“Not if I know F’lar,” the Harper said dryly. “I’ve recently entertained the notion that Benden’s Weyrleader takes these latest vagaries of our ancient scourge as a personal insult, since we had rather thought we’d got them neatly slotted in time and place.”

There was such good-humored raillery in the Harper’s tone that Oterel of Tillek gave a snort. Lord Groghe looked more thoughtful, probably not quite recovered from F’lar’s rebuttal the other day.

“An insult to Benden?” asked Sangel, baffled. “But his timetables were accurate for Turns. Used them myself and never found them wrong until just recently.”

Meron stamped his foot, his affected pose gone.

“You’re all fools. Letting the Harper sweet-talk you into complacency. We’ll never see the end of Thread. Not in his lifetime or ours. And we’ll be paying tithes to shiftless Weyrs, deferring to dragonriders and their women as long as this planet circles the sun. And there’s not one of you great Lords, not one, with the courage to force this issue. We don’t need dragonriders. We don’t need ’em. We’ve fire-lizards which eat Thread…”

“Then shall I inform T’bor of the High Reaches Weyr that his wings need no longer patrol Nabol? I’m certain he would be relieved,” Lessa asked in her lightest, sweetest voice.

The Nabolese Lord gave her a look of pure hatred. The fire-lizard gathered itself into a hissing launch position. A single clear note from Ramoth all but deafened those on the heights. The fire-lizard disappeared with a shriek. Strangling on his curses, Meron stamped down the lighted path to the landing, calling harshly for his dragon. The green appeared with such alacrity that Lessa was certain Ramoth had summoned him, even as she had warned the little lizard against attacking Lessa.

“You wouldn’t order T’bor to stop patrolling Nabol, would you, Weyrwoman?” asked Nessel, Lord of Crom. “After all, my lands march with his…”

“Lord Nessel,” Lessa began, intending to reassure him that she had no such authority in the first place and in the second…“Lord Nessel,” she repeated instead, smiling at him, “you notice that the Lord of Nabol did not request it, after all. Though,” and she sighed with dramatic dedication, “we have been sorely tempted to penalize him for his part in the death of the two dragon queens.” She gave Nessel a wan, brave smile. “But there are hundreds of innocent people on his lands, and many more about him, who cannot be permitted to suffer because of his—his—how shall I phrase it—his irrational behavior.”

“Which leads me to ask,” Groghe said, hastily clearing his throat, “what is being done with that—that Kylara woman?”

“Nothing,” Lessa said in a flat hard voice, trusting that would end the matter.

“Nothing?” Groghe was incensed. “She caused the deaths of two queens and you’re doing nothing…”