Toby Bishop - Horse Mistress 02

by Airs

  It was the first time Lark had seen a new class arrive. The girls of her own class, Beryl and Beatrice and Lillian and the others, had all come to the Academy in the usual way, their spring foals in tow, just as the warm days of autumn folded into the chill days of early winter. Tup had been a winter foal, a surprise to everyone. It was true, as Petra Sweet never tired of reminding everyone, that Lark was never intended to bond with a winged horse. But Lark believed firmly that Kalla, the horse goddess, had made her own choice in bringing Tup’s dam to Deeping Farm for her foaling. Lark and Tup had not arrived at the Academy until the following summer, and everything about them was different.

  Below, in the courtyard, she now saw how it was supposed to be. Colts filed wide-eyed and light-footed into the stables, their bonded companions at their sides. The oc-hounds who had fostered the colts paced alongside, feathery tails waving. The girls were no less wide-eyed than their colts, gazing around them at the emerald paddocks, at the long, whitewashed stables, at the majestic Hall flanked by the Dormitory on one side, the Domicile on the other. Some came in carriages, their winged colts trotting alongside. Others came in phaetons, or even, in one case, a girl rode a wingless horse with her foal on a lead beside her. None arrived, as Lark had, in an oxcart, her colt accompanied by a little brown Uplands goat.

  Hester nodded to Lark as if she could hear her thoughts. Anabel exclaimed over the colts as they paraded across the courtyard in a palette of equine colors.

  “Noble,” Anabel proclaimed, as a roan filly trotted into the stables with her bondmate.

  “There’s a Foundation,” Isobel said, pointing. The colt was a dapple gray, almost white. “And there’s an Ocmarin.”

  Lark leaned closer to the glass to get a look at the little dun creature following a girl and the first-level instructor. “Get a blink at him,” she said. “Those little pins—he looks a bit like Tup, doesn’t he?”

  “If by that bit of Uplands dialect you mean his legs,” Hester said dryly, “I can’t agree. That colt’s legs are thinner than Tup’s. Look how his croup slopes, too, where Tup’s is so flat. And by the way, Black, I thought you were going to start calling your horse by his proper name!”

  “I keep meaning to, but I’m so used to Tup. And he’s used to it, too.”

  “No saddle and no name,” Anabel said mildly. “You might have to try a little harder.”

  Lark sighed. “Aye,” she said. “I suppose I could try calling him Black Seraph—or Seraph—though it’s a mouthful. But the saddle still troubles me.”

  “You have to give it a chance.” This came from Beatrice, surprising Lark once again. In fact, all her classmates surprised her, except for Hester and Anabel. All during her first long months at the Academy, she had felt as friendless as a bummer lamb. Only Hester and Anabel had treated her as one of their own.

  But since their triumphant Ribbon Day, her classmates had behaved differently, teasing her as friends might, going on about her country accent and her Uplands dialect. The last step of her true belonging would be to learn to use the flying saddle.

  “Aye,” Lark said again. “We have work to do, right enough.”

  Beatrice gave her a shy smile. “You’re so good, Black. You have a beautiful seat. I know you can do it.”

  Lark blushed. “Thank you, Beatrice—Dark, I mean.” She turned back to the window, warmed by the camaraderie. It was a quirk of Academy life that girls were called by the names of their horses. The moment Tup had received his proper name, she had become Larkyn Black instead of Larkyn Hamley.

  Sometimes, she still forgot to answer.

  As they watched the last of the newcomers being sorted out, Horsemistress Winter came out of the Hall and crossed the courtyard with her long-legged stride. She stood, pulling on her gloves, her bony face pale in the sunlight, waiting for Winter Sunset. The stable-girl who had taken Rosellen’s job appeared with the sorrel mare, and the girls all leaned forward to watch Mistress Winter’s standing mount, a lithe, swift leap into the saddle, and her brisk trot toward the flight paddock.

  “Do you suppose she’s off to the Palace?” Anabel asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Isobel said. “She and the new Duke hate each other.”

  Hester and Lark exchanged glances. They knew the true depth of the conflict between Philippa Winter and Duke William, but they had sworn not to speak of it.

  Lillian said, “They say she wanted to marry him when she was young.”

  “Oh, surely not!” Beryl put in. “She would never have wanted to marry!”

  “Why not?” asked Anabel.

  “She’s—why, she’s ahorsemistress !” Beryl exclaimed.

  “She wasn’t a horsemistress when she was sixteen,” Lillian said pertly. “She was a girl, the daughter of an earl. And her family was very close to the Duke’s.”

  Hester interrupted. “There they go,” she said. All eyes turned back to the window to watch Philippa Winter and her glorious Noble, Winter Sunset, launch into the mists of the autumn morning. Sunny’s coat was a splash of red against the grayness, Mistress Winter’s slender, erect figure a slash of black, barely

  moving as Winter Sunset drove them up and away.

  “She’s perfect!” Beatrice breathed.

  “None better,” Isobel agreed. “Too bad she’s so sharp-tongued.”

  Lark restrained a protest. It was true enough, Mistress Winter was abrupt in her ways. But surely, she was the best flyer in all the Duchy. Lark watched her wing away to the south, the opposite direction from the Ducal Palace. She leaned into the window, gazing after the slender rider and the sorrel mare until they disappeared into the distant sky, and she wondered.

  The antagonism between Mistress Winter and the Duke was no worse than that Duke William felt for Lark herself. He had wanted Tup for breeding, that secret breeding only she and Hester and Mistress Winter knew of. They kept his secret in hopes that knowledge would give them some power over him.

  But the Duke had never forgiven Lark for keeping Tup from him.

  Even now, safe in the Hall, the memory of Duke William’s icy dark gaze gave her a shiver. She hoped Mistress Winter, her protector, would return soon.

  FOUR

  “FRANCIS,you have the best eye for horses in Isamar.”

  Lord Francis Fleckham, second son of Duke Frederick of Oc, bowed slightly to his prince. “Your Highness,” he said mildly. “I think you exaggerate. But no one who grew up with my late father could help learning about horses, winged or not.”

  Isamar’s prince, Nicolas, gave the younger man a lazy smile. “My own father had little interest in them, except for the prestige they brought him.” Like all the Gelmonds, Nicolas had brown eyes and brown hair. Isamar’s royals looked more like the Klee than they did like Isamarians, harking back to the days when Klee and Isamar were one single, albeit troubled, land.

  “Well, in this case, Prince Nicolas,” Francis said, nodding toward the tall stallion in the paddock, “given the color, the long backbone, and the depth of his chest, I would judge your stud has Foundation blood.”

  Nicolas eyed the horse. “A pity he throws no winged foals.”

  “I wasn’t aware,” Francis said, “that you aspired to breeding winged horses.” He kept his tone deliberately light, but a prickle crept over his shoulders. The winged horses were Oc’s province. His father had devoted his life to ensuring that they remained that way.

  Nicolas gave a brief, noncommittal laugh. “I am no breeder,” he said. “I barely ride.”

  Nicolas was a fat man, and only a horse the size of the stallion in the paddock would be able to carry his weight. Francis was not a diplomat, but to state such a fact would be an obvious political error. And Francis, though he preferred books and numbers to statecraft, had no wish to offend the Prince.

  Nicolas waved a beringed hand at his stable-boy. “We won’t ride today. Too tired.”

  The stable-boy bowed and led the horse away. It was a chilly morning. The cold saddle leather creaked again
st its fittings as the stallion pranced and pulled at his lead. The stable-boy set his heels to keep from

  being tossed off his feet. Francis suspected the Prince was simply too lazy to deal with such energy.

  “Come, Francis. Coffee and breakfast.” Prince Nicolas strolled past the open stable doors without pausing, and Francis was forced to follow him. He would have preferred to walk through them again, to smell the familiar odors of horseflesh and sawdust, saddle soap and grain. Those powerful scents reminded him of his father. They had never been close—indeed, Frederick had been close to only two people Francis knew of, and both were women—but Francis had admired and respected him. It was, he thought, a poorer world since the loss of the old Duke.

  He glanced into the stables as they passed. At the far end, in the largest stalls, were the six winged horses of Oc, assigned here for ceremonial purposes, at great expense to Isamar. Francis often stood in the window of the library and watched the horsemistresses drilling in the air above the Palace. That, too, reminded him of home.

  But there were no horsemistresses about now, on this cold morning. A few stable-boys came and went, and the one stable-girl who cared for the winged horses. There had been an elaborate party in the Palace last night, and the Prince’s reddened eyes and general scent of old wine and tobacco attested to that.

  Francis had been forced to attend, for appearances’ sake, but he had made his excuses early, and gone to bed. He had risen early this morning, as he usually did, to enjoy an hour’s ride on his own dun gelding.

  The last of the leaves had fallen from the birches and vine maples. Snow covered the distant mountaintops, and bare tree limbs stretched into the sky like some dark script written across silver parchment.

  Francis, with other second and third sons of the duchies of Isamar, had served in the Prince’s Palace for three years. For some, it was preferable to being ruled at home by elder brothers, but Francis chafed under the artificiality and the excesses of the Prince’s court. His love of books did not extend to account books, although he did his best to fulfill his duties. He often thought, had he been simply a Lord of the Council, he would have founded a great library in Oc, one to rival Isamar’s. Unlike many of the other young lords, he had never coveted William’s position. He had no wish at all to live in the Ducal Palace, or to rule. He wished, in truth, that he had been born a commoner, free to choose his own path.

  He thrust such thoughts aside now. He could not change the circumstances of his birth. His father could perhaps have arranged something different for him, had he requested it, but Frederick had died all too early. And now Francis, like every other citizen of Oc, was subject to his brother’s orders. William had made it clear he expected his brother to stay in Isamar, to be his liaison with the Prince.

  The cooks had seen the Prince’s approach through the windows of the Palace’s great kitchens, and by the time Francis followed Nicolas into the morning room, a table had been set with a silver coffee service and covered dishes that emitted fragrant steam from beneath their lids. The Prince settled himself, with a groan, into a sturdy chair and waved Francis into one opposite. “Eat, Francis!” he said jovially. “You need meat on those bones of yours.”

  Francis sat down and took a cup of coffee, but he gave a rueful laugh. “Your Highness, I would think you had given up fattening me by now,” he said. “My lord brother and I both have these long bones that resist all our efforts to cushion them.”

  “Lucky,” Nicolas said, his mouth already full of a great rasher of bacon. “But you would make me look better if you were not so skinny.”

  Francis took a modest plate of bacon, with a boiled egg, and a helping of steamed and buttered bloodbeets. “These could be from our own fields of Oc,” he said, spearing a slice of bloodbeet and

  holding it up for Nicolas to see. “From the Uplands.”

  Nicolas wrinkled his fleshy nose, and waved a dismissive hand. “Can’t stand the things,” he said. “Give me bacon and bread, thanks.”

  Francis was saved from further conversation by the arrival of two other young lords, each with a question for the Prince. Francis ate his breakfast and left the men talking. He carried his coffee to one of the tall, many-paned windows that faced out over the city of Arlton.

  Unlike Osham, Arlton was a city of colors. Its builders had borrowed from the blackstone of Oc’s Uplands, from the gray granite that came from Eastreach, and the pink marble from Crossmount. It sprawled along the Arl River, circling the Palace with broad avenues, spilling out in twisting lanes and terraced gardens. The party the evening before had begun with a demonstration by the winged horses of Oc, flying above the parks and plazas, circling the pink and gray towers of the Palace. Nicolas had preened with pride, as if the horsemistresses belonged to him. They did not. Francis didn’t bother mentioning it, because everyone knew the winged horses were Oc’s pride, not Isamar’s, and Prince Nicolas paid for their services with taxes wrung from the banking and shipping that made Isamar famous.

  Francis had excused himself early from the banquet of imported wines and exotic meats, the platters of elaborate pastries. He was thoroughly tired of princely affectation. He longed, in truth, to go home.

  He was about to turn away from the window, to turn back to his fat prince and the company of young lords gathered around him, when he saw a flash of red against the cold blue of the sky. He leaned closer to the glass, and peered into the distance. Yes, there it was…the unmistakable outline of a winged horse, with its slender black-habited horsemistress astride. As he watched, the pair came closer, growing larger and more distinct with each wingbeat. They banked around a tall spire and soared above the wide stone bridge that arched over the river.

  Francis drained his coffee. This was not one of the horsemistresses residing here at the Palace. In fact, Francis recognized both horse and horsemistress. He set his cup on the nearest table and turned to bow to the Prince.

  “If Your Highness will excuse me,” he said.

  Nicolas, his mouth full, waved a negligent hand. Francis hurried from the room.

  He went down the stairs at twice the speed he and Nicolas had come up. When he came out into the fresh air, he took a deep draught of it, tasting the tang of rain in the wind. By afternoon the clouds that hovered on the northern horizon would blow south, and by evening the autumn rains would begin falling on the city. The horsemistress must have been watching the sky with some anxiety, fearful of being caught by the storm. But then, this particular horsemistress no doubt knew exactly when the rain would come, precisely how much time she had to make her journey from Osham.

  Francis buttoned his greatcoat up to his chin, and thrust his cold hands deep in his pockets. In moments the magnificent sorrel Noble came up from the park at a posting trot, wings rippling in scarlet folds, drops of white lather flying from the jointure of wing and chest. Her rider was slender and tall, her riding cap pulled low over her rather long face. Francis stepped out into the return paddock and waited for them to reach him. When they were close enough, he called, “Mistress Winter! What a pleasure!”

  She lifted a gloved hand, and a moment later, leaped as lightly to the ground as any girl, though he knew she was thirty-eight years old. She was the same age as William, ten years older than he himself. Only the

  weathered lines around her cool blue eyes hinted at her age. She had one of those bony, strong faces that retained its firmness and shape for a long time.

  “Francis,” she said. She put out her hand, and he took it in his own.

  “Philippa,” he answered, squeezing her hand. “I do mean it. It’s wonderful to see a face from home, and especially yours.”

  “That’s kind,” she answered.

  “Have you come from my lord brother? Do you wish to see the Prince?”

  “No,” she said. She gave him a level look. “I carry a letter from Margareth to His Highness, but it’s meaningless. It’s a cover.” At his lifted eyebrows, she nodded. “It’s you I’ve come to see, Francis. An
d William must know nothing about it.”

  PHILIPPAhad spent many months in Arlton years before. Prince Nicolas had not yet taken his father’s throne at the time, but it was clear, even then, that he was a man inclined to indolence. Still, his corpulence surprised her when Francis escorted her into the salon where the Prince sat with two secretaries and an older man.

  Philippa inclined her head, and the Prince laughed. “Never curtsy, you horsemistresses!”

  “No, Your Highness,” Philippa said. “It is not our custom.”

  “I know.” He chuckled. “None of this lot here will curtsy, either.”

  “No offense is intended, my lord.”

  Nicolas waved a hand. “None taken, Mistress. Tell me, what brings you here? Word from Duke William, perhaps?”

  “No, Prince Nicolas.” Philippa took a step closer, and drew an ivory envelope from her pocket. “My headmistress, Margareth Morgan, greets you, and asks for advice on a small detail regarding the flight you have here at the Palace.”

  Some polite conversation followed, remembrances of Margareth’s days spent with Nicolas’s father, when she was still Margareth Highflyer, and Nicolas was a boy. Nicolas asked after William and expressed his regrets over the death of Duke Frederick. He barely glanced at Margareth’s letter before he passed it to a secretary. “Answer that,” he ordered. “Use your best judgment.” The secretary bowed and departed, and Philippa and Francis were soon able to take their leave as well.

  They strolled past the stables and paddocks and out into the rolling parks of the Palace grounds. A well-kept path wound between shrubs and groves, descending to a clear stream that burbled happily away toward the eastern sea. “Autumn comes so late here in Arlton,” Philippa mused, trailing her hand through the drooping, still-leafy branches of a vine maple. “The leaves have all fallen in Osham, and the nights are drawing in.”