Mirrim concentrated on coaxing Beauty to accept a piece of meat while T’gellan teased her, rather unfairly Menolly thought; but Mirrim returned his jibes with a few tart remarks of her own in a way that Menolly would never have dared address an older man, much less a dragonrider.

She was very tired, but it was pleasant to sit in the big kitchen cavern, listening to T’gellan, watching Mirrim coax Beauty, though it was Lazybones who finally ate from her hand. There were other small groups, chatting late over their evening meal, the women pairing with dragonriders. Menolly noticed wineskins being passed. She was surprised, at first, because the Sea Hold served wine only on very special occasions. T’gellan sent one of the weyrboys to get him cups and a skin and insisted that Menolly, as well as Mirrim, have a cup. “Good Benden wine is not to be refused,” he told her, filling her cup. “There, now, isn’t that the best you’ve ever tasted?”

Menolly forebore to mention that, barring wine laced with fellis juice, it was the first. Living was certainly conducted on different rules in the Weyr.

When the Weyrs Harper began to play softly, more for his own pleasure than to entertain anyone in the cavern, Menolly did not restrain her fingers from tapping the rhythm. It was a song she liked, though she felt his chords were dull, which was why she began to hum her harmony when it did not discord with his. She wasn’t even aware of what she was doing until Mirrim looked up with a smile on her face.

“That was just lovely, Menolly. Oharan? Come over here; Menolly has a new harmony for that one.”

“No, no, I couldn’t”

“Why not?” demanded T’gellan, and poured a bit more wine in her glass. “A little music would give us all heart. There’re faces around here as long as a wet Turn.”

Timidly at first, because of the older injunction against singing in front of people, Menolly joined her voice to Harper Oharan’s baritone.

“Yes, I like it, Menolly. You’ve got a sure sense of pitch,” said Oharan so approvingly that she started to worry again.

If Yanus knew she was singing at the Weyr ... But Yanus wasn’t here and he would never know.

“Say, can you harmonize to this one?” And Oharan broke into one of the older ballads, one in which she had always sung a counter-rune against Petiron’s melody.

Suddenly there were other voices humming along, softly but surely. Mirrim looked around, stared suspiciously at T’gellan, and then pointed at Beauty.

“She’s humming in tune. Menolly, however did you teach her to do that? And the others ... some of them are singing, too!” Mirrim was wide-eyed with amazement