Everyone knew about Gandam. It was one of the first history lessons all human children learnt. Sylvi had always wondered who had taught Gandam, and if Gandam had tried to teach the human language as well; was there a pegasus shaman who died? She would ask Ebon.
“From that very first meeting—from the first sighting, when the soldiers knelt, for they feared they were in the presence of gods or demons—from that first contact, it is clear: it is not for humans to speak plainly to the pegasi, nor the pegasi to humans: not without the safeguard of a magician’s strong magic between the two. The two races are too dissimilar: any attempt to draw them close together can only do injury—the incomprehension between our two peoples is a warning we ignore at our peril. The only other human besides Gandam who has ever become truly fluent in the pegasus language was the magician Boronax, and he too went mad. Since Boronax there have been rules laid down for us, the magicians and Speakers who serve you, lord, and who have served and will serve all the kings and queens before and after you—rules, so that we may learn enough of the pegasus language to make that service well and truly, and yet not so much as to harm ourselves or you; and even so we use magic to protect ourselves in ways we cannot use to protect you.”
Maybe it’s only magicians it happens to, thought Sylvi, but she was beginning to feel a little frightened. She remembered saying to Ahathin, when he told her of how Speaking was taught, but the pegasi are so light. She thought of Fralialal, and the twinkle of eight-hundred-year-old flower petals.
She looked away from Fthoom, toward Ebon. What’s going on? he said. I can tell you’re not happy, and my father doesn’t like what he’s hearing from your father and Fazuur, but I can’t pick up any of it.
Ebon, do you know about Gandam? The magician who wrote the treaty and then went mad and died? Did a pegasus die too?
What? Gandam died because he was old and sick. I never heard he was mad. D’you mean did a pegasus get knocked on the head to keep him company on the Long Road? Ugh. Is that what old Eyeballs there is telling you?
No. It’s just—oh, I can’t listen and—I’ll tell you later.
Ahathin only just brushed his Speaker sticks—the faint tock they made could only have been heard by Sylvi and Ebon, and possibly the nearest expressionless footman. Sylvi said, Oh—I’m being a featherbrain. Ahathin can tell you. And she made, for the first time, the gesture asking a Speaker to translate.
Fthoom droned on: “. . . the sovereign families of each race are bound to the sovereign families of the other; king to king, king’s child to king’s child: here is the true strength of the treaty, as stone and brick are set together to make a wall....”
Although not always consort to consort, thought Sylvi. And the cousins are always a muddle. And ... Dad’s dad had the same thing happen to him; everybody thought their queen was going to marry someone else. I wonder how often that happens. I’ll ask Ahathin. She could hear Ahathin murmuring to Ebon, and didn’t want to interrupt. And what about when the sovereignship goes to another family, like when the Sword left Grinbad and went to Rudolf ? And what about someone like Erisika? She grabbed the Sword when the king died because she was nearest and then there wasn’t anyone to give it to so she kept it and she won the battle and when the king’s son grew up and became King Udorin he married her even though she was a cabinet-maker’s daughter because, he said, what did he want with a lady when he could have the woman who saved the realm? And she’d borne him three daughters and a son, as fast as she could, she said, because she was old for child-bearing. Sylvi told herself the story with Fthoom’s voice booming in her ears, to give herself courage. Erisika would not have been frightened of Fthoom, and she, Sylvi, had Erisika’s blood in her veins.
Fthoom was still going on, sentence after ostentatious sentence, about the Alliance. I don’t believe any of it, thought Sylvi. It’s like he’s making it up and—and—
Silently and motionlessly she made an effort, as if she were stepping from under a drift of rainbow fabric and out of a fog of incense. She thought, It’s as if he’s looking at a tree and calling it a window. And he’s trying to make us call it a window too.
“I fear for your daughter,” Fthoom intoned. “I fear the damage she and her new friend may do to the body of the living Alliance between our two peoples, by the ephemerality of easy and careless speech, such as is likely between two young creatures, however well-intentioned and innocent—”
The dais and chairs that the king and his court sat on raised them up only enough that, sitting, they were a handsbreadth or two taller than the people standing on the floor before them. But Fthoom was taller than most humans, and he was wearing high-heeled shoes. He had moved closer and closer to the dais as he spoke, where the royal chairs sat so near the edge that Sylvi’s footstool was precariously placed; he made as if to lay a hand on Sylvi’s shoulder, looming over her, with the arched and coiling tip of his magician’s headdress peering down at her like the head of a snake, and the engulfing cape flinging itself wide with the movement of his arm as if to engulf her.... She flinched and slid away from him, grateful after all for the intimidating size of her chair, ashamed of her own cowardice.
“You may not touch the princess without her leave,” said her father softly.
Fthoom stopped as if he’d come to the edge of a cliff. His hand dropped to his side and he moved away, but as he had bent his obeisance to the king into nothing of the kind, he made his moving away from the princess’ chair a planned stage of his performance, and not a response to reproof; and he seemed to swell even larger. “I, as Fifth Magician, felt the binding go awry yesterday. I felt the wound in the flesh of our treaty—the new bleeding wound in its side.” He managed to invest I feel with a magician’s power: no ordinary human could feel as he did. “I say this is a dangerous thing—as dangerous as any thing could be to our country, founded as it is on the concord between these two most dissimilar and distinct peoples, human and pegasus. And I must ask—indeed I must insist, demand—that the princess Sylviianel and”—he made the hrrring noise in his throat that was the human equivalent of the word that meant king or lord in the pegasus language—“Hrrr Ebon be kept apart, at least until a council of magicians has studied the matter and decided how, in the best interests of our countries and our peoples, to proceed.”
The sigh again, running all round the room. Even the footman who had opened the door and brought her footstool, who still stood near her at the foot of the dais, was a little less expressionless: he looked dismayed. Sylvi risked turning her head and looking at her father: he was cool and regal. His gaze was bent mildly on Fthoom, as if the magician were no more than a small farmer declaring a boundary dispute with his neighbour. She looked at the magicians arrayed behind Fthoom. They looked unhappier than ever, but determined. She wanted to turn her head again, and look at Ahathin, but she did not want to be seen to do it. Ahathin was still murmuring to Ebon.
“My lord,” said Fthoom, and again made his unmindful kneeling. He had never once looked at her, not even when he had tried to grasp her shoulder.
“N-no,” she said. For a moment she didn’t recognise her own voice, nor that she had spoken aloud; her body seemed to be scrambling—not very gracefully—out of her chair without her having directed it to move. She was shaking all over, but she realised that the words she needed to say were already in her mouth, and all she needed to do was let them out. “My lord,” she said to her father, and bowed.