Pegasus Read online

  Their eyes met, and she was sure that he hadn’t liked the binding either…. There was a lot she was going to have to think about later. Too much. She wanted the happy, simple, delighted feeling of being able to talk to Ebon back again…. My mother can’t talk to her pegasus at all. Well, except for the “isn’t it a pretty day” stuff that you can guess if you have to.

  Ebon made a funny noise, like a whinny with a hiccup in it. That’s because she’s got Hirishy. Well, everyone thought your dad was going to marry Fandora, and everyone thought my dad was going to marry Ponoia, and they got the bindings wrong. Your big magician was really cross about it but you can’t rebind. Hirishy barely talks to us. My mum says she was the most awful crybaby when she was little, and all the grown-ups expected my mum to look after her because my mum was nearest her age of the cousins. Hirishy wouldn’t fly over water or over any hill higher than a—than one of your houses, and she was afraid of horses. She’s better now but…. My little sister isn’t anywhere near as awful as Hirishy was, and it’s a good thing because none of us would look after her if she was. It’s too bad, because I think my mum would have liked your mum. My mum is wasted on Lorival.

  Lorival was one of the king’s cousins. Both she and her husband were bound, but they lived outside the Wall, and only saw their pegasi briefly by arrangement on the rare occasions when they came to the palace.

  Sylvi wanted to say something in Hirishy’s defence, but the ritual was over, and they had to climb down from the platform together. She and Ebon were supposed to go first, and they went very slowly, since pegasi did have in common with horses a dislike of going down steps. The pegasi did not fly in mixed company, and there wasn’t room for pegasus wings in a crowded Great Court.

  And then there were too many people congratulating her, and she and Ebon were separated in the crush, and she saw him surrounded by his own people. And then her father had his arm round her shoulders—his right arm; the Sword hung on his left side, for easier drawing—and people were making way for them because he was the king. “How did you learn his name?” the king said softly to his daughter. It was the first thing he had said since the ritual.

  She had been expecting something like “well done” because her father wasn’t anything like his aunt Moira, and always tried to find the best in what you’d done and to recognise that you’d been trying. She realised that he was asking her if she had deliberately broken the rule that she was to know nothing about Ebon before this meeting and that he was making an effort to give her the benefit of some doubt. There should not have been any way she could have learnt Ebon’s name before he told it to her. Her father sounded grim, because her answer mattered, not just because she might have done something she knew she wasn’t supposed to. And she knew it must matter, or he’d have said “well done” first.

  She felt suddenly cold, and again she remembered the feeling of wrongness when she and Ebon had stood under the rainbow fabric and the magicians’ smoke had been so thick they couldn’t see each other. And then she felt a little light-headed and queasy and she thought, No, I am not going to be sick. But her voice still came out squeaky when she said, “He told me, just now, on the platform. That’s why I forgot to wait for you. We were talking when I was supposed to be saying all those words, and I got confused. It was—it was—” She had no idea what to say about the discovery that she and Ebon could talk to each other. She hadn’t really taken it in herself yet. Maybe—maybe it wouldn’t last. Maybe it was something to do with the binding ritual. This made her instantly unhappy: Ebon was already her friend. But—no. No one had said anything to her about anything like this, and someone would have. She looked up at her father. “I’m—I’m sorry. Is it very bad that I didn’t ask you?” She was afraid to ask if it was very bad that she could talk to her pegasus. What if he said yes? What if there was some reason why humans and pegasi could not talk to each other that they weren’t going to tell her until she was older?

  She was relieved to see that the king believed her, but he still looked grim. In fact, she thought, he looked grimmer, as if he’d almost rather she’d broken the rule—broken faith. And keeping faith was the king’s first rule. “You’re a princess,” he said to her every time she got into enough trouble that someone tattled to her father about it. “You have to know that you are no better than your people at the same time as you must behave as if you are.” Hadn’t she read somewhere that anyone giving the name of its future pegasus to a child who hadn’t been bound yet could be charged with treason? She began to feel sick again—sick and frightened. Was it a bad thing that she could talk to Ebon? Wasn’t the whole thing about keeping the Speakers in the background because if everything had gone the way the Alliance-makers had hoped, nobody would need Speakers?

  The king said, “Have you ever spoken to a pegasus before? Spoken—I mean not just by sign?” He knew that she rarely used the sign-language if she could help it; she made the necessary courtesy greetings, occasionally said “isn’t it a pretty day,” and on formal occasions she was so paralysed by shyness she couldn’t do the more elaborate ones fast enough to get them over with. “Lrrianay or Thowara perhaps?”

  She remembered Hirishy for a fraction of a second, and then shook her head emphatically. “No. Never. Nothing. That was partly why this was so—so muddling.” She thought sadly of the initial rush of delight, which now seemed a long time ago. She looked around for Ebon; the crowd was beginning to move purposefully toward the banqueting tables set round near the walls of the Court. In deference to the pegasi this was a standing-up banquet, although there were plenty of chairs for two-legs who grew tired.

  Ebon was looking at her, and as their eyes met he said, Are you catching it from your dad? I’ve just been getting it from mine. He seems to think it’s my fault that you made a little mistake.

  Yes, I—

  She was distracted by the arrival of Fthoom. Fthoom was looking at her very solemnly, and she knew at once that the solemnity was to hide the fact that he was very angry.

  Fthoom was the head—the unofficial head—of the royal magicians, which meant he was the first magician of the entire country. In theory magicians didn’t have a head, and any group of magicians who decided to act together—the magicians’ guild and the smaller but more consequential Speakers’ Guild most importantly—had to choose their actions democratically. In practise there generally was a head, and no one who spent more than five minutes or one ritual occasion at the king’s court was in any doubt that Fthoom was head magician. She knew that her father wished the royal magicians would elect him chief and get it over with; he had said many times that they wasted more time and energy squabbling for a better place in the unadmitted hierarchy than they spent on court business. But no one squabbled with Fthoom.

  Fthoom was chosen for all the most significant roles. He had been the fifth magician for the king’s daughter’s binding with her pegasus; that she was only the fourth child would be less important to him than that it would be a public spectacle involving a number of magicians with a lot of people watching. It was just like him to be the first magician to confront her with her blunder too, since she was pretty sure by the way he was glaring at her that that was his intention—once the ritual was over he could have been expected to lose interest in her.

  Her father’s arm tightened round her as he said, mildly, “Fthoom.”

  Fthoom heard the tone of the king’s voice and a little ripple of self-restraint went through him. Sylvi could see him standing up straighter and squaring his unpleasantly broad shoulders: she always thought of him in terms of how much light he blocked. She understood with increasing alarm that her tiny mistake was not tiny at all. Surely there could have been some other way she could have learnt Ebon’s name? But she knew there wasn’t.

  She didn’t want any part of magicians’ business. Magic was the worst of court affairs, worse even than being polite to people who were rude about your height. One of the reasons
she had been able to relax her guard around Ahathin was that while he usually had a little charm-thread in a pocket, he’d never done any magic in her presence, and she’d only once or twice smelled it on him. The charm against nightmares had smelled like fresh air and spring; that had been part of why it worked. Most magicians’ magic made her skin hurt.

  She’d never liked Fthoom, who was a patronising bully to everyone but her parents and her eldest brother, but now, looking at him, with the reek of fresh magic coming off him like the reek of fresh blood, she was very frightened of him indeed—even with her father’s arm around her. She wished she were still young enough to wrap herself up in the long skirts of her father’s ceremonial robe and disappear, as she had occasionally done when she was smaller.

  She glanced again at Ebon, who was still watching her. The pegasus standing next to him turned his head and looked at her too. She could guess, by the ears and nostrils, that he was saying something to Ebon, but she couldn’t hear anything with either her ears or her mind; and then Ebon began walking toward her. Lrrianay had materialised at her father’s other elbow, and she began to notice the number of people, both two-legged and four-, who were watching the confrontation. For confrontation was what it was.

  Fthoom was apparently still trying to decide how to phrase what he wanted to say when Ebon joined them. He put his nose to Sylvi’s ear and blew—very gently. It tickled, and she smiled involuntarily.

  Atta girl, he said, and pawed briefly, gracefully, with one forefoot for emphasis.

  This minor exchange infuriated Fthoom past restraint. “How dare you!” he said to Sylvi—who cringed against her father as if Fthoom had tried to strike her. “You know it is forbidden to have any contact between your pegasus and yourself before the ritual is performed!” He turned on her father and half shouted, “It is obvious these two have a long-standing—long-standing and inappropriate—relationship! How has this happened!”

  Nobody, not even the most powerful magician in the country, publicly accuses the king of misdoing. Very, very gently Sylvi’s father said, “Fthoom, you may speak tomorrow morning in court.”

  Fthoom started and stared at the king. He opened his mouth once or twice and then turned on his heel and strode away, across the Court, and out through the Gate. Murmurs rustled through the crowd, and those who had watched other bindings and noticed what had happened and assumed that the slight change had been deliberate now guessed it had not been, and wondered what it meant.

  The king sighed and dropped his hand. “Come; let us have something to eat.” He made the come-with sign to Ebon, who bowed his head and followed. Lrrianay bowed Sylvi ahead of him, but he often did; the stiffness with which he did it, she was sure, was not because she was a fourth child and he was a king, but because he was worried too. And he must be very worried, because pegasi were always as graceful as pouring water.

  No human was allowed to begin eating at a banquet attended by the human king till the king had eaten something, so the moment Sylvi’s father began to walk toward the tables several courtiers rushed up to him with bowls and plates of dainties. He chose one at random so that his people could begin. Fthoom had vanished and many of the magicians with him; those who remained were more simply dressed and could melt into the crowd. Sylvi could see a few of the Speakers: Fazuur, and Danacor’s Speaker, Moorcath; Minial would be sitting down somewhere, now that the ritual was over, with her knitting bag open at her feet. There was Ahathin: he didn’t approach her—that would be presumptuous in public, unless she asked him to—but he made a quick gesture with one hand, smiled and turned away before she could—or had to—respond.

  It took her a minute to remember what the gesture was; it wasn’t one of the basic ones. When she remembered, it was with bewilderment: it was the sign for victory, and historically used mostly on the battlefield or at great state occasions. Ahathin had taught it to her after she’d read about it in some great romantic ballad, and he’d never said “don’t fill your head with nonsense when you can barely remember the fundamentals.” Victory? That was the last thing what had just happened was. And he would have recognised her mistake too. But it was nice of him.

  People—other than Sylvi, her father and Lrrianay—began to relax and enjoy themselves. It was a beautiful day with a blue sky and a light fresh breeze. The Outer Court had been scrubbed and scrubbed for the birthday and binding of the king’s child, and its pale stones gleamed almost opal in the sunlight. The old stones were already nearly as silky as a pegasus’ shoulder (Sylvi guessed) from generations of scrubbing, and Sylvi always ran her hand along one whenever she was close enough to do so—sometimes her mother sent her with a message to her father, or Diamon, or vice versa, and she’d run round the perimeter of the Court so she could touch the stones, instead of straight across the centre. Today much of their surface was covered with ribbons and banners, and she had to stay in the centre of the Court and be a princess. The food was plentiful and excellent, and the king moved among his people, smiling and apparently carefree and, with the Sword at his side, very kingly indeed. The pegasi were all gracious and dignified, and those who knew a little of the sign-language spoke to them and were answered politely; occasionally a Speaker (easily identified by the Speaker’s sticks worn on all formal occasions) was applied to for assistance.

  Sylvi tried to pretend to be calm and self-possessed too. She knew she wasn’t doing a very good job of it, but she hoped that everyone around her would assume she was tired, or shy, or unused to court events—all of which were true. And she was worried because she knew her father was worried—she tried to force the memory of Fthoom’s angry face out of her mind, but she couldn’t forget the sound of her father’s gentlest voice saying, “You may speak tomorrow morning.” She was even worried that she knew Lrrianay was worried. The stiffness with which he had bowed to her could merely be the grand manner due to a formal event, but she knew it wasn’t. But why did she know? Pegasi had always been nearly as opaque as statues to her before.

  Before Ebon.

  CHAPTER 5

  By the time she could creep off to her room and be alone, Sylvi was so tired that when she closed her eyes she still saw the crowd in the Court, moving, eating, laughing, talking—looking at her, wondering who she was and who she was growing up to be—painstakingly making conversation with the thirty or so pegasi who had come with Lrrianay and Ebon, whose shining coats sparkled more brightly than any of the jewels in the humans’ dress. As she grew more tired, it had seemed to her that the sprinkling of pegasi in the crowd of humans made some kind of pattern—if she could just rearrange them a little—that dark bay pegasus should be a little closer to the Court wall, and the white one should move nearer the centre, and that clump of humans near the Gate needed to be lightened, maybe by Oyry and Poih, who were wasted where they were standing among the chairs, gravely attending to—oh, horrors—Great-aunt Moira.

  No one asked Sylvi directly about the odd change in the ritual, but she could assume everyone had seen Fthoom’s face afterward—many of them would have heard his outburst—and seen the king dismiss him as if he were a stableboy. Magicians used to performing in rituals tended to have deep, sonorous voices, and Fthoom’s was especially so: but no one shouted at the king. If there had been any chance that her mistake would be forgotten—those not immediately concerned with pegasi by being bound to one usually had only a vague notion of the peculiarities and pitfalls of the system—Fthoom had seen to it that it would instead be a subject of intense interest. She might have hoped that the interest would fade as soon as this day was over, but her father had told Fthoom to speak to him tomorrow, which meant the morning court…. She heard voices rise at the ends of sentences, and saw people who had been in earshot of the question turn their heads to look at her. At her and Ebon.

  Ebon had stayed near her for most of that long afternoon. He didn’t mind being stared at as much as she did. Well, they’re not my people, you know, he said. I’d mind if y
ou were at one of our five-seasons festivals and everyone was staring at me and you. Although I’m not looking forward to what old Gaaloo is going to say later. Gaaloo was one of Lrrianay’s cousins, bound to one of Eliona’s sisters. Reesha was here for her niece’s binding, although she rarely came to the palace, but Gaaloo was one of Lrrianay’s courtiers and often came in his train. Gaaloo can talk the hind legs off a unicorn.

  Are we supposed to stay together? Sylvi said anxiously.

  Haven’t a raindrop’s idea in a hailstorm, said Ebon cheerfully. I’ve never been to one of these things before. You tell me.

  Sylvi shook her head. Children don’t attend bindings unless it’s someone like your brother, and I was still too little for Garren—my youngest brother’s—to notice much.

  Figuratively and literally: too short to see what was going on, except when Danny let her sit on his shoulders. That was before he’d been through the acceptance of the heir, and didn’t always have to be part of important rituals with their father, and had more time for his little sister. But she’d been taken away soon after the ritual—although her mother had sent one of the housefolk after her with a plate of the banquet food. She thought about it a moment. It’s funny, though, isn’t it? That nobody told me what I—we—were supposed to do afterward. They’ve been drilling me silly in the sign-language for years of course—it’s one of the first things I remember, trying to learn the sign-language. Maybe we’re supposed to stand around and say things like, “Nice day, isn’t it? But I believe it will rain tomorrow.” Sylvi made a creditable effort to say this in sign, and one or two huffs.