Her pegasus.
The one thing she knew of her pegasus was that it was the fourth child of the pegasus king, as her brothers’ pegasi had been the three before. But that was all she knew. Not knowing anything about your pegasus beforehand was supposed to make the binding spell grip and hold better when you finally met. Her heart was beating faster; the pegasi were strange, amazing, almost impossible, entirely unlike anything else in your human life, just by being themselves. Eight hundred years of the Alliance had not weakened the wonder of them. To have one bound to you ...
For a moment all the words of the ritual that Sylvi had memorised drained away, leaving her mind a blank.
She saw a tall black shape pacing down the length of the Great Court beside the pegasus king, almost as tall as he, but still with colty legs slightly too long for its body. It would be bigger than its father when it finished growing, and Lrrianay was big for a pegasus—bigger than any of his elder three sons—as tall as a carriage pony. She tried to guess its age: her brothers’ pegasi were all within a year or two of their age. She thought this one was probably near her own age too; maybe a little older.
It was having difficulty taking the slow ceremonial steps beside its father; it kept trying to prance. One of its wings kept twitching half open and then flicking shut again; she wondered if the flowers in its pinions were tickling it, and she resisted (again) the urge to pull at her jewelled collar or scratch her forehead under the slender chain.
It surged ahead at the foot of the platform, obviously restraining itself with difficulty from bounding up the steps: eagerness to meet her, to find out who she was or to have the ritual over with? Or the pleasure of being allowed to precede your royal father for once?
She stepped forward to meet it. She supposed it was rather thrilling to be standing in front of the king with everybody looking at you instead of him, but she’d rather be almost anywhere else. Her robes weighed as if they were carved out of stone, her collar was strangling her, and it was difficult to breathe.
The young black pegasus reached the top of the steps and danced forward, lowering its head to look into her eyes, the wings half-opening toward her (one ill-anchored flower fell out), the tiny alula-hands spreading—
That’s not till later in the ceremony, pudding-head, she said to herself.
I know that, said a voice in her head. Aren’t you excited, or are you just a dull stupid human?
They looked at each other. Sylvi’s mouth dropped a little open, and the pegasus’ nostrils flared.
I heard that, they said simultaneously.
You’re a boy, Sylvi said suddenly. There was no reason for her to assume that the pegasus king should have had a daughter for his fourth child because the human king had done so, but she had assumed since she first understood that she would have her own pegasus that it would be a girl, like her.
Yes, and you’re a girl, replied the pegasus. I tried to tell them to have my little sister but they said no, I was next, it had to be me.
Then you knew? said Sylvi, outraged. You’re not supposed to know anything before the ceremony of binding!
The pegasus’ skin rippled, starting with his shoulders and rustling his feathers; she thought it must be a pegasus shrug, and she was fascinated by the inclusiveness of it: it ran down his back and his forelegs like flowing silk. How little she knew of them, she thought, these creatures she had seen every day of her life—by whose leave her people lived in this country; with whom her people had an alliance that had lasted almost a thousand years. How—it seemed to her now—humiliatingly little.
That’s just a human rule. I know a lot about you. You ask too many questions and you can’t sit still, and you’re always showing up in your father’s office at the wrong time, so you know more than you should. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be too bad to have a girl if she was another nosy fidget, like me. You’re shorter than I was expecting though.
Sylvi felt her face grow hot. Her height was a tender subject, and here was this pegasus looming over her.
Pegasi didn’t loom; they were too fine and delicate. Pegasus bones were hollow, like birds’, and their limbs were so slender the sun almost seemed to shine through them, as when you hold your hand up to a strong light and look at the thin webs of skin between your fingers. And pegasi never just galloped, like horses; any gait faster than a jog and they had their wings spread at least a little, perhaps partly for balance but mainly to absorb some of the shock of the pounding hoofs. Pegasus legs broke easily and, because they were hollow, usually broke badly; although pegasus shamans came rarely to the human lands, there was always a pegasus healer-shaman resident at the palace.
But Lrrianay’s fourth son didn’t look delicate. He was broadchested and wide-backed, and his blackness gave him an extra solidity. He gleamed as if he’d been polished all over by many small, light alula-hands, which of course he had been, for the ceremony. The flowers woven through his wings were pale blue and white; through the plaits in his mane, bright blue, white and primrose yellow, and he had a little blue bag around his neck on a golden ribbon. She wasn’t going to tell him he was beautiful—even more beautiful than usual for a pegasus, she thought—which he was, because he was probably vain enough about it already. But she did think it was rather hard that she should have an extra-tall pegasus.
Their silent conversation had taken less than a minute. No one of the humans had noticed anything unusual; pegasus child and human child often stared fixedly at each other on first meeting. The magicians had come up from the rear of the dais, and now one laid his hand on Sylvi’s right shoulder (she tried not to flinch), and another laid his hand on the pegasus king’s son’s right shoulder and turned them, gently, so that Sylvi’s left and her pegasus’ right, as they faced each other, were presented to the watching crowd. The two kings themselves moved to stand behind their offsprings’ left shoulders. Sylvi’s eyes, for a moment, met Lrrianay’s, and she wondered if he knew that his son had been talking to her, and she to him. And—even more briefly—she wondered just how much he and her father could say to each other.
Sylvi felt rather than saw the third and fourth magicians approaching, and she had a sudden clear memory of this part of the ceremony when Garren had gone through it; she had been just old enough to realise not only that what was going on was important, but that it would happen to her in a few years too. The third magician held burning herbs in a dish, and he stretched out his arm so that the fumes rose up in the faces of Sylvi and her pegasus, and the fourth magician threw a billow of light fabric over them, so light, or so enchanted, that it remained drifting a little above them, like a cloud, and the pale bars of colour woven into it striped the floor of the dais. But it touched her pegasus’ glossy blackness not at all.
To her right she heard the fifth magician droning the words of binding. She had always taken the idea of binding literally, and had assumed that she would feel something happening, some tautness, some imprisoning, building between her and her pegasus. She stiffened herself for it, but nothing of the kind occurred. The magician’s voice filled her ears—she wanted to shake her head to rattle the words back out again—and the smoke filled her mouth and lungs, like trying to breathe through a blanket, and eddying, drifting smoke dappled with the colours of the drifting fabric also dimmed and confused her eyes till her pegasus was nothing but a shadow behind it.