Sharing Secrets
Location: Weyrleaders Office
Time: Morning on Day 12, Month 9, Turn 3
Players: Roa, R’vain
Scene: Right after Miniyal's visit, the weyrwoman and weyrleader have a great many things to discuss. Miniyal, Ginella, and T'ral all get a mention.
The weyrwoman sits quietly, watching Miniyal depart, and she waits until the weyrling's footfalls can no longer be heard before she turns to R'vain, one brow arched. It's her eyes that blaze this time, burning sapphire instead of emerald, but her voice remains calm when she asks, simply, "Where would you like to start?"
The sip from his klah R'vain was about to take when Miniyal left gets completed now, and provides him something to do in that silence while Roa burns him with her blue stare. He finishes what's in the mug and sets it down, swallowing instead of answering, which is admittedly probably a good thing. But then he has no reason not to answer, and after a moment twisting his mouth into a variety of worried shapes replies, "Anywhere y'want. Might want t'leave th'guard f'last, though."
She draws in a slow breath before Roa speaks again. "What note? What clients?"
"Don't know what clients, besides me, and you-- you turned 'er down-- and Ginella." R'vain's nose wrinkles and he surges from the chair, prowling aimlessly along the side of the table he and Miniyal sat at, across from Roa. "Min'yal and I talked after th'hatching. Sorta told her th'Weyr's her primary concern now. If she's going t'be running an information racket she ought t'be doing it on th'up and up. She went off. Got a note later. Guess it was her resignation, didn't really understand it at th'time." A pause, and he stops his pacing, turning to face his Weyrwoman, thumbs going into his pockets. "Think she might've listened t'me," he admits, a little surprised.
Roa doesn't move, though she does finally allow herself a sip from the mug of cocoa that's long since cold by now. "I didn't fire her. She quit," the weyrwoman notes softly. "I suppose that makes sense. She mentioned trying to figure out how to make sure Peloth kept her secrets, but it sounded...more like an offer than anything else. Wouldn't have pegged Ginella." Another sip. "What did you hire her to do?"
"I assumed y'didn't even take her up on it," R'vain says, after a long moment, like he may or may not have assumed that once but is pleased to assume it now. And untroubled by the correction Roa's just provided. "Same she offered you, I assume. Collect information. No idea what she'll do with Peloth; she's too young t'think she's going t'be that great a secret-keeper yet."
"Yet being the important word," Roa notes with a small shrug. "She was my assistant, and then she quit to be sneaky for me, and then she quit that." Another small shrug. "Guards."
"T'be sneaky for you," R'vain repeats, grinning. He palms the back of a chair, pulls it out, sits down and leans onto his elbows on the table, watching his Weyrwoman with eyes brighter now. And stalls-- "I had 'er just reporting, stuff I don't get t'hear because people talk different when they see th'knot. Gossip. Asked 'bout Five Mines. Asked 'bout someone else, retracted it. She acted like I wasn't doing it right." A pause; he shakes his head, rueful. "I ain't that sneaky. Probably wasn't."
"You seem to be," the weyrwoman notes, her eyes lifting from her mug to the now-seated weyrleader to reveal that, yeah, her gaze is still eager to burn a hole in his head, "at least a little bit sneaky. Guards. Please."
R'vain's brows sink. "Wasn't--" Oh, but he can't say that. Won't. Cuts it off, and frowns at himself for starting. Then he lifts a hand and puts his eyes behind it, the bent bridge of his nose leaning into his palm. "Agreed it'd be right t'do. That was before th'exiles, like I said. Was suggested t'me I shouldn't tell you, make you upset. Stupid t'take th'suggestion. Know why I did, though."
There is a small nod from the weyrwoman and an intent study of her own fingers. "You said that in order to be of any help, you needed to know what was happening. You said that you couldn't do the right thing if I kept secrets from you. You -said- that." Roa's glance darts upward and then sinks again. "I had thought it was going to go both ways."
A small sigh comes out in lieu of words and R'vain, after giving his eyes the scrub of thumb and fingers, pulls his hand off of his face and looks up. His expression is baleful but unpleading; resignation and weariness are foremost. "I know." His tongue goes up over his upper teeth, then slicks back down in silence. "I know. Tryin' t'-- don't matter." After short-circuiting the why and wherefore he looks away from Roa, down the end of the table where the klah-pot waits, offering dubious refuge from this situation. R'vain props his cheek on his hand. "I'm sorry."
"You're sorry as in 'I'm sorry it needs to be this way' or you're sorry as in 'I'm sorry, I won't do it again'?" Roa reaches out, fingers curling around the klah pot to slide it over to the waiting weyrleader.
"I'm sorry," rumbles R'vain, his eyes sidelining so Roa comes back into his view, "I did it like this, and I had my reasons, and I shoulda come t'you t'explain 'em, defend it, at least so you'd know and not find out some dumbass way. I'm sorry," he growls a little bit, "f'being a coward. Don't make any promises. I /do/ try not t'do it, though."
Cowardly actions and reasons why, if not brushed aside, are not much focused on. "And if you try not to, but sometimes you have to and can't make any promises," Roa continues with a soft sigh, "What is it that you're expecting of me, in return?"
R'vain straightens, his hands falling into a loose fold on the table, and looks straight at his Weyrwoman with something like surprise. "Guess I /do/ make /a/ promise. I try t'be open t'you. Ain't keeping things from you. Not t'be /sneaky/, f'fuck's sake. Kept /this/ because it was--" In the pause where he searches for words, muscles beneath his left eye twitch furiously, forcing that one to narrow; his tongue worries his teeth and makes shapes beneath his lips. "--someone else's right t'tell you, I felt. I should've known better." Maybe this sort of remark, by tone alone, helps identify what someone else he's speaking of. "What I /ain't/ promising is t'always know better, where that's th'concern."
The weyrwoman glances upwards and holds R'vain's gaze as he speaks. There is a little pressure at the corners of her lips, as if they want to thin into an agitated line but are denied, as he speaks of someone else's right to say. Overall, though, there is the ease of tension in her shoulders and a deep breath expelling air held as she listens. "Okay," she agrees softly. "Anything else I should maybe know, since we're on the subject?"
"Nothing I've been /keeping,/" grunts the Weyrleader, and evidently considers himself enough dismissed from Roa's rage that he dares to get out of the chair and prowl back toward klah and mug. Along the way his eyes narrow, thoughtfulness clouding his features. "Not that I can think of, press me if y'think otherwise." This said he tosses Roa a little grin, begging, then goes about getting his mug within reach and filling it from the pot. "Do have new business," he muses.
"Don't weigh enough to press you," is Roa's quip, "but you better believe I'll try, I think that." She picks up one of the flaky croissant-things Corin baked. A plain one. She tears off a piece a chews with a small nod and her focus still on R'vain. New business. Go.
"Give y'self a few months," tosses back R'vain, absolutely easily, without even looking up from the sweetener he's dumping overgenerously into his cup. "Going t'give R'hal a wing."
Roa snorts. "A few months, I'll weigh less, not more," she tosses back. "Two brownriders with wings. Well, you know -I- won't complain, though I don't imagine you could find a fellow that goes more by the books if you looked at every bronzerider in the place." She tears off another piece, chews, swallows. "You'll need a 'second, then. Any idea who you want?"
R'vain snakes a look over at Roa, unsubtle: it hits her eyes, and drops like a weight past her chin to her midsection-- what of it he can see past the edge of the table. "Has it really been that long," he wonders, rhetorically, then looks back into his cup so he can measure ('measure') milk to go into it. "Don't mind browns leading th'little wings, even th'middle wings, so long's th'rider's a firm enough hand not t'let his dragon flinch if a bronze offers insubordination," he rumbles. Blah blah second? R'vain finishes stirring his klah and carries it back around so he can sit by Roa, where he started, and look at her formation drawing instead.
If R'vain glances downward at the growing bump (which is a bit more than that, now), Roa does not. At his question, she only offers a little shrug. "Guess we'll see if Yanith's up to it. Think, sometimes, that's more in the riders' heads than the dragons'. No thoughts then? On a second?" Tear. Nibble nibble.
"M'sure it is in th'rider's head," R'vain agrees, turning the formation around on the table so he's looking at it from an angle, but so that Roa can look at it from an angle too. "Got a thought," he allows. "Might be messy. What're you after with this one?"
"Changing winds, when the angle thread's falling keeps shifting. I wanted to try at a formation that was more fluid than the usual ones. Each rider has a few different places they can be without mucking anyone else up, so they can shift if thread does," Roa explains as her head tilts to peer down at the drawing. "Why messy?"
"Show me where th'greens and blues go," R'vain rumbles, tucking his cup on the edge of the table close to himself behind the protective curve of one paw, reaching out with the other to draw his fingertip over the aforementioned sorts of dragons. "Messy because he's got attachments."
"Attachments?" Roa looks up now in surprise. "Attachments that would have him turning down an Aye-one wingsecond's knot? What the f-...what kind of attachments are those? They're here, here, here, here, and here," Her fingers flick over the formation without looking down. Mostly, they're in the interior. "Can switch to between each brown pair or above them or outside of them."
"Don't think he'd turn down whatever," R'vain lets out in a snort. "But a little ways down th'road it might get complicated t'keep him there. -- And th'browns? Move less?" But his fingers are moving already, tracing out from Roa's symbols the places the browns are meant to fill when the wind turns northerly or southerly. "Agility's a concern. Don't see windspouts and devils here, but f'academics' sake, say one interferes with th'fall; how do they blow out t'get 'round it or out of th'way?"
"R'vain. I'm pressing you," she says with an arched brow. Then Roa looks down at the formation, her fingers brushing over the edge. "Windspouts hit the middle of a wing. The blues and greens head to the outside, the browns just widen their circle. They'll surround it until it goes. No accounting for the devils. Up to the wingleader to keep an eye out for conditions that make one likely and shift them to whichever side he's thinking it won't be coming from. The browns and bronzes are slower, but that's why the greens and blues go above them, sometimes."
But all of Roa's meteorological planning-ahead does R'vain only so much good. He's laughing, low and thunderous and fond, all throughout it, even when he picks up his klah cup and tries to drown the chortling in a swallow. "I'm impressed," he puns after the drink, after she's spoken, and withdraws his hand from her formation so he can look over at the woman who made it instead. "Want T'ral."
The expression Roa turns up to her weyrleader is petulant and irritated. It's a four-turn-old who doesn't understand why a grownup is laughing when she's announces how she's worked out her life's plans. "You," she says tartly, "are making -fun- of me. What'd I miss? Did I forget something? Not think of-" She had looked back down at the formation, but then her eyes flick up again. "T'ral?! But he's... You can't make him choose between here and Ginny. He'll pick Ginny anyway and have to rip his own honor to shreds to do it."
"Laughing," rumbles R'vain, "because you pressed me." He lifts the mug again to his mouth, as if it could hide some of his wide, toothy grin, but he cuts short his drinking when Roa starts in on the issue of the Bendenite junior. "I know, I know. Only, I think y'wrong that he'd-- well, he'd follow her, sure. Resign th'knot. He won't say no in th'meantime." The Weyrleader's freckled nose wrinkles all up its bent bridge and his nostrils flare; shaking his head he puts down the klah and spreads out his hand on the table's edge. "Talked t'Ginella."
She wrinkles her nose. "I'm not sure that's supposed to make you laugh. Quiver in fear, more like. Or something." Roa settles her chin back onto her palm. "You talked to Ginella about T'ral? That...doesn't seem like you."
"Well, it wasn't th'smartest thing I've ever done, but--" R'vain's shoulders roll. "Won't take it back. She's listening. She's-- eh." That's a single syllable of a laugh, uncomfortable, and the Weyrleader looks into his cup before putting it down on the table, just so as not to be looking at Roa when he notes, "Shouldn't say I told you, mind. Don't think she much looks forward t'what she figures M'arik'll have her do, once she's back there. Might want t'do something else, if anyone shows her a way."
"Well then, I'm guessing," Roa says slowly, her head tipping so that her cheek presses further into her palm, "in the interest of having T'ral for more than just a turn, you offered to show her a way?" Up goes that single, dark brow again.
"Not precisely. Asked her 'bout teaching. She just about threw up on th'table." R'vain looks down at the table in question, grinning, then looks back up at his Weyrwoman, the grin fading in favor of a soberer expression, for harder business. "She led me t'th'possibility of transferring. Told her I don't figure I /can/ transfer her, M'arik'd laugh in my face. Well, didn't say it quite like that." But he'll say that to Roa, and affords her a quick smirk because he knows it. "Got a turn t'think it through. Might be after a turn doing it he'd rather leave anyway. No reason t'get antsy. But-- she offered t'help, not like I know /how/ she'd help, if we wanted that. Figure that's more your call than mine." Another little smirk, because this is a big bow to such a small, young senior-- even if it's playfully given-- and R'vain grabs up the klah again for refuge.
Roa leans forward, arms folding so that her chin can settle, pillowed there, instead. She puffs out air from between her lips. "Have to do a trade of somesort. I like Ginny, but she and Miniyal will probably kill one another within the first seven. Also, she's itching to call a Conclave and stake or exile the...er...exiles," now it's Roa's turn for a weak smirk of confession. "Makes me a little...I dunno. She's probably just thinking what everyone else of Pern is thinking, I guess."
"Ginella's itching," rumbles R'vain, curious, "Or Min'yal? F'it's Min you mean I think she's lied t'you." He allows himself a twist of grin and buries it in the klah-mug again, drinking long before a heavy sigh. "Don't think Ginella's /itching./ What she is, is looking at it th'way a junior would. Th'way a lot of th'wingriders do. Don't understand, don't see-- Conclave wants t'keep off Nabol's toes because they seated him, s'important they don't make him look stupid. Council wants t'keep off Conclave's toes, needless t'explain why. Grand Conclave ain't got a chance on a snowy day at Igen Hold of happening until either th'members of Conclave and Council have figured themselves out independently, or until th'big men--" he must exclude himself from that list, because he says, "--tell th'rest of us we're /expected./" He puts down the mug yet again and reaches out to claim Roa's formation, just for something to put his eyes on. "She just sees a simple solution. She had t'sit that Grand Conclave she might think something else. Don't think it's personal."
"I meant Ginella," Roa clarifies with a small frown. "It's not personal. Just pragmatic from her perspective. We talked about it for a bit. Miniyal, I think, feels somewhat differently about the situation. Fuck. Did I tell you what she was doing in records? I wanted to throttle her." Roa hides her face in her hands so those hands can scrubscrubscrub up and down for a moment. "You handled her really well, by the way." Those hands drop. "Better than I do. You know who you sounded like, though, right?"
"What'd she do in records?" R'vain, no great respecter of the business of records beyond that they be complete and accurate in the minimalist sense, accompanies this question with a shrug. "D'ven ain't chasing her down about it I don't see any harm whatever she might be up to there. S'her little den, after all." ...right, so going on without the grin, the Weyrleader snorts and adds, afterthoughtfully, "Me?"
"The Headmaster," Roa supplies with a devilish smirk, but it's gone soon enough. "She has a copy of the Instigator trials and of other things surrounding said trials. She was slipping two or three pages of them in the records due to head back to other holds and weyrs. Her den. Our asses."
R'vain's eyes widen on the thing that Roa smirks so devilishly about-- and they don't get any narrower for the rest of that, either. "She has what. What? She-- where-- fuck." His mouth twists, presses thin and expands again, wrangled by a fury of a kind that doesn't seem inclined to turn his face red, appalled. "/I/ want a fucking copy," he spits out at full roar. "And I do not!"
"You did," Roa replies gleefully, despite the bellowing, "You so exactly did. Gave her authority, pointed out she was misusing it, put to her offers that made your way more appealing than hers. You did." She bites her bottom lip before adding, "Navan caught most of them, brought the problem to me. I talked to her and she's stopped now. I've a copy, if you want. I'll bring it by. It's...there some bad stuff in there. I mean. Things we did."
R'vain's mouth moves but no words come out, and in the end his only defense seems to be to shove back his chair and prowl out of it away from the table. He jams his fingertips into his pockets, elbows bent and loose, but still the hunch of his shoulders almost suggests sulking. But he is not too lost in sounding like Sefton (blech!) that he can't hear the rest of what Roa says, and after a few paces turns around. "Please. And I'd figure. Don't have th'first idea how we'd get 'em t'go back now, y'know. So they must've been pretty much beaten into submission, then." His mouth twists like he's tasted something sour.
"Beaten, kicked, limbs broken, food deprived, sleep deprived, denied heat....other things. Lots of things." Roa exhales softly. "Real fun reading. Real fun." Roa smiles again, weak this time. Sad. "Not sure all of the confessions they got were even really valid, all things considered."
Again, the Weyrleader's mouth moves in silence-- this time, only to drop. A beat, and then he's surging toward the table at almost a run. His palms flatten to its surface and he leans, frantic-eyed, down to reply that sad, weak smile with dumb shock. "They were beat t'shit /before/ th'trials?"
"Mmm," Roa agrees quietly. "Stopped a few weeks before. Time for wounds to heal, so when they stood before everyone else, they looked all right. Miniyal found interrogation records, incident reports. So much for the shining heroes of Pern, I guess."
"Guh," replies R'vain, looking a little beaten himself, and slowly straightens. "Who ordered that? Who decided? Th'fuck were they thinking?" His brows sink, a shallow furrow deepening between them, and he starts a prowl down the length of the table all over again. "Fuck. We really do have t'retry 'em."
"I don't know. Everyone, so far as I can tell. The men who were responsible for them came from all over. Every hold. Every crafthall. Have to presume the weyrs were aware, or the weyrleaders, anyhow. It's like, if they were going to do it, they were going to make sure everyone did it, so nobody could do any accusing after." Roa closes her eyes slowly. "How do we retry them? How do we even come close?"
"The Weyrleaders." R'vain stops his pacing-- start, stop, start stop-- and rounds about in place to stare at his Weyrwoman. "Roa, have-- you haven't." The knob of his throat bobs with a glurk of a swallow and his eyes narrow, then widen again, leery. "You ain't /asked/ him. You ain't said anything t'him about it. Tell me you ain't."
"No," She lifts her head enough to shake it, "I 'ain't'. I don't want to know. He was..." she lowers her head back onto her arms, eyes closing once more. "I really would rather just not know."
R'vain stares at his Weyrwoman some more, and while she won't know it with her head on her arms and her eyes closed, his expression shifts from one that can't decide whether to be furious or horrified or frustrated into a deeply pained, silent sympathy. He comes around the table, moving slow, footsteps relatively quiet, and the first thing he says isn't a word at all but a hush, worried and soft. Then he's reaching for her shoulder with one enormous paw, warm and terribly, conscientiously gentle. "I don't know," he says, voice low and ragged. "But we ain't going t'do it alone. Ginella's right on that much. Better think about how we want it t'be done this time, is all. Don't matter if it takes th'rest of th'Pass t'do, s'worth doing right. But we're still in wait-and-see and you--" He takes a breath, steels himself, dives in. "You shouldn't be worrying about it this much, just now."
She was doing all right, really. Calm, quiet, eyes closed. Old memories and old frets, successfully pushed away. Except there is a soft shush and a warm hand on her shoulder and Roa suddenly tips her head downward so that those folded arms hide her face, rather than just pillow it. The next breath she takes is more of a shudder and she doesn't say anything at all as R'vain talks. "Knew them, was all," comes her muffled explanation. Then a sharp sniff and a quick tilt of her hidden face to the left, to the right, before she peers up again. "No way not to worry about it. M'fine. Have to be, so I am."
R'vain's knees bend. He drops half of his height or so in bending them and looks at Roa from just a little below eye-level, brows furrowed, arm up so his hand can stay there on her shoulder a little longer. "Seems like we all knew some of 'em, or thought we did," he rumbles, and if it's unclear whether he means the tormented or the tormentors, that might just be the most appropriate way to put it, anyway. "Listen. I got something you can do, learn from, better'n worrying. Sometime take Tialith and go watch th'weyrlings when D'ven has 'em out in th'bowl. Try t'figure by watching 'em on th'ground what you think they're going t'be like in th'sky. Ain't a bad exercise. Wingleaders spend whole lives doing it." A wink might seem out of place, but he risks it. "Take notes. And keep your mind off this f'a while if you can."
There is a small frown for the offer of something to keep Roa's head busy. " 'M not...I don't need...they're not going to stop making trouble just because I'm getting sniffly. Just hormones. I didn't mean it." Please don't lock her out! "I can't be uniformed," she says quietly to her folded arms, "and I can't look like I need to be shielded from this."
"You can be informed," R'vain remarks, "Without obsessing." The paw on her shoulder curls a little, gentle, a one-motion massage that pleads her pay attention as much as it's meant to comfort. "And you seem t'have a hard time keeping your mind from running circles unless y'got somewhere f'it t'go and be productive. I'm suggesting something y'should probably do anyway, y'want t'understand how I build formations." No ego involved of course. "Couple afternoons watching weyrlings work don't make you look shielded. Makes you look interested in Tialith's get and our new riders. So." He's had his say, best he can do; he gives her shoulder another little squeeze and stands up.
"Would be a nice break from hidework," the weyrwoman concedes softly as she peers again at the formation. "All right. I'll start tomorrow." Roa's smile is still rueful as she pushes her chair back and stands, gathering up her half-mug of cocoa and her half-croissant. With no hands free, she can only tilt her cheek while shrugging, to brush red-dusted knuckles with her cheek. "Thanks. I'll bring those things by in a bit. Some work I should finish before lunch." Then she's slipping out of R'vain's light hold to drift back to her own weyr.
R'vain's hand accepts the brush of her cheek, then withdraws to knuckle loosely on his hip. "Thanks," he replies, gruff all over again. It's not until she leaves that he bends his head and with one paw ruffles up the back of his hair. "Well, fuck."
Time: Morning on Day 12, Month 9, Turn 3
Players: Roa, R’vain
Scene: Right after Miniyal's visit, the weyrwoman and weyrleader have a great many things to discuss. Miniyal, Ginella, and T'ral all get a mention.
The weyrwoman sits quietly, watching Miniyal depart, and she waits until the weyrling's footfalls can no longer be heard before she turns to R'vain, one brow arched. It's her eyes that blaze this time, burning sapphire instead of emerald, but her voice remains calm when she asks, simply, "Where would you like to start?"
The sip from his klah R'vain was about to take when Miniyal left gets completed now, and provides him something to do in that silence while Roa burns him with her blue stare. He finishes what's in the mug and sets it down, swallowing instead of answering, which is admittedly probably a good thing. But then he has no reason not to answer, and after a moment twisting his mouth into a variety of worried shapes replies, "Anywhere y'want. Might want t'leave th'guard f'last, though."
She draws in a slow breath before Roa speaks again. "What note? What clients?"
"Don't know what clients, besides me, and you-- you turned 'er down-- and Ginella." R'vain's nose wrinkles and he surges from the chair, prowling aimlessly along the side of the table he and Miniyal sat at, across from Roa. "Min'yal and I talked after th'hatching. Sorta told her th'Weyr's her primary concern now. If she's going t'be running an information racket she ought t'be doing it on th'up and up. She went off. Got a note later. Guess it was her resignation, didn't really understand it at th'time." A pause, and he stops his pacing, turning to face his Weyrwoman, thumbs going into his pockets. "Think she might've listened t'me," he admits, a little surprised.
Roa doesn't move, though she does finally allow herself a sip from the mug of cocoa that's long since cold by now. "I didn't fire her. She quit," the weyrwoman notes softly. "I suppose that makes sense. She mentioned trying to figure out how to make sure Peloth kept her secrets, but it sounded...more like an offer than anything else. Wouldn't have pegged Ginella." Another sip. "What did you hire her to do?"
"I assumed y'didn't even take her up on it," R'vain says, after a long moment, like he may or may not have assumed that once but is pleased to assume it now. And untroubled by the correction Roa's just provided. "Same she offered you, I assume. Collect information. No idea what she'll do with Peloth; she's too young t'think she's going t'be that great a secret-keeper yet."
"Yet being the important word," Roa notes with a small shrug. "She was my assistant, and then she quit to be sneaky for me, and then she quit that." Another small shrug. "Guards."
"T'be sneaky for you," R'vain repeats, grinning. He palms the back of a chair, pulls it out, sits down and leans onto his elbows on the table, watching his Weyrwoman with eyes brighter now. And stalls-- "I had 'er just reporting, stuff I don't get t'hear because people talk different when they see th'knot. Gossip. Asked 'bout Five Mines. Asked 'bout someone else, retracted it. She acted like I wasn't doing it right." A pause; he shakes his head, rueful. "I ain't that sneaky. Probably wasn't."
"You seem to be," the weyrwoman notes, her eyes lifting from her mug to the now-seated weyrleader to reveal that, yeah, her gaze is still eager to burn a hole in his head, "at least a little bit sneaky. Guards. Please."
R'vain's brows sink. "Wasn't--" Oh, but he can't say that. Won't. Cuts it off, and frowns at himself for starting. Then he lifts a hand and puts his eyes behind it, the bent bridge of his nose leaning into his palm. "Agreed it'd be right t'do. That was before th'exiles, like I said. Was suggested t'me I shouldn't tell you, make you upset. Stupid t'take th'suggestion. Know why I did, though."
There is a small nod from the weyrwoman and an intent study of her own fingers. "You said that in order to be of any help, you needed to know what was happening. You said that you couldn't do the right thing if I kept secrets from you. You -said- that." Roa's glance darts upward and then sinks again. "I had thought it was going to go both ways."
A small sigh comes out in lieu of words and R'vain, after giving his eyes the scrub of thumb and fingers, pulls his hand off of his face and looks up. His expression is baleful but unpleading; resignation and weariness are foremost. "I know." His tongue goes up over his upper teeth, then slicks back down in silence. "I know. Tryin' t'-- don't matter." After short-circuiting the why and wherefore he looks away from Roa, down the end of the table where the klah-pot waits, offering dubious refuge from this situation. R'vain props his cheek on his hand. "I'm sorry."
"You're sorry as in 'I'm sorry it needs to be this way' or you're sorry as in 'I'm sorry, I won't do it again'?" Roa reaches out, fingers curling around the klah pot to slide it over to the waiting weyrleader.
"I'm sorry," rumbles R'vain, his eyes sidelining so Roa comes back into his view, "I did it like this, and I had my reasons, and I shoulda come t'you t'explain 'em, defend it, at least so you'd know and not find out some dumbass way. I'm sorry," he growls a little bit, "f'being a coward. Don't make any promises. I /do/ try not t'do it, though."
Cowardly actions and reasons why, if not brushed aside, are not much focused on. "And if you try not to, but sometimes you have to and can't make any promises," Roa continues with a soft sigh, "What is it that you're expecting of me, in return?"
R'vain straightens, his hands falling into a loose fold on the table, and looks straight at his Weyrwoman with something like surprise. "Guess I /do/ make /a/ promise. I try t'be open t'you. Ain't keeping things from you. Not t'be /sneaky/, f'fuck's sake. Kept /this/ because it was--" In the pause where he searches for words, muscles beneath his left eye twitch furiously, forcing that one to narrow; his tongue worries his teeth and makes shapes beneath his lips. "--someone else's right t'tell you, I felt. I should've known better." Maybe this sort of remark, by tone alone, helps identify what someone else he's speaking of. "What I /ain't/ promising is t'always know better, where that's th'concern."
The weyrwoman glances upwards and holds R'vain's gaze as he speaks. There is a little pressure at the corners of her lips, as if they want to thin into an agitated line but are denied, as he speaks of someone else's right to say. Overall, though, there is the ease of tension in her shoulders and a deep breath expelling air held as she listens. "Okay," she agrees softly. "Anything else I should maybe know, since we're on the subject?"
"Nothing I've been /keeping,/" grunts the Weyrleader, and evidently considers himself enough dismissed from Roa's rage that he dares to get out of the chair and prowl back toward klah and mug. Along the way his eyes narrow, thoughtfulness clouding his features. "Not that I can think of, press me if y'think otherwise." This said he tosses Roa a little grin, begging, then goes about getting his mug within reach and filling it from the pot. "Do have new business," he muses.
"Don't weigh enough to press you," is Roa's quip, "but you better believe I'll try, I think that." She picks up one of the flaky croissant-things Corin baked. A plain one. She tears off a piece a chews with a small nod and her focus still on R'vain. New business. Go.
"Give y'self a few months," tosses back R'vain, absolutely easily, without even looking up from the sweetener he's dumping overgenerously into his cup. "Going t'give R'hal a wing."
Roa snorts. "A few months, I'll weigh less, not more," she tosses back. "Two brownriders with wings. Well, you know -I- won't complain, though I don't imagine you could find a fellow that goes more by the books if you looked at every bronzerider in the place." She tears off another piece, chews, swallows. "You'll need a 'second, then. Any idea who you want?"
R'vain snakes a look over at Roa, unsubtle: it hits her eyes, and drops like a weight past her chin to her midsection-- what of it he can see past the edge of the table. "Has it really been that long," he wonders, rhetorically, then looks back into his cup so he can measure ('measure') milk to go into it. "Don't mind browns leading th'little wings, even th'middle wings, so long's th'rider's a firm enough hand not t'let his dragon flinch if a bronze offers insubordination," he rumbles. Blah blah second? R'vain finishes stirring his klah and carries it back around so he can sit by Roa, where he started, and look at her formation drawing instead.
If R'vain glances downward at the growing bump (which is a bit more than that, now), Roa does not. At his question, she only offers a little shrug. "Guess we'll see if Yanith's up to it. Think, sometimes, that's more in the riders' heads than the dragons'. No thoughts then? On a second?" Tear. Nibble nibble.
"M'sure it is in th'rider's head," R'vain agrees, turning the formation around on the table so he's looking at it from an angle, but so that Roa can look at it from an angle too. "Got a thought," he allows. "Might be messy. What're you after with this one?"
"Changing winds, when the angle thread's falling keeps shifting. I wanted to try at a formation that was more fluid than the usual ones. Each rider has a few different places they can be without mucking anyone else up, so they can shift if thread does," Roa explains as her head tilts to peer down at the drawing. "Why messy?"
"Show me where th'greens and blues go," R'vain rumbles, tucking his cup on the edge of the table close to himself behind the protective curve of one paw, reaching out with the other to draw his fingertip over the aforementioned sorts of dragons. "Messy because he's got attachments."
"Attachments?" Roa looks up now in surprise. "Attachments that would have him turning down an Aye-one wingsecond's knot? What the f-...what kind of attachments are those? They're here, here, here, here, and here," Her fingers flick over the formation without looking down. Mostly, they're in the interior. "Can switch to between each brown pair or above them or outside of them."
"Don't think he'd turn down whatever," R'vain lets out in a snort. "But a little ways down th'road it might get complicated t'keep him there. -- And th'browns? Move less?" But his fingers are moving already, tracing out from Roa's symbols the places the browns are meant to fill when the wind turns northerly or southerly. "Agility's a concern. Don't see windspouts and devils here, but f'academics' sake, say one interferes with th'fall; how do they blow out t'get 'round it or out of th'way?"
"R'vain. I'm pressing you," she says with an arched brow. Then Roa looks down at the formation, her fingers brushing over the edge. "Windspouts hit the middle of a wing. The blues and greens head to the outside, the browns just widen their circle. They'll surround it until it goes. No accounting for the devils. Up to the wingleader to keep an eye out for conditions that make one likely and shift them to whichever side he's thinking it won't be coming from. The browns and bronzes are slower, but that's why the greens and blues go above them, sometimes."
But all of Roa's meteorological planning-ahead does R'vain only so much good. He's laughing, low and thunderous and fond, all throughout it, even when he picks up his klah cup and tries to drown the chortling in a swallow. "I'm impressed," he puns after the drink, after she's spoken, and withdraws his hand from her formation so he can look over at the woman who made it instead. "Want T'ral."
The expression Roa turns up to her weyrleader is petulant and irritated. It's a four-turn-old who doesn't understand why a grownup is laughing when she's announces how she's worked out her life's plans. "You," she says tartly, "are making -fun- of me. What'd I miss? Did I forget something? Not think of-" She had looked back down at the formation, but then her eyes flick up again. "T'ral?! But he's... You can't make him choose between here and Ginny. He'll pick Ginny anyway and have to rip his own honor to shreds to do it."
"Laughing," rumbles R'vain, "because you pressed me." He lifts the mug again to his mouth, as if it could hide some of his wide, toothy grin, but he cuts short his drinking when Roa starts in on the issue of the Bendenite junior. "I know, I know. Only, I think y'wrong that he'd-- well, he'd follow her, sure. Resign th'knot. He won't say no in th'meantime." The Weyrleader's freckled nose wrinkles all up its bent bridge and his nostrils flare; shaking his head he puts down the klah and spreads out his hand on the table's edge. "Talked t'Ginella."
She wrinkles her nose. "I'm not sure that's supposed to make you laugh. Quiver in fear, more like. Or something." Roa settles her chin back onto her palm. "You talked to Ginella about T'ral? That...doesn't seem like you."
"Well, it wasn't th'smartest thing I've ever done, but--" R'vain's shoulders roll. "Won't take it back. She's listening. She's-- eh." That's a single syllable of a laugh, uncomfortable, and the Weyrleader looks into his cup before putting it down on the table, just so as not to be looking at Roa when he notes, "Shouldn't say I told you, mind. Don't think she much looks forward t'what she figures M'arik'll have her do, once she's back there. Might want t'do something else, if anyone shows her a way."
"Well then, I'm guessing," Roa says slowly, her head tipping so that her cheek presses further into her palm, "in the interest of having T'ral for more than just a turn, you offered to show her a way?" Up goes that single, dark brow again.
"Not precisely. Asked her 'bout teaching. She just about threw up on th'table." R'vain looks down at the table in question, grinning, then looks back up at his Weyrwoman, the grin fading in favor of a soberer expression, for harder business. "She led me t'th'possibility of transferring. Told her I don't figure I /can/ transfer her, M'arik'd laugh in my face. Well, didn't say it quite like that." But he'll say that to Roa, and affords her a quick smirk because he knows it. "Got a turn t'think it through. Might be after a turn doing it he'd rather leave anyway. No reason t'get antsy. But-- she offered t'help, not like I know /how/ she'd help, if we wanted that. Figure that's more your call than mine." Another little smirk, because this is a big bow to such a small, young senior-- even if it's playfully given-- and R'vain grabs up the klah again for refuge.
Roa leans forward, arms folding so that her chin can settle, pillowed there, instead. She puffs out air from between her lips. "Have to do a trade of somesort. I like Ginny, but she and Miniyal will probably kill one another within the first seven. Also, she's itching to call a Conclave and stake or exile the...er...exiles," now it's Roa's turn for a weak smirk of confession. "Makes me a little...I dunno. She's probably just thinking what everyone else of Pern is thinking, I guess."
"Ginella's itching," rumbles R'vain, curious, "Or Min'yal? F'it's Min you mean I think she's lied t'you." He allows himself a twist of grin and buries it in the klah-mug again, drinking long before a heavy sigh. "Don't think Ginella's /itching./ What she is, is looking at it th'way a junior would. Th'way a lot of th'wingriders do. Don't understand, don't see-- Conclave wants t'keep off Nabol's toes because they seated him, s'important they don't make him look stupid. Council wants t'keep off Conclave's toes, needless t'explain why. Grand Conclave ain't got a chance on a snowy day at Igen Hold of happening until either th'members of Conclave and Council have figured themselves out independently, or until th'big men--" he must exclude himself from that list, because he says, "--tell th'rest of us we're /expected./" He puts down the mug yet again and reaches out to claim Roa's formation, just for something to put his eyes on. "She just sees a simple solution. She had t'sit that Grand Conclave she might think something else. Don't think it's personal."
"I meant Ginella," Roa clarifies with a small frown. "It's not personal. Just pragmatic from her perspective. We talked about it for a bit. Miniyal, I think, feels somewhat differently about the situation. Fuck. Did I tell you what she was doing in records? I wanted to throttle her." Roa hides her face in her hands so those hands can scrubscrubscrub up and down for a moment. "You handled her really well, by the way." Those hands drop. "Better than I do. You know who you sounded like, though, right?"
"What'd she do in records?" R'vain, no great respecter of the business of records beyond that they be complete and accurate in the minimalist sense, accompanies this question with a shrug. "D'ven ain't chasing her down about it I don't see any harm whatever she might be up to there. S'her little den, after all." ...right, so going on without the grin, the Weyrleader snorts and adds, afterthoughtfully, "Me?"
"The Headmaster," Roa supplies with a devilish smirk, but it's gone soon enough. "She has a copy of the Instigator trials and of other things surrounding said trials. She was slipping two or three pages of them in the records due to head back to other holds and weyrs. Her den. Our asses."
R'vain's eyes widen on the thing that Roa smirks so devilishly about-- and they don't get any narrower for the rest of that, either. "She has what. What? She-- where-- fuck." His mouth twists, presses thin and expands again, wrangled by a fury of a kind that doesn't seem inclined to turn his face red, appalled. "/I/ want a fucking copy," he spits out at full roar. "And I do not!"
"You did," Roa replies gleefully, despite the bellowing, "You so exactly did. Gave her authority, pointed out she was misusing it, put to her offers that made your way more appealing than hers. You did." She bites her bottom lip before adding, "Navan caught most of them, brought the problem to me. I talked to her and she's stopped now. I've a copy, if you want. I'll bring it by. It's...there some bad stuff in there. I mean. Things we did."
R'vain's mouth moves but no words come out, and in the end his only defense seems to be to shove back his chair and prowl out of it away from the table. He jams his fingertips into his pockets, elbows bent and loose, but still the hunch of his shoulders almost suggests sulking. But he is not too lost in sounding like Sefton (blech!) that he can't hear the rest of what Roa says, and after a few paces turns around. "Please. And I'd figure. Don't have th'first idea how we'd get 'em t'go back now, y'know. So they must've been pretty much beaten into submission, then." His mouth twists like he's tasted something sour.
"Beaten, kicked, limbs broken, food deprived, sleep deprived, denied heat....other things. Lots of things." Roa exhales softly. "Real fun reading. Real fun." Roa smiles again, weak this time. Sad. "Not sure all of the confessions they got were even really valid, all things considered."
Again, the Weyrleader's mouth moves in silence-- this time, only to drop. A beat, and then he's surging toward the table at almost a run. His palms flatten to its surface and he leans, frantic-eyed, down to reply that sad, weak smile with dumb shock. "They were beat t'shit /before/ th'trials?"
"Mmm," Roa agrees quietly. "Stopped a few weeks before. Time for wounds to heal, so when they stood before everyone else, they looked all right. Miniyal found interrogation records, incident reports. So much for the shining heroes of Pern, I guess."
"Guh," replies R'vain, looking a little beaten himself, and slowly straightens. "Who ordered that? Who decided? Th'fuck were they thinking?" His brows sink, a shallow furrow deepening between them, and he starts a prowl down the length of the table all over again. "Fuck. We really do have t'retry 'em."
"I don't know. Everyone, so far as I can tell. The men who were responsible for them came from all over. Every hold. Every crafthall. Have to presume the weyrs were aware, or the weyrleaders, anyhow. It's like, if they were going to do it, they were going to make sure everyone did it, so nobody could do any accusing after." Roa closes her eyes slowly. "How do we retry them? How do we even come close?"
"The Weyrleaders." R'vain stops his pacing-- start, stop, start stop-- and rounds about in place to stare at his Weyrwoman. "Roa, have-- you haven't." The knob of his throat bobs with a glurk of a swallow and his eyes narrow, then widen again, leery. "You ain't /asked/ him. You ain't said anything t'him about it. Tell me you ain't."
"No," She lifts her head enough to shake it, "I 'ain't'. I don't want to know. He was..." she lowers her head back onto her arms, eyes closing once more. "I really would rather just not know."
R'vain stares at his Weyrwoman some more, and while she won't know it with her head on her arms and her eyes closed, his expression shifts from one that can't decide whether to be furious or horrified or frustrated into a deeply pained, silent sympathy. He comes around the table, moving slow, footsteps relatively quiet, and the first thing he says isn't a word at all but a hush, worried and soft. Then he's reaching for her shoulder with one enormous paw, warm and terribly, conscientiously gentle. "I don't know," he says, voice low and ragged. "But we ain't going t'do it alone. Ginella's right on that much. Better think about how we want it t'be done this time, is all. Don't matter if it takes th'rest of th'Pass t'do, s'worth doing right. But we're still in wait-and-see and you--" He takes a breath, steels himself, dives in. "You shouldn't be worrying about it this much, just now."
She was doing all right, really. Calm, quiet, eyes closed. Old memories and old frets, successfully pushed away. Except there is a soft shush and a warm hand on her shoulder and Roa suddenly tips her head downward so that those folded arms hide her face, rather than just pillow it. The next breath she takes is more of a shudder and she doesn't say anything at all as R'vain talks. "Knew them, was all," comes her muffled explanation. Then a sharp sniff and a quick tilt of her hidden face to the left, to the right, before she peers up again. "No way not to worry about it. M'fine. Have to be, so I am."
R'vain's knees bend. He drops half of his height or so in bending them and looks at Roa from just a little below eye-level, brows furrowed, arm up so his hand can stay there on her shoulder a little longer. "Seems like we all knew some of 'em, or thought we did," he rumbles, and if it's unclear whether he means the tormented or the tormentors, that might just be the most appropriate way to put it, anyway. "Listen. I got something you can do, learn from, better'n worrying. Sometime take Tialith and go watch th'weyrlings when D'ven has 'em out in th'bowl. Try t'figure by watching 'em on th'ground what you think they're going t'be like in th'sky. Ain't a bad exercise. Wingleaders spend whole lives doing it." A wink might seem out of place, but he risks it. "Take notes. And keep your mind off this f'a while if you can."
There is a small frown for the offer of something to keep Roa's head busy. " 'M not...I don't need...they're not going to stop making trouble just because I'm getting sniffly. Just hormones. I didn't mean it." Please don't lock her out! "I can't be uniformed," she says quietly to her folded arms, "and I can't look like I need to be shielded from this."
"You can be informed," R'vain remarks, "Without obsessing." The paw on her shoulder curls a little, gentle, a one-motion massage that pleads her pay attention as much as it's meant to comfort. "And you seem t'have a hard time keeping your mind from running circles unless y'got somewhere f'it t'go and be productive. I'm suggesting something y'should probably do anyway, y'want t'understand how I build formations." No ego involved of course. "Couple afternoons watching weyrlings work don't make you look shielded. Makes you look interested in Tialith's get and our new riders. So." He's had his say, best he can do; he gives her shoulder another little squeeze and stands up.
"Would be a nice break from hidework," the weyrwoman concedes softly as she peers again at the formation. "All right. I'll start tomorrow." Roa's smile is still rueful as she pushes her chair back and stands, gathering up her half-mug of cocoa and her half-croissant. With no hands free, she can only tilt her cheek while shrugging, to brush red-dusted knuckles with her cheek. "Thanks. I'll bring those things by in a bit. Some work I should finish before lunch." Then she's slipping out of R'vain's light hold to drift back to her own weyr.
R'vain's hand accepts the brush of her cheek, then withdraws to knuckle loosely on his hip. "Thanks," he replies, gruff all over again. It's not until she leaves that he bends his head and with one paw ruffles up the back of his hair. "Well, fuck."