The wineman was doing a brisk trade by the time Piemur returned that way. He squatted at the corner of the stand, munching slowly away at another meatroll, listening to comments and noticing with deep chagrin and a growing wrath how many fire lizards flitted about, resting for a moment on the stall tops, wheeling up in fairs to dance in the air a bit before settling on their friends’ shoulders or on a new position where they could overlook. At first Piemur tried to convince himself that he was only seeing the same group again and again. He did notice that most were greens with a sprinkling of browns and blues—the lesser fire lizards. When he saw bronzes, they were always on the shoulder or arm of the more prosperously dressed. Yet no matter how Piemur argued the matter in his mind, it was clear that Nabol Hold boasted more fire lizards than he had seen even at Benden Weyr during the Impression.
Suddenly a phrase stood out from the murmurous conversation about the winestand.
“There’ll be a few more happy holidays today, I hear!”
Piemur turned to scratch his shoulder fiercely and located the man who had spoken from his knowing smirk, a smith from his clothing. His companion, a miner by his shoulder badge, was nodding in comprehension.
“Nabol don’t take proper care of ’em, he don’t. Three never shelled. My master was fair upset about that. Means to have three more today or his name’s not Kaljan.”
“Is that so?” The smith bobbed his head up and down to show regret. “We’d one that didn’t hatch, too, but no joy did we get above! Eggs we was promised and eggs we was given. Up to us to care for ’em proper enough to make ’em hatch. That one,” and his head jerked toward the Hold cliff to indicate Lord Meron, “enjoys putting a snake among the wherries!” He snorted derisively. “Happen it’s his only pleasure now.”
Both men guffawed with malicious delight.
“Happen we’ll not need to worry about him much longer, I hear tell.” The smith winked broadly at the miner.
“Couldn’t be soon enough for me. Well, see you at the dancing?”
“Going so soon?”
“Had my glass. Must get back.”
The disappointment in the miner’s face made Piemur think that the smith’s departure was precipitous. Going to tell his master about the eggs that were up at the Hold, was he? Piemur decided to tag along.
Eggs handed out in quantities, eggs that had been badly handled and wouldn’t hatch. Unless . . . and Piemur reflected over something that Menolly had said about fire lizard eggs. Green fire lizards laid eggs as well, having been fertilized by a mating flight with a blue or brown, sometimes even a bronze. But green fire lizards were stupid: they’d lay a clutch, ten at the most, Menolly said, and leave them with such a shallow covering of beach sand that they were easy prey to wild wherries or sand snakes. Very few green-laid clutches survived to Hatch. Which, as Menolly had succinctly stated, was just as well or Pern would be up to the eyeballs in little green fire lizards.
Piemur wondered if anyone in Nabol realized that a deception was being practiced on them, and green fire lizard eggs were what were dispersed so lavishly. Then he realized that he’d lost sight of the smith and, cursing his inattentiveness, began to retrace his steps, turning with assumed idleness to peer between the stalls. He spotted the smith, urgently speaking to a man with a smithmaster’s badge and, as the man reacted to his journeyman’s excited words, his master’s chain sparkled. Piemur managed to duck away as both men suddenly turned toward him. When they had passed him on their way to the Hold, Piemur followed, restlessly scanning faces in the hopes that he might see Sebell and tell him what he’d overheard. Sebell might wish to investigate.
As the two smiths turned from the Gather area toward the Hold, Piemur had to pause or be noticeable. The smiths strode purposefully up the ramp toward the main Hold gates. They were challenged by the guard and, after some moments of arguing, the guard summoned another from the gatehouse and sent him to the Hold with the smithmaster’s message.
While the messenger was gone, two men emerged from the Hold, well wrapped in their cloaks, though the air had lost its chill. Something about the way they walked, carefully; the way they carried their heads, proudly; the way they nodded and smiled at the guards, smugly; and most of all the way they pointedly avoided contact, struck Piemur as significant. He continued to watch them as they turned toward the Gather meadow. As they approached him he caught sight of their figures in profile and realized that each man carried something hidden in his cloak, held tight against his side. It couldn’t have been a large object. But, thought Piemur, putting expression, manner and profile together, an egg pot wouldn’t be large. He wanted to follow the men to see if his suspicion was correct, but he also didn’t want to leave the Hold until the message from the smithmaster had been answered.
A new party, holders by the look of them, now made themselves known to the guards and were admitted, to the angry chagrin of the smithmaster. Then three carts, heavily laden to judge by the straining of the burden beasts struggling up the ramp, forced the smithmaster to one side. The guard waved the carts toward the kitchen courtyard. The last cart jammed a wheel against the ramp parapet, the driver thudding his stick against the burden beast’s rump.
“Wheel be jammed,” yelled Piemur, not liking to see any animal beaten for what was not its fault.
He jumped forward to help guide the carter. The man now backed his stolid beast, swinging its head left. Piemur, setting his shoulder to the tailgate, gave a push in the proper direction. He also tried to peek under the covering to see what on earth was being delivered to the Hold on a Gather day when most business was done in the Gather meadow. Before he could get a good look, the cart had picked up speed as it reached more level ground.
He was past the guards, arguing with the smith and paying no more attention to the procession of carts. Ducking quickly to the side of the cart away from the carter, Piemur gained access to the Hold proper.
As the carts rumbled on into the kitchen court, Piemur rapidly wondered how he could turn this opportunity to advantage and remain in the Hold after the carters had unloaded and left. Certainly if he was actually in the Hold, he might find out more than he could possibly learn wandering about the Gather. If nothing else he could discover what the carter had delivered.
Then he spied a line of coveralls bleaching in the spring sun. He darted over and removed one, ignoring the slight dampness as he slipped it over his head. Kitchen drudges were never noted for cleanliness, and once the beast dirt and stains on his tunic were covered, the dust on his boots and trousers would be unremarkable.
“Hey, you!” Piemur tried to ignore the call, but it was repeated and could only be directed to him. He turned toward the speaker, affecting a stupid expression. “I mean you, with the empty arms!”
Obediently he trudged back to the carter, who slung a heavy sack across his back. At that point, the kitchen steward bustled out to supervise, and Piemur, bent double under the sack, passed him without a glance. The steward alternated between chivvying his drudges out to help unload, and the carter for his ill-timed arrival. The carter replied with equal heat that he had heavy carts and slow beasts and had had to give way and eat dust from those hurrying to this bloody Gather. Meron ought to be pleased he’d got here within the day allotted, much less at an earlier hour.
The steward hushed him and began shouting orders, ordering Piemur on to the back stores rooms. Piemur got inside the kitchen, not knowing where the stores rooms were, so, making a business of wiping his face and easing his shoulders, he waited until someone brushed past him and turned down the proper corridor.
“Don’t know where Ah’m t’ put more as is plenty here a’ready,” muttered the drudge as Piemur followed him.
“A-top them others?” suggested Piemur helpfully.
In the dim light of waning glows, the Nabolese peered at Piemur. “Never saw you afore.”
“Nor you haven’t,” Piemur agreed amiably. “Sent from t’Hold to help in kitchen for t’Gather.”
Haste appeared the vital factor in unloading the carts, so Piemur didn’t see many of the seals on the sacks, barrels and boxes he humped out of sight. But he saw enough to realize that the delivery came from a variety of sources: tanner, weaver, smithcraft for the heaviest boxes, wine from many of the yards, but none, he was pleased to note, from Benden. When the last bundle was stowed in the now-bulging stores rooms, Piemur’s sigh of relief was echoed by Besel, the sly drudge, who had managed to stay close to him during the unloading. Piemur had no sooner lowered himself to a sack to rest than the man snatched him to his feet.
“C’mon, we’ve no time to rest t’day.”
Nor did Piemur, who was set first to scrape out ashes from the secondary hearths and then to gutting beasts and wild fowl, thankful that he’d watched Camo often enough at that task to know the tricks. He scoured extra plates, encrusted with the dirt and grime of Turns, until his fingers shriveled. When he’d done that, and peeled a dragon-load of tubers, he was allowed a breather so long as he kept one of the five spits turning.
Chaos broke loose when the Hold Steward arrived to inform the kitchen that Lord Meron chose to eat in his own quarters and these were to be prepared while he walked the Gather.
The kitchen steward obsequiously took the change of order, having only that hour completed the feast arrangements in the Great Hall. The moment the heavy door had swung shut on the Hold Steward’s back, however, he burst into obscenities that won him Piemur’s astounded approval.
If Piemur had thought he’d worked hard already, he was soon disabused of that notion by the rate at which he was sent flying about the kitchen to collect cleaning and polishing tools and preparations. Then he was sent on ahead with Besel and a woman to start cleaning the Lord’s rooms. Already weary from an early rising and more hard labor than he’d known since he’d left his native cothold, Piemur tried to cheer himself by imagining Master Oldive’s reaction to his “quiet day” at Nabol Gather.
“Who’d a thought he’d walk t’Gather?” the woman was saying as they trudged up the steep steps from the main hall to Meron’s apartment.
“Had to. Didncha hear what they be saying at Gather? Meron dead a’ready and none know his heir. Some as want to turn Gather Day into Duel Day.”
That remark set both Nabolese into cackles of laughter, and Piemur wondered if he could be ignorant enough of Hold problems to ask why they were so amused.
“Ah saw ’em comin’ in, Ah did,” said Besel, again with that sly, knowing expression on his face. “Ev’ry one of ’em was with ’im some time t’day, they was. Outsides with him now, shouldn’t wonder.”
“He’ll have his li’l game wi’em, he will, each thinking he’s been named,” said the woman and dug her elbow into Besel’s ribs which sent them both off into malicious laughter again.
“Hope it’s not just us as has to do all the cleaning here,” Besel said, putting his hand on the door handle. “Hasn’t been done in . . . faugh!” He turned his head away, coughing against the stench that wafted out to them from the opened door.
As the smell reached Piemur’s nostrils, sweet, cloying, sickening, he felt his stomach turn in protest and tried not to inhale. He hung back, hoping the fresher air of the corridor would cleanse the room of its stink.
“Here, you get in and open shutters. You’re used to stinking messes, guttingman.” Besel grabbed Piemur roughly by the arm and propelled him violently into the room.
How Piemur managed not to vomit from the odor of the room before he reached the shutters and flung them open, he didn’t know. He half-threw his body up the deep sill, gasping in fresh, cool air.
“Other windows, too, boy,” ordered Besel from the doorway.
Piemur filled his lungs and opened the other windows, staying by the last until the chill air dissipated the odors of decay and illness. And Lord Meron’s heirs had had to attend him in this funking atmosphere? Piemur spared them a moment of sympathy.
Then Besel shouted for him to go into the other rooms and open them up to air properly. “Else no one’d eat his food, like as not, and we’m to clean up their messes.”
The foul odor hung heaviest in the last of the four large rooms that comprised the Lord Holder’s private apartments in Nabol. It was then that Piemur blessed the happenstance that had sent him in here ahead of the others. Reposing on the hearth were nine pots of exactly the size in which fire lizard eggs were placed to keep warm and harden. Mastering his urge to gag, Piemur ducked across the room to investigate. One pot was set slightly apart from the others and, lifting the lid, Piemur scraped enough sand away to see the mottled shell before he covered it carefully over. He took a quick look at the contents of the first pot in the other group. Yes, the egg was smaller and of a different hue. He’d wager every mark he owned that the separate pot contained a fire lizard queen egg.
Quickly he switched pots. Shielding his actions with his body in case Besel ventured this far to check on him, he dumped the sand with deft speed into the cinder shovel, removed the egg and shoved it up under his coverall and into his shirt above his belt. Poking among the cinders, he selected one that had a slightly rounded end and neatly inserted it into the egg pot, replaced sand and lid and stood the rifled pot back in line, straightening up just as the woman crossed the threshold.
“That’s the lad, tend the fire first. And you’ll need to bring up more blackrock from the yard. He likes his warmth, he does.” She cackled again as she roughly pushed carven chairs out of her way to sweep under the worktable. “To be sure, he’ll feel the cold soon enough, he will!”
Besel joined in her laughter.
The fire was hot as Piemur shook the grate free of ashes, and his face burned by the time he had cleared the debris. The heat also warmed the egg, lying against his ribs.
“Hurry it up, you guttingman,” said Besel when Piemur began to lug the heavy ash bucket out. “No slouching, or I’ll take me hand to you.” He raised a big fist and Piemur ducked away, feeling the egg pinch his skin and worried he might crack it prematurely.
As he strained with the heavy bucket down the long steps, he wondered how ever was he going to keep the egg safe. Certainly not on his person. And he’d have to keep it warm, too. As well as in someplace to which, in his guise as a lowly guttingman, he’d have easy access.
The solution came to him just as he was about to dump the ashes. He checked the swing of the bucket and glanced about the ashpit. Then very carefully, he emptied the ashes in a pile just to the left of the ashpit opening. Anyone emptying ashbuckets tended to fling the contents to the back wall where the cinders spread downward from the top of the accumulated pile. The molding on either side of the opening kept ashes from tumbling back into the courtyard until the pit was full. Its capacity was by no means reached at this moment. With his booted toe, Piemur made a small depression in the warm ashes, quickly inserted the egg, covering it first with warm ashes, then with a coating of cold cinders to insulate it. Glancing at the sun as he filled his bucket with fresh blackstone from the dump next to the ashpit, Piemur saw that the sun was lowering. Which was a mercy he thought, lugging the blackstone back into the Hold, because he wondered if he’d manage to last through the most arduous day of his life.
They’d have the Feast soon; more than likely as soon as Lord Meron returned to his freshened quarters. What caused that noxious stink? Certainly not Master Oldive’s medicines, for the healer believed in fresh air and freshening herbs, which at their worst were pungent but could not cause the odor in Lord Meron’s rooms. No matter. Once the Lord and his guests were served, the drudges would get what remained on the serving platters and that would mean everyone could relax for a while. He could, perhaps, sneak away then, before Sebell got anxious. And did he have a lot to tell Sebell!
Half the workers in
the Hold were now running up and down the steps, pursued by the strident voice of the Hold Steward who had arrived to direct the freshening. Piemur was promptly given another ashbucket to empty and fill with blackrock. On his way back through the kitchen this time, he sneaked a breadroll, which heartened him considerably.
By some miracle, they were just about finished when a messenger arrived from the guard to say that Lord Meron and his guests were returning. The Steward shoved and pushed everyone out, even to the point of collecting abandoned cleaning tools. As the last of the drudges scurried back into the kitchen, the laughter of the returning Gatherers was heard at the Hold doors.
Piemur had to assist the cook turn the roast for carving, and nearly had his fingers sliced thinner when the cook caught him taking bits that dropped to the table. Then he had to mash endless kettles of tubers. As fast as a dish was served up and garnished, it was despatched above. At one point, Piemur thought he might be sent, but it was decided he was much too dirty to carry food. Instead he was sent to the bowels of the Hold for more glowbaskets as Lord Meron complained that he couldn’t see to eat. Piemur had to make three trips to satisfy the need. By that time, the platters were coming back to the kitchen. The drudges and lesser stewards stripped food off as it passed them by. The kitchen began to quiet as mouths were stuffed too full to permit speech. Piemur managed to secure a meat-rimmed bone and, grabbing a handful of the sliced breads, he retired to the darkest corner of the huge room to eat.
He applied himself ravenously to his food, having decided to leave as quickly as possible now. The sun had set during the furor of serving the feast, so he had the cover of darkness to retrieve his egg. And he’d have the excuse for the guards, if they stopped him, that he was finished with his duties. Lord Groghe always gave his drudges time to attend the Gather dancing. Piemur was looking forward to encountering Sebell again. He might not have heard much to the point of which heir the Hold staff preferred, but he had proof that Lord Meron was getting far more fire lizard eggs than a small Hold like Nabol ought to receive; that his stores rooms were full of more supplies than he and his could ever use in a full pass much less a Turn.
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