The Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey [43]
She shook her head to dispel it. Her movement was injudicious. It caught R’gul’s attention. He looked up from the Records he was laboriously reading. As he drew her slate across the stone Council table, the clatter roused S’lel. He jerked his head up, uncertain of his surroundings.
“Humph? Eh? Yes?” he mumbled, blinking to focus sleep-blurred eyes.
It was too much. Lessa quickly made contact with S’lel’s Tuenth, himself just rousing from a nap. Tuenth was quite agreeable.
“Tuenth is restless, must go,” S’lel promptly muttered. He hastened up the passageway, his relief at leaving no less than Lessa’s at seeing him go. She was startled to hear him greet someone in the corridor and hoped the new arrival would provide an excuse to rid herself of R’gul.
It was Manora who entered. Lessa greeted the headwoman of the Lower Caverns with thinly disguised relief. R’gul, always nervous in Manora’s presence, immediately departed.
Manora, a stately woman of middle years, exuded an aura of quiet strength and purpose, having come to a difficult compromise with life which she maintained with serene dignity. Her patience tacitly chided Lessa for her fretfulness and petty grievances. Of all the women she had met in the Weyr, (when she was permitted by the dragonmen to meet any) Lessa admired and respected Manora most. Some instinct in Lessa made her bitterly aware that she would never be on easy or intimate terms with any of the women in the Weyr. Her carefully formal relationship with Manora, however, was both satisfying and satisfactory.
Manora had brought the tally slates of the Supply Caves. It was her responsibility as headwoman to keep the Weyrwoman informed of the domestic management of the Weyr. (One duty R’gul insisted she perform.)
“Bitra, Benden, and Lemos have sent in their tithes, but that won’t be enough to see us through the deep cold this Turn.”
“We had only those three last Turn and seemed to eat well enough.”
Manor smiled amiably, but it was obvious she did not consider the Weyr generously supplied.
“True, but that was because we had stores of preserved and dried foods from more bountiful Turns to sustain us. That reserve is now gone. Except for those barrels and barrels of fish from Tillek . . .” Her voice trailed off expressively.
Lessa shuddered. Dried fish, salted fish, fish, had been served all too frequently of late.
“Our supplies of grain and flour in the Dry Caves are very low, for Benden, Bitra, and Lemos are not grain producers.”
“Our biggest needs are grains and meat?”
“We could use more fruits and root vegetables for variety,” Manora said thoughtfully. “Particularly if we have the long cold season the weather-wise predict. Now we did go to Igen Plain for the spring and fall nuts, berries . . .”
“We? to Igen Plain?” Lessa interrupted her, stunned.
“Yes,” Manora answered, surprised at Lessa’s reaction. “We always pick there. And we beat out the water grains from the low swamplands.”
“How do you get there?” asked Lessa sharply. There could be only one answer.
“Why, the old ones fly us. They don’t mind, and it gives the beasts something to do that isn’t tiring. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“That the women in the Lower Caverns fly with dragonriders?” Lessa pursed her lips angrily. “No. I wasn’t told.” Nor did it help Lessa’s mood to see the pity and regret in Manora’s eyes.
“As Weyrwoman,” she said gently, “your obligations restrict you where . . .”
“If I should ask to be flown to . . . Ruatha, for instance,” Lessa cut in, ruthlessly pursuing a subject she sensed Manora wanted to drop, “would it be refused me?”
Manora regarded Lessa closely, her eyes dark with concern. Lessa waited. Deliberately she had put Manora into a position where the woman must either lie outright, which would be distasteful to a person of her integrity, or prevaricate, which could prove more instructive.
“An absence for any reason these days might be disastrous. Absolutely disastrous,” Manora said firmly and, unaccountably, flushed. “Not with the queen growing so quickly. You must be here.”