Sylvi was human enough, and princess enough, to know what that meant in human terms. Don’t you—mind? Mind always coming to us?
Ebon shrugged again—she was sure, now, that it was a pegasus shrug. What’s to mind? That we keep our quiet and our privacy? That we don’t have to worry about providing dead flesh for you to eat? And chairs? I would not be your father, the human king, to have the winning of that old war carried on my back, and on the backs of all the kings and queens after me, until the end of humans and pegasi—and the winning of any other wars. We are free, we pegasi, thanks to you. We are glad to honour you in this way if it pleases you—if it means you’ll go on carrying the burden for both of us. In what Sylvi was already learning was a typical Ebon manner, he added, Mind you, I wouldn’t want to be my dad either—he still has to listen to all the bickering when someone feels left out of some decision—and he has to listen to people like Gaaloo go on and on because usually there’s about six important words in what Gaaloo says that nobody else thinks of and since my dad’s king, he’d better hear them.
Sylvi sat up in bed. Something had moved very quickly between the window and the stars; something not only swift but large. There—there it was again, higher than the first time—no, gone again; no, not gone; it had banked and turned and—
Ebon folded his wings at the last minute, to fit through the window, and landed, therefore, rather abruptly and rather hard; his knees buckled and he rolled right over, wrapped in his wings, but making surprisingly little noise for all of that. Sylvi was out of bed and kneeling beside him before he scrambled to his feet again. Ow, he said. There must be a better way. Can’t you sleep somewhere with bigger windows?
Are you all right?
He walked once around the room, lifting his legs gingerly. Yes. Don’t worry. We’re taught to fall and roll like that when we’re babies and first learning to fly. They taught me really emphatically because I’ve always been too big. There were a lot of these doomsayers when I was a baby proclaiming that I’d be too big to fly. Ha. But you don’t break anything if you roll. Are you ready to go?
Sylvi, still confused by his sudden entrance, was nonplussed. Go where?
Out, said Ebon mysteriously. Can you get down to the ground without waking anybody up?
Yes, of course, she said. She’d crept down the two stories of wall from her bedroom many times, clinging to the knobbly, weatherworn stone heads of her ancestors—with useful little ridges for her feet where their necks ended—and to the heavy vronidia vine, which seemed to grow just enough bigger every year to go on bearing her weight. There were some nights, when the wind was singing to her and the sky went on forever, she couldn’t stay indoors.
Come on then. He tucked his forelegs to leap over the balustrade like a pony over a fence, but as he jumped his wings sprang out and he soared up, not down, and then turned once or twice (showing off, she thought), before he sailed gracefully down to earth—landing so lightly he made no sound at all. Because of the no-flying-in-mixed-company convention, she didn’t see pegasi flying all that often, except from a distance, and had never had one land so near her. She put her leg over the balustrade, felt around with her foot for Great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Neville’s nose, and began climbing.
Ebon was dancing with impatience by the time she reached the ground. Come on, he said, and led the way quickly through the gardens; she had to trot to keep up with him, and he was very hard to see in the dark, especially as he led her away from the more open flower-beds and into the winding, yew- and cypress-lined paths that surrounded them. In their shadow he disappeared entirely, except for the sparkle of his eye when he turned his head to check that she was still following him, and the just-discernible shimmer of motion as he passed from one shadow to the next. She noticed that he had his wings unfolded from his sides, although they were no more than a quarter spread; there wasn’t space between the trees.
How did you find me?
Spent most of the party trying to work it out. Knew about the palace—I’ve even been here a few times—knew you humans live inside walls all the time. And sleep in special rooms. Asked my brothers as if I was asking just because everything is so bizarre—which it is, how do you sleep all wrapped up like a sickly baby?—where their humans lived—slept. They told me everyone has his own separate cell. Weird. But figured all your sleep cells would be together. Saw your dad and mum standing with their arms around each other at one window, staring at the sky. Okay, that’s where they are, but I wished they’d go away. Then I was lucky: I saw your nurse shut your curtains. She is your nurse, isn’t she?
Sylvi, entranced, said, Pegasi have nurses too?
Eah. Although the kids are all together and then there are several nurses. But I guess I know what a nurse looks like, even when she’s human. And I figured your brothers are too old for nurses. So that had to be your sleep room. I was ready to be really confused and bewildered and apologetic if it wasn’t. I used to wander in my sleep when I was little. I thought I might just manage to bring it off as some kind of reaction to the ritual. That . . . smoke was really peculiar, wasn’t it?
Yes. It was. But don’t your shamans puff smoke over you for rituals? You have rituals too, don’t you?
Yes. Lots and lots. She could hear exactly her own aversion in his words, although she doubted that shyness was any part of Ebon’s dislike. But the smoke is never like that. It never makes you feel ...
Frightened, she thought. Frightened and all alone.
A low laugh. “No, I don’t think so,” said a young male voice.
Ebon and Sylvi froze.
“Well, I’m sure I heard something,” said another voice—a young female voice. “And it sounded large.”
“Our rabbits are enormous,” said the first voice. “Our specially bred Wall guardian rabbits are feared all over the country for their ferocity.”
“Very funny,” said the second voice. “I still want to go back indoors.”
That was Farley, thought Sylvi. I wonder who the girl is?
Come on, said Ebon. They’re gone.
The king’s palace lay in the largest piece of flat ground in the country; the rest of the landscape was a patchwork of plains, hills and mountains, and abundant lakes and rivers. Banesorrow Lake lay within the Wall, and the foothills of the Kish Mountains began near its eastern gate. The shape of the palace plain was irregular, extending several leagues to the southern tip but only a league and a half to the north and barely half a league to the east. But in a perfect circle, magician-measured, at half a league all round the palace at its centre, lay a Wall. The Wall had been erected after the final battle that had given Balsin his country and his kingship, although it had taken the reigns of three kings and three queens and the best efforts of six generations of magicians to finish it. It was twenty feet high and broad enough for a pair of guards to walk on abreast, which they did, because the full circumference was patrolled, guardtower to guardtower, of which there were twelve, one on each side of the six gates.
There were many buildings, homes, offices and administrative buildings, warehouses, markets, shops and smithies that had sprung up within the Wall, although all of those people had, to be and to stay there, a royal warrant to do so. But the palace’s Inner and Outer Courts were reflected in the capital city having the Inner and Outer City, on either side of the Wall, although the doors of the six gates had not been closed in defence in hundreds of years. They were closed on the nights of two holidays, that of the Signing of the Treaty—which had been followed so closely by one of the worst battles of the war that the treaty itself had been lost for a day and a half—and that of the End of the War; which also provided the opportunity to ensure that they were in full working order. Both inside and outside the Wall, the city extended in erratic clusters and doglegs, with gaps for small farms and big gardens and the occasional municipal park. Ebon was leading her to the biggest of these parks within the Wall, on the far side of which lay the lake.