The usual ritual and binding spell were delayed, however, till the human child’s twelfth birthday because it was a strong spell and might be too great a burden for anyone younger. Very occasionally the human child nonetheless became sick or ill, or fainted, and had to be carried away, and missed the banquet afterward, although there was a folk-tale that these bindings were often the most successful. While there was no record of any pegasus being made ill by the human binding magic, pegasus children were never bound before they were better than half grown—and, crucially, capable of the long flight from the pegasus country to the human palace. The pegasi’s life span was slightly longer than human, but they came to their full growth slightly sooner. It sometimes happened that there was no suitable pegasus for an eligible twelve-year-old human; usually some slightly less suitable pegasus was found in these cases, because of the likelihood that if the binding was put off more than a year or two there was no hope of its becoming a strong one. And, perhaps because of the continuing weakness of shared language, this shared empathy was greatly desired for the good of the Alliance.
It was several generations before Dorogin’s idea of the individual Speakers became traditional, but for many generations now every important bound pair had had a magician assigned when they were bound, to aid their connection. The magician neither took part in the binding ceremony nor was officially presented, because the need for such a facilitator was considered shameful, a proof of continued failure of one of the pivotal aspects of the Alliance the human domain was built on. The guild of Speaker magicians was however the most revered of all the magicians’ guilds—and the most inscrutable. Among the Speakers themselves the posting to a royal pair was hotly sought after.
Sylvi was the fourth child of the king and the first girl, and while her parents had been glad to see her, with three older brothers, she was not considered important to the country’s welfare. She was pleased about this, as soon as she was old enough to begin to understand what it meant, because she was much more interested in horses and dogs and hawks and stealing sweetmeats when the cook’s back was turned than she was in being a princess. She had a vague notion that there were lots of available horses and dogs and hawks—and sweetmeats—partly on account of her being a princess, but she believed that the connection was not all that close (her cousins, who didn’t live at the palace, had lots of horses and dogs and hawks and sweetmeats too), and that being king chiefly meant that her father looked tired all the time and was always either talking to or reading something from someone who wanted something from him.
Her cousins’ fathers weren’t quite so always reading and talking. Her favourite uncle—the one who had more in common with his boots than his pegasus—was a farmer, and while, he said, he mostly told other people what to do, sometimes he harnessed up a pair of his own horses and ploughed one of his own fields.“So I’ll remember what I’m asking,” he said. He and his wife, one of the queen’s sisters, had each a bound pegasus, but they usually only saw them on trips to the palace: “Can you imagine a Speakers’ Guild magician living on a farm?” But both pegasi occasionally visited. “It’s a funny thing, the animals like ’em,” said her uncle, whose name was Rulf. “ They always insist on sleeping outside—we’ve got a perfectly good room at the end of the house with doors that open out under that big old oak tree. But they sleep outdoors. In bad weather they may sleep in the barn. And wherever they are, the animals drift that way. The cows and the horses are all at whatever end of their pasture to be nearer the pegasi, and the outside dogs are usually curled up with them, like the house dogs sleep on our bed.”
He told all that part of the story easily and often; but once, when he and his family were visiting the palace, and he and Sylvi had been riding through the park together by themselves, a flight of pegasi came over them. The palace horses were all very accustomed to this, and Sylvi’s pony only raised his head and looked—longingly, Sylvi always thought, as she longingly looked as well—and the king’s hounds accompanying her stopped chasing rabbit smells and sat down, and Sylvi was sure she heard a tiny whine as they too stared up. But Rulf ’s horse reared and bounced and neighed and it was a moment before Rulf managed to quiet him again.
“It’s a mixed blessing, though, seeing ’em flying, isn’t it?” he said to his niece. “First time Hon”—his eldest son—“saw ours coming in at home, the sunset was behind ’em, the sky purple and blue and red and gold, and their wings going on forever, the way they do, gold and red like the sky, and their necks arched and their legs all held up fancy as a dancer’s and their manes and tails finer than the lace your dad had for his coronation robe—Hon was just on a year old, and he burst into tears, cried and cried and cried, and wouldn’t stop. Never cried, Hon. Never afraid of anything. Never cried. Cried, seeing pegasi flying for the first time.” Rulf ’s horse gave a last forlorn little whicker.
At the palace the pegasi had their own private annex in their own private grove of trees—and with their own private and exclusive latrine ; pegasus dung was much prized by the royal gardeners. The annex was merely one long narrow room with three walls and a bit of framing on the fourth; trees served to screen the fact that the long fourth wall of the annex was almost entirely absent. The trees also served as a windbreak, although the annex was in the lee of the palace. Sylvi had never seen the annex—humans did not trespass there without a good reason—but she had said to her father, “Don’t they get cold?”
Her father smiled. “Feathers are very warm. You sleep in a feather-bed : imagine you could wrap it around you like giving yourself a hug.”
The king rarely had time to ride out with his dogs and his hawks, and he rarely ate sweetmeats. He had told his daughter (she had asked) that he didn’t much care for them, though he remembered he’d liked them when he was younger. Sylvi was glad she’d never be king and lose her taste for sweetmeats. The king admitted that he would ride out oftener with his dogs, his hawks and his daughter, if he were able to, but he was not. Here he looked at the pile of paper on his desk, and sighed; as if the sigh were a signal, a dog or three materialised from in or behind or under some piece of furniture, and laid their heads on his knees.
The queen had given Sylvi her first riding lessons, had put the first elderly and benign hawk on her fist, had consulted with Diamon, the master-at-arms, about her first practise sword and her first little bow. The queen, before she was queen, had been colonel of her own regiment of Lightbearers; she had spent several years killing taralians, plus a few norindours and the occasional rare ladon, in the west in and around Orthumber and Stormdown, and had been known as something of a firebrand. She still took charge of a practise class occasionally when the master-at-arms was short-handed. The queen’s classes were always very popular because she had a habit of organising her students into a serviceable unit and taking them out to do some work: this might be anything from rescuing half a village stranded by a mud-slide to hunting taralian or ornbear, and even when it was hard, dirty and boring—or hard, dirty, boring and dangerous—the students came back smiling and gratified.