Toby Bishop - Horse Mistress 03

by Airs of Night

  EPILOGUE

  ONher last day as an Academy student, Lark packed up her few belongings, cleared her space on the sleeping porch, and embraced her classmates. They had spent six years together, studying, arguing, gossiping, and flying. They would see each other from time to time, but it would never be as it was now, all of them together in these familiar halls, sleeping next to each other in the Dormitory. They would go their separate ways, and there might be some who would never return to the Academy of the Air.

  Hester, as expected, was assigned to the border. She would set off for the Angles this very morning to take up her duties there near her parents’ summer estate. It had recently been redeemed from the lenders by Duke Francis himself in gratitude to the Beeths. Anabel, with Beatrice and Grace, was to fly to Isamar, to be part of Prince Nicolas’s palace flight. Lark had heard Mistress Star say that the cost of the royal flight had risen nicely since the troubles, and the Duke had assured her that the increased revenue would be spent on the Academy.

  Lark herself would take up residence in the Ducal Palace. She was to be Duke Francis’s special courier.

  She would be allowed to see her brothers from time to time.

  But she would see Mistress Winter often.

  She carried her bag downstairs. Duke Francis was sending a carriage for her things, so she left the bag just inside the door of the Dormitory and hurried across the courtyard to give Tup his breakfast. The autumn sun was bright as the twopenny coin for which Tup had been named, and it gleamed on Winter Sunset’s coat where she grazed now with the yearlings in their pasture. Lark paused at the fence to call softly to her.

  Sunny lifted her head and flicked her ears in greeting before she resumed grazing. There were only four yearlings with her, but next year there would be more. Master Crisp was working hard at restoring the breeding program.

  Molly, the little brown goat, came trotting up to the fence to bleat at Lark.

  Lark bent to stroke her. “So where is Diamond, Molly? Is she flying so early?”

  Molly pressed close so Lark could scratch at her poll. Lark stroked her for a moment before she turned toward the stables. There was a lot to do before she could leave. She wanted to leave Tup’s stall as clean as she had found it. And she wanted to clean Diamond’s stall for Mistress Winter one more time.

  The sound of Winter Sunset’s whinny stopped her where she was. She looked back, and saw the sorrel mare with her head up, her ears pricked forward. Lark followed her gaze, and found Mistress Winter and Diamond just banking for their descent into the return paddock. She shaded her eyes to watch them come to ground, Diamond’s silver wings wide and still, her forefeet reaching as she soared down over the hedgerow. Lark sighed with pleasure at the sight. As always, Mistress Winter’s slender form was erect, flowing with the horse as if she were part of the animal, her hands easy on the reins, the sleeves of her tabard rippling in the wind.

  Winter Sunset came trotting up to the fence and pressed close to the rails, stretching her neck over the top rail to watch. Lark gave her mane a gentle tug.

  “Aye, sweetheart,” she murmured. “ ’Tis a hard thing for you to see, isn’t it? You’re a lovely, fine girl to share your bondmate this way.”

  Sunny’s head turned to follow Diamond’s canter up the return paddock toward the stables; and then, once Mistress Winter dismounted, she gave a deep sigh and went back to cropping the dry grass. Lark opened the gate for Molly to come through, and the little goat trotted at her heels as she walked toward the stable.

  No one but Lark had believed it could work, that the orphaned filly would accept a new bondmate.

  When Mistress Winter had set out to fly her, that first time, Suzanne Star had begged her not to, fearful of another tragedy.

  But Lark had seen Diamond’s invitation to Mistress Winter. There had been not the slightest doubt in her mind that this was what Diamond wanted.

  She was not surprised, either, that Mistress Winter could manage both Diamond and Winter Sunset. She stabled them side by side, and she borrowed Molly to foster the filly when she was out with Sunny. She

  told Eduard Crisp that her price for saving Diamond was for Sunny to remain in the stables at the Academy of the Air. His dour protests were overridden by Mistress Star and by the Duke himself, and now even Master Crisp admitted he had been wrong. The other winged horses accepted Winter Sunset’s presence though she didn’t fly. The yearlings loved her, trotting up to her whenever they were turned out to graze, yearning after her when she went to her stall and they to theirs. And for her part, so long as Mistress Winter rode her each day, she seemed to accept her new role.

  Suzanne Star had offered to step down, to make Mistress Winter Headmistress. But Mistress Winter, with a young horse to train and an injured one to care for, refused. Lark suspected she wanted to retain a bit of freedom to visit the Uplands from time to time.

  Lark smiled as she went into to Tup’s stall. Six years before, Philippa Winter had allowed an unsuitable farm girl to come to the Academy of the Air. And now, Philippa spent as much time as she could on the very farm where she had first met Lark. And though Lark knew Brye hated to see her leave Deeping Farm, he was all the more glad when Philippa returned.

  Lark finished her chores, saddled Tup, and tied her saddlepack behind the cantle. She brushed bits of straw from her tabard, and put on her peaked cap and her flying gloves.

  Hester and Anabel and the others were also ready, gathering as a flight for the last time in the courtyard.

  Lark leaped up into Tup’s saddle and fell in behind her classmates. Just as Hester turned Golden Morning toward the flight paddock, Amelia hurried out from the stables. She came close to Tup, and held something up to Lark.

  “What’s this, Amelia?” Lark asked.

  “It’s your icon,” Amelia said breathlessly. “I almost forgot!”

  “But I gave it to you. ’Tis yours now.”

  “And it protected me,” Amelia said. She pressed it into Lark’s hand. Lark turned it over in her fingers, the little carved figure of Kalla she had worn for a long time around her own neck. She hesitated, and Amelia said, “It will protect you again now, Lark. I mean—” Her lips curved, and her eyes twinkled. “I mean—Horsemistress Black.”

  Horsemistress Black! It was true. Kalla’s miracle was complete, from Tup’s birth on an Uplands farm to this shining day. “Oh, Amelia. Thank you.”

  Amelia stepped back and lifted her hand. “Good-bye. Good luck!”

  Lark nodded farewell and lifted Tup’s reins. Hester began her canter down the flight paddock, and the rest of the flight followed, one by one. Lark and Tup were last to launch into the sky, lifted on Tup’s strong wings. When the whole flight was in the air, they hovered at Quarters, the girls gazing into each other’s eyes one last time.

  Then the formation broke apart, splitting in every direction in a sunburst of sorrel and palomino and bay and black.

  Lark looked back once at the gambrel roofs of the Academy stables, at the majestic lines of the Hall and the Dormitory and the Residence, at the younger girls gathered in the courtyard to watch them leave. As Tup carried her away, the figures below her shrank until she could no longer tell them apart.

  She was certain, though, that one of them was Mistress Winter, standing in the very center of the courtyard with her sorrel mare at her shoulder. She lifted one arm to wave.

  Lark, her heart as light as if it had its own wings, waved back before she turned her face forward to her new life.

  To read more about the winged horses of Oc,

  please visitwww.tobybishop.net .

  Toby Bishop can be contacted at DuchyofOc@aol.com.

  ONE

>   PHILIPPAWinter stood beside Winter Sunset in a high pasture of southern Klee, letting the mountain breeze cool her hot cheeks and dry the sweat from Sunny’s wings. Fields of lavender spilled down the steep hillside at their feet. On the opposite hill, black-faced sheep grazed in the sunshine, so close Philippa could have tossed a stone among them. Their occasional bleating was the only sound except for the whisper of the wind blowing up from the sea. Sunny stood still, listening to the peaceful quiet.

  Philippa encircled her bondmate’s neck with her arm. “Sunny, my girl,” she said. “It may not be home, but it could be worse.”

  Sunny arched her neck to touch Philippa’s face with her velvet muzzle. Philippa laughed and stroked her.

  “A little lonely, yes. But it’s a beautiful spot.”

  A shepherd raised an arm in silent greeting, and Philippa inclined her head in response. They had become friends of a sort, she and the odd assortment of people who maintained this remote estate. When she had

  first arrived, weary from the long flight, weighed down with sadness, she had hardly spoken to anyone.

  Her silence had made no impression. The staff at Marinan were a silent lot themselves and used to solitude. But that had been more than a year ago. Since Baron Rys’s captain had brought her to this mountain estate, she had grown familiar with its denizens, human and animal, and she had come to know every hill and valley of Marinan, the Ryses’ ancestral home.

  The family rarely came here now, having a bigger and better house in the capital city and another on the northern coast. They left Marinan in the care of an elderly housekeeper named Lyssett, two taciturn shepherds, and two narders to till and harvest the lavender. The sweet scent of lavender permeated every corner of the old house. Even the sheep’s oily wool, brushing against stray branches in the lavender fields, picked up and held the scent.

  These people had lived at Marinan all their lives. The young people had long since moved to livelier places, but these faithful retainers would never part from Marinan until death did it for them. The narders carried the lavender oil and seeds to the capital for sale and returned home immediately afterward. The shepherds left the hills only for the occasional festival, or to carry wool to market. Lyssett, to Philippa’s knowledge, never traveled at all except to the bottom of the long, precipitous lane to meet the mail coach. It was a circumscribed life, serenely undisturbed by the outside world. It was, in fact, the perfect place for a hunted person—and her winged horse—to hide.

  A stall had been cleaned and provisioned for Winter Sunset before they arrived. The narder who showed Philippa to the barn and the stall would say only, “M’lord’s orders,” when she asked him any questions.

  Her first few days at Marinan, she was afraid to leave Sunny alone, even to sleep, but by the time they had been there a week, she understood that no stranger or random visitor ever climbed the lane to the house, and that no one except the narders and the shepherds and Lyssett occupied Marinan. When she mentioned Baron Rys, the look of respect on every face convinced her that these good country people would never betray her. All that had been needed to transfer their loyalty to her was the word of Rys’s captain, given to Lyssett when he delivered Philippa and Sunny over to her care.

  Soon Philippa and Sunny were flying every day without fear of discovery. They avoided the lowland villages, where people’s tongues might be set a-rattle at the sight of a winged horse, and flew instead into the mountains, where they could come to ground on steep hillsides, in secluded meadows, in hidden valleys lush with oak trees and linden and tall, sweet-smelling pines. When they had set a pattern of being gone for many hours each day, Lyssett began to prepare a packet of bread and cheese and fruit, and lay it on the table next to Philippa’s place at breakfast.

  For that entire summer, and into the swiftly falling mountain autumn, Philippa and her mare reveled in the peace of Marinan. Sometimes Philippa, lying in her solitary bed at night, longed for news of the Academy of the Air. But she had come perilously close to losing her bondmate, and if isolation was the price she paid to avoid that tragedy, she willingly accepted it.

  The occasional betraying dream of Deeping Farm, of violet-eyed Larkyn Hamley—and, foolishly, of her brother Brye—disturbed her sleep from time to time. She would wake then, and shake herself in remonstrance. It was merely weakness, the sort of nonsense possible only in sleep. She would close her eyes again, comforting herself with the knowledge that Sunny was safe in the barn just across the yard.

  When winter closed in, with its snow and ice and long hours of darkness, she and Sunny rested, venturing out on only the clearest days. Spring found them both feeling as sprightly and restless as fledglings. And now, as a second summer wound down, Philippa began to feel as if she were thirty years of age instead of forty. She felt strong, relaxed, and refreshed. She also felt idle, as the days slipped away, one after another, and for this she experienced a twinge of remorse. She tried to help in the barn, and in the fields when she could, but not one of the Marinan retainers encouraged this industry.

  Esmond Rys’s appearance came as a surprise, the first visitor Philippa had seen in all her time at Marinan. She had noticed the elaborate meal preparations Lyssett was making, and the extra effort being expended on clipping hedges and raking gravel walks, but it didn’t occur to her that the staff was expecting their lord.

  The season was perhaps midway between Estian and Erdlin. It was hard to judge, as the Klee had different holidays. They didn’t worship the entwined gods of the Isamarians, but had some singular deity

  whose festival was held at midwinter. Philippa, an avowed skeptic, had never paid much attention to such things. She had lost track of the calendar, taking each day as it came, sun or rain or wind or snow.

  The sky on this day was a clear blue, the sun just beginning its descent into the west. Philippa was sweeping the aisles of the barn, sprinkling fresh sawdust from a wheelbarrow. She and Sunny had flown to one of their favorite spots that morning, a long flight to one of the high mountain pastures where a shepherd’s hut stood near a tiny, sparkling pond, and the lush grass reached Sunny’s knees. Philippa let Sunny graze while she dabbled her bare feet in the clear water and let the mountain sun toast her cheeks.

  She even dozed a little, there in the grass, before taking wing again for Marinan.

  They had been back about an hour when she was startled to hear hoofbeats in the lane that wound up the mountain. She dropped her broom and hurried to the barn door. She kept her face in shadow, but leaned forward just enough to see that two horses had come into the yard.

  The familiar sight of Rys’s slight figure gave her a rush of pleasure. It had been so long since she had spoken to anyone except Lyssett or the narders. She stepped out into the yard, smoothing her hair with her palms as she went, hoping her habit was not too grimy with sawdust and specks of hay. “My lord!”

  she called. “How good to see you!”

  He turned and gave her his usual restrained smile. It looked even more familiar to her since she had gotten to know his daughter, Amelia, who was very like him. Everything about these Ryses seemed understated, and yet spoke of strength and competence.

  “And you, Mistress Winter,” Rys said. “It’s easy to see that you’re well. And Sunny?”

  “She’s fine.” She reached him as he dismounted, and on an impulse, put out her hand.

  He took it, bowed over it, and said, “Philippa. You look wonderfully rested.”

  “We could hardly be otherwise, Esmond,” she said, and chuckled. “Sunny and I are as lazy and fat as two cats in the sun. I’m surprised to see you, though I suppose I should have suspected. Lyssett has been cooking for two days, and the narders took time from the fields to rake the paths.”

  He smiled. “I sent a note with the mail coach.” Rys’s companion slid down from his own saddle, and Rys nodded in his direction. “This is my nephew, Philippa. My brother’s son, Niven Rys. Niven, Philippa Winter.”

  The young man bowed, and said
gravely, “Horsemistress. An honor.”

  She inclined her head to him. “My lord Niven.”

  “Just Niven, Mistress Winter. Please.”

  “As you wish. Then I am Philippa, and I propose to stable your horses there while you go in and refresh yourselves.”

  The young prince’s brows rose at this. “Where’s the staff?”

  “The narders are weeding in the lavender fields this afternoon, down below the storage sheds. The shepherds—” She pointed to the west. “They’re grazing the sheep in the small meadow. And Lyssett, of course, will be at work on our evening meal.”

  Esmond chuckled. “I see you’ve become one of my household, Philippa.”

  Her lips curved. “I’ve been supremely comfortable. I’m so grateful, Esmond.”

  “Go, then, if you would, Philippa, and stable our horses. We appreciate your help. We’ll have a bit of a wash, then we can sit down over a cup of tea and talk.”

  LYSSETTlaid on a full tea, with sandwiches and cakes, though an even more complete supper was clearly under way. The scents of roasting lamb and mint sauce filled the house.

  Philippa sat at the long dining room table, toying with her teacup. Niven had the healthy appetite of a young man who had been riding all day, and he cleared every crumb from his plate. Even Esmond ate well, with compliments to Lyssett that brought a blush to the housekeeper’s wrinkled cheeks.

  When Esmond pushed away his plate and picked up his teacup, Philippa said, “What news of your daughter?”

  “Amelia says she will begin riding soon,” he said. “Her colt—she says they haven’t named him yet—but she writes that he is perfect in every way.” He made a deprecating gesture. “Actually, she writes at rather astonishing length about his perfections, from his glossy coat to his beautiful hooves and his spectacular

  wings!”

  Philippa chuckled. “Every girl feels the same about her bondmate, Esmond.”

  “So I gather. But she sounds happy, and she says she’s working him on a longue line in the dry paddock, whatever that is.”