Toby Bishop - Horse Mistress 03

by Airs of Night

  Mahogany couldn’t know any of that, but he clearly sensed the danger around them. He took another step backward, then, to her astonishment, he dipped his head, and took the loop of the halter lead between his teeth.

  “What, Mahogany?” she whispered. “Where do you want me to go?”

  Obviously satisfied that he had her full attention, Mahogany released the lead and sidestepped neatly into the wide doorway of the warehouse. It was open. Fingers of light stretched past barrels and stacked nets, and illuminated coils of astoundingly thick ropes. When Amelia followed Mahogany inside to stand beside him on the cold plank flooring, her nose assured her this must be where fishmongers could come to collect their wares. But now, with the boats idle, there were no fish to sell. Except for the bits of abandoned equipment, the warehouse was empty.

  She hugged Mahogany’s warm neck. “Thank you,” she said, with sincerity. It was warmer in the warehouse, and though Mahogany’s hooves echoed in the emptiness, accentuating their isolation, it was

  good to feel safe, at least for the moment.

  As a few people began to move about in the street, Amelia pondered her choices. Surely, she thought, with the warehousemen and the stevedores about, the lawless gangs would vanish to whatever den they had come from. Still, she and Mahogany would attract attention. The only horses anyone would expect to see around the docks were the draft horses pulling carts and wagons full of goods from the ships. At the moment, there were no ships, and no goods. And, of course, winged horses should fly above the port, not clop along it like their flightless brothers. She had no way to hide Mahogany’s glossy wings.

  She found a barrel of mostly clean water at the back of the warehouse and moved the lid aside so Mahogany could drink his fill. When he was done, she drank some herself, cupping it in her palms. It smelled only slightly of fish. She thought it must be rainwater. After she had cleaned the worst of the brambles and stickers from Mahogany’s mane and tail, she led him back to the open doorway and stood in the shadows peering out into the street.

  “We’ll simply walk there, Mahogany,” she said. He blew through his nostrils and nudged her shoulder with his muzzle. “Yes, I believe you’re right,” she said. “There’s no point in lurking here all day until night comes again, and the gangs come out. Are you ready?”

  He blew again, and she patted him, then stepped out into the dreary, snow-spattered lane.

  Two men in thick jackets and wide-legged canvas trousers were just turning the corner, walking toward her. They stopped where they were, goggling at the sight of a girl in a bedraggled riding habit and a slender-legged winged horse strolling between the warehouse loading docks. Amelia lifted her head, keeping her eyes fixed on the silhouette of the North Tower, and walked on as if her being there were the most natural thing in the world.

  Her cheeks burned, though the air was icy. Occasional snowflakes drifted past the slanting roofs and unpainted walls of the warehouses and sheds she passed. When she reached the first corner, she paused, with Mahogany’s nose touching the back of her neck. She peered toward the bay, where she could see the masts and furled sails of the fishing boats rocking gently in their moorage. A patrol boat, flying the black-and-silver flag of the Duke, was just sailing out into the harbor, several men in its prow, its carronades bristling on the deck. In the other direction, past a jumble of weathered buildings that spilled away from the bay, she saw the slender spire of the North Tower.

  A sense of renewed urgency gripped her. She set off down the nearest street that seemed to curve in the direction of the Tower, trying to look as if she knew where she was going.

  For ten minutes or so she and Mahogany walked on. Twice more, men stopped to stare at her, and once a woman in a heavy canvas apron and what looked like a filleting knife in her hand came to the door of a dilapidated shop with a sign carved into the shape of a fish. The woman stood staring, openmouthed, as Amelia and Mahogany came down her street. As they passed, Amelia inclined her head. The woman gawked at her, dropped the knife into a capacious pocket in her apron, then curtsied.

  Amelia smiled at this and walked on. Mahogany matched his steps to hers. They turned down a lane here, a street there, trying to find their way to the Tower. Amelia, despite having had no rest at all during the night, felt energized by having her goal within reach. She picked up the pace, and Mahogany’s hooves beat a neat pattern on the stones as they pressed forward.

  They had just reached a wider street, not quite a boulevard, but at least a road where Amelia could imagine wagons passing, when a little formation of men in black uniforms came marching toward her.

  Someone shouted an order, and the men stopped. They, too, stared at Amelia, and at the bay horse at her shoulder.

  One of them said, just loud enough for her to hear, “Zito’s ass, Wallace, them’s wings on that horse.”

  And the one who had given the order to halt said, “It’s the Klee girl!” He pulled a smallsword from a scabbard at his belt, and brandished it at Amelia. “This is our lucky day, boys. Just what the Duke ordered up, and she’s walked right into our arms!”

  As a group, the men started across the wide street toward Amelia and Mahogany. Mahogany threw up his head and flared his nostrils, but he held his ground. Amelia froze for only an instant.

  Then, with a hiss of indrawn breath, she turned toward Mahogany. “Hold very still, my love,” she murmured. “We’ll be faster if I ride.”

  Mahogany trembled as the scent of the men grew stronger. Amelia braced herself, wound her left hand in his mane, and kept the halter lead loose in her right. She leaped, and landed neatly on his back, her legs settling over his folded wings. She pressed her left calf against his pinions. “Go, Mahogany!” she cried.

  “Go!”

  And Mahogany, as if they had done just this a thousand times, whirled on his hindquarters, his tail brushing the snow-dampened cobblestones, and dashed away from the uniformed men.

  They shouted curses and commands, but Amelia never looked back. She leaned over Mahogany’s neck to watch for potholes or splits in the cobblestones, frantic with anxiety that Mahogany might slip on the wet street or catch a hoof in a gap.

  When the shouts faded behind them, she lifted the lead of the halter and gently pulled. “Slower, now,”

  she said. “I don’t want you to fall, Mahogany!”

  Obediently, as if he understood every word, Mahogany slowed to the running walk. It was at least twice as quick a pace as Amelia could walk, so she stayed where she was.

  A shot sounded from the harbor and was answered a moment later by another. People came out of their shops and leaned from the windows of houses, trying to see, calling to each other. When they saw Amelia and Mahogany, they halted to stare.

  One woman, who had unshuttered her window and peered out toward the harbor, called to her. “Miss!

  Miss! Do you know if the Klee are coming?”

  Amelia’s blood ran cold at the implication. Mutely, she shook her head, and she and Mahogany were past the woman’s house a moment later.

  The Klee coming? Is that what the people of Oc thought?

  “Kalla’s heels,” she muttered. “We have to hurry!”

  FROMthe roof of the Academy Hall, not long after the midday meal, the remaining students and horsemistresses gathered to look out toward the White City, transfixed and horrified.

  They had been listening to the carronades all morning. A shot would fire across the water, to be answered a moment later by another. Everyone held their breath, or stifled groans. Lark offered wordless, helpless prayers, for Nick, for Brye, for Amelia.

  The balcony ran all the way around the building, interrupted only by the facade facing the courtyard. As snow melted on the cobblestones of the courtyard, the girls and their instructors gathered to watch their colleagues and their friends take flight from the park of the Rotunda.

  He had sent them all. A proper flight was seven horses, but in this case there were twelve of them, nine from the Academy and three wh
o must have come from other posts. The formation banked to the right, and flew above the warehouses of the dock district and on toward the bay.

  Lark pressed her hands over her heart. “So beautiful,” she breathed.

  Jolinda stood beside her, her fists on her hips, her wrinkled face set. “Oh, aye,” Jolinda said. “Beautiful they are. And foolish.”

  “They think they’re doing their duty.”

  “Aye,” Jolinda answered dourly. “The old Duke would never have done such a thing, sending untried girls against carronades! He’d turn in his grave if he knew.”

  On Lark’s other side, Anabel sniffled back tears. Hester was beside her, an arm over her shoulders.

  Anabel said brokenly, “Surely, Baron Rys has no wish to fire on winged horses.”

  “Nay,” Lark said.“ ’Tis certain he doesn’t.”

  “The patrol boats are using the flight as cover,” Hester said. Lark glanced up at her. Her face looked as if it had been carved of stone. “If the patrol boats fire on the ship, the ship has to fire back.”

  “But the horses . . .” Anabel said faintly.

  Isobel, her face strained, had also come up the stairs to stand with them in the cold afternoon. The second- and first-level girls huddled near the wall. Mistress Star stood beside Mistress Winter, and Kathryn Dancer and the other junior instructors, chores and classes abandoned, whispered together near the door.

  Everyone fell silent as the flyers coalesced into the great vee of Open Columns, then, as they flew out

  over the water, they closed their ranks.

  Close Columns was a military formation. It was designed to break into the frightening maneuver called Arrows at a moment’s notice, the horses flashing toward their target at a steep angle, recovering at the last moment to arrow back up into the sky.

  Lark could hardly believe, even now, that Duke William would send these flyers against the Klee. Her heart pounded with fear, and she could feel the beat of Anabel’s pulse through her arm where she gripped it. Over the Moon, leading the formation, was an arrow of silver against the heavy gray clouds that hung over the bay. A sorrel and a bay followed, and then the roan mare flown by Caroline Rambler.

  Beryl’s chestnut Sky Heart was in the near column, his flaxen mane and tail barely visible in the dull light.

  Beatrice’s Dark Lad, a gelding almost as dark as Tup, came after Sky Heart. The column paused, then the front horses descended sharply. A moment later the sound of a carronade reached the watchers.

  They could just make out the faint outline of the sails of the Klee ship. The patrol boats were too small and low for them to see, but they saw a puff of smoke rise from the water to blend with the clouds.

  Lark gasped, and Anabel cried out as one of the first-levels screamed. Hester grunted something wordless.

  It was the roan, in the middle of its Arrows dive, that spun backward with a sudden, terrible jerk of its body and tumbled slowly and agonizingly, toward the sea. It was too far to see the horsemistress’s efforts to save it, to guide it to a splash it might survive. Before the horse struck the water, the rider was thrown free, her skirt flaring as she fell. Both horse and horsemistress disappeared behind the roofs of the city buildings.

  Suzanne Star was moaning, “Oh, gods! No! It’s Rambler!”

  “Kalla’s teeth,” Philippa Winter muttered, as the rest of the flight pulled out of its formation and rose again against the gray clouds. The student flyers, at the end of the columns, banked with the leaders, flying up and out of the carronades’ reach.

  “Can they save him?” someone cried. Lark thought it was Isobel, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the awful sight of the harbor and her classmates flying above it.

  “No,” Mistress Winter said harshly. “He’s injured, and his wings are open. They’ll drag him down.

  Someone will save Caroline, I suppose, though she may wish they had not.”

  Sobs and cries of horror rose around them on the balcony. Even Sarah Runner began to weep aloud.

  Mistress Winter said loudly, “No hysteria! It will upset our horses. Control yourselves.” The cries were abruptly muffled, but Lark heard girls choking back tears. Her own throat ached with them, but she thrust out her chin and patted the silently weeping Anabel. She told herself she could grieve for Rambler later.

  She cast a glance to her left to see that Hester, too, was dry-eyed, though her face was stiff with shock.

  All of them watched as the flight of winged horses hovered at Quarters. There were no more cannon shots. As the flight reassembled in Open Columns, it had one glaringly empty place. Lark could hardly bear it. The distance, and the silence, gave the entire scene the feeling of unreality. It was like a nightmare, she thought, when you know you will wake up soon, and realize none of it is real. It almost seemed that Rambler and Caroline would rise above the horizon after all, and join their fellows.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. A beautiful winged horse had just been lost. A horsemistress’s life had been ruined in a moment, in a puff of smoke and the clap of a cannon. And for what?

  A moment later, Matron hurried up the stairs and out onto the balcony, breathing hard. She had a rolled message in her hand. She carried it straight to where Mistress Winter and Mistress Star stood side by side. The two horsemistresses exchanged a glance, then Mistress Winter unrolled the letter, and they both leaned over it.

  Lark was trying to think of something comforting to say to Anabel when she heard Mistress Star say,

  “Philippa! Don’t you think—”

  But Philippa Winter’s straight back was already disappearing down the stairs. Mistress Star was a step behind her. Jolinda, without a word, and having received no order that Lark could see, hurried after them. Moments later Mistress Winter emerged from the double doors below the balcony, buttoning her flying coat. She pulled on her peaked cap as she strode down the steps, and by the time she had crossed the courtyard she had her gloves on and her quirt swinging at her belt. There was no sign of Mistress

  Star, but Jolinda came scuttling after Mistress Winter, to dash ahead of her into the stables.

  Lark turned her eyes back toward the sea just in time to see the double line of horses banking beyond the Klee ship. The ship’s sails were full, and it tacked across the mouth of the bay. They all heard the sounds of cannon, and saw puffs of smoke. There was an answering shot as the line of horses swept down and across the bow of the ship. Another carronade flashed, smoke rose, and the Klee ship tacked again, slowly and ponderously, like a great fat lady dancing in wide skirts.

  Lark’s mouth was dry with fear. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the sight.

  Her hand groped for her icon of Kalla, and for a moment she couldn’t remember why she no longer had it.

  Amelia! A shudder ran through her. In all of this, she had almost forgotten poor Amelia.

  And then she forgot even that, as she and Hester and the others gaped at the sight of Mistress Winter and Winter Sunset rising from the flight paddock, Mistress Winter a straight, slender figure in black, Winter Sunset majestic in her strength and grace.

  Lark gripped her elbows with her hands, shuddering with a dreadful premonition. Winter Sunset didn’t bank to the east, toward the harbor. The formation of winged horses there was dissolving, each flyer performing a Half Reverse, then hovering at Quarters above the billowing sails of the Klee ship.

  But Winter Sunset flew straight to the north.

  “Where’s she going?” Isobel said. And when no one answered her, she said again, “Where is Mistress Winter going? Don’t ignore me just because I’m neutral, please! I followed my conscience, just as you did!”

  Hester said, “No one minds your following your conscience, Isobel.”

  Isobel’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank you,” she said miserably. “I’ve been round and round it all, whether loyalty to the Duke is our duty or if we should follow Lord Francis and protect the bloodlines—I just don’t know what’s
right.”

  Hester nodded. “It’s difficult. There’s no precedent to follow, so we have to thrash it out ourselves.

  Lark, don’t you think—”

  Lark heard these last words, but she didn’t answer. She was already in the doorway, dashing headlong down the stairs, her heart pounding with fear. She thought she knew where Mistress Winter and Winter Sunset were headed, and she couldn’t let them go alone.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  WILLIAMhad kept his father’s room unchanged since his succession. The wing chair still sat beside the tall windows, angled for a good view of the stables and the paddocks. Frederick had liked sitting there, watching his winged horses drill over the park. Many and many a time, the young William had stood in the doorway to this room, waiting for his father to notice him. It had invariably been a good, long wait.

  Many years had passed, but those memories still carried a faint heat.

  The old Duke had been irritatingly single-minded. His devotion to the traditions of the Duchy, as well as the bloodlines of the winged horses, had been maddening, but he had been a popular ruler. William knew he himself enjoyed no such affection from his people.

  He leaned his hip against the curving back of the wing chair as he looked out into the courtyard. He had been forced, in the end, to call back the flyers. Not because they had lost a horse, although he knew that was the case, but because the snow had returned, drifts of it falling across the cold waters of the bay to dissolve into the waves. Winged horses, he had learned from Mistress Baron, dared not fly in a heavy snowstorm. The snow melted from the heat of their wings, she said, and pooled between the ribs so the wings were no longer efficient. Flyers caught in sudden storms had been known to fall.

  The snow had not looked all that heavy to him. But those twelve—well, eleven—flyers were all he had.

  He hadn’t dared risk them.

  And, of course, he had no Master Breeder to advise him.

  The Marinan had dropped anchor, and William recalled the patrol boats, too. It had been a gesture only, like brandishing a smallsword in an enemy’s face but having no real intention of using it. He had never meant to lose a winged horse, and he supposed he should be grateful the patrol boat had recovered the horsemistress.