by Airs
“’Tis all about the foal, though, isn’t it, m’lord?”
William turned on Slater, ready to snarl some insult at his devotion to the obvious, but the girl had begun to snivel, and she distracted him. “Not another weepy one, Slater, ye gods,” William said.
Slater gave the girl a sharp slap on her back, and hissed, “Listen, girl, if you want to get safely home, you’d best straighten yerself up.”
She choked back her sobs and tried to wipe her face with her black sleeve. The tabard was far too large for her, and when she moved her foot, William saw that her skirt was divided.
“Slater, what is this?” he demanded. “Is she wearing a riding habit?”
Slater gave him a snaggletoothed grin. “Aye, m’lord. And doesn’t she look a good bit like—you know, sir.” His laugh was low and suggestive. “The brat. From the Uplands.”
“I don’t know—lift your face, girl, so I can see you.”
The girl looked up at him. She was small, like the farm brat, but her eyes were a light brown under heavy lids, and her hair was greasy and ragged-looking. In his current mood, he would have preferred to vent his rage on some drab who looked like Philippa Winter, but he would not admit that to Slater.
William shook his head, feeling suddenly weary to death of the whole thing. “Oh, you take her, Slater,”
he said, with a wave of his hand. “I’m not in the mood after all.”
At this, the girl began to sob again, her eyes rolling to Slater and then back to William, pleading. This made him laugh. “Little fool,” he said. “You’ll be better off, believe me.” From where he stood, he stretched out his arm to chuck her under the chin with his quirt. He hit her just hard enough to make her head snap back, and she cried out, stumbling backward to bump into Slater, then trying to step to the side to get away from the touch of Slater’s dirty hands.
The sight of her fear almost made William change his mind, but his body was utterly unresponsive. He felt no craving at all, not the slightest stirring of lust. In fact, he thought, he had felt no physical desire for some time. He knew it was the potion, but he didn’t dare reduce the dose, not now, not with his goal so close. Sometimes, at night, he stared at his changing body with something like revulsion. It made him feel as if he were divided into two pieces, as if his soul and his body were fighting each other. And though he had denied it to Francis, it was true that the filly was in his mind, night and day, the smell and touch and sight of her driving out all other thoughts.
He turned away to the window again. “Go on, you stupid girl! Get out of here before I have second thoughts. You’re spared an hour of rather hard work, as it happens.” He glanced at Slater over his shoulder, and said softly, “I’m sure Slater will be kinder than I would have been—won’t you, Slater?”
Slater sniggered and pulled the girl out of the room, closing the door behind him. He came back a moment later. “I sent her on her way, m’lord. Not inclined myself, neither.”
“Poor Slater,” William said idly. He leaned against the window frame, tracing the sill with the quirt.
“Everyone else has all the fun.”
“Nay, m’lord. I have my fun.”
William turned his head to eye his serving-man’s unappetizing form. “Do you,” he said lazily. “What fun would that be?”
Slater grinned again as he dug through the pockets of his caped greatcoat. “I meet people,” he said.
“And eat well.” He came up with a flask and two grimy glasses. “Drink, m’lord? Brandy. Took it from that Paulina when she wasn’t looking.”
William sighed and turned his gaze back to the window. “No,” he said. “I’m going to the stable to see Diamond.”
He heard the gurgle of the brandy as Slater poured it, then slurped from the glass. The sound made William’s stomach turn. “Tell me, Slater,” he said. “What’s in this for you?”
“Beg pardon, m’lord?”
“You can’t care about the bloodlines as I do. You’ll never fly, after all.” William turned, and braced his
shoulders against the wall. He said dryly, “I hardly think I am an inspiration to great loyalty.”
Slater showed his yellow teeth. “T’be honest, m’lord, ’tis money and power. Nothing fancier than that. I likes being where the power is.”
“Then you’ve chosen well.”
“Aye. Don’t I know it.” He drank again.
William straightened and pulled down his vest with his hands. “And I suppose, excellent Slater, that if I lost my power, you’d follow after it. What would I do then?”
Slater shrugged, emitting a cloud of body odor, and drained his glass. He grinned again and gave a phlegmy chuckle. “M’lord, if you lose your power, your old Slater will be the least of your problems.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
AFTERErdlin, the hand of winter passed lightly over Oc, leaving only its rain-soaked print on the paddocks and fields around the White City. Tup, who had been a winter foal, was now three years old, and Golden Morning and Take a Chance and the other horses of the second-level class would soon turn four. Spring touched the hills with a tentative green finger, and the bravest birds began to twitter in the hedgerows. At Deeping Farm, Lark thought, with a nostalgic twinge, it would be time to till the dead vines and stems from the kitchen garden and think about laying out the rows of beans and lettuces and squash. But there was little time to dwell on that at the Academy. She and her classmates had begun to worry about mastering the Graces for Ribbon Day.
They wheeled through the misty morning sky at Mistress Star’s command, the horses’ wings sparkling with moisture, the girls’ faces damp with it. Graces could take a variety of balletic forms. For the Foundation flyers, Graces seemed a nuisance, simply a requirement to be dispensed with as soon as possible. For the Nobles, like Anabel’s Take a Chance, they were meant to impress the aristocracy. But for the Ocmarins—and for Tup—Graces were the whole point.
Couriers flew in strange places sometimes. They might fly over the smooth flat fields of Isamar or the rugged peaks of Marin. Their assignments might take them over seas or into the private estates of some of the great lords, or they might take them into the cities, where routes between towers and spires and domes could be narrow and unpredictable. Tup, with his long, narrow wings and small body, was perfect for courier work. And there would be no challenge to the Graces at all if Lark could only fly without the cumbersome saddle. But she had promised to learn to use it, and she meant to keep her promise.
Mistress Star had set the pattern before they launched. Aloft, Hester and Golden Morning took the lead, and Lark and Tup the end. It was like a great dance, the flyers ascending, tilting like swallows around a barn as they swept to the right, their wings at as sharp an angle as they could manage. Mistress Star had told them to imagine they were flying between the crenellated towers of one of the farthest castles, to come to ground in the keep, safe from attackers.
Lark saw, ahead of her, the Foundations cautiously dipping their wings as they turned. The Nobles were more daring, achieving a downward slant to the right with their riders leaning to the left, balancing their weight.
There were only two Ocmarins in the second-level. Lark grinned, watching Grace’s leggy filly Sweet Spring tilt her wings and cut sharply beneath Take a Chance, just in front of her. “That’s it, Tup,” she
called with exuberance. “We can do that, can’t we?”
She felt the surge of energy in his compact body as he increased his speed, driving them higher, and then, at the shift of her weight and the slight pull of the rein, he stilled his wings and veered sharply right and down. Lark clung to her pommel and squeezed her thighs against the stirrup leathers with all her strength. It would have been so much easier, she knew, if she could simply wrap her legs right around Tup’s barrel, her calves snug beneath his wings, her seat glued to his back. Instead, she had to brace her right foot in the stirrup, lean forward and to her left, and do her best not to interfere with his wingbeats.
His angle, she could see, was sharper by ten degrees even than Sweet Spring’s had been. She wanted to look up, to see if Mistress Star approved, but she was afraid to move her head and afraid to release her grip on the pommel. When Tup began to tilt even more, approaching the vertical, she lost her right stirrup. The right thigh roll caught her leg, but the stirrup swung free, and her balance wavered. She crouched over the pommel, gripping it so hard her palms burned, and she exclaimed, “No more, Tup!
No!”
It was doubtful he could hear her, but he knew immediately that something had changed. With a smooth movement, he straightened his flight path, neatly popping her back into the saddle. She found her stirrup, braced her rear against the high cantle, snugged her legs beneath the thigh rolls. With a wing thrust of sheer exuberance, Tup wheeled to catch up with the rest of the flight, his neck stretched long, his hooves tucked so tightly she could feel the flex of his shoulders and hindquarters. He caught the other flyers in three wingbeats, and before she could rein him in, he surged above them, swept across their line, and swooped back to resume his place at the end. Lark’s tongue dried, and she realized her mouth was open, laughing. But when Tup had steadied in his proper place in the formation, she saw the thunderstorm on Mistress Star’s face where she and Star Chaser hovered at Quarters, watching the flyers. Mistress Star signaled the return with a sharp movement of her quirt.
Hester obediently and efficiently led the flight in a wide descending pattern above the Academy grounds, choosing an approach, dropping toward the return paddock. They came down one at a time, first Golden Morning, then Little Duchess, Dark Lad, Sweet Spring, Sea Girl, Take a Chance, and finally Sky Heart, just in front of Tup.
Lark urged Tup, in his turn, toward the paddock. But Tup refused.
She called to him, “Tup! No! We’re going in!” Tup shook his head from side to side, rattling his bridle, then, with a powerful thrust of his wings, he soared up and over the paddock, over the gambrel roofs of the stables, past the tall profile of the Hall. “Tup!” Lark cried. “What are you doing?”
For answer, he flew in a great circle, slowed, and began the Grace again, this time easing himself gently, gently into his tilt. Lark knew she was going to be scolded, would have more penance to do, but she could see what was bothering her bondmate. They had failed the exercise, and he wasn’t willing to accept it. She loosened her rein, settled her boots more securely in her stirrups, and gave herself up to Tup’s lead.
His change of angle was so smooth and gradual this time that she was barely aware of it. Soon she found herself clinging easily to the saddle, her weight perfectly balanced, her right thigh secure beneath the thigh roll, her stirrups tucked close to the cinch. Tup flew this way for a half dozen wingbeats, then, as gracefully and gradually as he had come into the pattern, he leveled his flight path, and began his descending circle.
His landing was perfection, the reaching forefeet, the extended neck, the neatly tucked hind hooves that
struck the ground with almost no impact at all. He cantered up the flight paddock, head high, tail arched and flying, ears stiff with pride. As he trotted to a stop before Mistress Star and Star Chaser, he gave his little whicker, questioning, asking for praise.
“Stable your horse, Larkyn,” Mistress Star said through a jaw so tight Lark wondered she could even speak. “And meet me in the Head’s office.”
Lark nodded. She leaped down from Tup’s back, tapped his wingpoint with her quirt, and waited until he folded his wings before turning toward the stables. Her step felt as heavy as lead as she walked, the exhilaration of the flight, and the newly conquered Grace, draining away. Tup sensed her mood and whimpered in his throat as she opened his stall, led him in, and began to untack him. He butted her shoulder with his nose, and his pinions drooped to the straw.
Lark finished rubbing him down and blanketed him against the still-chilly spring nights. She was about to leave the stall, to go to the Hall as she had been ordered, but she turned back to throw her arms around Tup’s neck, and to bury her cheek in his silky mane. “Oh, Tup,” she whispered. “My lovely fine boy!
They just don’t understand you!”
He whimpered again, and twisted his neck to nuzzle her cheek. She held him tighter. “They think you belong to them,” she said. “They call you by the name they chose, and they tell you what to do and where to go and when! They can’t understand—howindependent you are!”
He lipped at her ear, and she laughed a little, weepily. “Maybe, Tup,” she said shakily, stroking him one last time, “maybe you really are the founder of a new bloodline, a different one. And Kalla sent you to me because she knew I would understand.”
At this, Tup tossed his head, and she laughed aloud. “Oh, aye, you’re certain of that, aren’t you? And I’ll let it go this time, Tup, and take my punishment as if it were my fault. But you and I know that it was you, and you alone, that got us into trouble!”
But she kissed his broad, smooth cheek and left him an extra half measure of grain before she sighed, brushed straw and horsehair off her tabard, and headed across the courtyard to take her scolding.
ITwas the same night, when Lark came late to the sleeping porch after spending two hours in the stables rubbing saddle soap into the instructors’ flying saddles, that she found Amelia waiting for her. All the other girls appeared to be sleeping, but Amelia was perched cross-legged on her cot, reading with the stub of a candle held close to her book. When she saw Lark come in, she tossed her book aside and set the candle on the nightstand.
“Amelia!” Lark said softly. “Surely you should have been in your bed an hour past!”
“I was,” Amelia said in a tense whisper. “But word just came from Matron…my foal is coming…I’m to go tomorrow…to be bonded!”
“At last!” Lark whispered, “Oh, Amelia, wonderful.” Her fatigue evaporated, all at once, and she bounced on her toes with excitement. “Where? When?”
“They’re coming for me in the morning,” Amelia said. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “The mare is in the stables at Beeth House. Oh, you have to come with me, Lark! You and Hester! I’m so afraid—”
Lark sat next to her. “But there’s nothing to be afraid of!”
The Klee girl wound her hands together in her lap. In a voice so low it was almost inaudible, she said,
“What if it doesn’t go well? What if the foal dies, or doesn’t have wings?”
“There’s nothing for it but to wait and see, Amelia.”
Amelia stared down at her hands. In an even lower voice, she said, “And what if it doesn’t like me, Lark? What if it knows I’m Klee?”
Lark put a hand on Amelia’s arm, and was startled to find that she was trembling like a leaf in the wind.
“Beasts don’t care about principalities,” she said. “Tup didn’t care that I wasn’t a lady, nor did Bramble, nor even yon Pig, who tossed me into the dirt of the dry paddock more than once. Your foal will give you one blink and fall in love with you. And Hester and I will be right there with you.”
She hoped that was true. She still had penance to do for her latest offense, but it wouldn’t help to mention that now. “Now,” she said, in a motherly way, though Amelia was almost two years older than she, “do you get into your bed, Amelia, and try to sleep a few hours. It could be a long day tomorrow.”
LADYBeeth, in her efficient and commanding way, disposed of any obstacles to Lark’s and Hester’s coming to Beeth House for the foaling. The girls were excused for the entire day, and not long after breakfast, all three found themselves in the Beeth carriage, hastening to the stables. The morning was chilly and clear, and a layer of frost rimed the swelling buds of beeches and cottonwoods and the first green fuzz on the hedgerows.
Amelia looked pale, her already-colorless lips pinched tight. Hester said heartily, “Stop worrying, Klee.
This is your greatest day!”
Amelia said, “I know,” but she resumed staring out the window, squeezing her
fingers white in her lap.
Hester grinned at Lark above Amelia’s head, and Lark smiled. Every bonded girl had a story like this one. There was nothing they could do to ease Amelia’s anxiety.
It was, Lark mused, as the carriage rolled smoothly out of the Academy lane and into the main road, very much like giving birth yourself. There was a good bit of uncertainty, and in her case, there had been pain and cold and sorrow to add to her stunned excitement at discovering a winged foal in the barn at Deeping Farm. But everyone had to go through her own experience. There could be no surrogates in this process.
Lark had visited Beeth House on two occasions, but still she found herself in awe as the carriage trundled smartly up before the great house, and the footman leaped down to open the doors. Lady Beeth herself came out onto the wide steps to greet them, and they hurried inside with her. Her cook had cups of chocolate laid ready for them, and Hester and Lark drank greedily, hungry again even though they had breakfasted. Amelia, politely, sipped the chocolate, but soon put it down again. Lady Beeth, seeing this, said, “Come now, girls, there’s Jolinda on the back step. Go along with her now.”
“Are you not coming, Mamá?” Hester said.
Lady Beeth, tall and strong and composed, gave a delicate shudder. “No, dear, I leave these things to
you. My own birthings were enough for a lifetime.”
Hester gave a hearty laugh. “So, Mamá,” she said, hugging her. “There is something, at least, you’re not the master of.”
Amelia said nothing. She pulled on her coat, her face pale, her mouth fixed. Lark put an arm around her shoulders as they followed the stable-girl out the back door of Beeth House and into the open door of the large, airy stables. As they walked down the sawdust-strewn aisle between high-ceilinged, roomy box stalls, Lark pulled the icon of Kalla from inside her tabard and slipped the cord over her head. She said, “Amelia, wait.”
