“This is better,” Lark said. “You can wean your colt bit by bit. ’Tis hard on young beasts to leave their dams all at once.”
When they reached the stables, Erna came out and stood watching, her hands empty, her face blank, as Jolinda got down from the cart and untied the mare’s halter lead from its ring. She shot Erna a dark glance. “You, girl,” she said sharply. “Take this mare to her stall.”
As Erna shuffled forward, Jolinda clicked her tongue in exasperation. “Look sharp, now!” she said, but Erna seemed not to hear. She took the lead and turned into the stables. The foal and the oc-hound followed, with Amelia hovering over them. When the whole entourage had disappeared, Jolinda turned to the girls. “Is that what you have to take poor Rosellen’s job?” she demanded. “Them lords have got to do better than that!”
“I miss her,” Lark said.
“We all do,” Hester added.
“She was a good girl, Rosellen,” Jolinda said. She brushed her hands together and said briskly, “Come, now, let’s not mope about. Rosellen wouldn’t want that. I’m going on to see that yon colt is nicely settled. Wouldn’t trust that Erna out of my sight.”
Lark and Hester watched them go, dawdling on the steps of the Hall rather than go in out of the sunshine.
“What have you heard from home?” Hester asked. “How is Lord Francis?”
“I’ve had no news, but spring is a busy time at Deeping Farm. I have to say, he looked terrible when we left him,” Lark said. “But I gave the Tarn a spin over him. If anything can help him, that will.”
“Oh, Black, you goose,” Hester said. “That’s only superstition.”
Lark grinned at her. “We’ll see, Morning,” she said. “We’ll just see.”
Hester opened her mouth to say more, then stopped. “Why—why, there’s Mamá’s carriage! What is she doing here?”
The girls ran across the courtyard to the foot of the Hall steps. The carriage circled past the stables, and came to a stop, and the footman jumped down to open the door. Lady Beeth climbed out, but when Hester started toward her, she put up a hand. “Wait, dearest,” she commanded.
She turned back to the carriage, and the two girls watched in confusion as Mistress Winter, moving
slowly and carefully, as if she had suddenly grown old, stepped down from the carriage and started up the steps.
“Hester,” Lady Beeth said. “Fetch Matron. Mistress Winter needs brandy.”
PHILIPPAneither ate nor drank the next morning, but saddled Sunny herself to fly straight to the Ducal Palace. Sunny, catching her urgent mood, flew high and fast, and when Parkson, William’s steward, came out onto the steps of the Palace, she laid her ears back. Parkson eyed her with distaste as he told Philippa in icy tones that His Grace was not at home to visitors.
She leaped back into the saddle, and flew on to Fleckham House, to the small stable behind the stand of beeches. Jinson came out when he heard Sunny’s hooves on the gravel. He had been, Philippa felt certain, expecting her.
She glared down at him without dismounting. Sunny sniffed noisily, backing away and rattling her bridle.
She closed her wings over Philippa’s calves, but they rustled and flexed angrily.
“Is he here?” Philippa demanded.
“No, Mistress,” Jinson said. His face reddened, and he looked at his boots. “But he said—if you came—”
“He knew I would come.”
“I—uh—I’m supposed to say, you have till Estian.”
Philippa snapped, “You mean, Winter Sunset—this winged horse —is allowed to live until Estian? Let’s be clear about this.”
“He won’t—I mean, she won’t die,” Jinson mumbled. “I’ll take care of her, Mistress, I swear I will.”
Philippa’s voice rose. “Take care of her? You fool! You can’t even get near her!”
“Well, no, but His Grace—he can—”
“No, he can’t!” She wanted to strike him, to scream at him. She gritted her teeth, and tried to control herself, while Sunny danced sideways, made fretful by her bondmate’s fury. “Jinson, this ruling is a death sentence for my mare. Surely even you can see that.”
His face darkened, and he lifted his eyes to hers. “Shouldn’t have gone against him, Mistress,” he said.
“Nobody can go against him.”
“Ridiculous! You’re the Master Breeder, which is a travesty, but now you are, and you can—”
He shook his head as her voice trailed off. “You don’t know,” he said miserably. “The things he’s done .
. . you just don’t know.”
“Tell the Council, then, man! Have you no courage at all?”
He took a step backward, up into the protection of the doorway as if she were about to assault him. “I have a sister,” he faltered. “And the Duke said—if I—”
“Idiot!” she exclaimed. “Have you seen him? He can’t seduce a girl now! He looks more womanly than I do!”
“You don’t know,” he said. He put up a hand, and there were tears in his voice as he said, “I can’t talk to you anymore, Mistress. I’m sorry, really I am. Estian. You have till Estian.”
LORDBeeth and Lord Chatham, with elderly Lord Daysmith, fought hard against those who allied themselves with William in the Council. Suzanne and Kathryn and the other instructors petitioned the lords, without success. They tried appealing to Duke William, and received threats in return. They wrote pleading letters to their families, and received guarded, fearful responses. Finally, on a warm spring evening, Philippa called a halt to all of it.
She asked every horsemistress at the Academy, seniors and juniors alike, to come to the reading room in the Domicile. She stood by the window, waiting for them to assemble, and when they had taken seats, she looked into each of their faces, these devoted women who put their trust in the Duchy and in the Academy.
“I thank those of you,” she said, “so many of you, who have tried to intercede for me, and for Sunny.
There is nothing left to try.”
Several women started to protest, but she shook her head, forestalling them. “I brought this on myself,”
she said. “I underestimated William’s influence. Duke Frederick taught me that the power of the Council Lords was equal to his own, and I didn’t understand how swiftly that could change.”
Sarah, one of the junior instructors, said, “We’ll keep you here, Philippa! We won’t let him take you—”
Her voice broke, and she began to sob.
“Sarah, you have Wind Runner to think of,” Philippa said. “Just as Kathryn has Sky Dancer, and Suzanne has Star Chaser. We exist at the pleasure of the Duke, it seems. Already the bloodlines are in trouble, and if the entire Academy is at odds with him, I fear the damage may be irreparable.”
Suzanne, now named the new Headmistress, said, “Everything changed when the old Duke died.”
“You’re not going to give Winter Sunset up?” Sarah pled. “Not really?”
“What choice do you see?”
“But after you risked yourself in Aeskland, after you helped save those children—”
“It makes no difference, Sarah. Duke William is not a forgiving man.”
“Perhaps if you called upon Lord Francis—”
Philippa leaned against the window sash, gazing out into the dusk. “Lord Francis is so ill,” she said. “I’m not sure he could even make the journey. And besides . . . I fear for him, too. The Duke attacked him.
Struck his own brother with his quirt while Francis lay ill and helpless. The Council doesn’t see it, but our Duke is no longer sane. He has—” She made a helpless gesture. “He has divided himself, and it has broken his mind.”
She straightened and faced them again. “The most important thing is to protect the winged horses. What happens to me is nothing by comparison. Remember that. I am with you till Estian. Then we will do what we must.”
Sarah pressed a handkerchief to her eyes, and whispered, “I would die first.”
/> Philippa could not disagree. She said only, “Don’t grieve, my friends. Please. This time will pass, and you must hold on until then.”
“The students suspect something,” Suzanne said.
“Don’t tell them,” Philippa said in a flat tone, turning her gaze back to the window. “I couldn’t bear for them to look at me the way all of you are.”
SPRINGripened into summer. Buds became blossoms. The yellowhammer nestlings tried their wings, and the horses grew satiny as the last of their winter coats fell away under brush and currycomb.
Amelia’s foal opened his wings and capered in the yearlings’ pasture while his bondmate looked on with fond pride.
Tup had reached his full and final height of thirteen hands. He was small, but with his long, narrow wings, his finely cut head, his arching silken tail, he was so beautiful he hardly seemed real to Lark. The summer air was rich with the smell of timothy and alfalfa, and Lark could hardly wait for Estian to see the bloodbeets growing tall in the fields around Deeping Farm and to smell the broomstraw turning gold in the sun.
Something, though, was wrong.
All through the spring, the instructors had gone about with grim faces. Tempers ran short, and the girls began to avoid the horsemistresses when they could, ducking out of their way in the stables, hanging back in the Hall so they would not have to greet them.
“Perhaps everyone is upset that Mistress Winter wasn’t named Headmistress,” Lark murmured to Hester. They were in Goldie’s stall, repairing the support for her water bucket. They were to leave the next day for the Estian holiday, and were trying to finish every chore to perfection. It was too easy to win a scolding.
Hester shook her head. “I don’t think that’s it.” She kept her voice low, too, as they had all taken to doing. “Everyone likes Mistress Star.”
“What is it, then?” Lark asked. “I looked up at the high table last night at supper, and no one was talking at all. Not a word! It was like watching my brother Edmar at the table.”
“Is Edmar so silent?”
“He is,” Lark said. “Although Brye says he talks to Pamella. And her little boy.”
Hester hammered the last nail, and Lark lifted the water bucket to test their work. The support held, and they left the stables to go to the Hall, where an assembly had been called. The horses were in the yearlings’ pasture, wingclipped, but no longer needing blankets. The palominos and chestnuts and blacks and grays were cropping the green summer grass. Tup sensed Lark’s regard and raised his head to whicker as she passed.
Hester said, “Black, look at the Head’s face.”
Lark followed her gaze, and saw Headmistress Star standing in the doorway, nodding to the girls as they came through. She looked as if she had aged ten years in the weeks she had been Headmistress, and today, in particular, there were lines of strain around her eyes and mouth. “I think,” Lark said, with an uncomfortable twinge of intuition, “that we’re about to learn what has been bothering everyone.”
The girls stood behind their usual places at the long tables in the dining hall, and the instructors stood on the dais. Only Mistress Winter’s place was empty. Lark looked around, but she couldn’t see her coming in at the door or standing in some other spot.
Headmistress Star spoke for several minutes. Her voice sounded thin and strained. The other horsemistresses stood in a tense silence, eyes down. It was clear they already knew Mistress Star’s news.
The girls gasped at her announcement. Some wept stunned tears, and clung to each other. Others whispered questions. Hester growled, “Mamá should have told me.” Amelia, like the horsemistresses, stared at her boots.
Lark whirled and ran from the room.
It was not allowed for the girls to go into the Domicile unless by invitation, but Lark paid no heed to the restriction. She crashed through the front door, letting it slam behind her, and ran swiftly up the stairs to knock on the door of Mistress Winter’s apartment. When there was no response, she knocked again, and again, until at last she heard a weary, “All right, all right. You can stop that banging. I’ll come.”
Mistress Winter opened the door, and stood stiffly, her face set and still. Lark burst out, “Why didn’t you tell me? What are you going to do?”
“Larkyn. What do you think you’re about?”
“Mistress Star says—she told us—you’ve been sent down, and Sunny—it’s too awful! You can’t let this happen!” Tears flooded her eyes, blurring her sight as Mistress Winter put a hand on her shoulder and guided her into the apartment, closing the door behind her. Mistress Winter pressed her into a big stuffed chair, and when she had dried her eyes, she saw she was sitting beside the window, with a view of the courtyard and the stables. Mistress Winter stood with one hand on the window sash, her eyes fixed on the summer day beyond the glass.
A small bag, of the kind used to tie behind the cantle of a flying saddle, rested on the bed, which had been stripped of its blankets. A banded trunk waited beside the door. The wardrobe stood open and empty.
Lark took a shuddering breath. “You’re really going,” she choked.
“Of course, Larkyn. I can hardly stay here. The Council has ruled.” Mistress Winter’s voice was like a knife, hard and sharp, and it cut Lark’s soul.
“But there must be something . . . surely Lord Beeth . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Mistress Winter’s lips curled slightly, and her cheeks creased like those of an old woman. She was whip-thin, her cheeks hollow, her hands fleshless. “Of course,” she said. “We have tried everything. Do you think we would give up without a fight?”
“Lord Francis?” Lark’s voice cracked, and the tears threatened again.
“Brye will explain this to you,” Mistress Winter said. “Your brother understands the world as it has come to be.”
“But I thought—you’re a horsemistress ! No one can order you away!”
Mistress Winter’s face softened a little, and she said in an undertone, “I thought that, too, Larkyn. It seems I was mistaken.” She looked down at Lark, her eyes shadowed with sorrow. “I must go, for the sakes of all of you, girls and horsemistresses. In time, I hope . . .” She swallowed, and looked away again.
“But,” Lark whispered, “what about Winter Sunset?”
Mistress Winter gave a sour laugh. “The Master Breeder assures me he will care for her.”
“He can’t!” Lark cried.
“So I told him.”
“So the Duke means for her to die.”
Mistress Winter’s bitter expression was her answer. Still, Lark persisted. “You’re not really going to give her up, are you? You could go to the Uplands, to Deeping Farm . . . or to Marin, or perhaps the Angles .
. .”
Mistress Winter put out a hand and pulled Lark up out of the chair. “Listen to me, Larkyn,” she said.
“There is no place in Oc, or in all of Isamar, that I could hide. The Duke’s eyes are everywhere, as you and your family have already learned.” She led Lark toward the door and opened it. Lark began to sniffle again, but Mistress Winter squeezed her shoulder, hard. “You’re a young woman, now, Larkyn. And you’re a flyer. You must learn to accept things as they are.”
A moment later, Lark found herself standing alone on the steps of the Domicile. The bright day had turned dark for her, the brilliant colors dull. Tup whinnied and cantered to the pasture fence. She went to meet him with slow, painful steps, to bury her face in his silky mane and try to comprehend the immensity of what had happened. “Never, Tup,” she whispered against his warm neck. “I will never accept this.”
LARKspent a sleepless night and finally rose when the sky lightened enough to see to dress. She washed her face and pulled on her tabard and skirt. She tiptoed down the stairs in her stockinged feet and sat on the Dormitory steps to pull on her boots before she hurried as quietly as she could across the dim courtyard to the stables. A lamp burned quietly in the tack room, and Lark felt certain Mistress Winter had spent the night t
here, with Winter Sunset. It was what she would have done.
She had only just reached the doorway when Mistress Winter appeared, leading Sunny. Jolinda, the stable-girl from the Beeth stables, was on the mare’s other side. Lark quickly stepped into the shadows, hiding herself in the gloom as the two women and the winged horse emerged into the dawn.
She heard Jolinda say, in a choked voice, “I’ll go to Fleckham House myself. I’ll take care of her, Mistress.”
Mistress Winter said, in a gentle voice Lark had never heard before, “No, please. The Duke will be there, and my brother as well, coming in a carriage to take me to Islington House. It’s better they don’t see you.”
“But Winter Sunset—” Jolinda’s voice shook, and she pressed her lips together.
“Yes.” Mistress Winter bent to tighten Winter Sunset’s cinch. “I know you’re worried about Sunny. But I beg you, stay here, watch over these girls, especially Larkyn Black. The Duke hates her almost as much as he hates me.”
“Why?”
Lark bit her lip, and watched as Mistress Winter stroked her mare’s neck with a loving hand. “He’s mad,” she said flatly. “Drunk with power, with obsession . . . and whatever potion he’s used to change his body has pushed him over the edge. Promise me, Jolinda. Promise me you’ll stay here, no matter what.”
“Aye, Mistress. If it’s what you want.”
Lark watched Mistress Winter lift her head, scanning the familiar outlines of the Hall, the Domicile, the Dormitory, the stables. The sky brightened, illuminating the emerald paddocks, the hedgerows in full bloom along the lane. She jumped up into the saddle, then said in a low voice, “Do you know, Jolinda, now that the moment is here, I can hardly bear to leave it.”
Jolinda tried to answer, but sobbed instead. Mistress Winter’s spine stiffened at that, and she lifted Sunny’s rein. She spoke to her, and the mare started toward the gate.
“Mistress Winter! Wait!” Lark stepped out into the light. Mistress Winter twisted in her saddle, and Lark ran to her, seizing Winter Sunset’s rein. “Were you not going to say goodbye?”
“Larkyn—” Mistress Winter’s lean face was like marble in the cool dawn light. “Larkyn, let me go. It’s time.”
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