“Can someone check my numbers?” Kindan asked after a moment. Something in his tone alarmed Fiona. She reached for the slate, even as she said, “I’m not all that good with numbers.”

The numbers were dragons lost in a series of Threadfalls compared with Weyr strength. She did a quick tally of each, divided the total losses by the total strength and then glanced at Kindan. “My numbers say nearly three dragons in every hundred.”

“Three in one hundred?” H’nez asked, surprised.

“Per Fall,” Fiona added grimly.

“So a full-strength Weyr lost nearly fifteen dragons every Fall?” M’tal said, gesturing for Kindan’s slate and reading through it quickly. He put it down and glanced around. “Is there a clean slate about?”

Fiona passed him one and a stick of chalk. M’tal’s eyes narrowed in thought as he drew numbers on his slate. Finally, he glanced up at the others. “That’s better than Benden’s average; we’ve been losing five for every one hundred.”

“But we can’t be sure how much of that was due to the illness,” Kindan said.

“All the same, it lends credence to your number,” H’nez said.

Lorana had been working on a separate slate of her own. “It tallies with the queens’ clutches, too.”

The others looked at her in surprise, so she explained, “Well, it makes sense that the queens would have to replace the losses. So a quick tally of clutches should roughly match the losses … and it does.”

“With—what? Five queens in six Weyrs?” Kindan asked.

“Thirty queens,” Lorana agreed.

“We’ve only eight.”

“We can make more,” Fiona reminded them, her lips quirked upward.

“But will we have the time?”

On H’nez’s suggestion, they agreed to say nothing of their findings to the rest of the Weyr.

“We’ve Threadfall tomorrow,” H’nez reminded them as they made their way back into Fiona’s quarters. He glanced at Lorana. “Will the dragons be fit to fly by then?”

“They could fly now,” M’tal said. “Tullea’s Minith had less time before she went back in time to High Reaches.”

“But it would be better if they rested as much as they could,” Lorana said.

“The Fall’s not until after noon,” H’nez said. “We wouldn’t have to start getting ready more than two hours before then.”

“That will be plenty of time for them to recover,” M’tal assured him.

H’nez regarded M’tal for a long moment before saying, “Thank you, bronze rider. I think we have relied on your kindness more than enough.”

M’tal looked at the rangy bronze rider with amusement in his eyes. “Are you dismissing me, H’nez?”

H’nez looked slightly flustered. “It’s just that I’m sure you have duties to your Weyr and I wouldn’t want to delay your return by imposing on your kindness.”

Lorana gave Fiona a sympathetic look.