by Toby Bishop
“Oh, the—the herbalist . . .” Lark pointed back the way she had come. “I wasn’t going to—I mean, I didn’t ask her—she insisted I take it.”
“Yes, of course she did,” Lady Beeth said. “Now she can say she is patronized by the students of the Academy of the Air.”
Hester snickered. “Told you, Hamley. Privileges.”
“I didn’t like the shop,” Lark said frankly.
“Why?” Anabel asked. “It’s a pretty little icon.”
“Oh, aye, I like the statue, but . . .”
Hester was standing by the window, staring out. “Who’s that man?” she asked.
Lady Beeth laid down the handful of ribbons she had been sorting, and went to stand beside her daughter. Lark stood behind them. The stooped man was standing just inside the doorway of the herbalist’s, as if hiding in the shadows.
Lady Beeth drew a sudden, noisy breath. “Step back, girls,” she commanded. There was an edge to her voice, and an air of authority Lark hadn’t noticed before. She understood, now, where Hester came by her self-confident manner. “Move away from the window, please,” Lady Beeth repeated. “We want nothing to do with that—that gentleman.” Her tone made it clear she considered the stooped man to be nothing of the sort.
“Why, Mamá?” Hester said, even as she did as her mother bid.
Her mamá turned away from the window, and Lark saw the glance she exchanged with her serving-man. “In a moment,” Lady Beeth said, “we will go to lunch, and I will explain.” She glanced over her shoulder. “When he has gone.”
When they were all seated at a table in the handsomest inn Lark had ever seen, with an order placed for an ample lunch, Lady Beeth leaned forward to address the girls in a low voice. “The man you saw,” she said, “works for Lord William.”
“But, Mamá,” Hester began. “Then why—?”
Lady Beeth put up her hand, and shook her head with a decisive motion. “I don’t like speaking of such things to you girls,” she said. “You’re in the Duke’s service, and one day Lord William will be Duke.” She glanced around to be certain no one was approaching their table. “He has a reputation,” she said grimly. “And that awful man has something to do with it. Your father and I, Hester . . .” She patted her daughter’s shoulder. “We took care to keep you away from William’s company. And most parents of our acquaintance did the same. Since he was a young man, his behavior has been . . . well, less than honorable. And in recent years, ever stranger stories about him, and about his man, reach our ears. You are young to be thinking of such things, but they are real, and they are dangerous. I would be remiss if I did not warn you.”
Lark sat back in her chair, her arms wrapped around herself, all her pleasure in the day evaporating. Lord William . . . the magicked quirt, dragged across her body so she couldn’t move . . . She wished she dared tell Lady Beeth all about that day, and how odd it had made her feel. But her brothers, and Deeping Farm . . . She did not dare risk it.
She dropped her hand to her pocket, and held the little icon of Kalla in her palm. Surely, she thought, Kalla’s magic was stronger than whatever smallmagic Lord William employed. Surely an icon of the horse goddess had power over a magicked quirt. But did Kalla have power over the Duke of Oc?
“Larkyn? Aren’t you hungry?”
Lark looked up, and realized that their meal had been served, a big platter of hot meat pastries, with brimming cups of cider and a bowl of crisp vegetables. Lady Beeth’s concern made her feel much better and she found herself smiling up into those strong features, so very like Hester’s. “Oh, aye,” she said. She saw that Hester and Anabel were already attacking the pastries, and she reached for two herself before they should disappear. “Oh, aye, Lady Beeth, I’m starving!”
Hester’s mamá nodded approval. “And so you should be, you young things. Eat, now. It won’t hurt you to be full for once!”
More shopping ensued after the excellent lunch, and Lady Beeth’s manservant made several trips to the carriage to stow their purchases, though Lark kept her little image of Kalla in her tabard pocket. Still, when the slant of the sun’s rays told them the day was coming to a close, they had not solved the problem of Lark’s hair.
As they all rode home, drowsy with heat and good food and fine company, Lady Beeth shook her head kindly at Lark. “I don’t know what to recommend, dear,” she said. “You have wonderful hair, and anyone but a horsemistress would envy it. How you are to restrain it under your cap I have no idea.”
Hester said sleepily, “Cut it.”
“What?” Lark turned to her, startled out of her own sleepy state.
Hester put her head back against the cushioned seat, smiling. “You’ll have to cut it, Hamley. I don’t see what else you can do.”
Reflexively, Lark put a hand to her head. A chaos of curls met her fingers, and she tugged at them ruefully.
“It would be unusual . . .” Lady Beeth began.
Anabel said, squinting a little at Lark, “It will look marvelous. With your skin, and such brilliant eyes . . . I’ll do it for you.”
Lark giggled. “What will my sponsor say?”
Hester spoke with her eyes closed. “Tell her it was Lady Beeth’s idea. She won’t have a word to say against it.”
NINETEEN
PHILIPPA returned from visiting Duke Frederick on a cool afternoon when the last of the beeches had turned to gold. It would be the final flourish of color before the sere shades of winter set in. The air aloft held the sharp bite of fall. To the north, the Ocmarins glimmered with early snow. The grass in the Academy paddocks was the only patch of pure green, its emerald hue protected by careful watering.
Philippa handed Sunny’s reins to Rosellen and walked slowly toward the Hall, weighed down by worry over her old friend. Frederick had roused barely enough to nod to her. His eyes were dark in sunken sockets, and his cheeks, always lean, seemed to sag from the bones as if there were no flesh left to hold them up. Andrews had confided in her that his lord ate almost nothing, and sat staring out of his window, hour after hour. In times past, he would have been watching his winged horses fly. Now, it seemed, he watched for the daughter who would never return. William had been absent. That he no longer felt a need to be present at Frederick’s interviews was an evil harbinger.
As she left the return paddock and started across the courtyard, Margareth came out of the Hall and down the steps. Students dashed here and there, finishing last chores before dinner, one or two stopping to bob their heads to the Headmistress. Margareth smiled at them before she spoke to Philippa.
“Did you see him?” she asked in an undertone. “Did you speak to him?”
“I tried,” Philippa said. She glanced around to be sure no one was close enough to hear. “He’s dying, Margareth. I doubt he heard a word I said.”
“So William will win this battle with Eduard. The little black will go uncut.”
They had reached the steps, and started up them. Philippa gave Margareth a wry look. “We’re going to have to stop calling him that, Margareth. He needs a name.”
Philippa took off her riding cap as they passed through the foyer, and smoothed her hair. Margareth signaled to a serving-girl to bring tea to her office. Once they were settled, Philippa said, “Even when I was young, Frederick always seemed lonely. Francis was at school, and William . . .” She shrugged. “William challenged his father even as a boy. When Pamella came along, late in Frederick’s life, he doted on her.” She sighed, and rubbed her eyes. “His father’s decline suits his purposes, I’m afraid.”
Margareth said heavily. “The day Frederick dies will be a dark day for us.”
“Indeed. William will make changes, and I doubt they will be in our best interests.”
A knock at the door interrupted Margareth’s answer. She called a response, and a maid put her head around the door. “Headmistress, one of the girls wants to see you.”
“Fine,” Margareth answered. “Show her in.” The maid curtsied, and turned away. A moment lat
er, the student stood uncertainly in the doorway.
“Why—Larkyn!” exclaimed Margareth.
“Kalla’s teeth,” Philippa said. “What have you done?”
Larkyn took a hesitant step into the room. “It was . . . it was Lady Beeth’s idea.”
Philippa stood up abruptly. “Since when does Lady Beeth dictate Academy dress?”
Larkyn’s cheeks were already red, but her color deepened. Her hand rose, almost involuntarily, to touch her hair.
Margareth stood up, and moved around her desk. She came to stand before the girl, tipping her chin up with her fingers and turning her head this way and that. “Hmm,” she said. “Well. It will grow, I expect.”
“It will never grow like yours, though, Headmistress!” Larkyn said. “It’s such an awful tangle of curls, and Pe—I mean, my sponsor is always scolding me about it. We couldn’t find anything in Osham that would work, and so—I mean, Lady Beeth tried so hard, and then we gave up, and she suggested—”
“I think I like it,” Margareth said. “It’s trim, and it’s neat. It will probably save you no end of hours brushing and pinning.”
Philippa pursed her lips, but she could see Margareth’s point. Lark’s black hair now curled tightly to her scalp, just grazing the tips of her ears, framing her forehead and her cheeks. The close silhouette dramatized her eyes and her full lips. Still . . .
“If any other girl imitates her,” Philippa said sternly, “we shall have to have a rule.”
Larkyn’s laugh was short and hard. “Mistress Winter, no one wants to imitate me. My hair only sets me more apart than I already am.”
Another warning came to Philippa’s lips, but died unspoken. She understood what it was to feel different. At Larkyn’s tender age, such a distinction must be even more painful.
Margareth said, in a gentler tone than Philippa’s, “Larkyn, did you come only to show me your hair? Or is there something else?”
The girl’s eyes brightened, and she thrust a hand through her newly shorn tresses in a gesture Philippa could wager would become habitual. “Yes, Headmistress, there is something else.” Her gaze slid warily to Philippa, and then back to Margareth. “Yes,” she repeated. “It’s Tup. Mistress Strong doesn’t think so, but I—I think he’s ready to fly!”
IT was always a relief to Lark to come into the stables. Straw and horseflesh filled her nostrils with their comforting scents, and Tup’s little whicker greeted her as she hurried to his stall and he thumped at the wall of his stall with one heel. “Tup! Stop that!” He had already splintered one board, and Herbert had scolded her for it. It was because he was restless, though, she knew it. Though she took him every day to the yearlings’ pasture, so he could canter to and fro with the older colts and fillies, it wasn’t enough.
She let herself in, and went to hug his neck with one arm, dropping the other hand to pet Molly. Tup had grown so that Molly’s poll tucked easily under his chin.
“Kalla’s teeth, I swear he’s grown taller since yesterday,” Mistress Winter said. She and Margareth Morgan stood in the aisle, gazing over the wall at Tup.
“How old is he now, Larkyn?” the Headmistress asked.
Lark stroked Tup’s gleaming shoulder with pride. “Ten months,” she said. She urged Molly to one side so the horsemistresses could admire Tup’s straight, fine legs, his arching neck, the silky fall of his tail. “Autumn is a month old now, and Tup was born one month to the day after Erd’s Festival.”
Mistress Winter leaned on the low wall of the stall and eyed Tup with a practiced eye. “Eduard has still made no judgment, I gather.”
“He has nothing to go on,” the Headmistress responded.
Lark ran her hand down Tup’s neck and tickled the jointure of wing and chest. Obligingly, he lifted his wing and opened the pinions, showing the silken membrane.
“Ah,” murmured the Headmistress.
Mistress Winter fixed Lark with a hard look. Lark knew the horsemistress understood what she had done. But Tup was ready! It was time, and past time, for him to know what flying felt like, to begin to strengthen his wings—to be ready to carry his bondmate.
“You must follow our judgment on these things, Larkyn,” Mistress Winter said sharply. “Our colts fly at twelve months. When you come back, after the Festival of Erd, I will take him up with Sunny.”
“But, Mistress Winter! He’s almost as big as the yearling Ocmarins, and he—”
“Not yet,” the horsemistress said. A glance passed between Mistress Winter and the Headmistress, heavy with knowledge Lark couldn’t share. She wanted to stamp her foot, to insist, to explain . . . but the older women had already turned away.
Lark turned back to Tup and pressed her forehead against the sweet warmth of his neck. Tears of impatience stung her eyes. “They don’t understand,” she whispered to Tup. “They just don’t understand.”
TWENTY
THE cold white stars of impending winter glittered above William’s head as he hurried across the sloping lawn of Fleckham House, his fingers fumbling with the buttons of a heavy woolen shirt. He wore little else except boots and a pair of narrow trousers, picked up in haste from where he had dropped them hours before. His stable-man trotted ahead of him, the oil lamp in his hand swinging wildly. One of the oc-hounds barked, but at William’s hissed command, the dog whined, and slunk back into its kennel.
The stable beyond the grove still smelled of new paint. Three mares put their heads out of their stalls, and the lamplight glimmered in their eyes. William ignored them. What he wanted, what he had been awaiting for months, was in the last stall on the left.
“Stand back, Jinson,” he said harshly. “Leave this to me.”
“M’lord,” the stable-man said anxiously. “I don’t think he’ll stand for it . . .”
“Is it a colt, then?” William said eagerly. “A stallion?”
“Oh, aye, m’lord, a fine one. But I don’t think he’ll allow you to—”
“Never mind, Jinson. It’s different with me, you understand? It’s going to be different.”
The stable-man, little more than a youth, lifted his lamp high, but kept his distance from the stall. William approached, deliberately slowing his steps, savoring the moment. It was like wanting a woman, this desire. He craved it. It made his mouth dry and his loins stir in a way no woman now could do. This achievement represented his triumph over the constraints of tradition. The foal in the stall meant freedom from an old man’s slavish devotion to the past, of the dominance of the horsemistresses in Oc . . .
“Hang the lantern on the hook, Jinson. Go back to the house, and get me some bedding. A nightshirt, and a bottle of brandy. I’ll be sleeping here tonight.”
Jinson, with a doubtful look on his face, did as he was bid. When he had vanished into the darkness, William stepped into the vague circle of light, and peered into the stall.
The foal was so pale he glimmered in the dimness, as if stars shone on his hide. His sire was a fine dapple gray, known to Eduard, like the other had been, for getting winged foals on wingless mares. And this foal—this trembling, secret creature of silvery hue, still wet with afterbirth—this one had neat little gray wings clamped to its sides.
William sidled in through the gate, and leaned against the inner wall, watching. The foal was intent on finding its dam’s udder, and the mare was busily licking her little one clean. Absorbed as they were, they hardly noticed William, though the mare’s ears flicked his way, and then relaxed.
William knew how it was done. He had lurked about, curious and resentful, as Philippa Winter—Philippa Islington, then, sixteen years old—had bonded with her newborn filly on a chilly spring night in the Duke’s own stables. Duke Frederick, William’s own father, had watched with pride, as if Philippa were his own daughter. He had ignored William, as always, in favor of anything to do with the winged horses. And that ass Meredith, Philippa’s brother, stood by smirking, pleased with himself at this connection to the Duke. William swore to himself that Me
redith Islington would never step foot in the Ducal Palace again, once he assumed the title.
His own plans would come to fruition at last. He would be free of Eduard Crisp’s meddling, free of his father’s criticism, free of those cursed horsemistresses’ lording it over everyone, including even the Duke himself. And he knew, he remembered, what he needed to do. The last one had gotten away from him, but this one was right here, in his own stable. It was in his control.
Carefully, moving slowly, he lowered himself to his knees in the straw, and began to murmur to the colt.
PETRA, as Lark expected, sneered over her shorn hair. But she had little free time to torment her. The girls of the first level, all except Lark, were preparing to fly for the first time.
Mistress Strong stopped at Tup’s stall to suggest Lark should be in the flight paddock to watch the momentous event. “Your own day won’t come for some time, Larkyn,” she said, in her lifeless way. “Your colt is only—what is it, eleven months now? And he should be eighteen months before he carries weight in the air. But you should observe this, and perhaps you’ll understand why your drills with the pony are so important.”
Lark only said, “Yes, Mistress Strong.” Rosellen stood in the aisle outside Tup’s stall, and Lark studiously avoided her eyes.
In their free time, she and Rosellen had been galloping Pig around the back paddock, each taking a turn while the other kept an eye out for any girl or instructor who might come near. Herbert knew, of course, and rolled his eyes at Rosellen. But Pig was the better for it, his muscles beginning to emerge from their layer of fat, his legs trimmer, his neck leaner.
“No pride in a fat pony around the place,” Herbert muttered. “So I’ll keep your secret. But if Mistress Strong finds out, I won’t defend you.”
Mistress Strong’s objection, of course, would be to the manner of Lark’s riding. The moment the instructor departed the dry paddock, the girls slid the saddle from Pig’s wide back.
Lark felt like a completely different creature without the rock-hard saddle tree beneath her, without jouncing against the restraining pommel and the stiff cantle. Her heels tucked neatly around Pig’s ribs, and her seat seemed to mold to his back. More than once, as she persuaded Pig to some feat of coordination or flexibility, Rosellen would demand to know how she did it. Lark couldn’t explain it. It was something instinctive, as natural to her as herding a flock of goats to graze, or as coaxing a flighty hen into its coop. It was as easy a thing for her to ride the pony without tack as it was hard to suffer the cumbersome saddle.