How did you find me?
Spent most of the party trying to work it out. Knew about the palace—I’ve even been here a few times—knew you humans live inside walls all the time. And sleep in special rooms. Asked my brothers as if I was asking just because everything is so bizarre—which it is, how do you sleep all wrapped up like a sickly baby?—where their humans lived—slept. They told me everyone has his own separate cell. Weird. But figured all your sleep cells would be together. Saw your dad and mum standing with their arms around each other at one window, staring at the sky. Okay, that’s where they are, but I wished they’d go away. Then I was lucky: I saw your nurse shut your curtains. She is your nurse, isn’t she?
Sylvi, entranced, said, Pegasi have nurses too?
Eah. Although the kids are all together and then there are several nurses. But I guess I know what a nurse looks like, even when she’s human. And I figured your brothers are too old for nurses. So that had to be your sleep room. I was ready to be really confused and bewildered and apologetic if it wasn’t. I used to wander in my sleep when I was little. I thought I might just manage to bring it off as some kind of reaction to the ritual. That . . . smoke was really peculiar, wasn’t it?
Yes. It was. But don’t your shamans puff smoke over you for rituals? You have rituals too, don’t you?
Yes. Lots and lots. She could hear exactly her own aversion in his words, although she doubted that shyness was any part of Ebon’s dislike. But the smoke is never like that. It never makes you feel ...
Frightened, she thought. Frightened and all alone.
A low laugh. “No, I don’t think so,” said a young male voice.
Ebon and Sylvi froze.
“Well, I’m sure I heard something,” said another voice—a young female voice. “And it sounded large.”
“Our rabbits are enormous,” said the first voice. “Our specially bred Wall guardian rabbits are feared all over the country for their ferocity.”
“Very funny,” said the second voice. “I still want to go back indoors.”
That was Farley, thought Sylvi. I wonder who the girl is?
Come on, said Ebon. They’re gone.
The king’s palace lay in the largest piece of flat ground in the country; the rest of the landscape was a patchwork of plains, hills and mountains, and abundant lakes and rivers. Banesorrow Lake lay within the Wall, and the foothills of the Kish Mountains began near its eastern gate. The shape of the palace plain was irregular, extending several leagues to the southern tip but only a league and a half to the north and barely half a league to the east. But in a perfect circle, magician-measured, at half a league all round the palace at its centre, lay a Wall. The Wall had been erected after the final battle that had given Balsin his country and his kingship, although it had taken the reigns of three kings and three queens and the best efforts of six generations of magicians to finish it. It was twenty feet high and broad enough for a pair of guards to walk on abreast, which they did, because the full circumference was patrolled, guardtower to guardtower, of which there were twelve, one on each side of the six gates.
There were many buildings, homes, offices and administrative buildings, warehouses, markets, shops and smithies that had sprung up within the Wall, although all of those people had, to be and to stay there, a royal warrant to do so. But the palace’s Inner and Outer Courts were reflected in the capital city having the Inner and Outer City, on either side of the Wall, although the doors of the six gates had not been closed in defence in hundreds of years. They were closed on the nights of two holidays, that of the Signing of the Treaty—which had been followed so closely by one of the worst battles of the war that the treaty itself had been lost for a day and a half—and that of the End of the War; which also provided the opportunity to ensure that they were in full working order. Both inside and outside the Wall, the city extended in erratic clusters and doglegs, with gaps for small farms and big gardens and the occasional municipal park. Ebon was leading her to the biggest of these parks within the Wall, on the far side of which lay the lake.
She panted up to him and said crossly, being already sure that he’d led her so briskly to keep her fully occupied not blundering into anything in the dark and therefore less likely to ask awkward questions, All right, are you ready to tell me what we are doing?
He had stopped, and was looking up at the stars—it was a very bright night, with a half-moon brilliant as a torch—and switching his tail gently. His wings were three-quarters open but down, the tips of them trailing softly against the grass. I thought I’d take you flying, he said.
Sylvi was tired. It had been a long day, and while she was still too keyed up to sleep, her mind rattled and buzzed and could not focus, and her intellect veered away from trying to comprehend what Ebon had said. Flying? I can’t fly. I’m human. And in her determination not to understand him she felt angry with him for teasing her.
I know that, he said. Stupid. You can sit on my back. I was trying to decide how. My wings have to be free to flap, you know.
Sylvi burst into tears. At once she felt a warm velvety muzzle against one cheek and a little feathery hand against the other. I’m sorry, said Ebon. You’re crying, aren’t you? You’re sad? I’ve made you sad. I’m sorry. I thought you’d want to. I’ve been thinking about it all day, since I saw how small you are. There’s a story that all humans want to fly, that you dream about it. Like we dream about having large strong hands with wrists. But maybe it’s—you can want something and not want it—I felt that way about being your pegasus. It’s okay if you don’t want to fly. I—I won’t think you’re like Hirishy.
This made Sylvi laugh, which, in the middle of crying, made her choke, and it was a minute before she could breathe or think anything at all. I want to fly more than anything else in the world, she said. But there’s no point in wanting something you can’t have, is there? We’re taught that pegasi are not for riding before we’re old enough to know what riding or flying or pegasi are. It’s like—it would be like trying to steal the Sword or something.
Grown-up rules, said Ebon. Human grown-up rules. You people have too many rules. So, can you get up, or do we need to find a bench for you to stand on? You can’t kick my wing on the way. If I lose any feathers I won’t be able to carry the extra weight. I think maybe if you lie along my back, you can maybe hook your feet under the back edges of my wings.