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.