Unacceptable Timetable
Location: The Alley
Time: Day 18, Month 6, Turn 3
Players: Derek, E'sere, J'lor
Scene: E'sere returns from Five Mines with news. It is not news that J'lor likes.
It seems plausible that Derek might have hoped for a swifter return. Of course, the island king spends a great deal of his leisure time perched on the rock just before the Alley's mouth, staring out to sea; some percentage of that time is naturally spent with brows crouched low over pale eyes and an expression of something sour depressing the corners of his mouth and mustache. Still, he manages to emote a sense of everlasting patience, of suspicion and dull dread - chiefly by not eating, not moving, doing nothing in any way to distract the scene he creates there on his rock from the abstract idea of idle waiting.
Behind him the Alley is dark, a hole punched in the cliff, a gap of shadow offering reprieve from the alternating lightweight drizzle and gray noontime sunlight.
E'sere hasn't exactly hurried this trip, but finally he does return, with the healer who accompanied him and a small bag of the supplies they gathered. The healer is off at once to tend to her patient, hardly taking the time to bid E'sere goodbye. The bronzerider is unfazed, however, and simply continues alone up the short distance to the Alley himself. "Sir," he offers Derek as he nears and stops.
Derek's gaze takes a bead on the pair once they appear; that bead tracks the healer as she takes off. His gaze follows her until she's gone far enough along the cliff that he'd have to turn his head to watch her any longer, then snaps back to the present location and the bronzerider standing there. The low-crouched brows sink a little farther, casting gray shadows over pale eyes - but those eyes widen a little upon taking E'sere in, as if some detail of the young man's presentation somehow surprises the mustachioed man. He's quiet for a moment longer than polite, then says, "Well. You better come in." Only then does he start to slip down off the rock.
During that silence, E'sere manages not to fidget under Derek's gaze; when spoken to, he offers a simple, glib, "Yes, sir," and moves to let Derek lead the way inside. "We gathered everything the healer thought she might possibly need," he offers then. "She thinks that she can help S'val now, as much as anyone would be able to."
The Alley is, as mentioned before, dark. No fire burns inside and little other light creeps in at high noon. Two rough wooden slabs, plates of sorts, dress the table along with three tin cups. On one plate, cold mussels. On the other, empty shells in a chaotic post-breakfast heap. "Glad to hear it," Derek remarks as he pads inside, going to the table to sit. "For S'val's sake and ours. If Lord Odern's stores are stocked we'll be better able to gain a foothold there. Are there herds of any kind?"
E'sere joins Derek at the table, folding his hands in his lap and nodding slowly in answer to the man. "Yes, sir," he agrees. "I believe he has a stock there--while I don't think it's anything terribly large, we /are/ used to making do with little." A pause. His silence then is restless as he watches Derek for some cue; there's something else on his mind that he's apparently delaying saying for the moment.
"We are," Derek replies, with a glance that would have to have some significance at the mussels. Then he leans sideways and bends to take up from the floor a gourd; from it he pours full two of the tin cups with (wonders never cease) water. "J'lor thinks we should be able to take some of our own back as well. It's not as if we have so much else to carry. And there's surrounding lands to consider." To pilfer herdbeasts from, then, if Derek would suggest so much; he does not look up from pouring and putting aside the gourd again, so perhaps he might not. He -does- offer E'sere eye contact again on asking, "So how is our Lord faring else?"
"Yes, sir," E'sere repeats his mantra again, nodding once to Derek. "He fares well. As imperious as ever." A hesitation. "Sir, he wanted a day, for when we would arrive. He was rather upset we'd not been in contact since my last visit to him. To placate him, I told him the first, sir. Six weeks from now."
"Upset we weren't 'in contact,'" iterates Derek with brows crouching again. "I guess I should have written him a letter and had the runners carry it." He looks at E'sere a moment longer, expression beyond deadpan into consternated, then takes up his cup and swallows a sip of the water from it. He's shaking his head as he puts the cup back down. "I'll have to let J'lor know. You think we'll be ready?" That pale gaze slips back up from his cup to the bronzerider's face.
"As I explained to him," drawls E'sere with a shake of his head. Apparently, Derek takes the news better than he expected, because the rider relaxes once that's out. Until the latter question. Then, pausing a moment, he nods once. "We must be," is his answer, probably not particularly comforting. "Lord Odern made it very clear we were to arrive then, or not at all."
Derek is ever inconsolable; comfort would be wasted on those thick, worried brows and indifferent, tense mustache. "Then we'll arrive then. And we'll arrive ready for a fight, just in case."
"Yes, sir." For the first time since his arrival, a slow smile spreads across E'sere's mouth, the rider pleased with this verdict. "I'm very glad to hear it. I don't anticipate much problem, though."
"I'm glad to hear -that,-" frowns Derek, head shaking. "As long as Lord Odern sees a need for us. For what we can do. For what we provide." Pale eyes grow beady by narrowing and fine lines crease at the corners of the island king's eyelids; he lifts a hand and with thumb and forefinger smoothes the mustache. Or tries; it remains tense and displeased even for this attention. "As long as he doesn't see in us an opportunity for misguided heroism. I have no patience for that."
"Lord Odern is no hero; I doubt even he possesses /that/ particular delusion," offers E'sere with a shake of his head. "And I am confident, too, that we can control him well enough to prevent him from developing it; he's a stubborn, proud man who fancies himself independent where he isn't. Providing we can rid him of whatever other advisors he has, or at the least control /them/, we shouldn't have any problems at all."
"Oh, let him fancy himself independent," says Derek, a bit suddenly, all but cutting off the last few of E'sere's words. He grows after that saying a little trace of a smile; it twitches at the hidden corners of his small mouth, curling pleasure into the edges of the mustache, which only now takes on the smoother seeming his fingers before sought to create. "Once he has us, he -is- independent - otherwise - as much as he chooses to be. Which means we are, also, and with a Lord in hand." A pause, reflective, and then those pale eyes snap wider again, refocusing on the bronzerider at his table: "How does he take to you now, E'sere?"
E'sere's smile broadens then, strengthening in the face of Derek's assurances. "He is no more--but no less, either--fond of me than he is anyone else, but I feel familiar enough to him now that I can ingratiate myself further for a cause," he tells the island king.
"Familiar," selects Derek to repeat of the words E'sere used for his reply, and smiles a little more around the repetition, evidently approving. His brows ease and he nudges back his seat from the table, rising. "J'lor, Nera and I shall rely upon you, then, to introduce us well to him when we arrive."
"It will be my pleasure, sir," agrees E'sere at once, nodding his agreement with that statement. "I can continue to act as a go-between for you and him, if you like, and give us a voice in his ear for our own goals as things progress for us."
"Perhaps," Derek allows, though the smile held before vanishes, leaving the corners of his mustache to flatten again into a thick, simple brush that obscures his upper lip and most of the lower. He turns halfway back toward the table, loose knuckles coming to pause bent upon its rough surface, and spends a moment in silent regard of the bronzerider. His eyes narrow all over again and something unsmilingly, unpleasantly pleased makes his features seemingly sharper, more roughly hewn. His voice is suddenly soft: "It would suit me more to make you -Odern's- go-between for other folk and places, E'sere, if what you have told me before is true."
That statement makes E'sere lean back as his brows knit. Surprised, he queries only, "Sir?"
Derek smiles. Then he turns away from the table and pads off to the Alley's mouth, placing himself sideways there with a shoulder to the wall, not quite blocking the opening. "To Nabol. To High Reaches Weyr. Where else are you highly regarded, son? Of what other contacts are you most proud?" His head turns; he'd been looking out to sea, but now he looks in, to E'sere. "Name them and when Odern needs emissary there, you'll be best poised. See?"
"Sir, I--" E'sere hesitates, breaking off that sentence for the moment. "Sir, I don't think I can count myself well-regarded there, at either of those now. I expect they--the most of them--hate me, blame me, for... certain events that happened. As much as they blame you--" all the Instigators "--and more recently than all that, too."
"Oh?" Derek's gaze sticks to its goal; he keeps E'sere in his regard while his expression alters from thoughtfully pleased to merely thoughtful. He murmurs a note, 'hmm,' then nods, eyes unmoving. "I thought you had a wing waiting for you. They have waited a long time, however, it's true. Perhaps it's time to talk about those events, then?" A pause, and he looks back out toward the beach. "I prefer to be prepared where damage control is concerned."
"One wing, against the rest of Pern? A scattered handful of others who would follow me, or the Instigators, or Lord Odern?" says E'sere, sounding uncertain, dubious, as he regards Derek askance from the other side of the table within the Alley. "Those events--" Another sentence unfinished. "There are those at Nabol who would blame me as much as Lord Odern for destroying their lands. Those at the Weyr who would blame me for hurting them or those they know for my own discontent. That's all."
"One wing who would receive you well at High Reaches, son - not one we'd try to lure away." Derek glances back into the cave, smiling again, slightly. "We're already little better than one wing against the rest of Pern." That said he looks back out, expression growing more pensive by the turning. "It's time, I think, we had conversations including better detail than that. We'll be best equipped to present you properly if we know what the pitfalls might be. On what grounds would people of Nabol blame you?"
"My father," E'sere explains slowly, leaving, for the moment, the subject of his supporters, "is a cousin of Lord Odern--my mother, of course, being the former Weyrwoman Lexine. Nabol being firmly traditional, and Lord Odern prone to... snitfits, Mother didn't allow anything of my father to slip out. But it finally did, and Lord Odern refused the tithe when he found out, and that led to Nabol's being denied coverage in 'Fall. I expect most of the Nabolese blame me just for the fact of my birth, but." A pause. He frowns a second, then notes, "I did contrive to let the secret out--but only to force Mother to step down. I didn't anticipate Nabol's losing coverage over it."
Morelenth's return didn't go unnoticed by Vellath or his rider, but one cannot simply drop thirty three weyrlings in the middle of a formation lesson in the air. Or, rather, perhaps one can, but J'lor cannot. He does manage to cut the lesson a little short and now he makes his way along the beach, rolling up his sleeves, riding boots dangling from one hand as he makes his brisk passage to The Alley. The boots are left at the foot (heh) of the climb, and the rider they belong to makes quick work of that ascent. Klah-dark eyes take in the two men assembled and the food laid out, but his greeting is only a slightly breathless, "What have I missed? Did you get it? Them? The supplies?"
"Complicated. We blame Odern, or we blame you. Neither is a good choice," the island king notes. Facing forward, watching the beach, he has every opportunity to witness J'lor's awaited approach, and just as he comes up to the level of the cave mouth Derek backs up from the entrance to let the taller man sidestep him and come in. "She's already off to see S'val," Derek tells J'lor, then tips his head a little to indicate the table - welcome be, bluerider.
"Yes, sir," says E'sere to Derek; and then at once, as J'lor makes what is apparently a rather welcome intrusion into the conversation E'sere does not want to be having, the bronzerider tacks on another nod and a "Sir" for him as well. He adds, "She was very hopeful that she can care for him properly now."
"Really?" The good news even deflects J'lor from his usual quip about that much-hated title, reducing it to a small nose-wrinkle. "That's...really? Faranth, that's a relief." Crossing his arms and, as ever, avoiding the food, he asks, "Anything else happen?"
Derek acquires for himself a position near the table, on the wall, where he might face by turns of his head E'sere or J'lor either one. "Our Lord obliged us to set an arrival date," he notes, soft-spoken and sandy-voiced, unsmiling though also unconcerned. An entre for the bronzerider only, these words, since apparently Derek will say no more; he looks on E'sere, instead.
"Lord Odern told us to come the first of eighth month," E'sere explains himself, apologetic on behalf of the demanding Lord, "or not to come at all." No mention of his part in setting that little date.
Blink. Swallow. Blink again. "The first of...that's only five sevens away. We can't...the weyrlings won't...he can't be serious." J'lor draws in a sharp breath and stands up as straight as his spine will allow. "We need more time than that. You'll have to return and tell him so. A month more, at the very least. Two or three, ideally."
"They'll be almost eleven months old, won't they?" Derek looks back from E'sere to J'lor, then shrugs - it's just that little twitch of tense shoulders, a gesture he's really no good for. It's enough, though, with his blank expression to make his position plain: he knows nothing about weyrlings and betweening and all of that. "There must be reason he's so urgent. I worry - well, if Odern knows his position at all, I worry that if we delay, we may find there's no one there to greet us."
"I don't think I can negotiate the date further, sir," says E'sere, still mildly apologetic as he glances downward, frowning. "I'm sorry. I tried to explain, but... he wasn't in a mood to listen. He was already upset with us, sir, for having had no contact with him since my previous visit. And as Derek says--"
"Would you stop--" J'lor's snap is directed towards E'sere, but instead of finishing it, he grits his teeth, shoves his hands into his pockets, and inhales a slow careful breath through his nose. "If we leave that soon," he begins again, clear and careful, "I don't know how many weyrlings will survive. If Odern and his people are so worried for their own safety, they can come here until we're ready."
"As easily done as my letter I was going to send him by runner, no doubt," Derek observes, piquant. He turns his head to look toward the Alley's mouth, gaze going distant toward the gray ocean horizon. "How would you bring them, J'lor?"
"Sir," says E'sere once more, more curtly, and sulkily, than prior for that chastisement. That's all he says, however, as he simply leans back to let Derek handle J'lor. After all, he's been doing this for turns.
One sort of has to pity Derek a bit, doesn't one. J'lor groans softly, hands pulling free from his pockets to scrub at his face. "Dragons. I don't know. We managed sheep and boys when we needed to. They'll die. They could -die-." His hands fall away and he peers unhappily over at the other two men. "How can you be all right with that?"
Derek pulls his gaze away from the ocean to offer to meet J'lor's dark blue gaze with his pale one. That offering is steady, if baleful; not quite indifferent, but certainly measured well. "I am not all right with it. I am only concerned about the alternatives. Do they include a decision to remain here forever? To bring another hundred, two hundred, how many hundred people into exile alongside us? To go late, and meet the men and blades of Nabol Hold or worse, their Weyr in wait for us? I hate them all. Tell me what alternatives I should imagine instead, J'lor. Would you go argue on our behalf to Lord Odern?"
E'sere remains silent, studying J'lor now, and not looking toward Derek as the man argues for their viewpoint.
"The Weyr wouldn't...I don't believe that they'd...that..." The fingers of J'lor's hands stretch wide and then ball up and then carefully relax again. "If they need us there so quickly, we should know why. There must be something other than this. Yes. -Yes-. I'll speak to Odern if it would help." The bluerider turns his attention from Derek to E'sere. "Will it? Why -is- he rushing us?"
"Anxiety," supposes Derek, but he too looks at E'sere, expectant.
"To fortify his position, sir," E'sere offers his take, an elaboration of Derek's. "To make himself truly independent--with us, he won't have to rely upon the Weyr for 'Fall coverage, and he's really able to step out and push forward his own agenda without fear of their repeating their last stunt."
"And this cannot wait for the dragonriders he needs to mature enough to survive the trip?" J'lor asks dryly, one brow arching. Somehow, his shoulders have hunched up again, and the bluerider takes a moment to try and correct his posture into something more composed.
"I thought by almost a turn they might be," Derek says, turning back his attention to J'lor only after having said so, half-questioning. "Did you plan to instruct them at ten months? Still - " His shoulders twitch, and his hands flatten with palms forward at his sides. "My greatest concern is for the greatest number of people, J'lor. Odern lacks for something and he considers his lacking urgent. Without his stability -we- lack for anywhere to go. As much as I believe we're owed better explanation, I'm not sure we dare wait for one."
"Sir," says E'sere, rather quietly. "Do you have that little confidence in your training of them? That little belief in their own capabilities?"
For the first moment, Derek is ignored so that the bluerider might say curtly to E'sere, "Do I have that little confidence that a ten-month-old dragon who has never betweened before could make a jump across the world to a place most of the weyrlings have never seen at all and none of them have seen aerially?" He snorts softly, jaw clenching. "I am afraid, E'sere, that I do indeed have very little confidence of that." J'lor looks back to Derek, then. "He's given us five sevens. You do not think I could get an answer before then?"
"I," Derek replies, with another shrug - his supply of them is opened wide for this occasion - "have no idea. I expect you could ask and hear whatever our Lord pleases to say. But J'lor, you are - " He pauses here, long enough to frown. Thick brows crouch and the mustache flattens unhappily over displeased mouth. Backstepping to put his shoulders to the wall, crossing his arms, Derek notes, "Sending you is a little different than sending E'sere. I'd worry. And Vellath - " He looks back at the bronzerider to interrupt himself with a question. "You saw sweepsriders at the hold?"
For once brief moment, E'sere's expression drifts toward contemptuous of J'lor before he catches himself and adopts again a studied neutrality. "I saw them, sir," he answers simply.
"If Odern wants me there in five sevens, he can stand to see me a bit earlier," J'lor replies to Derek, this time. The turn of his head means that he misses E'sere's momentary slip. "Vellath can wait for me here. We'll do as we did with E'sere. Have someone else drop me off and come get me."
"Do it, then," Derek replies, turning J'lor's desperation into -his- command with three words and another twitch of his shoulders. "But get the new riders ready to learn just in case. If something comes of you we'll be twice as urgent and E'sere will have to pick up where you left off."
"I can take you, sir," E'sere volunteers after a moment, with a faint lift of his own shoulders to echo Derek's motion. "Or accompany you if you like. As yourself, you may not command enough weight to be allowed to see Lord Odern, let alone to make any progress with him."
The bluerider's chin comes up, jaw clenching as, after Derek's approval given in order form, E'sere is named as his successor. He opens his mouth as if he might reply to that, but then the bronzerider himself speaks, and J'lor chooses to answer him instead. "Do you mean to say, all of these trips, you just left Morelenth behind for your own amusement? If sweepsriders will recognize Vellath, I dare say they'd know your bronze a bit better. And," those dark eyes narrow just slightly, "If I do not carry enough weight to speak to Lord Odern, we have a bigger problem than just the five sevens."
There was a moment when the exile king would have spoken. A moment when his mouth parted, lower lip becoming visible beneath the mustache; a moment almost filled with sound. And then the bluerider spoke instead. So Derek only says, softly, "J'lor," when the weyrlingmaster's eyes narrow; then, "J'lor," a bit more firmly, some time thereafter, both speakings just quiet notes beneath the bluerider's reply. He does not let much silence go by then, though E'sere's silence is bid with a lifted hand; thus Derek begins with peacekeeping. "Please," he asks them both, first. Then: "E'sere. You heard me. With S'val so sick, if J'lor does not return, I have no one for the weyrlings turn to but you. You may not go this time." After that, he levels a pained look on J'lor precisely, regretful. "I think your name enough to win you audience, but I loathe to have you declare it there without guard of some kind. Might we send Donavon with you?"
Derek's gesture earns E'sere's silence, of course, even after the gesture subsides. The suggestion, though, makes his brows furrow, and now he studies Derek over J'lor.
"Might we send somebody -I- trust?" is the bluerider's rather childish and petulant remark. "Or at least someone who isn't...Derek, you can't put..." So eloquent, save when he is in the presence of the self-proclaimed leader of his people. "I could give you a list. Of those who could train them well. I intend to return, anyhow."
"We would have to," points out Derek. "Donavon is no dragonrider. But he kept -E'sere- safe on his journey there, and even not understanding the full depth of his - relationship with Nabol, I didn't expect that was really possible." With a compromise provided, even if it might seem to have been already formed fully in his mind some time prior, the island's usurper adds in a softer tone, "I don't like to assume the worst, J'lor, but - you do know how I like to be well-prepared. A list would be a welcome accessory."
"He's quite capable in the role," E'sere volunteers on behalf of Donavon. "But I should leave you to your deliberations on the details, unless you've further need of me, sir?" He directs the question to Derek only.
As E'sere's question is not addressed to J'lor, the bluerider doesn't bother responding. "I expect Donavon had a bit more interest in seeing to E'sere's well-being than..." but with a sharp shake of his head, J'lor dismisses his own quip. "Never mind. Fine. Donavon goes. L'lan takes us. I'll make you a list." He doesn't second E'sere's question. He only looks towards the mouth of the cave and then back to the ex-captain.
"Donavon will have an interest in your well-being, J'lor," observes Derek with the grey certainty which his men sometimes take as command, even when no command is precisely given. Then, only after this is said, does he turn to E'sere to reply the bronzerider's question. "If you see him, say to him I would like his audience, son. Otherwise, no. You must be tired, having lost so much of the day yesterday and got it back today - go rest."
"Yes, sir. I'll let him know," agrees E'sere. "Good day, sir. And--sir." One last time to J'lor, then E'sere is making his way out to meet Morelenth again, and head home.
He waits until E'sere has departed before J'lor again turns his attention to Derek. "Not him," he repeats quietly, hands once again cramming into his pockets. "I don't believe I ask you for very much. I'm asking this. If something should happen...not him."
"What harm could he do, if you were gone? His ambition would be sated and no one but me left for him to ponder harm against." Derek looks on J'lor with the same grey expression, but smiles a little also, so the sum result is bemused. "Give me your list. There are few of your riders I wouldn't have do it, if you recommended them to. I thought only to keep him - " A glance at the cave mouth, to ascertain the exeunt of the man who departed there. "To keep him," Derek decides is adequate, on reflection, and looks back at J'lor.
"I think, perhaps, you underestimate his ambition," J'lor replies quietly as his weight shifts slowly from foot to foot. "He still wants High Reaches. He told me, once, his tentative plan for gaining it."
"I would like to hear it sometime," replies Derek. "But if it relies upon the faith of a number of dragonmen he thought were his friends, allow me to assure you that his perspective on the matter has changed." The island king steps forward, then, and reaches out the hand that sometimes has boldness enough or luck enough to land on the bluerider's shoulder. "J'lor. It wounds me that you'd think - well." A pause. He clears his throat; it's a small noise, a strangled cough. "Donavon will do well by you and make you seem more common to common folk, J'lor. It's imperative to me that you get back." The hand draws back without making its mark, whether the taller man might have withdrawn or not. His affection, such as it is, he conveys instead with a certain warmth of words. "Go buy us some time, o great talker. I'm counting on you."
"It seemed to rely a bit more upon the assassination of the current weyrleaders," the bluerider says flatly, staring once again at the mouth of the cave. "I'll go tomorrow. Be back the same day if it's possible." There is a small snort and a roll of his eyes for Derek's parting words before he begins to make his way to The Alley's entrance and turn it into an exit.
Derek follows on bare and quiet feet, slowly. He stands then in the cave mouth, watching as J'lor climbs away. The once-captain's eyes are beady, pale and thoughtful. But what he thinks of the 'plan' revealed, or of J'lor's cold shoulder, he spends only a few minutes on before departing the Alley himself to begin whatever duties he should have spent the morning upon.
Time: Day 18, Month 6, Turn 3
Players: Derek, E'sere, J'lor
Scene: E'sere returns from Five Mines with news. It is not news that J'lor likes.
It seems plausible that Derek might have hoped for a swifter return. Of course, the island king spends a great deal of his leisure time perched on the rock just before the Alley's mouth, staring out to sea; some percentage of that time is naturally spent with brows crouched low over pale eyes and an expression of something sour depressing the corners of his mouth and mustache. Still, he manages to emote a sense of everlasting patience, of suspicion and dull dread - chiefly by not eating, not moving, doing nothing in any way to distract the scene he creates there on his rock from the abstract idea of idle waiting.
Behind him the Alley is dark, a hole punched in the cliff, a gap of shadow offering reprieve from the alternating lightweight drizzle and gray noontime sunlight.
E'sere hasn't exactly hurried this trip, but finally he does return, with the healer who accompanied him and a small bag of the supplies they gathered. The healer is off at once to tend to her patient, hardly taking the time to bid E'sere goodbye. The bronzerider is unfazed, however, and simply continues alone up the short distance to the Alley himself. "Sir," he offers Derek as he nears and stops.
Derek's gaze takes a bead on the pair once they appear; that bead tracks the healer as she takes off. His gaze follows her until she's gone far enough along the cliff that he'd have to turn his head to watch her any longer, then snaps back to the present location and the bronzerider standing there. The low-crouched brows sink a little farther, casting gray shadows over pale eyes - but those eyes widen a little upon taking E'sere in, as if some detail of the young man's presentation somehow surprises the mustachioed man. He's quiet for a moment longer than polite, then says, "Well. You better come in." Only then does he start to slip down off the rock.
During that silence, E'sere manages not to fidget under Derek's gaze; when spoken to, he offers a simple, glib, "Yes, sir," and moves to let Derek lead the way inside. "We gathered everything the healer thought she might possibly need," he offers then. "She thinks that she can help S'val now, as much as anyone would be able to."
The Alley is, as mentioned before, dark. No fire burns inside and little other light creeps in at high noon. Two rough wooden slabs, plates of sorts, dress the table along with three tin cups. On one plate, cold mussels. On the other, empty shells in a chaotic post-breakfast heap. "Glad to hear it," Derek remarks as he pads inside, going to the table to sit. "For S'val's sake and ours. If Lord Odern's stores are stocked we'll be better able to gain a foothold there. Are there herds of any kind?"
E'sere joins Derek at the table, folding his hands in his lap and nodding slowly in answer to the man. "Yes, sir," he agrees. "I believe he has a stock there--while I don't think it's anything terribly large, we /are/ used to making do with little." A pause. His silence then is restless as he watches Derek for some cue; there's something else on his mind that he's apparently delaying saying for the moment.
"We are," Derek replies, with a glance that would have to have some significance at the mussels. Then he leans sideways and bends to take up from the floor a gourd; from it he pours full two of the tin cups with (wonders never cease) water. "J'lor thinks we should be able to take some of our own back as well. It's not as if we have so much else to carry. And there's surrounding lands to consider." To pilfer herdbeasts from, then, if Derek would suggest so much; he does not look up from pouring and putting aside the gourd again, so perhaps he might not. He -does- offer E'sere eye contact again on asking, "So how is our Lord faring else?"
"Yes, sir," E'sere repeats his mantra again, nodding once to Derek. "He fares well. As imperious as ever." A hesitation. "Sir, he wanted a day, for when we would arrive. He was rather upset we'd not been in contact since my last visit to him. To placate him, I told him the first, sir. Six weeks from now."
"Upset we weren't 'in contact,'" iterates Derek with brows crouching again. "I guess I should have written him a letter and had the runners carry it." He looks at E'sere a moment longer, expression beyond deadpan into consternated, then takes up his cup and swallows a sip of the water from it. He's shaking his head as he puts the cup back down. "I'll have to let J'lor know. You think we'll be ready?" That pale gaze slips back up from his cup to the bronzerider's face.
"As I explained to him," drawls E'sere with a shake of his head. Apparently, Derek takes the news better than he expected, because the rider relaxes once that's out. Until the latter question. Then, pausing a moment, he nods once. "We must be," is his answer, probably not particularly comforting. "Lord Odern made it very clear we were to arrive then, or not at all."
Derek is ever inconsolable; comfort would be wasted on those thick, worried brows and indifferent, tense mustache. "Then we'll arrive then. And we'll arrive ready for a fight, just in case."
"Yes, sir." For the first time since his arrival, a slow smile spreads across E'sere's mouth, the rider pleased with this verdict. "I'm very glad to hear it. I don't anticipate much problem, though."
"I'm glad to hear -that,-" frowns Derek, head shaking. "As long as Lord Odern sees a need for us. For what we can do. For what we provide." Pale eyes grow beady by narrowing and fine lines crease at the corners of the island king's eyelids; he lifts a hand and with thumb and forefinger smoothes the mustache. Or tries; it remains tense and displeased even for this attention. "As long as he doesn't see in us an opportunity for misguided heroism. I have no patience for that."
"Lord Odern is no hero; I doubt even he possesses /that/ particular delusion," offers E'sere with a shake of his head. "And I am confident, too, that we can control him well enough to prevent him from developing it; he's a stubborn, proud man who fancies himself independent where he isn't. Providing we can rid him of whatever other advisors he has, or at the least control /them/, we shouldn't have any problems at all."
"Oh, let him fancy himself independent," says Derek, a bit suddenly, all but cutting off the last few of E'sere's words. He grows after that saying a little trace of a smile; it twitches at the hidden corners of his small mouth, curling pleasure into the edges of the mustache, which only now takes on the smoother seeming his fingers before sought to create. "Once he has us, he -is- independent - otherwise - as much as he chooses to be. Which means we are, also, and with a Lord in hand." A pause, reflective, and then those pale eyes snap wider again, refocusing on the bronzerider at his table: "How does he take to you now, E'sere?"
E'sere's smile broadens then, strengthening in the face of Derek's assurances. "He is no more--but no less, either--fond of me than he is anyone else, but I feel familiar enough to him now that I can ingratiate myself further for a cause," he tells the island king.
"Familiar," selects Derek to repeat of the words E'sere used for his reply, and smiles a little more around the repetition, evidently approving. His brows ease and he nudges back his seat from the table, rising. "J'lor, Nera and I shall rely upon you, then, to introduce us well to him when we arrive."
"It will be my pleasure, sir," agrees E'sere at once, nodding his agreement with that statement. "I can continue to act as a go-between for you and him, if you like, and give us a voice in his ear for our own goals as things progress for us."
"Perhaps," Derek allows, though the smile held before vanishes, leaving the corners of his mustache to flatten again into a thick, simple brush that obscures his upper lip and most of the lower. He turns halfway back toward the table, loose knuckles coming to pause bent upon its rough surface, and spends a moment in silent regard of the bronzerider. His eyes narrow all over again and something unsmilingly, unpleasantly pleased makes his features seemingly sharper, more roughly hewn. His voice is suddenly soft: "It would suit me more to make you -Odern's- go-between for other folk and places, E'sere, if what you have told me before is true."
That statement makes E'sere lean back as his brows knit. Surprised, he queries only, "Sir?"
Derek smiles. Then he turns away from the table and pads off to the Alley's mouth, placing himself sideways there with a shoulder to the wall, not quite blocking the opening. "To Nabol. To High Reaches Weyr. Where else are you highly regarded, son? Of what other contacts are you most proud?" His head turns; he'd been looking out to sea, but now he looks in, to E'sere. "Name them and when Odern needs emissary there, you'll be best poised. See?"
"Sir, I--" E'sere hesitates, breaking off that sentence for the moment. "Sir, I don't think I can count myself well-regarded there, at either of those now. I expect they--the most of them--hate me, blame me, for... certain events that happened. As much as they blame you--" all the Instigators "--and more recently than all that, too."
"Oh?" Derek's gaze sticks to its goal; he keeps E'sere in his regard while his expression alters from thoughtfully pleased to merely thoughtful. He murmurs a note, 'hmm,' then nods, eyes unmoving. "I thought you had a wing waiting for you. They have waited a long time, however, it's true. Perhaps it's time to talk about those events, then?" A pause, and he looks back out toward the beach. "I prefer to be prepared where damage control is concerned."
"One wing, against the rest of Pern? A scattered handful of others who would follow me, or the Instigators, or Lord Odern?" says E'sere, sounding uncertain, dubious, as he regards Derek askance from the other side of the table within the Alley. "Those events--" Another sentence unfinished. "There are those at Nabol who would blame me as much as Lord Odern for destroying their lands. Those at the Weyr who would blame me for hurting them or those they know for my own discontent. That's all."
"One wing who would receive you well at High Reaches, son - not one we'd try to lure away." Derek glances back into the cave, smiling again, slightly. "We're already little better than one wing against the rest of Pern." That said he looks back out, expression growing more pensive by the turning. "It's time, I think, we had conversations including better detail than that. We'll be best equipped to present you properly if we know what the pitfalls might be. On what grounds would people of Nabol blame you?"
"My father," E'sere explains slowly, leaving, for the moment, the subject of his supporters, "is a cousin of Lord Odern--my mother, of course, being the former Weyrwoman Lexine. Nabol being firmly traditional, and Lord Odern prone to... snitfits, Mother didn't allow anything of my father to slip out. But it finally did, and Lord Odern refused the tithe when he found out, and that led to Nabol's being denied coverage in 'Fall. I expect most of the Nabolese blame me just for the fact of my birth, but." A pause. He frowns a second, then notes, "I did contrive to let the secret out--but only to force Mother to step down. I didn't anticipate Nabol's losing coverage over it."
Morelenth's return didn't go unnoticed by Vellath or his rider, but one cannot simply drop thirty three weyrlings in the middle of a formation lesson in the air. Or, rather, perhaps one can, but J'lor cannot. He does manage to cut the lesson a little short and now he makes his way along the beach, rolling up his sleeves, riding boots dangling from one hand as he makes his brisk passage to The Alley. The boots are left at the foot (heh) of the climb, and the rider they belong to makes quick work of that ascent. Klah-dark eyes take in the two men assembled and the food laid out, but his greeting is only a slightly breathless, "What have I missed? Did you get it? Them? The supplies?"
"Complicated. We blame Odern, or we blame you. Neither is a good choice," the island king notes. Facing forward, watching the beach, he has every opportunity to witness J'lor's awaited approach, and just as he comes up to the level of the cave mouth Derek backs up from the entrance to let the taller man sidestep him and come in. "She's already off to see S'val," Derek tells J'lor, then tips his head a little to indicate the table - welcome be, bluerider.
"Yes, sir," says E'sere to Derek; and then at once, as J'lor makes what is apparently a rather welcome intrusion into the conversation E'sere does not want to be having, the bronzerider tacks on another nod and a "Sir" for him as well. He adds, "She was very hopeful that she can care for him properly now."
"Really?" The good news even deflects J'lor from his usual quip about that much-hated title, reducing it to a small nose-wrinkle. "That's...really? Faranth, that's a relief." Crossing his arms and, as ever, avoiding the food, he asks, "Anything else happen?"
Derek acquires for himself a position near the table, on the wall, where he might face by turns of his head E'sere or J'lor either one. "Our Lord obliged us to set an arrival date," he notes, soft-spoken and sandy-voiced, unsmiling though also unconcerned. An entre for the bronzerider only, these words, since apparently Derek will say no more; he looks on E'sere, instead.
"Lord Odern told us to come the first of eighth month," E'sere explains himself, apologetic on behalf of the demanding Lord, "or not to come at all." No mention of his part in setting that little date.
Blink. Swallow. Blink again. "The first of...that's only five sevens away. We can't...the weyrlings won't...he can't be serious." J'lor draws in a sharp breath and stands up as straight as his spine will allow. "We need more time than that. You'll have to return and tell him so. A month more, at the very least. Two or three, ideally."
"They'll be almost eleven months old, won't they?" Derek looks back from E'sere to J'lor, then shrugs - it's just that little twitch of tense shoulders, a gesture he's really no good for. It's enough, though, with his blank expression to make his position plain: he knows nothing about weyrlings and betweening and all of that. "There must be reason he's so urgent. I worry - well, if Odern knows his position at all, I worry that if we delay, we may find there's no one there to greet us."
"I don't think I can negotiate the date further, sir," says E'sere, still mildly apologetic as he glances downward, frowning. "I'm sorry. I tried to explain, but... he wasn't in a mood to listen. He was already upset with us, sir, for having had no contact with him since my previous visit. And as Derek says--"
"Would you stop--" J'lor's snap is directed towards E'sere, but instead of finishing it, he grits his teeth, shoves his hands into his pockets, and inhales a slow careful breath through his nose. "If we leave that soon," he begins again, clear and careful, "I don't know how many weyrlings will survive. If Odern and his people are so worried for their own safety, they can come here until we're ready."
"As easily done as my letter I was going to send him by runner, no doubt," Derek observes, piquant. He turns his head to look toward the Alley's mouth, gaze going distant toward the gray ocean horizon. "How would you bring them, J'lor?"
"Sir," says E'sere once more, more curtly, and sulkily, than prior for that chastisement. That's all he says, however, as he simply leans back to let Derek handle J'lor. After all, he's been doing this for turns.
One sort of has to pity Derek a bit, doesn't one. J'lor groans softly, hands pulling free from his pockets to scrub at his face. "Dragons. I don't know. We managed sheep and boys when we needed to. They'll die. They could -die-." His hands fall away and he peers unhappily over at the other two men. "How can you be all right with that?"
Derek pulls his gaze away from the ocean to offer to meet J'lor's dark blue gaze with his pale one. That offering is steady, if baleful; not quite indifferent, but certainly measured well. "I am not all right with it. I am only concerned about the alternatives. Do they include a decision to remain here forever? To bring another hundred, two hundred, how many hundred people into exile alongside us? To go late, and meet the men and blades of Nabol Hold or worse, their Weyr in wait for us? I hate them all. Tell me what alternatives I should imagine instead, J'lor. Would you go argue on our behalf to Lord Odern?"
E'sere remains silent, studying J'lor now, and not looking toward Derek as the man argues for their viewpoint.
"The Weyr wouldn't...I don't believe that they'd...that..." The fingers of J'lor's hands stretch wide and then ball up and then carefully relax again. "If they need us there so quickly, we should know why. There must be something other than this. Yes. -Yes-. I'll speak to Odern if it would help." The bluerider turns his attention from Derek to E'sere. "Will it? Why -is- he rushing us?"
"Anxiety," supposes Derek, but he too looks at E'sere, expectant.
"To fortify his position, sir," E'sere offers his take, an elaboration of Derek's. "To make himself truly independent--with us, he won't have to rely upon the Weyr for 'Fall coverage, and he's really able to step out and push forward his own agenda without fear of their repeating their last stunt."
"And this cannot wait for the dragonriders he needs to mature enough to survive the trip?" J'lor asks dryly, one brow arching. Somehow, his shoulders have hunched up again, and the bluerider takes a moment to try and correct his posture into something more composed.
"I thought by almost a turn they might be," Derek says, turning back his attention to J'lor only after having said so, half-questioning. "Did you plan to instruct them at ten months? Still - " His shoulders twitch, and his hands flatten with palms forward at his sides. "My greatest concern is for the greatest number of people, J'lor. Odern lacks for something and he considers his lacking urgent. Without his stability -we- lack for anywhere to go. As much as I believe we're owed better explanation, I'm not sure we dare wait for one."
"Sir," says E'sere, rather quietly. "Do you have that little confidence in your training of them? That little belief in their own capabilities?"
For the first moment, Derek is ignored so that the bluerider might say curtly to E'sere, "Do I have that little confidence that a ten-month-old dragon who has never betweened before could make a jump across the world to a place most of the weyrlings have never seen at all and none of them have seen aerially?" He snorts softly, jaw clenching. "I am afraid, E'sere, that I do indeed have very little confidence of that." J'lor looks back to Derek, then. "He's given us five sevens. You do not think I could get an answer before then?"
"I," Derek replies, with another shrug - his supply of them is opened wide for this occasion - "have no idea. I expect you could ask and hear whatever our Lord pleases to say. But J'lor, you are - " He pauses here, long enough to frown. Thick brows crouch and the mustache flattens unhappily over displeased mouth. Backstepping to put his shoulders to the wall, crossing his arms, Derek notes, "Sending you is a little different than sending E'sere. I'd worry. And Vellath - " He looks back at the bronzerider to interrupt himself with a question. "You saw sweepsriders at the hold?"
For once brief moment, E'sere's expression drifts toward contemptuous of J'lor before he catches himself and adopts again a studied neutrality. "I saw them, sir," he answers simply.
"If Odern wants me there in five sevens, he can stand to see me a bit earlier," J'lor replies to Derek, this time. The turn of his head means that he misses E'sere's momentary slip. "Vellath can wait for me here. We'll do as we did with E'sere. Have someone else drop me off and come get me."
"Do it, then," Derek replies, turning J'lor's desperation into -his- command with three words and another twitch of his shoulders. "But get the new riders ready to learn just in case. If something comes of you we'll be twice as urgent and E'sere will have to pick up where you left off."
"I can take you, sir," E'sere volunteers after a moment, with a faint lift of his own shoulders to echo Derek's motion. "Or accompany you if you like. As yourself, you may not command enough weight to be allowed to see Lord Odern, let alone to make any progress with him."
The bluerider's chin comes up, jaw clenching as, after Derek's approval given in order form, E'sere is named as his successor. He opens his mouth as if he might reply to that, but then the bronzerider himself speaks, and J'lor chooses to answer him instead. "Do you mean to say, all of these trips, you just left Morelenth behind for your own amusement? If sweepsriders will recognize Vellath, I dare say they'd know your bronze a bit better. And," those dark eyes narrow just slightly, "If I do not carry enough weight to speak to Lord Odern, we have a bigger problem than just the five sevens."
There was a moment when the exile king would have spoken. A moment when his mouth parted, lower lip becoming visible beneath the mustache; a moment almost filled with sound. And then the bluerider spoke instead. So Derek only says, softly, "J'lor," when the weyrlingmaster's eyes narrow; then, "J'lor," a bit more firmly, some time thereafter, both speakings just quiet notes beneath the bluerider's reply. He does not let much silence go by then, though E'sere's silence is bid with a lifted hand; thus Derek begins with peacekeeping. "Please," he asks them both, first. Then: "E'sere. You heard me. With S'val so sick, if J'lor does not return, I have no one for the weyrlings turn to but you. You may not go this time." After that, he levels a pained look on J'lor precisely, regretful. "I think your name enough to win you audience, but I loathe to have you declare it there without guard of some kind. Might we send Donavon with you?"
Derek's gesture earns E'sere's silence, of course, even after the gesture subsides. The suggestion, though, makes his brows furrow, and now he studies Derek over J'lor.
"Might we send somebody -I- trust?" is the bluerider's rather childish and petulant remark. "Or at least someone who isn't...Derek, you can't put..." So eloquent, save when he is in the presence of the self-proclaimed leader of his people. "I could give you a list. Of those who could train them well. I intend to return, anyhow."
"We would have to," points out Derek. "Donavon is no dragonrider. But he kept -E'sere- safe on his journey there, and even not understanding the full depth of his - relationship with Nabol, I didn't expect that was really possible." With a compromise provided, even if it might seem to have been already formed fully in his mind some time prior, the island's usurper adds in a softer tone, "I don't like to assume the worst, J'lor, but - you do know how I like to be well-prepared. A list would be a welcome accessory."
"He's quite capable in the role," E'sere volunteers on behalf of Donavon. "But I should leave you to your deliberations on the details, unless you've further need of me, sir?" He directs the question to Derek only.
As E'sere's question is not addressed to J'lor, the bluerider doesn't bother responding. "I expect Donavon had a bit more interest in seeing to E'sere's well-being than..." but with a sharp shake of his head, J'lor dismisses his own quip. "Never mind. Fine. Donavon goes. L'lan takes us. I'll make you a list." He doesn't second E'sere's question. He only looks towards the mouth of the cave and then back to the ex-captain.
"Donavon will have an interest in your well-being, J'lor," observes Derek with the grey certainty which his men sometimes take as command, even when no command is precisely given. Then, only after this is said, does he turn to E'sere to reply the bronzerider's question. "If you see him, say to him I would like his audience, son. Otherwise, no. You must be tired, having lost so much of the day yesterday and got it back today - go rest."
"Yes, sir. I'll let him know," agrees E'sere. "Good day, sir. And--sir." One last time to J'lor, then E'sere is making his way out to meet Morelenth again, and head home.
He waits until E'sere has departed before J'lor again turns his attention to Derek. "Not him," he repeats quietly, hands once again cramming into his pockets. "I don't believe I ask you for very much. I'm asking this. If something should happen...not him."
"What harm could he do, if you were gone? His ambition would be sated and no one but me left for him to ponder harm against." Derek looks on J'lor with the same grey expression, but smiles a little also, so the sum result is bemused. "Give me your list. There are few of your riders I wouldn't have do it, if you recommended them to. I thought only to keep him - " A glance at the cave mouth, to ascertain the exeunt of the man who departed there. "To keep him," Derek decides is adequate, on reflection, and looks back at J'lor.
"I think, perhaps, you underestimate his ambition," J'lor replies quietly as his weight shifts slowly from foot to foot. "He still wants High Reaches. He told me, once, his tentative plan for gaining it."
"I would like to hear it sometime," replies Derek. "But if it relies upon the faith of a number of dragonmen he thought were his friends, allow me to assure you that his perspective on the matter has changed." The island king steps forward, then, and reaches out the hand that sometimes has boldness enough or luck enough to land on the bluerider's shoulder. "J'lor. It wounds me that you'd think - well." A pause. He clears his throat; it's a small noise, a strangled cough. "Donavon will do well by you and make you seem more common to common folk, J'lor. It's imperative to me that you get back." The hand draws back without making its mark, whether the taller man might have withdrawn or not. His affection, such as it is, he conveys instead with a certain warmth of words. "Go buy us some time, o great talker. I'm counting on you."
"It seemed to rely a bit more upon the assassination of the current weyrleaders," the bluerider says flatly, staring once again at the mouth of the cave. "I'll go tomorrow. Be back the same day if it's possible." There is a small snort and a roll of his eyes for Derek's parting words before he begins to make his way to The Alley's entrance and turn it into an exit.
Derek follows on bare and quiet feet, slowly. He stands then in the cave mouth, watching as J'lor climbs away. The once-captain's eyes are beady, pale and thoughtful. But what he thinks of the 'plan' revealed, or of J'lor's cold shoulder, he spends only a few minutes on before departing the Alley himself to begin whatever duties he should have spent the morning upon.