sighed and Shoorininuin—Shoor—said, Well, Ebon, you’re mine. I accept you. Welcome.
Ebon fell silent, still looking out over the Dreaming Sea. Sylvi was thinking of Ebon walking into one of the huge chambers of the Caves, he and his father, hundreds—thousands—of pebbles and small stones strewn over the floor—and three sculptors watching. She couldn’t imagine Ebon stumbling.
She thought of a conversation they’d had long ago. So that’s why they listened when your master spoke up for your idea about sculpting a bit of the palace grounds somewhere in the Caves.
He stirred, bowing his head as if his neck were stiff, rousing his feathers and laying them flat again. Yes. Yes.
I— She stopped, and tried again. I can’t even imagine what you’re going to do.
He extended one wing, stretching the tiny alula-hand as if he were grasping a brush or a knife and about to start work on a wall standing in front of him. Can’t you? I can.
He looked at her at last. Syl . . . what are we?
She could think of nothing to say.
Ebon put his nose in her hair and tugged gently. Life is funny, isn’t it?
I’m—sorry, said Sylvi helplessly.
Sorry? said Ebon. Oh, don’t be so—human.
Well, I am human. I—this is probably human too—I wish I’d met him. Shoorininuin.
You did, said Ebon. The sculptor who spoke to you. That was Shoor. He wanted to meet you.
Sylvi caught her breath. She had envied Ebon his certainty, his focus on becoming a sculptor, while she muddled along being her father’s fourth child, having projects assigned to her, village witchcraft, bridge-building, because she had no ideas of her own. She was still muddling, she felt; it was nothing she had done, nothing she had chosen, that had enabled her to talk to Ebon, and hear him when he spoke to her. She had not chosen to hear Niahi the other night; she had not chosen to walk eight hundred years back in time to watch the signing of the treaty that allied her people to the pegasi. It was perhaps not surprising that Ebon’s master had wished to speak to her; she was what she was, however helpless she felt within that which had chosen her. We are all bound by what fate chooses for us, the sculptor had said. But he had also said, I am proud of him. I am proud of you too.
There was another little pause. We’d better go back, Ebon said finally, before someone comes after us ’cause they think we’ve decided to try and swim across the Sea. We could start our own country there, where pegasi and humans just talk to each other.
How big is your Sea, do you know? said Sylvi, grateful for a change of subject. Has anyone ever crossed it?
If they have, they haven’t told us about it, said Ebon. The legend is that it’s another world wide. That if you managed to cross it, you’d be somewhere else than this world. That the only way from our world to get to the far shore of the Sea is to cross the Sea—and you can’t do that either. Although there’s another legend that says the Caves extend under the Sea and come out on the other side. And that you could walk it—if you lived long enough. He paused. There’s another legend still that says that before your King Thingummy showed up with his troops—
Balsin.
And started killing taralians, our King Fralialal was thinking of taking who remained of us and trying to cross the Sea—underneath, by the Caves.
CHAPTER 16
On her last night there was another enormous feast, in the same meadow as the feast held for her father, near the border between Rhiandomeer and Balsinland. She stood on the edge of that meadow as the pegasi set up the tables, chewing on a stem of llyri grass, naming the wildflowers to herself, because she knew them now; knew the names of the birds she could hear singing in the trees—recognised the fornol moving not quite silently through the undergrowth. The llyri grass was sweet and succulent, the first shoots of the new season, but she doubted it would give her wings.
This time the tall chair was for her. When the pegasi brought it out from the shelter, rocking on its poles, she said, But that’s my father’s chair. For a wild moment she thought, Perhaps he’s come back for the last night, and felt a rush of emotion so confused it made her dizzy. Those first nights in the pegasus country