Chap. 355 The Adoption

Chap. 355 The Adoption

“Wow,” B’rost said, “This is fascinating. So many twists and turns in this scenario!”

They were sitting around a fire, digesting. Everyone had a mug of beer save K’ndar.

Their fire lizards rested in the tree limbs above them. The fire was just warm enough to offset the cooling air. The sun would set in another hour.

They’d all told their sides of the story.

Francie sipped at her beer. “My word, K’ndar, you’re missing a good beer.”

He laughed. “Not really, but I think I know what you mean. It’s D’mitran’s. He gave me a cask of his a few months ago, ‘for those special occasions’.

“He knows you’re allergic, yes?” B’rost said.

“He knows. But he also knows most folks aren’t, and I do want to be a good host, once or twice in a lifetime.”

“So,” Francie said, “Let’s talk, briefly, about how we untangle this nasty little web that’s cost two lives and almost those of Lizard and Vixen.”

“Us? You mean us?” K’ndar said.

“Well, how many usses are here? You. Me. B’rost. Lizard. Us.”

They laughed.

“I told Jansen everything I knew about it, admittedly, it wasn’t much. But she said she wanted the Council to look at it, first, and to keep it quiet until after they’d made a decision on what to do.” K’ndar said.

He looked at B’rost, wondering if he’d said too much in front of the blue rider.

“I only told you what I know because I trust you all to not betray me. The last thing I want is to be on my knees in front of the Council, trying to explain how all this got out into public knowledge.”

He looked a little harder at B’rost than necessary. The blue rider began to protest, then subsided. I had yakked my mouth in the past, he thought. He forgave me, I don’t want to break that trust.

Francie waved it off. “Jansen knows a lot more, K’ndar, I had a nice long chat with Vixen when I took her to Lemos. She told me all about it. And she has the right to make a big stink at Lemos. It won’t be a secret for much longer.”

“Gossip flies at light speed,” Lizard quoted.

“Yes,” Francie said, “And if we let the Council deal with it, we’ll all be dead by the time they get around to taking care of it. In the meantime there’s people in danger. I’m not saying its us who have to fix it. It’s got multiple players in multiple spots. It’s a heavily packed wagon, but we can get the wagon rolling.

Now look,” she started ticking the points on her fingers,”This involves fire lizards serving as messengers, a girl from Lizard’s early days, one quite possibly chosen to serve as courier because she is a girl and they thought she’d never be considered a courier. But someone tipped the raiders off. We have stolen horses, phony minting stamps, of brass rather than steel, messages in code, a dead fire lizard, an orphaned fire lizard, a man who was ordered to kill everyone else involved, maybe he killed two couriers, one who attacked Lizard thinking he was the courier, the same man has the ‘keys’ to decode the ciphers but is now dead, a picture of a bollard, and someoneveryhigh up at Lemos, one who can hold an engraver hostage. Or his family. Sheesh, I’ve run out of fingers.”

“Where do you get that?” B’rost asked, “where someone is being held hostage?”

“Like K’ndar said, a cry for help, right under the spy master’s nose. It tells me the spymaster has no idea how to make the stamps but has access to the craftsman who does, and probably has threatened the person with harm to his family if he reports making counterfeit stamps. But the engraver has ethics and the courage to try and get the word out to someone, and those someones are us. Maybe he’s been doing it for a couple years, and is getting desperate.”

“Sheesh, it’s complex,” K’ndar said.

“Did the green fire lizard manage to tell her master that she was dying?”

No. Her last act was to send an image of the man who attacked Lizard.

“Raventh says no. So maybe the woman doesn’t know that her fire lizard is dead. Although by now she should be worried.”

“Let’s send her a message. By the brown fire lizard,” B’rost said.

“What? I don’t’ have the code.”

She doesn’t know that. She thinks we do. Do we have Jansen type up a note for her? Something that says, ‘last message unreadable, please send again?”

“It’s late, and I’ve got to get back to Landing, K’ndar,” Francie said, “I bet she’d not want to be disturbed.”

“And I’ve got to get back to Healer Hall,” B’rost said.

“And of course, no one knows who that higher up in Lemos is.”

“Um, yes, we do,” Lizard said.

“We do?”

“The brown fire lizard knows who to take messages to. Remember, he mourned the green fire lizard, they’d mated. So he knows someone at Lemos.”

“Ah.” They all looked up into the trees to look at the brown. He had purposefully perched a ways from all the others.

“He looks lonely,” Francie said. Should I take him on?

No. Our three are not interested Motanith said, a little more firmly than necessary.

“His name is Kelso, he’s been with me all day, ” K’ndar said, ‘but he’s not communicating.”

But he talks to me Raventh said.

“Oh, I am such a dolt!” K’ndar sighed, “He’s been talking to Raventh. Let me…” he got up for his backpack and dug out his notebook.

“Maybe have him send an image of the Lemos person to Raventh?” B’rost said, “But how do we get the information out of that?”

K’ndar grinned, flourishing his notebook and a pencil.

“Through my drawings.”

Raventh. Ask Kelso to show you who he delivers messages to in Lemos Hold. It may be the person who the green looked to. Then show it to me.

They saw his face change to the vacant expression when one is listening to their dragon. He began to draw.

This isn’t easy, he thought, drawing with someone else’s direction. I have to really concentrate.

A face soon appeared.

He’s sending them as fast as he can. It’s like he’s been waiting to be asked.

Can you keep them separate? I’m still on the face. I want to get it absolutely right.

He says he wants this out of his mind. He doesn’t want to go back to Lemos. He doesn’t like the person he is showing.His master did not trust the human.

Okay. Keep this face in your mind, and I’ll let you know when I can draw more.

He dragged his attention to his drawing.

“Jansen was right. It’s a woman.”

Raventh pushed the new image. He sketched a green fire lizard on the shoulder of the woman. She was opulently dressed.

“Sorry, but the brown is pushing it so fast. Raventh says he wants to flush this person at Lemos out of his mind,” he apologized to the others.

He turned the notebook so the others could see.

“You’re an excellent artist, K’ndar. I’m sure you don’t know a thing about dresses so I know you’re not embellishing it. That dress? It’s expensive. It’s not something you wear when you’re about to milk a cow,” Francie said. “Not that I know much, I’m a pants person, always have been. It’s impossible to ride a dragon or a horse in a dress. But I do know high level stuff when I see it.”

“Thank you. I have to keep drawing, the brown is pushing this stuff to Raventh as fast as he can. “

Hurry. He’s almost frantic, he’s so grateful I am listening.

Okay. Transfer it as he’s sending. The face was the most important.

Such talent, B’rost thought, to be able to draw as well as he does.

“Does he show where it is? Is he showing Lemos Hold?” Francie asked.

Flustered, he waved his hands to shut her off. “I’ve got three things going in my mind, I have to draw and listen and interpret. I don’t know if it’s Lemos Hold, I’ve never been there.”

His pencil flew over the paper. “He’s not done sending, ” K’ndar said, apologetically.

Francie looked at it. “It’s a bollard,” she said, “On a wharf, like every wharf. There must be thousands of them on Pern.”

“Yes,” K’ndar said, almost blind with the need to draw and ‘see’ at the same time.

“Didn’t you say the drawing in the pouch was labeled “two hundred seventy degrees?” Lizard asked.

“It did.”

“Are bollards numbered?”

They all shrugged. None of them were seafolk. Maybe I should call Harve, the young man on the We’re Here, K’ndar thought.

“Despite living in the southern hemisphere, where compasses spin to the south pole, everyone on Pern uses azimuths based on the northern pole,” Lizard said. “I guess it made navigation easier for the Ancients after they all moved to Northern. If it were just numbered, maybe it would be just number 270. But the degree symbol is telling. This bollard is at two hundred and seventy degrees on the compass. So it should show the ocean if it’s here on our northern coast.”

“I wish I could see it right now,” K’ndar said, “but I’m sure it showed the bollard with the ocean in the background.”

“As if you were on the wharf, looking out to sea?” Lizard asked.

“Yes.”

Lizard looked at the sketch K’ndar finished. “This looks like the new port west of us, where Vixen disembarked. See that wall in the background? It’s just like the palisades here. This bollard looks like it’s at the very end of the new wharf, there’s more lining both sides, and it leads to the land. Behind that wall is the SeaCoast Weyr.”

“Maybe it’s showing the bollard as if from a ship?” They all pondered the seeming dichotomy.

“That would make sense, with the palisade in the background. This is showing this bollard from the sea. Maybe it’s two different bollards?”

“Fire lizards don’t do azimuth degrees, they have compasses in their heads,” Lizard said. “It has to be we’re seeing the same bollard from two points of view, one, human from the land side, and the other, from a fire lizard’s sighting.”

“Oh, he’s pushing again,” K’ndar said.

No. Now he’s moving images Raventh said. It’s hard for him to do the moving images. He’s getting tired.

K’ndar said, “Now he’s pushing moving images. Oh! I get it! The bollard is hollow! He shows flying to it, over the water, there’s a hole above the tide line. He shows it on the seaside, where it can’t be seen from the wharf. Oh, he’s going inside it! He shows himself picking something up, a small rolled thing, that was in the bollard. He’s exiting the bollard and blip, he’s gone between.”

“Whoa!” Francie said, “A hiding place? A message place?”

“Ah!” Lizard said, “Now I want to go back to the port to find it!”

“Whew,” K’ndar said, “It’s not easy doing three brain things at once.”

“You’re lucky you can do one, ” B’rost teased.

“Quiet, lout.”

He has one more thing to send, and then he says no more Raventh said. His heart is hurting, he feels like he will always be alone.

“Raventh said the brown has one more image to send.”

Wait just a moment. No. Here’s more moving ones.

“K’ndar,” Francie started.

“Shhh,” he said, “he’s sending moving ones. Wait.”

“Oh my stars. He’s hovering above a man on a horse. There’s a man on the ground ahead of him, he’s galloping after him. The man on the ground, is running at a mounted bowman. Arrows everywhere! Oh! From his right another man throws a bolo-it’s YOU, Lizard, you’re being hit with a bolo, you’re down! Now the man he’s over, is..oh. Wow. What a shot! Got an arrow right between the eyes.”

They were all stunned into silence.

He is done sending. The one with the arrow in his head was his master. He is very sad. He doesn’t know where to go now.

Tell him he can stay with us.

You have me and Siskin. He wants his master back, but he knows that is impossible. He doesn’t want to go wild, like Roany did. He wants to be with humans and dragons. But not us. Motanith told him there is no room for him in their hearts.

That is sad, K’ndar thought. I don’t know how to help him.

“By the egg, Lizard, it sounds as if they missed killing you by centimeters,” B’rost said.

The trader rubbed his head. “How does one say thanks for boloing me? I remember seeing the arrow coming and thinking, well, that one’s for me.”

K’ndar rubbed his head, too, trying to get his thoughts together.

“Well, now we know how it came out, Lizard,” Francie said.

“Aye. And thanks to you all, I’m patched up, I’m wearing a nice new shirt, I’m full of food you brought, and I’ll be okay. Thank you all.”

“You’re welcome,” they all said.

“It was my pleasure, sir,” B’rost said, getting up, “But I’m afraid I’ve got to go home, now.”

“Me, too,” Francie said, a bit distraught at Motanith’s abrupt refusal of the brown fire lizard. Ah well, it’ll work out.

B’rost made to shoulder his now empty bundle as they all said their see you laters.

Not yet, Rath said. Call the brown fire lizard

Me?

Yes.

“Um, K’ndar, Rath told me to call Kelso to me.”

“Really! So do it!

“You don’t mind?”

“He’s not mine, B’rost. He’s himself, and he’s telling Raventh he’s scared and lonely. Give it a go,” K’ndar said, not daring to hope. Fire lizards were dragons but not like ours, he thought.

Not knowing much about fire lizards, B’rost was hesitant.

“I thought they only impressed on hatching? Like dragons?”

Lizard shook his head. “No one really knows, B’rost, if they’ll accept a new master or not. They’re all individuals, like dogs, like horses, like people. Give it a go, if he doesn’t accept you, I owe you, blue dragonrider and healer. I’ll have an egg for you when my two mate. Promise.”

He has come to to accept losing his master. You know I want a fire lizard. He is not a hatchling, but he is alone now and wants someone to look to Rath said.

B’rost felt Rath’s encouraging nudge. Please. I want this Rath said.

“When they send, B’rost, it’s no different than a dragon’s touch, except there’s no words, just emotions and images,” Francie said, understanding his reticence. “You can talk to them or ping them like we do our dragons.”

Above their heads, the fire lizards looked at him. It’s like they’re insisting I try it, B’rost thought.

He cleared his throat and picked out the brown’s eyes.

“Kelso? Kelso, would you like to be my friend? Would you like to be with me and Rath?” he called.

The brown tilted his head, his eyes whirling an uncertain green.

Be my friend, he pinged the lizard, you will be happy with us. I will love you like I love Rath. You won’t be alone anymore.

Come be with us. You can be ours. Come with us, Kelso, be my brother Rath said to the brown.

The brown chipped, and, opening his wings, dropped down to B’rost’s shoulder.

B’rost met his eyes. Kelso sent a feeling of pleading, fear-and hope.

“By the stars, it’s just like Impression,” B’rost said, his heart in his throat.

The three watchers all felt the emotion. Francie’s eyes got wet.

He gently touched the brown’s head. “Yes, you can be ours. Brave Kelso, won’t you look to me?”

The brown weeked, then wrapped his tail around his neck.


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