Pegasus

CHAPTER 17

Sylvi got through the rest of the week without Ebon somehow. She spent as much time outdoors as she could. She polished the sword that might have belonged to Razolon till it gleamed like a bead round the neck of a pegasus. She took extra lessons with Diamon; she volunteered for extra bashing-and-crashing practise, as hand-to-hand was familiarly called out of Diamon’s hearing, and was put up against a variety of opponents, from Lucretia to some of Diamon’s smallest and youngest beginners, including one of her cousins, her uncle Rulf ’s youngest daughter, who had been sent to the palace for six weeks to find out what she needed to learn.

“Well done,” said Diamon, after one long afternoon, as Sylvi was hanging up the rest of her practise gear, with her sword over her shoulder.

“I suppose I’m less threatening than someone bigger,” she said. “Someone like Renny,” her cousin,“is more likely to try what she knows against someone like me.”

“I’m not putting you up against the littles for your size,” said Diamon. “I’m putting you in because you use your strength well. Don’t sell yourself as a three-legged donkey when you’re a pegasus.”

It was an old phrase, as old as “it will hearten us.” She still had to stop herself from saying “I wish.”

“Thank you,” she said.

But she had to spend some time indoors. Ahathin said, “Have you given any thought to how you wish to present your report of your journey?”

“No,” said Sylvi with loathing. There was a pile of blank paper in a corner of her table. She flicked the edge of the pile with her finger: it was beautiful, in its way, hard and crisp and shiny. The pegasi’s softer, duller paper was meant chiefly to take paint, not ink. She had seen several shamans’ sigils: Ebon said that how the paint bled into the paper told you how strong the charm would be, and also something about how it would do its work. I can read a few of the easy ones, what they’re for, Ebon said. But that’s all. I can’t tell you whether it’s a good one or not. It’s one of the things you learn if you’re a shaman’s apprentice. Like this one is for a good harvest. But it could be a good harvest that’s full of weeds that we’ll have to pick out. Sigils for rain are tricky, for example, because you want a nice steady medium rain, not like the rain-spirits overturning the sky-bowl so all the rain falls on you at once.

“I recommend you do so,” said Ahathin. “I wish to be able to tell your father before the festivities for your birthday when he can expect to see it.”

Could she write about the shamans’ sigils? She could at least write about watching them make their paper. Her outstretched arm revealed Niahi’s bracelet below the end of her sleeve. She could write about meeting Ebon’s little sister. She could write about how the pegasi made yelloni for each other, but for ears and ankles. She could not write that Niahi had decided that human wrists were best. She could not write that Niahi had said anything to her at all.

She had spoken to no pegasus since Ebon left. When she saw one in a corridor or in one of the gardens, they bowed to each other but did not stop. In human groups . . . the humans were always making so much mouth noise it was hard to think.

She looked at Ahathin and could think of nothing to say, no loud human words. But even the silence in the human world lay differently than silence with the pegasi.

“The king has faith in his daughter’s intelligence and perception, and so do I,” said Ahathin.

“You mean, be careful what I put in my report.”

“Remember that your report may be read by anyone who goes to the library and asks to see it.”

“Which might include Fthoom.”

“Which will undoubtedly include Fthoom.”

“Will you help me?” she said sadly.

“I will certainly help you, if you wish it.”

“You mean you are a magician too.”

“I am indeed a magician too. But my similarity to Fthoom ends there, as I would most humbly beg the lady Sylviianel to remember.”

She thought of the Hall of Magicians, where he could go and she could not. She thought of Redfora; she thought of the fact that Ahathin was one of her oldest friends. She let her mind drift . . . and for a moment she was standing in the little valley with an army behind her, and the king of the pegasi was sweeping his wingtip across the bottom of a long piece of soft white paper: she could hear a faint rustling as some human hand shifted its grip. And the two magicians with the human king looked up. She remembered the one—the one whose smile, back in the Caves, said, It is too late. It is done.

But the second one looked at her now and in his eyes she read, Try. “I believe you,” she said aloud. “And I would be grateful for your help.”

“It shall be my last official act as your tutor,” said Ahathin. “I thank you for that.”

At night—especially on the three quiet clear nights that would have been perfect for flying—she told herself that there had been many perfect flying nights they had not gone flying because Ebon wasn’t there. There had been many weeks when Ebon had been at home among the pegasi, having lessons from his master, teasing his little sister, being bored by council meetings—not with her at the palace, among the humans. This had not seemed strange to her then. But that was then, she thought. That was before I visited their country, and their Caves.

She had after all told no one, not even her father, that she had spoken to other pegasi in Rhiandomeer—pegasi other than Ebon. It turned out that it was easy—miserably, painfully easy—not to tell anyone. It was not only that no one asked directly—who was going to say to her, “Did you find, in Rhiandomeer, that you could speak to the rest of the pegasi too? That for you almost a thousand years of the way things are were nothing at all?” She had not thought of this clearly; she had been too busy bracing herself to lie. She had been, before she was brought back to the human world, so full of her experience of the pegasi, it had seemed to her that anyone who met her might read the truth of it, somehow, off her face, her bearing, as visible as a siraga around her shoulders.

Instead there was a new, curious distance, an awkwardness, between her and—everyone. She had thought everyone would be longing to hear about her visit, the adventure that no one else had had before. And perhaps they were. But no one asked. Even Ahathin, helping her organise her thoughts and her notes into a presentation she could give to her father and the senate, asked her no questions except about what she had already volunteered, already written down. She wanted to ask him, Do you think the pegasi shamans’ magic is antithetical to human magicians’ magic? Would you go to Rhiandomeer if you had the chance? Do you think it would make you confused or sick or powerless? Have the magicians ever discussed this barrier between humans and pegasi? Do they know why so few shamans come here, and why they never stay long? Is there a special group within some magicians’ guild that studies the situation, like Fthoom looking for stories of friendship between human and pegasus? Has it taken you over eight hundred years to reach no conclusions?

She wasn’t even sure she could, here, in the human country, speak to pegasi, any more than Hibeehea could speak to humans, here. The air, like the silence, lay against you differently here, and she put her hand to her cheek as if to brush back a veil. The difference did not seem to make her ill, as it made the pegasus shamans, but it made her feel as if she had not come home after all—as if some of her had not come home, the part that understood sky views and sky holds, the part that found human noise and human sitting-down banquets normal.

She had dreaded what her father might ask her about speaking to the pegasi: she dreaded it because of the look in Dorogin’s eyes, because of Hibeehea’s advice, because she did not want to think about why she knew in her bones it was good advice. Lrrianay, on that first incredible night when she had begun speaking to the other pegasi, had told her what the two kings hoped, and her father had noticed that her speech at the banquet had already become more fluent after only a day among the pegasi in their own country. She dreaded almost anything he might now ask her about her journey, but he asked her nothing at all. The morning he and she had seen the doorathbaa pegasi who had brought her back leave to fly home to their country—the morning she had had to hold on to her father to keep herself standing as she watched Ebon vanish—he had said to her afterward, “I’m sorry, young one, that it’s so hard. But I’m glad to have you back.”

But he said nothing more, that day or the following days. And she never seemed to see him except in some councillor’s company, or among a group of senators—or with Fazuur and Lrrianay. She could have asked to see him alone, but she didn’t. She wondered if he thought she was avoiding him. She wondered if he was avoiding her. It was so easy to avoid someone, here at the palace, with all the bustling, clattering humans, all the comings and goings, all the meetings, all the discussions, all the messages, all the different groups of people concerned about different things and insisting on the greater importance of whatever their subject, their charge, their preoccupation was.... She had never realised before that it was too much. But it hadn’t been too much, before. Before Rhiandomeer and its birdsong, rustling-tree silences, the hum of the pegasi; before the taste of her porridge, of fwhfwhfwha, of the llyri grass. Before the Caves. Before ssshuuwuushuu.

She didn’t try to speak to any other pegasus, and none tried to speak to her. She felt that if she did try, she might fall down, as she had that evening she had first spoken to Niahi and then Lrrianay. She felt that despite the things that wouldn’t change—the two legs, the big hands with the rotating wrists, the lack of wings—that she was less secure in her humanness than she had been before she visited Rhiandomeer, and that was exactly what she dared not risk revealing. She dared not risk trying to speak to a pegasus. And—changed as she was in other ways—she dared not risk the despair if she failed.

She wondered if Lrrianay had said anything about her to the other pegasi at the palace, about what had happened to her in Rhiandomeer—and if so what might he have said? Had he told them not to try to speak to her—she the wingless biped who had spent five days in the Caves, who, in Rhiandomeer, could speak to all the pegasi, and not only to Ebon? Had Lrrianay guessed about the despair? Or was it only that Lrrianay agreed with Hibeehea—although Lrrianay had, in the end, said nothing about what Hibeehea had told her. Lrrianay’s last words to her had been on the morning of her flight home, merely: Thank you for coming. And she had replied, Thank you for having me. Her aunt or her uncle might have said just the same, and she responded the same, at the end of one of her visits to her cousins.

But her state of mind was not as important as the fact that any hint of communication between the princess returned from Rhiandomeer and any other pegasus than the one she was so strangely bound to would be reported directly and immediately to Fthoom. Fthoom, the powerful and power-mad, Fthoom, about whom a petition was gathering support and signatures, calling for him to be reinstated in his former place of authority and influence in the king’s council; Fthoom, who hated her.

She thought Lrrianay was avoiding her—but she knew she was avoiding him. From the outside, she thought, the pegasi looked just as before—formal, aloof, polite, perhaps kind, but disinterested. That was a good thing, she reminded herself. She was supposed to pretend—to appear—that nothing had happened except that she had been gone for three weeks; except that she had made history. I won’t make any of the kind of history anybody will have to learn later. I promise, she had said to her father. And he had replied, Be careful of your promises. I’m not going to hold you to this one.

The pegasi she met were careful to acknowledge her—but the pegasi were always careful to acknowledge any human bound to one of their own, and any pegasus in the palace grounds knew who the bound humans were. She wondered, as she punctiliously responded to pegasus acknowledgements, just as punctiliously as she responded to human acknowledgements, how many of the pegasi disapproved of her visit to their country. Was it that she was human, and was accustomed to reading human gestures and expressions, that she so often knew immediately which humans disapproved of her journey, or was it that humans made their disapproval so obvious? She could not read the pegasi any more—was that because she had lost what she had learnt of them in Rhiandomeer, or was it that they held themselves differently—as she felt she held herself differently—here in Balsinland?

She could almost hear Ebon saying, Disapprove? That’s another of your human things. What’s it for? Once something’s been decided, that’s it, isn’t it?

But what if someone—call it dislike rather than disapprove? Hibeehea didn’t like me talking to the queen when I first arrived. Hibeehea didn’t want me to come at all. . . .

But she couldn’t hear his answer. Faintly she heard Redfora’s voice, but she couldn’t hear the words she said—and furthermore she knew she was making it up, to comfort herself.

She said aloud, “Gonoarin, wheehuf ”—“the best of good days, noble sirs, noble madams”—making the correct human motions with her human hands. She could say the pegasi vowels, the ff’s, the mrr’s, better now than she had been able to a month ago. This much at least she could keep of her journey; a few clear superficial words, a slightly greater fluency with sign.

The pegasi bowed their heads to her so that their long manes swept forward like curtains of silk: beautiful, remote, unknowable.

Of course she never went near the pegasi annex. She had no reason to.

Once she met Hirishy alone, outside her mother’s rooms. She paused to make her bow and when she raised her head Hirishy was very close to her, reaching out one tiny feather-hand to stroke her cheek. Sylvi thought—she almost thought—she heard Oh, poor sweetheart— and in her mind she saw, briefly but so vividly she could not, could not, have imagined it, one of the cultivated hill-meadows of the pegasus land. There were pegasi hoeing between the little green rows, and a pavilion at one corner of the field: a simple, comforting, homey scene, nothing demanding or formidable, like the Caves, or the Dreaming Sea . . . or the palace where they stood.

And then Waina, who was one of the ladies-of-the-queen’s-chamber on duty that week, opened the door. Hirishy moved unhurriedly away from Sylvi’s side, nodded a slow human-style nod to Waina, and stood waiting for Sylvi to precede her through the door. The moment—whatever it had been—was over.

Sylvi had been rather hopelessly making notes toward the presentation she was going to have to give about her journey, writing down three things she thought she could talk about and then crossing two of them off again. It would be so much easier to have a pegasus to ask, she thought.

She sighed, and pushed herself away from the table, and went and sat on the window-sill. She had been given her own office when she began to work on dams and waterways, so she could receive reports and have a place to unroll the charts and diagrams that various people brought her. She had been offered rooms on the ground floor, where most of the rest of her family had their offices, but she had wanted something as high up as possible and was in fact in an attic.“I may try that,” her father said. “Anyone who will climb four flights of stairs to consult me must really want my advice.”

The attics had only slightly lower ceilings than the rest of the palace—and the wind that came through the windows tasted a little more like free air than house air, although when she had chosen the rooms almost four years ago she’d chiefly been interested in the view. She looked out over one of the palace’s smaller courtyards, then the outthrust bulk of the Great Hall, with a curl of old trees softening its outline. Beyond it there was parkland, and beyond that she could see the faint haze over the practise yards—and very far away, the thick dark line that was the Wall.

She sighed again, and had just stood up to go back to her desk when there was a quick knock on the door—and the head that was put round it was Danacor’s.

“Oh!” she said, and ran to throw her arms around him, her mood lightening immediately.

“How’s my favourite sister?” he said, smiling, but when she looked up at him she thought he looked tired and worried.“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for your arrival. How did it go? Or is that a bad question?” And he looked at her table. “When’s your presentation?”

“Three days,” she said glumly. “Three days before the party.”

“Dad’ll have scheduled it before you left. And written the list of questions. Which he wrote an addendum to after he got back, am I right?”

There was a list of questions, and there was an addendum, but her father had said, “These are only because I can’t help myself. This is your report. Tell us what you choose to tell us.” She had looked at him quickly and looked away. Lrrianay was standing just behind him; if she looked into her father’s face she risked catching Lrrianay’s eye. Fazuur sat at a table set end-on to Corone’s desk. He looked up from the papers he was reading and smiled at her.

Danacor added, “I hope I’ll be back in time to hear you.”

“They’re sending you away again immediately?” she said, dismayed.

He sighed.“We haven’t got any quiet borders left at the moment—except the Starclouds. It’s just a question of how far in, and how much effort to force them back. The wild lands are the worst, but we’ve got Ipinay and her Queen’s Own holding the most hazardous stretch of that line. I’m off to look at Pantock—there are reports of sea monsters. Sea monsters are a new one.”

Fthoom is from Ghorm, thought Sylvi, which is next to Pantock. Maybe it’s his family come to visit.

“From some other messenger I’d be inclined to say, ‘Mm hmm, send me another report in a month,’ but the mayor of Pantock is pretty reliable. If he says sea monsters, there probably are sea monsters. But I’ll be back for your party. So finish your presentation so you can enjoy it.”He looked at her, smiling.“My little sister, all grown up. Well, maybe not up, exactly. . . .”

“Troll,” she said equably. “Think of all the horse-fodder bills I will save the realm by never getting tall enough to ride anything bigger than a pony.”

“Of course. My future chancellor of the exchequer thanks you.” He paused again. “You look so much like Dad. It’s uncanny.”

“And you look more and more like Mum.”

He grimaced. “Yes. I’m the warrior, not the negotiator. You’ll have to take over the negotiating when Dad retires. Farley wants to raise horses and Garren wants to find new plants for his herbalism.”

“Not me,” she said. “I’m going to—to—” But her usual declaration of her future—I’m going to become an engineer, and build dams and bridges all up and down the Kishes and the Greentops—wouldn’t come. What came to her instead was, I’m going back to Rhiandomeer, if they’ll have me, and then I’m going to find out if there’s a little not very interesting Cave somewhere that someone would let a human try and sculpt. A human no one would miss much, being the king’s fourth child. And I’d come back occasionally, and visit you humans.

But she couldn’t say that, even to Danny.

Danacor said, “Mum warned me your journey had changed you. Maybe it’s a little like after Mum said yes to Dad, or after the Sword accepted me. Everything does change. But nobody—no human—has ever been to Rhiandomeer before. You’re the pegasus expert now. Everyone will want to know what you think about anything to do with the pegasi, now.”

“No!” she said, horrified. “I am not the pegasi expert! I’m going to learn engineering, and build dams! They are—they are—oh!” She remembered her father sitting down through the long pegasus banquet; she remembered telling her mother about chuur and chuua.“Knowing more—oh—it’s more like knowing less!”

Danny laughed. “Yes, I—er—know. But you’re the expert to the rest of us. Dad would tell you he’s not the expert on running a country, and I would certainly tell you I’m not the expert on making taralians and norindours—and sea monsters—go away and stop bothering us. But we’re all we’ve got. You too. You’d better get used to it.”

She stared at him. He was right, of course. But it hadn’t occurred to her before. She was too busy thinking about herself—and missing Ebon—and worrying about her presentation. She wondered if this was why her father had not asked her any private questions about her journey—that he had guessed what she was feeling. The warrior had blurted it out when the negotiator had chosen to say nothing.

“But you’ll give a brilliant presentation. Just like Dad would. It’s written all over you, as well as on all those papers.” He kissed the top of her head and was gone again.

At the prospect of being the pegasus expert she had been even more careful what she had, and had not, said. Was it all right to describe the crops they cultivate? The fields of llyri grass so tall she could not see over their waving tassels, even in spring? The colonies of spiders they fed and tended, that they might harvest their silk? The spinning, dyeing and weaving, the paper-making? That they had no houses, but that each trade had its small cotes or cabins or cottages? Could she describe the pavilions, the furniture, the ingenious way they harnessed each other to carry loads? The last was done at the palace, but somehow humans rarely saw them doing it; nor would humans ever have seen them carrying their long tables on poles, and fitting the pieces together, and the tray-frames that let them carry full serving-bowls or anything else that must not be jostled, and the various pokers, prodders and hooks that let them shift the things they carried; and the deft way they used their knees, their chests and their teeth—everything based on, and arising from, their weak but clever hands. Why did humans see so little of this creative dexterity? On the rare occasions the pegasi hosted an event, they did it in one of the Courts, and there were human servants to do the fetching and carrying. Was this sense—there were human servants, why not make use of them—or was it the humans barging in where they were not needed because barging was what humans did?

Ahathin had come to see how she was getting on a little after Danacor had left her.

“I’m not,” she said.“Getting on. Danacor was just here and . . . ” But there was nothing she could ask Ahathin when she wasn’t telling her own father the truth. She looked up from her increasing pages of notes. Ahathin was looking at her thoughtfully.

“If you had come back from a month at your cousins’ and been asked to give a report, what would you have said?”

“I was asked,” she said, half laughing and half impatient. “I was always asked. I hated it when I was younger, you know, I felt it spoilt the holiday. It was more interesting lately, when I could talk about rivers and bridges. But the pegasi don’t need bridges.”

“It is the role of teachers,” Ahathin said tranquilly, “to spoil their students’ pleasure. As I recall, when you were younger, you said a good deal about the food and the countryside.”

“But that was just a holiday, like anyone might have,” she said dubiously. “ This was—”

“That you went is as much as anyone needs to know,” he said.“The rest you may treat more or less as a holiday, as you choose.”

The Caves? she thought. Can I treat the Caves as a holiday outing? I must say something about the Caves.

So she (again) praised the pegasi’s hospitality, she described her feather-bed and her hot breakfasts—she described the pavilions, and the harnesses and frames, and the way almost everything the pegasi used came to bits small enough to be made and then fitted together by the tiny pegasi feather-hands. She described the paper and the weaving—and the spiders. She described the countryside, that it was like and unlike their human lands—she had mentioned the lack of bridges, and of dams, and the way the paths all connected within an area, but that there were no roads between discrete areas—and she described the fields of koy and fleiier for drying and weaving, of barley and oats and djee, of pumpkins, maize and zorra; the orchards of apples, pears and plooraia—and the fields and fields and fields of llyri grass.

Of the Caves she said only that she had seen but a fraction of a fraction of them—she allowed it to be implied that she had spent perhaps a single afternoon there—and that the corridors and individual chambers were often very large, and very beautifully decorated, some with great washes and swirls of muted colours, and some with representational scenes of landscapes, and of pegasi galloping or flying.

She did not mention that a shaman must accompany you into the Caves. She did not mention ssshuuwuushuu. She did not mention Redfora and Oraan; she did not mention the Dreaming Sea. To the best of her ability she made her journey sound like a kind of royal progression, as if she had been the king’s ambassador to a barony a little farther away and a little less known than most, as if the strangeness could be contained in a description of the food and the clothing, and possibly a few local peculiarities about the raising of crops. She mentioned ssshasssha as a visitor to the palace might mention seeing the mural of the signing in the Great Hall, and the affecting historical token of the framed treaty.

Part of her training as king’s daughter had included how to give a speech: speak slowly and distinctly, and don’t keep your nose buried in your pages; look up as often as you can, and make eye contact with members of your audience. She had done these things, but the eyes she had met had stared back at her like painted porcelain. When she was done, she shook her pages together again, looked out over the faces looking up at her and smiled a trained princess’ smile. She had been aware of them—senators, blood, courtiers and councillors, about a quarter of them with pegasi present who stood beside their bondmates’ pegasus-tall chairs—listening closely to everything she said; no one had so much as sneezed while she spoke. But she had picked up nothing from them, any more than she had been able to read anything in the porcelain eyes. She permitted herself to glance to her right, where her father sat; he smiled encouragingly at her, and that made her feel a little better. But her eyes drifted to Lrrianay standing behind him, and to Fazuur’s hands falling still as she fell silent—and she wished, again, for Ebon. She wished for Ebon as she wished every time she saw Lrrianay at her father’s shoulder, or any pegasus at any bondmate’s shoulder, or any pegasus. Or any time she took a breath, she wished again for Ebon.

She turned back to her audience.

The first question she was asked was if there were any representations of humans in the Caves. She was ready for this, but she was a little shaken that it was the very first question: shouldn’t her audience be more interested in the zorra and the djee? Or the flying? How could any human not want to hear more about the flying? But she smiled again, and looked levelly at Senator Chorro and said that she did not remember seeing any, no, but that even the little of the Caves she had seen had been rather overwhelming in its size and magnificence—“Imagine spending a day at the palace and then trying to report on what you’d seen.” That, finally, gained her her first laugh of the afternoon, and the atmosphere in the Little Hall eased somewhat; Sylvi was grateful, not least because that should make them less likely to notice that she was lying.

She had originally planned to say that she had seen the signing of the treaty on one chamber wall—but when the time came she found she could not. It struck too near to what had really happened to her—admitting even so much felt dangerous, as if it were a crack in a dam wall, and the water might use that one tiny crack to bring the wall down, and the lake behind rush out.

There were murmurs in the hall now, neighbour speaking to neighbour, and one or two more questions, and Sylvi concentrated on appearing candid and at ease. She was wearing a long cream-coloured robe with the siraga the pegasi had given to her over her shoulders; she touched it once or twice in what she hoped was an appreciative but offhand manner. Young Vlodor stood up, smiling tentatively. He was tall enough that he could do this gracefully, despite the height of the Little Hall chairs, which was to allow for the presence of pegasi. Vlodor had only recently taken his father’s place among the blood councillors; he had been introduced to her at the banquet welcoming her home. He was bound, and his pegasus’ name was Nyyoah. The Holder of Concord recognised him, and he bowed to Sylvi and said, “I am sure this is a frivolous question and unworthy of our august company, but, princess, might you be kind enough to indulge us in a little more description of what flyingis like?”

That produced another laugh, and Sylvi almost relaxed. In other circumstances she had thought, the other evening, that she might like Vlodor; she thought so again now. “I have both longed for and dreaded that question,” she said lightly, jokingly,“because flying is most amazing—it is beyond amazing—I fear it is indescribable, and I wish it were not; I would like to tell you how amazing it is.” She paused and glanced at her father and they exchanged reminiscent smiles. “You ride in a rope sling—but you are riding on air.” She had to be careful not to be too enthusiastic; she had to remember that nothing had changed, except that she was now sixteen years old and had visited Rhiandomeer. She had to remember she did not miss Ebon with very breath she took—she had to remember that the only flying she had done was in a drai. She finished by saying, “It is a little embarrassing to discover that some of our most famous sky holds and sky views are inaccurate.”

But it was Senator Orflung who asked the question that was, she was sure, in everyone’s minds—she felt she could almost see it shimmering in the air, like she could almost see the magic that held the draia ropes taut—even more she felt she could see it flickering in Fazuur’s eyes.

Senator Orflung got slowly to his feet and was recognised by the Holder of Concord. He then bowed to Sylvi and said,“My lady, we are glad to have you back. And I wonder if you can tell us now, my lady, now that you have turned sixteen, if you—if you and Hrrr Ebon—are prepared to begin some of the task of translation and mediation between our two peoples, as your father the king hinted four years ago might be permitted once you had attained your majority.”

She was conscious of Fazuur and Sagda, Lord Cral’s Speaker, standing behind her on the dais. Ebon was not there, so Ahathin was not there. She had wanted to ask him to come, for fear of exactly this question, but for fear of exactly this question she had decided it was better to face the senate alone.

“Yes,” she said at once, and her voice rang out as clear and calm as her father’s might have done.“Yes, my sir, and all my sirs and ladies, all my barons and granddames. I am ready to do anything I can for my people and my country—and for our peoples and our countries. Ebon and I have discussed this many times, and Ebon has assured me he feels the same.” Almost—almost—she could hear Ebon saying, Assured? Dearheart, I’ll promise to do anything you like, but I don’t assure.

It’s just king talk, she said back to him, knowing that she was making him up—and felt a pang of loneliness and loss every bit as severe as she had the evening she had met Niahi—just before she met Niahi—when her father’s absence seemed too terrible to bear. “ Tomorrow, my sir, you will be able to ask him yourself,” and she was almost sure she kept the longing out of her voice.

But it was her father who came to stand beside her now on the dais, and Lrrianay briefly left her father’s shoulder to stand at hers. “We have already begun the discussions about how best we may use our daughter and our son for this work,” said Sylvi’s father, Fazuur’s hands flicking in counterpoint, “and if any of you wish to contribute to that discussion, you may wait upon us.”

And Lrrianay said, “Araawhaia,” which meant “I agree,” and added the gesture for emphasis, which was to drop his right wing almost to floor level and give it a tiny, scooping sweep. But in her mind she heard him say—she was sure she heard him say—well done. And she unmistakably heard Fazuur murmur to her and her father both, “The king compliments the Lady Sylviianel on her poise and clear-headedness.”

Ebon’s return was the first time she had been a part of the formal ritual of welcome to the pegasus king. Lrrianay had flown home immediately after her presentation, to escort the pegasi coming to the human princess’ birthday party, and there was to be the full ceremony of reception when the company arrived. She was still, that day, half in a daze from having given her report successfully the day before—that, and her answer to Senator Orflung’s question had instantly begun a deluge of messages, papers and requests for appointments.

“We must ask your father for a secretary,” said Ahathin.

Ahathin had appeared at his usual hour that morning, to ask her how her presentation had gone, and found her sorting through the first courier’s delivery in increasing dismay.

“I don’t know most of these words in my own language,” she said, handing him a letter from a philosopher who seemed to want to discuss the pegasi’s understanding of the nature of reality and epistemological truth. That had been six hours, two couriers and seven special messengers ago.

Sylvi pushed her chair back violently and went to stand by the window. It was raining again; with Ahathin present—and the likelihood of the next courier arriving at any moment—she decided not to lean out in it, but she did put her hand through the open pane and let a few raindrops pool in her palm. She didn’t want a secretary; she didn’t want to be tied down by more fuss and commotion, more meetings, more quacking human voices demanding she do things, more piles of paper, till her desk resembled her father’s. She rubbed the palmful of cool water over her face. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose so.” She turned round. “Can you—will you stay? Were you planning on writing the history of the world as soon as you were relieved of your duties as tutor? I don’t know what to do with a secretary.”

“I am still the princess’ adviser as well as her somewhat superfluous Speaker,” said Ahathin in his usual calm tone.“I will attend her as long as she wishes my assistance.”

“The princess is extremely grateful,” she said, and sighed.

She went back to her rooms for a quiet tea and to dress for the ceremonial meeting, thinking, Ebon will be here this evening. Ebon. And yet her best friend of the last four years seemed, for the moment, almost as unreal as her journey to his land seemed, after her cool dry recitation of pegasi food and furniture. The barrage of requests for their services as translators seemed only to push him even farther away.

Pansa had laid her topaz robe out ready for her when she brought her her tea. Sylvi went to lean against the window-sill again, holding a cup of tea, looking out—but her bedroom faced in the wrong direction to see the pegasi returning. Pansa brought her a plate with some of the food from the tray on it and said,“Lady, remember to eat something,” and jiggled it under Sylvi’s nose. Sylvi sighed and took it, went back to her chair and sat down. She looked at the robe lying across her bed: the orange-gold of the topazes, soft in lamplight, reminded her of the colours of the Caves. Pansa hovered, wanting to help her into it. Sylvi looked at the plate still in her hands, picked up something at random and put it in her mouth. And then there was a knock on the door, and a courtier saying that the pegasi were in sight.

Lrrianay was escorting not only his youngest son but also his wife, his daughter, and an assortment of other pegasi—including an unusually high number of shamans.“ That’s Hibeehea,” Sylvi whispered to her father, as the two of them stood, waiting, while the pegasi landed, lightly as sparrows, shook their wings and folded them, and walked toward them. Behind the king and the princess were ranks of gorgeously dressed humans, including the queen and the king’s heir; at their elbows were their Speakers, Fazuur and Ahathin, and Ahathin was wearing his Speaker sticks.

“Yes, it is,” said her father. “For the birthday celebration of the only human who has ever visited the pegasus Caves.”

She was silent, but the crowd around them meant she did not have to try and respond to this. Hibeehea had said he would come again to the palace—to visit her, the human who had walked into ssshasssha and seen the signing of the treaty of Alliance. You have changed the world, little human child, he had said to her when they parted, and she stood waiting to greet him now in her beautiful topaz robe, and felt ashamed. I have not changed the world, she thought. I am not a hero, and the world is too big.

She walked forward when her father did—trying not to think about anything, trying not to think about the fact that she was now the pegasus expert, and stood beside her father while the queen and the heir stood behind her. She tried especially not to think about the sight of Ebon walking toward her, a black hole in the twilight, next to his pale father. Lrrianay was wearing Balsin’s opal, and her heart sank even further; he only wore it for very special occasions. No, she thought again. I have not changed the world. I am too small.

She did not run forward to throw her arms around Ebon’s neck, as she wanted to, as she might have done if they were alone, as she had done with her brother. But here there were hundreds of people watching them, including some of those who wanted their interpretive skills, including some of those who had tried to block her visit to Rhiandomeer—and everyone present knew the prohibition on touching the pegasi.

The formal greeting ritual was hands held up, palms pressed together, then parted and held out; then you picked up a handful of flower petals, fresh or dried, according to the season, which a footman would be offering you from a bowl, and you scattered them on the ground between you. Lrrianay walked gravely forward and bowed to her father, the opal at his breast glowing like fire; Ebon, when it was his turn, did the same to her. He was wearing a black siraga, invisible against his blackness, so that the gems stitched to it looked as if they had been strewn over Ebon’s naked shoulders. As neither of them had ever been a part of the sovereigns’ ritual, they had never greeted each other this way before either. Missed you, was all he said.

And I you, she replied—her joy at seeing him muted and confused by the strangeness of their meeting; and there were Speakers listening. She even found she was relieved that she could still talk to him—of course I can still talk to him! she thought. That’s where it all began!

Lrrianay and Ebon took their traditional places half a step behind the shoulders of their human bondmates and half a step to one side, to allow the Speakers room. Then the rest of the pegasi were presented to the two of them, the human king and his daughter, with their Speakers at their elbows, Fazuur and Ahathin bending slightly toward the king and the princess, murmuring names and greetings. Ebon did not interrupt. Sylvi bowed and repeated names and tried to think about nothing—and thought about her bond-friend’s silence, while her mouth said the names that her Speaker gave her.

The pegasus queen, as she rose from her bow, reached forward with one wing, and brushed Sylvi’s face with the tips of her feathers—there was the smell of Rhiandomeer again, the grassy, flowery, earthy smell. Sylvi’s eyes filled with tears, and she blinked frantically. Niahi was presented with her mother, and while she did a faultless bow, she then took another step forward, close enough to put her nose to Sylvi’s cheek. A tiny, whispering, almost inaudible voice in her mind said, I’m not supposed to talk to you! Please come back soon! I miss you! The last two sentences were almost obliterated by a very emphatic silent ssssssh from Ebon, which made Sylvi smile as much as Niahi’s words did—it was, for a few seconds, as if they were together and all was well.

Niahi took a hasty step backward again, and made a little bob of a second bow—and Sylvi held her hands out, stretching the one farther than the other, so the bracelet of pegasus hair showed clearly beneath her topaz-studded sleeve. She just saw the wrinkle form across Niahi’s muzzle, and then she ducked her head and whisked after her mother.

Sylvi glanced at Ahathin, but if he had heard the exchange, he gave no sign.

None of the other pegasi spoke to her—but she had the answer to one of her questions with Niahi’s words: it was not only Ebon any more, even in Balsinland. Although she almost doubted again when Hibeehea was presented to her: his mind-silence seemed absolute, as if the mere idea of that communication was inconceivable, and he looked as forbidding as he had the night she had met him, her first night in Rhiandomeer, when she began her historic visit by offending the greatest of the pegasus shamans.

After he made his bow, he said aloud,“I am proud and honoured to be here,” very clearly and distinctly, and there was a murmur of astonishment from the humans. But to Sylvi’s ear he sounded strained, as if the effort to speak even a few formal words was almost too great to be made. And his limbs and wings and body were stiff; she could read nothing in gesture.

When the presentations were over, the human queen stepped forward and took the human king’s arm; Danacor stepped forward and took Sylvi’s—and squeezed it against his side. “Well done, princess,” he said, but Sylvi was too conscious of their two pegasi, standing behind them; as Danacor had come up to them, Ebon had dropped back, and Thowara’s forehead stayed near the nape of Danacor’s neck. “They’re always behind us,” murmured Sylvi. “They’re always behind us.”

They were slowly following the king and queen, who were flanked by Lrrianay and Hirishy. Sylvi wasn’t expecting an answer, but as they passed under the Great Arch and turned toward the Great Hall where the celebration for her birthday was being held, Danacor said, “If you want to give up building bridges in the mountains and go back to Rhiandomeer and negotiate a reciprocal visitation agreement, I’ll engage now to stand behind Thowara when our time comes. But you will have to build a road.”

Then the first of the senators came up to them to say something pleasant and flattering and meaningless, and they spoke no more about it. Shortly after, they parted, and then it was just herself and Ebon—and several hundred party-goers. And Ahathin. And Glarfin, neither of whom let themselves be elbowed more than an arm’s-length away, however bad the crush. Sylvi kept wanting to drop back and put an arm over Ebon’s back, or twine her fingers in his mane—as she had done so easily and so often for three weeks—and she had to keep stopping herself. But she spoke politely to everyone who spoke to her— including a few pegasi, meticulously translated by Ahathin, while she half listened to the human words and did not try to hear the pegasi themselves. Niahi came and stood with them for much of the time, and Senator Grant and Lord Broughton, both of whom Sylvi knew had eleven-year-old daughters, asked as if idly if this was the king’s daughter, and was it true that she was still unbound. And when Glarfin brought her food and a glass of wine—and two pages brought a great platter of grasses and fruit for her companions—they all ate and drank.

And while, with Ebon with her, she enjoyed her birthday party that evening far more than she had enjoyed anything about the previous week without him, there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week. I’m still missing him when he’s standing right next to me, Sylvi thought.

Her original plan that the party for her sixteenth birthday should have equal numbers of human and pegasus guests had been one of the casualties of her visit to Rhiandomeer. “Oh,” she had said sadly, “oh,” when one of her father’s secretaries had presented her with the guest list, drawn up in her absence. It wasn’t normal enough, she realised, to have as many pegasi as human guests at her party. She had flicked a look at Fazuur and back at the guest list.

“Is there anyone we’ve missed?” said her father. “That you’d like to include? The invitations have gone out of course, but it’s not too late.”

About a hundred more pegasi, she thought. I can give you some names....

In fact nearly a third of those present at her party were pegasi, which was an unusually high percentage. That’s also because of my visit to Rhiandomeer, she thought. It has to be more than the usual number of pegasi. But not too many. Half would be too many. She felt restless, trapped, outmanoeuvred by the human gift for complication, for creating obstacles of words—and piles of paper.

They’re watching us, said Ebon. I mean, they’ve always watched us, but...

Yes, said Sylvi. It’s different. One more thing that was different. She didn’t want to ask him what he had spent the last week doing. How could she miss Rhiandomeer? She didn’t only miss Ebon; she missed his country, where she couldn’t even cross a river dry-shod, because there were no bridges and no boats. She thought about what Danacor had said. Would it be worth it, to chop and slash a footway to the pegasus land, so that the human king could stand behind the pegasus king?

Not to the pegasi.

Well, it was still worth it, Ebon said. Their eyes met, lingered just a fraction too long and were hastily shifted away.

The birthday party went on and on, and it was very late by the time the princess and her parents—and their attendant pegasi—could leave. Ebon and Sylvi took a brief stroll around the gardens before they parted.

Here’s the bad news, said Ebon. I don’t dare take you flying till some of these hrreefaar shamans leave. Shamans don’t sleep like the rest of us. They also have some weird glaurau—uh—other-space sense of where we all are. It wouldn’t be so bad if they just knew I was flying, but I’m not sure they wouldn’t pick you up. I know being here messes them up, but I’m afraid it might not mess them up enough, you know?

It’s also a full moon and a lot of—movement. Scouts and things. Even at night. Danny leaves again tomorrow....

He’d come back for her party, as he said he would, but he’d had three messages over the course of the evening—three that she saw happening. The only private words she’d had with him, since she’d been back, had been in her office, when he’d told her she was the pegasus expert now.

She and Ebon stood silent for a few minutes longer; neither of them was ready to let the other out of sight—out of sound-of-breath, out of sense-of-other’s-body-bulk-and-warmth, out of touch of human hand or velvet pegasus nose—after the long week apart. At least, out here, they could touch each other again.