Mother Karina smiled unsympathetically. “I’m an old woman and a trader.”

Fiona fumed to herself at that response, and all the while Mother Karina simply waited patiently until

Fiona recovered her composure and carefully examined Karina’s words and compared them to her own.

At which point her expression fell and she sighed again, her lips turned down ruefully, as she said, “So

we’ve got the same problem, only different.”

Karina nodded silently, her eyes gleaming in congratulation of Fiona’s insight.

“But I’m scared!” Fiona blurted in a wail.

“Of course you are,” Karina said, leaning forward to pat Fiona’s hand reassuringly. “That’s natural.

You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t.”

Fiona avoided her problem by plunging herself even deeper in Weyr matters, but as sevendays

became months and they neared the time when the older dragonriders were due to reappear and the

massed riders would return to their proper time at their proper Weyr, Fiona realized that time was forcing

her hand.

Terin never quite apologized to Fiona for leaving her, but she did return, although she never spent quite

as much time with Fiona after that, preferring to spend most of it in F’jian’s company—that much of

Fiona’s plan had worked out so perfectly that she was not at all surprised to find that Terin had given

F’jian her hard-earned gold ring as a Turn’s End present. Judging from Terin’s expression the next

morning, F’jian’s response had been everything that the young headwoman could desire. As Terin had

celebrated her thirteenth Turn several sevendays beforehand—just twelve days after Fiona had herself

turned sixteen—Fiona did not feel it necessary to comment to either headwoman or bronze rider on the

new arrangement.

For her part, Fiona found herself growing misty-eyed as she caught the sunsets over Igen, the desert

all hued with reds and purples in a cloudless sky, the stars suddenly appearing like brilliant jewels visible

in an instant, the two moons with their stately progression, the Dawn Sisters waiting to greet her in the

early morning or, more often, to find her greeting them in the strange double-day cycles that they had

adopted so long ago to manage the unbearable midday heat.

Fiona had found the time to engage Terregar and Zenor in solving the problem of a flamethrower that

didn’t require the old firestone.

“The holders would pay plenty for it,” had clinched the argument—she had so intrigued Zenor and

Terregar with the difficulties of the project that they only needed the merest incentive for trade to commit

themselves wholeheartedly to the project.

Trade flourished between Weyr and Wherhold. Azeez and Mother Karina shrewdly had established a

major depot at the wherhold, allowing for a convenient meeting place for the Igen riders and a permanent

basis for expansion in the whole central region of Pern.