Pegasus

CHAPTER 4

Sylvi got through the first part of the ceremony somehow, and she knew she must have remembered what to do and to say, because her father was smiling at her and Danacor (drat him) looked relieved. Thowara stood just behind Danacor’s right shoulder, looking exquisite; the flowers tucked among his primaries glittered like jewels. She wanted to pinch him, just to dent his dignity a little, even though she knew it wouldn’t’ve worked. He would have looked at her gravely and in mild surprise. Beyond Danacor and Thowara stood the rest of the family and their pegasi; the queen, Sylvi’s other two brothers, two of her uncles and three of her aunts. Lrrianay was absent; he would be escorting her pegasus into the Court in a little while. What her father did have to bear him company was the Sword.

The Sword was the greatest treasure of their house, and the most important symbol of their rule, for the Sword chose the ruler. Balsin, who signed the treaty with the pegasi, had been carrying the Sword; some histories claimed that it was the Sword that Argen wanted out of his country, not Balsin. For some generations now the Sword had passed from parent to eldest child, but when Great-great-great-great-uncle Snumal had died without direct descendents, the Sword had chosen which cousin the crown should pass to. Sylvi had never understood what happened when it passed—when the Sword had left Grinbad and come to Great—eight greats—uncle Rudolf, how did they know it had happened?

She’d asked her father this several times and he’d only shaken his head, but recently she’d asked again and possibly because she was going to have to swear fealty to him and it on her twelfth birthday, he stopped mid head-shake, stared at nothing for a minute and finally said, “It’s rather like a bad dream. You can see it in your mind’s eye, and it’s so bright you think it will blind you. You can’t move, and it comes closer and closer and ... there is the most extraordinary sensation when it finally touches you, somewhere between diving into icy water and banging your elbow really hard, and even though you’ve seen it nearly every day of your life—and you know you’re in this fix because it’s already accepted you—you know that it’s the greatest treasure of your house and you’re suddenly and shamingly afraid it will cut you because you, after all, eldest child of the reigning monarch or not, are not worthy of it. But it doesn’t cut you, and you feel almost sick with relief. And then you seem to wake up, only it’s still there.”

He stopped looking at nothing and looked at his daughter, and smiled, but it was a rather grim smile. “And then you really feel sick, because you know what that’s just happened means.” Her father, Sylvi knew, had been given the Sword in a quiet ceremony of transfer on his thirtieth birthday, when his mother retired, but the Sword had acknowledged him as heir in the great public ritual of acceptance ten years before. “Afterward my mother said—” He stopped.

“What did Grandmother say?” Sylvi only barely remembered her father’s mother, who had died when Sylvi was four years old: a Sword-straight and Sword-thin old lady who looked desperately forbidding in her official retired-sovereign robes, but who somehow became benign and comforting (if a little bony) as soon as she picked tiny Sylvi up and smiled at her.

The king looked at his daughter for another long minute and then said, “She said she felt twenty years younger and six inches taller.”

Sylvi shivered.

“You get used to it,” said the king. “You have to. And you’re trained for it. Well—we’ve been trained for it, some generations now. I’ve often wondered how one of those unexpected battlefield transfers happens—how whoever the Sword has gone to copes. It’s shocking and disorienting enough when it happens in the Little Court. Fortunately it doesn’t happen that way very often. And you, my dear, do not need to worry: Danacor is very healthy and very responsible. And you have two more brothers to spare.”

Danacor’s sense of responsibility was such a family joke (as Sylvi had told her cousins, especially Faadra, who was inclined to be sweet on him) that when Sylvi asked her oldest brother what being accepted was like, she was not prepared for the king’s heir to look hunted, and reply immediately, “Like the worst dressing-down you’ve ever had, and a little bit over, except the Sword doesn’t talk, of course—it sort of looks at you.” He fell silent and stared into space just as his father had. “You come out of it thinking that you’d be better off asking one of the magicians to turn you into a rat and get it over with, and then you look around and everyone’s cheering and you can’t imagine what’s going on.”

Sylvi had always been a little afraid of the Sword just because it was the Sword. But she wasn’t the king’s heir, and she’d never heard that it was especially severe to anyone but heirs and rulers, so she didn’t really dread the fealty-swearing—not nearly as much as she had dreaded meeting her Speaker. But standing next to her father on her birthday, up on the little platform that was raised even higher yet from the Outer Great Court’s stage so even more people could watch what was happening, it seemed bigger than it did hanging on the wall of the Great Hall. It wasn’t a large sword, for it was intended—and had, in the old days, often been used—as a single-handed battle sword. But it had presence, like a person—like an important person. Like the king. Sometimes her father was just her father, tired and kind and overworked ; but when he was the king you knew it. You knew when he changed over too, even if he hadn’t been the king a moment before and was now. The Sword was like that all the time.

Swearing by the Sword was the second-to-last thing in the ceremony ; then Lrrianay would bring her pegasus through the Great Gate and they would meet, and the magicians would blow the binding dust over them and burn herbs and things, and speak some words that no one but other magicians understood, and then they—she and the pegasus—would pretend they understood each other, and she would say her Welcome Excellent Friend speech. Her pegasus would make some of the funny whuffling noises that pegasi did make when they were speaking aloud and which, according to the magicians, was the pegasus version of Welcome Excellent Friend.

Then the magicians would finish the spell, and blow more dust, and wave their arms around and look grand, and then the banquet would begin, when at least she could get down off the platform and have something to eat and there weren’t any more words she had to remember to say. Although when there were too many people around—which there certainly were today—it was hard even to remember to say thank you: all those people were like drowning. And being polite to people like Great-aunt Moira, who always came to rituals, would be tricky, because she always told you that you’d done whatever you had done wrong, and Sylvi knew she’d have done something wrong, but it was going to be hard to listen to how wrong it was right after it happened.

Right after it happened. Right after she started to have a pegasus just behind her right shoulder at all important court events for the rest of her life. She was sure she’d trip over her hems even more with a pegasus standing there looking magnificent and supercilious. It had always rather suited her not to know anything about her pegasus in advance, so she didn’t have to think about it, but now that the binding was here....

She came back to herself staring at the Sword: it was as beautiful as a pegasus, in its own way. Frighteningly beautiful.

What she had to say during the swearing of fealty was easy: every time her father paused she said“I swear.” She was supposed to say it with her hands on the blade of the Sword. She’d never touched it before, although her brothers all had, long before they had to swear fealty; she thought maybe it was a boy thing, wanting to handle swords, although she put in her time in the practise yards, like them. A sword was a sword: it was a great big knife, much too big for any purpose but killing things, and she knew the stories of it defending the realm in the hand of the ruler. Her father had never gone to battle with it, but she was glad she didn’t even have to carry it on feast-days and during ceremonies.

Her father pulled it out of its scabbard and laid the blade over his palms, and she put her hands lightly on the blade between his two hands, and her father began speaking.

She heard him pause, and so she knew to say “I swear,” but she hadn’t heard a word he said, and her own voice seemed to come from queerly far away. She heard him start speaking again, pause again, and again she said “I swear,” her voice echoing in her own ears as if she stood in a huge empty cavern. The Sword didn’t scold her or scorn her but it ... it looked, as Danny had said—as her other two brothers had said it didn’t. “Don’t worry about it, minikin,” Farley had said. “It doesn’t bother with us.”

But it bothered with Sylvi. Its looking seemed to wrap her up all round so that she could no longer hear anything but the indeterminate murmur of her father’s voice, and she could see nothing past its bright blade. She thought it looked at her with surprise and ... and ... What made her think it was looking at her with anything? Maybe it was just interested to see a girl for a change: the first daughter of a sovereign since her grandmother.

And then the swearing was over. She had missed counting—she was supposed to say five “I swear”s, and with the last one she was to take her hands off the blade, but she had been looking back at the Sword. Her father moved slightly and lowered the point of the Sword to give her a chance to recover herself and take her hands away—and the Sword released her—she came back into her body, her hands on its blade, with a little start—and did as she should, only a little slowly (Great-aunt Moira was sure to have noticed). He looked at her, half the king making sure the rite was going as it should and half her father, puzzled and perhaps worried, for he had noticed that something had happened. But there was no opportunity to say anything: the Great Gate was opening and her pegasus was entering.

Her pegasus.

The one thing she knew of her pegasus was that it was the fourth child of the pegasus king, as her brothers’ pegasi had been the three before. But that was all she knew. Not knowing anything about your pegasus beforehand was supposed to make the binding spell grip and hold better when you finally met. Her heart was beating faster; the pegasi were strange, amazing, almost impossible, entirely unlike anything else in your human life, just by being themselves. Eight hundred years of the Alliance had not weakened the wonder of them. To have one bound to you ...

For a moment all the words of the ritual that Sylvi had memorised drained away, leaving her mind a blank.

She saw a tall black shape pacing down the length of the Great Court beside the pegasus king, almost as tall as he, but still with colty legs slightly too long for its body. It would be bigger than its father when it finished growing, and Lrrianay was big for a pegasus—bigger than any of his elder three sons—as tall as a carriage pony. She tried to guess its age: her brothers’ pegasi were all within a year or two of their age. She thought this one was probably near her own age too; maybe a little older.

It was having difficulty taking the slow ceremonial steps beside its father; it kept trying to prance. One of its wings kept twitching half open and then flicking shut again; she wondered if the flowers in its pinions were tickling it, and she resisted (again) the urge to pull at her jewelled collar or scratch her forehead under the slender chain.

It surged ahead at the foot of the platform, obviously restraining itself with difficulty from bounding up the steps: eagerness to meet her, to find out who she was or to have the ritual over with? Or the pleasure of being allowed to precede your royal father for once?

She stepped forward to meet it. She supposed it was rather thrilling to be standing in front of the king with everybody looking at you instead of him, but she’d rather be almost anywhere else. Her robes weighed as if they were carved out of stone, her collar was strangling her, and it was difficult to breathe.

The young black pegasus reached the top of the steps and danced forward, lowering its head to look into her eyes, the wings half-opening toward her (one ill-anchored flower fell out), the tiny alula-hands spreading—

That’s not till later in the ceremony, pudding-head, she said to herself.

I know that, said a voice in her head. Aren’t you excited, or are you just a dull stupid human?

They looked at each other. Sylvi’s mouth dropped a little open, and the pegasus’ nostrils flared.

I heard that, they said simultaneously.

You’re a boy, Sylvi said suddenly. There was no reason for her to assume that the pegasus king should have had a daughter for his fourth child because the human king had done so, but she had assumed since she first understood that she would have her own pegasus that it would be a girl, like her.

Yes, and you’re a girl, replied the pegasus. I tried to tell them to have my little sister but they said no, I was next, it had to be me.

Then you knew? said Sylvi, outraged. You’re not supposed to know anything before the ceremony of binding!

The pegasus’ skin rippled, starting with his shoulders and rustling his feathers; she thought it must be a pegasus shrug, and she was fascinated by the inclusiveness of it: it ran down his back and his forelegs like flowing silk. How little she knew of them, she thought, these creatures she had seen every day of her life—by whose leave her people lived in this country; with whom her people had an alliance that had lasted almost a thousand years. How—it seemed to her now—humiliatingly little.

That’s just a human rule. I know a lot about you. You ask too many questions and you can’t sit still, and you’re always showing up in your father’s office at the wrong time, so you know more than you should. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be too bad to have a girl if she was another nosy fidget, like me. You’re shorter than I was expecting though.

Sylvi felt her face grow hot. Her height was a tender subject, and here was this pegasus looming over her.

Pegasi didn’t loom; they were too fine and delicate. Pegasus bones were hollow, like birds’, and their limbs were so slender the sun almost seemed to shine through them, as when you hold your hand up to a strong light and look at the thin webs of skin between your fingers. And pegasi never just galloped, like horses; any gait faster than a jog and they had their wings spread at least a little, perhaps partly for balance but mainly to absorb some of the shock of the pounding hoofs. Pegasus legs broke easily and, because they were hollow, usually broke badly; although pegasus shamans came rarely to the human lands, there was always a pegasus healer-shaman resident at the palace.

But Lrrianay’s fourth son didn’t look delicate. He was broadchested and wide-backed, and his blackness gave him an extra solidity. He gleamed as if he’d been polished all over by many small, light alula-hands, which of course he had been, for the ceremony. The flowers woven through his wings were pale blue and white; through the plaits in his mane, bright blue, white and primrose yellow, and he had a little blue bag around his neck on a golden ribbon. She wasn’t going to tell him he was beautiful—even more beautiful than usual for a pegasus, she thought—which he was, because he was probably vain enough about it already. But she did think it was rather hard that she should have an extra-tall pegasus.

Their silent conversation had taken less than a minute. No one of the humans had noticed anything unusual; pegasus child and human child often stared fixedly at each other on first meeting. The magicians had come up from the rear of the dais, and now one laid his hand on Sylvi’s right shoulder (she tried not to flinch), and another laid his hand on the pegasus king’s son’s right shoulder and turned them, gently, so that Sylvi’s left and her pegasus’ right, as they faced each other, were presented to the watching crowd. The two kings themselves moved to stand behind their offsprings’ left shoulders. Sylvi’s eyes, for a moment, met Lrrianay’s, and she wondered if he knew that his son had been talking to her, and she to him. And—even more briefly—she wondered just how much he and her father could say to each other.

Sylvi felt rather than saw the third and fourth magicians approaching, and she had a sudden clear memory of this part of the ceremony when Garren had gone through it; she had been just old enough to realise not only that what was going on was important, but that it would happen to her in a few years too. The third magician held burning herbs in a dish, and he stretched out his arm so that the fumes rose up in the faces of Sylvi and her pegasus, and the fourth magician threw a billow of light fabric over them, so light, or so enchanted, that it remained drifting a little above them, like a cloud, and the pale bars of colour woven into it striped the floor of the dais. But it touched her pegasus’ glossy blackness not at all.

To her right she heard the fifth magician droning the words of binding. She had always taken the idea of binding literally, and had assumed that she would feel something happening, some tautness, some imprisoning, building between her and her pegasus. She stiffened herself for it, but nothing of the kind occurred. The magician’s voice filled her ears—she wanted to shake her head to rattle the words back out again—and the smoke filled her mouth and lungs, like trying to breathe through a blanket, and eddying, drifting smoke dappled with the colours of the drifting fabric also dimmed and confused her eyes till her pegasus was nothing but a shadow behind it.

It felt all wrong. It felt as if they were being separated, not bound together. A thought came to her from somewhere: we are already bound. That was why it had to be him, and not his little sister.

Maybe that is why we can talk to each other. I don’t understand—

But as she thought this, the fifth magician’s voice rose to a climax, and the third magician flourished the herb-bowl, so that the unburnt herbs and the ashes and embers leaped out of the bowl and fell to the floor of the dais. The embers twinkled against the border of the rainbow fabric but left no scorch marks. Sylvi sneezed, violently, and heard her pegasus sneeze as well. It was good luck to sneeze during your binding.

The fabric was pulled away and the smoke dispersed as if it had never been. Sylvi blinked in the sunlight and watched it sparkle on the flowers laced through her pegasus’ wings and mane. The magicians gathered round them—too close, Sylvi thought—and blew the spell-dust over them, and when it touched her face Sylvi involuntarily put her hand up to brush it off.

Then there was a moment’s grace; housefolk discreetly gave goblets to Sylvi’s father and Danacor, who in turn offered them to Sylvi and her pegasus. Sylvi found that she didn’t want to swallow any of the dust and ashes that had got into her mouth; she wanted to rinse her mouth and spit it out. But she knew she couldn’t. She looked up at her father; she wondered if it had been anyone but the king who held the goblet for her if she might have refused. But no. She was still a princess, and she had learnt her part of the ritual very carefully. She sipped the faintly honey-flavoured water and swallowed—with difficulty; it was like swallowing a rock. It stuck in her throat, and then lay heavily in her stomach. Her pegasus swallowed too, but she thought he drank as gingerly as she did.

Now...

Better get on with it, said her pegasus. You do remember your words, don’t you?

Of course I remember, Sylvi said, nettled, and began at once. “Welcome, Excellent Friend, on this glorious day ...”

The end of her dry little speech went “And so I name myself to thee, Sylviianel, princess of the line of Gohasson, daughter of the sixth of that line, Corone IV, and his queen Eliona, fourth child of them I call my parents,” and as she said these words out loud she added silently, I don’t even know your name yet.

They really don’t tell you anything, do they? I’ve known you were Sylvi forever. My name is Ebon.

It was not surprising that Sylvi missed her last cue. Trying to give a speech and hold a conversation at the same time would be hard work for anybody under any circumstances—and under these particular circumstances it was also not surprising she could not resist having the conversation. Nor was it surprising that she forgot what the cue was. It just seemed to her—very reasonably—that it was ridiculous that she should be bound to this pegasus before she so much as knew his name.

But her father, the king, was supposed to say Ebon’s name aloud, which was when she was supposed to hear it for the first time—and while she had learnt every moment of the ritual with painful precision, the ritual had not included that she should find herself able to talk to her pegasus directly. The ritual dictated that her father should say Ebon’s name aloud, and then she would formally kiss (or pretend to kiss) Ebon on the forehead and repeat it. But she forgot to turn to her father. She stepped forward, kissed him (he having lowered his head so she could) and shouted his name out; the crowd below the dais cheered.

She didn’t think about what she had done till much later. It was Ebon’s turn now, and he stepped forward and gave the pegasus’ great clarion neigh—far more like a trumpet than a horse’s neigh; hollow bones are wonderful for resonance—and swept his wings forward to touch, or almost touch, his alula-hands to her temples before he gave his own speech, in the half-humming, half-whuffling syllables the pegasi made when they spoke aloud, only she could understand what he was saying in silent-speech. The words were just as stiff and silly (she was rather relieved to discover) as the ones she’d had to say.

He stopped whuffling and added, I was going to say hee ho, ho hee, your wings are too short, you’ll never catch me, but my dad said he was going to be listening and I’d better get it right. I guess since you can hear too it’s good that I did.

Sylvi set aside for later the alarming thought that the pegasus king was perhaps listening in on them both, and said, Do you have any idea why we can hear each other? It’s supposed to take years to happen at all, and I don’t think it’s ever like this.

Not a clue. I know something happens occasionally.... Our dads can talk, sort of. I thought it was mostly stories. Stories about what we wanted to happen instead of what does happen.

My father says he and your dad have got like a hundred words or ideas or things they can get across pretty well and then everything else has to be built up around one of them and sometimes they do and mostly they don’t. He says it’s like shouting in a wind—you never know what’s going to get through. If you say, “To help you defend yourselves my son is sending a messenger-pigeon with news of our enemies’ victory,” and they hear “help-son-message-victory” they’re going to be looking for the son, not the pigeon, and expecting good news.

Their eyes met, and she was sure that he hadn’t liked the binding either.... There was a lot she was going to have to think about later. Too much. She wanted the happy, simple, delighted feeling of being able to talk to Ebon back again.... My mother can’t talk to her pegasus at all. Well, except for the “isn’t it a pretty day” stuff that you can guess if you have to.

Ebon made a funny noise, like a whinny with a hiccup in it. That’s because she’s got Hirishy. Well, everyone thought your dad was going to marry Fandora, and everyone thought my dad was going to marry Ponoia, and they got the bindings wrong. Your big magician was really cross about it but you can’t rebind. Hirishy barely talks to us. My mum says she was the most awful cry-baby when she was little, and all the grown-ups expected my mum to look after her because my mum was nearest her age of the cousins. Hirishy wouldn’t fly over water or over any hill higher than a—than one of your houses, and she was afraid of horses. She’s better now but.... My little sister isn’t anywhere near as awful as Hirishy was, and it’s a good thing because none of us would look after her if she was. It’s too bad, because I think my mum would have liked your mum. My mum is wasted on Lorival.

Lorival was one of the king’s cousins. Both she and her husband were bound, but they lived outside the Wall, and only saw their pegasi briefly by arrangement on the rare occasions when they came to the palace.

Sylvi wanted to say something in Hirishy’s defence, but the ritual was over, and they had to climb down from the platform together. She and Ebon were supposed to go first, and they went very slowly, since pegasi did have in common with horses a dislike of going down steps. The pegasi did not fly in mixed company, and there wasn’t room for pegasus wings in a crowded Great Court.

And then there were too many people congratulating her, and she and Ebon were separated in the crush, and she saw him surrounded by his own people. And then her father had his arm round her shoulders—his right arm; the Sword hung on his left side, for easier drawing—and people were making way for them because he was the king. “How did you learn his name?” the king said softly to his daughter. It was the first thing he had said since the ritual.

She had been expecting something like “well done” because her father wasn’t anything like his aunt Moira, and always tried to find the best in what you’d done and to recognise that you’d been trying. She realised that he was asking her if she had deliberately broken the rule that she was to know nothing about Ebon before this meeting and that he was making an effort to give her the benefit of some doubt. There should not have been any way she could have learnt Ebon’s name before he told it to her. Her father sounded grim, because her answer mattered, not just because she might have done something she knew she wasn’t supposed to. And she knew it must matter, or he’d have said “well done” first.

She felt suddenly cold, and again she remembered the feeling of wrongness when she and Ebon had stood under the rainbow fabric and the magicians’ smoke had been so thick they couldn’t see each other. And then she felt a little light-headed and queasy and she thought, No, I am not going to be sick. But her voice still came out squeaky when she said, “He told me, just now, on the platform. That’s why I forgot to wait for you. We were talking when I was supposed to be saying all those words, and I got confused. It was—it was—” She had no idea what to say about the discovery that she and Ebon could talk to each other. She hadn’t really taken it in herself yet. Maybe—maybe it wouldn’t last. Maybe it was something to do with the binding ritual. This made her instantly unhappy: Ebon was already her friend. But—no. No one had said anything to her about anything like this, and someone would have. She looked up at her father. “I’m—I’m sorry. Is it very bad that I didn’t ask you?” She was afraid to ask if it was very bad that she could talk to her pegasus. What if he said yes? What if there was some reason why humans and pegasi could not talk to each other that they weren’t going to tell her until she was older?

She was relieved to see that the king believed her, but he still looked grim. In fact, she thought, he looked grimmer, as if he’d almost rather she’d broken the rule—broken faith. And keeping faith was the king’s first rule. “You’re a princess,” he said to her every time she got into enough trouble that someone tattled to her father about it. “You have to know that you are no better than your people at the same time as you must behave as if you are.” Hadn’t she read somewhere that anyone giving the name of its future pegasus to a child who hadn’t been bound yet could be charged with treason? She began to feel sick again—sick and frightened. Was it a bad thing that she could talk to Ebon? Wasn’t the whole thing about keeping the Speakers in the background because if everything had gone the way the Alliance-makers had hoped, nobody would need Speakers?

The king said, “Have you ever spoken to a pegasus before? Spoken—I mean not just by sign?” He knew that she rarely used the sign-language if she could help it; she made the necessary courtesy greetings, occasionally said “isn’t it a pretty day,” and on formal occasions she was so paralysed by shyness she couldn’t do the more elaborate ones fast enough to get them over with. “Lrrianay or Thowara perhaps?”

She remembered Hirishy for a fraction of a second, and then shook her head emphatically. “No. Never. Nothing. That was partly why this was so—so muddling.” She thought sadly of the initial rush of delight, which now seemed a long time ago. She looked around for Ebon; the crowd was beginning to move purposefully toward the banqueting tables set round near the walls of the Court. In deference to the pegasi this was a standing-up banquet, although there were plenty of chairs for two-legs who grew tired.

Ebon was looking at her, and as their eyes met he said, Are you catching it from your dad? I’ve just been getting it from mine. He seems to think it’s my fault that you made a little mistake.

Yes, I—

She was distracted by the arrival of Fthoom. Fthoom was looking at her very solemnly, and she knew at once that the solemnity was to hide the fact that he was very angry.

Fthoom was the head—the unofficial head—of the royal magicians, which meant he was the first magician of the entire country. In theory magicians didn’t have a head, and any group of magicians who decided to act together—the magicians’ guild and the smaller but more consequential Speakers’ Guild most importantly—had to choose their actions democratically. In practise there generally was a head, and no one who spent more than five minutes or one ritual occasion at the king’s court was in any doubt that Fthoom was head magician. She knew that her father wished the royal magicians would elect him chief and get it over with; he had said many times that they wasted more time and energy squabbling for a better place in the unadmitted hierarchy than they spent on court business. But no one squabbled with Fthoom.

Fthoom was chosen for all the most significant roles. He had been the fifth magician for the king’s daughter’s binding with her pegasus; that she was only the fourth child would be less important to him than that it would be a public spectacle involving a number of magicians with a lot of people watching. It was just like him to be the first magician to confront her with her blunder too, since she was pretty sure by the way he was glaring at her that that was his intention—once the ritual was over he could have been expected to lose interest in her.

Her father’s arm tightened round her as he said, mildly, “Fthoom.”

Fthoom heard the tone of the king’s voice and a little ripple of self-restraint went through him. Sylvi could see him standing up straighter and squaring his unpleasantly broad shoulders: she always thought of him in terms of how much light he blocked. She understood with increasing alarm that her tiny mistake was not tiny at all. Surely there could have been some other way she could have learnt Ebon’s name? But she knew there wasn’t.

She didn’t want any part of magicians’ business. Magic was the worst of court affairs, worse even than being polite to people who were rude about your height. One of the reasons she had been able to relax her guard around Ahathin was that while he usually had a little charm-thread in a pocket, he’d never done any magic in her presence, and she’d only once or twice smelled it on him. The charm against nightmares had smelled like fresh air and spring; that had been part of why it worked. Most magicians’ magic made her skin hurt.

She ’d never liked Fthoom, who was a patronising bully to everyone but her parents and her eldest brother, but now, looking at him, with the reek of fresh magic coming off him like the reek of fresh blood, she was very frightened of him indeed—even with her father’s arm around her. She wished she were still young enough to wrap herself up in the long skirts of her father’s ceremonial robe and disappear, as she had occasionally done when she was smaller.

She glanced again at Ebon, who was still watching her. The pegasus standing next to him turned his head and looked at her too. She could guess, by the ears and nostrils, that he was saying something to Ebon, but she couldn’t hear anything with either her ears or her mind; and then Ebon began walking toward her. Lrrianay had materialised at her father’s other elbow, and she began to notice the number of people, both two-legged and four-, who were watching the confrontation. For confrontation was what it was.

Fthoom was apparently still trying to decide how to phrase what he wanted to say when Ebon joined them. He put his nose to Sylvi’s ear and blew—very gently. It tickled, and she smiled involuntarily.

Atta girl, he said, and pawed briefly, gracefully, with one forefoot for emphasis.

This minor exchange infuriated Fthoom past restraint. “How dare you!” he said to Sylvi—who cringed against her father as if Fthoom had tried to strike her. “You know it is forbidden to have any contact between your pegasus and yourself before the ritual is performed!” He turned on her father and half shouted, “It is obvious these two have a long-standing—long-standing and inappropriate—relationship! How has this happened!”

Nobody, not even the most powerful magician in the country, publicly accuses the king of misdoing. Very, very gently Sylvi’s father said, “Fthoom, you may speak tomorrow morning in court.”

Fthoom started and stared at the king. He opened his mouth once or twice and then turned on his heel and strode away, across the Court, and out through the Gate. Murmurs rustled through the crowd, and those who had watched other bindings and noticed what had happened and assumed that the slight change had been deliberate now guessed it had not been, and wondered what it meant.

The king sighed and dropped his hand. “Come; let us have something to eat.” He made the come-with sign to Ebon, who bowed his head and followed. Lrrianay bowed Sylvi ahead of him, but he often did; the stiffness with which he did it, she was sure, was not because she was a fourth child and he was a king, but because he was worried too. And he must be very worried, because pegasi were always as graceful as pouring water.

No human was allowed to begin eating at a banquet attended by the human king till the king had eaten something, so the moment Sylvi’s father began to walk toward the tables several courtiers rushed up to him with bowls and plates of dainties. He chose one at random so that his people could begin. Fthoom had vanished and many of the magicians with him; those who remained were more simply dressed and could melt into the crowd. Sylvi could see a few of the Speakers: Fazuur, and Danacor’s Speaker, Moorcath; Minial would be sitting down somewhere, now that the ritual was over, with her knitting bag open at her feet. There was Ahathin: he didn’t approach her—that would be presumptuous in public, unless she asked him to—but he made a quick gesture with one hand, smiled and turned away before she could—or had to—respond.

It took her a minute to remember what the gesture was; it wasn’t one of the basic ones. When she remembered, it was with bewilderment : it was the sign for victory, and historically used mostly on the battlefield or at great state occasions. Ahathin had taught it to her after she’d read about it in some great romantic ballad, and he’d never said “don’t fill your head with nonsense when you can barely remember the fundamentals.” Victory? That was the last thing what had just happened was. And he would have recognised her mistake too. But it was nice of him.

People—other than Sylvi, her father and Lrrianay—began to relax and enjoy themselves. It was a beautiful day with a blue sky and a light fresh breeze. The Outer Court had been scrubbed and scrubbed for the birthday and binding of the king’s child, and its pale stones gleamed almost opal in the sunlight. The old stones were already nearly as silky as a pegasus’ shoulder (Sylvi guessed) from generations of scrubbing, and Sylvi always ran her hand along one whenever she was close enough to do so—sometimes her mother sent her with a message to her father, or Diamon, or vice versa, and she’d run round the perimeter of the Court so she could touch the stones, instead of straight across the centre. Today much of their surface was covered with ribbons and banners, and she had to stay in the centre of the Court and be a princess. The food was plentiful and excellent, and the king moved among his people, smiling and apparently carefree and, with the Sword at his side, very kingly indeed. The pegasi were all gracious and dignified, and those who knew a little of the sign-language spoke to them and were answered politely; occasionally a Speaker (easily identified by the Speaker’s sticks worn on all formal occasions) was applied to for assistance.

Sylvi tried to pretend to be calm and self-possessed too. She knew she wasn’t doing a very good job of it, but she hoped that everyone around her would assume she was tired, or shy, or unused to court events—all of which were true. And she was worried because she knew her father was worried—she tried to force the memory of Fthoom’s angry face out of her mind, but she couldn’t forget the sound of her father’s gentlest voice saying, “You may speak tomorrow morning.” She was even worried that she knew Lrrianay was worried. The stiffness with which he had bowed to her could merely be the grand manner due to a formal event, but she knew it wasn’t. But why did she know? Pegasi had always been nearly as opaque as statues to her before.

Before Ebon.