pleasure. As I recall, when you were younger, you said a good deal about the food and the countryside.”
“But that was just a holiday, like anyone might have,” she said dubiously. “ This was—”
“That you went is as much as anyone needs to know,” he said.“The rest you may treat more or less as a holiday, as you choose.”
The Caves? she thought. Can I treat the Caves as a holiday outing? I must say something about the Caves.
So she (again) praised the pegasi’s hospitality, she described her feather-bed and her hot breakfasts—she described the pavilions, and the harnesses and frames, and the way almost everything the pegasi used came to bits small enough to be made and then fitted together by the tiny pegasi feather-hands. She described the paper and the weaving—and the spiders. She described the countryside, that it was like and unlike their human lands—she had mentioned the lack of bridges, and of dams, and the way the paths all connected within an area, but that there were no roads between discrete areas—and she described the fields of koy and fleiier for drying and weaving, of barley and oats and djee, of pumpkins, maize and zorra; the orchards of apples, pears and plooraia—and the fields and fields and fields of llyri grass.
Of the Caves she said only that she had seen but a fraction of a fraction of them—she allowed it to be implied that she had spent perhaps a single afternoon there—and that the corridors and individual chambers were often very large, and very beautifully decorated, some with great washes and swirls of muted colours, and some with representational scenes of landscapes, and of pegasi galloping or flying.
She did not mention that a shaman must accompany you into the Caves. She did not mention ssshuuwuushuu. She did not mention Redfora and Oraan; she did not mention the Dreaming Sea. To the best of her ability she made her journey sound like a kind of royal progression, as if she had been the king’s ambassador to a barony a little farther away and a little less known than most, as if the strangeness could be contained in a description of the food and the clothing, and possibly a few local peculiarities about the raising of crops. She mentioned ssshasssha as a visitor to the palace might mention seeing the mural of the signing in the Great Hall, and the affecting historical token of the framed treaty.
Part of her training as king’s daughter had included how to give a speech: speak slowly and distinctly, and don’t keep your nose buried in your pages; look up as often as you can, and make eye contact with members of your audience. She had done these things, but the eyes she had met had stared back at her like painted porcelain. When she was done, she shook her pages together again, looked out over the faces looking up at her and smiled a trained princess’ smile. She had been aware of them—senators, blood, courtiers and councillors, about a quarter of them with pegasi present who stood beside their bondmates’ pegasus-tall chairs—listening closely to everything she said; no one had so much as sneezed while she spoke. But she had picked up nothing from them, any more than she had been able to read anything in the porcelain eyes. She permitted herself to glance to her right, where her father sat; he smiled encouragingly at her, and that made her feel a little better. But her eyes drifted to Lrrianay standing behind him, and to Fazuur’s hands falling still as she fell silent—and she wished, again, for Ebon. She wished for Ebon as she wished every time she saw Lrrianay at her father’s shoulder, or any pegasus at any bondmate’s shoulder, or any pegasus. Or any time she took a breath, she wished again for Ebon.
She turned back to her audience.
The first question she was asked was if there were any representations of humans in the Caves. She was ready for this, but she was a little shaken that it was the very first question: shouldn’t her audience be more interested in the zorra and the djee? Or the flying? How could any human not want to hear more about the flying? But she smiled again, and looked levelly at Senator Chorro and said that she did not remember seeing any, no, but that even the little of the Caves she had seen had been rather overwhelming in its size and magnificence—“Imagine spending