“Our strength is returning,” T’mar told her soothingly. “We’ve five fighting wings as of today—we’ve been as low as four.” He turned to H’nez. “We’ve time enough before the next Fall, I think we should practice timing it.”

“If you are, then I’m coming with you,” Fiona warned.

“If you can get Talenth roused, we’ll be happy to have you,” T’mar said, knowing that the gravid queen was spending most of her time resting. Fiona glared at him in response, turned on her heel and stomped off.

“I’ll be happy when her queen clutches,” T’mar admitted to H’nez once she was out of earshot.

“It’ll be awhile yet,” H’nez said. T’mar nodded in agreement, then shook his head to clear it of distractions, before saying to H’nez, “Now, let’s consider how best to practice timing it.”

“I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” F’jian said as the dragonriders milled around the Dining Cavern later that evening. He pointed at T’mar. “There he was”—and then he pointed to a spot above him—“and there he was—two of him!”

“Two of you, as well?” Terin asked, her expression troubled.

“I didn’t see me,” F’jian said, “I was too busy looking at the Weyrleaders.” He shook his head in bemusement. “If I hadn’t seen it myself, I never would have believed it.”

The conversation was a sample of the murmuring throughout the Cavern as dragonriders joked and swapped tales of seeing themselves—“I never knew I was that fat!” “We did!”—and explaining to the wary weyrfolk the events of the day.

“We’ll jump back tomorrow,” T’mar said to H’nez as they gathered at the wingleaders’ table. Timing it was difficult enough to do but sometimes harder to explain—as they hadn’t jumped back immediately in time after seeing their future selves, the jump from some future point still had yet to occur.

“So soon?” Fiona asked, eyeing him carefully.

“That will give us more time to recover before the next Threadfall,” T’mar said. He frowned. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have considered jumping back any later than that.”

“You didn’t look too tired,” H’nez said.

“The worst of the exhaustion usually sets in after timing it,” Fiona said.

“So it will only be a problem if we don’t have enough time to recover.”

Fiona looked at T’mar and they exchanged a frown, the Weyrleader saying, “I’m not sure it’s quite that easy.”

Fiona pulled the pitcher of klah toward her and refilled T’mar’s mug. “I’m not sure that either of us are good examples,” she said, shaking the pitcher emphatically before placing it back on the table.

“How did Kindan and Lorana do on Winurth?” Fiona asked, glancing toward the couple who sat at the opposite end of the table, engrossed in their own conversation.

“Well enough,” T’mar told her. He pursed his lips, adding, “If we had more injured riders than dragons, this idea of pairing spare riders with dragons would work better.”