Please move along.
She vanished from his sight, and chastised herself mentally for having bumped into the lad. It wasn't his fault, really. But if she were to speak to him, her whole mission might be compromised.
Everything that Lord Holder Engell told her about this small but rather rich minor Hold was true. The people were cowards. Utter, complete cowards. If they weren't apologizing to each other for spilling a drink or having bumped an arm, they were shivering in their stone-roofed homes waiting for Thread to fall.
Avery was here to collect on tithes for the Lord, and she would not be stopped. However, the tithes weren't exactly being pushed at her. No. They'd stopped coming entirely several turns before, and though Engell would normally have punished them sooner, it was a small place, and had not attracted much attention to itself.
Until the gemstones began coming out of the mines they had. Engell knew the mines, and Avery was told where to find them. If she had to, she was informed, she could simply go to them and take what she could carry.
She wanted to do it the hard way. The way that Engell had trained her for -- well, that she had been trained for, anyway. The pale man had very little to do with her actual physical training, but everything to do with why she was who she was today.
After having rescued her from a cothold filled with corpses, Engell had made certain that this girl was educated, and kept healthy. Though the master healer Kalkin told them both that she would certainly be sterile from her exposure to the pox that killed almost all her village, Avery kept hoping he was wrong.
Well, she was almost seventeen turns, and had never had a blood flow. That was not the most encouraging sign. But then again, she thought as she climbed through a small air duct into the Lord Holder's offices, that meant she never really had to worry about all that whining that the young Ladies put out.
She dropped to the stone floor and still made no sound. Her soft leather boots conformed to her feet, and she felt with her toes around on the floor for any traps. Feeling safe, she put her mind to finding the Holder's private stash of 'good' gems. The tithes which were shunted to the other Holds would normally not be of superior quality, if not large in quantity.
But these... She held up a gleaming green gem. It would do nicely. As would the clear one. Diamond? She couldn't tell. She had not spent particularly much time with the mine crafters of Alabaster, but she did know gamblers, and this stone could fetch an absolute fortune.
She put it, and three more like it, into her narrow waist pouch. It blended in with her snug outfit, along with the weapons which she carried on her back. She did hope that someone would challenge her some day, but... Avery also hoped dearly that she was never tempted to actually slay anyone.
For that would just ruin her chance at Impressing a dragon.
As Avery crept back out of the Hold, silent as the wind itself, she pondered perhaps that her standards would never carry her into a Weyr. A proper one, anyway. While it was true that sometime after her thirteenth turn day, the search dragons at Alabaster had sniffed her out and tagged her as potential rider material, she was certain that Engell had other plans for her even then.
She complied with them, knowing that to disobey him would be both stupid and dangerous. When she began to excell at his games of politics and theft and blood, Avery did not pull back. She threw herself into her training. Swordsmanship, taught by that eerie man at Blackstone... Hand to hand fighting taught by the master Healer Kalkin; many things in between taught by this master or that clever journeyman.
Avery walked back to Alabaster, two days travel on foot, and arrived hungry. With just a look, she got a plate and drink. With but another, Engell summoned her to his office from the end of the dining hall.
"You've done well, Avery," the man praised her as he looked over the gems. "These will keep them off my list for a short while anyway."
"Good," Avery said, "I mean, thank you, I thought they were the right ones. The one is already cut."
"Yes..." the white-haired man held the diamond to the light from the bright glow basket. "Avery, you'll want to rest up a little, tonight. But tomorrow, you're going to be on your way to a weyr."
Jolting back a bit, Avery's eyes widened. "Sir?"
"A small clutch on the sands at Ryslen Weyr. It's new, but I am familiar with the weyrwoman. She assures me that you will have a place there."
Avery let a tiny, rare smile cross her thin lips. "Thank you sir!" She breathed. Her voice, even when excited, barely rose above a whisper anyway.
She would stand after all! Her heart pounded, she was thrilled and ... Would any dragon want her?
Any of her fears were swept away when Kalkin offered to fly her to Ryslen on his blue Sixth...
