Pegasus

by Robin McKinley

  “The binding means something to everyone who goes through it. Whatever you think about the treaty and its provisions—”

  Sylvi had managed to read a copy of the treaty, with Ahathin’s help: the second commander’s diary was mostly perfectly comprehensible if oddly spelled, but the treaty, aside from being written in a script that hadn’t been used in five hundred years, was in desperately old-fashioned formal language, plus (Ahathin said) Gandam had tried to incorporate some pegasus phrasing. It could have said almost anything and she wouldn’t have known.

  She had thought, since her binding, that she would like another look at it, now that what it said was a real part of her life too, but she had kept putting off asking. Ahathin would be more than happy to help her, but she felt awkward around Ahathin about anything even remotely to do with Ebon. And she didn’t want to read the schoolroom copy again—she wanted to try to read the true one on the wall of the Great Hall. Perhaps she could read the flower petals. But she would be seen to be doing so. And wouldn’t that look silly and pretentious in a superfluous princess?

  And wouldn’t someone report to Fthoom what she was doing—the superfluous princess who had spoken out against him in open court? She didn’t want any extra reports on her activities going to Fthoom.

  Danacor continued, “You think you know about pegasi; you’ve grown up with them, you know Lrrianay’s face almost as well as you know Dad’s. You know what happens. And then it happens to you: your pegasus is a here-and-now, living-and-breathing individual. And it’s not just real, it’s real in ways you didn’t know. But, Syl, nobody’s had a binding like yours.”

  “Being made heir—that must have changed everything. More.”

  “Yes. But we knew it was coming.” There was a little silence. Danacor was watching her. But she couldn’t make herself say the name of her enemy out loud. “Try not to worry about Fthoom,” Danacor said at last. “Dad’s got him fully occupied and better than half the magicians and scribes working for him report to Dad or me. Enjoy that we don’t have to listen to him bullying everyone in council any more.”

  Sylvi rubbed her face in a gesture she realised she’d learnt from her father. She took her hand down and looked at it as if it didn’t belong to her. “But we have to listen to Soronon going on and on. Who cares that magician apprenticeships are down three percent this year? Or that rituals requiring magicians are up five percent in Hillshire? Can’t he just submit the report and anyone who wants to know can read it?”

  “Poor old Soronon. Farley calls him Snore-on. But it’s not entirely his fault—everyone’s really jumpy because of what happened with Fthoom, and Snore-on doesn’t want anyone to think the magicians’ guild is hiding anything.”

  “I know everyone’s jumpy. Even the Sword is.”

  Danacor looked startled. “The Sword?”

  “Oh, well,” said Sylvi. “I mean, it flickers. It flickers blue all along its edge sometimes, so it almost looks like it’s moving. Like Fralialal’s wings in the mural. Especially when we’re in the Great Hall and it’s hanging on the wall—it almost looks like it’s going to leap out of its stays. If someone’s going to jump I’d rather it were Fralialal, but if the Sword would make Snore-on stop talking I’d be all for it.”

  But Danacor was looking at her oddly.

  “What’s wrong?” she said. “It does flicker—doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Danacor. “But most people don’t see it. Not even the magicians. Usually only Dad and me.”

  Sylvi stared at him, a prickle of cold moving up her spine.

  “Don’t spread it around that the Sword’s awake, okay?” Danacor said, trying to sound as if he were talking about something of no importance, and failing. “It’s …” He stood up abruptly and went to look out the window as if he’d heard someone call his name. He turned back again. “It’s never good news.”

  Sylvi attended court and council meetings, took her hours in the practise yard under the master-at-arms, bowed to people in the corridors and tried to accustom herself to the fact that there was almost always someone with her now. At first she had thought that was just a part of having turned twelve, of being bound, of being a princess with her first adult responsibilities. But the tall, expressionless footman who’d thrust her behind him when Fthoom had roared at her—and whose name, she learnt, was Glarfin—had seemingly been assigned specially to her. And there was something familiar about Lady Lucretia, who had replaced the lady who didn’t like her relationship with Ebon … which she remembered the day she saw Lucretia gleefully driving her opponent against the wall in the practise yard. When Lucretia waited on the princess, she was always wearing a dress, and had her hair beautifully done up, but Sylvi had been watching her chasing people around the practise yard for years. She’d never asked her name, although she was very aware of her. She measured her own progress against whether she was ready to ask for Lucretia as a sparring partner. Not yet.

  It was the day after she’d seen Lucretia getting the better of a man half again bigger than she was that she took a long, thoughtful look at Glarfin, and said, trying not to sound accusing, “You stand like a soldier.”

  “I was a soldier, lady,” said Glarfin.

  “Sylvi,” said Sylvi. “If you were a soldier, why are you a footman?”

  “I was wounded,” said Glarfin. “It took a long time to heal. They did not think I would make a soldier again, but I was not good at being invalided out and doing nothing. So they made me a footman.”

  “Wounded,” said Sylvi. “But you used to lift me onto my cushions.”

  “You never weighed anything,” said Glarfin, “and I healed better than they expected. But I had found I liked being a footman, and sleeping in my own bed every night.”

  “But you still stand like a soldier … and … and you react like a soldier,” said Sylvi, remembering the day after her twelfth birthday.

  “I was well trained, lady,” said Glarfin.

  “Sylvi,” said Sylvi. “You’re not an attendant—you don’t follow me around to open doors and bow and make sure everyone knows there’s a princess nearby—you’re a guard.”

  “I’m sorry, lady,” said Glarfin.

  “Sylvi,” said Sylvi.

  “I cannot call you Sylvi any more than I can help reacting like a soldier,” said Glarfin.

  “Like Lucretia is a guard. How many of you are there? Lieutenant,” added Sylvi.

  “I do not use lieutenant any more,” said Glarfin.

  “I don’t use lady except with strangers, or in court,” said Sylvi. “How many of you? Not Celia, I think—snakes make her scream. Guridon? Alsa? Orooca? Minni? Pansa?”

  Glarfin didn’t answer.

  “Pansa, I think,” said Sylvi. “Her reflexes are really good. Maybe Guridon. Maybe Alsa. Certainly Lucretia. Well, lieutenant?”

  Glarfin sighed. “Why would I know, lady?”

  “Because you would,” said Sylvi. “And also because there must be some kind of rota, and you’d need to know who else is on it.”

  “Perhaps you could take this up with the king, lady,” said Glarfin.

  “Perhaps I will take it up with him later, lieutenant,” said Sylvi. She thought of her father, raised her chin and stared at Glarfin, trying not to think about how quickly she would develop a crick in her neck. She considered crossing her arms, but her father never crossed his arms, so she didn’t.

  After a moment Glarfin said, “You are very like your father, lady. Very well. It is the five of us you have named who are the core of it. Danis or Colm is usually at your bedroom door overnight.”

  She’d been sure she was right, but it was still worse to have it confirmed. And she hadn’t known about the night guards. “Is Ebon guarded too?”

  “There are extra patrols around the pegasus house, yes,” said Glarfin. “But King Lrrianay did not wish Ebon to be singled out, and there are extra patrols all round the palace
since the ladon was found in Riss.”

  Riss was a village two leagues from the Wall. It had been known since Sylvi’s grandmother’s day that ladons—and probably wyverns—had returned to the wild lands, but sightings of them had continued to be agreeably rare. Sylvi had been in court the morning that the report had come in, and the queen, who had just come in to the horseyards from chasing norindours and heard the news from the stableboy who was walking the messenger’s horse, paused only long enough to change her saddle to a fresh horse, reorganise her squad and send a note to her husband what she was doing before she rode straight back out again. The king had sent a note back to the horseyards that the next time the queen reappeared they were to take her saddle away from her even if there was a sighting of forty-six rocs over Banesorrow Lake. And Sylvi knew about the extra patrols: she and Ebon had a much harder time going flying because of them.

  But what she disliked most was the realisation that she was being protected not only from anyone who might want to ask her inappropriate questions about the pegasi, but from actual physical harm. She had wanted to believe that even Fthoom hadn’t meant anything by his gesture that day in the king’s receiving room, beyond that he was angry at not getting his own way about something. She could guess that all her guards were wearing a variety of glamour-neutralising and magic-disabling charms. She stared at Glarfin’s uniform, but the charms wouldn’t be anything you could see.

  She wouldn’t be able to browbeat Ahathin the way she had just done poor Glarfin; she wondered what Ahathin might tell her if she merely asked him what charms he kept in his pockets that he hadn’t done before her twelfth birthday—what guard-magic now followed her—whether a guild spell-maker had been engaged to do the work. If so, he was a good one, because she couldn’t feel it plucking at her, nipping at her heels, haunting the shadows at the corners of her eyes.

  She could feel herself drooping. She wasn’t really like her father.

  “I’m sorry … Sylvi,” said Glarfin with an obvious effort.

  “Thanks,” said Sylvi, and smiled. “You can call me lady when there’s anyone else around, okay?”

  She did ask her father why he hadn’t told her that she had had a special guard assigned to her. Her father looked at her thoughtfully. “I knew you’d figure it out,” he said. “And I hoped that by the time you figured it out, you would be sufficiently accustomed to the situation for the realisation to be less … dispiriting.”

  Sylvi was silent a moment. At last she said, “I wish you’d told me.”

  “Next time I will,” said the king. “But you are older now: next time I would have told you anyway.”

  “Next time?” said Sylvi.

  “There’s always a next time,” said the king, “unfortunately. You just don’t know what it’s going to be about.”

  And she asked Diamon if she could have Lucretia as a sparring partner—occasionally.

  “She’ll knock you down,” said Diamon. “She’s not one to pull her punches, our Lucretia.”

  “I know,” said Sylvi. “But she could show me how she did it after, couldn’t she?”

  She had been assigned to the development of the river network in the Kish Mountains as her special project, and so she knew that potential locations of wheels and dams were dependent as much on their defensibility as on the geography of the rivers: because there were taralians in the Kishes—and, lately, there were also norindours. There had always been a few taralians in the Kishes, which also bordered on the wild lands, but she’d been present when one of the engineers reported to Danacor that it was the worst season for taralians he’d ever seen, and he’d been working in and around the Kishes for forty years, man and boy.

  “And now a ladon,” he said, and shook his head. Riss lay in the foothills of the Kishes. “Damned snaky basilisk things,” he said. “They make taralians look like housecats. Nearly.”

  Bridges, dams and water-power was interesting work—she didn’t mind being good at maths when she could use it for something—and she enjoyed trying to negotiate with water and rock. She didn’t like worrying about taralians.

  To everyone’s surprise but her father’s, Sylvi was able to make suggestions about how the village witches might be included in the planning and the defences: several of her best interviewees about village magic were from the Kishes. The engineers blinked at the idea of asking a local wart-charmer and love-potion-mixer for advice about choosing wood and stone most likely to resist interference—a ladon in a temper might well be able to pull a bridge down—but Sylvi would bet on old Marigale or young Vant’s knowledge of their own neighbourhoods, perhaps even against a ladon, and said so. Firmly. The engineer, Sasko, who had said that it was the worst year for taralians he’d ever seen, smiled faintly and said, “You are very like your father, lady. I know Marigale. I will ask.”

  She wondered what the pegasi thought about the increasing numbers of sightings of their old enemies in the human lowlands. It seemed to her that Lrrianay never went home any more—that he was always standing by her father’s chair at council now. She didn’t talk to Ebon about taralians and norindours and ladons, or about the rivers of the Kish Mountains—or about the flickering Sword. And he didn’t tell her what he did when they weren’t together—and she didn’t ask. She had discovered that talking to Ebon seemed to happen in the busy, front part of her mind. It was hard to keep anything she was excited about from him, but something she didn’t want to think about was easy to keep to herself. She assumed it was the same for him—but she didn’t ask that either.

  She and Ebon ran away from it all as much as they could. They went flying.

  It bothered them both, being deliberately disobedient: once, that first night, after their binding, was an adventure; as a habit it felt bad and wrong and sad. But it also felt bad and wrong and sad that they had been forbidden to do something both felt was bred into them, bone and blood: like forbidding a fleethound from running, or a hawk from stooping on its prey. Sylvi didn’t know why it should feel urgent or imperative to Ebon—and had begun by assuming, desolately, that it didn’t. But by the time she had scraped enough courage together to ask him (braced for him to say that actually it was rather a burden, whereupon she would have to refuse ever to go flying with him again), she knew him well enough to know that he was telling her the truth when he said flying with her was a whole other thing—a whole new thing—that he wouldn’t miss it for anything.

  She would have been happy to leave it there. That she didn’t have to stop flying was the next best thing that had ever happened to her—the best thing after Ebon himself—even better than having gone flying in the first place.

  But he was still trying to explain something. I don’t see the stuff you see. I— He paused, whirled his ears, flattened his nose, hunched one wing, and said, You’re going to make me the greatest sculptor who ever lived—or at least the oddest. Because of the stuff you see—because of talking to you about it. No pegasus sees … sees the relationships of things the way you do. We can build an arch with a keystone—but we could never have built the palace. And that’s not about strength, it’s about seeing. All those walls leaning on each other, stacked on each other…. And those funny little landscape thingummies that are all over the palace—they’re—they’re … they’re stranger than you are, you humans.

  Of course you don’t understand them, said Sylvi. You don’t have to think about it—what things look like from overhead. You can fly. We think about it too much because—because you can fly.

  Okay. But if you flew and we didn’t, we wouldn’t make the thingummies.

  Perhaps the difference began in the way they smiled. Ebon said it wasn’t only himself among the pegasi who found that meat-eating humans choosing to bare their teeth when they smiled made you wonder what their real motives were.

  I can’t help it! said Sylvi. I smile like that because that’s what my mouth does!

  Sylvi had tried to feel the A
lliance as she felt the binding between her and Ebon, or as she felt her love for her parents and her brothers—or the slightly anxious deferential respect she felt for Ahathin or Diamon, or even the nameless connection she felt for her land and her people: the sense of something crucially there, not only all around her but in her, even when it maddened or frustrated her (as her brothers often did). But she didn’t. She never had. It hadn’t bothered her before she met Ebon: the pegasi were part of the background of life in the palace, part of the general seethe of motion and urgency—as real, or as unreal, as the crowned pegasus on the royal banner, or the mural of Fralialal. But the real pegasi flew. Every thought about them began and ended there: they were beautiful and strange—and intimidating—they were the symbol of Balsinland’s existence—and they flew.

  Danacor hadn’t agreed with the intimidating, but Garren had. “Oh, minikin, you’re so right. Lrrianay isn’t so bad, but that gang that comes with him for the big state occasions—Dossaya and Gaaloo and that lot—and Fhwen—especially Fhwen. The way she looks at you.”

  Sylvi asked Ebon later, What’s Fhwen like? She’s very … imposing.