Fiona was just urging Talenth into the air when a voice cried out, “Wait!”

Xhinna was running toward her, her face wet with tears, her look determined. “You’re not going without me!”

Gladly, Fiona reached down for her. Dragonriders boosted Xhinna up to her and the young weyrgirl clambered up the rest of the way.

“You left me once—you’re not leaving me again!”

Talenth had nearly reached the heights and the Star Stones when Xhinna jerked her head around and pointed, shouting over her shoulder to Fiona, “Look!”

As they drew closer, Fiona saw Seban and Bekka hurrying toward them. Seban was carrying a large carisak and had a coil of something on his shoulder, and Bekka toted a large, lumpy bundle.

“We’re coming with you, Weyrwoman,” Seban announced as Talenth steadied into a hover beside the Weyr’s edge.

“What about the Healer Hall?” Fiona called back in surprise, glancing from Bekka to Seban and back again.

Bekka merely shook her head. “We’re coming with you!”

Fiona smiled at the youngster’s spirit. With an abundance of energy and no lack of courage, Bekka leaped toward Fiona, whose surprised squeak was enough to alert Xhinna; between the two of them, they managed to haul the youngster into position on Talenth’s back. Seban, with a wry look for his daughter, managed a more practiced transition and was soon mounted in front of Xhinna, with Bekka placed carefully between them.

“We’ve got no straps!” Fiona cried, annoyed with herself and chagrined for the time, now Turns past, when she’d berated T’mar for a much milder stunt.

“We’ve straps,” Seban called, whipping a line of leather from around his shoulder and deftly looping it under Talenth’s chest. Catching the far end as it whipped up, he smiled at Fiona and said, “We’ve cargo too precious to lose!”

Even so, Fiona impressed upon Talenth the delicacy of their passengers, but she needn’t have worried: Talenth pumped her great wings smoothly and lifted the four of them effortlessly toward the Star Stones, where the watch dragon bugled in honor and his rider saluted them.

Fiona took a deep, steadying breath and pulled the image of Telgar into her mind, corrected it for the later time of day, and said to Talenth, Let’s go.

It looks abandoned, Fiona thought sadly as Talenth wheeled once more over the heights of Telgar Weyr. No dragon challenged them. Below, no one moved.

The air was cold, full of winter, with less of the dampness that she always felt at Fort Weyr.

There is so much to guard here, Fiona thought as she scanned past the Weyr Bowl and southward beyond to the great wheat plains of Telgar and then westward toward Crom and the coal mountains to its north.