“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 she was 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 fray
ed 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.
Lark spent an hour with Winter Sunset. She removed her blanket, rubbed her vigorously with a clean towel, then brushed her. It took a long time to get the rough spots out of her sorrel coat, to comb the tangles out of her mane and tail. She brought her a bucket of warmed water, and when the mare had drunk her fill, Lark put a measure of grain in her feed bin. She went to the tack room to find a clean blanket, carrying the soiled one over her arm. Erna came in just as she was dropping the dirty blanket into the wash pile.
“What’s this, then?” she asked in her sullen way. “More work for me?”
Lark was too relieved at Mistress Winter’s safe return to snap at the stable-girl. “Winter Sunset’s blanket was filthy,” she said mildly. “She needed a clean one.”
She could see Erna looking for some way to object to that and finding none. She left the girl staring at the wash pile as if it would hie itself into the tub on its own if she glared at it long enough. At another time, Lark might have let Erna know in some detail just how many loads of wash she herself had scrubbed in a tin tub on Deeping Farm, but at this moment, she wanted only to assure herself that Winter Sunset was as clean and warm and comfortable as she could make her. She stroked Bramble on her way out of the tack room, and the oc-hound thumped her tail without opening her eyes.
Tup had calmed, no doubt because Lark herself was so much calmer. He was happily drowsing in one corner of his stall, Molly the goat snuggled up against him. Sunny was munching grain. Lark buckled the fresh blanket around her and dashed across the courtyard through steady snowfall to see what else she might do to help.
She found that Lord Francis had been installed in the tiny guest room on the second floor of the Hall,
opposite the reading room. The two blue-uniformed Klee soldiers guarded the half-open door to the apartment. The door to the reading room stood wide open, and Amelia Rys was there with her father.
The afternoon was wearing on to dusk, and the falling snow blotted out what little light was left. Even as Amelia stood to invite Lark into the reading room, one of the maids came along with a taper, lighting the lamps and the wall sconces. The fire crackled nicely in the reading room, but Baron Rys looked cold and tired.
“Black,” Amelia said. Her manner reflected nothing of the drama of the day. “Do come and meet my father. Father, this is my sponsor. Larkyn Hamley, now called Black.”
Baron Rys bowed, and Lark inclined her head.
“Father says,” Amelia told her, “that the children of Onmarin have been restored to their parents.”
“Oh,” Lark said weakly. “Oh, my lord, that is wonderful news. Rosellen—my friend—she would be so grateful.”
“They’ve had a bad time of it,” he said. His voice was hard, and his eyes looked as weary as Mistress Winter’s. “But the Aesks have paid the price for their suffering.”
“And Lord Francis?” Lark dared to ask. “Will he live?”
“That, I’m afraid,” Baron Rys answered her, “is something we don’t know yet.”
PHILIPPAleft Francis to Matron’s care. Margareth had dispatched Herbert to the Palace for the Duke’s own physician, and there was nothing further to be done until he arrived. Matron, diffidently, suggested the witchwoman who lived just beyond the Academy, but Philippa and Margareth both disdained the suggestion. Francis was comfortable for the moment, at least, though he occasionally moaned and protested something about having failed.
Philippa heard Rys whisper to Francis, bending close to his ear. “You did not fail, my friend,” he said.
“Both children are safe.” But Francis evidently was past comprehension.
Philippa knew she had no need to check on Winter Sunset. No one could take better care of her mare than the Uplands farm girl. With a weariness beyond belief, Philippa went down the staircase and into the dining room. She would eat, and bathe, then sleep, and try to erase from her memory the images of dead bodies on a bloodstained field of snow.
Conversation in the dining room was subdued, and when the students and the horsemistresses saw Philippa, it died away completely. She walked to the high table, feeling every pair of eyes on her back, and took a seat. Kathryn Dancer signaled for someone to bring her a plate, and she nodded her gratitude.
“Are you all right, Philippa?” Kathryn asked her.
“Cold, dirty, and hungry,” Philippa said. “But otherwise well.”
“We hear,” Suzanne Star said softly, “that Lord Francis lies dying upstairs.”
Philippa had just picked up her soup spoon, but she laid it down again, staring at the fragrant, pale broth in her bowl. Everything sparkled in the lamplight, the crystal, the silver, the white tablecloths. S
he looked up at her colleagues, and at the young women seated at the long tables. Their clean faces and hands, their neat hair, their immaculate riding habits, reproached her. “Kalla’s teeth,” she gritted, “I hope he’s not dying.”
“A barbarian stabbed him?” someone said.
Philippa fingered her spoon and didn’t answer for a long moment. When she found a way to put her thoughts into words, she found that her voice was more gentle than usual. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose you could say that. But I don’t know that I will ever think of the Aesks as barbarians again, though they live a barbaric life. They have—” She swept the elegant dining room with her glance, the old, graceful wall sconces, the carved oak chairs, the sideboards laden with savory dishes. “They have nothing,” she finished. “Nothing but snow and rocks and fish to sustain them.”
“But they attack innocent folk,” Suzanne protested. “And take hostages!”
“I know.” Philippa took a spoonful of soup, and closed her eyes at the perfection of its delicate taste. “I know they do. And they have been punished for it.” She took another spoonful as her colleagues watched her. One or two were shaking their heads doubtfully. Philippa put down the spoon again and
folded her arms. “It’s easy for you, sitting here with a good meal and a warm room and clean clothes.
But I wonder, if we had to live as they do, if we might not behave in ways we now think barbaric.”
“Ridiculous!” someone said, and several women agreed. “Never!”
“You know nothing about it, any of you,” Philippa began. She felt the heat of her temper, and she preferred it to the fear and sorrow she had suffered in the last days.
“Hush.” It wasn’t clear who Kathryn was speaking to, but as she pressed a fresh yeast roll on Philippa, she said, “Philippa is exhausted. Let’s talk about it another time.”
Philippa cast her a grateful glance. She took the roll and dropped her eyes to her soup bowl. Another time, yes, but not soon. It would be a long time before she knew how to think of the Aesks and what had happened to Lissie, and Peter, and herself.
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