Part 4 (1/2)

”You'll now be expected to come to most council meetings,” the queen went on, ”at which you will have no say and no vote. But your father or Ahathin will decide on a speciality for you-farming or the guilds, or rivers and waterways, or roads-or the army: G.o.ds save you if you have anything to do with the army. It could be anything on the court schedule, and you have the misfortune to have made a very good impression on your father with your papers on village witchcraft, so he'll probably want to give you something challenging. And you'll be expected to study whatever it is carefully and have opinions about it. And they'll want you to come up with good ideas, but if you manage to do so, you'll be expected to stand up in front of everybody else on the council and possibly even the senate, and present them. Horrifying. Much worse than anything that happens in the practise yards with mere weapons.”

”Mum,” said Sylvi, ”you've never been afraid of anything in your life.”

”How wrong you are,” said the queen. ”I am afraid of almost everything except what I can go after with a sword. You know where you are with a taralian. When it began to dawn on me that your father was serious, I almost ran away. I probably would have run away the night before the wedding except you're expected to sleep among your attending maidens. Probably to prevent you from running away.”

Sylvi laughed.

”Court etiquette,” said the queen. ”Court G.o.ds-save-us etiquette. I was a country baron's daughter so we had banquets once or twice a year when the queen or a bigger, more formal baron than we were came to visit. And my father held court one afternoon a week for troubles and disputes and so on, which usually degenerated into everyone complaining about the weather. I'd been to the palace for my binding and my sisters', and it was all huge and confusing beyond imagining, but we didn't have to imagine it. We had two sky views and a sky hold of the palace, which probably made it worse, being used to being able to hold the king's palace in the palms of your two hands-and the sky hold is three hundred years old, and the palace was smaller then.”

Sylvi nodded. She had seen it when she visited her cousins; it was made of many different kinds of wood, cut, carved and glued with beautiful precision.

”Maiden I was, but maidenly modesty did not become a colonel of the Lightbearers; and armour and a sword did not become the king's intended. I didn't even have dress armour-useless stuff, and we couldn't afford it. The first speech I gave to your father's court, I had to brace myself against the plinth because my knees kept trying to fold up, and force my hands flat against the desk to stop them trembling.”

”Was Hirishy with you?” said Sylvi.

”Yes,” said the queen thoughtfully, ”she was. It's funny, because she's so little, and when you look round for her she's probably hiding. But when you need-oh, when you don't know what you need!-she'll be right there. She slept with all us maidens the night before the wedding, for example. I don't know of another occasion when a pegasus slept with her human, do you? There should have been a fuss about it, I think, but there wasn't. It was just Hirishy.”

Sylvi smiled.

”And now you've been bound to your pegasus,” said the queen. Sylvi heaved a great, happy sigh and felt her spirits lighten. Even the thought of Fthoom couldn't entirely spoil the thought of Ebon. ”Yes. I have been bound to my pegasus. Ebon. He's ... he's ... um.” Again she felt the thrilling, terrifying surge of the lift into the air; the wind-hammer of the huge wings.

”You two bonded yourselves, didn't you? I've never seen anything like it-nor has your father.” The queen paused. ”Nor has anyone. Your father told me that you can talk to each other-that that was how you knew his name.”

So her mother had noticed her slip too. Maybe everyone had. Even before Fthoom. Well, they could could talk to each other. ”Yes.” talk to each other. ”Yes.”

”There are barely any folk-tales about such a thing. A few fool tales, I think-it's as if it's so driven into us that we can't talk to each other, we can't even make up stories about it. Maybe that your fathers can almost talk to each other is some explanation of what happened to you and Ebon, even though it didn't happen to any of your brothers.”

”They tell jokes, Mum, did you know? The pegasi, I mean.

Mother”-Sylvi sat up and forward, kneeling by her mother so she was tall enough to look her directly in the face-”Mother, does it ever seem to you that we don't know the pegasi at all?”

”Yes, darling,” said the queen. ”I have often thought just that, and wondered what it meant, for all of us, both pegasi and humans.”

Sylvi dressed carefully, taking her time about it. She had hated court clothes till her mother had said, ”Court clothes are just another form of dress armour. And if it's a bad show, like the combined court and senate, you can sit there designing your breastplate, with all the curlicues you'd never have on working armour. I designed one with a roc swooping down to carry old Barnum away, the wings curling back over my shoulders and a satisfying look of fear on his face, which I think of often.” May a roc fly away with Fthoom, Sylvi thought.

She might be better at sitting still today, with the dread of catching Fthoom's eye, like the hawk stooping on the rabbit (or the roc on the senator) as soon as it moves. Her black velvet trousers, she thought, with the wide red ribbons wrapped around the ankles; they made her look taller. Fthoom was both tall and big, and magicians and courtiers often wore high heels when they attended the king. She was sure Fthoom would be wearing high heels today. The custom had begun, Ahathin had told her, centuries ago, when Skagal the Giant had been king.

”They wouldn't have to do it now, now,”she said.

”It is a custom,” said Ahathin. Ahathin, who was even smaller than the king, never wore high heels.

”And who cares who's taller anyway?” she said.

Ahathin looked at her and permitted himself a smile.

”Don't you mind mind being short?” she blurted. being short?” she blurted.

He spread his small hands and looked at them. ”I am a magician, not a princess. A pony costs less to keep than a horse, which means I can buy more books.” He paused. ”It is not always a bad thing, to be overlooked.”

As Fthoom had always overlooked her, she thought, until yesterday. She stared at herself in the mirror and sighed. In trousers rather than a skirt, she thought, it was easier to feel that you could could run away. run away.

It wasn't going to matter if she missed breakfast; she was now too anxious to eat. She asked one of her new attendants to bring her tea and toast on a tray. Her nurse would have brought her a proper breakfast and hovered over her till she ate it. Her nurse, in theory, was now retired-her last official act was closing Sylvi's curtains yesterday evening-but Sylvi wondered if she would stay in the pleasant little suite in the retired courtiers' wing that now belonged to her, and refrain from reappearing to scold Sylvi on the state of her underclothing. One of the new ladies brought the tea and toast and left it silently. Sylvi tore the toast into sc.r.a.ps to make it look as if she'd eaten something, but drank the tea; her mouth was dry.

She could have had an attendant lady or two accompany her to her father's court; it could have been her first official something-or-other, as a newly almost-grown-up person with a pegasus, who would be expected to be present at council meetings and develop a useful speciality. She thought about an attendant for all of two seconds, as she pulled her tunic straight and smoothed her hair down. In the first place an attendant would make her feel smaller and more insignificant than ever, not less; and in the second place ... it was too much like copying Fthoom. Her father always had people around him because he was king; but they were councillors and senators and cartographers and colonels and scribes and whoever else was important to what he was doing or trying to do; he didn't have attendants. attendants. Fthoom had attendants. Fthoom had attendants.

She paused in the antechamber outside her father's private receiving room. The inner door was closed, and in the absence of a footman to open the door and bow her through it, she had a momentary reprieve. Her feet took her to one of the low shelves that ran round the room. These shelves bore some of the king's favourite sky holds. The one her feet paused in front of was a new model of the northwest gates of the palace Wall, with a long curve of Wall running away on either side. She and Ebon had flown over it the night before. It doesn't look like that, she thought, with a queer little shock, as if finding out one of her parents or some other authoritative grown-up in a lie that was not quite trifling. The curve of the Wall is more gradual, she said to herself, and the trees inside are set farther back, and the grove is more of an S shape.

She was still staring at the little landscape when the inner door opened silently; but she felt the change of air, and turned. One of the expressionless footmen-an especially tall expressionless footman-one of the footmen who had used to lift her onto her heap of seat-cus.h.i.+ons so she could see over the edge of the dining table as recently as two years ago, stood there staring over her head. He was staring quite pointedly and directly over her head, however, so she knew he was waiting to bow her through the door. She went.

Fthoom was already there. So was her father, of course, and Lrrianay. So was Ebon.

Hey, are we in trouble? said Ebon. How did you sleep last night? This sorry a.s.s' great rolling eyes are making me queasy. I didn't mean to get up so early. How did you sleep last night? This sorry a.s.s' great rolling eyes are making me queasy. I didn't mean to get up so early.

Sylvi swallowed the laugh that tried to jump out of her; she felt her face wrinkle up to contain it. Ebon was right; Fthoom's eyes did rather roll around. It was all part of what she called to herself his magician act, but she was still afraid of him. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes, and her stomach lurched, and she no longer felt like laughing.

”My lady Sylviianel,” said her father gravely.

”My lord Corone,” she said, and bowed. As she straightened up again she looked at who else stood by her father: those closest were Danacor and his pegasus, Thowara, the king's Speaker, Fazuur, and Lord Cral, who was probably her father's closest friend as well as a member of both the blood and the high council, and Lord Cral's pegasus, Miaia. As she looked, someone a little beyond them moved, as if deliberately to make her notice him, and it was Ahathin.

Fthoom rustled forward. He was wearing some great stiff cape that stuck out round him as if on wires, and round his head was the magicians' spiral, this one silver and set with pale stones over his forehead and rising nearly a double hand's span in the air above him. His foot-steps made a curious hollow thunder: his shoes had not only high heels but built-up soles. He looked as tall as Skagal the Giant, but he was not the king.

Sylvi looked behind him. There were half a dozen other magicians in his train, and they all looked unhappy, although they looked unhappy in different ways. Kachakon, who was about the best of them in Sylvi's opinion, looked worried and unhappy; Gornchern, who was almost as big a bully as Fthoom, looked angry and unhappy. Warily she looked again into Fthoom's face; he only looked angry. She remembered something her nurse used to say to her when she was young and sulky: what if your face froze like that? Fthoom's face looked like it had frozen yesterday morning, presumably at the moment when she had said Ebon's name. But this anger looked like the deep, powerful, strategic anger of a general about to engage his enemy. His enemy enemy?

The moment stretched. She glanced at her father looking at Fthoom, and at Fthoom looking at her father. Fthoom began to turn rather purple. Majestically, her father indicated that she should sit beside him. At some other time she might have been exhilarated as well as unnerved by the honour; usually the heir sat on one side of the king and the queen on the other, but the queen's chair was empty this morning. Lucky queen, she thought, although she understood the political game being played: to have both the queen and the heir present would grant Fthoom too much power.

Very carefully, for her limbs felt strangely rigid, she settled herself in the great chair. She was accustomed to hoicking herself into chairs that were too tall for her, and had even learnt to do it (relatively) smoothly; but this one made her feel smaller than usual, for it was as wide and deep as it was tall, so she could not lean against the back of it without having her legs sticking straight out in front of her like a baby's. Her feet still hung well clear of the floor. She grasped the clawed forelegs of some vast animal that were its arms, and straightened her spine. She had chosen this tunic because she knew it would sit well across her shoulders as long as she didn't slump. Her father was the king and could stare down Fthoom; her mother was life colonel of the Lightbearers, and had twice killed a taralian single-handed, once in coming to the aid of a fallen comrade. Their daughter could sit up straight. But when one of the footmen knelt in front of her to slide a stool beneath her dangling feet, she wasn't sure but what that made it worse, not better. Silently she took a deep breath. Her father was wearing his very grandest manner; she would not let him down by being too small, too young, and too frightened. Ebon moved with her, and stood at her right shoulder; Ahathin came to stand at her left.

”My lord,” said Fthoom, and knelt, somehow making the gesture pointless, almost careless, as one might raise a hand to brush a fly away, even though one was addressing a king. The stiff cape flourished out around him as he knelt and then reformed itself as he stood. When he had regained his feet, he said, looking straight past Sylvi as if she were either a criminal or an inanimate object, ”My lord, I believe our country is at a crisis point.”

There was a sigh from the courtiers around her father's chair. She hadn't dared count how many people-and pegasi-were present; the room was made to hold about twenty, but there were councillors, senators, barons and magicians crowded along the walls-probably nearer twice that. She saw Lord Kanf lean to whisper something in Grand-dame Orel's ear; Orel's look of worry deepened.

Fthoom drew himself up even taller-the tip of the spiral quivered-as the king said gently, ”Because my daughter can speak to her pegasus, and he to her?”

”It is not the way, that human should speak to pegasus,” said Fthoom heavily. As he said it, ”the way” became ”The Way,” although Sylvi had never heard of it. What way?

”I know-much-much-much about the history of human and pegasus. I have read the original treaty; I have felt its aura with my own hands,” and here he held them up as if there were some axiom written across his palms for all to read.

Sylvi stared at him. The treaty hung on the wall of the Great Hall next to the mural of the signing, but Sylvi could not read it. The fanciest calligraphy of eight-hundred-year-old scribes was much harder to decipher than the plain handwriting of Viktur. There was gla.s.s over it too, gla.s.s that was specially treated to prevent any interference, by magical or physical force, and this made it s.h.i.+mmer faintly. Sylvi had studied what it said in her schoolroom copy of the annals; when she looked at the treaty itself, she saw the pale twinkle of eight-hundred-year-old flower petals and long curling twists like vines which were the black lines of the script-and Fralialal, one foreleg raised, ready to step down from the wall, the eight-hundred-year-old ink still wet on the edge of his wing. She didn't like the idea of Fthoom standing close enough to the treaty to read its aura-leaning nearer and nearer yet till his breath misted the gla.s.s, his big hands only just clear of its surface-so close that if Fralialal chose that moment to step free of the wall, his wing might brush Fthoom's face.

”I have felt the strength of the centuries like the Wall that wraps around the palace. I have read the chronicles of the magicians who served their rulers from that day to this; I have read the diary of Gandam, who as you know put himself under intolerable duress to learn the pegasus language, that he might write the treaty, and died of the strain.”

Everyone knew about Gandam. It was one of the first history lessons all human children learnt. Sylvi had always wondered who had taught Gandam, and if Gandam had tried to teach the human language as well; was there a pegasus shaman who died? She would ask Ebon.

”From that very first meeting-from the first sighting, when the soldiers knelt, for they feared they were in the presence of G.o.ds or demons-from that first contact, it is clear: it is not for humans to speak plainly to the pegasi, nor the pegasi to humans: not without the safeguard of a magician's strong magic between the two. The two races are too dissimilar: any attempt to draw them close together can only do injury-the incomprehension between our two peoples is a warning we ignore at our peril. The only other human besides Gandam who has ever become truly fluent in the pegasus language was the magician Boronax, and he too went mad. Since Boronax there have been rules laid down for us, the magicians and Speakers who serve you, lord, and who have served and will serve all the kings and queens before and after you-rules, so that we may learn enough of the pegasus language to make that service well and truly, and yet not so much as to harm ourselves or you; and even so we use magic to protect ourselves in ways we cannot use to protect you.”

Maybe it's only magicians it happens to, thought Sylvi, but she was beginning to feel a little frightened. She remembered saying to Ahathin, when he told her of how Speaking was taught, but the pegasi are so light light. She thought of Fralialal, and the twinkle of eight-hundred-year-old flower petals.

She looked away from Fthoom, toward Ebon. What's going on? What's going on? he said. he said. I can tell you're not happy, and my father doesn't like what he's hearing from your father and Fazuur, but I can't pick up any of it. I can tell you're not happy, and my father doesn't like what he's hearing from your father and Fazuur, but I can't pick up any of it.