Senator Orflung got slowly to his feet and was recognised by the Holder of Concord. He then bowed to Sylvi and said, “My lady, we are glad to have you back. And I wonder if you can tell us now, my lady, now that you have turned sixteen, if you—if you and Hrrr Ebon—are prepared to begin some of the task of translation and mediation between our two peoples, as your father the king hinted four years ago might be permitted once you had attained your majority.”
She was conscious of Fazuur and Sagda, Lord Cral’s Speaker, standing behind her on the dais. Ebon was not there, so Ahathin was not there. She had wanted to ask him to come, for fear of exactly this question, but for fear of exactly this question she had decided it was better to face the senate alone.
“Yes,” she said at once, and her voice rang out as clear and calm as her father’s might have done. “Yes, my sir, and all my sirs and ladies, all my barons and granddames. I am ready to do anything I can for my people and my country—and for our peoples and our countries. Ebon and I have discussed this many times, and Ebon has assured me he feels the same.” Almost—almost—she could hear Ebon saying, Assured? Dearheart, I’ll promise to do anything you like, but I don’t assure.
It’s just king talk, she said back to him, knowing that she was making him up—and felt a pang of loneliness and loss every bit as severe as she had the evening she had met Niahi—just before she met Niahi—when her father’s absence seemed too terrible to bear. “Tomorrow, my sir, you will be able to ask him yourself,” and she was almost sure she kept the longing out of her voice.
But it was her father who came to stand beside her now on the dais, and Lrrianay briefly left her father’s shoulder to stand at hers. “We have already begun the discussions about how best we may use our daughter and our son for this work,” said Sylvi’s father, Fazuur’s hands flicking in counterpoint, “and if any of you wish to contribute to that discussion, you may wait upon us.”
And Lrrianay said, “Araawhaia,” which meant “I agree,” and added the gesture for emphasis, which was to drop his right wing almost to floor level and give it a tiny, scooping sweep. But in her mind she heard him say—she was sure she heard him say—well done. And she unmistakably heard Fazuur murmur to her and her father both, “The king compliments the Lady Sylviianel on her poise and clear-headedness.”
Ebon’s return was the first time she had been a part of the formal ritual of welcome to the pegasus king. Lrrianay had flown home immediately after her presentation, to escort the pegasi coming to the human princess’ birthday party, and there was to be the full ceremony of reception when the company arrived. She was still, that day, half in a daze from having given her report successfully the day before—that, and her answer to Senator Orflung’s question had instantly begun a deluge of messages, papers and requests for appointments.
“We must ask your father for a secretary,” said Ahathin.
Ahathin had appeared at his usual hour that morning, to ask her how her presentation had gone, and found her sorting through the first courier’s delivery in increasing dismay.
“I don’t know most of these words in my own language,” she said, handing him a letter from a philosopher who seemed to want to discuss the pegasi’s understanding of the nature of reality and epistemological truth. That had been six hours, two couriers and seven special messengers ago.
Sylvi pushed her chair back violently and went to stand by the window. It was raining again; with Ahathin present—and the likelihood of the next courier arriving at any moment—she decided not to lean out in it, but she did put her hand through the open pane and let a few raindrops pool in her palm. She didn’t want a secretary; she didn’t want to be tied down by more fuss and commotion, more meetings, more quacking human voices demanding she do things, more piles of paper, till her desk resembled her father’s. She rubbed the palmful of cool water over her face. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose so.” She turned round. “Can you—will you stay? Were you planning on writing the history of the world as soon as you were relieved of your duties as tutor? I don’t know what to do with a secretary.”
“I am still the princess’ adviser as well as her somewhat superfluous Speaker,” said Ahathin in his usual calm tone. “I will attend her as long as she wishes my assistance.”
“The princess is extremely grateful,” she said, and sighed.
She went back to her rooms for a quiet tea and to dress for the ceremonial meeting, thinking, Ebon will be here this evening. Ebon. And yet her best friend of the last four years seemed, for the moment, almost as unreal as her journey to his land seemed, after her cool dry recitation of pegasi food and furniture. The barrage of requests for their services as translators seemed only to push him even farther away.
Pansa had laid her topaz robe out ready for her when she brought her her tea. Sylvi went to lean against the window-sill again, holding a cup of tea, looking out—but her bedroom faced in the wrong direction to see the pegasi returning. Pansa brought her a plate with some of the food from the tray on it and said, “Lady, remember to eat something,” and jiggled it under Sylvi’s nose. Sylvi sighed and took it, went back to her chair and sat down. She looked at the robe lying across her bed: the orange-gold of the topazes, soft in lamplight, reminded her of the colours of the Caves. Pansa hovered, wanting to help her into it. Sylvi looked at the plate still in her hands, picked up something at random and put it in her mouth. And then there was a knock on the door, and a courtier saying that the pegasi were in sight.
Lrrianay was escorting not only his youngest son but also his wife, his daughter, and an assortment of other pegasi—including an unusually high number of shamans. “That’s Hibeehea,” Sylvi whispered to her father, as the two of them stood, waiting, while the pegasi landed, lightly as sparrows, shook their wings and folded them, and walked toward them. Behind the king and the princess were ranks of gorgeously dressed humans, including the queen and the king’s heir; at their elbows were their Speakers, Fazuur and Ahathin, and Ahathin was wearing his Speaker sticks.
“Yes, it is,” said her father. “For the birthday celebration of the only human who has ever visited the pegasus Caves.”
She was silent, but the crowd around them meant she did not have to try and respond to this. Hibeehea had said he would come again to the palace—to visit her, the human who had walked into ssshasssha and seen the signing of the treaty of Alliance. You have changed the world, little human child, he had said to her when they parted, and she stood waiting to greet him now in her beautiful topaz robe, and felt ashamed. I have not changed the world, she thought. I am not a hero, and the world is too big.
She walked forward when her father did—trying not to think about anything, trying not to think about the fact that she was now the pegasus expert, and stood beside her father while the queen and the heir stood behind her. She tried especially not to think about the sight of Ebon walking toward her, a black hole in the twilight, next to his pale father. Lrrianay was wearing Balsin’s opal, and her heart sank even further; he only wore it for very special occasions. No, she thought again. I have not changed the world. I am too small.
She did not run forward to throw her arms around Ebon’s neck, as she wanted to, as she might have done if they were alone, as she had done with her brother. But here there were hundreds of people watching them, including some of those who wanted their interpretive skills, including some of those who had tried to block her visit to Rhiandomeer—and everyone present knew the prohibition on touching the pegasi.
The formal greeting ritual was hands held up, palms pressed together, then parted and held out; then you picked up a handful of flower petals, fresh or dried, according to the season, which a footman would be offering you from a bowl, and you scattered them on the ground between you. Lrrianay walked gravely forward and bowed to her father, the opal at his breast glowing like fire; Ebon, when it was his turn, did the same to her. He was wearing a black siraga, invisible against his blackness, so that the gems
stitched to it looked as if they had been strewn over Ebon’s naked shoulders. As neither of them had ever been a part of the sovereigns’ ritual, they had never greeted each other this way before either. Missed you, was all he said.
And I you, she replied—her joy at seeing him muted and confused by the strangeness of their meeting; and there were Speakers listening. She even found she was relieved that she could still talk to him—of course I can still talk to him! she thought. That’s where it all began!
Lrrianay and Ebon took their traditional places half a step behind the shoulders of their human bondmates and half a step to one side, to allow the Speakers room. Then the rest of the pegasi were presented to the two of them, the human king and his daughter, with their Speakers at their elbows, Fazuur and Ahathin bending slightly toward the king and the princess, murmuring names and greetings. Ebon did not interrupt. Sylvi bowed and repeated names and tried to think about nothing—and thought about her bond-friend’s silence, while her mouth said the names that her Speaker gave her.
The pegasus queen, as she rose from her bow, reached forward with one wing, and brushed Sylvi’s face with the tips of her feathers—there was the smell of Rhiandomeer again, the grassy, flowery, earthy smell. Sylvi’s eyes filled with tears, and she blinked frantically. Niahi was presented with her mother, and while she did a faultless bow, she then took another step forward, close enough to put her nose to Sylvi’s cheek. A tiny, whispering, almost inaudible voice in her mind said, I’m not supposed to talk to you! Please come back soon! I miss you! The last two sentences were almost obliterated by a very emphatic silent ssssssh from Ebon, which made Sylvi smile as much as Niahi’s words did—it was, for a few seconds, as if they were together and all was well.
Niahi took a hasty step backward again, and made a little bob of a second bow—and Sylvi held her hands out, stretching the one farther than the other, so the bracelet of pegasus hair showed clearly beneath her topaz-studded sleeve. She just saw the wrinkle form across Niahi’s muzzle, and then she ducked her head and whisked after her mother.
Sylvi glanced at Ahathin, but if he had heard the exchange, he gave no sign.
None of the other pegasi spoke to her—but she had the answer to one of her questions with Niahi’s words: it was not only Ebon any more, even in Balsinland. Although she almost doubted again when Hibeehea was presented to her: his mind-silence seemed absolute, as if the mere idea of that communication was inconceivable, and he looked as forbidding as he had the night she had met him, her first night in Rhiandomeer, when she began her historic visit by offending the greatest of the pegasus shamans.
After he made his bow, he said aloud, “I am proud and honoured to be here,” very clearly and distinctly, and there was a murmur of astonishment from the humans. But to Sylvi’s ear he sounded strained, as if the effort to speak even a few formal words was almost too great to be made. And his limbs and wings and body were stiff; she could read nothing in gesture.
When the presentations were over, the human queen stepped forward and took the human king’s arm; Danacor stepped forward and took Sylvi’s—and squeezed it against his side. “Well done, princess,” he said, but Sylvi was too conscious of their two pegasi, standing behind them; as Danacor had come up to them, Ebon had dropped back, and Thowara’s forehead stayed near the nape of Danacor’s neck. “They’re always behind us,” murmured Sylvi. “They’re always behind us.”
They were slowly following the king and queen, who were flanked by Lrrianay and Hirishy. Sylvi wasn’t expecting an answer, but as they passed under the Great Arch and turned toward the Great Hall where the celebration for her birthday was being held, Danacor said, “If you want to give up building bridges in the mountains and go back to Rhiandomeer and negotiate a reciprocal visitation agreement, I’ll engage now to stand behind Thowara when our time comes. But you will have to build a road.”
Then the first of the senators came up to them to say something pleasant and flattering and meaningless, and they spoke no more about it. Shortly after, they parted, and then it was just herself and Ebon—and several hundred party-goers. And Ahathin. And Glarfin, neither of whom let themselves be elbowed more than an arm’s-length away, however bad the crush. Sylvi kept wanting to drop back and put an arm over Ebon’s back, or twine her fingers in his mane—as she had done so easily and so often for three weeks—and she had to keep stopping herself. But she spoke politely to everyone who spoke to her—including a few pegasi, meticulously translated by Ahathin, while she half listened to the human words and did not try to hear the pegasi themselves. Niahi came and stood with them for much of the time, and Senator Grant and Lord Broughton, both of whom Sylvi knew had eleven-year-old daughters, asked as if idly if this was the king’s daughter, and was it true that she was still unbound. And when Glarfin brought her food and a glass of wine—and two pages brought a great platter of grasses and fruit for her companions—they all ate and drank.
And while, with Ebon with her, she enjoyed her birthday party that evening far more than she had enjoyed anything about the previous week without him, there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week. I’m still missing him when he’s standing right next to me, Sylvi thought.
Her original plan that the party for her sixteenth birthday should have equal numbers of human and pegasus guests had been one of the casualties of her visit to Rhiandomeer. “Oh,” she had said sadly, “oh,” when one of her father’s secretaries had presented her with the guest list, drawn up in her absence. It wasn’t normal enough, she realised, to have as many pegasi as human guests at her party. She had flicked a look at Fazuur and back at the guest list.
“Is there anyone we’ve missed?” said her father. “That you’d like to include? The invitations have gone out of course, but it’s not too late.”
About a hundred more pegasi, she thought. I can give you some names….
In fact nearly a third of those present at her party were pegasi, which was an unusually high percentage. That’s also because of my visit to Rhiandomeer, she thought. It has to be more than the usual number of pegasi. But not too many. Half would be too many. She felt restless, trapped, outmanoeuvred by the human gift for complication, for creating obstacles of words—and piles of paper.
They’re watching us, said Ebon. I mean, they’ve always watched us, but …
Yes, said Sylvi. It’s different. One more thing that was different. She didn’t want to ask him what he had spent the last week doing. How could she miss Rhiandomeer? She didn’t only miss Ebon; she missed his country, where she couldn’t even cross a river dry-shod, because there were no bridges and no boats. She thought about what Danacor had said. Would it be worth it, to chop and slash a footway to the pegasus land, so that the human king could stand behind the pegasus king?
Not to the pegasi.
Well, it was still worth it, Ebon said. Their eyes met, lingered just a fraction too long and were hastily shifted away.
The birthday party went on and on, and it was very late by the time the princess and her parents—and their attendant pegasi—could leave. Ebon and Sylvi took a brief stroll around the gardens before they parted.
Here’s the bad news, said Ebon. I don’t dare take you flying till some of these hrreefaar shamans leave. Shamans don’t sleep like the rest of us. They also have some weird glaurau—uh—other-space sense of where we all are. It wouldn’t be so bad if they just knew I was flying, but I’m not sure they wouldn’t pick you up. I know being here messes them up, but I’m afraid it might not mess them up enough, you know?
It’s also a full moon and a lot of—movement. Scouts and things. Even at night. Danny leaves again tomorrow….
He’d come back for her party, as he said he would, but he’d had three messages over the course of the evening—three that she saw happening. The only private words she’d had with him, since she’d been back, ha
d been in her office, when he’d told her she was the pegasus expert now.
She and Ebon stood silent for a few minutes longer; neither of them was ready to let the other out of sight—out of sound-of-breath, out of sense-of-other’s-body-bulk-and-warmth, out of touch of human hand or velvet pegasus nose—after the long week apart. At least, out here, they could touch each other again.
CHAPTER 18
All sightings of taralians and norindours and their other old enemies were brought to the Balsinland king, even if the report was merely that the creature had already been dispatched by a baronial hunting party or a patrol of soldiers. Barring taralians, which were a more persistent problem, there were several reports every year, but—until recently—never more than several, not since Corone IV’s great-great-grandfather’s day. There were ballads about the Great Hunt that King Janek himself had led; the main fact about it was that it had been successful and had not been repeated.
Sylvi was with her father in his private office the morning the messenger from General Randarl came. It was three days after her birthday party. Ebon was with her, Lord Cral and his pegasus, Miaia, the two kings—and two Speakers.
They were again considering her travels in Rhiandomeer; she was tense and anxious, unsure what she could discuss and what she must not. She was afraid to say anything to Ebon that she wouldn’t want a Speaker to overhear; whenever she asked him anything about what she’d seen or where she’d gone, there was an implication of How much can I say? and his answers were stilted and constrained. She wondered if his father was saying anything to him; if so, she did not hear it.
Both she and Ebon were oppressed by the knowledge of the suggestions that were still coming in from senate, council, individual bloods and courtiers, and from a surprising number of citizen groups, about how to use the ability of the princess and her pegasus to talk across the barrier between their two species: proposals and recommendations as well as specific requests for arbitration and intervention. The Speakers’ Guild, however, advised caution and deferment, and requested the right to inspect any papers on the subject and to sit in on any meetings. On Ahathin’s advice, Sylvi’s new secretary, for the present, reported to her father.