"There's nothing wrong with me," Maris said in a reasonable tone of voice. "I was dizzy and weak at first, but I'm getting better. I can walk now — you have to admit that — and I'll be able to fly again."
"You are learning to adjust, to compensate, that's all," Evan said. "But your sense of balance was affected. You will probably learn to adjust to life on the ground. But in the air — an ability you need in the air may be gone now. I don't think you can learn to fly without it. So much depends on your sense of balance—"
"What do you know about flying? How can you tell me what I need to fly?" Her voice was as hard and cold as ice.
"Maris," whispered S'Rella. She tried to catch Maris' hand, but the injured woman pulled away.
"I don't believe you," Maris said. "There's nothing wrong with me that won't heal. I will fly again. I am just a little sick, that's all. Why should you assume the worst? Why should I?"
Evan sat still, thinking. Then he rose and went to the corner by the back door, where the firewood was kept. Separate from the logs and kindling were some long, flat boards, leftover lumber that Evan cut up to use as splints. He selected one about six feet long, seven inches wide, and two inches thick, and laid it down on the bare boards of the kitchen floor.
He straightened up and looked at Maris. "Can you walk along this?"
Maris raised her eyebrows in mocking surprise. Absurdly, her stomach was tight with nerves. Of course she could do it; she couldn't imagine failing such a test.
She rose from her chair slowly, one hand gripping the table edge. She walked across the floor smoothly, not too slowly. The floor did not slip or buckle beneath her as it had that first day. Absurd to say there was anything wrong with her sense of balance; she wouldn't fall on level ground, and she wouldn't fall from a two-inch height.
"Shall I hop on one foot?" she asked Evan.
"Just walk along it normally."
Maris stepped upon the plank. It wasn't quite wide enough to stand normally, feet side by side, so she had to take a second step at once, with no time for consideration. She remembered high cliff ledges she had skipped along as a child, some with paths narrower than this board.
The board wobbled and shifted beneath her feet. Despite herself, Maris cried out as she felt herself falling to one side. Evan caught her.
"You made the board move!" she said in sudden fury. But the words sounded petulant and childish in her ears. Evan only looked at her. Maris tried to calm herself. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean that. Let me try again."
Silently, he let go of her and stepped back.
Tense now, Maris stepped up again and walked three steps. She began to waver. One foot went over the side onto the floor. She cursed and pulled it back, and took another step, and felt the board shift again. Again she missed it. She lifted her foot back onto the board and took another step forward, and lurched to one side, falling.
Evan did not catch her that time. She hit the floor on hands and knees and jumped up, her head spinning from the exertion.
"Maris, enough." Evan's firm, gentle hands were on her, pulling her away from the treacherous plank.
Maris could hear S'Rella weeping softly.
"All right," Maris said. She tried to keep the anguish out of her voice. "There's something wrong. All right.
I admit it. But I'm still healing. Give me time. I will get well. I will fly again."
In the morning, Maris began exercising in earnest. Evan brought her a set of stone weights, and she began working out regularly. She was dismayed to find that both her arms, not merely the injured one, were sadly weakened by her time of enforced idleness.
Determined to test the air again as soon as possible, Maris had her wings taken to the keep, to the Landsman's own metalsmith, for repair. The woman was busy with preparations for the impending war, but a flyer's request was never to be ignored, and she promised to have the damaged struts straightened and restored within a week. She was true to her word.
Maris checked out her wings carefully on the day they were returned, folding and unfolding each strut in turn, scanning the fabric to make sure it was taut and firmly mounted. Her hands fell to the task as if they had never stopped doing it; they were a flyer's hands, and there was nothing in all the world they knew how to do better than tend a pair of wings. Almost Maris was tempted to strap on the wings and make the long walk to the flyers' cliff. Almost, but not quite. Her balance had not yet come to her, she thought, though she was steadier on her feet now. Every night, surreptitiously, she gave herself the plank test. She had not yet passed it, but she was improving. She was not yet ready for wings, but soon, soon.
When she was not working, sometimes she walked with Evan in the forest, when he went abroad to gather herbs or tend to other patients. He taught her the names of the plants he used in his work, and explained what each herb was good for, and when and how to use it. He showed her all manner of animals as well; the beasts of the chilly Eastern forests were not at all like the familiar denizens of Lesser Amberly's tame woods, and Maris found them fascinating. Evan seemed so at home in the forest that the creatures did not fear him. Strange white crows with scarlet eyes accepted breadcrumbs from his fingers, and he knew the hidden entrances to the tunnel-monkey lairs that honeycombed the wild, and once he caught her arm and pointed out a hooded torturer, gliding sensuously from limb to limb in pursuit of some unseen prey.
Maris told him stories of her adventures in the sky and on other islands. She had been flying for more than forty years, and her head was full of wonders. She told him of life on Lesser Amberly, of Stormtown with its windmills and its wharves, of the vast blue-white glaciers of Artellia and the fire mountains of the Embers. She talked of the loneliness of the Outer Islands, hard up against the Endless Ocean to the east, and the fellowship that had once thrived on the Eyrie before flyers had divided into factions.
Neither ever spoke of what lay between them, dividing them. Evan did not contradict Maris when she spoke of flying, nor did he mention any invisible damage to her head. The subject was like a patch of dangerous ground, no wider than a wooden plank, upon which neither was willing to step. Maris kept her occasional dizzy spells to herself.
One day as they stepped outside Evan's house, Maris stopped him from turning deeper into the forest.
"All those trees make me feel like I'm still inside," she complained. "I need to see the sky, to smell clean, open air. How far away is the sea?"
Evan gestured to the north. "About two miles that way. You can see where the trees begin to thin."
Maris grinned at him. "You sound reluctant. Do you feel sad when there aren't any trees around? You don't have to come if you can't bear it — but I don't understand how you can breathe in that forest. It's too dim and close. Nothing to smell but dirt and rot and leaf-mold."
"Wonderful smells," Evan said, smiling back. They began to walk toward the north. "The sea is too cold and empty and big for my tastes. I feel comfortable and at home in my forest."
"Ah, Evan, we're so different, you and I!" She touched his arm and grinned at him, somehow pleased by the contrast. She threw her head back and sniffed the air. "Yes, I can smell the sea already!"
"You could smell it on my doorstep — you can smell the sea all over Thayos," Evan pointed out.
"The forest disguised it." Maris felt her heart lightening with the thinning of the forest. All her life had been spent beside the sea, or over it. She had felt the lack every morning waking in Evan's house, missing the pounding of the waves and the sharp salt smell, but most of all missing the sight of that vast, gray immensity, beneath an equally immense and turbulent sky.
The tree line ended abruptly, and the rocky cliffs began. Maris broke into a run. She stopped on the cliff's edge, breathing hard, and gazed out over the sea and the sky.
The sky was indigo, filled with rapidly scudding gray clouds. The wind was relatively gentle at this height, but Maris could tell from the patient circling of a pair of scavenger kites that up higher the f
lying was still good. Not a day for rushing urgent messages, perhaps, but a good day for playing, for swooping and diving and laughing in the cool air.
She heard Evan approaching. "You can't tell me that's not beautiful," she said, without turning. She took an-other step closer to the edge of the cliff and looked down… and felt the world drop beneath her.
She gasped for breath and her arms flailed, seeking some solidity, and she was falling, falling, falling, and even Evan's arms wrapped tight around her could not draw her back to safety.
It stormed all the next day. Maris spent the day inside, lost in depression, thinking of what had happened on the cliffs. She did not exercise. She ate listlessly, and had to force herself to tend to her wings. Evan watched her in silence, frowning often.
The rain continued the following day, but the worst of the storm was past, and the downpour grew more gentle. Evan announced that he was going out. "There are some things I need from Port Thayos," he said,
"herbs that do not grow here. A trader came in last week, I understand. Perhaps I will be able to replenish my stores."
"Perhaps," Maris said evenly. She was tired, though she had done nothing this morning except eat breakfast. She felt old.
"Would you like to walk with me? You have never seen Port Thayos."
"No," Maris said. "I don't feel up to it just now. I'll spend the day here."
Evan frowned, but reached for his heavy raincloak nonetheless. "Very well," he said. "I will be back before dark."
But it was well after dark when the healer finally returned, carrying a basket full of bottled herbs. The rain had finally stopped. Maris had begun to worry about him when the sun went down. "You're late," she said when he entered, and shook the rain from his cloak. "Are you all right?"
He was smiling; Maris had never seen him quite so happy. "News, good news," he said. "The port is full of it. There will be no war. The Landsmen of Thayos and Thrane have agreed to a personal meeting on that accursed rock, to work out a compromise about mining rights!"
"No war," Maris said, a little dully. "Good, good. Odd, though. How did it happen?"
Evan started a fire and began to make some tea. "Oh, it was all happenstance," he said. "Tya returned from another mission, bearing nothing. Our Landsman was rebuffed on all sides. Without allies, he did not feel strong enough to press his claims. He is furious, I'm told, but what can he do? Nothing. So he sent Jem to Thrane to set up a meeting, to haggle out whatever settlement he can. Anything is better than nothing, I would have thought he'd find support on Cheslin or Thrynel, particularly if he offered them a large enough share of the iron. And certainly there is no love lost between Thrane and the Arrens." Evan laughed. "Ah, what does it matter? The war is off. Port Thayos is giddy with relief, except for a few landsguard who'd hoped to weigh down their pockets with iron. Everyone is celebrating, and we should celebrate too."
Evan went to his basket and rummaged among the herbs, pulling out a large moonfish. "I thought perhaps seafood would cheer you up," he said. "I know a way of cooking this with dandyweed and bitternuts that will make your tongue sing." He found a long bone knife, and began to scale the fish, whistling happily as he worked, and his mood was so infectious that Maris found herself smiling too.
There was a loud knocking at the door.
Evan looked up, scowling. "An emergency, no doubt," he said, cursing. "Answer it if you would, Maris.
My hands are full of fish."
The girl standing in the door wore a dark green uniform, trimmed with gray fur; a landsguard, and one of the Landsman's runners. "Maris of Lesser Amberly?" she asked.
"Yes," Maris said.
The girl nodded. "The Landsman of Thayos sends his greetings, and invites you and the healer Evan to honor him at dinner tomorrow night. If your health permits it."
"My health permits it," Maris snapped. "Why are we suddenly so honored, child?"
The runner had a seriousness beyond her years. "The Landsman honors all flyers, and your injury in his service has weighed heavily on him. He wishes to show his gratitude to all the flyers who have flown for Thayos, however briefly, in the emergency just past."
"Oh," Maris said. She still was not satisfied. The Landsman of Thayos had not struck her as the type who cared much about expressing gratitude. "Is that all?"
The girl hesitated. Briefly her detachment left her, and Maris saw that she was indeed very young. "It is not part of the message, flyer, but…"
"Yes?" Maris prompted. Evan had stopped his work to stand behind her.
"Late this afternoon, a flyer arrived, with a message for the Landsman's ears only. He received her in private chambers. She was from Western, I think. She dressed funny, and her hair was too short."
"Describe her, if you can," Maris said. She took a copper coin from a pocket and let her fingers play with it.
The girl looked at the coin and smiled. "Oh, she was a Westerner, young — twenty or twenty-five. Her hair was black, cut just like yours. She was very pretty. I don't think I've ever seen anyone as pretty. She had a nice smile, I thought, but the lodge men didn't like her. They said she didn't even bother thanking them for their help. Green eyes. She was wearing a choker. Three strands of colored sea-glass. Is that enough?"
"Yes," Maris said. "You're very observant." She gave the girl the coin.
"You know her?" Evan asked. "This flyer?"
Maris nodded. "I've known her since the day she was born. I know her parents as well."
"Who is she?" he demanded, impatiently.
"Corina," said Maris, "of Lesser Amberly."
The runner remained at the door. Maris glanced back at her. "Yes?" she asked. "Is there more? We accept the invitation, of course. You may give the Landsman our thanks."
"There's more," the girl blurted. "I forgot. The Landsman said, most respectfully, that you are requested to bring your wings, if that would not put too great a burden on your health."
"Of course," Maris said numbly. "Of course."
She closed the door.
The keep of the Landsman of Thayos was a grim, martial place that lay well away from the island's towns and villages in a narrow, secluded valley of its own. It was close to the sea, but shielded from it by a solid wall of mountains. By land, only two roads gave approach, and both were fortified by landsguard. A stone watchtower stood atop the tallest peak, a high sentinel for all the paths leading to the keep.
The fortress itself was old and stern, built of great blocks of weathered black stone. Its back was to the mountain, and Maris knew from her last visit that much of it lay underground, in chambers chiseled from solid rock. Its exterior face showed a double set of wide walls — landsguard armed with longbows walked patrol on the parapets — ringing a cluster of wooden buildings and two black towers, the taller of which was almost fifty feet high. Stout wooden bars closed off the tower windows. The valley, so close to the sea, was damp and cold. The only ground cover was a tenacious violet lichen, and a blue-green moss that clung to the underside of boulders and half-covered the walls of the keep.
Coming up the road from Thossi, Maris and Evan were stopped once at the valley checkpoint, passed, stopped again at the outer wall, and finally admitted to the keep. They might have been detained longer, but Maris was carrying her bright silver wings, and lands-guard did not trifle with flyers. The inner courtyard was full of activity — children playing with great shaggy dogs, fierce-looking pigs running everywhere, landsguard drilling with bow and club. A gibbet had been built against one wall, its wood cracked and well-weathered. The children played all about it, and one of them was using a noose as a swing. The other two nooses hung empty, twisting ominously in the chill wind of evening.
"This place oppresses me," Maris told Evan. "The Landsman of Lesser Amberly lives in a huge wooden manor on a hill overlooking the town. It has twenty guest rooms, and a tremendous banquet hall, and wonderful windows of colored glass, and a beacon tower for summoning flyers — but it has no walls, and no guards, and no gibb
ets."
"The Landsman of Lesser Amberly is chosen by the people," Evan said. "The Landsman of Thayos is from a line that has ruled here since the days of the star sailors. And you forget, Maris, that Eastern is not as gentle a land as Western. Winter lasts longer here. Our storms are colder and fiercer. Our soil has more metal, but it is not so good for growing things as the soil in the West. Famine and war are never very far away on Thayos."
They passed through a massive gate, down into the interior of the keep, and Maris fell silent.
The Landsman met them in his private reception chamber, seated on a plain wooden throne and flanked by two sour-faced landsguard. But he rose when they entered; Landsmen and flyers were equal. "I'm pleased you could accept my invitation, flyer," he said. "There was some concern about your health."
Despite the polite words, Maris did not like him. The Landsman was a tall, well-proportioned man with regular, almost handsome, features, his gray hair worn long and knotted behind his head in the Eastern fashion. But there was something disturbing about his manner, and he had a puffiness around his eyes, and a twitch at the corner of his mouth that his full beard did not quite conceal. His dress was rich and somber; thick blue-gray cloth trimmed with black fur, thigh-high boots, a wide leather belt inlaid with iron and silver and gemstones. And he wore a small metal dagger.
"I appreciate your concern," Maris replied. "I was badly injured, but I have recovered my health now.
You have a great treasure here on Thayos in Evan. I have met many healers, but few as skilled as he."
The Landsman sank back into his chair. "He will be well rewarded," he said, as if Evan was not even present. "Good work deserves a good reward, eh?"
"I will pay Evan myself," Maris said. "I have sufficient iron."
"No," the Landsman insisted. "Your near-death in my service gave me great distress. Let me show my gratitude."
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