Pegasus

CHAPTER 7

They went flying anyway, of course. They couldn’t help it.

Lrrianay had given Ebon almost exactly the same orders as her father had given Sylvi. Do you suppose they’d already discussed it? said Ebon that morning the human king had stripped the magician’s spiral from Fthoom’s head. They’d just been released from attendance on their fathers; Sylvi took a deep breath as one of the footmen bowed them out of the receiving room, as if it was the first time she’d been able to breathe properly since she went in. Even Ebon was subdued as they walked soberly across the inner garden toward the more open parkland beyond the Outer Great Court. It occurred to neither of them to question that they wanted to stay together. They would be together as much as they could from the moment of their meeting.

No, said Sylvi positively. They’re just both kings. And fathers. And they’ve been friends for forty years, even if they don’t talk much.

Mmmh, said Ebon. In forty years what will we be like?

That was the first time either of them asked that question, although it became a regular one between them—less as a question than as a way of stopping a conversation that had drifted toward an undesirable topic such as the number of taralian sightings, or that the queen was now riding out with a scout troop almost as often as she would have if she weren’t both the queen and officially retired. Or the rumours of Fthoom, and of the schism in the Magicians’ Guild; or the way Sylvi could recognise the magicians and courtiers who did not like her relationship with Ebon by the way they avoided her. One of her attendant ladies had been replaced; she hadn’t asked why, because she thought she knew the answer: Fgeela had had a tight, hard expression any time she saw Sylvi and Ebon together.

Sylvi didn’t know when In forty years what will we be like? became code for Can we please stop now? But she knew it had.

That first time Ebon asked it, they had just come through the Great Arch, and the statue of Queen Amarinda was to their left, surrounded by weeping pear trees, like courtiers. Sylvi had always liked that statue; Amarinda had a hawk on her fist. On their right was the statue of Queen Sisishini, looking proud and elegant, but with her wings watchfully half raised. As she and Ebon came through the arch, Ebon was on Amarinda’s side and Sylvi was on Sisishini’s. As she turned her head to look at Ebon she seemed to meet Amarinda’s eyes. Amarinda looked at her mildly, but Sylvi felt she was saying, Well? And what will you do with what has been given you?

As if on some prearranged agreement, they stopped as soon as they were on the far side of the arch, out of sight of the palace so long as they remained close to the park hedgerows. They looked at each other—Sylvi thought Ebon’s eyes flicked briefly over her shoulder, perhaps to meet the gaze of Sisishini—long enough for Ebon to slash his wings out and in, and for Sylvi to pick up and put down one foot like a restless horse. But their imaginations failed them. They had still known each other less than twenty-four hours.

Race you to the cherry tree, said Ebon after the silence had begun to grow uncomfortable.

Race you? said Sylvi indignantly. You’ll win!

I promise not to win by very much, said Ebon.

Sylvi giggled—and set off running, Ebon trotting nonchalantly at her side.

Three years later, they were still using their old idiom: In forty years, what will we be like? In ten, twenty, thirty-seven years what would they be like? Fifteen years old was already worlds beyond twelve; it was, in fact, harder and harder to go on not imagining adulthood. When Sylvi turned sixteen she would take her place in the council—and Ahathin would no longer be her tutor.

“And you don’t need a Speaker,” he said, “although for the purposes of the royal bureaucrats who need someone’s name to write in the blank space, I should be honoured to retain the title.”

“Oh, but I will need an adviser!” said Sylvi.

“There will be many folk clamouring to be your advisers—” began Ahathin.

“Yes, I know,” Sylvi put in hastily. “I would like to appoint you my adviser on advisers.”

“Very well, my lady,” said Ahathin. When he said “my lady” he was serious. “Subject to your father’s agreement, I accept.”

Being a grown-up was something that happened to you whether you were ready or not; she and Ebon had each watched three brothers cross that threshold. Farley and Oyry were recently returned from a diplomatic visit to Peshcant, in the hopes of reminding them that if taralians, and possibly worse, were breeding in the wild lands between the two countries, then Peshcant was also at risk. Garren and Poih had been making a tour of the locations in the Kish and the Greentop Mountains that the queen had felt needed regular patrolling; there were now several semipermanent camps where soldiers could be stationed. And Danacor and Thowara had been visiting Lord Gram, who had a daughter who might become the next queen.

(“She has a good head on her shoulders,” said the present queen, “but she’s a terrible shot, and worse with a sword. She’d make a superb quartermaster. But who are we going to marry Farley to? He’s the one needs settling.”)

Sylvi finally managed to talk to Danacor about how strange everything had become. Danny had less and less time to talk to anyone but messengers and ambassadors and administrators and agents, and occasional aggrieved ordinary subjects dogged enough to stay the course through the lower functionaries and insist on speaking to the king or his heir. But she thought he might understand what it was like for her—he’d been through the ritual of the sovereign’s heir, which had to be even huger and scarier than having the most powerful magician in the country hate you.

She’d told Danacor about the Sword looking at her, and he’d said, “Unlucky for you. Neither Farley nor Garren got the full treatment. Dad says the Sword has sleepy days and wakeful days. I got a wakeful day, but the heir usually does. So did you, I guess. I don’t know why, except you never know with the Sword.” He grinned at her. “Maybe it was surprised to see a girl. But you know—the ritual of binding to your pegasus really counts for something. Unlike, say, the Exaltation of Water.”

The Exaltation of Water was famous not only in their family but among most of the country. It was supposed to be a rite to honour the water that flowed through the kingdom and to ask that it continue to flow as it did, bright and clear and lavish—the country had many fine rivers, which provided not merely drink and washing but the running of many wheels to produce power—but in practise it had degenerated into a yearly epic water fight. A royal family with three boys in it had set the tone for so many years that by now, when all three boys were theoretically grown, the small-excited-boy version of the rite continued to prevail. Even Danacor forgot himself during the Exaltation of Water. Sylvi, as soon as she’d been old enough, joined in enthusiastically, and had no desire to see it revert to a few discreet sprinkles and some wet feet. This enthusiasm was shared by all the small, medium-sized and large boys who lived not too far from the mouth of the Anuluin, where the ritual was held, who could easily attend year after year, as well as many of their fathers—and mothers, sisters and sweet-hearts.

“The binding means something to everyone who goes through it. Whatever you think about the treaty and its provisions—”

Sylvi had managed to read a copy of the treaty, with Ahathin’s help: the second commander’s diary was mostly perfectly comprehensible if oddly spelled, but the treaty, aside from being written in a script that hadn’t been used in five hundred years, was in desperately old-fashioned formal language, plus (Ahathin said) Gandam had tried to incorporate some pegasus phrasing. It could have said almost anything and she wouldn’t have known.

She had thought, since her binding, that she would like another look at it, now that what it said was a real part of her life too, but she had kept putting off asking. Ahathin would be more than happy to help her, but she felt awkward around Ahathin about anything even remotely to do with Ebon. And she didn’t want to read the schoolroom copy again—she wanted to try to read the true one on the wall of the Great Hall. Perhaps she could read the flower petals. But she would be seen to be doing so. And wouldn’t that look silly and pretentious in a superfluous princess?

And wouldn’t someone report to Fthoom what she was doing—the superfluous princess who had spoken out against him in open court? She didn’t want any extra reports on her activities going to Fthoom.

Danacor continued, “You think you know about pegasi; you’ve grown up with them, you know Lrrianay’s face almost as well as you know Dad’s. You know what happens. And then it happens to you: your pegasus is a here-and-now, living-and-breathing individual. And it’s not just real, it’s real in ways you didn’t know. But, Syl, nobody’s had a binding like yours.”

“Being made heir—that must have changed everything. More.”

“Yes. But we knew it was coming.” There was a little silence. Danacor was watching her. But she couldn’t make herself say the name of her enemy out loud. “Try not to worry about Fthoom,” Danacor said at last. “Dad’s got him fully occupied and better than half the magicians and scribes working for him report to Dad or me. Enjoy that we don’t have to listen to him bullying everyone in council any more.”

Sylvi rubbed her face in a gesture she realised she ’d learnt from her father. She took her hand down and looked at it as if it didn’t belong to her. “But we have to listen to Soronon going on and on. Who cares that magician apprenticeships are down three percent this year? Or that rituals requiring magicians are up five percent in Hillshire? Can’t he just submit the report and anyone who wants to know can read it?”

“Poor old Soronon. Farley calls him Snore-on. But it’s not entirely his fault—everyone’s really jumpy because of what happened with Fthoom, and Snore-on doesn’t want anyone to think the magicians’ guild is hiding anything.”

“I know everyone’s jumpy. Even the Sword is.”

Danacor looked startled. “The Sword?”

“Oh, well,” said Sylvi. “I mean, it flickers. It flickers blue all along its edge sometimes, so it almost looks like it’s moving. Like Fralialal’s wings in the mural. Especially when we’re in the Great Hall and it’s hanging on the wall—it almost looks like it’s going to leap out of its stays. If someone’s going to jump I’d rather it were Fralialal, but if the Sword would make Snore-on stop talking I’d be all for it.”

But Danacor was looking at her oddly.

“What’s wrong?” she said. “It does flicker—doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Danacor. “But most people don’t see it. Not even the magicians. Usually only Dad and me.”

Sylvi stared at him, a prickle of cold moving up her spine.

“Don’t spread it around that the Sword’s awake, okay?” Danacor said, trying to sound as if he were talking about something of no importance, and failing. “It’s ...” He stood up abruptly and went to look out the window as if he’d heard someone call his name. He turned back again. “It’s never good news.”

Sylvi attended court and council meetings, took her hours in the practise yard under the master-at-arms, bowed to people in the corridors and tried to accustom herself to the fact that there was almost always someone with her now. At first she had thought that was just a part of having turned twelve, of being bound, of being a princess with her first adult responsibilities. But the tall, expressionless footman who’d thrust her behind him when Fthoom had roared at her—and whose name, she learnt, was Glarfin—had seemingly been assigned specially to her. And there was something familiar about Lady Lucretia, who had replaced the lady who didn’t like her relationship with Ebon ... which she remembered the day she saw Lucretia gleefully driving her opponent against the wall in the practise yard. When Lucretia waited on the princess, she was always wearing a dress, and had her hair beautifully done up, but Sylvi had been watching her chasing people around the practise yard for years. She’d never asked her name, although she was very aware of her. She measured her own progress against whether she was ready to ask for Lucretia as a sparring partner. Not yet.

It was the day after she’d seen Lucretia getting the better of a man half again bigger than she was that she took a long, thoughtful look at Glarfin, and said, trying not to sound accusing,“You stand like a soldier.”

“I was a soldier, lady,” said Glarfin.

“Sylvi,” said Sylvi. “If you were a soldier, why are you a footman?”

“I was wounded,” said Glarfin.“It took a long time to heal. They did not think I would make a soldier again, but I was not good at being invalided out and doing nothing. So they made me a footman.”

“Wounded,” said Sylvi. “But you used to lift me onto my cushions.”

“You never weighed anything,” said Glarfin, “and I healed better than they expected. But I had found I liked being a footman, and sleeping in my own bed every night.”

“But you still stand like a soldier ... and ... and you react like a soldier,” said Sylvi, remembering the day after her twelfth birthday.

“I was well trained, lady,” said Glarfin.

“Sylvi,” said Sylvi. “You’re not an attendant—you don’t follow me around to open doors and bow and make sure everyone knows there’s a princess nearby—you’re a guard.”

“I’m sorry, lady,” said Glarfin.

“Sylvi,” said Sylvi.

“I cannot call you Sylvi any more than I can help reacting like a soldier,” said Glarfin.

“Like Lucretia is a guard. How many of you are there? Lieutenant,” added Sylvi.

“I do not use lieutenant any more,” said Glarfin.

“I don’t use lady except with strangers, or in court,” said Sylvi.“How many of you? Not Celia, I think—snakes make her scream. Guridon? Alsa? Orooca? Minni? Pansa?”

Glarfin didn’t answer.

“Pansa, I think,” said Sylvi. “Her reflexes are really good. Maybe Guridon. Maybe Alsa. Certainly Lucretia. Well, lieutenant?”

Glarfin sighed.“Why would I know, lady?”

“Because you would,” said Sylvi. “And also because there must be some kind of rota, and you’d need to know who else is on it.”

“Perhaps you could take this up with the king, lady,” said Glarfin.

“Perhaps I will take it up with him later, lieutenant,” said Sylvi. She thought of her father, raised her chin and stared at Glarfin, trying not to think about how quickly she would develop a crick in her neck. She considered crossing her arms, but her father never crossed his arms, so she didn’t.

After a moment Glarfin said, “You are very like your father, lady. Very well. It is the five of us you have named who are the core of it. Danis or Colm is usually at your bedroom door overnight.”

She’d been sure she was right, but it was still worse to have it confirmed. And she hadn’t known about the night guards. “Is Ebon guarded too?”

“There are extra patrols around the pegasus house, yes,” said Glarfin. “But King Lrrianay did not wish Ebon to be singled out, and there are extra patrols all round the palace since the ladon was found in Riss.”

Riss was a village two leagues from the Wall. It had been known since Sylvi’s grandmother’s day that ladons—and probably wyverns—had returned to the wild lands, but sightings of them had continued to be agreeably rare. Sylvi had been in court the morning that the report had come in, and the queen, who had just come in to the horseyards from chasing norindours and heard the news from the stableboy who was walking the messenger’s horse, paused only long enough to change her saddle to a fresh horse, reorganise her squad and send a note to her husband what she was doing before she rode straight back out again. The king had sent a note back to the horseyards that the next time the queen reappeared they were to take her saddle away from her even if there was a sighting of forty-six rocs over Banesorrow Lake. And Sylvi knew about the extra patrols: she and Ebon had a much harder time going flying because of them.

But what she disliked most was the realisation that she was being protected not only from anyone who might want to ask her inappropriate questions about the pegasi, but from actual physical harm. She had wanted to believe that even Fthoom hadn’t meant anything by his gesture that day in the king’s receiving room, beyond that he was angry at not getting his own way about something. She could guess that all her guards were wearing a variety of glamour-neutralising and magic-disabling charms. She stared at Glarfin’s uniform, but the charms wouldn’t be anything you could see.

She wouldn’t be able to browbeat Ahathin the way she had just done poor Glarfin; she wondered what Ahathin might tell her if she merely asked him what charms he kept in his pockets that he hadn’t done before her twelfth birthday—what guard-magic now followed her—whether a guild spell-maker had been engaged to do the work. If so, he was a good one, because she couldn’t feel it plucking at her, nipping at her heels, haunting the shadows at the corners of her eyes.

She could feel herself drooping. She wasn’t really like her father.

“I’m sorry ... Sylvi,” said Glarfin with an obvious effort.

“Thanks,” said Sylvi, and smiled.“You can call me lady when there’s anyone else around, okay?”

She did ask her father why he hadn’t told her that she had had a special guard assigned to her. Her father looked at her thoughtfully. “I knew you’d figure it out,” he said. “And I hoped that by the time you figured it out, you would be sufficiently accustomed to the situation for the realisation to be less ... dispiriting.”

Sylvi was silent a moment. At last she said, “I wish you’d told me.”

“Next time I will,” said the king. “But you are older now: next time I would have told you anyway.”

“Next time?” said Sylvi.

“There’s always a next time,” said the king, “unfortunately. You just don’t know what it’s going to be about.”

And she asked Diamon if she could have Lucretia as a sparring partner—occasionally.

“She’ll knock you down,” said Diamon. “She’s not one to pull her punches, our Lucretia.”

“I know,” said Sylvi. “But she could show me how she did it after, couldn’t she?”

She had been assigned to the development of the river network in the Kish Mountains as her special project, and so she knew that potential locations of wheels and dams were dependent as much on their defensibility as on the geography of the rivers: because there were taralians in the Kishes—and, lately, there were also norindours. There had always been a few taralians in the Kishes, which also bordered on the wild lands, but she’d been present when one of the engineers reported to Danacor that it was the worst season for taralians he’d ever seen, and he’d been working in and around the Kishes for forty years, man and boy.

“And now a ladon,” he said, and shook his head. Riss lay in the foothills of the Kishes.“Damned snaky basilisk things,” he said. “They make taralians look like housecats. Nearly.”

Bridges, dams and water-power was interesting work—she didn’t mind being good at maths when she could use it for something—and she enjoyed trying to negotiate with water and rock. She didn’t like worrying about taralians.

To everyone’s surprise but her father’s, Sylvi was able to make suggestions about how the village witches might be included in the planning and the defences: several of her best interviewees about village magic were from the Kishes. The engineers blinked at the idea of asking a local wart-charmer and love-potion-mixer for advice about choosing wood and stone most likely to resist interference—a ladon in a temper might well be able to pull a bridge down—but Sylvi would bet on old Marigale or young Vant’s knowledge of their own neighbourhoods, perhaps even against a ladon, and said so. Firmly. The engineer, Sasko, who had said that it was the worst year for taralians he’d ever seen, smiled faintly and said, “You are very like your father, lady. I know Marigale. I will ask.”

She wondered what the pegasi thought about the increasing numbers of sightings of their old enemies in the human lowlands. It seemed to her that Lrrianay never went home any more—that he was always standing by her father’s chair at council now. She didn’t talk to Ebon about taralians and norindours and ladons, or about the rivers of the Kish Mountains—or about the flickering Sword. And he didn’t tell her what he did when they weren’t together—and she didn’t ask. She had discovered that talking to Ebon seemed to happen in the busy, front part of her mind. It was hard to keep anything she was excited about from him, but something she didn’t want to think about was easy to keep to herself. She assumed it was the same for him—but she didn’t ask that either.

She and Ebon ran away from it all as much as they could. They went flying.

It bothered them both, being deliberately disobedient: once, that first night, after their binding, was an adventure; as a habit it felt bad and wrong and sad. But it also felt bad and wrong and sad that they had been forbidden to do something both felt was bred into them, bone and blood: like forbidding a fleethound from running, or a hawk from stooping on its prey. Sylvi didn’t know why it should feel urgent or imperative to Ebon—and had begun by assuming, desolately, that it didn’t. But by the time she had scraped enough courage together to ask him (braced for him to say that actually it was rather a burden, whereupon she would have to refuse ever to go flying with him again), she knew him well enough to know that he was telling her the truth when he said flying with her was a whole other thing—a whole new thing—that he wouldn’t miss it for anything.

She would have been happy to leave it there. That she didn’t have to stop flying was the next best thing that had ever happened to her—the best thing after Ebon himself—even better than having gone flying in the first place.

But he was still trying to explain something. I don’t see the stuff you see. I— He paused, whirled his ears, flattened his nose, hunched one wing, and said, You’re going to make me the greatest sculptor who ever lived—or at least the oddest. Because of the stuff you see—because of talking to you about it. No pegasus sees ... sees the relationships of things the way you do. We can build an arch with a keystone—but we could never have built the palace. And that’s not about strength, it’s about seeing. All those walls leaning on each other, stacked on each other.... And those funny little landscape thingummies that are all over the palace—they’re—they’re . . . they’re stranger than you are, you humans.

Of course you don’t understand them, said Sylvi. You don’t have to think about it—what things look like from overhead. You can fly. We think about it too much because—because you can fly.

Okay. But if you flew and we didn’t, we wouldn’t make the thingummies.

Perhaps the difference began in the way they smiled. Ebon said it wasn’t only himself among the pegasi who found that meat-eating humans choosing to bare their teeth when they smiled made you wonder what their real motives were.

I can’t help it! said Sylvi. I smile like that because that’s what my mouth does!

Sylvi had tried to feel the Alliance as she felt the binding between her and Ebon, or as she felt her love for her parents and her brothers—or the slightly anxious deferential respect she felt for Ahathin or Diamon, or even the nameless connection she felt for her land and her people: the sense of something crucially there, not only all around her but in her, even when it maddened or frustrated her (as her brothers often did). But she didn’t. She never had. It hadn’t bothered her before she met Ebon: the pegasi were part of the background of life in the palace, part of the general seethe of motion and urgency—as real, or as unreal, as the crowned pegasus on the royal banner, or the mural of Fralialal. But the real pegasi flew. Every thought about them began and ended there: they were beautiful and strange—and intimidating—they were the symbol of Balsinland’s existence—and they flew.

Danacor hadn’t agreed with the intimidating, but Garren had.“Oh, minikin, you’re so right. Lrrianay isn’t so bad, but that gang that comes with him for the big state occasions—Dossaya and Gaaloo and that lot—and Fhwen—especially Fhwen. The way she looks at you.”

Sylvi asked Ebon later, What’s Fhwen like? She’s very ... imposing.

Ebon had laughed his snorty laugh. You mean she looks like a pompous half-wit.

A beautiful pompous half-wit who can fly, Sylvi amended to herself.

No, she’s a sweetie really. It runs in the family: she looks just like her dad, and her daughter looks just like her. They’d all give you their last feather if you were cold.

She’d had to tell Garren. She’d almost made him promise not to mention their conversation to Poih, when she realised he couldn’t. And it wasn’t the sort of thing you’d ask your Speaker to say for you. Human people often looked different than you found out they were too: Lord Ranruth, for example, one of her father’s councillors, whom she’d been terrified of when she was little, because he was always wearing a scowl. The scowl was short-sightedness: as soon as you got close enough, his big round face broke into an enormous smile. If people and pegasi were different from the way they appeared, mightn’t their Alliance be different too?

Different how? Why was there no ... no feel to it, this great important thing? Why did it seem no more than a silken representation on a banner, this thing that Balsin had called the foundation upon which their country was built? And that made magicians central to their lives? How could it hearten you when you couldn’t feel it?

She’d asked her father shortly after the awful morning that had resulted in Fthoom’s being given his charge, if Fthoom was likely to do it, well, honestly.

The king made a snorting, humming noise rather like a pegasus laugh. “No. But I’ve assigned him a huge number of helpers, which will, I hope, go some little way toward softening the blow of my stripping him from his position in my court and, at the same time, make it harder for him not to do what I asked him to do.” The king looked bleakly into the empty air for a moment and addd, “ The sad thing is that I’ve meant for years—for most of my working life as king—to set that task. Why aren’t there more stories about friendship between human and pegasus? Even your favourite, Erisika, isn’t quoted much beyond that they fought together as why she considered Dlaiali a friend. But there has never seemed to be the time and the people to do it.”

Sylvi had done a quick intensive study of how to avoid Fthoom. This was made easier by the fact he never went anywhere without an entourage, and by the fact that he had the sort of mind that believed that doing something the same way added to his consequence, so he always used the king’s library’s west portal, which was, of course, the grandest. The drawback was that the king’s library was also the country’s largest and grandest library, so he rarely went to any others, allotting any searching, fetching and carrying tasks to his staff. Before the day of her binding Sylvi had learnt to like finding books in the library—you often found other interesting ones on the way to the one you were looking for—but since the day after her binding she preferred to send messages, like her father, and have the material she wanted brought to her.

The queen one day told her that Fthoom had submitted an interim report saying that the work was going well—

“Which means he hasn’t found anything,” Sylvi interrupted. “He’s not going to find anything because he is determined not to find anything! He doesn’t want there to be any record of real communication—real friendship—between humans and pegasi!”

“No, he doesn’t, but if his committee finds such a record, it will be reported,” said the queen. “And don’t forget Cory and Lrrianay—your and Ebon’s relationship may be unprecedented, but friendship between bondmates is not.”

“Dad said he’s always wanted to appoint a commission to do what Fthoom is doing now, and it had never been the right time,” said Sylvi.

“So there,” said the queen. “We’re getting some use out of Fthoom after all.”

Sylvi tried to smile.

“It will be all right, love,” said the queen.“Remember that the longer it takes Fthoom to find nothing—because I’m afraid I agree he probably will find nothing; if there were anything, it would be a favourite bedtime story, not to mention the basis of dozens of plays and hundreds of ballads—the longer Fthoom takes to find nothing, the more used our people will have become to seeing you and Ebon together. The more normal and ordinary it will be.”

It ought to be very normal and ordinary by now, thought Sylvi a little wryly. She and Ebon were very popular guests at fairs and fêtes and festivals and, with Fthoom on everyone at the palace’s minds, she and Ebon were encouraged to accept as many (carefully screened) invitations as they could bear to. Since Ebon reported that his family felt the same way, they accepted a lot of invitations. Ebon was much better about these occasions than she was. I keep telling you—they aren’t my people. It’s easier for me.

They went with an entourage—just like Fthoom, Sylvi thought without humour. Occasionally, for a very grand one, she wore a frock and rode in a carriage, but usually she and Ahathin and at least one of her attendant guards, plus up to a dozen assorted aides and escorts all travelled on horseback, and Sylvi would pull a princessy tunic over her riding clothes when they arrived. (She also learned to bring a dog-brush on the chance that a hound or two or three would be found to have followed them and could be tidied up to join their company.)

Ebon would meet them there—with at least one pegasus attendant of his own, sometimes two or three; and they would be wearing a few flowers or a few ribbons, or especially vivid examples of the little embroidered bags around their necks that the pegasi often wore. Sylvi’s pony grew very fond of Ebon and would neigh when he saw him, and Ebon would whuffle at him in a way Sylvi found very like the way she would make a conversation out of “Good dog, what a good dog, there’s a good dog, stand still so I can get the knots out, what have you been rolling in?”

Pegasi looked almost more like four-legged birds, standing next to horses. Their necks were longer and their bodies shorter in comparison, their ribs tremendously widesprung for lung space and their shoulders broad for wing muscles, but tapering away behind to almost nothing; their bellies tucked up like sighthounds’, although there were deep lines of muscle on their hindquarters. Their legs seemed as slender as grass stems, and the place where the head met the neck was so delicate a child’s hands could ring it; they moved as if they weighed nothing at all, as if they might float away, even without spreading their wings.

And no human could ever take their eyes off a pegasus’ wings.

Sylvi and Ebon’s entourage stayed watchfully nearby, but the two of them were the centre of attention. All the little children wanted to pet Ebon—Ebon put up with this with unimpaired good humour, while Sylvi tried not to let it show that she felt it was an impertinence, which she did. Not from the children, but from their parents—didn’t they know you weren’t supposed to touch the pegasi? No one ever offered to stroke any pegasus who had come with Ebon—but Ebon was not only the one out in front with the princess Sylviianel, he was also a terrible flirt. He would put his head down till he was eye to eye with a toddler who was smiling and waving at him, and then tap its cheek or its nose with one of his feather-hands. If one too small to walk on its own screamed in excitement and bounced up and down in its parent’s arms he would very likely stamp a foot (gently) and go “eeeeeeeee” back at it. He even gave pony rides to the littlest. The first few times this happened, all the human eyes within range nearly stood out on stalks—the rule about not riding pegasi apparently had filtered comprehensively through the entire population.

Just lift the kid up there and stop fussing, he’d said the first time. Only the tiniest, mind. Nobody big enough to break a feather if they get too thrilled and start kicking, that’s the rule.

After that their invitations came even more often. The most pressing, Sylvi noticed, seemed to be from towns where the mayors and sheriffs and head councillors—and fête organisers—had children or grandchildren old enough to sit up but too young to kick very hard.

But then something else happened. The older children—and far too many adults, who should have been old enough to know better—began to ask her to ask Ebon questions. Maybe it was the petting and the pony rides. The first time it happened Sylvi was so nonplussed she simply did—the question was so harmless (“What is your favourite colour?”), and the young woman who asked it was obviously trying to make some kind of friendly contact with the pegasus who had been kind to her children—twins, about a year old, and they’d each had a pony ride. And the woman looked so tired—too tired to remember explicit royal prohibitions—and so grateful. And perhaps Ebon’s answer (“The colour of the sky at dawn over the mountain called Cuandoia when we’re in the lower meadows. It’s best in autumn when we’re harvesting the llyri grass for the winter”) sounded a little too mystical, “mystical” not being a word anyone who knew him would apply to Ebon. But the king’s ban against questions, Sylvi and her attendants bemusedly realised, had been translated into “no political questions”: no questions about kings and treaties and government. And magicians. But the people had decided that Ebon was some kind of oracle.

The king, when this was reported to him, himself looked nonplussed and bemused, and then started to laugh. “Why should I have thought it was a simple, straightforward proscription? No questions. How can that be misinterpreted? Very well. I am willing to leave this to your judgement, Sylvi. Keep Ahathin close to you; he’ll intercede if you need him to—if you’re the least bit uncertain, let him do so. And come tell me about it afterwards.”

“And—Sylvi—try to remember not to wander around with your fingers curled in Ebon’s mane, will you? I realise that the—er—pony rides have confused the issue, but I did say something about behaving no differently than any other bound pair. The tradition of no physical contact is as old as the Alliance, and the casualness of your behaviour is disrespectful.”

If he were really cross he would call her Sylviianel, but he was right and she knew it. It was mostly comfort, having her hand in Ebon’s mane, especially on fête days when everyone was looking at them—and it was so easy to put it back there after she’d lifted a little rider down. But there was showing off in it too. “Yes, my sir,” she said.

“Good,” he said.

The pegasi weren’t that uncommon, even outside the palace—even outside the Wall. It was true that they mostly stayed in their own lands, but—Sylvi knew this from her father, but Ebon had told her the same thing—they felt humans needed to see them, and so they made a point of flying over all parts of the country, even the ones farthest from either the palace or their own territory, and stopping to graze and drink at meadows and streams near towns and villages. They never quite grasped human land ownership, and on at least one memorable occasion during Corone IV’s mother’s reign, a small group of pegasi had settled down for a mouthful and a nap on a piece of ground so hotly disputed that no human had set foot on it for a decade. But they knew to stay out of standing crops, because they raised crops themselves.

Any fête or festival big or important enough to host a member of the royal or any baronial family would expect the bound pegasus to attend also; as the presence of the pegasi at the palace was known to promote the welfare of the country, the presence of a pegasus or two at a fête was believed to contribute to the success of the occasion, especially if it were an occasion like a spring or a harvest festival. And there were the open court days at the palace, and occasional parades, all of which would feature pegasi. But ordinary people seemed as stirred at the idea of being able really to talk to a pegasus as Sylvi herself was—which she could understand. Perhaps it was this that had transformed itself into a hope that the pegasi could answer private questions the interlocutors couldn’t answer themselves merely because such questions weren’t about kings and treaties and governments.

Some of the questions weren’t difficult. The little girl with the grey-and-black zurcat in her arms wants to know if it will have any spotted kittens. Spotted zurcats always had spotted kittens. If it’s pregnant it will, replied Ebon with perfect logic.

Sometimes she was surprised at the things the pegasi knew, and wondered why humans hadn’t worked harder to learn some of them. Ebon was very good on weather, for example, and certain aspects of farming. No, he doesn’t want to put veer in this year, it’s going to be a hard winter, it’ll be too cold to grow. Djee would be better—you humans use djee, don’t you?—it thinks a good snow layer is warm and comfy. Maybe the Speakers’ Guild wasn’t very interested in farming.

She’d learnt early on not to ask him the truly oracular ones. The big good-looking girl wearing the red scarf wants to know whether she should marry the blacksmith or the baker.

Tell her she should run away to sea and become a pirate.

The tall man with the scar on his cheek wants to know if the gods live on the moon.

I’ll look around the next time I’m there.

He’ll think you can fly to the moon!

He already thinks we can.

Which was probably true. But what did you do with questions like that? She’d come storming—or rather, she’d walked perfectly calmly, but inside she was storming—from a council meeting where Senator Barnum had wished to discuss her comportment—hers and Ebon’s—at their public appearances, and how they needed to appear sensible and mature. “Mature!” she’d burst out later to Ebon. Mature! And Dad and Ahathin just say that that fat tick Barnum is a citizen too and he’s not the only—the only pompous pudding-head we need to remember will be doing his best to find fault!

Ebon had unfolded and refolded a wing—whoosh snap—and shook his head violently two or three times, which was the nearest a pegasus ever came to angry: Yes. I’ve already had the pitch from Dad, and Gaaloo. I promise not to trample any small children or to sneeze in anyone’s food. If they think we’re so dangerous to concord and prosperity, why do they want us to go?

After a little silence Sylvi said, You know why. Ebon made a half whuffle, half hum, that she knew from the rituals; it meant “our fate is our fate.” But he added, That’s always been a dumb line. It just means shut up and don’t make trouble. Sometimes you have to make trouble. He paused. But this isn’t one of those times. Okay. He sighed a vast gusty sigh—the vast gusty sigh that only a pegasus can sigh—and Sylvi rubbed his mane. And he tried to repress himself—not always successfully—and Sylvi tried to be careful what she repeated back to their human audience.

They saw magicians in the crowds sometimes—never among the people immediately around them wanting answers to their questions—but rather more often at the outskirts of those people than seemed to Sylvi at all reasonable. These were not the village witches, the little wizards, whom they often saw, and who could be expected to come to their local fêtes, but the big magicians, the members of the guilds, who didn’t come to little country fêtes. Except that they did. Sylvi tried to tell herself that before Ebon she hadn’t gone to many country fêtes herself, and maybe guild magicians came to more of them than she realised. But she didn’t believe it.

She rarely recognised any of them, but the magicians’ robes were easy to spot—and the way ordinary people tended to leave space around them. What were they watching for? What were they seeing?

What were they reporting back to Fthoom?

She thought of asking Ahathin about the number of guild magicians she saw, about why there were so many ... but couldn’t think how to do so without betraying the intensity of her dislike and distrust of magic and magicians. What had still been half a joke on her twelfth birthday was, since the morning after her twelfth birthday, no joke at all. She often thought, bleakly, that all the things she most wanted to ask Ahathin because he was a magician, she could not, because he was a magician.

Ahathin himself she was glad to have beside her. Ahathin’s presence—and, she had to admit, Glarfin’s or Colm’s or Lucretia’s—made her feel braver; as her Speaker, Ahathin could whisper in her ear, even when he was saying things like “you need not answer that question” or “tell him that is a question for a judge.” And most of the questions were innocuous enough—she also learnt to wait, fractionally, for any stir or startle from her entourage. She asked the questions about the pegasi themselves, like how many of them there were (Yikes. I haven’t a clue. Lots. Not as many as you humans, though), or where they lived (See the mountains that start behind the far Wall of the king’s palace? If you fly—er—if you walked, uh, up and down, over those mountains, Rhiandomeer begins on the other side) and if their king lived in a huge grand beautiful palace too (Yuck! No way. Who wants to be trapped in the same old stiff up-and-down walled-in thing all the time, where the sun can only come through the same holes?).

Sylvi had some trouble translating that one. Okay, it’s not trampling children, she’d said crossly to Ebon, but can’t you think of a little nicer way of putting it? Your shfeeahs stay in the same place, don’t they?

Sort of, said Ebon. But most of the walls come off or roll up or something. They’re not made of stones as big as our bodies.

And he answered all the weather-and-crops questions. He was not good about livestock questions: If I knew what would make your wethers grow faster, I wouldn’t tell you. Their lives are short enough before they go to the—the what-you -call-’em—the killer. Let them have their few months in peace. He also knew some odd herbal remedies for things that she didn’t dare pass on because neither of them had any idea whether they’d work for humans or not—although she told her mother, whose best friend was a healer (“the best friend a soldier can have,” said the queen). The queen shook her head. “We’ll have to ask your father.”

“Careful,” said the king.

“Cory—” began the queen. “Dad!” said Sylvi at the same time.

“Sylvi first, I think,” said the king.“Persuade me this is a worthwhile exception—another worthwhile exception—to the rule. You’ll be sixteen soon enough, when everything will change, and you’ll have more—”

“Of course it is!” interrupted Sylvi. “A good exception. A good exception now. This is the sort of thing that could make everyone happy that Ebon and I can talk to each other, if it turns out there’s something we can use!”

“I agree,” said the king. “And I have no intention of forbidding it. You still need to realise what you’re doing.”

He was looking at her in a way that reminded her of Ahathin waiting for her to answer her own question. She smiled involuntarily, quickly and mirthlessly. “And perhaps we’ll be grateful for a few extra friends when I turn sixteen and the Speakers’ Guild tries to block Ebon and me doing any Speaker work.”

“Perhaps,” said the king. “But the Speakers’ Guild won’t block you, if that’s what you decide you—and Ebon—want to do.”

She looked at her father, and remembered the hatred in Fthoom’s glittering eyes.

But she had her permission, and one of the remedies got the queen’s friend, whose name was Nirakla, very excited. She begged for the opportunity to speak to any of the healer-shamans who were willing to speak to her, and Minial translated.

“You’ve thrown a rock in a pond,” said the king.

“It’s a good rock,” Sylvi answered. “Why hasn’t anyone thrown it before now?”

“Good question,” said the king. “But the shamans come here very little, and those who do come stay in their annex.”

I wonder what Fthoom has heard about it, she thought, but she didn’t say it aloud.

Sylvi couldn’t help picking at the thought of Fthoom, scratching at it like a wound that won’t heal, partly because you keep scratching at it.

“Darling,” said the queen, “if you don’t stop fretting, I’ll ask your father to give you another project. You know Hester and Damha’s binding went just as it was supposed to.”

“Did it?”

“Do you mean we didn’t tell you about the ultimatum we had from Fthoom about it? Darling, don’t be silly.”

Kachakon had been the Fifth Magician, and Sylvi had thought he looked uneasy, and the other magicians furtive. Hester and Damha couldn’t talk to each other—but it had been a blow to Sylvi when she read relief in Hester’s face after the ceremony. She might just have been relieved to have the ceremony over, but Sylvi didn’t think so. She didn’t think so even more when she and Ebon went up to give the new pair their congratulations, and Hester looked worried as soon as she saw Sylvi coming toward her. What, do you think it’s catching? Sylvi thought irritably. But she said the correct words, and Hester said the correct words back, and then Sylvi and Ebon went away. Did Damha say anything to you? said Sylvi. After you said congratulations, or whatever you say.

Are you kidding? She was too busy being overcome. We’re famous, you know.

What? Oh, leave me alone.

Ebon looked at her sidelong. No, I don’t like it either.

But at that moment Lady Denovol came up to them and begged the favour of being allowed to present her son to them. The son was about Sylvi’s age, and looked even more miserable at being faced with Sylvi and Ebon than Hester had, and his pegasus seemed to be trying to hide behind Lady Denovol’s. The older pegasus stepped smartly aside and swung her head round in a gesture that needed no translation : move it, you. Sylvi used this as an excuse not to reply as she made her bow to the son and he bowed back. She didn’t catch his name.