"Indeed, I am," and Iantine looked around for his clothes.

Someone had undressed him and he didn't see his own clothes.

"I'm to help you if you need it," the boy said, pushing half-way through the curtains. "Tisha laid out clean clothes." He wrinkled a snub nose.

"Yours were pretty ripe," she said.

Iantine chuckled. "They probably were. I ran out of soap for washing three weeks ago."

"You waz at Bitra. They charge for everything there," and the boy threw up both arms in disgust. "I'm Leopol," he added.

Then he lifted the soft slippers from the pile on the Stool.

"Tisha said you'd better wear these, not your boots. And you're to use the salve first." He held up the lidded jar.

"Dinner's ready." Leopol then licked his lips.

"And you must wait your meal until I'm ready, huh?"

Leopol nodded solemnly and then grinned. "I don't mind. I'll get more because I waited."

"Is food in short supply at this Weyr?" Iantine asked jokingly as he began to dress in the clean gear.

Odd how important simple things, like freshly laundered clothing, a.s.sumed the level of luxury when you've had to do without.

Leopol helped him spread the salve on his feet. They were still tender to the touch and even the act of applying the salve made them suddenly itchy. Fortunately the numb weed or whatever it was, reduced that sensation.

When he had relieved himself again and gingerly washed face and hands, he and Leopol made their way to the Lower Cavern where the evening meal was in progress.

The lad led him to a side table near the hearth which had been set for two. Instantly cooks descended with plates overflowing with food, wine for him and klah for Leopol.

"There now, Artist man," the cook said, nodding appreciation as Iantine attacked the roast meat, eat first and then the Weyrleaders would like a few words with you, if you're not too tired." Iantine murmured thanks and understanding and addressed himself single-mindedly to his food. How long had it been since he'd eaten a decent meal?

He would have had additional servings of the main course, but his stomach felt uneasy: too much good food after several days of semi-fasting, probably. Leopol brought him a large serving of the sweet course, but he couldn't finish it all because the back of his throat felt raw and sore. He would have gone back to his bed then, but he saw the Weyrleaders advancing on him. Leopol made a discreet exit, grinning rea.s.surance at him. Iantine tried to stand in courtesy to his hosts, but he wobbled on his numbed feet and dropped back into the chair.

"We don't stand much on ceremony here," Zulaya said, gesturing for him to stay seated as K'vin pulled out one chair for her.

He carried the wine-skin from which he filled all the gla.s.ses.

Iantine took a polite sip - it was a nice crisp wine - but even the one sip made his stomach feel sourer.

"Messages have been sent, and acknowledgments received, that you've been rescued," K'vin said, grinning over the last word. Master Domaize was becoming worried, so we saved him a messenger to Bitra."

"That's very good of you, Zulaya, K'vin," Iantine said, thankful that part of his training at Hall Domaize had included knowing the important names in every Hold, Weyr and Hall.

"I certainly appreciated P'tero's rescue." Zulaya grinned. He'll be dining out on that one for the rest of the year. But it proves the wisdom of sweep riding even during the Interval."

"You should know," Iantine blurted out, "that Lord Chalkin doesn't believe there will be a Pa.s.s."

"Of course not," K'vin replied easily. "It doesn't suit him to. Bridgely and M'shall would like a report from you, though, concerning your visit there."

"You mean, there's something that can be done about him?" Iantine was amazed. Lord Holders were autonomous within their borders; he hadn't known there'd be any recourse.

"He may do himself in," Zulaya said with a grim twist of her lips.

"That would be wonderful," said Iantine. "Only," and now honesty forced him to admit this, "he didn't really do anything to me."

"Our Weyr artist may not be trained," K'vin said, "but Waine informed me that it doesn't take seven weeks to do four miniatures."

"I actually painted twenty-two to get four that they liked," Iantine explained, clearing his throat grimly. "The hooker in the contract was the word 'satisfactory'

"Ah," Zulaya and K'vin said in chorus.

"I ran out of paint and canvas because I brought only what I thought I'd need." He lifted his hands, then rubbed them because they were beginning to itch again. "Then the children all got measles and so, rather than have anything deducted from the fee for room and board, I agreed to freshen up the Hold murals... only I hadn't brought that sort of paint and had to manufacture the colors."

"Did he charge you for the use of the equipment?" Zulaya asked to Iantine's astonishment.

"How did you know?" When she only laughed and waved at him to continue his telling.

Iantine went on, "So I excavated what I needed in the midden."

"Good for you," Zulaya clapped her hands, delighted by his resourcefulness.

"Fortunately, most of the raw materials for pigments are readily available. You only have to find them and make the colors up. Which I'd have to do anyhow. Master Domaize was good about pa.s.sing on techniques like that.

"Then I finally got them to accept the miniatures, which weren't exactly miniature size any more, by the way, just before the first blizzard snowed me in." Iantine flushed; his narrative showed him to be such a ninny.

"So? What did you contract for then?" Zulaya shot K'vin a knowing look.

"I was a bit wiser. Or so I thought," he said with a grimace and then told them the clauses he'd insisted on.

"He had you on the drudges' level at Bitra?" Zulaya was appalled.

"And you a diploma'd artist? I would protest about that! There are certain courtesies which most Holds, Halls and Weyrs accord a student of a craft, and certainly to an artist!"

"So, when Lord Chalkin finally accepted his portrait, I made tracks away as fast as I could!" K'vin clapped him on the shoulder, grinning at the fervor with which that statement came out.

"Not that my conditions improved that much," Iantine added quickly and then grinned, "until P'tero rescued me." His throat kept clogging up and he had to clear it again. "I want to thank you very much for that. I hope I didn't keep him from proper duties."

"No, no," K'vin said. "Mind you, I'm not all that sure why he was over Bitra, but it's as well he was."

"How are your hands?" Zulaya asked, looking down at him as he washed his itching fingers together.

"I shouldn't rub the skin, should I?"

Zulaya spoke over her shoulder. "Leopol, get the numb weed for Iantine, please." The young artist hadn't noticed the boy's discreet presence, but he was glad he didn't have to walk all the way to the cubicle to get the salve.

"It's just the after-effects of cold," he said, looking at his fingers, and noticing what Tisha had - pigment under the nails. He curled his fingers, ashamed to be at a Weyr table with dirty hands.

And a deep shiver went down his spine.

"I was wondering, Iantine," Zulaya began, "if you'd feel up to doing another portrait or two? The Weyr pays the usual rates, and no extras charged against you."

Iantine protested. "I'd gladly do your portrait, Weyrwoman."

"It is of yourself you were speaking, isn't it?" That first shiver was followed by another which he did his best to mask.

"You'll do it only if you are paid a proper fee, young man," Zulaya said sternly.

"But..."

"No buts," K'vin put in. "What with preparations for a Pa.s.s, neither Zulaya nor I have had the time to commission proper portraits. However, since you're here... and willing?"

"I'm willing, all right, but you don't know my work and I'm only just accredited."

Zulaya caught his hands in hers, for he'd been wildly gesticulating in both eagerness and an attempt to disguise another spasm.

"Artist Iantine, if you managed to do four miniatures and two formal portraits, and refresh murals for Chalkin, you're more than qualified. Didn't you know that it took Macartor five months to finish Chalkin's wedding-day scene?"

"And he had to borrow marks from an engineer to pay off the last of his 'debt'?" K'vin added. "Here's Waine to greet you. But you're not to start work again until you're completely recovered from the cold."

"Oh, I'm recovered, I'm recovered," Iantine said, standing up as the Weyrleaders did, determined to control the next set of shiverings.

After they had introduced him to the little man, Waine, they left him, circulating to other tables as the Weyr relaxed.

There was singing and guitar playing from one side of the room, cheerful noises, above a general level of easy conversation. That was something else which Iantine only now realized had been totally absent at Bitra Hold: music, talk, people relaxing after a day's work.

"Heard you ran afoul of Chalkin?" Waine said, grinning and ducking his head. Then he brought from behind his back a sheaf of large-sized paper sheets, neatly tied together, and a handful of pencils. "Thought you might need em, like," he said shyly. "Heard tell you used up all at Bitra."

"Thank you," Iantine replied, running his fingers appreciatively over the fine sheets and noticing that the pencils were of different weights of carbon. "How much do I owe you?"

Waine laughed, showing gaps in his teeth. "You been at Bitra too long, Artist man. I've colors, too, but not many. Don't do more'n basics."

"Then let me make you a range of paints," Iantine said gratefully, gritting his teeth against yet another onslaught of ague. "You know where to find the raw stuff around here, and I'll show you how I make the tints."

Waine grinned toothlessly again. " That's a right good trade."

He held out a hand and nearly crushed Iantine's fingers with his enthusiasm. But he caught the paroxysm of almost uncontrollable shivering which Iantine could not hide.

"Hey, man, you're cold."

"I can't seem to stop shivering, for all that I'm on top of the fire," and Iantine had to surrender to the shaking.

"TISHA" Iantine was embarra.s.sed by Waine's bellow for a.s.sistance, but he didn't resist when he was bundled back into his quarters and the medic summoned while Tisha ordered more furs, hot water-bottles, aromatics to be steeped in hot water to make breathing easier. He made no resistance to the medication that was immediately prescribed for him because, by then, his head had started to ache. So did his bones.

The last thing he remembered before he drifted off to an uneasy sleep was what Maranis, the medic, said to Tisha. "Let's hope they all have it at Bitra for giving it to him!"

Much later Leopol told him that Tisha had stayed by his bedside three nights while he burned of the mountain fever he had caught, compounding his illness by exposure on the cold slopes. Maranis felt that the old woodsman might be a carrier for the disease: himself immune, but able to transmit the fever.

Iantine was amazed to find his mother there when he woke from the fever. Her eyes were red with crying and she burst into tears again when she realized he was no longer delirious.

Leopol also told him that Tisha had insisted she be sent for when his fever lasted so long.

To Iantine's astonishment, his mother didn't seem as pleased to receive the transfer fee as he was to give it.

"Your life isn't worth the fee," she told him finally when he was afraid she was displeased with the missing eighth mark he'd had to give the woodsman. "And he nearly killed you for that eighth."

"He's a good lad you have for a son," Tisha said with an edge to her voice, "working that hard to earn money from Chalkin."

"Oh yes," his mother hastily agreed as she suddenly realized she ought to be more grateful. "Though why ever you sought to please that old skinflint is beyond me."

"The fee was right," Iantine said weakly.

"Don't take on so, now, Ian," Tisha said when his mother had to return to the sheep hold "She was far more worried about you than about the marks. Which shows her heart's in the right place. Worry makes people act odd, you know." She patted Iantine's shoulder. "She wanted to take you home and nurse you there," she went on rea.s.suringly.

"But couldn't risk your lungs in the cold of between. I don't think she liked us taking care of you!" She grinned. "Mothers never trust others, you know."

Iantine managed a grin back at Tisha. I guess that's it."

It was Leopol who restored Iantine's peace of mind. "You gotta real nice mother, you know," he said, sitting on the end of the bed. "Worried herself sick about leaving until P'tero promised to convey her again if you took any turn for the worst. She'd never ridden a dragon before."

Iantine chuckled. "No, I don't think she has. Must have frightened her."

"Not as much," and now Leopol c.o.c.ked a slightly dirty finger at the artist, "as you being so sick she had to be sent for. But she was telling P'tero how happy your father would be to have those marks you earned. Real happy. And she near deafened P'tero, shouting about how she'd always known you'd be a success, and to get the whole fee out of Chalkin was quite an achievement."

"She did?" Iantine perked up. His mother had been bragging about him?

"She did indeed," Leopol said, giving an emphatic nod to his head.

Leopol seemed to know a great deal about a lot of matters in the Weyr. He also never seemed to mind being sent on errands as Iantine made a slow convalescence.

Master Domaize paid him a visit, too. And it was Leopol who told the convalescent why the Master had made such a visit.

"That Lord Chalkin sent a complaint to Master Domaize that you had skived out of the Hold without any courtesy and he was seriously considering lodging a demand for the return of some of the fee since you were so obviously very new at your art, and the fee had been for a seasoned painter, not a young upstart." Leopol grinned at Iantine's furious reaction.

"Oh, don't worry. Your master wasn't born yesterday. M'shall himself brought him to Bitra Hold, and they said that there was not a thing wrong with any of the work you'd done for that Lord Chalkin." He c.o.c.ked his head to one side, regarding Iantine with a calculating look.

"Seems like there's lot of people wanting to sit their portraits with you. Didja know that?" Iantine shook his head, trying to absorb the injustice of Chalkin's objection. He was speechless with fury. Leopol grinned again.

"Don't worry, Iantine. Chalkin's the one should worry, treating you like that. Your Master and the Benden Weyrleader gave out to that Lord Holder about it, too. You're qualified, and ent.i.tled to all the courtesies of which you got none at Bitra Hold. Good thing you didn't get sick until after Zulaya and K'vin had a chance to hear your side of the story. Not that anyone would believe Chalkin, no matter what he says."

"Did you know that even wherries won t roost in Bitra Hold?" Convalescence from the lung infection took time and Iantine fretted at his weakness.

"I keep falling asleep," he complained to Tisha one morning when she arrived with his potion. "How long do I have to keep taking this stuff?"

"Until Maranis hears clear lungs in you," she said in her no-nonsense tone. Then she handed him the sketch paper and pencils that Waine had given him on his first night in the Weyr. "Get your hand back in. At least doing what you're best at can be done sitting still."

It was good to have paper and pencil again. It was good to look about the Lower Caverns and catch poses, especially when the poser didn't realize he was being sketched. And his eye had not lost its keenness, and if his fingers cramped now and then from weakness, strength gradually returned. He became unaware of the pa.s.sage of time, nor did he notice people coming up behind him to see what he was drawing just then.