The pegasi she met were careful to acknowledge her—but the pegasi were always careful to acknowledge any human bound to one of their own, and any pegasus in the palace grounds knew who the bound humans were. She wondered, as she punctiliously responded to pegasus acknowledgements, just as punctiliously as she responded to human acknowledgements, how many of the pegasi disapproved of her visit to their country. Was it that she was human, and was accustomed to reading human gestures and expressions, that she so often knew immediately which humans disapproved of her journey, or was it that humans made their disapproval so obvious? She could not read the pegasi any more—was that because she had lost what she had learnt of them in Rhiandomeer, or was it that they held themselves differently—as she felt she held herself differently—here in Balsinland?
She could almost hear Ebon saying, Disapprove? That’s another of your human things. What’s it for? Once something’s been decided, that’s it, isn’t it?
But what if someone—call it dislike rather than disapprove? Hibeehea didn’t like me talking to the queen when I first arrived. Hibeehea didn’t want me to come at all….
But she couldn’t hear his answer. Faintly she heard Redfora’s voice, but she couldn’t hear the words she said—and furthermore she knew she was making it up, to comfort herself.
She said aloud, “Gonoarin, wheehuf”—“the best of good days, noble sirs, noble madams”—making the correct human motions with her human hands. She could say the pegasi vowels, the ff’s, the mrr’s, better now than she had been able to a month ago. This much at least she could keep of her journey; a few clear superficial words, a slightly greater fluency with sign.
The pegasi bowed their heads to her so that their long manes swept forward like curtains of silk: beautiful, remote, unknowable.
Of course she never went near the pegasi annex. She had no reason to.
Once she met Hirishy alone, outside her mother’s rooms. She paused to make her bow and when she raised her head Hirishy was very close to her, reaching out one tiny feather-hand to stroke her cheek. Sylvi thought—she almost thought—she heard Oh, poor sweetheart—and in her mind she saw, briefly but so vividly she could not, could not, have imagined it, one of the cultivated hill-meadows of the pegasus land. There were pegasi hoeing between the little green rows, and a pavilion at one corner of the field: a simple, comforting, homey scene, nothing demanding or formidable, like the Caves, or the Dreaming Sea … or the palace where they stood.
And then Waina, who was one of the ladies-of-the-queen’s-chamber on duty that week, opened the door. Hirishy moved unhurriedly away from Sylvi’s side, nodded a slow human-style nod to Waina, and stood waiting for Sylvi to precede her through the door. The moment—whatever it had been—was over.
Sylvi had been rather hopelessly making notes toward the presentation she was going to have to give about her journey, writing down three things she thought she could talk about and then crossing two of them off again. It would be so much easier to have a pegasus to ask, she thought.
She sighed, and pushed herself away from the table, and went and sat on the window-sill. She had been given her own office when she began to work on dams and waterways, so she could receive reports and have a place to unroll the charts and diagrams that various people brought her. She had been offered rooms on the ground floor, where most of the rest of her family had their offices, but she had wanted something as high up as possible and was in fact in an attic. “I may try that,” her father said. “Anyone who will climb four flights of stairs to consult me must really want my advice.”
The attics had only slightly lower ceilings than the rest of the palace—and the wind that came through the windows tasted a little more like free air than house air, although when she had chosen the rooms almost four years ago she’d chiefly been interested in the view. She looked out over one of the palace’s smaller courtyards, then the outthrust bulk of the Great Hall, with a curl of old trees softening its outline. Beyond it there was parkland, and beyond that she could see the faint haze over the practise yards—and very far away, the thick dark line that was the Wall.
She sighed again, and had just stood up to go back to her desk when there was a quick knock on the door—and the head that was put round it was Danacor’s.
“Oh!” she said, and ran to throw her arms around him, her mood lightening immediately.
“How’s my favourite sister?” he said, smiling, but when she looked up at him she thought he looked tired and worried. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for your arrival. How did it go? Or is that a bad question?” And he looked at her table. “When’s your presentation?”
“Three days,” she said glumly. “Three days before the party.”
“Dad’ll have scheduled it before you left. And written the list of questions. Which he wrote an addendum to after he got back, am I right?”
There was a list of questions, and there was an addendum, but her father had said, “These are only because I can’t help myself. This is your report. Tell us what you choose to tell us.” She had looked at him quickly and looked away. Lrrianay was standing just behind him; if she looked into her father’s face she risked catching Lrrianay’s eye. Fazuur sat at a table set end-on to Corone’s desk. He looked up from the papers he was reading and smiled at her.
Danacor added, “I hope I’ll be back in time to hear you.”
“They’re sending you away again immediately?” she said, dismayed.
He sighed. “We haven’t got any quiet borders left at the moment—except the Starclouds. It’s just a question of how far in, and how much effort to force them back. The wild lands are the worst, but we’ve got Ipinay and her Queen’s Own holding the most hazardous stretch of that line. I’m off to look at Pantock—there are reports of sea monsters. Sea monsters are a new one.”
Fthoom is from Ghorm, thought Sylvi, which is next to Pantock. Maybe it’s his family come to visit.
“From some other messenger I’d be inclined to say, ‘Mm hmm, send me another report in a month,’ but the mayor of Pantock is pretty reliable. If he says sea monsters, there probably are sea monsters. But I’ll be back for your party. So finish your presentation so you can enjoy it.” He looked at her, smiling. “My little sister, all grown up. Well, maybe not up, exactly….”
“Troll,” she said equably. “Think of all the horse-fodder bills I will save the realm by never getting tall enough to ride anything bigger than a pony.”
“Of course. My future chancellor of the exchequer thanks you.” He paused again. “You look so much like Dad. It’s uncanny.”
“And you look more and more like Mum.”
He grimaced. “Yes. I’m the warrior, not the negotiator. You’ll have to take over the negotiating when Dad retires. Farley wants to raise horses and Garren wants to find new plants for his herbalism.”
“Not me,” she said. “I’m going to—to—” But her usual declaration of her future—I’m going to become an engineer, and build dams and bridges all up and down the Kishes and the Greentops—wouldn’t come. What came to her instead was, I’m going back to Rhiandomeer, if they’ll have me, and then I’m going to find out if there’s a little not very interesting Cave somewhere that someone would let a human try and sculpt. A human no one would miss much, being the king’s fourth child. And I’d come back occasionally, and visit you humans.
But she couldn’t say that, even to Danny.
Danacor said, “Mum warned me your journey had changed you. Maybe it’s a little like after Mum said yes to Dad, or after the Sword accepted me. Everything does change. But nobody—no human—has ever been to Rhiandomeer before. You’re the pegasus expert now. Everyone will want to know what you think about anything to do with the pegasi, now.”
“No!” she said, horrified. “I am not the pegasi expert! I’m going to learn engineering, and build dams! They are—they are—oh!” She remembered her father sitting down through the long pegasus b
anquet; she remembered telling her mother about chuur and chuua. “Knowing more—oh—it’s more like knowing less!”
Danny laughed. “Yes, I—er—know. But you’re the expert to the rest of us. Dad would tell you he’s not the expert on running a country, and I would certainly tell you I’m not the expert on making taralians and norindours—and sea monsters—go away and stop bothering us. But we’re all we’ve got. You too. You’d better get used to it.”
She stared at him. He was right, of course. But it hadn’t occurred to her before. She was too busy thinking about herself—and missing Ebon—and worrying about her presentation. She wondered if this was why her father had not asked her any private questions about her journey—that he had guessed what she was feeling. The warrior had blurted it out when the negotiator had chosen to say nothing.
“But you’ll give a brilliant presentation. Just like Dad would. It’s written all over you, as well as on all those papers.” He kissed the top of her head and was gone again.
At the prospect of being the pegasus expert she had been even more careful what she had, and had not, said. Was it all right to describe the crops they cultivate? The fields of llyri grass so tall she could not see over their waving tassels, even in spring? The colonies of spiders they fed and tended, that they might harvest their silk? The spinning, dyeing and weaving, the paper-making? That they had no houses, but that each trade had its small cotes or cabins or cottages? Could she describe the pavilions, the furniture, the ingenious way they harnessed each other to carry loads? The last was done at the palace, but somehow humans rarely saw them doing it; nor would humans ever have seen them carrying their long tables on poles, and fitting the pieces together, and the tray-frames that let them carry full serving-bowls or anything else that must not be jostled, and the various pokers, prodders and hooks that let them shift the things they carried; and the deft way they used their knees, their chests and their teeth—everything based on, and arising from, their weak but clever hands. Why did humans see so little of this creative dexterity? On the rare occasions the pegasi hosted an event, they did it in one of the Courts, and there were human servants to do the fetching and carrying. Was this sense—there were human servants, why not make use of them—or was it the humans barging in where they were not needed because barging was what humans did?
Ahathin had come to see how she was getting on a little after Danacor had left her.
“I’m not,” she said. “Getting on. Danacor was just here and …” But there was nothing she could ask Ahathin when she wasn’t telling her own father the truth. She looked up from her increasing pages of notes. Ahathin was looking at her thoughtfully.
“If you had come back from a month at your cousins’ and been asked to give a report, what would you have said?”
“I was asked,” she said, half laughing and half impatient. “I was always asked. I hated it when I was younger, you know, I felt it spoilt the holiday. It was more interesting lately, when I could talk about rivers and bridges. But the pegasi don’t need bridges.”
“It is the role of teachers,” Ahathin said tranquilly, “to spoil their students’ pleasure. As I recall, when you were younger, you said a good deal about the food and the countryside.”
“But that was just a holiday, like anyone might have,” she said dubiously. “This was—”
“That you went is as much as anyone needs to know,” he said. “The rest you may treat more or less as a holiday, as you choose.”
The Caves? she thought. Can I treat the Caves as a holiday outing? I must say something about the Caves.
So she (again) praised the pegasi’s hospitality, she described her feather-bed and her hot breakfasts—she described the pavilions, and the harnesses and frames, and the way almost everything the pegasi used came to bits small enough to be made and then fitted together by the tiny pegasi feather-hands. She described the paper and the weaving—and the spiders. She described the countryside, that it was like and unlike their human lands—she had mentioned the lack of bridges, and of dams, and the way the paths all connected within an area, but that there were no roads between discrete areas—and she described the fields of koy and fleiier for drying and weaving, of barley and oats and djee, of pumpkins, maize and zorra; the orchards of apples, pears and plooraia—and the fields and fields and fields of llyri grass.
Of the Caves she said only that she had seen but a fraction of a fraction of them—she allowed it to be implied that she had spent perhaps a single afternoon there—and that the corridors and individual chambers were often very large, and very beautifully decorated, some with great washes and swirls of muted colours, and some with representational scenes of landscapes, and of pegasi galloping or flying.
She did not mention that a shaman must accompany you into the Caves. She did not mention ssshuuwuushuu. She did not mention Redfora and Oraan; she did not mention the Dreaming Sea. To the best of her ability she made her journey sound like a kind of royal progression, as if she had been the king’s ambassador to a barony a little farther away and a little less known than most, as if the strangeness could be contained in a description of the food and the clothing, and possibly a few local peculiarities about the raising of crops. She mentioned ssshasssha as a visitor to the palace might mention seeing the mural of the signing in the Great Hall, and the affecting historical token of the framed treaty.
Part of her training as king’s daughter had included how to give a speech: speak slowly and distinctly, and don’t keep your nose buried in your pages; look up as often as you can, and make eye contact with members of your audience. She had done these things, but the eyes she had met had stared back at her like painted porcelain. When she was done, she shook her pages together again, looked out over the faces looking up at her and smiled a trained princess’ smile. She had been aware of them—senators, blood, courtiers and councillors, about a quarter of them with pegasi present who stood beside their bondmates’ pegasus-tall chairs—listening closely to everything she said; no one had so much as sneezed while she spoke. But she had picked up nothing from them, any more than she had been able to read anything in the porcelain eyes. She permitted herself to glance to her right, where her father sat; he smiled encouragingly at her, and that made her feel a little better. But her eyes drifted to Lrrianay standing behind him, and to Fazuur’s hands falling still as she fell silent—and she wished, again, for Ebon. She wished for Ebon as she wished every time she saw Lrrianay at her father’s shoulder, or any pegasus at any bondmate’s shoulder, or any pegasus. Or any time she took a breath, she wished again for Ebon.
She turned back to her audience.
The first question she was asked was if there were any representations of humans in the Caves. She was ready for this, but she was a little shaken that it was the very first question: shouldn’t her audience be more interested in the zorra and the djee? Or the flying? How could any human not want to hear more about the flying? But she smiled again, and looked levelly at Senator Chorro and said that she did not remember seeing any, no, but that even the little of the Caves she had seen had been rather overwhelming in its size and magnificence—“Imagine spending a day at the palace and then trying to report on what you’d seen.” That, finally, gained her her first laugh of the afternoon, and the atmosphere in the Little Hall eased somewhat; Sylvi was grateful, not least because that should make them less likely to notice that she was lying.
She had originally planned to say that she had seen the signing of the treaty on one chamber wall—but when the time came she found she could not. It struck too near to what had really happened to her—admitting even so much felt dangerous, as if it were a crack in a dam wall, and the water might use that one tiny crack to bring the wall down, and the lake behind rush out.
There were murmurs in the hall now, neighbour speaking to neighbour, and one or two more questions, and Sylvi concentrated on appearing candid and at ease. She was wearing a long cream-coloured robe with th
e siraga the pegasi had given to her over her shoulders; she touched it once or twice in what she hoped was an appreciative but offhand manner. Young Vlodor stood up, smiling tentatively. He was tall enough that he could do this gracefully, despite the height of the Little Hall chairs, which was to allow for the presence of pegasi. Vlodor had only recently taken his father’s place among the blood councillors; he had been introduced to her at the banquet welcoming her home. He was bound, and his pegasus’ name was Nyyoah. The Holder of Concord recognised him, and he bowed to Sylvi and said, “I am sure this is a frivolous question and unworthy of our august company, but, princess, might you be kind enough to indulge us in a little more description of what flying is like?”
That produced another laugh, and Sylvi almost relaxed. In other circumstances she had thought, the other evening, that she might like Vlodor; she thought so again now. “I have both longed for and dreaded that question,” she said lightly, jokingly, “because flying is most amazing—it is beyond amazing—I fear it is indescribable, and I wish it were not; I would like to tell you how amazing it is.” She paused and glanced at her father and they exchanged reminiscent smiles. “You ride in a rope sling—but you are riding on air.” She had to be careful not to be too enthusiastic; she had to remember that nothing had changed, except that she was now sixteen years old and had visited Rhiandomeer. She had to remember she did not miss Ebon with very breath she took—she had to remember that the only flying she had done was in a drai. She finished by saying, “It is a little embarrassing to discover that some of our most famous sky holds and sky views are inaccurate.”
But it was Senator Orflung who asked the question that was, she was sure, in everyone’s minds—she felt she could almost see it shimmering in the air, like she could almost see the magic that held the draia ropes taut—even more she felt she could see it flickering in Fazuur’s eyes.
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