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There were dwellings bordering the sides of the broad paved road that led in several well-travelled directions; south to the fields and pastures, east down the valley towards the low foothills and west around to the pass in the cliff that would lead to the higher mountains of the Central Fort Range.
    Silvina guided Menolly now towards a cottage, a good-sized one with five windows, all of them shuttered tight, on the upper floor. The cottage nestled against the slope of the ramp. As they got close enough, Menolly realized that the little cot was also quite old. And the cottage door was metal, too! Incredible! Silvina opened it, calling out for Dunca. Menolly had just time to notice that the metal door closed as the one at the Harper Hall did, with a small wheel throwing the thick rods into grooves in ceiling and floor.
    ‘Menolly, come and meet Dunca who holds the cottage for the girls who study at the Harper Hall.’
    Menolly dutifully greeted the short, dumpy little woman with bright black eyes and cheeks like a puff-belly’s sides. Dunca gave Menolly a raking look, at odds with her jolly appearance, as if measuring up Menolly to the gossip she’d already heard. Then Dunca saw Beauty peeking around Menolly’s ear. She gave a shriek, jumping back.
    ‘What’s that?’
    Menolly reached up to calm Beauty, who was hissing and raising her wings, getting one entangled in Menolly’s hair.
    ‘But, Dunca, surely you knew—’ Silvina’s voice chided the woman, ‘—that Menolly had Impressed fire lizards.’
    Menolly’s sharp ear caught the edge to Silvina’s voice, and so did the little queen, for Beauty thrummed softly and warningly in her throat as her eyes whirled at Dunca. Menolly silently called her to order.
    ‘I’d
heard
, but I don’t always credit things I’m
told
,’ said Dunca, standing as far away from Menolly and Beauty as the hall permitted.
    ‘Very wise of you,’ replied Silvina. The set of the headwoman’s lips and the wary amusement in her glance told Menolly that Silvina was not overly fond of the little cotholder. ‘Now you’ve a windowed room vacant, have you not? I think it’s best if we settled her there.’
    ‘I don’t want another hysterical girl who’ll panic during Threadfall and scare us all with imagining that Thread is actually
in
the cottage!’
    Silvina’s eyes danced with suppressed laughter as she glanced Menolly’s way. ‘No, Menolly won’t panic. She is, by the way, the youngest daughter of Sea Holder Yanus of Half-Circle Sea Hold, beholden to Benden Weyr. The sea breeds stern souls, you know.’
    Dunca’s bright little eyes were almost lost in the folds of her eye flesh as she peered up at Menolly.
    ‘So you knew Petiron, did you?’
    ‘Yes, I did, Dunca.’
    The cotholder gave a disgusted snort and turned so quickly her full skirt followed in hasty swirls as she made for the stone steps carved into the wall at the back of the hallway. She kept twitching her skirt, grunting at the steepness of the risers as she heaved her small fat person upwards.
    Two narrow corridors, lit at either end by dimming glows, went left and right from the stairwell. Dunca turned right, led them to the far end and threw open the last door on the outside.
    ‘Lazy sluts,’ she said truculently, fumbling at the catch of the glowbasket. ‘They’ve cleared the glows.’
    ‘Where are they kept?’ asked Menolly, wishing to ingratiate herself with the cotkeeper. Fleetingly she wondered if she’d always be trotting up and down narrow steps after glows.
    ‘Where’s your drudge, Dunca? It’s her task to bring glows, not Menolly’s,’ said Silvina as she walked past Dunca and flipped open first one, then a second set of shutters, flooding the room with sunlight.
    ‘Silvina! What are you doing?’
    ‘Threadfall’s not for two more days, Dunca. Be sensible. The room’s fusty.’
    Dunca’s answer was a shriek as the other fire lizards swooped in through the opened window, diving about