When Val wakes up the next time, in her own weyr, she consults the dice. She always does: before she rinses and spits, before she so much as rises. This time it's the little ceramic pair, glazed blue and green, weighted to throw sixes.
They don't.
Three nights ago, they met in Nayara's weyr.
She's a tall woman, with strong features and hair that bristles silver. If her left arm sometimes shakes, legacy of an old Threadscore, she can pour wine just fine with the right. Her brown isn't as long as Visigoth, but brawnier all the way through, and possessive of the even older green with whom he shares his ledge. The green's rider is never around for meetings like this, isn't around for N'ya to welcome T'nia, Jierri, F'rie. Aleis's name was always too hard to shorten, but when she was of Benden, N'ya would give her a breathy pause after that first vowel anyway. A'leis. They laughed together.
Jierri likes her name the way it is. Eavie doesn't believe in honorifics for women, thinks they've got their browns and that's honor enough for anyone, but she still shows up because names are the least of it. And Val is always Val, because what else can you do with her?
There aren't many of them.
They stick together, but not like burrs, except how some of them can annoy each other just that much. It's more of a glancing thing, an erratic gravitational pull. You could say they look out for each other... one way or another.
Smoke rises, from the braziers, from the heavy cigars that some of them favor. It's streaked along T'nia's eyes to make them seem long, and drifts in Bealla's lazy-sounding voice, and further shadows the edges of Dounaeth's wings. He perches up on Visigoth's ledge, the two of them shooting the breeze. Their girls are going to take a while.
Most of it is what you'd expect. Dicing, of course. Drinking. Cards. Stories. Speculation. Remember-whens. Sometimes they fall silent. Sometimes they sing. Some of them have even gotten better at it over the Turns.
There's a lot of arguing, for the fun of it and otherwise. It doesn't take a dick to have a pissing contest.
That night, over a pressing of Bealla's family's Nabolese hard cider, they start off with a mix of rants and advice, some of it even asked for. Somebody's daughter wants to "get back to her roots" and marry her latest cotholder fling, wash her own diapers even. Somebody else's wingleader can't keep the same sweep assignments two days straight. Val pays more attention to the brownrider who's recruited a mark ripe for fleecing, though she's not one of the takers this time. Another woman has a spare tapestry, wonders if anyone wants dibs before it goes back to stores.
They update the books, of course, including payoffs from Ista's hatching. F'rie tells the bluest jokes while knitting tiny, tiny socks. Val flirts, argues, tussles... and then all but falls asleep on her neighbor's bony shoulder.
Whoever's still there at midnight, and most of them mostly are, toasts the dead. This time, Val stays longer than almost anyone.
Every now and again, she thinks of how it will sound, her name on the list. Her name, Val-and-Visigoth. She wonders whether F'rie will find something to do with her name, the Val part, that she hasn't in life.
Two nights ago, there was still a crick in her neck when she got collared.
She's rounding a corner when she's hauled in. Flattened between leather and stone, she can smell soap and old sweat, and she recognizes them even before the voice, the hot breath against her ear. It doesn't relax her.
"Hands off. I see you doing that again, you know what I'll do."
She does know not to fight.
One night ago, she did it again.
Of course.
Her neck doesn't hurt now, nothing does. She's riding high. Her veins burn. She used to know better, but it doesn't matter now. When she walks out afterward, she's singing.
She's just careful not to be seen.
If she left, she'd be leaving all this.
She reaches out for Visigoth, and rolls the dice again.
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