by Airs
She walked on trembling feet across the cobblestones toward the Hall, trying to convince herself that it was her imagination, that it was exhaustion after the stressful day, and her fear for Bramble, but she couldn’t drive away the feeling that something had happened, some further disaster.
“Zito’s ears,” she muttered, an epithet that had not come to her lips since she left the Uplands. “Will no one tell me what is happening?”
LARKtossed and turned on her cot until the pale dawn washed the stars from the sky. Only then did she fall into a fitful sleep, with dreams and alarms disturbing her often. When Matron roused the girls on the sleeping porch, Lark felt exhausted and dry in that way she had felt during lambing season, when sleep
came in short bursts, and was always interrupted. She struggled into her clothes, grateful that she had no need to spend time on her rider’s knot as the other girls did. She ran a comb through her short curls, splashed water on her face, cleaned her teeth, and was ready.
Despite her anxiety, she was ravenous. As she sat down to breakfast between Hester and Amelia, it occurred to her that she had not eaten since breakfast the day before. She ate everything she was given and took every scrap of buttered toast from the tray when the others were done.
Amelia only looked at her in that unreadable way she had, but Hester laughed. “Black, you’ve eaten enough to make Goldie full!”
“I know,” she said. “Are you going to eat those apple slices?”
Hester chuckled, and passed her plate so that Lark could have the last of her fruit. “Poor Black Seraph,” she said, as she brought it back to her place, empty now of every scrap. “I hope he feels strong this morning, now that you’ve eaten enough for two! We’re supposed to be drilling Grand Reverses.”
Lark groaned, and Amelia raised her eyebrows. “Are they difficult?” she asked.
“No,” Hester said, leaning forward to see Amelia past Lark. “Except Black would rather fly them bareback.”
Lark was about to answer, but Matron interrupted her, bustling up behind her to tap her shoulder.
“Larkyn,” she hissed. “The Headmistress wants you, quick!”
Lark pushed her chair back, trembling with renewed anxiety. “Has something happened, Matron?” she asked.
Hester stood, too. “What is it, Black? What’s wrong?”
Lark shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Maybe,” Hester said with a wry grin, “it’s about your punishment for yesterday.”
“No doubt,” Lark sighed.
Matron, already at the door, turned and gestured to Lark to hurry. Lark said hastily, “Hester, explain to Mistress Star for me, will you? I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She hurried after Matron, leaving Hester shaking her head.
As she trotted after Matron to the Hall, Lark thought Hester probably was right. Mistress Morgan had no doubt thought of some task she could do to show her penitence, something hard so that she would not repeat her offense. But why now? Why not wait until after her flight? Her stomach roiled with the big breakfast she had eaten so quickly.
Matron opened Mistress Morgan’s door and stood back. Lark, trying to moisten her dry lips with her tongue, walked past her on trembling legs.
When she saw the tall, burly man in the Headmistress’s office, his broomstraw hat in his hand, standing with his feet apart in his old, well-polished farm boots, for a moment she couldn’t speak. She stared at him, caught in an undertow between fear at what might have brought him here and joy at seeing him for
the first time in months.
He gave her a nod. “Lark,” he said, in his familiar rumbling voice.
“Oh! Oh, Brye!” And she threw herself into her eldest brother’s arms.
“WON’TPamella come to speak for us?” Lark said anxiously. “After all you’ve done?”
Brye shook his head, heavily, sadly. “The poor lass is so terrified of her brother,” he said. “Edmar got it out of her, somehow.”
“Is she speaking, then?”
“Nay, not to me. But Edmar, when he comes home from the quarry, spends most of his time with her and the little boy, and he learns things. You can see for yourself, in any case, that whenever the Duke’s name is mentioned she turns that white, it would frighten you.”
“But to lose Deeping Farm…” Lark shuddered, hardly able to take it in.
“Now, Larkyn,” said Mistress Morgan. “You must not give up hope. The Council of Lords has to vote on such a confiscation.”
“And what’s the charge?” Lark demanded. “’Tis the Duke who has committed crimes!”
“Hush, child,” the Headmistress said. “Even here, his spies may be listening.”
Lark put her fingers to her lips. Brye reached out one big hand and laid it gently on her shoulder. She had forgotten how hard his hands were. Indeed, his whole big body was rigid with muscle. The Hamleys often marveled that Lark should be so different from her brothers. Silent Edmar and handsome Nick were both muscled and tall, though not so tall as Brye. They had teased Lark as a child, calling her bobbin, and button, and mouse.
“Mistress Morgan has the right of it,” Brye said heavily. “I will speak before the Council, as is my right since the Duke wants to take our farm. But I had thought that Mistress Winter—if she would—could support me. If it doesn’t cause trouble for her.”
They had explained Philippa’s absence to him and their hope that she would return any moment.
“Mistress Winter won’t care about trouble,” Lark said stoutly. “But Brye, Duke William must have learned that Pamella can’t speak. We always thought he was afraid of what she would say, and that would keep Deeping Farm safe from him.”
“We had a stranger with the bloodbeets crew,” Brye said. His shoulders sagged at the admission.
“Should have known better. Should have suspected…but he seemed all right.”
“You think he was a spy,” Lark said.
“Aye, I fear so.” Brye turned his broad-brimmed hat in his hands. “The summons came soon as he left Willakeep.”
“How did you get here?” Lark asked. “I didn’t see the oxcart.”
“I took the mail coach,” he said. “Nick needed the cart. And I don’t know how long all this might take.”
“What is the charge against you, Master Hamley?” Mistress Morgan asked.
“Treason,” he said bluntly. “For harboring a winged horse of the bloodlines.”
WILLIAMlaid his quirt across Jinson’s neck, enjoying the blanching of the man’s color as the power of the cold leather closed his throat. “Give me a reason,” he purred, “why I should not kill you the way I told you to kill that dog.”
“M’ lord,” Jinson choked, “I’m sorry. I told you, I thought she was dying, I didn’t think she could last much longer…”
“You thought?” William said. He pressed the quirt harder, seeing Jinson’s flesh crease, hearing his breath rasp. “You should have made sure.”
“I know, m’lord, it’s just that…she’s such a nice dog, and the flyers…”
“Don’t talk to me about the flyers, I don’t care about that! I gave you your position, and you owe me fealty.”
“I do,” Jinson croaked. “And I—I’ve proved it, my lord.” He didn’t try to push the quirt away, but lay where he was, trying to breathe. His eyes pled with William, and his pitiful look turned William’s stomach.
William sighed and lifted the quirt. He couldn’t, after all, kill everyone who irritated him. “What does that mean, Jinson, you’ve proved it? Speak plainly, man.”
Jinson took a ragged breath, and sat up, keeping a cautious eye on the quirt. “M’lord,” he said. “Come to the stables. At Fleckham House. I’ve something to show you.”
William stood back and let Jinson get up from the floor, where he had shoved him in his spasm of fury.
He supposed he should give the stable-man—that is, his Master Breeder—a bit of latitude. It went with the job, no doubt, a love for animals, a
soft heart for beasts in pain. A lopsided smile twisted his lips. He could leave the soft heart to Jinson; fortunately, he himself suffered no such affliction. He would be the one to see that things got done, that changes were made. Such a revolution required a strength of will no one else possessed. Certainly his father had not had it.
They went alone to Fleckham House, William riding his tall brown gelding, Jinson his own rather chicken-necked piebald mare. The day was clear, the air dry and cold. Clouds hung low over the western hills, but the spire and towers of the White City caught the pale sunshine.
It was not far from the Palace to Fleckham House, but Jinson’s mare had nothing like the speed of William’s horse. Her trot looked, to William, like riding in a cart over boulders. Jinson jigged and bounced until William wondered his teeth didn’t rattle. “You need a better horse, man,” he said with a laugh.
“Aye, m’lord,” Jinson said, his voice uneven. “But I prefer a carriage.”
William shook his head. He would have to find a better Master Breeder soon. Jinson was an embarrassment.
Except for a housekeeper and two gardeners, Fleckham House had been left empty when William and Lady Constance moved into the Ducal Palace. Though there was no family left to live in it, William had declined several offers to purchase the estate, having his own reasons for keeping it. He glanced up at the house now, its curtainless windows blank, its doors locked, its stone entryway littered by fallen leaves.
The house of his boyhood looked abandoned. Lonely.
His lip curled at his own romantic thought. Careful, he admonished himself. You’ll be as soft as Francis if you don’t keep a firm hand.
Jinson urged his mare through the grove of beech trees that masked the small stable from the main house. He dismounted and looped her reins over the hitching post. He loosened her cinches before he turned toward the stable.
William only leaped down from his own gelding and dropped the reins where they were. It was not his job to see to the horse’s comfort. He had more pressing concerns.
It was warmer inside the stable. William shrugged out of his long black cloak and tossed it over the nearest gate. He followed Jinson down the aisle to the farthest stall.
Jinson reached the stall, opened the half-gate, and stood back. His thin features twisted into a sort of conflicted pride, and William eyed him briefly, thinking the man must decide, once and for all, whom he would serve. Then he turned to look into the stall, and what he saw there drove all other thoughts from his mind.
The smells of soil and foaling still permeated the box stall, but these things, for once, made no impression on William’s senses. The world dropped away, and he brought his entire focus to the foal in the stall. It was a tiny, trembling, big-eared creature staggering beside its dam on long, thin legs. The mare was white, and wingless. The foal was gray, like the one that had died the year before, but lighter, with ghostly dapples over the back and hindquarters. The mane and tail were the silvery color of winter moonlight, so pale they glowed in the dimness of the stall.
But what made William’s breath catch in his throat, made a thrill run through his nerves and tingle in his fingers, were the delicate silver wings, fragile, shining things, clamped to the foal’s sides.
“Colt or filly?” he breathed.
“Filly, m’lord,” Jinson said.
Filly. This could be the foundress of his new bloodline, the one he had spent most of his adult life striving for.
She showed her Noble sire’s breeding in the line of her back, the depth of her chest. The Foundation strain, from the wingless horses William had experimented with, showed in the shape of her hoof, the flatness of her croup, her color. But her head was finely made, with the wide eyes and delicate muzzle of an Ocmarin, which her dam was. She was perfect, this little silver filly. She could spawn a whole line of perfectly crossbred horses. Winged horses.
Horses who would, William was determined, fly with men.
Cautiously, he stepped into the stall, smoothing his embroidered vest as he went.
From the aisle, Jinson said, “M’lord, please, if this one doesn’t take to you either—please, sir, there’s the Rys girl at the Academy. She’d be glad of a winter foal. It might take to her, even if we wait until tomorrow, and we wouldn’t need to tell ’em when she was foaled.”
William ignored him. His attention was all for the filly.His filly. “She’s bigger than I expected,” he murmured.
“She’ll be strong,” Jinson said.
“Such a pretty color,” William said, surprising himself. He was not normally given to girlish notions.
But shewas pretty, her coat shining in the gloom as if sprinkled with diamond dust. “A silver horse, a winged horse,” he murmured. “A little diamond of a horse who will carry the Duke of Oc into the sky.”
Jinson made a small sound in his throat, and now William did look up. He fixed him with a hard gaze. “If you can’t be quiet, leave,” he said.
“It’s just—m’lord—” Jinson turned his hat in his hands, and shuffled his feet, the picture of misery. “I wouldn’t want you to—I mean, the last one—you—”
“It died. Say it.”
“M’lord, a winged horse! If it won’t bond to you…”
“If it won’t bond to me, it’s worthless.”
“Please,” Jinson begged. “I’ll do whatever you say, if you just—”
“You’re a weakling, Jinson,” William said conversationally. “And I’m not.” He turned his eyes back on the little filly, who had buried her nose beneath her dam and begun to suckle. “Get out now, man. Leave me alone with my foal.”
TWENTY-SIX
ITwas hard for Lark to concentrate on her duties when she knew Brye had gone off to stand alone in the Council of Lords, that great marble Rotunda that sat like an Erdlin cake in the center of the White City.
Mistress Morgan had sent a note to Lord Beeth, in hopes of securing a sympathetic ear in the Council, but Lark knew all too well how the highborn Lords would sneer at the Uplands farmer in his thick boots and worn winter coat. Trying to keep her nerves in check, she brushed Tup till he gleamed, and cleaned his stall until she could have eaten her own supper on its floor.
Tup caught her mood and pranced in his stall, whimpering. When she remonstrated, he kicked at the back wall as he had done when he was younger, when he had almost destroyed his stall. He needed exercise, but their flight had been necessarily short this morning. The lowering sky was gray and threatening, and the air was perilously cold for horses and girls alike.
The hand of the year had begun to open, as they said in the Uplands, bleaching the land of color, drying the grass, turning the hills white with frost. The first snowfall had melted, but more was coming, perhaps even today. Lark worried about Brye, and Deeping Farm, but she worried about Mistress Winter, too.
By the middle of the day, her nerves and Tup’s were frayed to threads. Lark went to the tack room, where Bramble still lay on her pallet of blankets, and spent a few minutes changing her bandage, persuading her to drink a bit of warmed water. She was there when she heard hoofbeats in the courtyard, and she ran to the window to look out.
A battered and weathered hackney coach, with much-mended wheels, circled the courtyard to come to a rattling stop before the Hall. Two plain horses, one gray, the other brown, champed at their bits and switched their tails against the traces as the driver reined them in. The families of the Academy girls all had their own carriages, with matched pairs, and Lark had not seen a rented coach since she had been here. She leaned farther into the window casement, trying to see who might have come in such an odd conveyance.
When she saw Winter Sunset behind the coach, blanketed and wingclipped, on a long halter lead, her heart missed a beat.
“Kalla’s teeth!” Lark breathed. “Something’s happened to Mistress Winter!” She whirled away from the window and dashed headlong down the stairs.
She reached the courtyard at the same moment that the carriage door opened.
Relief made her giddy as she saw the horsemistress climb down, looking lean and weary, but blessedly standing on her own two feet. Mistress Winter glanced at Winter Sunset, then leaned back into the carriage as Lark raced across the cobblestones. She skidded to a stop, crying, “Oh, Mistress Winter! We’ve been so—”
Philippa Winter turned about, suddenly, her finger to her lips. Lark stopped and stared past her into the interior of the coach.
Baron Rys was there, with two men Lark didn’t recognize, both in the blue wool uniforms of the Klee.
With careful movements, they were lifting someone, someone wrapped in blankets. The Baron himself pillowed the person’s head as Mistress Winter guided them out of the coach and down to the cobblestones. Lark, on tiptoe, saw only the white-blond hair of the Fleckhams above the blankets.
Lark spun about to run up the stairs of the Hall to tell Mistress Morgan. The faces of the Baron, of Mistress Winter, and of the Klee soldiers, and the limpness of the blanketed form, made it clear that something grave had happened, and that it had happened to Lord Francis.
The first snow began to fall in tiny flakes that clung to the coats of the soldiers as they laid Lord Francis on a litter of poles and canvas. They started up the steps, maneuvering with care. Philippa Winter and Baron Rys followed, their breath pluming in the frigid air. Mistress Morgan had come down, and she held the doors open for them to pass through.
Mistress Winter’s nose and chin looked sharp as knife blades, and her cheeks were hollow. She stood to one side as the men carried the litter into the Hall, her hands knotted together before her. As she turned to follow them, she paused in the doorway, and looked up into the swirling snow. “Larkyn,” she said hoarsely. “Winter Sunset…if you could…”
“Oh, aye, Mistress!” Larkyn said, relieved at having something to do. “I’ll see to her, I promise! I’ll rub her down and get her some warm water and grain.”
As she ran down the stairs to take Winter Sunset’s lead, she wondered if that gleam in Philippa Winter’s eyes had been the shine of tears. But surely not, she told herself, as she led the winged horse across the courtyard to the stables. Mistress Winter was always strong, always clear in her purpose. She would never shed tears.
