mine fumes? That doesn’t sound good. And if the shaft collapsed and there were dragons nearby, maybe the cough they have is related to black lung disease (The Other Wiki says I’m looking for Coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP) as the correct name), which causes chronic bronchitis and is incurable.

As things progress, B’naj gets told that T’reb is going to try and make an alliance with Nabol.

“When they sought help over a family feud, Benden said they couldn’t interfere in Hold matters. Benden—F’lar and Lessa so high and mighty, as if their Weyr rules all the rest! Some leaders, yeah? Left those Nabolese out in the cold just like those other meddlers, the harpers. Honestly, B’naj, I hardly listened to all the details of their silly feud. The nub of it is they want us to help secure a holding promised to their father by Lord Meron.”
“Meron,” B’naj said, enunciating the two syllables slowly and with so much distaste in his voice that Piemur had no difficulty imagining the dragonrider’s facial expression. And no surprise there: the late Lord Meron had been cruel and uncaring: even Piemur had fallen afoul of the Lord Holder. “He was always a sneaky lick of a man. We never should have traded with him.”
“But we did, and strange as it now seems, his kin may actually have thought of an idea that will benefit our Weyr. We just have to assist them in securing lands to hold.”
“They can have plenty of land down here—as much as they like.”
“They won’t travel south.”
“Why not?”
“They say they can’t stomach the sea crossing. And anyway, they want lands in the north—just as we promised to them.”
“And what would we get in return?”
“Exactly what we need, B’naj. New blood.”
“How in the name of the First Egg—” B’naj’s response increased in volume until T’reb cut him short.

There is then a whispered conference which Piemur cannot hear, and at the end of it, T’reb storms out angry at B’naj, saying that he can’t be stopped. (Piemur’s swear here is “Shards and fire blast!” so that’s a new addition to things.)

It’s kind of nice, actually, to see such openly anti-Benden, anti-harper sentiment on display, and that T’reb, despite supposedly getting ready to make an alliance with people, doesn’t really care about why the little people want to do something, just what the dragonriders of Southern can get out of it. B’naj seems like the kind of person who would like to stick to his principles, but understands that surviving to another day is likely going to be more important than standing on principle, and if your dragons are going to die out anyway, you’ll be willing to sacrifice a lot of your principles at any shot of survival. We’ve already gotten a more nuanced picture painted of the exiles of Southern and what this exile is doing to them than we had in the Benden-centric books. It remains to be seen whether this story is going to be still very protagonist-centered in its morality, but at the very least, we don’t have mustache-twirling antagonists, so that’s already an improvement.

Piemur calls Farli to him with a “sharply-pitched, three-tone whistle that sounded just like a birdcall,” which seems an odd choice, given that fire-lizards are, as Piemur will note a couple of paragraphs down from here, telepathic, so presumably Pirmur could just summon Farli with a thought, rather than a noise. Piemur sends Farli to trail T’reb and his dragon, Beth, and report back what sort of information she can find about where they’ve gone, but in spending that much time, apparently, he’s been noticed by B’naj, who calls out to him, and Piemur does a quick act like he’s responding to some other person about an order before disappearing into the forest and trying to put some distance between himself and the dragonriders.
Once he returns to his camp, we find out that he still has Stupid, now a fully-grown runner, and there’s some amount of descripting of getting Stupid ready for travel that sounds a lot like someone who has been raised around horses and how to manage them putting that knowledge to work in an infodump, because sometimes all that research or knowledge feels like it has to go into the book somewhere or it was wasted time.

Piemur made short work of readying the runnerbeast, smoothing the hair on Stupid’s back and quickly checking for any insects that might hae burrowed under the skin.
Finally, he slipped the bridle over Stupid’s head and gently eased the left ear into the loop of the single-ear strap. Then, still hum-buzzing, he placed the saddle pad on Stupid’s back, behind the last neck bone. The runner blew through his muzzle gently, a sure sign he was relaxed, and shifted his weight from one forefoot to the other. Piemur tightened up the saddle pad cinch, which was positioned behind the two pairs of front legs, doing so slowly to ensure that Stupid wouldn’t be pinched by the saddle girth, a seemingly minor injury that could result in the dreaded, hard-to-cure girth galls. Stupid stomped his rear feet, but didn’t seem upset.
Piemur passed a critical eye over his handiwork, still pleased, after all this time, with the way he had modified the design of the saddles he’d grown up with in Crom. His customized saddle suited the specific needs of the Southern Continent’s warmer climate, where a hide-made, wood-framed saddle would be far too hot, heavy, and cumbersome for both rider and mount. Piemur had not been in Southern long before he’d realized that a soft saddle pad would work much better. It was easier to make and maintain, it dried more quickly, and it was far less likely to harbor and pesky bugs or biters that could riddle the back of a runner with poxy ooze-sores and painful lumps.

There are two things I want to note in this, because I am not a horse person and wouldn’t know if this is indeed the right way to saddle a horse (and a quick duck out to The Other Wiki suggests that what Piemur has here is a treeless saddle, which is popular here on Terra but may be trading one set of issues for another set). The first is “front pairs of legs,” which suggests to me that we ma have finally found the difference between runners and Pernese horses, because runners have more than four appendages. How that translates into riding style, cadence, and comfort for the rider, I haven’t a clue, but this is a good example of slipping in a detail for the reader that reminds us that “parallel Earth” doesn’t mean “exactly like Earth”. So, maybe the runners we have here are hybrids between the horses that the colonists brought with them and some native species of Pern. Or, perhaps, the horses have all died out because *handwave* (one of the many plagues that has ripped through the populations) and instead, there’s been a concerted breeding and domestication program of a native Pernese life-form, which like all native Pernese life-forms, is six-limbed instead of four, but it turns out most of the craft of horse-raising and saddling translated adequately to these new life forms.

Or it’s a typo and what was really meant was “pair of limbs” and it didn’t get caught. For worldbuilding purposes, the first is more intriguing.

Second, I’m really annoyed that the idea of Randian superpeople has managed to persist into the third author, because an invention like that shouldn’t be the province of a single person and otherwise something that Piemur came up with and hasn’t done anything with other than to saddle Stupid with. I would have expected something like that to be a thing that would have been discovered long before Piemur comes up with it. Because Southern isn’t the only hot climate where a saddle of that nature would be really useful for someone to use. Also, that means Piemur has also managed to get whatever amount of materials he needs to fashion such a saddle, and I’m pretty sure that means he needed the materials to fashion that kind of saddle multiple times, because there’s no way that Piemur would have gotten that design exactly right the first time. (Yes, we know that he has a beast upbringing, but he was also pretty rubbish at instrument making, since they were trying to teach him how to do it while he was going through puberty and getting bullied.) I can’t imagine Piemur the spy having all that much time to source and prototype different saddles until he got one that he liked, and also to then keep the idea to himself instead of trying to make as much profit off it as he could, because the Piemur I remember would more than happily find a way of profiting off of any sort of invention that he came up with. (Or that someone else came up with.)

As things are, we have an extended sequence of Piemur recounting what’s happened so far, but with an eye toward how it affected the time-skipped as they came through. After pointing out that that Southern is in decline, with no queens rising to mate, “that left only the few smaller females, the green dragons, as an inadequate source of release for the virile males.” Which, of course, as fighting dragons, they’ve already ingested firestone and been sterilized, so they can’t be used to repopulate Southern. From what we’ve experienced, and how common it seems to be for there to be crises of too few dragonriders, it seems like it would be a common practice to keep a green or two fertile in case population needs to ramp up in a hurry or something. But, of course, everything that happened in the past has been long since consigned to the memory hole. Plus, since this is aiming toward the idea of the original generation of dragonstuff, I have a feeling there’s not going to be a whole lot of the Todd era mentioned in this book.

While thinking about the situation at Southern, Piemur is really sympathetic to the idea of people who have been time-displaced, asked by their descendants to come fight Thread once again, right after they finished doing so in their own era, and who probably felt like they couldn’t refuse the call again.

In the four centuries that had elapsed between their time and the current Pass, attitudes, customs, and even aspects of the language had changed, and while most of the [time-skipped] had managed to adapt to their new lives, some of them had collided disastrously with the newer generation of weyrfolk, craftspeople, and holders.
Piemur knew all about the numerous clashes and claims of foul play that had occurred while the [time-skipped] resided in the Weyrs of the north, clashes that had grown so frequent that they culminated in a group of more than two hundred [time-skipped] moving to the Southern Continent where they could live by their old ways, unchallenged. But in a cruel twist of fate, while their northern peers embraced a new life for heroes, the Southerners’ inability to accept change not only made them exiles but also tarnished their reputations, turning them from heroes to castoffs.

That’s a solid point, actually. Think about what would have been common practices in the 1600s CE, in whatever society you would like to imagine, and then pluck them out of that context and drop them into our current environment. Even better, take someone who is used to being in charge and being obeyed and who doesn’t have to answer to anyone, and then drop them into this society.

Now, admittedly, since this is still pre-industrial Pern, it’s much more like taking someone from about the 1200s CE to the 1600s CE. In the “progress” form of history, that’s going from solidly in the Middle Ages to the Italian city-states, and so while a lot of things might look the same, like castles and swords, the whole society involved in how those castles and swords get used would have completely changed. It’s also nice that this time around that even Piemur recognizes that, despite their best attempts to keep the society static, there’s been a significant shift, even in the language. Plus, y’know, they’ve gone from being the top of the heap to slightly not the top of the heap and, worse, everyone else is expecting all sorts of different behaviors from them as if they were born and raised in this era, instead of having to relearn it all.

But also, it’s interesting to see this portrayed as a choice the Southerners made, as opposed to being sent that way by Benden, so this Piemur is also a lot more sympathetic to the plight of the time-skipped, even though he’s supposed to be reporting on them back to Robinton. Which seems like a change in characterization from the Piemur from before, as well, so I’m still having trouble trying to figure out how this fits.

So why is Piemur sympathetic to the time-skipped?

Piemur felt a stab of empathy for the [time-skipped] of Southern—he felt like a discard, too. No longer of any use as an apprentice at the Harper Hall, where his young singing voice had been extraordinary until the dreadful day when it broke, Piemur was now, at the age of just seventeen Turns, a castoff, stuck doing odd-jobber tasks until his Master found an alternative role for him. He clenched his jaw and and shook his head slightly, determined not to let his feelings of misfortune engulf him again. He’d been working hard to get past the loss of his voice and had no wish to wallow in self-pity anymore. What’s done is done, he reflected.

Cocowhat by depizan

Hang on, so this is post-Dragondrums Piemur, because Saneter has arrived as an official Harper, and he’s trained him, but yet this Piemur is feeling like an outcast, rather than having felt like he’s found himself again as the wanderer or as the person who’s foiled the great scheme, so I’m really confused about this characterization of him. And where we are in the timeline and how this book relates to the other ones that have Piemur in them. Because at the end of Dragondrums, Piemur had been installed as a Harper and a journeyman and was well on his way to feeling very fulfilled. And past that point, Piemur seems to be entirely okay with mapping the world, or at least not having to deal with other people for a good long while as he got over his crush on Sharra before ending up being part of the favored class of people to deal with the artificial intelligence. So I guess we really are in a Ninth Pass 3.0, one where things are different between Piemur and Southern and there’s more sympathy for the time-skipped.

Getting back to the plot, since he’s curious about what’s going on, Piemur sneaks on to the Hatching Ground to see what’s got everyone so riled up, and there’s a lot of clumps of tissue, feces, and eggshells, strewn about in defiance of the sparklingly-clean Grounds he’s used to seeing for dragons, and then a malformed egg. There’s something clearly not going well for the Southern dragons here. After he leaves the Hatching Grounds, Farli returns to Piemur, and after reviewing the imagery of where T’reb went, Piemur feels it’s urgent enough that he has to ride quickly to there so that he can learn more about the plan that T’reb is trying to hatch. And that’s the end of the first chapter.

So, be prepared for more alternate universe weirdness, I guess. And maybe, just maybe, we can hope for a Pern that’s more favorable to the audience of 2018.

Last time, the orbital observation plan worked, with the observers managing to spot an odd thing above the world, and then the observers went at it with a vengeance against the Thread and killed it completely with no casualties by flaming it into dust right when it sheds its spore casing. Having demonstrated her competence yet again, Xhinna was rewarded with even more responsibility, getting six wings worth’ of blue and green riders to continue implementing this strategy, with bronze, brown, and gold riders as their catchers just in case one of the blues or greens passes out from anoxia due to the thin air of their altitude (air that they are burning up by additionally throwing flame at the Thread.) There have been a few close calls, but catching the dragon, then applying rescue breathing to the rider and a mental kickstart or something like that to the dragon has brought them back to consciousness and life.

And, quite possibly because he has a direct line to the author, but also, if we’re feeling charitable, because he might have managed to extrapolate that being so far out of phase before known falls might mean that there are other unknown falls, or possibly because he might have remembered what day it was when this event happened the first time, K’dan has ordered a bigger guard against the possibility that they might get surprised with a Threadfall of their own.

Sky Dragons, Chapters 19, 20, 21, 22, and the Epilogue: Content Notes: Major Character Death, Bury Your Neuroatypicals,

So, for whatever reason it is that K’dan wanted to order more watch, he turns out right, and there’s a surprise Threadfall over Eastern Isle, which the Skies immediately mobilize to defeat while things are high in the air. Xhinna realizes, while she’s in the middle of fighting it with her wings, that she observed the flashes when she was on the ground at Eastern, and now understands that she’s causing the thing that she had already observed, just so that we have one more time trick to show off before we hit the end chapters. And that specifically, this is the day where she warped herself and the fledglings back in time and across to the Western Isle because of the Thread that caught them without fighting dragons. I would have thought that day would have been seared in her mind, because of the panic that came with it. Or, perhaps, in K’dan’s mind, and that would give him an obvious reason to say “we need to really be on the lookout, because Thread falls tomorrow over where we were before, and we need to be sure we catch all of it.” They don’t actually catch all of it, so some of it burrows, but fire breaks get built to contain the damage, and so this particular Fall gets survived without casualties…almost.

“Danirry?” Xhinna said.
“We couldn’t catch her,” Jirana said, the tremble in her voice suddenly loud in Xhinna’s ears. Why hadn’t she heard it before? Why hadn’t she noticed the girl was crying?
“We tried,” Jirana said, lowering herself to her knees in front of Xhinna. “We tried. Laspanth and I almost caught her but—but we couldn’t—she slid off and we—”
“We lost her,” another voice added from the darkness in stone-cold tones. It was Jepara. She came up through the passage from the High Kitchen and sat next to Jirana, looking at Xhinna, her eyes spangled with tears. “I’m sorry, Xhinna, we tried but—we weren’t fast enough and—”
“Where is she?” Xhinna asked softly, trying to concentrate beyond the sound of Taria’s crying.
“She fell into the sea,” Jirana said. “We couldn’t find her.” She turned to Jepara. “They dived into the water, but they couldn’t find her.” She was silent for a moment, and then offered in solace, “I don’t think they felt any pain. Thy were out of air—they’d fainted and they didn’t even know what had happened.”
Xhinna wrapped a hand around Taria’s and clasped it tight. The green rider clenched her hand in return.
Xhinna looked at Jirana, saw the red-rimmed eyes in the dim evening light, saw the darker look in them, and realized—Jirana had known.
Worse, in the young queen rider’s eyes she could plainly see the future. Without words, Jirana’s sad, miserable expression told her: you’re next.

So the authors had a neuroatypical woman, who was a blue rider, at least crushing on Xhinna, at least on par with R’ney for brilliance, and they decided that she was the woman who was going to die from anoxia. And not only that, but she was going to die and neither her nor her dragon’s body was going to be recovered because they fell into the sea and couldn’t be recovered, somehow, despite Jirana and Jepara being right there to direct them as to where Danirry and her dragon entered the water. Which is not to say the current can’t be strong enough to sweep a dragon and their rider away, but the dragons are pretty big, and while these are not the dragons that have learned telekenesis, these are the dragons that are pretty good about warping to various positions, and surely a “we lost Danirry in the sea!” cry would have summoned dragons to find her, especially if she was unconscious at the time, and a whole bunch of dragons would be trying very hard to retrieve her.

But instead, at the end of Chapter 19, the authors have decided that the character to die has to be the brilliant woman, so that everyone else understands what kind of serious business this is. How do I know this?

Chapter 20: Farewell To A Dreamer

“Now we know the worst,” T’mar said as the Weyrleaders gathered in the Council Room of Sky Weyr’s stone hall early the next morning.

Yeah. It’s not quite a fridging, since her death isn’t for increasing manpain or getting the characters to go after a villain, but it’s definitely a choice to kill her, when there are so many other characters, nameless redshirts (or blueshirts and greenshirts in this case) or only-there-once characters, like Davissa, who could be used as the sacrificial fodder, if someone really did have to die to demonstrate how serious this problem is. As if the two previous situations where rescue technique had to be used didn’t help with that.

So, yes, Danirry’s dead, killed by the narrative. And I have the strong feeling that this was a choice, rather than something more like “threw a dart, Danirry’s name came up” for something like this.

Chapter 20 starts with the council talking about how hard they had to fight the burrow that landed but also that having this second point in time (that at least some of them should have remembered) means they’ve figured out what their schedule is for when Thread drops are and now they won’t be surprised again. Having achieved this task, K’dan suggests breaking up the Sky Wings and sending them back so they can “spread the knowledge and forget their pain.” H’nez (who has come a long way from the pompous ass his was, apparently, all credit to Jeila for no-nonsensing him until he changed) says that there’s always going to be casualties (which were, even though it was Danirry, much fewer than usually happens in the traditional method of fighting Thread). But K’dan says

“But to have them freeze to death or die by asphyxiation?” He shook his head. “That’s not honorable.”

And, as I’m sure that the Asshole would tell us, honor is much more important than anything else, when it comes to dragonriders.

What happens after this is basically a large outpouring of grief for Danirry’s death, reminding us that Xhinna (and Taria) agreed to raise the kids of any rider who died. Xhinna also wants R’ney to come live with her and Taria, and to think of them as family. (R’ney and Danirry’s child, Davinna, gets spirited off quickly by Mirressa to make sure she has enough milk, since she’s hungry and R’ney isn’t exactly the best option for breastfeeding.) The wing deliberately tries to make sure R’ney is looked after, and that Danirry will be remembered, since she’s saved the planet twice, and eventually Jepara prevails on Xhinna to make it a much bigger affair than the simple thing that Xhinna wanted.

And so now, as the sun matched the point at which Danirry’s final lifesaving cry had been uttered, the six Weyrs were all gathered, their wings arrayed in Flights and the Flights stacked on top of each other as the queens of all flew out to sea, their path lit by the dragons of all five Weyrleaders.
In the center of the V formation a single bright light—a torch to mark the lost rider and dragon—was seen, falling to the sea and sizzling out as it hit the water.
Then, in a brilliant burst of light, all the oldest dragons breathed fire into the air.
And then it was dark, quiet, and cold.
Weyr by Weyr they departed for their homes, until only the Sky wings remained stubbornly behind.
Rest well, blue rider, Xhinna thought, knowing her words would be echoed by Tazith to all the dragons surrounding them. You’ve earned it.

And that’s Chapter 20, with the solemn ceremony for the first (and, peeking ahead, almost only) fatality of the Skies.

Chapter 21: Feast for the Fallen

This chapter opens up with J’keran greeting Xhinna with a cask of beer. The first lines of the chapter are “K’dan approved it,” so we know that this isn’t illicit brew, and J’keran vouches for it being okay by saying it’s “Guaranteed to do the job and no more.” And, basically, for the first part of this chapter, Xhinna and a lot of the leadership gets blitzed. Which then leads to the second scene, where Xhinna has a hangover and Jirana and Jepara admit to being specifically the people who were to make sure that Xhinna never had an empty cup and to make sure that when she inevitably passed out, that she was carried to somewhere where she could sleep it off. Unfortunately, that hasn’t helped the mood all that much on the permanent. And they’ve still got nine months before they can warp back to the future, and there are a lot of tragedies that they’re going to feel along the way, like Lorana losing Arith and The Asshole getting his entire weyr stuck in the time knot that then causes grief for everyone. Which leads to an interlude about how the Asshole’s son didn’t come back when the rest of his Weyr did. We know what happened to D’lin, he’s the rider entombed that later generations will use as a warning about bad warping, but this prompts sympathy, that it “Must have been hard on D’gan” [ASSHOLE] to lose his son, and you know, that makes more sense the more I think about it, because someone can still be an asshole and you can have sympathy for their child dying or vanishing completely.

So, now that they’re back to being sober, the Skies have hatched a plan to go fight a Threadfall without their leader actually going anywhere, under the guise of taking part in training, but because there’s a lot of moving parts in this training exercise, they can’t really be expected to have visuals on everyone all the time, now can they? And so, there will be an entire fighting group that disappears to fight the next Threadfall (so continuity stays preserved) that Xhinna officially doesn’t know exists, but they need an additional wingsecond to make it work. And who presents themselves as a candidate but J’keran? And, at this point, having killed Danirry, it’s apparently time to redeem J’keran.

His life was forfeit to her and she’d given it to the Weyr and, more specifically, to Jirana, whose Mrreow-claw injuries had nearly killed her. Since then, J’keran had slowly transformed from the young girl’s guard to the guard of all the Hatching Grounds for all six Weyrs—and he took his duty very seriously. Since that day when Jirana had touched her queen Laspanth still in the shell and guided the dragonriders to destroy all the ravaging tunnel snakes, not a single egg had been lost. Much—perhaps most—due to J’keran.
Xhinna could sense R’ney’s outrage and Taria’s…challenge—it was not contempt—as clearly as though both were dragons. She understood R’ney’s feelings and spent a few moments coming to grips with Taria’s odd emotions before nodding to the man who stood before her, projecting strength, honesty, and—unless she missed her guess—pure, unadulterated terror.
“Your duty’s done,” Xhinna told him. “You have earned back your honor and your life.” Her eyes strayed to Jirana, who was bouncing on her feet, her throat moving with unspoken words, her eyes silently urging Xhinna on. “If they Weyrwoman is satisfied—”
“More than satisfied!” Jirana cried jubilantly.
“Then, with the Weyrleader’s permission,” Xhinna told J’keran, “I’d be honored to have you fly with us.”

Why J’keran for this? Why does he get a redemption arc at all in this? The attempted murder bit is still a big thing, and even though he’s been an effective and excellent guard, and sober all of this time, it’s all been basically off-screen, and now we’re supposed to believe that, basically, because we haven’t seen him but for tiny bits here and there, he’s changed himself completely to the point where they feel comfortable removing all of his restrictions and forgiving him fully. Which is not something that is impossible here, but because we haven’t seen him grow, we didn’t see him start out as someone who was more embarrassed at his shame and slowly became someone who did care and took his responsibilities seriously, it’s hard for me to believe that’s what’s happened here. It also galls me particularly hard that J’keran, who has done all sorts of bad things, and would have been a really good candidate for being sent on a run that had a high chance of death, gets redeemed and Danirry, who has been smart and the equal of R’ney and bisexual as hell gets killed to signify the difficulty of what’s going to happen. I’m bitter about this.

With this clandestine Threadfall attack arranged, Xhinna is on site. Mirressa’s dragon tumbles, which makes Xhinna realize that there’s nobody up observing things, so she pops up to space to try and find the Threadfall, which is described as “a line of what looked like large pebbles or stones, but dirtier” when it’s spotted. Knowing where to go, Xhinna calls forth the cavalry and sends herself and Tazith to go fight Thread. Something goes wrong for them, though.

A moment later, he and Xhinna were surprised when he opened his huge jaws and no flame burst forth. Warm, the blue said to her.
Xhinna blinked in surprise. Her teeth weren’t chattering anymore. She was warm, as if she were resting in a hot tub after a long day’s flying and flaming. Idly she wondered why the air was so warm. And why didn’t Tazith’s flame burst around the Thread?
It was getting dark, too. The colors were going gray and darkness was closing around from behind her. But she was warm, Tazith was warm. It was nice being warm.
And then the darkness closed in.

So, with all of that teeth chattering, I would be just as inclined to say that Xhinna’s suffering from hypothermia, rather than running out of oxygen, because one of the signs of lacking the appropriate amount of heat in the body is feeling like you have too much heat, instead. And yes, once it gets too pronounced, people do lose consciousness and potentially die if they’re not warmed up properly or left to continue dying. Of course, being Pern, they don’t have the scientific knowledge of how to do such a thing, but if necessary, something would get handwaved in, or it would be one of the secret forms of knowledge that somehow managed to survive so it could be useful here.

Chapter 22: The Kiss of Hope

None of that gets used, though, and I think we’re supposed to believe that Xhinna did a garden-variety passing out that requires rescue breathing.

Someone was crying. They’d been crying a long time because they were in that awful, horrible heaving stage where they could barely breathe and when they did, all they could do was sob some more.
It was cold. The ground was cold. She was freezing.
Someone was kissing her.
“Breathe!” she heard someone beg. “Breathe, please breathe!”
Whoever was kissing her was doing a poor job. Xhinna tried to respond and then—
“Ewwww! Yuk!” another voice cried and the lips were gone as the voice spat, “Ptah, yuk! She tried to kiss me!”
“Move away!” Another voice, the one that had ordered her to breathe, said irritably, and then there were lips on hers once more, lips that she knew, and suddenly Xhinna realized that she was alive, lying on cold, hard stone, and that the first kisser had been—
[…Jepara, as we are about to find out…]
“Ptui, ptui, ptui!” Jepara said, still trying disgustedly to remove the last vestiges of her life-giving kiss from her lips. She eyed Xhinna and said darkly, “Don’t ever expect me to do that again!”
Xhinna heard a gasp and looked up to see Jirana launching herself at her.
“You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive!” Jirana cried at the top of her lungs, grabbing Xhinna tightly around the middle and kissing her madly with relief. Jirana pulled back, her face crumpling as she said, “You were blue, you were dead. I saw it.”
“And now you’ve seen me breathing the life back into her,” Jepara said sourly. She looked down at Xhinna and ordered, “Don’t ever make me have to do that again!”

And so Jirana turns out not to be wrong, as such, but for the first time in this entire book, her Sight turned out not to have given her a complete picture. And, I suspect, the author is using Jepara as the character for the not-romantic kissing, because Jepara has been characterized throughout as someone who is gruff, grumpy, and crabby, but actually cares a lot about the people she’s with. And, I suspect, because the author finds it funny for the always-het gold rider to be completely grossed out at the idea of being kissed by a woman.

Having finished the final setpiece of Xhinna cheating death, we’re told that both her and Mirressa are perfectly fine, and Xhinna, Jepara, and Taria order Jirana to start talking more about her visions, which Jirana says “can’t break time” over, but the others insist that they’ll keep Jirana’s secrets, with Xhinna saying “If it worries you, try me first.”

Epilogue: Eight Months Later

Having cleared the last hurdle for this book with Xhinna nearly dying, the rest of the time passes without major incident, and the only other fatality, Cliova, also dies of altitude sickness, which prompts Xhinna to change her tactics so that everyone actually stays with their catchers all the time, instead of haring off every now and then. Everything gets wound down properly, the last hatching happen, and many of the dragons have already been transported to Igen for their eventual assignments. All that’s left, of course, is for the last signal to be given, and K’dan has chosen for Xhinna to give the final go, as one last swipe at her.

“He’s twitting you and he’s right,” the ex-dragonrider shouted in her ear. He waved a hand down at the thousands of dragons below them. “It’s your right—you’ve earned it, dragonrider.”
Xhinna groaned, then joined in the ex-dragonrider’s bellow of laughter.
You’d think, Xhinna mused, that by now I’d learn to give in gracefully.
Never, Tazith replied.
Very well, Xhinna said, taking one last, long, wistful look at the broom trees and the Weyr that had given them life. Let’s go.
As one, on her command, the dragons of the Western Isle blinked out between to return, triumphant, to the fight to save Pern.

And that’s the end of this book, with the dragon plague handled, the time knot unraveled, the Skies triumphant, and all of this about to be officially swept under the rug and never mentioned again.

We don’t know what happens with the politics that was happening when Fiona warped back, and whether Fiona will be better able to press her claim to Telgar when she re-arrives with thousands of dragons. And all the records of the women riders, despite there being hundreds of them, possibly thousands of them, are just going to disappear and not be thought of again, apparently, until Mirrim reintroduces them to the idea of women riding fighting dragons many hundreds of years later. This still feels like there was probably at least one more book planned, to have one more crisis appear. Maybe to deal with the Asshole at Telgar trying to reassert himself, or that he causes all sorts of trouble with the people around his Weyr and he has to be removed in some non-obvious way. But, this book having been completed, and the primary author dead, this was the end of the Dragonriders of Pern.

At least, when this series of examinations started, this was the end of the Dragonriders of Pern. Which would have been a lot of a feeling of incompleteness, like many things are when the author dies before the series is completed. That said, Todd had already attempted a series of his own, so there would have been plenty of opportunity to try and get this era done and set in some way that felt a little less “and they warped back into a terrible situation with active Threadfall, an actively hostile Weyrleader, and a completely terrible governmental system, but at least they finally had enough dragons to ride out the Threadfall.” But that doesn’t happen. Instead, Pern stops, and turns itself over to the care of its fans, even with the menacing part that says only the children of Anne are allowed to write in the world of Pern. And then, six years later, the other official writer of Pern produces a novel, so there’s still one more book to go.

I am really very happy to see the Todd era come to an end, and, having gone through it, I can see how many fans of Pern would pretend this era never existed, because of all the ways that it messed with the continuity established in the Ninth Pass books, the decisions to play up the youngness of the protagonists and the decisions and situations they are choosing to engage with, especially regarding dragonrider and watch-wher mating flights, and the incredible events that happen, as well as the development of time-traveling powers and scientific achievements, that all simply vanish into the dustbin of history, rather than being specifically passed down from rider to rider over time. It has not been a good era, especially for gender things, even though there’s all of these women riders around, because there’s a lot of hypercompetence required of them, and none of the authors seem to believe in the idea of a lesbian being solely interested in women, nor for economic issues, as the weaknesses of vassalage feudalism are on full display, on addition to the cruelty that comes from people with power being able to arbitrarily designate other people as untouchable and excluded from society. If this were approached with care and intent on how the Pern concept would be nightmarish if brought into reality, I would have said the Todd books would have succeeded mightily as deconstructive works, but they don’t show that kind of self-awareness.

And we still don’t know who Xelinan’s father is, although I suspect we’re supposed to conclude it’s R’ney, because he’s fathered so many children, and he’s one of the few dudes who would not be strutting around the camp bragging about how he nailed Xhinna.

In any case, we’ll start Dragon’s Code next week.

Last time, more of the details of the orbital plot were revealed to us, and we had our first near-fatality when Mirressa and her dragon passed out and had to be revived with rescue breathing and the combined will of other riders and their dragons to restart hearts from stoppage. And while this was a potentially preventable affair (and there were immediate measures to prevent a repeat of passing out), Jirana confided in Xhinna that there is much more disaster to come, and Xhinna was almost able to have a real moment of empathy for Jirana based on them both being people in exceptional situations and having the entire weight of the survival of the Isle placed on them more than once. The narrative, however, intervened and chose, instead, to suggest that Jirana is somehow being spoiled by all the attention she’s received before going on a long tangent about children, including showcasing that Xhinna seems to have adopted Fiona’s policies about having lots of kids in her and Taria’s bed, even if Taria is less sanguine about the matter.

Sky Dragons: Chapter Nineteen: A Flame In The Void: Content Notes: Standing on someone’s anxiety triggers,

Chapter Nineteen opens up with J’riz coming to talk with Xhinna. He’s brought klah because they’re sending up the first serious orbital observation rotation this morning. While Xhinna hopes that she manages to sneak out of the bed without disturbing anyone, she’s wrong, but Taria and the others eventually settle back down. Early morning waking time settled, Xhinna arrives at the infirmary, where Mirressa and Bekka are having a discussion about who’s going to look after the children while there are dragons up in the sky. Which eventually resolves in a particularly Pernese way.

“Actually,” Xhinna interposed smoothly. “I’ve already arranged with Fiona.”
Mirressa’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and she started to protest, but Xhinna cut her off. “It’s not as though she doesn’t owe us, after all.”
“But—”
“You, in particular,” Xhinna cut across the green rider’s incipient objection.
“She’s right, and you know it,” Bekka said. She smiled at the green rider, adding, “And why do you think she’s used you so unmercifully to sit her brood if she didn’t intend return payment?”
Mirressa’s objections died on her lips as she digested Bekka’s words.
“And it’s not as if she won’t pester my mother or Aressil or Colfet or any one of a dozen others to help at it,” J’riz added with a grin.

The particular Pernese way, in this case, being that someone decides that since they’ve been used sufficiently, they’re just going to drop a problem in the lap of the person that’s been using them, without giving them the opportunity to say no. That Fiona is sufficiently able to get others to do what she wants anyway increases their willingness to ditch her, but it’s interesting to see this done without any apparent concern that Fiona will use her gold rider status to exact revenge on them or to escalate after this particular revenge is given. Fiona won’t, because she’s a designated protagonist and Good Person, and if the prediction holds true, she’ll shuck all the kids she doesn’t want to look after on other people, telling them they’ve been volunteered for the job. Given how other dragonriders have been about having things dropped in their lap, depending on what color the person doing the dropping is, I feel like this particular strategy only is going to succeed because it’s Fiona. The Asshole At Telgar certainly wouldn’t be so cheerful or accepting of such a thing were it to happen to him, even if it weren’t also childcare. Appealing to a higher-colored rider’s sense of fairness always seems like a risky proposition to me, especially given what we’ve seen of how the bronze and gold riders can be about what they think is fair.

There’s also some reinforcement of the idea that Bekka likes people who are going to be brats to her.

“I made the boy get it [firestone, in this case],” Bekka said, nodding toward J’riz, who tried his best to look put upon. With any other person, J’riz’s brilliant green eyes and miserable look would have at least won an “Ahhh!” of sympathy, but Bekka merely swatted him on the arm. “Guide them up—I don’t need their broken necks to deal with on top of everything else.”
“As you say, Weyrwoman,” J’riz returned with a low and overly obsequious bow. Bekka snarled at him and he took off like a wounded Meeyu, Xhinna and Mirressa trailing behind, neither of them taken in by the act.

And, of course, our call-back to the idea that J’riz is a heartbreaker who is going to use his cute to the greatest advantage that he has, even if those who are wise to him are less likely to fall for his charms. Seriously, Bekka has the worst bedside manner. But she seems to find people that enjoy working with her and that she seems to enjoy teasing and being the disciplinarian for. Whatever dynamic works for you. Although I kind of wish the authors would have everybody being old enough where this could be made into something more intentional and an adult decision, rather than it being all subtext and for everyone’s ages to have to be thought about rather prominently, because so many of them are not of age to make those decisions as adults, at least to the Terran readership, even if they’re probably well past the marriageable age on Pern.

So! The first day of the orbital tour is, apparently, following the sun around the planet, using the Dawn Sisters as the first reference point and then handing off the coordinate picture to the next group to come up and look, and basically trying to stay squarely in the middle of wherever the sun is shining on the planet. Since Xhinna’s shift goes first, they use the Dawn Sisters as their reference point of where to jump to for observations, going up at sunup and staying there for their shift. The handoff for the sun chase goes smoothly, there’s a lot of post-observation awe and chatter about what they’ve just done, and Jirana and her queen group, as well as plenty of the other queen riders (apparently on orders from Bekka) burst in to demand their turn to go up and see the planet from orbit. Which gets handled relatively quickly and smoothly.

The narrative then says that for this unscheduled trip,

They arrived near the Dawn Sisters when they were midway across the Western Isle

surprising the observers on shift, and then, after this jaunt,

At the start of the next watch, Xhinna and Mirressa got their image from the last pair of Jirelli’s wing and went up to the Dawn Sisters

and then later, there’s this:

They can’t see us, can they? Mirressa relayed through her Valcanth to Xhinna.
The Dawn Sisters are bright lights in the sky, Xhinna relayed back by way of answer.

which violates the idea that the Dawn Sisters are in a geostationary orbit or any sort, and contradicts earlier books that specifically say the Dawn Sisters do not move across the sky. I understand why this kind of mistake would be made, because, after all, the name “geostationary” makes someone think that the crafts aren’t moving, but it’s about relative movement in orbit, rather than absolute movement. The sort of thing that is easy for us to discover on the World Wide Web at this point in time, using The Other Wiki, for example, as it even has graphics that demonstrate that geostationary orbits are always staring down at the same patch of land. So, as described, this plan definitely does not work. It’s simple enough to fix, by removing the “midway across the Western Isle” part so that Xhinna and company pop up where the Dawn Sisters are to do their observations, or to change the narrative so that Xhinna and company use the imagery provided by the last observation shift to pop up next to the current ones and startle them slightly by being there, and substituting “Rukbat” or “the sun” for the Dawn Sisters as the bright object that’s in the sky. Ground observers wouldn’t be able to see the dragons in the sky if the dragons always put themselves between the planet and the sun, causing a tiny eclipse with their bodies, unless the observer knew exactly what to point their telescope at and used a proper polarizing filter so that looking at the sun didn’t fry their eyeballs.

And then we have information that should have been relayed much earlier, when I was going on for a significant amount of time about how everyone on the ground should be able to successfully calculate the time in which their Threadfalls begin, if they know when Threadfall begins.

“We need to start keeping an eye out for Thread,” Xhinna said to Avarra and Jerilli later as the watch riders took post with the dawn over Telgar Weyr.
“I thought we had a month at least,” Avarra protested.
“We can’t be certain,” Xhinna said. “We know there were dustfalls before the Fall over Benden, Bitra, and Tillek.”

Which would not have been all that hard to include earlier so that the reader was properly informed that there was variability as to when Thread actually started, necessitating this orbital observation plan in the first place, rather than waiting until the plan was underway to provide justification for its existence. Blargh.

With one final wrongness about the Dawn Sisters, phase two of the plan, which makes much more sense and would potentially work to spot Thread, is unveiled.

“So when we’ve followed the Dawn Sisters back here, what’s next?” Avarra asked.
“Then we start our proper watch,” Xhinna told her. “We’ll need a watch stationary over Benden from sunrise to sunset, same with Telgar and High Reaches—”
“That should let us see everything there,” Jerilli agreed.
“And we’ll keep the same length of watch here over the Great Isles.”
“We’ll have fourteen hours over the Northern Continent, but only eleven over our own,” Jerilli noted. When Avarra grunted in confusion, Jerilli explained, “We only get eight hours of sunlight in one place; there’s six hours’ difference between Benden and High Reaches, whereas we’ve only got three at best between the easternmost of Eastern and the westernmost of Western.”

At which point I scream in aggravation, because not only did we not have the information about the dustfalls earlier in time, we didn’t have an indication that the time zones had already been figured out and/or know, both of which would have curbed several of the objections I had to the plan as originally discussed and decided upon. We know they don’t use them, but right now, a beta and an editor really would have helped put the correct information in the correct places so the whole thing would flow better and not contain glaring errors about the ships in orbit around Pern.

Moving on.

Because there’s a time discrepancy, there’s also a shift discrepancy that needs to be ironed out. Xhinna says she’s open for suggestions, which everyone else takes to mean “I have an idea already,” and they’re not wrong. It happens to be that Xhinna and the other wingleaders agree about staying up a little bit longer for each shift and for staggering things properly so there’s always a new pair up to check on the old ones and make sure they’re not extending themselves past their ability. With that ironed out, the observers settle into their schedules to wait. And very quickly (within six days) become bored of staring at the same spot for hours upon end without anything changing. Right after grumbling that there might be a mere nineteen days to go before the first known Threadfall, there’s a Threadfall reported over Bitra, and Xhinna and company pop up to the orbiting space to confirm what’s going on.

Xhinna quickly found Bitra. There, dark smudges seemed to mar the landscape. She looked around, saw the rest of her wing form around her, and called to her blue, Take us there!

And it is, in fact, Thread that is falling, but they’ve spotted it before it fully unspools itself into the silver rain, which means their altitude is too high to effectively ignite the air and the Thread, so Danirry tells the dragons to fall with it and then unleash their flame on the Thread as it makes the transition from space spore to deadly organism, which is effective. And, for the first time in basically all of these books, we get to see the transition.

Xhinna looked at the Thread, so tantalizingly close, deadly, threatening. The clumps were changing, glowing with a heat of their own and—extending, growing, streaming into—
Thread! Tazith bellowed, bursting forth with another—belch of firestone—this time it lit and the streaming Thread in front of him caught fire, crisped, and charred into nothingness

Having figured out the effective altitude to wallop Thread at, Xhinna calls Avarra and Jeilli to her and the wings roast the Thread completely, everyone extremely happy that they’re finally getting actual combat practice and breaking the routine they have otherwise been suffering from.

That said, apparently “dark smudges” over somewhere is enough to call down the alarm as to what is being sought after. Everyone who has seen Thread before has seen it as the silvery rain that it becomes after the heat of atmospheric entry causes the spores to shed their space travel covers, so I would have expected the call to be much more “Is this Thread?” rather than “This is Thread!” I am entirely okay with the orbital observers going “That’s not the usual weather patterns, those aren’t the usual clouds, we should go investigate that,” but unless someone has already seen it transform, or someone magically already knows what Thread looks like before it unspools, I can’t really believe they have that kind of certainty.

After jubilation about effectively crushing Thread for the first time, when K’dan and Fiona come by and suggest that perhaps they should report in about what happened, Fiona makes a statement that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

Danirry’s Kiarith reported to everyone, and you knew that Xhinna and her—ahem—consorts were going to fight the Thread.

Okay, so who’s present at this hugging session? Xhinna, R’ney, Davissa, Danirry. Of these four, Xhinna’s connected to R’ney through Taria and the children, to Danirry because Danirry, we’ve been told, has a monster crush on Xhinna (and possibly has become intimate with R’ney as well, given that Xhinna blushed when she interrupted them together?) and Davissa is just part of the wing. I don’t believe she has any connection to Xhinna in any intimate way. If there are any jokes about who’s consorting with whom, it should be focused on R’ney, since he’s the one with the demonstrated, or at least insinuated, big ball of polyamory going on. Instead, Fiona makes this crack about Xhinna and insinuates that she’s the one who’s got a partner in every weyr. For this to be seen as a much more joking affair, I feel like Xhinna should swipe back with something like “I learned from the best, clearly,” so that the reader understands there’s no malice in either tease or response.

As it is, Danirry is over the moon about how her plan worked perfectly. However,

“Uh, dear…,” R’ney prompted.
At this, Danirry seemed to realize that she’d left a few important words out—a habit of hers that her fellow blues and greens had come to accept, but which was foreign to most others.
[…Danirry starts her explanation, but it’s not particularly illuminating to the others, apparently…]
“Please explain, blue rider, and assume that we’ve never heard what you’re talking about before,” Fiona said.
“Because we haven’t,” R’ney added, reaching forward to poke the blue rider affectionately on the shoulder. “Once again, dear heart, you forget what you haven’t told us.”
“Oh,” Danirry said, only slightly repentant.

(Okay, so yes, clearly, Danirry and R’ney are a thing together, thank you narrative, and also, see above about how R’ney should be getting the harem joke.)

As I recall, from earlier chapters, this was a thing that R’ney also did, so I’m kind of happy that two people with compatible neuroatypicalities are doing well together and are being supportive of each other. Although I think that R’ney could probably do a little bit better in the supportive department. I’m also glad that the people who are around Danirry have adjusted to this particular thing, and it doesn’t seem to be affecting anyone’s ability to do things or their opinion of Danirry.

That said, Danirry’s explanation is a little strange to the Terran audience.

“Well, it’s just that I thought—well, Thread burns, right?”
K’dan nodded slowly.
“And it grows; it eats things,” Danirry continued. “So it’s something that lives and needs air.” She glanced around, her eyes darting quickly toward K’dan and Fiona before coming to rest on Xhinna as she took a deep breath. “So I figure that it lives, then while it’s in the cold of space it must be dead—”
“Dead?” K’dan repeated, his brows furrowed.
“Asleep, like a seed out of the ground,” Danirry said. “Inert, if you will.”
“I see,” K’dan said.
“So when it falls, something has to wake it, as it were, or it would still be a seed when it hit the soil, wouldn’t it?”
“We’re with you,” R’ney said encouragingly.
“So I figured that when it woke up would be when it was most vulnerable, when it would be smallest and easiest to destroy,” Danirry continued. She looked K’dan full in the eyes as she concluded, “Just when it was spooling out into Thread. Just where there was enough air to slow it down, enough air that we could flame it into dust.”
“By the first Egg!” Fiona swore in awe. She glanced to K’dan.
“It worked?” K’dan asked.
“Perfectly,” Xhinna said, moving to Danirry’s side and hugging the blue rider’s shoulders. She glanced toward Avarra and Jerilli. “Not a dragon or rider injured, and no Thread reached the ground.”

This feels like one of those times where someone who has a scientific mind is trying to explain a concept that she doesn’t actually have the words for. Because it would be a lot easier for her to say “Thread is in a dormant phase until the friction from atmospheric entry removes the spore casing, at which point it becomes vulnerable to dragon fire,” but if she said that, she’d have to go back and explain all of those things all the same, I suspect. And it’s an interesting property of Thread, apparently, that as it loses the casing, it becomes a lot more subject to drag and thermals and other such things. Describing it as “rain” has been a bit of a misnomer throughout all of these books, but I suppose it’s the best thing they have, a rain with clumps that’s affected by wind so it blows in unexpected directions.

Anyway, having discovered a new point to start making calculations from, the entire Western Isle group is a-flutter that they’re way out of sync with what they’ve already experienced, before Danirry suggests that the reason everything is so out of phase, and there’s only dustfall instead of Threadfall is because the Sky Dragons have already cleaned it up using their upper-atmosphere techniques. Which, again, appear to work perfectly well because…Thread doesn’t behave erratically when it’s coming out of the spore shell? Because they’re high enough up that there isn’t any wind? I don’t know, but it sounds like this technique can be used to destroy Thread in neat rows or ways without risking the dragonriders to Thread. So long as they hit the timing and altitude windows correctly, which everyone is very enthusiastic about and resources are rearranged and reallocated to make sure there’s enough catching dragons for the Skies to attempt this new technique multiple times in the future.

Before we go forward to this plan of running several secret high-altitude Thread destruction, Fiona and K’dan have more…teasing isn’t the right word, but it’s close, because what they’re doing is standing hard again on how much Xhinna doesn’t want attention, even if she’s really competent at what she’s being asked to do. (Because all of Xhinna’s life experiences to this point have told her that getting attention is negative attention.)

“Flightleader?” Xhinna exclaimed when Fiona and K’dan sprang their latest surprise on her the next morning in the High Kitchen.
“Well, ‘Weyrleader’ seems a bit much,” K’dan told her, barely able to keep the grin off his face.
“Although Flightleader is an insult, because you’ll be in charge of two Flights,” Fiona added. She turned to K’dan, suggesting “Over-leader?”
“No,” Xhinna said, raising her hands in horror. She knew how persuasive Fiona could be, especially with the Weyrleader. Well, actually, pretty much with all the Weyrleaders. It was absolutely necessary to nip this in the bud. “No, anything but that!”
“So, Flightleader it is,” Fiona said triumphantly.
“Still,” K’dan began, clearly enjoying himself, “it’s not quite right, because you’ll be in charge of six wings.”
“Flightleader will do fine,” Xhinna muttered. Shaking her head, she looked across the table at the two of them. Settling her gaze on Fiona, she accused, “You set me up for this.”
“Well, of course,” Fiona agreed easily. “Although far be it from me to suggest that perhaps you actually earned it—”
“No, that would be my job,” K’dan inserted. He grinned at Xhinna. “You’ve got all the qualifications. And, you’ll note, the other Weyrleaders all saw fit to send their best—”
“And not a bronze among them,” Xhinna noted tartly.
“Well, that’s not fair,” Fiona said, her light tone evaporating. “Jirana makes too much sense with her notion of catching falling dragons—”
[…they point out that it has worked when needed, but because of how much help is needed to catch bigger dragons, they’ll stick with the lighter ones in the Sky Wings, which Fiona has also just sprung on Xhinna…”]
“Sky Wings?” Xhinna interrupted.
“Well, I don’t think Space Wings makes much sense,” Fiona continued, thoroughly enjoying herself, “as you’re not really up in space for all that long, after all.”
“Sky Wings,” Xhinna repeated with a long sigh of resignation. She was rewarded with chuckles from the Weyrwoman and Weyrleader, which is what she’d intended.

Specifically, they’re assholes because they should know by now that promoting Fiona and giving her new titles and new names for things is exactly the worst thing to do to her, and they are clearly taking delight in doing this, rather than doing something like this with less flash and fanfare and more asking Xhinna if she’s comfortable with this thing and then just assigning people as needed to her. But it seems like Fiona and K’dan both enjoy torturing Xhinna with these kinds of rewards for her competence that only increase her profile and make her even more of a target for people who think that women shouldn’t be doing any of these things. And increases Xhinna’s pressure on herself, as well. If the authors were trying to show us how terrible these previous protagonists have become in the intervening time, they did an excellent job. After outlining the new plan and the new duties, Fiona can’t help but tease Xhinna one final time.

“Catching wings,” Fiona murmured approvingly and then, with a cry that startled everyone she shouted “Sky wings! Skyleader!”
Xhinna raced out before Fiona could formally pin the appelation on her.

Because, of course, you can’t have this sort of thing happening unless you have a name for it and you can spread that name around as much as possible so that everyone knows it and uses it. As opposed to, say, what the actual situation on the ground might be for this kind of thing:

Reflecting on the numerous times she and Jirana had ridden in Search, she knew that the odds were more than even that any blue or green rider would be female. The older riders, in a distinct but revered minority, found the change both difficult and pleasing.
“At least I don’t have to look at your old scarred face all the time!” was a common refrain among some of them. Several had been skeptical initially, believing that women wouldn’t be up to the rigors of riding a fighting dragon, but Xhinna had been at the forefront of dismantling that concern. Still, she found herself having to fight the fear that these new wingleaders and their wings had been assigned to her because they weren’t good enough to be considered good enough to fight in “proper” wings.
When she thought about it, though, she realized that if fighting Thread at the heights worked as well as it had the first time, it would be these six wings that would bear the brunt of fighting Thread for the foreseeable future—not the “proper” wings flying in the thicker, warmer air near the ground. So it would be up to Xhinna to be sure that these wings could meet the challenge.
All the faces were familiar to her. They looked at her expectantly and almost with awe. She’d Searched them; she’d assured them as young girls and women that they could become dragonriders, that there was a hope for them far beyond the dank confines of their dying cotholds and fallow fields. She, Jirana, Taria, and a few others had been the ones to warn them for the first time about between, to bring them forward in time from the end of the Plague years to the lush Western Isle where they had begun new lives.

So, yet again, we have the situation where Xhinna is not wrong in thinking that the men riders are going to think that the women riders aren’t able to hack it and they’ll have to keep continuously proving it to hem, even though they’ve already been proving that they are able to do things. This is one of those things where I think the authors didn’t intend for their novel to match the reality of their readers, but they nailed it and have been doing so perfectly, repeatedly, to the point that a reader or editor who’s a man might start complaining about how it’s unrealistic that the women keep having to prove themselves and that the men characters seem to be more interested in how pretty the women riders look rather than their competence. Even though it’s completely realistic that this keeps happening and they keep having to do it and that K’dan and Fiona are being completely useless about it, instead coming up with new titles and springing all of this on Fiona for their own amusement while they put a significant amount of new pressure and expectations on her. (We knew K’dan was useless, but Fiona apparently has become the same, and a reader who wanted to could probably claim that the author very specifically decided to make Fiona useless now that she has her children with her again, because gender roles and being a “proper” Weyrwoman or other such bullshit.)

In any case, Xhinna meets with all of the people who are going to lead the wings and help Xhinna achieve the orbital bombardment plan, learns that all the things she needs to plan for have been planned for, save Jepara and Jirana wanting to participate in the flaming plan instead of the catching plan, but the narrative tells us it’s not completely important and is resolved quickly, before moving on to a scene where Jirana gets clingy, Xhinna gets aggravated at her clinginess, and the two of them go off to talk alone, where Xhinna correctly deduces that Jirana is being this way because she’s seen Xhinna die and is trying to spend as much time with her as possible. So Xhinna tells Jirana that she should talk with Seban, since he understands things like death, and for once in the narrative, Jirana admits she could be wrong about this, and Xhinna chooses not to give any credence to that idea.

“I could be wrong,” Jirana said in a small voice. “I hope I’m wrong.”
Xhinna wasn’t sure how much credence to put in the young Seer’s hopes. Thus far, she’d been right about everything.

Because now the drama is in Jirana being right, rather than in Jirana being wrong, so now everyone is certain that Jirana can’t be wrong about anything. This, I think, is also the first time that Jirana has expressed the possibility that she might be wrong, and it’s specifically because she doesn’t want to lose Xhinna.

Right after this, K’dan arrives and wants to double the watch because he’s worried they’re still going to get caught out by Thread falling out of phase. He’s going to be right, making him useful, for once, and Xhinna is going to recognize that a thing that she saw earlier on in her own timeline is something that she’s caused to happen. However, we’re going to wait to talk about the fallout from that particular event until next week, when, hopefully, we finally finish this book and the second author’s run.

Additionally, the catching wings that are going to be on standby are going to contain all of the green queens. As was brought to our attention in the comments earlier, the technique of spotting tunnel snakes is something that can be taught, but there’s still some worry about whether or not this last clutch of eggs is going to be okay if all the green queens are on catch duty. Fiona reassures Xhinna that there’s no need for worry on that, between the guards and the constant contact between queens and eggs. But again, that technique can be taught, so that we don’t need to have worries about queens being away from the eggs if the tunnel snakes attack. The amount of things that get forgotten in this book are pretty impressive.

Last time, Xhinna had her wing returned to her so they could take on the extremely dangerous task of observing the world from orbit so that they could anticipate correctly when Thread would fall on their space and be able to defeat it and to know how much longer they had to wait before all of the dragons on the island could shuttle themselves back to The Future with a fighting force that would be more than sufficient to kick The Asshole out of Telgar and provide enough dragons to all the Weyrs so they can ride out the current Fall at their projected casualty rates. The green and blue riders are the ones who are going up high enough that they might end up with oxygen deprivation, so they’re going to have supports from gold riders who intend to catch them if they fall out of the sky.

Sky Dragons, Chapter 18: A Fall Through Nothing: Content Notes:

This chapter starts with the understanding that the new riders are not going to be expected to warp all the way up to the airless spaceships on their first try, but instead are going to follow the Dawn Sisters around the planet, with specific attention paid to the time when the Dawn sisters pass above Benden, High Reaches, and Telgar, since those are going to be the three points used to calculate the appropriate offsets and to provide the early-warning system that will be needed so that the work done on the Isles isn’t lost to an un-noticed Threadfall.

Except…the Dawn Sisters are supposed to be in an orbit where they don’t appear to move across the starscape, which means their orbit speed is the same as the planet, and so I can’t imagine that they’re a useful reference for anyone for the design that’s being spoken about here.

“What we’ll do next is we’ll keep coordinated watches over Benden, Telgar, and High Reaches—from our height, we’re certain to spot any Threadfall that occurs during daylight.”
“So the groups will let the Dawn Sisters pass out of sight?” Jerilli said.
“Yes, we’ll set it up so that each of the three groups over the Northern Continent watches for eight hours—split into eight pairs each—and we’ll set up a twenty-four hour watch here, plus we’ll have an all-day guard set up at the easternmost tip of the Eastern Isle in case Thread comes at night.”
[…when asked about what happens if Thread happens at night, Lorana says “They’re working on it.”…]
“Our mission is to find the Thread when it falls on the Northern Continent at the same time that it’s falling here,” Xhinna told them.

I’m going to say that’s something an editor and proofer did not catch, because that’s flat-out wrong. The whole point of this satellite observations system is to find Thread falling before it arrives and catches the Eastern Isle unprepared, and to communicate where and when it was sighted so that the Eastern Isle can synchronize their schedule and know when they’re up next. They already have one temporal reference that they can figure out at least an approximate offset against, so, at least to me, still, the only thing they’re lacking, knowledge-wise, is whether the temporal reference they have is the true First Fall or whether it’s only the first observed fall and there’s one or more Threadfalls that happened before that one that would have fallen on supposedly-uninhabited land or sea, including the Island Weyrs That Doesn’t Exist.

The plan, as described here, seems to be to send people up, using the Dawn Sisters as their reference point for the first pairing, then have each subsequent pairing pass the image to the next pairing at the switch, so that the observers are at fixed points in the sky and can watch the planet turn underneath them while Rukbat shines. The problem with this plan is that a geostationary orbit means that the Dawn Sisters are in the same place in the sky (which is what has been observed about them), and so the picture of the planet underneath them will be the same, modulo how much of the planet is illuminated by Rukbat. Instead, what the dragonriders need to do is warp themselves “up” from their launch points to low Pern orbit and maintain their own fixed positions to observe the illuminated phase of the day, and that requires multiple launch points. Because if the riders stayed in one singular observation point above the planet, eventually they’d have a shift in darkness where they would be unable to observe anything at all. Which also makes me wonder what Pern’s axial tilt is, since there are clearly seasons, and whether or not the stations chosen are really the right idea, since the correct answer of “how long should we be observing this space” is “however long it’s illuminated enough that you can spot Thread”. So “eight hour shifts” might be true at a very specific season, and be entirely wrong for the rest of the Turn. Unless-maybe the observation points that are envisioned are in line with the equator (the ecliptic?) and therefore will have the least seasonal variations in terms of illuminated time, but that would require someone to have an idea of what settlements were passing underneath them so as to have an idea about the right time offset they’ll need, which, I suppose, could be trained. The trickiest part about this is that the Dawn Sisters can really only be used for one launch reference, because they are always staring at the same piece of planet underneath them.

Which is to say, I don’t think this plan has been explained very well, and I’ve already given far more thought about how to make it actually work to get the desired results (observe the planet while illuminated to spot Threadfall and use those geo-temporal coordinates to calculate a correct offset and synchronize the Threadfall schedule for the Eastern Island) than the authors probably put in when writing the plan.

Since they’re already too far into the day to warp without risking themselves to the time knot, T’mar, instead has a plan, explained through Xhinna, and explicitly referred to as an experiment, for the dragons to give them an idea of how much atmosphere they actually have – by feeding their dragons a steady diet of firestone and having them flame, they can check how much usable air is available for breathing to humans and dragons. What they’re watching for, in addition to the power of the flames, are the signs of anoxia, which are described as “rather like being drunk,” and “Color starts to go from your sight and you get really sleepy.” When there are questions about whether or not they’ll keep flaming through the darkness, Xhinna reveals a second experiment in mind to test and see whether good breathable air sinks as the temperature gets colder, such that riders won’t be able to climb quite as high. While the fighting dragons are being trained to flame, the queens are being trained in the use of the “agenothree throwers” that “burn Thread out of the sky”, but are explicitly not flamethrowers of any sort, only acid tossers.

The climbing experiment goes according to plan, with the dragons flaming up to the normal ceiling altitude, then doing controlled hyperspace warps up a kilometer, testing on whether they can flame, then repeating the procedure with another kilometer warp and flame test. Eventually, at seven kilometers above the surface they launched from (possibly sea level?), there’s complaints of cold and an inability to flame, and Lorana calls them all back to the ground immediately. In the headcount that Xhinna takes instinctively, she realizes there’s one missing, and immediately sounds the alarm to find Mirressa, who is falling from the sky, still strapped into her dragon. Having sounded the alarm, a staircase of queen, bronze, and brown dragons arranges themselves to gently lower Mirressa and Valcanth to the ground, where it becomes clear that neither dragon nor rider is breathing. Xhinna performs the beginnings of what might be CPR while someone calls for a board, but before we get too far into the wickets of what rescue breathing and medical techniques for restarting someone have survived to this point, instead we get the dragonriders and dragons using their mental powers to kickstart both dragon and rider back to breathing.

She turned to see Lorana and Jirana standing by Valcanth’s head, their eyes closed, their bodies taut, expressions strained.
Tazith! Xhinna called. Valcanth must breathe! She reached out to the rest of her wing. Help Valcanth breathe!
She moved over to Lorana and stood behind her and Jirana. For one startled moment, she noticed he two were breathing in unison and then she closed her eyes, reached out, and joined in. She felt others come join her, bound in by the will of their dragons, even as she felt Taria position herself with Mirressa.
And slowly, the cold, still shape of the dragon changed. A twitch, a judder, and then—
“She’s breathing!” Jirana’s cry was marked by sobs and a heaving chest. “She’s breathing!”
“They’re both breathing!” Taria exclaimed.

So that’s convenient, and yet another dimension of dragon abilities that I would have expected to get retained over time, much like this dragon staircase that we first saw in the Ninth Pass. Unless it was being used in all sorts of places and just not explicitly called out.

Anyway, on what should be a happy occasion that an accident has been prevented, Jirana has bad news for Xhinna.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Jirana whispered into Xhinna’s hair. “It’s the Sight.”
Xhinna stiffened as she heard the words. Jirana added, “It’s not over. It’s going to get worse.”
Xhinna pulled back and, with all the tenderness of a big sister, kissed Jirana’s tears away before hugging her once more and whispering back, “Thank you for trusting me.”
Jirana sniffed and slowly got herself back under control. With one final grateful nod, she pulled away from Xhinna, saying, “I’m all right now.”
Xhinna gave her a half-smile and stood up. “Of course you are.”

Cocowhat by depizan

Someone, anyone, please rediscover the art of therapy on Pern. Because this small girl is being tortured by the narrative with future visions that she’s been taught not to tell other people about, and apparently they’re the kind of visions of bad things happening to the people she cares about. It’s trauma on top of trauma for Jirana, and she doesn’t really have a support system she can turn to about this. Maybe her brother and mother, since they had the most experience with Tenniz and what he said and did, but they’re probably also going to be on Team Jirana Don’t Say Anything To Anyone. And this torture is being inflicted on the brown girl with the nomadic heritage, just so we’re clear.

Mirressa, once revived, describes the situation as being cold, then abruptly very warm and cozy, and not really thinking there was any danger in the fact they were falling because it was still warm and cozy. Which sparks off a lot of self-recrimination about whose fault it was that Mirressa passed out and nobody noticed until Xhinna was doing a headcount and realized one was missing. Bekka eventually cuts across the recrimination by declaring that it’s best for every rider to experience something close to anoxia for themselves so they know what their telltale signs are and can warp themselves away before they need catching. Jirana suggests holding their breath until they can’t any more, which turns into a counting of how long everyone can hold their breath as they experience the beginning signs of running out of air, (a “slow count of seventy” is the top form, held by R’ney and Avarra. Xhinna manages sixty-seven and Taria fifty-three.) At which point, their dragons learn how to gather the bubble of air around them and hold it while they’re up in space, and they practice going up to the heights and coming back down again. Xhinna nearly gets hypnotized by seeing the planet below before Lorana firmly calls her and Tazith back, so hopefully Xhinna understands how easy it is to lose track of time and air when you see something beautiful.

Also, in this segment, there’s something tantalizing about the relationship that Mirressa and Jepara have developed. Mirressa was introduced to us as someone in the vein of Meeya, “so biddable” that I feel like she would be just as much of a problem for Jepara to get a useful rise out of her as she had trouble with Meeya.

“We can always send up replacements,” Xhinna said. “We lose less time sending up a replacement early than trying to catch a falling dragon.”
“Shards, that’s too true!” Jepara murmured from where she sat next to Mirressa. Mirressa looked up and made a face, but Jepara, to Xhinna’s surprise, merely shushed the green rider and stroked her hair while, on the other side of her, Meeya patted the green rider’s shoulder.

Which, at least to me, helps cement the idea that Jepara being a brat as a role she takes on, because in this situation, when things got all too real, instead of picking a fight, she just soothes Mirressa and strokes her hair, which are pretty intimate gestures. And perhaps this Jepara has gotten better at communicating in the meantime, so that when she’s sparring with Bekka or bratting to anybody else, they know it’s an act and they’ve chosen to participate in it with her. Which doesn’t break the enforced het rule among gold riders, as I’m pretty sure there are plenty of ways that Jepara can get her brat on that have nothing to do at all with who she has sex with.

Moving forward again, Jirana is still pretty morose about what it to come, including about “losing friends” and not reacting well at all to Xhinna trying to get her not to mourn their loss before it happens. On the scene change, we have Xhinna consulting with Taria about what to do as they get their children ready for bed, apart from telling Javissa, because Xhinna didn’t offer Javissa’s support. Of course, there’s nothing precluding having both Xhinna and Javissa’s support for Jirana, but Pern is that kind of place where asking for help is seen as weakness rather than sense, especially because Javissa is the one with the most experience around how to handle Seers, having, y’know, been married to one for most of his life.

“She must be awfully lonely…”
“How can she be? She’s got the whole Weyr watching over her, five queen riders who positively adore her, and every Weyrleader hanging off her very words!” Taria shook her head. “It’s a wonder she’s not more spoiled than she is.” Xhinna gave her a sharp look, but Taria just smiled. “And you, my dear, are among the worst!”
“Really?” Xhinna said, examining her feelings critically. She hadn’t thought she’d doted on the youngster overmuch, but perhaps…
“And I’m next in line,” Taria said, chuckling.

And Xhinna was soclose to being able to understand, before Taria knocked her off course. Because that instinct about being lonely is the right one to have. There’s nobody exactly like Jirana alive that we know of, burdened with the ability to see the future and have to decide on whether to try and prevent it or to let it happen, because the pain that will happen in the short term will be essential to the long-term success of everyone. Knowing who’s going to survive and who isn’t if the best timeline is allowed to happen. It’s the same sort of loneliness that Xhinna might be very familiar with, as the first woman rider of a blue dragon, thrust into a leadership role that she basically did not want from the start, and with everyone looking at her, either as proof that women should never be allowed to ride blues or as the beacon of hope and the glass ceiling crusher that will pave the way for others. The pressure on both Xhinna and Jirana is immense, and they might be the only two people who have a clue about how to handle it and to help each other handle it. But from the outside, to Taria, it looks like Jirana has all the attention that she could ever want, and a gold dragonet to boot, and it’s a miracle that it hasn’t all gone to her head and made her stuck up like some of the other gold riders she could name. If the authors were intentional about this in any sort of way, I’d be pretty impressed at how they made it easy for us to make the right inferences and draw the correct conclusions so subtly, but I can’t grant them that intentionality at all, because they’ve never demonstrated anything like it before.

Instead, the narrative leads us in the direction of believing Taria that Xhinna is indulgent and spoiling everyone.

Taria’s soft breathing was comfort enough to lull Xhinna quickly off to sleep. She had slept for several hours, she was certain, when she woke and spied a pair of small eyes peering from the entrance. Through long practice, she extended a hand from underneath the covers and beckoned the child to join them. Naturally, it was only a matter of moments before the bed was filled with cold, squiggly children. Taria surfaced long enough to roll an eye at Xhinna’s lack of discipline, and then she was asleep once more, while Xhinna reveled in the squirmy warm bodies that were a small portion of her children.

“You’ve too many babies,” Taria had said when Xhinna had broached the idea of getting pregnant again after Xelinan’s birth. In reply to Xhinna’s startled look, Taria had explained, “Not only yours, but all the blues and greens.”
There was truth in Taria’s words, for the tight-knit group of blue and green riders that inhabited Sky Weyr, as well as many from the other Weyrs, had all asked Xhinna to stand in their place if, in the Turns to come, anything should happen to leave their babies without parents. Neither Xhinna nor Taria could deny these heartfelt requests, no more than could the others so honored. Xelinan had many fathers, including K’dan, T’mar, R’ney, X’lerin, Colfet, Seban, and all the bronze riders among the weyrlings that Xhinna had brought to the Sky Weyr more than two Turns before. The children played together and were watched together by various honorary parents and real parents, and it was a relief to know that, in the worst of cases, the children would all still have the love and support they’d need.
It also meant that all the children were well-adjusted and cheerful, not so reliant on any one parent that the loss would be tragic to them.
It really was one of the greatest gifts Taria had given her—to be able to build and grow a family that was freely shared and fully loved.
Which was why, Xhinna thought as she tried to drift back to sleep, Jirana’s sorrow so upset her. Not just for the strange green queen rider, but also for what it meant for her extended family.
It’s going to get worse. Jirana had never been wrong

And that’s the end of Chapter 18, and I have so many questions about all of this. First and foremost, this whole parenting inter-twining system sounds like what was described as the communal raising system that Pern supposedly had in the very earliest books, but rather than acknowledge this as it is, or have Xhinna do a flashback to her and Taria’s time before they became dragonriders, when they were taking care of a nursery/daycare of children and say that it’s not that different, or even just pop back to the times where Finoa used to do something like this with the kids of Telgar Weyr, the whole thing passes basically without a call-back and in support of the idea that Xhinna is an indulgent parent, along with Taria, rather than anything else.

I also note that the foster father list is almost exclusively bronze riders for Xelinan, and that the way this is written makes it sound like a lot of the blue and green riders are asking Xhinna to be the just-in-case parent for their children, too, because they’re all trying to get the highest-ranking person they feel comfortable with as the death-parent. It’s kind of morbid, in its own way. Because in theory, only Xhinna knows about Jirana’s proclamation, and so I guess we’re supposed to think that these other riders are thinking about being killed when Thread arrives, but I can’t help but think that if Pern kept operating on the communal fostering system that it keeps making gestures at, instead of having taken this shift into nuclear parenting with extended family, it would be a lot less dramatic to have people making arrangements to make sure their children will be looked after if they should die during Threadfall. (And also, Xhinna’s come a long way from being a pariah because she was a lesbian raising kids, to being one of Fiona’s favorites and invited to take part in her apparently weird child-raising, to having her own children and being he person that others want to have as part of her own bed full of youngsters with her lesbian lover. Except, of course, that they both seem remarkably okay with getting pregnant and having children through sex with penises, which continues to cause problems about whether or not the authors understand what “lesbian” means.)

Anyway, since that’s the end of the chapter, it’s a good stopping point for us, and we’ll pick up again next week. Maybe with a little more concern and caution, or an actual plan that makes sense for this orbital observation.

Last time, there was a lot of tell without showing, where we heard secondhand about how Fiona et al. dealt with The Asshole insisting that Telgar was his Weyr again and that he should be in charge of it (retreat to friendly ground and bide time until coming back with way more dragons that The Asshole has so as to out-might-makes-right him), how the dragon explosion has resulted in the creation of multiple Weyrs with their own leaders and seconds, and we heard about the fact that Jepara bested Fiona for the privilege of letting gold dragons go up to low-Pern orbit to spot Thread falling soon enough to get the Weyrs prepared to flame it.

Sky Dragons: Chapter 17, Continued: Content Notes:

There’s just one tiny thing about sending these dragons up to observe. Specifically, they already know when Thread is going to fall, within a very short window.

“The first Threadfall was over Benden Weyr and Bitra Hold on the first day of the new Turn,” K’dan said as he, M’gel, R’ney, Danirry, Xhinna, and Fiona were clustered around the Council table in the stone hall early the next morning.
“So we’ve got a bit under a month,” Fiona said. Colfet had been called upon to use his navigational skills in reading the night sky to verify that they currently were in the seventh day of the last month of the Turn, the five hundred and seventh Turn since Landing.

That’s AL 13.7.507, but this book doesn’t have any time markers for the chapters, but that lets us link up what’s going on with what happened in the previous books. That might be the only time reference we get for the whole book, and maybe we can construct a timeline from that single reference.

More specifically, however,

Cocowhat by depizan

Why is there a plan to send dragons up into space if they know what the time is exactly, and when Thread started falling, if Colfet can read the stars to this exactness. This should be “okay, people, we have less than a month to get our shit in order and prepare ourselves for warping back to our normal time. Start packing up, as best you can, and get your greens into the firestone queue so that we don’t leave any eggs behind for the snakes or the cats.” (Although, one would have hoped that, knowing this, there would have been a stop day for the greens well before this point, so there won’t be any eggs left unhatched when it’s time to go home.) The narrative then tries to explain that there’s still some potential variance because having one point of alignment doesn’t mean that they know what the time offset for the Isles are and there’s always the possibility that the known Threadfall point happens after the first fall on the Isles, and so the orbiting watchers are going up so that they can get both of those matters handled and schedules aligned by providing the correct start times and places for Threadfall that can be fed into the charts to know where to start reading from. Except that there’s an easy way to determine your time offset, and it doesn’t have to have anything to do with warping through time and possibly risking getting entangled in the time knot (because it still exists because it hasn’t been unraveled yet, even though the unraveling of it presumably happened all across time, at least as I understand it). You figure out who gets sunrise first, Isle or Benden, then have Dragonrider 2 light a time candle or other timekeeping device when Dragonrider 1 mentally transmits that the sun has just broken over the horizon in the place where the sun comes up first. When the sun breaks over the horizon in the second space, the candle is blown out and the time marks are measured. So then, if you have a Record that at least says the day when Thread first fell on Benden, you only have to watch a small envelope of time in relation to that to catch the first Fall on the Island. Unless, of course, there’s black dust before that or some other sign that there would have been a Threadfall, but it froze and died before it could arrive. I would like to think that such things would also have been recorded in the Records because it’s something out of the ordinary and previous Records have said to be on the lookout for frozen black dust, because that is an indication that you got lucky and didn’t have to deal with Thread. Anyway, the point is that you only have to watch for a certain amount of time, presumably no more than a cycle before the known earliest point, just in case there’s something that falls live on the Island that would be black dust in Benden.

The actual logistics of who is going up and in what quantities means that there’s going to be some extra help brought in from other Weyrs to make sure there’s enough numbers to rotate through watchers without anyone risking passing out from a lack of air, and to have catchers up in the sky just in case someone, human or dragon, faints from anoxia and starts falling down. With that settled, then thoughts turn to the practicalities of making sure that all the dragons are ready to meet Thread when it falls, which means firestone training (and stealing/mining enough firestone for this to do that for all the fighting dragons to be cognizant), and this means that the time of the greens breeding is coming to an end.

“Well, I suppose it’s about time we had the greens chewing firestone,” Fiona said. “Another set of mating flights and we couldn’t find enough Candidates to match on all Pern.”
Xhinna flicked her eyes away so that the Weyrwoman couldn’t guess her thoughts—for it was clear to her that Fiona was miffed that the greens had so outproduced the queens, going so far even as to produce six queens on their own. But there was no denying the truth in what Fiona had said—they were now at a point where another round of clutching would leave Western unable to support the increased dragon and human populations.
In addition to the original 128 older dragons, there were 1,558 who had two or more Turns of age.

Okay, so now we have to contemplate the idea that this secret operation had no opsec breaches or inadvertent observations by anyone, land-dweller or shipmeister, about the fact that there are dragons and dragonriders on a supposedly uninhabited isle for three whole years. And that the families of the people pulled as candidates don’t talk to others about the fact that their girls and boys were collected on Search by dragonriders who weren’t aligned with any known Weyr. (Or, conversely, that there are enough people on Pern in and around Nerra’s sphere of influence who don’t have family or don’t have family that will miss them or want to talk about them or investigate if they disappear to a strange place.) And that nobody asks questions about where the gold is coming from and the goods going to (although I think the authors tried to half-handwave this by mentioning all the trader involvement in things and that the traders, of course, are excellent at keeping secrets, especially when the one with the Sight is asking them to) or balks at taking worthless metal in exchange for giving up things that they might feel they need to survive the post-plague period. The more I think about this, the more I think everyone on Pern actually knows what was going on, but because the dragonriders said “it’s a secret, we can’t break time,” they chose not to say anything about the clearly weird people claiming to be dragonriders, or the dragons were like “nope, sorry, we’re wiping our presence from your minds after we leave, so you will have no memory of any of this, gotta preserve time,” and nobody knows that the dragons are doing this except the dragons. It’s extremely improbable they managed to carry on a secret that big for that long. That’s conspiracies of the kind that most people on Terra would start fashioning you a hat made of aluminum foil to wear if you believed in them.

In addition to firestone training, there’s bad news delivered that Xhinna’s wing is being broken up and riders reassigned or given command of their own wings.

The hiss of surprise came from every mouth.
“It’s time,” Fiona said. She turned to Xhinna and smiled. “While we all know blues aren’t supposed to lead wings, we’ve seen too many bad examples of the results of following Tradition too closely.” She looked toward M’gel as she added, “This is not to say that the current leadership is wanting in any way. But I’m sure that it comes as no surprise to any of you when I say that the Weyrwoman [sic] and I were willing to let this wing continue in its present form because we recognized that most of its leadership came not from those riding bronzes but—”
“A blue!” Danirry cried, exultantly, patting Xhinna’s shoulder hard.
[…the queens stay with Xhinna, who’s getting a special task, K’dan explains, and who was apparently the speaker of the above sentence, even though Fiona is the one who continued talking. The bronze riders follow K’dan and Fiona in for their new assignments…]
K’dan paused in the doorway and turned back, smiling. “Of course, Wingleader Xhinna will need to plan the details with her wing.”
Xhinna opened her mouth to protest. She’d given up the position once already and had no desire to add to her duties, but Fiona caught her eye and waggled a finger at her.
“No good deed goes unrewarded,” Danirry remarked in an aside to Xhinna.
“Don’t even think about trying to wriggle out of it,” R’ney added just as firmly.
Xhinna nodded in resignation, but her eyes sought out Taria’s. The green rider met them with her own dark eyes and held her gaze for a long moment before her lips curved up in a smile.
Coranth says Taria won’t let you out of doing diapers, Tazith relayed. Xhinna’s blue eyes danced and she returned Taria’s grin with a small smile.
Wingleader.

Xhinna also gets some reinforcement from other Weyrs to help her in this task. Also, in this chapter, I’m really beginning to believe that Book Two here is a fragment of what would have been another novel, but was instead published with this one because that novel was never going to be finished due to the untimely death of one of the partnership. Because we’ve been hearing Xhinna recap things that we already presumably know from the first part, like the reason why they’ve succeeded at breeding so many dragons.

The queens landed first, as was their right, and Jirana came bounding over, followed by the five other young girls who had Impressed the green queens. They were al fit and tan, as was to be expected from their days spent lying under the sun guarding the Hatching Grounds against tunnel snakes. The girls were all near Jirana’s age—much younger than normal for a Candidate—but they had all formed the strange connection with their queens before the Hatching. It was their ability to hear the unhatched queens that protected the sands from the depredations of tunnel snakes, aided by the growing population of Meeyus and older Mreeows.

Then again, in the disguise of a supposedly innocuous recap, we’ve managed to make the infinite scream even more terrifying, because Jirana is no longer the only one with this connection, and apparently it’s a connection that’s forged more easily by children who are younger than the standard Candidate age, so we’re pairing girls that I have a sneaking suspicion are before the age of puberty, just based on the fact that the new author likes them really young, with dragons that aren’t out of their eggshells yet, but who can tell where all of the tunnel snakes are, which is apparently an ability they lose when they come out of the shell and make their full bond with their rider? And those are gold dragons, so they’re also ticking their clocks as well, even despite Jirana’s confidence that Laspanth won’t rise until they’re both ready, but aigh. I feel for all six of those girls and what they’re going to be subjected to.

The plan, as such, is for the greens and blues to go up and observe things, and for the queens to watch the blues and greens and catch them if they pass out and start falling down.

“It’s like guarding the eggs, only harder,” little Devon piped up. She was just a sevenday younger than Jirana—much to the other’s disgust at losing her position as the youngest queen rider on Pern. Even so, she had been the first to be picked by Jirana when she and Xhinna had gone on Search for riders for the green queens. Now, nearly three Turns later, she and Jirana were nearing adolescence, while Kimmy, the eldest by two turns, was beginning to giggle at the looks given her by the younger bronze riders.
Xhinna had had little chance to see any of them since their Impression, but they’d all seemed pleasant, sweet, and just a little different—marked, as it were, by their strange queens with whom they could communicate before they were Hatched.
“They don’t have the Sight, too, do they?” Xhinna had asked Jirana after the five had all Impressed exactly as the young trader girl had predicted.
“I don’t think so,” Jirana had said, giving the question her full attention and adding with a shrug, “They might.”

And, I was right, at least some of them haven’t even made it to adolescence. The infinite scream only gets louder about this plotting and characterization decision of the green queens.

And while the narrative is trying to play this off as “well, it’s because they’re queens hatched from greens in unusual circumstances,” I don’t see any reason why, apart from a rule, written or otherwise, that you don’t take girls this early for Search, as to why this is something specific to these six, since Jirana seems to believe they don’t necessarily have the Sight or anything like it. (Although it would make sense that precognitive or other types of esper abilities would be spread across the planet, since basically everyone is selecting for those genes and powers, whether as dragoniders or trying to become them. It certainly wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for there to be multiple lines of psi powers, but then the authors might have to put in some work about how or why there aren’t more of them going around.)

As it is, the plan is getting put in place, and there’s one last arrival, Bekka, who makes an even dozen of queens. And while the narrative tells us that Jepara can’t find it in herself to behave like a brat toward Lorana, she’s more than happy to do it for Bekka, imperiously saying that Bekka will take the dawn shift, since she was late (although she was late because she had to go be a Healer first). And then there’s this exchange, which Xhinna will admit is odd, but has come to the conclusion that it’s mostly harmless.

“When did your queen rise?” Bekka demanded hotly. She and the other queen rider had locked horns on so many occasions that Xhinna had feared they would finally come to blows, but so far, their arguments had dissipated just short of that. After a while, Xhinna decided their bickering was just their way of being friendly to each other. She’d seen them stick up for each other’s best interest countless times in the past two Turns, but it still seemed to her a strange way of expressing affection.
“Before yours, certainly!” Jepara snapped back.
“Enough,” Xhinna growled, cutting her eyes to the horrified looks of the other blue and queen riders. “Bekka—that would be great. I think Jepara has just volunteered to precede you—”
“I did not!” Jepara snapped. Xhinna lowered her head toward her with raised brows and the queen rider sighed, saying to Bekka, “Don’t expect any klah.”
“You’d probably spit in it,” Bekka shot back.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Jepara said sweetly.
“Children,” Xhinna said to the two of them, earning her a pair of dark looks—both of them were as near her age as made no difference.
“Are you sure you’d like them watching out for you?” Avarra asked in a choked voice.
“Absolutely,” Xhinna said. “I’d trust them with my life.”

Vitriolic Best Buds between queen riders? Well, maybe, if Jepara’s found a partner to be a brat to and Bekka enjoys putting the brat in her place. And earlier on, we’d had Bekka call Jirana her “weyrmate”, even though we’ve also had the narrative make sure we know that she’s hanging out with J’riz a lot, who is going to be a heartbreaker as he’s gotten older. Like, even if we’re not able to go far enough to say that Bekka’s bi or pan, there does seem to be a lot of big Top energy from her, something that both Jepara and Jirana might gravitate toward and want to have in their life. But it’s also just as likely that Bekka and Jepara dislike each other and want to tweak each other, but both know what their status is in society and will back each other to the hilt against anybody else, because they can’t afford to let any of them get picked off or turned against them.

The narrative proceeds then, with the setting of the watch and advances to dinner, where we find out that there’s been a lot of construction going on since the beginning – what was X’lerin’s broom tree weyr has been converted into the High Kitchen – a completely enclosed space constructed with “pinus wood” that also provided a model for other winter housing for dragonriders in the broom trees, so I guess they haven’t been shivering up in the treetops this entire time. And there’s more than just one rider who has the knowledge needed for the Lumbercraft, or whichever one it is that handles forestry. So, at dinner, some of the new riders want to sit with Xhinna, because she’s the O.G. woman riding blue.

slightly more than half of all the new green riders and and just a bit more than one in three blue riders were women, a tremendous break with Weyr tradition brought about mostly because of the dearth of able-bodied males of suitable Searching age.
Xhinna suspected that Nerra might have slightly “stacked the deck” [did we know there was card-playing and cheating like that coming from Bitra before this?], as R’ney had once described it, assiduously succoring girls by getting them into her orphanage, but whether or not that was true, she doubted that the Lady Holder’s [Lord Holder’s!] discrimination would matter much in the long term. Able-bodied men and lads had been drafted first into the recovery after the Plague, and all too often women had been left to shift for themselves, with the tragic result that many young girls had been left homeless and starving.

But also, I call bullshit! The only reason that able and healthy bodies would have been abandoned in the aftermath of the Plague would have been if there was a deliberate decision to do so, as the people who are subsistence farming are going to be worried about whether they have enough bodies at all, much less who they are. We’ve already heard that women are working the fields, and if men and boys are being drafted into recovery efforts (which, to me, sounds like the Lords Holder are demanding their vassals restock and repair them, which will cascade down through all of the land grants until you have families whose most able-bodied men and boys have been drafted to help out someone higher-ranked than them and they have to rely on their women, girls, and animals (if they have any left) to be able to till the land and keep things going. There are possible orphans who have no relatives that would be potential candidates for both orphanage and dragonriders, but anyone who had a relative probably has had that relative claiming them as another person who can work, even if feeding them adequately is less possible on their own and would need help from the people who have stores and are at least nominally expected to release them to help their vassals. So if so many women have been given up (as Danirry was, as these candidates are), it’s because they were deliberately given up by someone.

That’s not out of character for Pern, as they seem like the kinds of people who would have a completely wrong bias that believes women are useless and should be discarded if they can’t get married advantageously. Or that they’re only good for keeping kitchen and can’t possibly also farm while maintaining their womanly duties. But this explanation as to why there are so many women doesn’t work as its described.

Soon, rigid, inflexible old-timers like D’gan [ASSHOLE] were going to be confronted with the new reality. Given both Fiona and Nerra’s harsh words, Xhinna was hoping she’d have the chance to see his reaction firsthand, although she was the first to bet against his “dying of apoplexy at the mere sight,” as Fiona had so cheerfully predicted.
There was an equally vigorous discussion of the possible reaction of Weyrwoman Tullea to the new organizations. There, Xhinna was in agreement with Fiona’s prediction that the tetchy Benden Weyrwoman would be at least secretly and maybe even openly ecstatic.
The betting was spread more evenly upon the reactions of the various Lord Holders, Fiona covering all wagers against her father having a negative reaction. She seemed surprised to have no takers, but having played several games of chance with Fiona, Xhinna was reasonably sure the blond Weyrwoman was bluffing.

Which needs some interpretation and parsing, but I think is supposed to mean “Xhinna thinks Fiona is trying to sucker people into betting against her by acting surprised that nobody’s taking advantage of her cover offer.”

Also, I have a sneaking suspicion at why so many people are in hock to Bitra and have a profound hatred of them, if the Pernese can’t help themselves from wagering on these sorts of things in such great quantities and combinations. And also, I’d bet with Xhinna against Fiona on “dying of apoplexy,” and instead put my marks on “enraged and openly attempts to defy the new reality.” And we’ve already seen that Tullea has depths that she doesn’t usually let out, and Fiona already knows this, so it’s not surprising that she’s betting that Tullea will be a lot happier about more women riders. Half of green riders and about a third of blue riders as women is a pretty impressive set, but also, there’s no threat to the established order in this, because there are no women brown riders or bronze riders. Xhinna is an exception that’s allowed to continue as a Wingleader because Fiona and T’mar want her to, and all of the blues and greens are still cannon fodder, essentially, and have no real access to any power structures in the dragonriders. They’re going to be a flash in the pan and then be actively covered up by those dudes who are affronted by the break with tradition, probably with the help of Harpers and others. But this particular situation should cause, for at least a few generations to come, urban legends and stories about how once upon a time, there was something close to parity in the dragonriders (in certain colors anyway).

The narrative proceeds with Xhinna receiving a complaint that the observation assignment is insulting and beneath the women riders, when they should be using their flame to destroy Thread when it arrives. Seban and Xhinna manage to explain to them that the observation duties they’re being tasked with is the sort of thing that will save the entire Isles and all the dragons and riders that have been built up to this point, so instead of being saddled with an errand and treated like weyrlings, they’ve actually been given the highest honors for keeping Pern safe. The riders who were going to protest recognize and accept the logic involved, as well as Xhinna pointing out that neither X’lerin nor H’nez would appoint anyone as a Wingleader who they thought was a fool.

“Do you still want to protest?”
“No,” Jerilli said,” going quite red. “I think I want to hide.”
“Don’t do that!” R’ney told her. She looked over at him. “Wingleaders are supposed to make mistakes,” he continued, glancing toward Danirry as his face expanded into a grin, and the two continued in unison: “That’s why they have wingseconds—”
Xhinna joined in: “—to correct them!”

And that’s the end of Chapter 17, and I have to admit that I do like this attitude, and the way that it acknowledges that leadership is often a matter of teamwork and being able to recognize when things have gone sideways and bring them back on track. Which, in this time, if this were the thing that’s the guiding principle of all fighting wings, you would have inexperienced wingleaders being supported by very experienced wingseconds who can help them learn how to lead properly. Given, however, that this entire population, save the hundred-plus time travelers from Fiona’s time period, has been hatched in the time that Xhinna has been back, I don’t think there’s enough experienced wingseconds to be able to help all of the newly minted wingleaders learn how to do things correctly. In every other situation, though, the bronze riders have mentorship from more experienced bronze riders to draw upon.

The orbital observation plan begins in earnest next week.

Last time, we shifted into Book Two, having successfully figured out that some dragons are mature enough in their shells to be able to sense the presence of other lifeforms burrowing toward them and to communicate this out to their prospective, already chosen dragonrider candidates, who then use bigger dragons and dragonets to dig to those spots and then crush-kill-destroy with those dragonets, but also with trained murderbeasts who have been raised from kittenhood to go after those tunnel snakes, who appear to have an ingrained hatred of any native Pernese life form that might be related to them as well, and that includes dragons, since their fully-matured forms tend to attack, even though it’s a bad idea, generally, to pick a fight with something much bigger than you, even if you have numbers. Taria and Xhinna made up with each other, and rather than being axed on the spot, J’keran has been made into the weyr’s drudge and forbidden from drinking.

And there’s a fucking lot of babies to go along with the dragon eggs that have been laid all across the continent, as a finally successful repopulation measure. When we last left our intrepid heroes, Fiona had popped back in time to help oversee this mass hatching project, and she was just about to explain why she’s more than happy to be here in the past, even with the additional headaches of existing twice or more in time, rather than stay home and deal with the Asshole that they pulled out of a rift in time of his own making.

Chapter Sixteen: The Battle Of Friends: Content Notes:

Which means, yes, actual politics! However, it’s politics as filtered through Fiona and the new hotness Telgar Weyr, not that I would believe The Asshole’s account of the weather without checking for myself. There’s going to be extensive quoting of this section because it’s what should have been the B-plot of this entire book.

“So there’s D’gan [ASSHOLE], all high and mighty until his Kaloth collapses from the injection of the dragon sickness cure, and then he starts bellowing and raging all over the place until we could calm him down and get him back to his weyr,” Fiona had said as she brought Xhinna up to date on the several days they’d spent back in Telgar Weyr. She shook her head trying to shake her anger out of it. “And then, last night, acting like he was the Weyrleader…”
“Well, he was,” Xhinna said.
“Half a Turn ago before he and all his dragons were lost between,” Fiona agreed. “But not now.”
“He has over three hundred riders who think otherwise,” Lorana disagreed from where she sat nearby. “And they’re planning on riding Fall with High Reaches today.”
Fiona made a sour face. “You should have heard him go on about the new firestone,” she said. “He practically accused me of sabotage for ordering the old stuff removed, and then one of his bronze riders nearly jumped out of his skin when one of our weyrlings dropped a rock in a bucket by accident.” She brightened. “After that, he changed his tune, but he never said anything to me.”
“He’d hoped to ignore us,” Jeila said.
“He might still succeed,” T’mar said. Fiona shot him an angry look and the bronze rider raised his hands defensively. “He’s got almost more dragons than all the other Weyrs put together,” he pointed out. “We’re all exhausted, and his riders are still in their prime, ready for anything. We really can’t reject his aid.”
“And the blues and greens we brought back would have needed a sevenday at least to learn to chew firestone,” Fiona said in agreement. “So D’gan [ASSHOLE] can ignore us, leave us out of the Fall, and we have nothing to do about it,” she ended bitterly. She sighed and sat back dejectedly in her chair. Xhinna threw her a questioning look.

Not a good start to shame someone’s dragon for being squeamish around needles. Or for possibly having a reaction to the cure. If this were a place with any sort of testing protocols, they would have taken notes and figured out that so many percent of dragons have reactions to the inoculation and to then warn riders that this is a possibility, especially of that reaction tends to cluster in certain types of dragons. I might be judging them harshly because I’m still in the middle of the pandemic, but I also feel like all of these “we’re totally SFnal! We’re trying for harrrrrrd science” sorts of things means that I get to be harsh on them for not really managing the hard science bits. If they were willing to sit in the pocket of being a soft science fiction series or a science fantasy, I probably would be more forgiving of the whole affair. And also, I’m sure The Asshole’s ego felt extremely threatened at this open display of weakness from his dragon, so he was most likely looking for something to retaliate with or to stroke his own feeling of self-importance.

Lorana is being a very practical person at this point, however – The Asshole has three hundred newly-immunized dragons and no perception that any time has passed since his ill-decided trip to nowhere, so of course he expects to take over again and resume as if he hadn’t just gotten his people stuck in a time loop for a significant amount of time, to the point where his weyr has been empty long enough to be taken over by someone else. Nobody is going to challenge him, of course, are they? He certainly doesn’t have to be thankful or grateful to anyone for pulling his ass out, because that would be unmanly, and he has three hundred of his boys to say he’s right, what are you going to do about it?

This makes me wish that the time knot could have been selectively unwound – take care of all the ones who were seen as being potentially good folks, and then leave the rest of them to collapse into hyperspace properly. But I’m sure that goes against the Bro Code.

He is at least appreciative that they no longer have to worry about blowing themselves up from a misplaced firestone rock or an accident. Not, again, that he would show such an appreciation, because that would be acknowledging that other people have worth, other than himself, so that can’t happen at all.

“And another thing,” Fiona said, gesturing toward Shaneese, who sat nearby. “Remember how the weyrfolk were when we first arrived?”
Xhinna nodded, her stomach clenching in anger. The weyrfolk were used to D’gan [ASSHOLE]: He demanded their instant respect and was not very caring when it came to women.
“Well, Shaneese’s L’rat is alive and well,” Fiona said, her lips curled in anger, “and he believes T’mar is a poacher.” She shook her head. “He even told T’mar: ‘As you’ve a woman already, I want mine back.’ ”
“Shaneese tried to deal with it diplomatically,” Jeila said with a sour look, “but that didn’t work.”
“We were like a Weyr within a Weyr,” Fiona said with an expression that was alarming both for its ferocity and its resignation. “When we found your first message, it was nothing to find enough volunteers—”

You see why I think this should have been the b-plot for this entire book. Or, in the worst case scenario, an entire book unto itself, because I’m pretty sure there’s more than enough material in “The Asshole is back and nobody is adjusting well, oh hey, here’s a message from Xhinna, should we go back now? No? Okay things are even more terrible, hey look, there’s a second message from Xhinna, have fun, Asshole, we’ll be back.” to fill out a full book, if needed.

Also, this whole thing pretty well shot to hell the happy polyamory idea that we’ve been working on with Fiona, but I can see that just as much L’rat being possessive and jealous and allowed to be so because he’s a bronze rider (although it’s not confirmed what his dragon is) than any sort of viscerally negative reaction he has toward a good polyamory. Because he’s one of The Asshole’s, in fact, and they say The Asshole wasn’t particularly good toward women, that gives weight and credence to the idea that L’rat is a possessive asshole all on his own, and is assuming, just like The Asshole, that everything is going to immediately snap back to the way it was, even though there has been significant time lapsed in between when they left and when they returned.

If it were The Asshole by himself, he’d be overruled and sent somewhere in exile, but unfortunately, he’s got three hundred dragonriders under his command and they apparently need his strength to fight Thread with until Xhinna’s experiment can pop back into existence in the correct time and tell him and anyone who isn’t getting with the new world order can go fuck off. Even though, especially with Fiona and Lorana’s help, they could probably hit a pinpoint shot and arrive within a short time of their own disappearance, or Fiona’s story might include a detail of how The Asshole was found very neatly poisoned by someone, but nobody saw anything and nobody confessed to everything, and so T’mar and Fiona reasserted themselves, offered people who don’t want to join up the nice island off the coast that has the full roughing it experience for those that have excess toxicity to bleed off, and things are doing so much better now, so that when you’re ready to come back, we’ll all be so happy. Because Shaneese can run a kitchen that will more than happily figure out a way to make something completely toxic that nobody knows anything about except what they put in it and who it was supposed to go to. Fiona wouldn’t know the full extent of what Xhinna had planned at this point, but I’m pretty sure she would be entirely happy to be rid of a troublesome dragonrider that is screwing with her perfectly well-run Weyr, thank you very much. The Asshole shouldn’t be a problem at this point, but apparently we need him for the dramatic tension, or something. Because what he’s also done is something that should have gotten him straight-up knifed.

“And then D’gan [ASSHOLE!] came up to us, saying there was a Fall at High Reaches and wanting to know how many of our riders could haul firestone for his fighting dragons.”
She changed her voice to a mocking imitation of the old Telgar Weyrleader: “ ’I don’t allow shirkers in my Weyr.’ ”
“Uh oh!” Xhinna said.
“I told him: ‘This is my Weyr, bronze rider’ and he said, ‘We’ve no need for impertinence’ and then, can you believe it? He turned to T’mar and said, ‘If you can’t control your women—and you have far too many of them if you ask me—’ ”
“He didn’t!” Xhinna and Taria exclaimed in unison.
Finoa nodded solemnly and then looked up at them, eyes blazing, but it was Jeila who, with awe in her voice, said, “And then she said, ‘Enough. You will be silent now.’ ”
H’nez, Jeila, and T’mar all broke into laughter.
“I thought he was going to burst, the way his eyes bulged,” Jeila continued. “Shards, I didn’t even think he could even speak, but just as he was about to, all three of our queens bellowed as one. The old queen called back, but she didn’t sound like she was angry, only resigned.” She glanced toward Fiona, continuing, “So the Weyrwoman said—”
“ ’We’re leaving. We’ll be back when we’re needed,’ ” Fiona said.

As I was saying, That Asshole performed a public diss of a gold rider and her bronze rider and ordered them to take on weyrling slash young rider duty. That he didn’t end up running into someone’s knife repeatedly for that is really rather interesting. That he didn’t end up sprouting a knife from when Fiona kicked him in the nuts before shivving him is also impressive. It doesn’t seem like he has a reason to keep existing for the plot, now that his time knot’s been resolved, and it would be a really nice present to the readers who have had to read about his asshole behavior if he were to get knifed, poisoned, or booted off his dragon back into hyperspace on some trip. His riders are important, but they can be brought to heel. There’s no reason for him.

Okay, part of the reason they all came back was to see their children and parents and lovers, too. And they brought Mekiar, too, the wise potter. Xhinna gestures at the fact that there are a lot more Weyrs represented here than just Telgar, and so there’s more to this story than just Fiona deciding she needs more dragons to take her Weyr back.

“So when we went to leave, D’gan [ASSHOLE!] tried to block us, but the queens put an end to that.”
“He didn’t give up, did he?” Taria asked. She’d known him from her childhood at Telgar Weyr.
“Oh, no!” Fiona exclaimed. “It wasn’t until the others”—she waved a hand at the non-Telgar riders—”arrived that things were finally sorted.” Her smile dimpled. “You see, I thought that if we were going to do this, we should be certain not to do it by halves.”
“But what of the other Weyrs?” Taria objected. “Surely they didn’t—”
“Ah, but they did!” Jeila said with a laugh. “In fact—” and she waved a hand for Fiona to finish the story.
“Lorana spoke with them,” Fiona said. “You should have seen the look on D’gan’s [ASSHOLE] face when he saw them. And then I told him, ‘The others are a parting gift, as it were.’ ”
“Others?” Xhinna asked.
“That’s just what D’gan [ASSHOLE] said!” Jeila laughed. “Because when he looked up he saw not only all our Eastern weyelings and riders but—” and again she waved for Fiona to finish.
“Not only Tullea on her Minith, but Sonia of High Reaches on Lyrinth, Cisca of Fort on Melirth, and Dalia of Ista on Bidenth all gliding in for a landing—and all looking as though they were going to have more than a few words with Telgar’s old Weyrleader.”

I still would like all of those queen riders to have knives in hand and be ready to stabstab as their “more than a few words”, but it’s probably supposed to be that no dragonrider could stand a coordinated verbal assault from all the queen riders united against them. Given That Asshole’s stated position toward women, however, I can entirely see him not listening to a word they say to him and dismissing them all as women unworthy of his time and attentions. So they would still need to get his attention in some more physical way. And supposedly, this would be the right time for someone to wince about what kind of pressure can be brought to bear on a united front of angry gold riders, but that particular part only seems to show up when there’s roaring involved. Like, what if all three of those gold riders and their dragons had been able to enforce “You will be silent now.” until they decided to let him talk again, and the Asshole was stuck trying to lead a Weyr when he couldn’t speak? Gold riders are, after all, supposed to be terrifying enough that nobody willingly gets on their bad side. Even if nobody actually deigns to say why. This would be a perfect time to demonstrate why.

Anyway, the rest of this chapter is surveying the successes that have happened, now that there’s a way of keeping the tunnel snakes at bay, but there’s still a nagging issue in Xhinna’s head despite being so close to their goal time to back to the future. Because Jirana, after all, isn’t behaving like they’re out of the woods yet, so Xhinna (finally) is still nervous about what is yet to come.

And there’s also this bit of logistics that gets completely glossed over:

The days of mating flight after mating flight—with the horrifying specter of battles between mating queens and mating greens—were nearly done, and besides, Xhinna and her riders had learned how to to distract and separate amorous dragons safely.

I want to know how they did this! Mostly because that seems like knowledge that should have been preserved so that, just in case you end up with a situation where a queen rider is slow about getting her gold away from a mating flight, you don’t have them trying to kill each other over the boys. Something that could have been really helpful in the Ninth Pass, say, when some people noticed that Kylara’s not exactly the promptest about keeping her dragon well away from the festivities, and Lessa could order some additional drills to be run for a just-in-case situation. It’s yet another one of those times where something that’s been learned in the past should have been kept to the future because it’s really super-useful. I know that there’s long enough between these times that anything can get lost, but this is really feeling like this author is saying that their world is going to be so much better than the previous author, when what they’ve achieved is to be more than the previous author, in some things that are good, and many things that are not good.

So that was our dose of politics! An asshole was an asshole who expected everyone to accept him as the person in charge because he was the one who went before, and nobody could really stand up to him, even though they gave him an earful (and that he ignored) about it, thinking that something short of running a knife through him or otherwise physically removing him would change his methods or attitudes. Especially because he’s got 300 flunkies with dragons who think they’ve done great under his leadership. So, in that way, it was perfectly Pernese politics, because there was no way that either author was going to let soft-power Fiona and her love technique defeat the Ultimate Manly Man. On we go.

Chapter 17: Journey to Starlight

Chapter 17 opens with Xhinna being summoned to “the stone,” the Hold that Xhinna was hauled off to so that she could get some sleep and that has now become the primary space where the cats live. It turns out the cats are not quite a perfect solution to the tunnel snakes, but they’re renewable enough that they’ll do.

The Mreeows and the Meeyus preferred any of the six-limbed creatures of Pern as their prey, so enlisting them to protect the dragons had its drawbacks—particularly as the Mreeows grew older and less controllable by human or dragon.
The solution had been to retire the intractable beasts to one of the many islands that dotted the oceans surrounding the great Eastern and Western Isles of Pern. Xhinna’s own Scruff had been one of the first to be so placed, and a pang of sorrow went through her even as she realized it was prompted by the sight and smell of the cages and the noise of the latest litter of little Meeyus

So it looks like we’ve found a humane way of retiring those cats that get too unruly or uncontrollable, which is very nice, actually. I’d expect them to have been put down when their usefulness had expired, but it very much seems like Ted instilled a complete hatred of dragons in his cats and that part, at least, took very well. But since this entire solution is temporary enough to get things back up to fighting strength, solutions that have to be renewed periodically will do just fine. Xhinna also mentions that she should talk to Jirana about making sure all of the Green-queens (because that’s not confusing at all to figure out that they’re talking about gold dragons hatched from green dragons, rather than anything else) are prepared and have said all of their proper goodbyes when it’s time to go, as they won’t be bringing any cats back with themselves when they hop forward in time.

Xhinna wonders what she did wrong that she’s being called in, which is exactly the correct feeling to have given how well she’s been treated by her own Weyr leadership, but T’mar is quick to reassure her that she is not in any trouble and has not done anything wrong. At which point we are introduced to the logistical arrangement and affiliations of the residents of the Isles, minus the place where Fiona and them already are for their first visit.

To comfortably house and support all the dragons and riders, it had been decided in the first month after the arrival of Fiona and the other 126 dragons to spread out throughout the Western Isle. Sky Weyr—the name had stuck, despite all of Xhinna’s protests—they created five additional Weyrs: Midriver, Southriver, Southern, Western, and Northern.

And with names like that, no wonder Sky Weyr stuck, it’s the only one that’s got any sort of creativity attached to it. The other Weyr names that were created were similarly unimaginative – Southern on the continent, Eastern as the next one created, Western, I think, was the name for the observatory, and in this era, I think the first one that Fiona did the first time around was something they called Eastern. As a general thing, Pernese names are either people names or directions. Which doesn’t bode well for the creativity of the people involved, or the people writing them. No wonder it takes them so much time and effort to understand even the most basic of things, much less the things that they have tutorials for from much more advanced progenitors.

Fiona’s desire to spend time with her children and K’dan had grown from inclination into permanence. While T’mar had taken the lead in everything, he was too good a leader not to involve everyone, and so it was mutually decided that H’nez and C’tov, as the next two most experienced wingleaders, would be the temporary Weyrleaders of the Northern and Southern Weyrs. X’lerin, ever tactful, offered to relinquish his leadership at Sky Weyr to K’dan and, as a consequence, was assigned to start Midriver Weyr—an assignment made permanent when his Kivith flew Indeera’s queen Morurth when she rose. There was no established Weyrleader at Western Weyr, which was ably run by the Weyrwoman, Garra, with T’mar aiding as needed in the leadership that W’vin and his brown Jorth provided to the adult riders.
Xhinna’s wing was not, to her surprise, disbanded. In fact, both the queen and bronze weyrling riders insisted on staying with her at Sky Weyr in spite of the lure of better positions elsewhere. But at Xhinna’s insistence and in defiance of Fiona—who had been delighted at the notion of a blue wingleader—the young bronze riders themselves had rotated through the leadership of the fledgling wing, able to lean on the assistance of Xhinna and R’ney as wingseconds.
The queens and their riders, naturally, had become the business of Fiona as Weyrwoman, but with Taria’s connivance, Xhinna had found herself compelled to take on much of that, as well, as Fiona had, in a very unconvincing tone, apologized for being too busy with her other duties.
Danirry had been elevated to wingsecond, third in command of what was still known as Xhinna’s wing, when the work had become too much for the combined efforts of Xhinna, R’ney, and whichever bronze rider had the position.

So we have a Weyr run by a woman and a brown rider and none of the bronze riders seem to be objecting to this, that they are somehow being usurped in some way or another. I would have expected H’nez to object for Tradition’s sake, even though he has his own Weyr to run. When we last left him, Jeila seemed to be curbing his worst tendencies, so perhaps her ability to do so has only improved in the interim. And while K’dan and Fiona are nominally in charge at Sky Weyr (and T’mar is the Southriver Weyrleader), I have a sneaking suspicion that all of the day-to-day matters are being run by Xhinna all the same, because Fiona still believed very firmly that Xhinna wants to lead and will not be satisfied unless she is leading. Plus, all of that entirely unconvincing stuff about her other duties being too much for her to properly look after the queen riders that Xhinna has been capably taking care of. Also, I wonder how Jepara feels about the fact that X’lerin is now installed at a different Weyr with a different queen rider and all of her efforts to make nice with him have gone for naught. We don’t hear from her in any of this, though, and all we get is that Xhinna feels sorry that Jepara’s gold isn’t going to rise before they head back to their original time. Why she feels sorry about that, we don’t know, so we have no idea if it’s genuinely sorry that the now-changed Jepara won’t get a chance to shine, or sorry because she thought X’lerin might be a good match for Jepara mixed with relief because Jepara’s still not mature and seasoned enough to take on the leadership of a Weyr, even with X’lerin’s help. The narrative is not interested in this, though, instead turning its attention to the conference and why Xhinna got called into it: the assembled Weyrleaders would like Xhinna to start keeping watch for when Thread starts falling…from low-Pern orbit, so there’s enough warning time for the dragons on the Isles to take action if they’re threatened. Yes, they’re suggesting that Xhinna and others fly up to the Dawn Sisters part of space and scan the planet for the telltale sign of Threadfall on the way, rather than keeping watch on the ground, or at least in the breathable atmosphere, for that selfsame thing. Also, don’t they have the charts and the experience of having been caught out on Eastern to know when the first Threadfall is going to arrive? If they’re concerned things are going to fall out of sequence, I can see wanting to post a rapid-response team that will spot the Thread, jump back six hours to warn everyone about it, and then go join the fray after they’ve warped themselves back in time so as to prevent paradoxing themselves. Instead, we have a plan to send up people to low-Pern orbit, outside the atmosphere, to scan the entire planet to see where the Thread is going to fall and go from there. I, personally, really love the idea of the orbital observation platform, but I would want them to construct something sealed so that when the dragon warps in with their air bubble, they don’t have to expend significant amounts of energy holding that air bubble around themselves. And with a regular timetable and a stable orbit (which might take a few tries), they could have one dragon warp out and then an hour later, have the next dragon warp in, and stagger it in such a way that there’s not too much time where the planet is unobserved. But I’m thinking about this like it’s a science fiction story, instead of a fantasy with science fiction elements bolted on.

Jepara demands to know what’s going on and that the entire wing should be gathered for it, which raises a protest from Meeya that it’s not their wing any more, except that it is, because Fiona gave them back, and this is what Jepara points out. Also adding to the theory that dragonriders magically have all the right skills to do everything else they need to do, and those skilled are properly distributed so that there doesn’t have to be a lot of outside help, if any at all, we have Meeya’s secret skill turn out to be “good at harpering” in the same way that Danirry turned out to be “good at engineering.”

Of all the riders, she had the best memory after Fiona. In fact, she had spent all her spare time with K’dan and Fiona learning Ballads and writing Records. She had a good voice and was often in demand, singing solo or duet with the harper.

I kind of hope this means that Meeya takes over as Weyr Harper and does the job that K’dan was supposed to do in the first place, before he was promoted beyond the level of his incompetence, failing up to becoming Weyrleader of Sky Weyr while someone else does the actual running of the place. She seems like she would be good at the job of instructing and keeping records and singing and giving someone a piece of her mind when they warrant it.

As Xhinna describes it to her wing, she mentions that Fiona is only saying the greens and blues are going to go up and have a look at the world from above. Jepara is not having any of that.

Xhinna waved a hand. “No, just us,” she said, waving toward the other blue and green riders.
“What?” Jepara cried, glancing to her fellow queen riders for support. “Why not us?”
“Because we can lose greens and blues, not queens,” Alimma replied. For all that she tried to sound bitter about it, Xhinna could hear the excitement in the young rider’s voice.
“No! No, by the Egg of Faranth!” Jepara cried. “We ride with you.”
“You’ll have to take that up with Fiona,” Xhinna said.
Jepara shot her a startled look. “Didn’t you ask her?”
Xhinna shook her head. “The matter didn’t come up.”
Jepara harrumphed and rose to her feet. “Well, then, I’ll bring it up right now!”
As she stormed off, Taria and Alimma rose behind her, saying in chorus, “This I’ve got to see.”
“Two Marks says she wins,” Xhinna ventured calmly.
All eyes turned toward her. “Against Fiona?”
Xhinna nodded slowly. […and then has seconds of food, which is long enough for the argument to happen,…] before they heard a triumphant shout and the sound of people racing back to their gathering.
“She won!” Taria said to Xhinna in amazement.
Xhinna smiled, laid her plate to one side, and held out a hand, palm up. “Pay up.”

Nobody said they were taking up Xhinna on the bet, and as I recall, at least from the Ninth Pass books, two marks is a hefty wager! That was the entirety of what Robinton gave to Menolly for her Gather time so that she could enjoy herself and possibly get some interesting new goods for herself. Like, Robinton, who presumably is rolling in cash as the Masterharper, might be making two mark wagers without thinking about it with other senior harpers, but I can’t imagine an of these dragonriders being willing to give up hat kind of cash, even if they think it’s a sucker bet. Also, what are the dragonriders doing with money? They live as a collective that shares resources, labor, and assets because they have to keep and raise giant flamethrowers to protect the planet from harm, but more importantly, they’re here on an island where nobody but Nerra supposedly knows they’re there, so what need do they have of money if the gold dust is enough to keep them in food and supplies? Are there dragonriders sneaking off-site to participate in Gathers back in time? Why is there anyone making money wagers in this space, because they haven’t had a need for it for the entire time they’ve been here? It would make much more sense for Xhinna to wager something like “dirty diaper duty for a week” as the stakes for Jepara beating Fiona in the argument.

Also, the authors choose not to show us the actual argument between Jepara and Fiona, which, y’know, if you were looking for somewhere in the narrative to show the reader that Jepara has matured and become a more well-rounded leader and gold rider and/or that having to raise Meeya into someone with a spine has helped temper Jepara into less of a brat to everyone, this would be a great spot to do it with. You could even slip in some bits about how much Fiona’s temperament has also changed, and that with her men and her children, she’s no longer got the sense of adventure that would have had her up there with the rest of them, looking down on the world. Or how Fiona was always doing her own reckless things to try and build a family, and now that she finally has one, she doesn’t have to be so reckless any more. We’re three quarters of the way into the book, and we’ve been spending so much time with Xhinna, Jepara, and the Skies, this would be the place to narratively signal that we’re moving away from Fiona, Lorana, and their men as the main arc, and that we’re going to keep with Xhinna, Taria, Jepara, and the Skies for the rest of this book and into the next one. (Even though there isn’t going to be a next one, a series like Pern, at least in this sense of it being Todd’s authoring arc, is always gesturing at a next book, even if that next book never gets written.) Xhinna is, according to Jirana’s vision, going to have to physically disarm Fiona to get the good end and avoid the bad one, and Jepara managing to disarm Fiona in the arena of words and stubbornness would be a good reminder and foreshadow of what Xhinna still has yet to do. There’s so much that can be done here that’s left by the wayside because the author’s not willing to show a previous book protagonist being defeated on screen. And maybe it wasn’t an argument or a defeat. Maybe Jepara came up, all ready to have it out with Fiona about this, and Fiona simply said, “Okay,” after Jepara asked. Jepara wins, but Fiona retains the upper hand by refusing to engage with Jepara on something that she really wants to have a fight over. Xhinna might have bet not that Jepara would out-argue Fiona, but that Fiona was wise enough to sidestep the argument and give Jepara what she wants, because Jepara wouldn’t listen to Fiona if she forbade him anyway.

So, Xhinna wins her bet, and we’re going to stop for this week here, on this note, rather than the absolute WTF that’s waiting for us in the next paragraph that’s going to make this low-Pern orbit plan entirely superfluous.

Last time, we finally reunited Xhinna and Taria, and figured out that the cats are actually quite effective hunters of the tunnel snakes, when they have the opportunity to kill them, although cats and candidates aren’t enough to deal with a concerted assault on dragon eggs. And, apparently, Taria and Xhinna made up with each other, even though Xhinna also killed Taria’s pet, Razz, on instinct when Razz was trying to protect Xhinna from a tunnel snake attack, because “I’m trying to kill you” and “I’m trying to protect you” look basically the same when the tunnel snake is trying to take your head off. Also, Jirana took a hit that required significant surgery, and rather than do something sensible, like ask the dragons to block Jirana’s pain, they have the pain be redistributed to others, which causes them all to get identical-looking welts in the space where Jirana got clawed in sympathy pains, including Taria, which kind of makes me wonder if her child took some of that pain on, too.

Sky Dragons: Chapters 15 and 16: Content Notes:

Chapter 15: A Greeting Foretold

Despite being a short chapter, this one wants to play merry hell with all sorts of things that were otherwise established. And yes, the beginning of this chapter tells us that Xhinna and Taria are back together, everything forgiven, as if Taria had never left. J’keran, on the other hand, will have a much rougher time of it, but we’re not getting to him yet.

Instead, during this night, now that Xhinna’s convinced of the reality of Laspanth and that Jirana found her and made a bond with her, Xhinna also thinks that the idea of the greens and blues coming before the other colors of fire-lizard is also true and then wonders about how the first queen fire-lizard made sure that she was protected from tunnel snakes. Which gives Xhinna an idea, and she goes over to Laspanth’s egg and mentally asks where the tunnel snakes are.

Laspanth, where are the tunnel snakes? she thought, hard, at the form inside the egg.
Nothing. And then— she heard it first, a rustling, rock-moving noise, slithering, sliding. And then suddenly it was as if the ground beneath her were lit with glows, showing map lines where tunnel snakes burrowed, digging and rising toward their helpless prey…
“Xhinna? What is it?” Bekka cried.
Xhinna realized she had been screaming. […So she calls people to herself, shows them how she got Laspanth to give her the map…]
Beyond her, dragons bellowed in anger and excitement. Xhinna felt Tazith, pictured a large site underground, heard the blue digging furiously and then roaring with glee as he surprised a group of tunnel snakes and tore them to pieces with his jaws.
All around her, the dragons roared, the riders cried, and the night air was rent with the sounds of dying tunnel snakes.
A noise altered Xhinna and she spun as she saw Jepara approach with Scruff on her lead, chewing on something greenish and spitting out bones, buzzing with pride in her achievements.
“She got six!” Jepara cried happily. “And Saruth got three.” She grabbed Xhinna and hugged her, as Scruff ran in circles, wrapping her lead around the two of them. “And Saruth can hear the tunnel snakes, she can spot them. She says that Laspanth showed her how.”
Xhinna saw Taria approaching, eyes wide in surprise. Xhinna bent down and picked up the Mreeow. “This is Scruff—she killed six tunnel snakes.”
“She’s pretty,” Taria said, letting the grime-stained Meeyu sniff her.

So now people know that at least some dragons in-egg are developed enough to do communication with humans, and also, they are able to sense the presence of attacking tunnel snakes. Which immediately begs the question of why those dragonets weren’t communicating before, to dragons, to their mother, even if they haven’t figured out how to do it with the humans around them. Even if it were the humans and dragons who were digging to kill the things, that would be self-preservation involved.

Secondly, apparently the cats are predisposed to kill the tunnel snakes if they encounter them, and are happy to try and dig them up, if given the opportunity. And the dragons and dragonets are much better at digging than the cats are, really, so we’re back to the question of why, other than for plot reasons, it takes the cats to figure out all of the necessary things to mount an effective snake defense. (They’re cute, and it’s good they’re effective, so I suppose they’re good for situations where there’s no space for dragons to do their thing.) I mean, maybe we’re supposed to think of Laspanth and Jirana as the super-most-special of dragons, for figuring out this completely novel way of doing things, but that says a lot more about the lack of communication before this than it does about the special status of Jirana and Laspanth. New Powers As The Plot Demands is a trope, but when it’s done this nakedly, without working it in or otherwise trying to make it seem less like it’s the first time this has happened, and it changes things this drastically, well, I suppose there’s little else to do but sigh about the Todd books and try to work this new knowledge in.

Plot-wise, now that there’s a solid and repeatable tunnel snake defense in place, we kick back to how the problem of J’keran got handled.

Xhinna assigned J’keran to guard Jirana, saying, “If she dies, you die.”
The brown rider had been abject in his apology, but it hadn’t spared him her wrath. True to her word, she’d beaten him to a pulp, limiting her revenge to a swift kick where it hurt the most, followed by a double-fisted blow to his chin as he collapsed.
He had awakened, groaning, to find a knife pointed at his neck.

Cocowhat by depizan

Ah, no, that’s not beating someone to a pulp if you kick them in the nuts and then hammer them with an uppercut that knocks them out. Beating someone to a pulp is kicking them in the nuts, then punching them in the face and body, repeatedly, until you’re satisfied they’re going to have a network of bruises sprout everywhere that you’ve hit them. J’keran may have a hell of a shiner when everything’s done, but Xhinna decided not to beat him to a pulp, if that’s all she did. Unless we’re seeing an editing problem here, where the word that’s “limiting” in the quote is actually supposed to be “finishing”. so it would be “finishing her revenge with a swift kick.” With that note, we continue.

“Say it,” Xhinna growled, standing above him. “You know the words.”
J’keran swallowed, feeling the tip of the knife prick his skin. “Wingleader, I have struck another in anger; my life is forfeit.”
“Louder, so the others can hear,” Xhinna said, flicking her knife to the left and right before resting it, once again, under the point of his chin. J’keran’s eyes followed her blade, saw those standing around them in a tight knot. HE recognized X’lerin, K’dan, W’vin, bronze rider J’sarte, T’rennor and—V’lex.
“Weyrleader, my life is forfeit. I struck another in anger,” J’keran said more loudly, his eyes darting toward X’lerin, his heart sinking as he acknowledged his shame. The person above him was no longer a mere girl, a mere blue rider, and upstart. He’d been wrong not to accept what he’d seen, arrogant to think he might know better.
He had clenched his jaw tight as he felt the knife bite into his skin. He would not cry out; he would at least die with honor.
The blade stopped. “Your life is forfeit,” Xhinna said, standing back, sheathing her knife, and gesturing for him to rise. “You live for the Weyr now.”
J’keran rose slowly and knelt before her, head bowed, ignoring the drop of blood that had spilled to the ground.
“Wingleader, my life is yours,” he said.

Cocowhat by depizan

Uh, wait, at what point did that rule come into existence? Has it always been thus, and we’ve just had a lot of dragonriders decide that it’s not worth hitting each other and instead they take their frustrations out on the Holders and everyone else? And also, this seems like the sort of thing where there would be a lot of dead dragonriders if striking another in anger is a death sentence. Everything we’ve seen to this point is a lot of effort to try and make sure that there are not all that many dead dragonriders at all. And also, that whole thing with Fiona and the stuffing suits could have had a lot more effect or be a much more important thing that needed to happen if the penalty was death for striking another dragonrider and Fiona has a bunch of very irritated, very cranky dragonriders who will otherwise be condemning each other to death for going at each other. No, this doesn’t make sense at all, and it feels like there’s something else at work here that the authors haven’t bothered to explain to us – like, I can entirely see the thing being “the punishment is commensurate to the crime, so since you tried to kill Xhinna, J’keran, she gets to control how your life ends,” but this would involve having to talk about politics. Or for X’lerin and K’dan to be visibly doing leadership all throughout this book, such that we have a pattern of what discipline is in the Weyr that can be relied on that isn’t related to what Xhinna has been trying to do. Instead, we get this appearing from a place where the only thing we’ve seen before is the clear expectation that Xhinna will be able to beat the snot out of J’keran when she gets her hands on him, which was never fully explained, either, in any official capacity, but more like something that everyone knows and therefore nobody has to explain to anyone else. So we’re still guessing about all of this.

As for J’keran’s thought processes here, shame is certainly a word that can be used, because it has a meaning that doesn’t actually require J’keran to feel any remorse for what he’s done. This entire sequence feels wrong, because I don’t see J’keran actually being sorry for any of his actions. He’s sorry for how this turned out, and he’s sorry that his discipline is happening publicly in front of people he had hoped to bring to his side and the leadership he had hoped to convince to eventually blame everything on Xhinna. (Which they still will, I’m sure, if something else goes wrong.) He misjudged Xhinna’s competence and ability, yes, and her ability to survive massive wounds, but that doesn’t mean that he thinks of her as anything more than the girl, the blue rider, and the upstart. I expect him to be more upset about the fact that he’s going to be held to whatever punishment he has to go with, because if she had killed him, he would have at least died with honor and being seen as a man. But we’re supposed to believe that this arrogant asshole has seen the error of his ways and now respects Xhinna as a person.

“Heard and witnessed!” the crowd called. Behind him, he heard dragons roar, heard his beautiful, precious Perinth among them. He would live. He could fly again, fight Thread as he was meant to do.
He glanced up at Xhinna and was surprised when she winked at him, reached down and slipped her forearm behind his, and heaved him to his feet.
“Live long, brown rider,” she told him quietly. As he looked into her deep blue eyes, he saw that she truly meant it.
“Thank you.”
“One more thing,” she said, raising a hand warningly. “You belong to the Weyr, and so for it, I say: You may not drink again unless the Weyrleader gives leave.”
“As you say,” J’keran said, bowing his head once more.
And now, he followed Jepara’s orders without a word, collecting the best scraps from the newly-butchered herdbeasts, placing them in a clean light bowl, finding a wooden hammer, and placing all the items near to Jirana’s hand.
Then, at Jepara’s gesture, he sat and waited as the sun slowly rose into the sky.

This would feel so much more realistic if J’keran recognized that Xhinna is essentially telling him that she wants him to live for a long time so that he’ll stay in this shameful position, at the beck and call of the Weyr, for the rest of his life. He might be glad that he’ll get to do his dragonrider duties, but at this point, he’s farther down on the power list than the green riders are, and for as much of an arrogant asshole that he was before, and how toxically masculine the culture of Pern is, I can’t see him being anything other than royally pissed that he’s been denied his leadership, denied getting to see tradition upheld, denied getting anybody away from Xhinna, and as the final nail in the coffin, denied both an honorable death and the ability to drink away the pain. It’s not impossible that J’keran is a different person, like V’lex was insisting, but there has to be a lot more work done in that regard to make me believe it than what we’ve been shown.

(If he really is changed, and to this degree, then Xhinna got Jepara again by giving her another person who won’t sass her and give her what she wants in underlings. But I still don’t really believe that at all about him.)

Getting back to the plot, right after this, Laspanth hatches, and wouldn’t you know it, she’s a gold dragon, all the same, proving that the greens can produce gold (and presumably bronze) dragons after all. (I misread things earlier, clearly. “Green queen” apparently refers to golds that have hatched from greens, not greens that have hatched and then get to have eggs. I’ll have to fix wherever I’ve been wrong about that in earlier posts.) And with Laspanth’s arrival, and being fed, everyone rejoices about the idea that the dragons are saved, even though neither Jirana nor Xhinna wants to take the credit that the other is trying to foist on them. And with that, Book One comes to a close, almost 75% of the way into the novel.

Book Two is called The Sky Dragons, and there’s a timeskip that happens in this space before we pick back up with Chapter 16, because Fiona’s arrived.

Chapter 16: The Battle of Friends

This is a very short chapter, and it starts with Xhinna and Fiona fighting with wooden swords and Xhinna complaining that even though it’s “soft wood”, it still hurts when she gets hit by Fiona in the chest, despite the padded leather armor. Because she’s “got a baby to nurse,” which I’m taking to mean Taria gave birth. Fiona tells Xhinna that that complaint won’t work, because she’s also nursing and Xhinna’s been striking her in the chest at least as much as Fiona’s been giving. The important thing to help us realize just how much time has passed is that Fiona turns to look at the fact that there are two kilometers of eggs on the beach sands, as well as several new Flights worth of dragons. Fiona says there’s two thousand more fighting dragons, and Xhinna mentions 2300 people that have been funneled through Nerra to “rebuild the dragon strength of Pern,” so there might be some support staff there in addition to the queens that are probably not considered part of the fighting dragons, because all of those dragons need space, of course, and people to take care of them. All of this, of course, is still a secret to anybody other than Nerra, which also explains some amount of the devastation that was attributed to the plague and makes it supposedly less terrible, even though it was still very terrible. Having established all of this, and marveled at it, Jirana says that within half a Turn, at most, they’ll all be back in their regular timeline. And there’s a fashion choice that I’m trying to puzzle out.

She [Jirana] wore the light robe that was used as both towel and body covering by so many of the Weyr’s beach worshipers—she’d been part of one of several parties speckled up and down the beach who’d mixed their rest with swimming and sunbathing.

I’m pretty sure it’s not Jirana in a terry cloth bath robe, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the authors were thinking about saris and decided they didn’t want to mention them by name, perhaps. Or maybe there’s something else that I’m not thinking of, but it seems interesting that there’s a beach-wear contingent, given how much it’s been an assumed part of dragonrider (and everyone else’s) culture to strip off and take a swim whenever they want to exercise, or wash, or other sorts of things where taking a swim would be a good idea. Before this, though, we haven’t had this idea of both clothing and towel together. It almost suggests like there has been innovation and invention, rather than strict adherence to tradition. Maybe the Sky Weyr has been busting traditions in all sorts of ways.

After this, Jirana looks at Mirressa caring after the babies with “a look of pain” that both Fiona and Xhinna notice and seem to understand the context of, even though we get nothing and instead, it turns out that Xhinna and Fiona are sparring because Jirana saw the future and it’s apparently an essential skill that Xhinna needs to have to avoid a bad future. But Jirana isn’t saying what it is that she’s seen, and so she keeps telling Xhinna she needs to practice more and get better at it. After that, Xhinna plays a little with Xelinan, who is her son, and so that bit earlier about nursing is not for Taria’s baby, but her own, and Xhinna agrees to do a diaper wash in exchange for Mirressa continuing to look after Xelinan. Mirressa apparently has two of her own, but loves babies and looking after them. There’s a big mystery afoot in the Weyr, though, and it’s one that only Xhinna can answer.

“Taria’s got R’ney watching Tarena and Taralin. Don’t you think it’s nice that he’s so helpful?”
“I do,” Xhinna agreed with a slow smile. “But if you think after all these months that you’ll get me to tell you who’s the father, you’re sadly mistaken.”
Mirressa sighed. “It’s just that it’d be a help, you know—”
Xhinna stopped her with a quickly raised hand, then just as quickly returned to her task.
“You’ve got the whole island guessing,” Mirressa persisted.
“Good,” Xhinna said, finishing with Xelinan’s diaper and leaning down to plant a big kiss on his beaming face. “It makes a pleasant diversion and reminds everyone that we are all entitled to our secrets.”
“I suppose,” Mirressa allowed.

In theory, there should be a clue as to who the father is in Xelinan’s name, since boy children have been named in some combination of their parents names. But the narrative has also been very cagey about who the father that Xhinna had in mind would be. And also, apparently, her plan to get someone to impregnate her with a mating flight or something similar worked, and whomever the father of the baby is, he’s not going around claiming that he knocked up the legendary wingleader. Which means he’s either also very content to keep Xhinna’s secret (which seems extremely unlikely, given the bragging bro-culture that Weyrs run on). Which makes me think that Xhinna was remarkably quick about what she wanted, and waited until the father was completely in the mating flight frenzy before getting in, getting what she wanted, and then getting out before the mating flight finished and he came back to himself. Which, like, that’s the sort of thing that should make anyone afraid of Xhinna, because if she can do sex that stealthily, she can probably do anything else equally as well and quietly, so some people should be afraid they’re going to get stabbity-stabbed if they cross the Wingleader.

Mirressa presses Xhinna for information about the upcoming meeting of the leadership team, but Xhinna says she doesn’t know a whole lot anymore, because she “had a baby and am quite happy to let others handle the bigger problems.” Because, with all of those dragons, nobody is relying on a blue rider with excellent leadership and improvisation skills when they have full cohorts of properly colored dragons to fill the ranks with, regardless of their leadership role. Which makes Xhinna happy, because the target’s off her back, at least for now. That said, there’s also a human baby boom going on, and that’s caused a cloth shortage.

rinsing and recycling were more crucial now than ever, now that cloth was in short supply with the added need to provide diapers and baby clothing.
It was an unanticipated side effect of the widespread realization that here on the Western Isle and now, back in time before the Third Pass, was the best time for women who rode blues, green, and queens to complete their families.

Unanticipated side effect, my entire ass. Xhinna was specifically talking about the people trying and succeeding at getting themselves pregnant, and herself being mostly sanguine about this, several chapters ago. The only thing that might have been unanticipated was the rush of people that they needed to get in front of dragons once it was a guarantee that the eggs would not get killed by tunnel snakes before they were able to develop. (Which also makes me wonder how well that operation scaled up. Lots of Mreeow kittens and their handlers and these specific special dragons that can communicate while still in the egg? After a certain point of getting killed by dragons and cats alike, one wonders if the tunnel snakes would learn to give a wide berth of where the dragons are. Then again, there are still humans hunting them at this point, so the tunnel snakes probably aren’t smart enough to recognize the danger zone when they are in it.)

And, while I can’t be sure about this, it seems like it’s more than just Nerra who’s in on the secret of all of this.

“Fair trade” was a phrase borrowed from the traders who had grown in importance and meaning as the inhabitants had outgrown Sky Weyr and overflowed throughout the Western Isle. It was all the result of Xhinna’s simple message, left nearly three Turns back at the Red Butte, […by Tenniz’s grave.] It seemed more than fitting to Fiona, Lorana, and Xhinna that the dragonriders saved by the vision of the trader be willing to borrow from his people’s customs and his bequests—particularly the strange Sights that his daughter, Jirana, had provided.

Well, either that or the dragonriders are perfectly happy with appropriation of trader culture, which is equally as likely as having wholesale imported an entire trader network to the Western Isle to help with the logistics of keeping everyone supplied. But that also basically means that the great conspiracy has more people in it than they would like us to think, even if it would be really smart of Xhinna to have thought of this, specifically because traders don’t interact much and aren’t seen as particularly anything in society, so they would certainly be able to succeed at pulling off all of this without anyone asking questions or trying to dig too deeply. Which also says bad things about how the society thinks of and treats the traders.

Taria arrives promptly, apparently on cue because whenever Xhinna starts thinking and worrying about Jirana, someone arrives to shift her mind off of Jirana and on to something else. There’s a little bit of worry about what’s going to happen when Laspanth gets old enough to go mating, but Xhinna says Jirana’s not concerned.

“Her queen will be old enough soon.”
“That doesn’t worry her,” Xhinna said, recalling a recent conversation with Jirana. “She’ll rise when we’re ready,” Jirana had assured her. Laspanth, the first of six “green queens” was still small for a gold and clearly growing, so perhaps there was no reason to doubt Jirana on this. That hadn’t stopped Fiona from bringing the matter up with Xhinna, nor Xhinna from worrying about it.

But does Fiona bring it up with Jirana, or does she just endlessly fret about it to Xhinna? Because Fiona is also a gold rider, and therefore the person with the most experience about what Jirana’s experience might be like when that time comes. And I somehow doubt that the plan that Xhinna had for educating the greens and blues will fly with the gold riders. Of course, the right answer to this might very well be “sic Jepara on the new gold riders and she’ll make sure they get properly educated, if out of spite more than anything.”

In any case, even though Taria’s been sent as a distraction, she knows it’s not always the most effective option.

“Hrmph!” Taria said. “One, you’re impossible to distract when you’ve your mind on something; and two, if I wanted to distract you, I wouldn’t be talking about it.”
[…there’s more diaper washing…]
The dark-haired rider was right on both counts: Xhinna would not let herself be distracted when she thought something was important; and regardless, no matter how important her thoughts, Taria could always distract her if she really desired.
In the past two Turns their relationship had grown both stronger and freer than Xhinna could possibly have imagined. They no longer needed to be in sight of each other and constantly touching; in fact, they now took joy in being able to recount separate adventures, to revel in the strength of their bonds rather than railing against them.
Xhinna could feel that special connection with Taria, that increased joy in her presence, the knowledge that they were free enough to go their separate ways without fear of hurting each other, and the greater joy that, when they could, they preferred each other’s company above all others. Not that they were exclusive—they couldn’t quite be, because of the nature of their bonds with their dragons. Taria was willing to cheer when Tazith outflew browns to catch other greens; Xhinna was willing to stand in honor as Coranth was caught by another blue. But Xhinna and Taria had learned to adjust and thrive in those situations. What mattered most was what they chose—not what dragon passion compelled.
As it was with them, so it was with the other greens and blues throughout the Western Isle.

Which very much sounds like a mature dragonrider relationship, although there still seems to be a certain amount of “the riders of the dragons that are having sex have to have sex with each other,” rather than being able to make sure that their preferred partner is nearby when the mating flight stuff happens so that while the dragons are having the sex they want, so are the riders. This author still can’t really conceive of allowing Xhinna and Taria and any other nominally-lesbian riders to forego penis in its entirety. Even though he’s writing that idea on the page that what Xhinna and Taria choose is more important than what the dragons are lusting after.

Xhinna and Taria talk a little bit more about what it might be that has Jirana on edge, but get no further at guessing, and we learn what the message was that Xhinna left for everyone saying they were ready for them: Come. Yep, just that one word, left at Red Butte, the second message left, and far enough apart from the first so that the timelines would stay intact.

And at this point, we have a convenient stopping place, because next week, we’re going to actually hear about the politics of what happened when Fiona let the Asshole out of his cage. No one will be surprised that he decided he was going to be an asshole. And it will even be the people who were there telling the story. What it won’t be, however, is the actual scene itself being written in, but a fairly thorough recap. I still think this book would have been better if we’d bounced between present and past with their different problems before this merge point, but at least we’re getting something about how Telgar Weyr was when the old guard came back and thought they could pick up where they left off.

Last time, Xhinna and company figured out what went wrong with the eggs that didn’t get eaten by tunnel snakes, and instituted a policy of having riders and dragons sleep next to the eggs to keep them warm enough to develop properly. Also, Jirana introduced herself to her dragon. And, eventually, all of Xhinna’s subordinates made sure she got shipped off for some necessary rest after she pulled two all-nighters in a row out of anxiety over the reality that everyone is looking at her and waiting for her to fail on this hatching, so they can categorically dismiss women riders.

Sky Dragons: Chapters 13 and 14: Content Notes: Accidental pet death,

Chapter 13: Attack From Beneath

Xhinna awakens to R’ney appearing with caffeine and rolls (with butter available), but R’ney won’t tell Xhinna about anything going on until she’s eaten food. We get a quick summary of all the things that happened while Xhinna was out, which mostly involves yet another big cat attack, which was eventually handled by the humans and the dragons. This is all stuff that Xhinna believes could have been handled, so why is she awake now? Apparently, Jirana is saying there’s a litter of kittens that they absolutely need to go rescue, and Jepara, of all people, is inclined to let Jirana have her way on the matter. Jirana tells Xhinna that this litter is one of those things that has to happen, but that she can’t tell her the details. So, realizing that Jirana’s asking because of the future, and that Jepara is willing to indulge in this, Xhinna turns immediately to practical mode, asks about things like building a proper pen, and then devises a system where specific riders and Candidates, including herself, will take charge of raising the Meeyus and training them, so that they won’t end up trying to maul or kill the humans or dragons. Jepara says that if the cats aren’t trainable and turn dangerous, she’ll kill them herself, and Jirana suggests that if cats attack dragons, it’s because they’re confused, and maybe the dragons can talk to the cats to get that straightened out. Having decided they’re going at it, the weyrpeople set themselves into motion to build a pen for the kittens and to go find them so they can be rescued, taking direction from Jirana about the location of the cats.

Xhinna hustled the child toward Tazith even as the trader girl prattled off orders. As Tazith bore the three of them skyward, Xhinna had a horrible thought: What would Jirana be like as a Weyrwoman?

Further increasing Jirana’s reputation, the Meeyus were exactly where she said, exactly as old as she said, and exactly the same numbers she’d said. Xhinna found herself torn once more between belief in all the girl’s predictions and incredulity that one so young, even Tenniz’s daughter, could know the things she claimed to know.

The thought of what Jirana would be like as a Weyrwoman, to me, is effective. Assuming she had enough buy-in from her weyrpeople to follow through with things when she had a Sight about them. Presumably, with a little more maturity, Jirana will stop being disbelieved because of how young she is, despite the fact that she still hasn’t missed, yet.

Since they’re still wild, when Xhinna picks up one of the kittens the wrong way, it takes a swipe at her with its claws, which results in Xhinna grabbing it by the scruff, which works as effectively as grabbing any other cat or kitten by the scruff as a behavior modifier. So all the kittens successfully get back to the camp, where there’s milk and a pen waiting for them. And this part, where despite having fawned over Danirry earlier, R’ney doubts her ability to construct a pen.

“Rough wood, rough work, but it’s sturdy.”
“How far down did you go?”
“I had the dragons bounce on them,” Danirry said. “They’re a good meter, meter and a half in the ground.”
R’ney seized one of the stakes and pulled; it bowed but didn’t move. “Good,” he said, glancing over at her. “Good work, Danirry.”
The blue rider beamed at the compliment.

I like the visual of dragons bouncing up and down on the stakes to drive them into the ground, and the excitement and enjoyment they might have had about doing that, since the dragons seem to enjoy having fun like that. I’m less impressed with R’ney’s decision to test the stakes himself, because that makes me shift the tone of his compliment from something genuine to something more like “I’m surprised this woman knows how to do anything competently, but it’s good work and I should say so.” Which, remember, Danirry was the one who suggested the right designs for them to use to sift the gold out when they were clearing away all the dirt, and presumably helped build the things. If Danirry says that it’s solid, there’s been no evidence to believe the contrary. And, if he doesn’t believe her, or he wants to check just to be sure, he can probably ask the dragons about it. Or, if this is something just to satisfy his own need to be sure that the cage is going to hold, he can say “I believe you, but I have to check for myself because otherwise I’ll have An Whole Anxiety about it” or something else that indicates that it’s really his own thing. Or he can wait until Danirry’s gone and check it himself. Because doing it right in front of her, right after she said what she did about it, is a pretty clear signal that he doesn’t believe her. But Danirry apparently is super-happy at the compliment that follows the diss and doesn’t frown or otherwise react to the insult.

Having figured out who is getting cats, we get their names in pretty rapid-fire: Jirana’s is Meesha, Xhinna’s is Scruff (which Jirana disapproves of), Jepara’s is Tawny, and V’lex and T’rennor, who each get one, are called Mee and Yu.

V’lex named his Mee, and T’rennor, not to be outdone, went with Yu. Xhinna tolerantly said nothing, reminding herself sardonically that the two, after all, were green riders.

Aliyal gets the last one, calling it Amber. Also, didn’t we just have a bit a little while ago about how Xhinna supposedly saw the depths in both V’lex and T’rennor and how they’re not just supposed to be the butt of jokes, but complete people all to themselves? Yet here we are, with Xhinna going “well, they’re green riders, so I suppose this is the sort of naming we should have expected from them,” as opposed to “Oh, of course the two who are pretty similar and in love with each other would come up with puns for names, especially after the first one started it.”

Xhinna remarks that Aliyal’s the quietest of the new riders, but she’s formed a good bond with Alimma, who seems to treat her well. Mirressa offers to help Jepara with Tawny, so that gets most of the new riders involved with raising kittens. Which Xhinna is fine with, especially since she’s also fine with the idea of killing all of those kittens with her bare hands if they step out of line with her or threaten eggs or people. Cats are cats, though, and, as anyone who has been around them long enough knows, xkcd #231 applies. And also, because of how cute kittens are, the prospect of getting hold one or otherwise interact with one can be used as an excellent bribe/goad.

It seemed that everyone in the extended camp had to touch, pet, fondle, or hold one of the Meeyus in the next several days.
To keep the litter from getting too frightened, Xhinna decided that only those who had done more than their share on any particular day would be allowed to handle a Meeyu. The competition worked and industry picked up immensely.
The effort lasted for three days until Xhinna, sensing she was straining the Weyr too much, decided to end it, allowing each individual Meeyu handler to set his or her own schedule.

This seems like a reasonable way of domesticating the cats, or at least making them less likely to go after humans and dragons, which is one of the desired effects. They also do something correct later on where halters and leads are fashioned for each of the cats, so the cats are going to learn early that wearing leash and halter is just a thing that happens, rather than something new, scary, and a thing to fight.

And, apparently, this entire Weyr runs on Cute, whether it’s being cute, having the opportunity to hold the cute, or trying to gestate some cute of their own. I also wonder what the “strain” is that’s being caused to this Weyr by Xhinna’s proclamation. Is it that in all of three days, what qualifies as more than their share has jumped to unsustainable levels and people are risking injury in trying to achieve peak effectiveness? Are people trying to sabotage other efforts so that they can seem above and beyond in comparison? Are *gasp* bronze riders being expected to pitch in and contribute their full amount, rather than sitting on their asses and ordering everyone else around? Is the Weyrleadership suddenly finding themselves having to lead and assign people and find things for them to do and they’re running out of excuses to give or busy work to do? Why is this causing strain? It would be really helpful to tell us about what the status of Sky Weyr is in relation to their supplies and places and everything.

Instead, we stay on the interpersonal level. The next scene starts with Jepara waking Xhinna up and saying the dragons are noticing something is wrong. But first we have this:

The difficult queen rider had chosen to sleep with Xhinna, ostensibly for warmth and proximity to Scruff but really, Xhinna had quickly realized, for advice on relationships. Apparently X’lerin was being aloof to her, spending more time in the company of the other weyrwomen, and Jepara was near frantic with worry.
Their conversation had turned intimate and Xhinna was not surprised to learn that Jepara had not realized that one love was much like the other, no matter who gave it or to whom it was given. When they finally decided to sleep—after the topic had been talked over far longer than Xhinna cared—Jepara had rolled over with her back to Xhinna in a clear statement. Xhinna had smiled to herself, and was not at all surprised when, sometime later, Jepara heaved a huge sigh, rolled back over, and draped an arm lightly around her. Cold nights made for the strangest of bedfellows. Xhinna thought as she rested her head on the pillow nestled up against the egg she was warming. She considered rudely forcing Jepara to move around to the far side of the egg, but Tazith was already there and little Scruff would complain at being wakened, having just found the perfect spot at the back of Xhinna’s knees.

I mean, I suppose that Xhinna’s the one person in the camp who wouldn’t be seen as a threat to X’lerin if Jepara confides in her, but there’s also the part where Xhinna is pretty much Kinsey 5.999 and so she doesn’t exactly have a lot of tools in her belt on how to get men to pay attention to her. And, as the narrative tells us, Xhinna is not exactly feeling like she wants to help Jepara with her boy woes, especially if, as it appears, Jepara seems to be more interested in maintaining her place at the top of the hierarchy and not that she’s particularly interested in X’lerin as a person. (Xhinna’s not being particularly written in character here, either, with her thought of “one love is much like the other,” which is pretty rich given that up until very recently, she and Taria were the only women with interest in other women. So I would expect Xhinna to be “if you want him, sink your claws into him and never let go,” not “eh, one lover is much like the next, don’t be so concerned that you’re losing your shot at being X’lerin’s Weyrwoman.”)

Before we can get too much farther into why Xhinna still dislikes Jepara, she recognizes Tazith is also awake, and that has her feeling for Scruff’s lead and her own knife, in case she has to fight something off again. Because that went so well the last time. Aliyal eventually also joins the party trying to figure out what’s going on, apparently awoken by her kitten. Eventually, through the cats sniffing and the humans investigating, they discover there’s a tunnel snake inside the dragon egg by lifting it up. Xhinna keeps the egg tilted to expose the tunnel snake, the kittens try to kill it, and eventually Aliyal kills it with Xhinna’s knife, and both Scruff and Amber go to town feeding on the fresh corpses of both tunnel snake and dragonet, because the tunnel snake had already killed the dragonet before being discovered. Which then triggers recriminations from Xhinna because they lost a dragonet, but X’lerin doesn’t take Xhinna to task, just states that now they know that the sands aren’t safe (which they knew before) and that the cats can be helpful against the snakes (proving Taria correct.) And then he tells her to figure out how to keep the rest of the eggs safe. Xhinna’s relieved, apparently, that X’lerin hasn’t decided to yank her authority, and then calls a meeting immediately to figure out how to avoid a repeat of this incident. None of the suggestions really work, because the Hold they’ve been creating doesn’t have enough rock space to hold all the clutches, and they might not be able to transport enough sand anyway. Xhinna hits on a moment of foreshadowing when she complains that it would be easier if the dragonets could talk, but the narrative continues on to Xhinna going around and basically telling everyone who asks that they’re working on a solution and they’ll figure it out shortly. Which apparently bolsters their spirits, but sinks Xhinna’s further because she’s at an impasse. Jirana tries to be resolutely cheerful at Xhinna, but fails, and then dashes off rather than answer Xhinna’s question about what’s wrong. And that’s chapter 13.

Chapter 14: A Body Torn

Chapter 14 opens with more dread, and a big fog, and a little bit of Xhinna admitting that the kitten was cute, and might turn out to be trainable after all. Then a muffled voice in her head tells Xhinna to follow, Javissa shows up asking if Xhinna’s seen Jirana, and the two of them recruit J’riz and Bekka to help her go find Jirana, eventually helped out by Jirana sending a picture of the stars above her so that Tazith has a warp coordinate. Which puts them, eventually, in the middle of a melee that involves humans, cats, and tunnel snakes all fighting in a big and dark cave. But first there’s this:

“You stay here,” Xhinna said.
“I’m coming with you,” Javissa said. “That’s my daughter.”
“And my sister,” J’riz added, moving up beside his mother, his belt kninfe drawn.
“And my—” Bekka cut herself off. “My weyrmate, if nothing else.”

I feel like there’s something really good in that space from Bekka. It could also be something that Bekka wanted to declare, but realized her claim was subordinate to “daughter” and “sister” from her biological family. That said, in previous places, “weyrmate” has often had the implication that the people in the weyr together are sleeping together, which would be yet more of a child sex fetish on display, but would also end up breaking the rules about gold riders being exclusively het. So that’s probably not it, but the pause there could really be usefully significant in a world where there aren’t quite so stringently-defined gender roles involved.

So, after all hell breaks loose, because the tunnel snakes are attacking the sands, Razz is killing snakes, but also frightening candidates, and J’keran is trying mightily to restore some form of order and rally his people to fight (and failing miserably, for obvious reasons), Bekka eventually finds Jirana, but she’s apparently hurt, because while Bekka is saying Jirana will be all right, Xhinna recognizes the tone of voice as the one that Bekka uses when she’s lying through her teeth, and what Xhinna heard earlier was Razz growling and being aggressive. Which means what happens next is pretty predictable.

With berserk rage, Xhinna went charging toward Bekka, slicing through snakes or anything that looked like them and looking for the large amber eyes of the attacking Mreeow.
A roar alerted her and she spun, falling backward as she thrust her knife forward. A huge male Mrreow flew over her, snagged her knife, yanking it from her hands even as its roar turned to a bellow of pain.
She scrambled to retrieve her knife and turned to face the Mreeow if it returned. Panting hard, she tried to hear anything but the sound of her breath.
There was motion above again and she pivoted, slashing the air, splitting the tunnel snake in half before spinning around again at the first touch of a large paw.
The Mrreow had flung itself into the air with a menacing growl, and as Xhinna turned, thrusting her knife out to protect herself, she felt a second tunnel snake’s claws rip into her scalp just before the Mreeow’s paw connected with it and flung it far.
But it was too late for the Mrreow. Xhinna’s knife and her instincts moved faster than her brain, and in the startled moment she had to recognize that the Mreeow had attacked the tunnel snake and not her, its momentum and hers drove the sharp dirk hard into its chest.

And so Xhinna kills the Mrreow that was trying to protect her, and worse, it’s Razz, which she recognizes as soon as she sees the collar. That’s essentially the thing that breaks Xhinna, and she goes into a sobbing rage at everyone, especially Bekka, about how they all need to do something to save Razz, that it was an accident, all the excuses that won’t do anything. Xhinna sobs at R’ney, at Bekka, at Taria, who are all understanding that Xhinna didn’t mean it. Xhinna eventually demands a bandage, and then starts tearing her shirt to try and patch the hole and bandage up Razz, even though everyone there knows it won’t bring the cat back to live. But it seems to provide some closure for Xhinna to do it, and for Razz to get buried (Tazith digs the hole) and yet another apology, this one to Razz and Taria about not listening to them about the cats. A lot of people, including X’lerin and K’dan and others show up to help with the burial, which pings Xhinna’s radar that something’s wrong, and eventually, Bekka comes to get her and we realize why Jirana didn’t want to tell Xhinna about what was bothering her – apparently Jirana saw herself being severely mauled during this sequence, to the point where Bekka is afraid that moving Jirana will cause lethal damage to her, and didn’t want to worry Xhinna. Jirana, says to “ask the queens” and “trust”, which makes as much sense as Tenniz usually did. Xhinna is not having anyone else dying on her watch, and so when Bekka complains about it being too dark to perform effective surgery, Xhinna warps Bekka and Jirana on Tazith to the middle of the day to provide the necessary light.

She felt Bekka’s astonishment and worry. The cold of between could do horrible things to an open wound. They came out above the beach, where Pinorth bugled in surprise. The sun was high above, and the sands were warm with the noon heat.
“Enough light now?” Xhinna called as Tazith began a gentle spiral to a soft landing on the sands.
“If the cold of between didn’t kill her,” Bekka said, jumping down and reaching up to receive the stricken girl.

That’s kind of fascinating, actually. I know that very cold things can cause necrosis and that frostbite is not a thing to be fucked around with, and the riders have heavy warm gear to try and keep the cold of hyperspace out, but the dragonriders have, to this point, warped through time and space without particularly caring about the consequences to their faces exposed to the cold of hyperspace.

Or, for that matter, worrying about oxygen deprivation while traveling through both space and time, which was a problem for Lessa (admittedly, Lessa’s time hop was bigger than theirs). It seems perfectly likely that whatever the dragons do to make sure themselves and their riders stay safe and warm as they warp their way through hyperspace is the thing they use for passengers, whether they’re also seated on the dragon or in the hands of the dragons themselves. So unless it were something tearing Jirana apart more, or some other thing, I would have assumed that the cold of hyperspace was being warded away in the same way as it always is. (Then again, there’s that thing where hyperspace causes miscarriages and the cold is blamed for it. So, somehow, we have people who regularly warp through the cold of space with skin exposed who somehow are extra concerned about babies and the injured with regard to this, and then we also have to remember that warping into hyperspace is the most effective way of stopping Thread from devouring you whole, and the assumption on that is that the extreme cold is the effective way of killing the organism. So somehow we have lots of things being potentially frozen, and yet the dragonriders don’t, as best as I can tell, try to cover everything up, unless those “helmets” that we’ve heard referred to all the time are actually full head-covering items with glass or something else that allows the rider to see through. We’ll have to chalk it up to yet another situation where things weren’t fully thought through, I guess. Or that I’m being super-nitpicky, well beyond what any reader should be expected to be about it.

Getting back to the plot, Xhinna manages to puzzle out what Jirana was asking for in “trusting” and “asking the queens”, specifically, to have the queen dragons transmit Jirana’s pain to all the other people around her so that Jirana will stay still enough for Bekka to operate on her and patch her back together. Which is really good as a narrative thing of people working together and collectively bearing the pain of the person they’re trying to help, but doesn’t make any sense in biology. If the queen dragons can transmit the pain and share it so that Jirana doesn’t experience it, the queen dragons can block the pain entirely. And, if I recall correctly, Fiona had Talenth do something like that to a dragon to ensure that they held still long enough for surgery to succeed and take on them, so presumably the queens, especially massed, should be able to block basically any signals from Jirana’s injuries from reaching her brain or anywhere else, for that matter, so that she doesn’t experience it or twitch or otherwise potentially harm herself in a reaction to the pain she’s going through. That, of course, would require someone to have a working understanding of how the nervous system works and how anesthetics work, and otherwise be a properly trained Healer in a system that has proper Healing knowledge. It might take several queens working in concert with Laspanth (as is happening here, and remember Laspanth is still in her egg) to use the correct conduit to get those pain signals blocked and dampened, but that’s the better idea, rather than intercepting and transmitting that pain to other people. (I could totally see the queens and/or Laspanth transmitting pain as a way of being angry with the humans that have allowed things to progress to the point where Jirana got hurt that much, or someone asking to take on some of that pain out of guilt that Jirana got hurt to this degree, but it seems suspect that the default idea is to transmit the pain to others so that Jirana relaxes enough to stay still and be operated on.)

We get a description of what the experience is like for Xhinna.

Pain! She gasped, she went rigid—she didn’t twitch or move a muscle, she just felt pain—roaring, furious pain, and with it, terror: She was dying. She rode down the terror, calmed it, soothed it, held the pain, examined it, compared it to other pains, the pain of her shoulder, the pain of childbirth to come, of Threadscore, of—
“Xhinna!” a voice cried. “Xhinna, it’s done.”

For however long it took while Xhinna was focusing and applying meditative technique to the pain, Bekka got Jirana stitched up and she’s going to be fine. Weirdly enough, the experience of taking the pain has also left a physical reminder.

Xhinna felt a painful twinge in her own belly and, wincing, lifted her tunic to stare down at herself.
“Xhinna, what’s wrong with your stomach?” Bekka asked, peering at the reddened skin.
Xhinna didn’t answer her, turning instead to the dark-haired queen rider beside her. “Jepara, how’s your stomach?”
Wordlessly, the queen rider lifted her tunic to reveal three parallel red welts, matching Xhinna’s.
“We took the pain, didn’t we?” Jepara asked then, smiling at Xhinna. “It had to go somewhere.”
“What about the others?” Xhinna glanced over her shoulder at the figure that trailed them silently. “Taria, raise your tunic.”
Surprised, the green rider lifted her tunic above her distended belly. There were three welts across it.

Xhinna remembers Taria putting a hand on her and helping out, and then kisses each of the three welts, before listening to the baby, and then accepting an apology from Taria about listening to J’keran and having drank his stuff (“We’ve got better,” Xhinna offered shyly. / “Not until the baby comes,” Bekka growled tersely from beside the sleeping Jirana, which is an oh holy fuck whyyyyyyy would you say that, Xhinna?) and apologizing again for the death of Razz. Jirana stirs, repeats her request to ask the queens for help, is assured by Xhinna that they did that to help with Jirana’s pain, and Jirana falls back asleep before saying anything more. That’s Bekka’s cue to throw everyone out, and the chapter ends with Xhinna being surprised at Taria slipping her hand into Xhinna’s. I’m not all that surprised, given that everything that happened is likely to be considered a lovers’ spat between them, and also, J’keran is right there to be a scapegoat for everything that went wrong in all of these situations. So, because Taria never fell out of love with Xhinna (and Xhinna didn’t fall out of love with Taria), it seems pretty natural for both of them to want to pick up where they left off and pretend the whole thing didn’t happen, as much as such a thing can be pretended away.

In chapter Fifteen, we’ll finally get to see what happens to J’keran.

(I say approaching the halfway point, but there aren’t that many chapters left in this book and my electronic copy says we’re about 70% of the way through, so it’s not actually halfway through. It just seems like this is the halfway point of the narrative, where we’ve resolved the initial problem and can now devote our full attention to the greater scope problem. The next chapter will resolve Book One, meaning that Book Two is only 30 percent of the whole text, but again, it feels like we’ve made it to the halfway point. Maybe Book Two was going to be developed more, and the untimely death of one of the authors stopped that from going forward. Even if it has been acknowledged that Todd was doing the writing and Anne was a creative consultant. In a more romance-like book, getting Xhinna and Taria back together would be much closer to the end, so whatever is yet to happen is apparently something bigger than this beat in the book. Unless the authorial ultimate endgame is not actually Xhinna/Taria but something else. There’s still some unknowing father of Xhinna’s child to resolve, after all.)