Pegasus Read online

  And it had been Hirishy who’d come to stand beside her the day that Sylvi had slipped and fallen on the Little Court steps when she was supposed to be processing with the rest of her family. It had been one of the first occasions when Sylvi had been deemed old enough—and in her case, more crucially, big enough—and sensible enough to be in the royal procession. And then she had managed to trip—by catching her foot on a bulge of hastily taken-up hem—and fall. She landed hard and painfully, but was up again so quickly that her mother only glanced at her and the ceremony wasn’t quite spoilt—Sylvi hoped. She knew she was walking stiffly, because what she wanted to do was limp, but she told herself it wouldn’t show under the heavy robe she was wearing. If it had been less heavy, there wouldn’t have been a bulge to catch her foot.

  But when they’d come to the end of the court and turned to stand in the great arched doorway, while the magicians chanted and waved their incense around and the royal family wasn’t the centre of attention for a moment, Hirishy had slipped from behind the queen and stood beside Sylvi, and, after a moment, as if accidentally, as if she were merely shifting her position, put her nose in Sylvi’s hand. And Sylvi had relaxed, as if her mother had put her arm around her, and as soon as she relaxed, the hurt began to ebb, so that when the ceremony had been over with and her mother had put her arm around her and asked her if she was all right, Sylvi said truthfully, “Yes, I’m fine now.”

  But Hirishy was different from the other pegasi—and not different in a way that was well-matched to a professional soldier. As Eliona, daughter of Baron Soral of Powring in Orthumber and colonel of the Lightbearers, she hadn’t had her own Speaker, and neither Hirishy nor the pegasus bound to her second-in-command had ever gone out with her company as they patrolled borders, escorted ambassadors through the wild lands, chased rumours of ladons and dispatched taralians and norindours. But she’d had a Speaker assigned the moment the news of her engagement to Corone was announced—and two years later, shortly after Danacor was born, and on very dubious precedent, her Speaker was changed.

  Sylvi’s translation of the adult conversations she’d overheard about this was that her mother’s first Speaker, having discovered that his enviable achievement was in fact career ruin, was daring enough to believe he might yet succeed elsewhere if he were given the chance. He was transferred out, on the grounds that pregnancy had altered the queen’s aura in a way that another Speaker might better take advantage of, and Minial came instead. And while Hirishy was apparently even more untranslatable than most pegasi, Minial treated her with absolute respect—and patience. Sylvi liked her for that. Minial was one of the rare female magicians, but she was tall and imposing, and looked good in processions. She was also easy to have around, without that pressingness, Sylvi had once called it, that most magicians had, that feeling that there was no space for you when a magician was in the room.

  Hirishy came wafting in after Sylvi’s mother, her mane and tail already plaited, flowers woven snugly up among her primaries, and a wide blue ribbon around her creamy shoulders with wreaths of blue and yellow embroidery on it, and a little embroidered bag dangling from it like a pendant jewel. There was a word for the embroidered neck-bands the pegasi made, but Sylvi couldn’t think of it. Hirishy went and stood at the window, looking out toward the long curly trails and clusters of people moving toward the Outer Great Court for the ceremony. Sylvi was trying to ignore them. Sylvi looked at Hirishy’s wings and thought the flowers must itch, like a scratchy collar. Like the scratchy collar she was wearing, heavy with gold thread and heavier yet with gems. They were only lapis lazuli and storm agate, but they weighed just as much as sapphires and rubies. She sighed.

  There wasn’t any chance of rain. The sky was blue and clear, and the housefolk would be laying out the banquet without one hesitating glance overhead. She saw Hirishy look at the sky, and grinned to herself. There are fewer shadowy corners to hide in on a bright day.

  Her mother was twisting a fine enamelled chain through Sylvi’s hair, plaiting as she went, and muttering to herself. The chain hung in a loop round Sylvi’s temples and over her forehead, and then the tail wound through her plait and ended with a teardrop of aquamarine. Only the reigning sovereign ever wore a crown, and Sylvi’s father very rarely did so, but chains and flowers were common. The queen was wearing a garnet chain for her daughter’s binding, with diamonds at her temples. “You don’t have to do that,” said Sylvi, trying not to laugh; what her mother was muttering as she plaited was more suited to the practise yard than her daughter’s bedroom just before her binding. “One of them could.”

  “Them” were the half-dozen beautifully-dressed ladies waiting in the corridor to escort the queen and her daughter to the Outer Great Court, only one of whom was also a soldier.

  “Well, you won’t believe me,” said the queen, “but I would like to. You’re the only daughter I’m going to dress for her binding; your father has had three sons to dress for theirs. And if I can plait my own hair—if I can plait a mane, for the gods’ sake, I ought to be able to plait your hair.”

  “Did you find the roc?” Sylvi said suddenly.

  “Roc?” said her mother, but Sylvi knew she was bluffing.

  “Yes,” said Sylvi. “In Contary. Father sent you to look.”

  The chain twitched as the queen tweaked it. “No.”

  She was still bluffing. “But?” said Sylvi.

  The queen sighed. “You’re as bad as your father. He always knows when I’m not telling him everything. My official report says ‘the evidence was inconclusive.’ Which is true. But I’m privately certain—which is what I told your father and Danny—that a roc had been through Contary.”

  “Oh.” The wild lands around Balsinland were uncomfortably full of large, fierce, and often half-magical creatures, but only the taralians, who were the least magical, made a regular nuisance of themselves in Balsinland. Norindours were unusual, ladons rare, and the last wyvern sighting had been in Sylvi’s great-grandfather’s day.

  But rocs, with their savage intelligence and relentless ferocity, were another category of hazard altogether. Rocs, it was believed, belonged to another world. No one knew why they occasionally emerged into this one; when they did, catastrophe followed.

  “Yes. Oh.” The queen patted Sylvi’s hair. “There. Almost as good as one of the ladies could have done.”

  Sylvi was distracted by this, and only half noticed the sudden hush in the hall. And then her Speaker arrived.

  She had been braced for this. Or rather, she hadn’t been braced for it at all: she’d been trying to brace herself for it, and failing. She didn’t like magicians. They gave her the creeps. The idea of having one who was assigned to her—who was now going to be around all the time, because your Speaker tended to lurk in your vicinity even when your pegasus wasn’t there—was the worst thing about this whole rite of passage. Pegasi were a little scary and she knew she’d mess up what she was supposed to do with hers, if not today then tomorrow or the day after or the next ceremonial occasion or something, but this was different. She didn’t like magicians—save Ahathin and Minial—and she was afraid of them—even Ahathin and Minial. She’d wasted a little time hoping that since she was only a fourth child they wouldn’t bother to give her one, but she knew better. She was a princess being bound to a pegasus, and she’d have to have a Speaker.

  She heard the clatter of the Speaker sticks before she turned around to see who it was—if it was anyone she’d ever seen before. The Speakers’ Guild had a tendency to be secretive.

  “Sylvi—” began her mother, and Sylvi turned around and bowed in all the same gesture, putting off for another few seconds meeting him, whoever he was. She heard the Speaker sticks clatter again, as he bowed too.

  She straightened up slowly.

  It was Ahathin. Her tutor. Little round bald Ahathin with his spectacles sliding down his nose, the way they always did slide down his nose, although she was
used to seeing him trying to juggle several rolls of parchment and an armful of books while pushing up his glasses, and she’d never seen him wearing Speaker sticks. She hadn’t known he was a Speaker. She took another look at the sticks, to make sure she wasn’t imagining things, as her heart, or maybe her stomach, seemed to take a great leap of relief.

  He stood up from his bow, pushed his spectacles up his nose, awkwardly shook his sticks so they’d lie flat, and said, “My lady, I am your least servant.”

  “Oh!” she said. “Ahathin.”

  “Sylvi,” said her mother sharply.

  You met your Speaker in private, right before the binding ceremony, and you weren’t supposed to know who he was until that moment (just as you weren’t supposed to know anything about your pegasus). It was still an enormously formal occasion and you had more words you were supposed to have memorised to say. Sylvi had memorised them, but the shock of discovering that her Speaker was almost the only magician she’d ever met who didn’t make her flesh crawl was so great she forgot them.

  “Sir Magician—Worthy—sir—” But she couldn’t remember any more, so instead she said what she was thinking: “I am so glad it’s you.”

  “Oh, Sylvi,” said her mother.

  Ahathin’s face twitched, but he said placidly, “Yes, your father seemed to think that might be your reaction.”

  The guild chose a Speaker, not the king. A king could request, and in order to have done a favour for the king, the magicians might listen to a request for a specific Speaker for an unimportant royal. But being her tutor was one thing; being her Speaker was a much closer, more demanding, and longer-lasting appointment—and tied him visibly and humblingly to a mere fourth child. The first child of one of the more important barons would be a much better placement. “Do you mind?” she said.

  “Sylvi!” said the queen for the third time, sounding rather despairing.

  Ahathin’s placid expression was growing somewhat fixed. He glanced at the queen and said, “Saving your grace’s presence, I would say that the king asked me a similar question before he approached the selection committee. I replied that I did not consider Lady Sylvi a lesser royal because she is the fourth child, and that I would be inexpressibly honoured if I were chosen to be her Speaker. The king indicated that he believed my lady Sylvi would not lay an undue charge upon her Speaker and indeed might be happy if he continued to spend most of his time in the library. And that he, the king, would entertain hopes in such an instance that it might possibly encourage my lady Sylvi to spend more time there.”

  Sylvi thought this deeply unfair, since it seemed to her that she spent a great deal of time there already. Wasn’t she always bringing him authorisation slips from the head librarian? And hadn’t he started asking her horrible trick questions based on what he knew she was reading? … Although she wasn’t sure if they were horrible trick questions or not, since he was usually asking her what she thought about things, and if she hadn’t read enough yet to have any thoughts, he said, well, let me know when you do, so then she had to. Sometimes he even asked her questions when there were other people around—and when she had protested (later, in private) he shook his head and said, “You’re a princess. You’re going to need to be able to think on your feet, later if not sooner.”

  Even so. She had her mouth all open to protest when it occurred to her that she was pushing her mother rather hard. She made an enormous effort and said, “Sir Magician, Worthy Sir, I thank and welcome you, and I—I—”

  “Look forward to a long and fruitful dialogue,” said Ahathin helpfully.

  “Yes—oh, yes—yes. And we—we three—pegasus, magician and p-princess, shall be as the sun, moon and stars, and all shall look upon us and find us—uh—wonderful.”

  “A light upon their path,” said her mother, “and a thing of wonder. I hope you’ve memorised the binding better.” Her mother had heard her say it over just yesterday, but that had been sitting swinging her legs on a chair in the queen’s office, with no one else present, and no surprises.

  “I—I think so,” said Sylvi, a little ashamed. “It’s just that it’s Ahathin. I’ve been so dread—” She stopped. He was still a magician, and she was being fearfully impolite. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “There are tales of much worse, my queen, my lady,” said Ahathin. “Razolon, who was king six hundred years ago, is said to have spoken but one word to his first Speaker: you! Whereupon he ran him through with his sword.”

  “Why?” said Sylvi, fascinated.

  “He believed—with some justice—that the magicians were plotting that he should not come to the throne. He was a rather—er—precocious twelve.”

  “The occasion you might tell of,” said the queen, “which I believe you might remember for yourself, is when my husband’s second brother was bound. Do you know this story?” she said to Sylvi. Sylvi shook her head. “Well, ask your uncle some time to tell it to you. The version I heard is that there had been an episode of the throwing-up sickness, and that the youngest prince was the worst affected, but it was such a terrible omen to put off a binding they decided to go through with it. And when his Speaker arrived, your uncle bowed and—threw up all over his Speaker’s shoes. But I believe the ritual of binding went perfectly.”

  “It did,” said Ahathin. “I was one of the incense-bearers. Although the curious informality of the newly-assigned Speaker-to-the-Bound’s footgear was somewhat remarked upon.”

  The queen laughed. “And thirty years later, Mindo is good friends with Ned, I believe, although he is rarely needed to Speak. We will therefore take the present informality as a good omen—you feel welcomed by your princess, I hope?”

  “I do indeed, your grace.”

  “Good.” The queen frowned at Sylvi. “And now we must go, or we’ll be late.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Sylvi got through the first part of the ceremony somehow, and she knew she must have remembered what to do and to say, because her father was smiling at her and Danacor (drat him) looked relieved. Thowara stood just behind Danacor’s right shoulder, looking exquisite; the flowers tucked among his primaries glittered like jewels. She wanted to pinch him, just to dent his dignity a little, even though she knew it wouldn’t’ve worked. He would have looked at her gravely and in mild surprise. Beyond Danacor and Thowara stood the rest of the family and their pegasi; the queen, Sylvi’s other two brothers, two of her uncles and three of her aunts. Lrrianay was absent; he would be escorting her pegasus into the Court in a little while. What her father did have to bear him company was the Sword.

  The Sword was the greatest treasure of their house, and the most important symbol of their rule, for the Sword chose the ruler. Balsin, who signed the treaty with the pegasi, had been carrying the Sword; some histories claimed that it was the Sword that Argen wanted out of his country, not Balsin. For some generations now the Sword had passed from parent to eldest child, but when Great-great-great-great-uncle Snumal had died without direct descendents, the Sword had chosen which cousin the crown should pass to. Sylvi had never understood what happened when it passed—when the Sword had left Grinbad and come to Great—eight greats—uncle Rudolf, how did they know it had happened?

  She’d asked her father this several times and he’d only shaken his head, but recently she’d asked again and possibly because she was going to have to swear fealty to him and it on her twelfth birthday, he stopped mid head-shake, stared at nothing for a minute and finally said, “It’s rather like a bad dream. You can see it in your mind’s eye, and it’s so bright you think it will blind you. You can’t move, and it comes closer and closer and … there is the most extraordinary sensation when it finally touches you, somewhere between diving into icy water and banging your elbow really hard, and even though you’ve seen it nearly every day of your life—and you know you’re in this fix because it’s already accepted you—you know that it’s the greatest treasure of your house and you’re suddenly a
nd shamingly afraid it will cut you because you, after all, eldest child of the reigning monarch or not, are not worthy of it. But it doesn’t cut you, and you feel almost sick with relief. And then you seem to wake up, only it’s still there.”

  He stopped looking at nothing and looked at his daughter, and smiled, but it was a rather grim smile. “And then you really feel sick, because you know what that’s just happened means.” Her father, Sylvi knew, had been given the Sword in a quiet ceremony of transfer on his thirtieth birthday, when his mother retired, but the Sword had acknowledged him as heir in the great public ritual of acceptance ten years before. “Afterward my mother said—” He stopped.

  “What did Grandmother say?” Sylvi only barely remembered her father’s mother, who had died when Sylvi was four years old: a Sword-straight and Sword-thin old lady who looked desperately forbidding in her official retired-sovereign robes, but who somehow became benign and comforting (if a little bony) as soon as she picked tiny Sylvi up and smiled at her.

  The king looked at his daughter for another long minute and then said, “She said she felt twenty years younger and six inches taller.”

  Sylvi shivered.

  “You get used to it,” said the king. “You have to. And you’re trained for it. Well—we’ve been trained for it, some generations now. I’ve often wondered how one of those unexpected battlefield transfers happens—how whoever the Sword has gone to copes. It’s shocking and disorienting enough when it happens in the Little Court. Fortunately it doesn’t happen that way very often. And you, my dear, do not need to worry: Danacor is very healthy and very responsible. And you have two more brothers to spare.”

  Danacor’s sense of responsibility was such a family joke (as Sylvi had told her cousins, especially Faadra, who was inclined to be sweet on him) that when Sylvi asked her oldest brother what being accepted was like, she was not prepared for the king’s heir to look hunted, and reply immediately, “Like the worst dressing-down you’ve ever had, and a little bit over, except the Sword doesn’t talk, of course—it sort of looks at you.” He fell silent and stared into space just as his father had. “You come out of it thinking that you’d be better off asking one of the magicians to turn you into a rat and get it over with, and then you look around and everyone’s cheering and you can’t imagine what’s going on.”