But Sylvi stood, shivering with fear and longing, and stared at him. I—can’t. It’s—it’s rude. It’s horribly rude.
Ebon was silent a moment. You mean to me, I guess. I think this is another of those things like what you asked me earlier—don’t we mind that we have to come to you and stand around in your Court and take places you give us in your rituals. This is a human thing, this making it matter who stands where. We think that it is mixed up in why you won the war. We do not mind standing where you want us to. If you had not won the war we would not stand anywhere at all.
I know humans don’t ride us, but I don’t know any great forbidding about it. You don’t ride us because we’re too small and you’re too big. It’s rather nice of you, I think, to make it into a big forbidding. It’s—it’s to do us honour, I can see that. Human honour. Thank you. But I would like to take you flying. My dad would tell me no—that’s why I’m here in the middle of the night—not because it’s rude but because it’s dangerous. I bet you aren’t allowed to climb down the wall from your window, are you?
No.
Well then.
He moved around till she was facing his near shoulder. He’d flattened that wing and stretched it as far back as it would go; she put one hand on his withers and one just behind, and gave a little heave, and lay belly down over his back. She could do this without thinking on her own pony who was, in fact, a little shorter than Ebon, but who was also, of course, uncomplicated by wings. She lifted her right leg very gingerly as far as it would go and then laid it along his back—his right wing was now stretched out horizontal to prevent her rolling off the other side—wriggled her body around, laid her left leg beside her right, took hold of his mane and wriggled a little further forward. Except for his (mercifully low) withers gouging into her breastbone, she was—surprisingly—fairly comfortable.
Okay?
Okay.
He walked forward a little cautiously. She could feel him trying to adjust to the weight of her; his wings were half spread, and they vibrated as he sought his balance. He bowed his head up and down a few times, stretched his wings to their full extent—they seemed leagues wide to Sylvi—said, Here we go, and shot forward at a gallop. The powerful wings seemed to grab the air; she could feel not only the great muscular thrust down, but the kick of the released air again as the wings rose and freed it; and with each downstroke, Ebon—and Sylvi—briefly left the earth in a long bound. One ... two ... three ... the sweep of wings and the boom of wind deafened her to any other sound; she could just feel the tap of Ebon’s galloping feet, one-two-three, one stride for each wing-stroke, beneath her ... four ... five ... six....
They were airborne.
Sylvi was crying again, but it might have been the wind. She could guess at the extra effort Ebon was making to carry her; the body beneath her was taut with exertion, the muscles both as solid as stone and as live and lithe as running water. It should have been difficult, and terrifying, to stay on, but somehow it was not; the muscles of her belly and thighs seemed to know how to keep her centre of gravity so perfectly balanced over Ebon’s spine that when he turned and banked she merely sank a little closer to him, almost as if she were a part of him. She knew the old horse-riding adage of striving to become one with your horse, but this was nothing like riding a horse, and she had never felt anything with her pony—whom she loved dearly and rode every day—like she now felt with Ebon, as if they were almost one creature indeed.
She’d always found the stories of centaurs a little unsatisfactory. The earthbound centaurs interested her not at all, but she often thought about the winged ones—thought of them for having human faces, voices, hands—and wings. But what would centaurs eat? If they ate hay for their horse digestion, didn’t it hurt their human mouths? If they grazed like horses, didn’t the human heads get dizzy? She thought, Maybe there’s a very, very old story, that we aren’t allowed to know about, that some magician put a spell on so we shouldn’t find it, that centaurs are really humans riding pegasi.
She felt secure enough to rearrange her hands in his mane and raise her face a little so that she could glance to one side and then the other—careful not to move her head far enough or quickly enough to disturb Ebon’s equilibrium.
He was gaining height, spiralling up and up in a huge gyre. Even in the dark she could see—her view came and went, like an eye’s slow blinking, by the whip of Ebon’s wingbeats—the great shadowy loom of the palace, spilling off in one direction with stables and barns, and in another with servants’ quarters, and another with courtiers’ and magicians’ apartments, and another yet with the special open rooms for the pegasi. She could make out the always-lit dome of the Inner Great Court and the walls around the Outer, the whole surrounded by wide formal gardens and carriageways like the erratic spokes of a very strangely shaped wheel. She thought, This is how it really looks.
As all these passed under Ebon’s wings she could see farther and farther, forest and parkland and a clutch of buildings like a small village at a crossroads of the inner city; and there was the Wall. Now, as Ebon turned again, the palace came once more into view, a little smaller this time. Her people were fascinated by what they called sky views; some of the most prized and valuable of the decorative artwork in the palace were paintings of hills and valleys, lakes and forests, towns and villages, as if seen from above, and there were many miniature landscapes called sky holds, made out of stone and wood and clay and, occasionally, jewels. None of them were as beautiful—or as exciting—or as shocking—as this dark-blurred, wing-nicked scene, with the wind streaking past, tangling her hair and chilling her back and her bare feet; but her hands were buried snugly in his mane, and Ebon himself was as warm as a hearth.
She thought, This is how it really looks. And again, wonderingly: This is how it really looks....
At last he stopped climbing and flew for the Wall, and over it. It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder (as presumably it had not occurred to Ebon) whether the airborne magic carefully suspended and maintained above the Wall would let a human pass; they had just proved that it would. Moving boringly at walking speed through one of the gates, there was a faint chilly press or wash against your skin rather like diving into Banesorrow Lake; she felt nothing tonight but the wind and the flick of Ebon’s mane.