Airs Beneath the Moon

by Toby Bishop

  Lark said ruefully, “But only Tup complains so loudly everyone can hear him!”

  Hester started to grin, and then remembered the solemnity of the day. She forced a grave expression onto her long face. “He’ll outgrow it, Black, don’t worry.”

  “He wants to join the rest of you in your ground drills,” Lark said. “And so do I!”

  Hester nodded. “I’d say it’s past time for that.”

  They heard a clatter of hooves on cobblestones, and turned to see Philippa and Winter Sunset pass through the paddock gate in a high trot. “Oh!” Lark pressed her palm over the icon she wore under her tabard. “They’re lovely fine, aren’t they, Hester? Mistress Winter . . . surely she’s the finest rider in all of Oc!”

  “They say she defended in the battle for the South Tower of Isamar.”

  “Oh! Did she?”

  “Yes. Alana Rose was lost there, with her horse. I think they teach us all this in the third level.” Hester put a hand under Lark’s arm, and they moved toward one of the carriages. “They try not to frighten us too early in our training,” she added under her breath. “But Mamá told me the whole story.”

  They climbed up into the carriage with four other girls between them, and the conversation ended. Anabel was in the carriage behind them. She waved as she stepped inside. The carriages, draped in black and silver bunting, began to move. Lark leaned from the window to watch as the flights of winged horses launched from the flight paddock, seven by seven, assembling themselves into Open Columns. Mistress Winter and Sunny led the whole, great red wings driving them up, banking toward the White City in a long arc. It was the most magnificent sight she had ever seen. She gazed upward, her lips parted in wonder, as the third-level Academy students and then the second-level also launched.

  The girl next to her, Grace, pressed close to Lark. “Have you ever seen anything so magnificent?” she breathed.

  It was the first time Grace had spoken directly to her, and for an uncomfortable moment Lark wasn’t sure it was she being addressed. But Grace smiled at her, and nodded toward the spectacle aloft. “Nay, Grace,” Lark said hastily. “Never in my life.”

  “And how terrifying,” Grace said, “to fly with all those other horses! What if you make a mistake? What if you bump someone, or drop out of the line, or . . .”

  Lark didn’t know how to answer. She wasn’t terrified at all, but eager and impatient. She thought if Mistress Strong made her ride poor old Pig one more time, she would throw herself on the floor and bang her heels like Tup. They must, they simply must, learn to deal with the saddle. They could fly together, she was certain they could, if Mistress Strong would only release her, let her join Mistress Dancer and her own class. The next time there was a grand occasion like this one, she and Tup would fly with the others.

  TWENTY-NINE

  LARK and Hester and Anabel stood together in the sloping brick plaza of the Tower of the Seasons. The Academy girls mingled with the lords and ladies of Oc, the merchants and shopkeepers, other students released from their studies for the day, and even a few maids and serving-men who could escape their duties to attend the funeral procession of the old Duke.

  Black and silver ribbons and armbands were everywhere, and faces were solemn, but nothing could dispel the air of festival that hung about the White City. The scents of roasting meats and baking puddings wafted from every inn and tavern, and the fragrance of yeast and cinnamon and sugar tantalized the girls from the shuttered tea shops surrounding the plaza. They would not go into the Tower for the funeral itself, but would stand as an honor guard as the coffin was carried out to the caisson. Until that happened, they were free to roam the plaza, to stare up at the aged copper dome, the latticework surrounding the top of the tower, the priests in their forbidding undyed woolen hoods and ropes of wooden beads, filing in and out of the Tower in twos and threes.

  “Look, there’s Lady Beeth!” Anabel said. She started to lift her arm to wave, but then remembered the occasion.

  “She has to go inside for the service,” Hester said. “That’s Papá with her. And Grandmamá and my older brother Graham.”

  “Your brother is a fine-looking man,” Anabel said.

  Lark stood on tiptoe, trying to peer over the heads of the crowd. “I want a blink at your brother,” she complained. “But everyone is so tall!”

  Hester grinned at Anabel. “What do you think, Chance? Shall we give the goat-girl a boost?”

  Anabel laughed, and took Lark’s left arm. Hester seized her right, and the two girls lifted her up above the heads of the crowd around them. Lark giggled, and people turned, frowning until they recognized the girls’ habits. One or two smiled, then nodded indulgently. No one spoke to them. Lark, braced on the arms of her friends, looked across the plaza and found Lady Beeth just going up the steps into the Winter Tower, a small, chubby man in her wake, a tall, broad-shouldered young man after that. “Oh!” she said. “Is that Graham, in the tall hat?”

  “Yes. That’s my brother.”

  “Oh, aye, he’s lovely handsome, Hester!”

  “That he is,” Hester said wryly. “Graham got all the beauty in our family.”

  Lark was about to protest this statement, but another face caught her attention. Surely she had seen that crone before, an old woman with wisps of gray hair coming out from her battered straw hat. But where? Lark puzzled over it, distracted from admiring Graham Beeth. Somehow she associated the old woman with the Uplands, with home, but she couldn’t remember.

  A moment later, the girls set her back on her feet. The crowd had begun to exclaim in low voices, and turn their faces up to the sky. When Lark followed their gaze, she forgot all about the old woman.

  From the west, the direction of the Ducal Palace, a double line of winged horses flew toward the Tower of the Seasons. All three girls tipped their heads back, gripped their hands together, struck with envy and pride at the beauty of the sight.

  A path cleared from the street to the steps of the Tower. An empty caisson, drawn by a single black draught horse, wearing blinkers and his harness wound with black and silver, rattled up over the bricks. Black and silver pennants fluttered from the corners of the caisson. The flyers, in two great double Columns, slowed their wingbeats to soar above the plaza. They circled the dome at a stately pace. A breathless silence spread over the crowd.

  “Oh,” Lark whispered. “Only look at Winter Sunset!”

  The sorrel mare hovered at Quarters at the highest point, just at the center of the copper dome. The movement of her wings as she held her position was elegant, her neck and head outstretched in a perfect line. The slender black figure of Mistress Winter sat so still upon her mount that she might have been a statue. Lark’s heart swelled at the sight. They were too high for her to see details, but she imagined Mistress Winter’s sharp profile serenely still against the clear blue sky, her gloved hands steady upon the reins, her back straight and her head high. Tears of admiration filled Lark’s eyes, casting the whole scene into a golden haze.

  When Mistress Winter signaled with her quirt, the entire company of flyers executed a Half Reverse. The watching crowd gasped as the great circle of flying horses dissolved, opening like the petals of a multihued flower, each horse winging out from the Tower, then wheeling, finding its place again in the re-formed Open Columns. The whole body of them turned back toward the Ducal Palace. They would alight there, and rest until the end of the service, when they would return to escort the funeral cortège from Osham to the Palace cemetery, where for centuries past the Dukes of Oc had been laid to rest.

  A collective sigh swept the crowd as the winged horses left the city. Anabel said, “Imagine! One day we will be part of that.”

  “We have to remember,” Hester said, “how marvelous it looks from below.”

  When the last horse disappeared to the west, murmured conversations began around the plaza, and the crowd began to disperse. Hester said, “It will be hours now.”

  Anabel pulled a little purse
out of her pocket. “My uncle sent me some money,” she said. “Let’s find a tea shop.”

  They chose a place with flower-patterned curtains and cushioned chairs, and were served cups of pale tea and plates of sugared scones. When Anabel tried to pay the hostess, the woman smiled, and waved off her coins. “No, no, young ladies. You just remember me when it’s your turn to fly for the Duke.”

  The girls thanked her, and went out to wander through the throng, passing the hours until they were needed.

  Just before they were to take their places beside the caisson, Lark saw the old woman again, and this time she remembered where she had met her.

  She stood in the shadow of the dome, her gray hair bristling, a goat-hair cloak wrapped around her. She peered up from beneath the hatbrim, and grinned fiercely when she caught Lark’s eye. “Oh, aye, aye, you remember me, don’t you, Missy? You remember old Dorsey!”

  “You’re the witchwoman,” Lark said. She saw Hester and Anabel watching her curiously, and she gestured for them to go on without her. “You’re from Clellum.”

  “Aye, aye, that’s me, that is!” The woman shook with a cackling laugh, and nodded rapidly. “Missy wanted none of old Dorsey’s potions!”

  “No,” Lark said. The witchwoman’s scent had reached her now, and her nose twitched with distaste. Dorsey of Clellum smelled of herbs and beer and unwashed flesh. Horses, Lark thought, no matter how tired or dirty, never smelled as bad as this old woman did. The thought gave her a pang of compunction, and so she tried to say something courteous. “I’m glad to see you well, though, Mistress.” She took a step away, to follow her friends.

  “Oh, aye, aye,” old Dorsey cackled. “I’m well enough. That other one isn’t, though!”

  Lark nodded politely, and tried to edge away, but the witchwoman seized her arm with bony fingers. “You know that other one?” she asked, her eyes fever-bright in her wrinkled face. “You know her?”

  “I told you before,” Lark said. “I don’t know anyone in Clellum.”

  “Aye, aye! But this one, she’s from Osham! She’s had visitors!”

  Lark pulled her arm free. “I don’t know her.”

  “Nay, nay, a pity. She’s that lonely, poor thing, only her baby for company. No voice, no one to talk to. Sold everything to buy a potion, and now she has no money, neither.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lark repeated. “I don’t have any money.”

  “She wasn’t supposed to have the baby,” the witchwoman whispered. “I gave her the potion. Gave her a good potion.” She leaned close to Lark again, and the wave of sour breath made Lark shudder. “Never says a word, that one.”

  “It’s nothing to do with me, Mistress,” Lark said. She firmly disengaged the old woman’s hand from her arm. “If the girl needs help, you must go to your prefect.”

  “Don’t have such in Clellum.”

  Lark paused, looking down at the woman. “Well, then. What’s the nearest town?”

  The witchwoman grinned again, as if the name were going to mean something to Lark. “It’s Mossyrock!” she said gleefully. “Mossyrock, where they have the market!”

  At that moment, the crowd in the plaza hushed, and every head turned up to the sky. Lark looked up, too, and saw that the great company of flyers was on its way back, approaching from the west. She would be late, and Mistress Strong would scold her.

  Without bidding old Dorsey farewell, she began to squeeze her way through the crowd. By the time she found Hester, lined up with the other Academy students, the coffin had appeared in the great double doors of the Tower of the Seasons. Men in the Duke’s livery carried it down the broad steps to the waiting caisson. The new Duke followed, and stood on the steps watching.

  Everyone stood in a somber silence. Lark slipped quickly into her place beside Hester, and turned to watch the great carved coffin being gently laid in the caisson. The draught horse shifted in his traces, and the jingle of his harness was the only sound in the crowded plaza. As the driver picked up the reins, and the caisson began to creak forward, the winged horses above flew in a slow, elegant circle, a formation Lark supposed must be one of the Graces. They dipped and turned, their wings catching the sunlight, the slender black-clad riders swaying with their wingbeats.

  Duke William walked on foot behind the caisson, alone, elegantly tall, his white-blond hair gleaming, his face set in cold lines. The quirt hung from his belt, and Lark stared, lips apart, as he passed her.

  As if he could feel her gaze, his head turned. He found her there, among the others, and his eyes narrowed.

  Later Lark tried to tell herself she was wrong, that she had imagined it. But it wasn’t imagination. The new Duke’s expression changed as he looked at her. The stiffness relaxed from his face. His narrow lips curved in a mirthless smile, and something dark and frightening gleamed from his eyes.

  WHEN the first-level girls returned from the White City, tired and thoughtful after the day of solemn ceremony, the older girls and the horsemistresses were already back, grooming their mounts, feeding them, making their way in twos and threes to the Hall for a late supper. Rosellen and Herbert were busy finding stalls for the visiting horsemistresses, who had flown in for the funeral from Isamar and Marin and the Angles. Lark caught a glimpse of Amberly Cloud just leaving Silver Cloud in a stall at one end of the long row. She couldn’t remember seeing her in the formation today.

  Lark and Hester and Anabel hurried to the stables to see to their horses, and then followed the others to the Hall. Tea and cold sandwiches were laid ready on the long tables. Conversation was scattered, and quiet. Lark, despite the feast of pastries in Osham, was hungry again, and ate three of the thin sandwiches and drank two cups of tea.

  As she finished, she looked up at the head table where the horsemistresses sat. “Hester,” she whispered. “Did you notice Mistress Strong?”

  Hester followed her gaze. “Look at that!” she murmured. “She’s been made senior.”

  Anabel sat near them. “What is it?” she asked. “What do you see?”

  Hester said, “Irina Strong. She has the senior’s insignia on her collar.”

  “When did that happen?” Anabel asked. “Did someone leave?”

  “I don’t think so. They’re all there,” Hester said, scanning the faces that flanked the Headmistress and Mistress Winter.

  The senior instructors always sat in the center seats, the juniors at the ends, or even with the students. And it was true, Lark saw, that Irina Strong now wore the jeweled wings of a senior instructor. “Now I’ll never be allowed to ride Tup,” she said miserably.

  “Or she’ll have bigger worries than making you ride Pig,” Hester said.

  “What flight will she teach?” Anabel wondered.

  Hester shook her head. “I don’t know. Let’s hope it’s not ours.”

  They rose when the Headmistress did, and Lark saw then that the visiting flyers had a table of their own, near the front of the big room. Amberly Cloud was there, looking plumper than ever.

  “Hester,” she whispered. “Do you see that horsemistress there—just by the door?”

  Hester looked over Lark’s head. “You mean the fat one?”

  “Well—yes. She’s the horsemistress from Dickering Park. She was supposed to teach me to ride, but all she did was bend my ears about how hard her life is!”

  “Kalla’s tail,” Hester said in hard voice. “She’s the one who missed the flight today. I heard Mistress Dancer say she barely made it here, and no wonder! What winged horse could carry her?”

  “It’s so sad. Her Silver Cloud is the sweetest gelding.”

  Anabel said, “I will never, never get fat, never.”

  Hester said tartly, “Not on Academy food, you won’t!” and Lark and Anabel giggled as they made their way across the courtyard to the Dormitory.

  Lark went up to the sleeping porch with the others, but after she had washed her face and folded away her cap and gloves and coat, she wasn’t sleepy. It had been such a long, odd
day. The old witchwoman’s face floated through her mind, and then Duke William’s cold smile.

  Some girls were already in their cots. Hester and Anabel were both yawning, pulling on their nightdresses. Lark took off her boots, and sat on the edge of her cot. She thought of poor, gentle Silver Cloud, having to watch all the other horses fly off without him. When she had left Dickering Park for the last time, he had looked after her with such longing. Today had to have been hard for him, even worse than it was for Tup and all the other first-level flyers. Cloud could have expected to fly the Airs and Graces with the others.

  The other girls fell asleep quickly, without even murmuring last bits of gossip to each other. Lark pulled her boots on again, and unfolded her coat. She tiptoed out of the sleeping porch and down the stairs.

  She found the courtyard deserted. Most of the windows of the Hall and the Domicile were dark, their panes reflecting the light of a nearly full moon. In the reading room, a single lamp gleamed through the window. The apartments above the stables were also dark and lifeless. Lark felt as if she had the entire Academy to herself. Not even an oc-hound rose to greet her as she crossed the courtyard.

  She stopped in the feed room for a bit of grain, and then found Silver Cloud’s stall at the end of one of the long aisles.

  The gelding put his nose over the wall, and Lark stroked his cheek. “Cloud,” she murmured. “Was it hard for you today? Poor lovely boy! Maybe Mistress Winter or Mistress Morgan will speak to her, make things better.”

  She offered him the grain. Cloud lipped it delicately from her palm, and blew a warm breath over her cheek. “Ah,” she said, “you recognize me, do you? Yes, lovely boy. It’s good to see you, too.”

  She rubbed the gelding’s ears, and breathed in the familiar smells of horses and hay and sawdust. After ten minutes or so she began to feel sleepy at last. She murmured a good night to Silver Cloud, and turned to go. Just one glance at Tup, she thought, and then, at last, her bed.

  She wandered back down the aisle between the quiet stalls. The winged horses nodded drowsily at her. One or two whickered, and she spoke to them in soothing tones. As she rounded the corner, she glanced across the courtyard and saw that the last lamp had been turned out in the Domicile. She was, she thought, the only person awake in all of the Academy. The thought made her smile, and even though now she felt truly tired and ready to sleep, she hated to give up this moment.