Toby Bishop - Horse Mistress 01

by Airs Beneath the Moon

  Philippa stood helplessly in the windowless sod hut, staring at the leather panel, the door to her prison that had shut her off from the fresh air, freedom, and Winter Sunset.

  FRANCIShad been in favor of rushing into the Aesk compound, but Rys demurred. “They’re capable of anything,” he said. We need to have a plan first.”

  Francis sagged back against the rock he was leaning on. Unspent nervous energy made his head ache, and the smallsword at his belt seemed to have grown heavy.

  The Klee captains had been conferring, and one of them came up now to murmur something in Rys’s ear.

  As they talked, Francis lifted his face and let the drifting snowflakes cool his burning cheeks. He had hoped it would all be over by now. That they might have rescued the children, if they lived, and that he

  would have proved himself. William would never let him forget this if they failed, especially if a winged horse were harmed.

  “Francis,” Rys said.

  Francis turned to see Rys and the captain standing beside him. Self-consciously, he brushed the snow from his face and adjusted the smallsword at his belt. Rys’s grim expression gave Francis no comfort.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “My captains feel we should return to the ship and get out of the bay before the Aesks spot us.”

  “Is there no other choice?” Francis asked. He looked back toward the narrow, boulder-strewn passage that led to the encampment. He yearned to dash in among the Aesks, blade swinging, shouting his fury.

  He could see it in his mind, the Klee soldiers appearing like dark demons out of the snow, matchlocks blazing, the barbarians fleeing in disarray before them.

  The captain spoke with deference, but with authority, too. “No, my lord,” he said firmly. “I’ve fought the Aesks before, and I’ve seen what they can do to hostages. The risk to the winged horse is too great.”

  “And to her rider,” Rys said.

  “Yes, of course,” the captain said. “I think we must hope the horsemistress can find a way to escape on her own.”

  “How is she going to do that?”

  “I don’t know, Francis,” Rys said. “Not yet, in any case. We will withdraw and try to devise a scheme.”

  Francis’s heart rebelled at the delay, and at leaving Philippa and Sunny in Aesk hands, but he could think of no argument. His own burning desire to try his courage would hardly serve. He bowed his head and gave in though it grieved him.

  As quickly and silently as they had come to shore, the soldiers and the two noblemen made their way back to the ship under cover of swiftly falling darkness. Francis climbed aboard, his fingers and his feet chilled to the bone, but even then he didn’t go below, where dinner was being laid out in Rys’s cabin. He stood in the prow of the ship and stared inland. The snow had stopped though the clouds remained. The high plateau and the twisted coastal vegetation gleamed with fresh snowfall. A sharp breeze snapped the edges of the furled sails, and the empty masts groaned. The ship had pulled back behind the sea stack so that the Aesks could not see it.

  Francis hoped Philippa would have something to eat tonight. What about Winter Sunset? How long could she manage without the grain and hay she was accustomed to?

  “My lord,” came a voice behind him. Francis turned to see Rys standing in a lighted doorway. “Come and eat,” the Baron said. “You will be no good to them if you’re exhausted. Or frozen,” he added.

  “I know,” Francis said heavily. He turned away from the vista of land and dark sea and joined Rys in the doorway. “It’s just so damned hard to do nothing.”

  “That’s war, Francis,” Rys answered. He stood back to let Francis precede him down the short stair.

  “War is long stretches of idleness interrupted by episodes of rather shocking violence. I know no other way to conduct it.”

  PHILIPPApaced her prison, back and forth, back and forth. She shuddered with cold and fatigue and worry, and every sound from outside made her body quiver with anxiety for Sunny. Daylight faded with staggering swiftness, and she had neither light nor fire to brighten the dank hut. It smelled of dirt and fish and animal droppings. At one end was a stack of empty barrels she supposed had held foodstuffs of some kind, but which now offered only the tang of long-gone roots and dried fish and other substances she couldn’t identify. The hut had never, she felt certain, been intended for human habitation.

  More than once she pulled at the edge of the leather door panel, trying to see what was happening. Every time, a guard brandished a spear at her. One of the wardogs lay at his feet, and each time she put her eye to the opening, the dog leaped up, bristling and growling. She could see just enough to know that a fire had been set in the fire pit. Flames leaped into the darkness, sparks fading into the sky. The snow had stopped, but it seemed the sky was still cloudy. No starlight penetrated that Philippa could see, and soon she could see almost nothing inside her hut.

  She tried to examine the walls with her fingers, to find any weakness, any hole. She was rewarded with

  splinters and handfuls of crumbling mud, but no door or window or other opening. There was certainly nothing like a chamber pot, which she would need soon. She thrust that concern aside, and continued her examination, wiping her dirty hands on her skirt.

  It seemed to her that the rear wall, behind the barrels, slanted inward, possibly on the verge of collapse.

  She might be able to break that down. She didn’t dare try it now, though. She couldn’t leave Sunny in their hands. She would—and she faced the thought without flinching—rather die.

  The Aesks, it seemed, gathered for a communal meal around the central fire pit. She heard the babble of conversation grow and could detect the smell of cooking. She heard voices as people walked past her jail, and the wardog snapped and growled as if it hated everything and everyone.

  When Philippa had begun to think she would be left utterly alone all night long, the flap over the door was pulled back, and the scarred woman reappeared. She tied back the flap, allowing some of the light from the fire pit to penetrate the darkness of the hut.

  She had a broad, low forehead over a thick nose and eyes so small it seemed inconceivable she had full use of her vision. Her mouth pulled hard to one side, and as she came closer, Philippa saw that the scar that so distorted her face had a thick center of corded flesh, as if she had been slashed with a knife, the edges of the wound inexpertly sewn together. It must have been unbearably painful, Philippa thought, with a rush of pity.

  The woman stepped through the door and held the panel aside for someone else.

  Behind her, carrying a wooden bowl and spoon, her head hanging so low Philippa hardly recognized her, was a young girl with sandy hair and a pale, freckled face.

  “Lissie!” Philippa exclaimed.

  The child did not so much as lift her eyes at the sound of her name.

  EIGHTEEN

  “YOU’REsupposed to do your own chores, Goat-girl.” Petra leaned back against the gate of her horse’s stall, propping herself on her elbows, her riding boots crossed at the ankle. Sweet Reason put his nose over the gate, nodding above her shoulder at Lark, until Petra hissed at him, and he stepped back.

  Petra fixed Lark with a stony gaze. “The Head wouldn’t be pleased with you giving your jobs to a baron’s daughter.”

  Lark had been trundling a wheelbarrow down the aisle, full of soiled straw to be put into the refuse heap.

  Amelia Rys carried a shovel in one hand and a pitchfork in the other. Her tabard and skirt were littered with bits of hay and other dirt. She stopped midstride and looked at Petra for a long moment, until the older girl began to redden.

  “Naturally I felt it was proper to offer to help my sponsor with her work, since I have little else to do until my foal arrives,” Amelia said in her uninflected voice. Lark, who had been about to protest Petra’s accusation, put down the handles of the wheelbarrow. She would not want to miss this exchange. The past day had given her reason to believe Amelia Rys could deal with a
nyone or anything that came her way.

  Petra’s forced accent intensified. “I hardly think you should be shoveling muck from that little crossbred’s stall, Miss Rys. You’ll have enough of that to do for your own foal.”

  “I wonder,” Amelia said, almost casually, “why you concern yourself with the way I spend my time? I’ve observed how busy all you third-level flyers are.”

  Petra’s blush darkened, and she dropped her elbows from the gate and attempted a casual shrug. “You will do as you please, of course,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’s unfortunate there was no more suitable person assigned as your sponsor.”

  Lark laughed at that. “As you were suitable for me, Sweet? Calling me names and predicting my failure every other day?”

  Petra’s lip curled. “It’s hardly an accident that the Duke himself is keeping an eye on you, Black. I merely

  share his concerns.”

  Lark drew an outraged breath, but Amelia spoke. “How nice for you,” she said in that modulated voice,

  “to be in His Grace’s confidence.”

  Petra’s eyes narrowed, and one hand strayed uneasily to her throat. Lark guessed she was not certain whether Amelia had insulted her or not. “Well,” she said, after a pause, “if you insist on doing Black’s work for her, you’d better get on with it.”

  “Yes,” Amelia said. “Do excuse us.”

  She nodded to Petra and turned away. Lark, biting her lip to suppress a giggle, picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow again and trundled it down the aisle.

  Once the muck had been dumped in the refuse heap and mixed with the rest of the compost, she and Amelia stowed the tools in the tack room and walked back to Tup’s stall. The first emotion Lark had seen on Amelia’s face had been when she had introduced the Klee girl to Tup. Amelia’s eyes softened, and her lips parted as she watched Tup drop his nose into Lark’s hand, as he rustled his gleaming wings, as Lark fed him, brushed him, polished his hooves. Her voice softened, too, when she spoke to him.

  They went into the stall now, and Amelia stood back, allowing Lark to touch Tup first. Lark smiled over her shoulder. “He likes you, Amelia. You can stroke him if you like.”

  Amelia’s smile brought something like beauty to her narrow face. She stepped forward, without fear but without hurrying and laid her palm on Tup’s gleaming neck. “You beautiful creature,” she said softly.

  “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than you are.” His ears flicked in her direction, and he blew air through his nostrils.

  Lark chuckled. “Tup’s a one for compliments.”

  Amelia drew her hand down Tup’s muscled neck, over the jointure of his wings, up to ruffle his silky mane. “It’s a miracle,” she said, her voice a little throaty.

  “Kalla’s miracle,” Lark said as she poured grain into Tup’s feed bucket.

  “That, of course,” Amelia said quietly. “But I meant, it’s a miracle that I’m here. That one of these glorious horses will one day bond to me.”

  “It was for me, too,” Lark said.

  Amelia turned to look at her, her face settling again into its still lines. “Was it?”

  “Oh, aye,” Lark assured her. She opened the stall gate and held it for Amelia. “’Twas never meant to be that I should bond with a winged horse. ’Tis why the Duke hates me so.”

  “Does he hate you?” Amelia asked.

  “He does.” Lark called to Bramble and let her into the stall.

  Amelia watched this ritual, her eyebrows rising. “Do you always leave an oc-hound in his stall? The other winged horses don’t have one.”

  “Well, they don’t have them anymore. They did, when they were foals. Oc-hounds keep the foals company when they’re small.”

  “But Seraph has that sweet little goat.”

  “Aye.” Lark shrugged. “I just feel better if Bramble’s there, too.”

  Amelia seemed to accept this without comment. Lark led the way out of the stables and across the courtyard. “My bonding was a mistake, in Duke William’s view.”

  “But not in yours,” Amelia said.

  Lark ran her fingers through her short curls, dislodging bits of straw and no small amount of horsehair.

  “Tup’s coming to me was no accident. I believe the horse goddess sent his dam, the sweetest little mare you could ever hope to know, to us at Deeping Farm. We didn’t know she was with foal, but we cared for her when she was almost dead from hunger. Tup was Kalla’s gift to me. That’s why I wear this.” She lifted the icon of Kalla on its thong and held it out for Amelia to see. As they turned into the Dormitory to change for dinner, she said, “I had never even seen a winged horse before he came. And once he was foaled, I slept in the barn for the better part of two weeks!”

  Amelia Rys said, “Of course. I would have done precisely the same.”

  INthe morning, Lark and Hester escorted Amelia to the Headmistress’s office. Hester’s mamá wanted to

  meet the daughter of Baron Rys of Klee. Hester and Amelia had not yet spoken together. They kept a careful distance apart, and their expressions were neither friendly nor unfriendly. Lark watched this with bemusement. Surely, the two had much in common, growing up as they had. Lark would not believe Hester capable of envy, but her friend seemed wary around Amelia, as if loath to reveal anything of herself.

  The girls found the Headmistress standing on the steps of the Hall, shading her eyes as she peered to the north. A thin snowfall had come during the night, frosting the paddocks and the hedgerows faintly with white. The air was cold enough to make lungs ache.

  Lark said absently, “The bite of winter has sharp teeth.”

  Amelia turned her cool glance her way. “Is that another Uplands saying?”

  Lark nodded, and said distractedly, “Oh, aye.” Like Mistress Morgan, she searched the horizon, longing to see a winged horse appear above the towers of the White City on its return flight. There was no sign of Winter Sunset.

  Mistress Morgan turned when she heard the girls’ footsteps and made some greeting, but Lark saw the worry in her eyes, and the quiver of anxiety she had felt herself ever since Mistress Winter set out for Onmarin and Aeskland intensified. The icon at her breast seemed to burn through her tabard, and she scanned the grounds of the Academy, fearful of seeing Duke William’s brown gelding. She breathed a little easier when she saw Lady Beeth’s carriage turn into the drive.

  Hester kissed her mother, then she and Lark left Amelia to go into the Hall with Lady Beeth and Mistress Morgan. They crossed the courtyard to the stables, where Mistress Star was expecting them. Lark asked quietly, “Do you not like Amelia, Hester?”

  Hester didn’t meet her eyes. “It’s not a question of liking. It’s a question of trust.”

  “You don’t trust her?”

  “Oc has plenty of reason not to trust Klee. And Amelia Rys is Klee.”

  “But—Baron Rys is trying to save Lissie and Peter!”

  They had reached Goldie’s stall, and Hester stopped. “Black, the Baron is a politician, and Amelia is a politician’s daughter.”

  Lark grinned. “So are you, Morning.”

  Hester laughed, and shrugged. “Yes,” she said. “That’s why I’m withholding judgment.”

  “Lord Francis trusts the Baron.”

  “Lord Francis is no politician. And I’m afraid he’s rather naive.”

  “Don’t you think the Baron is sincere about finding the children, then? About bonding his daughter to a winged horse?”

  “I think it is expedient for him.”

  Lark shook her head. “You should have seen Amelia yesterday with Tup. She—she came alive, for the first time since she’s come here. I believe she, at least, is sincere.”

  “Perhaps.” Hester opened the gate to Golden Morning’s stall and went in. She lifted a halter from its hook, then turned with the halter in her hands. “Ask me about the Ryses again, Black, when Mistress Winter is back safely.”

  Hester turned to her horse, le
aving Lark staring at her back. Something cold clutched at her heart.

  Hester, she saw, was as worried as she was.

  She shivered and turned to hurry down the aisle to Tup’s stall.

  THEREwas still no sign of Mistress Winter by evening. Amelia Rys spent most of the day in the Headmistress’s office. The early darkness of winter enfolded the Academy grounds before suppertime, and the girls blanketed their horses and laid down extra straw for their feet. Hester finished with Goldie, and begged Lark to hurry.

  Lark promised she would. She stepped outside the stables to call for Bramble just as cold white stars were beginning to prick the night sky.

  The sound of her calling brought Herbert out of the tack room. “What are you needing the oc-hound for, Miss?” he asked brusquely. “Surely your little black is past needing her for company.”

  Lark bit her lip. She liked Herbert, and she knew he was missing Rosellen as much as she was. But she was fearful of expressing her fears about Duke William, despite what had happened the year before. The very walls, it seemed, listened for a stray word. “I—” she began, and then faltered. Bramble saved her by bounding up, thrusting her sleek head beneath Lark’s hand, her plume of tail waving.

  Herbert’s wizened face creased in gloomy lines. “Your little stallion doesn’t need protection now,” he said. “I mean, anyone who tries to come in these stables again—that is, I wouldn’t let it happen, Miss Hamley.”

  “It was never your fault, Herbert!” Lark said hastily. “And I know you—I mean—Oh, Herbert, I just sleep better, knowing Bramble is with Tup.”

  Herbert considered this for a moment, one finger rubbing the side of his nose. At last he sighed, and said,

  “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter, Miss. She’s not needed elsewhere until the spring foaling.”