going to say. You weren’t made the youngest life colonel of the Lightbearers without knowing how to deal with awkward situations, even when they were caused by your daughter.
The queen found what she was looking for and smiled reminiscently. “You know the story about Lrrianay being Witness at our wedding?”
Sylvi did. The pegasi of a human couple to be married attend the wedding although they take no active part. Ordinarily the heir would have his sovereign as Witness, but, Corone had said, his mother blesses them twice, she doesn’t have to be Witness too. Corone wanted to make Lrrianay his Witness; the Witness doesn’t have to talk, the presence at the man or the woman’s side is the witnessing. There was a spectacular uproar. The senators all said that it wasn’t that the Witness didn’t talk but that he could if the man’s (or the woman’s) honour was questioned. Corone said that if they were willing to accept an heir so shaky that his honour could be questioned successfully at his own wedding with his mother the queen looking on, they deserved what they got, but if they could find an instance anywhere of the future sovereign’s right to marry and have children being disputed since his family took the crown over two hundred years ago, he would have the first senator as Witness.
Of course they couldn’t find an example—he’d have checked first. The senators turned to the queen, who said that she thought he had a point, that Lrrianay would be an ornament to the proceedings and she wasn’t going to interfere. That didn’t end the matter, but Corone was young and fierce in those days, and Lrrianay was his Witness.
“The entire wedding felt like a battlefield—so I was perfectly at ease, of course,” said the queen,“although I felt a little embarrassed that my Witness was the completely uncontroversial choice of my elder sister. But I’d rather dreaded the enormity of the heir’s wedding. I told Cory I suspected him of inventing a skirmish to make his military bride comfortable, and he said it had been a consideration.” The queen’s smile grew, till Sylvi couldn’t resist smiling back.“What is not generally known, I believe, is that your father and I were awake till dawn on our wedding night . . . discussing the pegasi. Discussing the pegasi isn’t all we did, mind you, but we might have had some sleep if the pegasi and the Alliance hadn’t come into it.
“Fifteen years—and three sons who can’t talk to their pegasi—after we were married, you were born. And now here you are. You can talk to Ebon as easily as you can talk to me.”
“Danacor can talk—has some sense of Thowara,” said Sylvi. “Like Dad. Danny says it’s like a thief breaks into his mind at night when he’s asleep and steals the pegasus words he learnt that day, so when he goes to look for them, the next time he’s with Thowara, knowing they should be there, they’re gone.”
The queen took a moment to answer. “I don’t think Danny’s connection with Thowara is as strong as your father’s with Lrrianay, but that may only be they have not been together for as long. But Cory’s link with Lrrianay is still nothing like yours with Ebon—your binding was like the opening of some great riverwork, and the water poured into the new channel.... And the only disadvantage is that you can’t do without him.”
Sylvi didn’t try to deny it. “And that”—she didn’t want to say one particular name aloud—“some people don’t like it.”
“All those people who tried to stop you going, yes,” said her mother. “But you are thinking about Fthoom, aren’t you? He is not the only one. But he is the worst. If we hadn’t had Fthoom’s creatures whispering in ears, I don’t think the senate would have caused so much trouble.” She hesitated. “I think you had better know: there is a petition collecting signatures in the senate and among the blood asking for Fthoom to be reinstated.”
She had forgotten. Lucretia had told her this long ago, in her previous life, the life before she had been to Rhiandomeer. There were enough people who wanted Fthoom back—Fthoom, who was the most powerful magician of his generation—that there were signatures on a petition to try and force the king’s hand. She wondered if anyone who signed the petition had been to a fête where she had gone with Ebon; if any of those signatures belonged to someone who had