“That’s a queen egg, for sure!” H’nez said as he noticed the larger gold-hued egg that Tolarth had pushed off to one side and was watching protectively.

“Aren’t you wonderful?” Jeila cried, scratching her queen’s eye ridges and beaming with pride. She turned to Fiona, saying, “Twenty-two and one’s a queen!”

“I’m glad we’ve got a queen egg,” J’lian said as he and the other riders approached.

“That’s forty-three altogether,” Kindan said.

“That makes a good dent on our losses,” T’mar said, bestowing a huge grin on Jeila and H’nez both.

“And a queen!” H’nez said, as proud as if he’d done the clutching himself.

“Not bad at all for a first clutching,” one of the blue riders allowed. Catching sight of Fiona, he added hastily, “Meaning no disrespect to you, Weyrwoman.”

Fiona waved a hand dismissively. “None taken.”

“Tullea’s Minith clutched twenty-two,” Lorana reported. “One queen egg.”

T’mar and Kindan exchanged worried looks to which Fiona added a frown and then, with a jerk of her head toward Lorana, gestured for them to head back to the Weyr Bowl.

The two men followed her lead, catching up to where she waited out of earshot of the others.

“Could this have something to do with the cure to the illness?” Fiona asked the question that was troubling all of them.

“That’s only three queens, Fiona,” Kindan said. She gave him a look; his tone had made his own unease quite clear.

“If the cure means that the queens clutch early and light, how will that affect us?” T’mar asked, glancing first at Fiona, then at Kindan.

“Well,” Kindan said, “it will mean that we have fighting dragons sooner—”

“Only a little—” T’mar interjected.

“—and that we’ll take longer to replenish our numbers,” Kindan finished, nodding in agreement with T’mar’s remark.

“We don’t have enough at the moment,” Fiona said. “Getting only a few—”

“We can’t say what the future holds,” T’mar said. “It could easily mean that the queens will clutch more often.”

“It could also be just a response to whatever was in the cure,” Kindan said. Fiona arched an eyebrow inquiringly. “It would make sense for the queens to have clutches quickly right after they’ve been cured so that they can produce more queens to increase the dragon population.”

“Then why didn’t Talenth have a queen?” Fiona said. “For that matter, why didn’t each clutch consist only of queens?”

Kindan shrugged. “Lorana and I only learned enough—and were taught enough—to know how to make the cure; we don’t know nearly enough to understand all that was involved.”

“From what I remember, Kitti Ping, who made the dragons, spent her entire life learning her trade and couldn’t pass it all on to her daughter,” T’mar said.