Jeila smiled and nodded. “With Kindan and Lorana, I think you’ve got enough helping hands.”

“They’re with T’mar,” Fiona said. She gestured toward Bekka. “But I’m sure Bekka and I can manage.”

Jeila smiled at the younger girl, who smiled shyly in return, awed to be under the approving gaze of no less than three Weyrwomen.

“I’ll come back as soon as I can,” Jeila said, as her Tolarth landed close by.

“Stay there and rest, if you need it.”

“Don’t worry,” Sonia said, “I won’t let her fly if she’s too tired.”

The two queens were soon airborne, their departure cheerfully acknowledged by Talenth from her place back on the watch heights.

“Come on,” Fiona said to Bekka as the two queens winked out between, “we should rest while we can.”

She led the young girl back to the aid tables. They spotted Seban and in no time Bekka had squirmed into his lap, closed her eyes, and curled up tight against his chest.

“She’s not sleeping, is she?” Fiona whispered to the ex-dragonrider in surprise.

“This is about all the sleep she ever gets,” Seban said with an answering grin and an affectionate glance for his youngest. “She takes little naps, worse than a baby fire-lizard, and then she’s up again, and just as much trouble.”

Bekka got to nap for little more than twenty minutes before the next injured dragon arrived. Fiona had no more than finished dowsing the injured rider with numbweed before another dragon arrived and another.

Somewhere during the tumult, Talenth and the other dragons sounded the keen that indicated that a dragon had been lost, and then another, and another.

At the end of it all, H’nez, F’jian, and M’tal returned leading only twenty-six dragons and riders.

Eight others, beside T’mar, had returned beforehand. Two were severely injured and would take many months to heal, six were more lightly injured, but not so lightly that they would be able to fly for many Falls to come.

“High Reaches had it worse,” M’tal said as he and the others regrouped in the Dining Cavern. He glanced around the room. “Where are Kindan and Lorana?”

H’nez heard the question and looked around, adding, “Where’s T’mar?”

“He’s in a coma,” Fiona said. “Lorana and Kindan are keeping watch on him.” She explained how he’d fallen, victim of a threadscored riding strap, how she’d caught him, but not before he’d banged his head on the rock of the weyr wall so badly that his skull had been fractured.

“It’s a wonder you didn’t lose Zirenth,” M’tal said. “With an injury like that, the dragon wouldn’t hear the rider and might think the worst.”

“We nearly did,” Fiona said. “I think Lorana convinced him to stay.”