into space just as his father had. “You come out of it thinking that you’d be better off asking one of the magicians to turn you into a rat and get it over with, and then you look around and everyone’s cheering and you can’t imagine what’s going on.”
Sylvi had always been a little afraid of the Sword just because it was the Sword. But she wasn’t the king’s heir, and she’d never heard that it was especially severe to anyone but heirs and rulers, so she didn’t really dread the fealty-swearing—not nearly as much as she had dreaded meeting her Speaker. But standing next to her father on her birthday, up on the little platform that was raised even higher yet from the Outer Great Court’s stage so even more people could watch what was happening, it seemed bigger than it did hanging on the wall of the Great Hall. It wasn’t a large sword, for it was intended—and had, in the old days, often been used—as a single-handed battle sword. But it had presence, like a person—like an important person. Like the king. Sometimes her father was just her father, tired and kind and overworked ; but when he was the king you knew it. You knew when he changed over too, even if he hadn’t been the king a moment before and was now. The Sword was like that all the time.
Swearing by the Sword was the second-to-last thing in the ceremony ; then Lrrianay would bring her pegasus through the Great Gate and they would meet, and the magicians would blow the binding dust over them and burn herbs and things, and speak some words that no one but other magicians understood, and then they—she and the pegasus—would pretend they understood each other, and she would say her Welcome Excellent Friend speech. Her pegasus would make some of the funny whuffling noises that pegasi did make when they were speaking aloud and which, according to the magicians, was the pegasus version of Welcome Excellent Friend.
Then the magicians would finish the spell, and blow more dust, and wave their arms around and look grand, and then the banquet would begin, when at least she could get down off the platform and have something to eat and there weren’t any more words she had to remember to say. Although when there were too many people around—which there certainly were today—it was hard even to remember to say thank you: all those people were like drowning. And being polite to people like Great-aunt Moira, who always came to rituals, would be tricky, because she always told you that you’d done whatever you had done wrong, and Sylvi knew she’d have done something wrong, but it was going to be hard to listen to how wrong it was right after it happened.
Right after it happened. Right after she started to have a pegasus just behind her right shoulder at all important court events for the rest of her life. She was sure she’d trip over her hems even more with a pegasus standing there looking magnificent and supercilious. It had always rather suited her not to know anything about her pegasus in advance, so she didn’t have to think about it, but now that the binding was here....
She came back to herself staring at the Sword: it was as beautiful as a pegasus, in its own way. Frighteningly beautiful.
What she had to say during the swearing of fealty was easy: every time her father paused she said“I swear.” She was supposed to say it with her hands on the blade of the Sword. She’d never touched it before, although her brothers all had, long before they had to swear fealty; she thought maybe it was a boy thing, wanting to handle swords, although she put in her time in the practise yards, like them. A sword was a sword: it was a great big knife, much too big for any purpose but killing things, and she knew the stories of it defending the realm in the hand of the ruler. Her father had never gone to battle with it, but she was glad she didn’t even have to carry it on feast-days and during ceremonies.
Her father pulled it out of its scabbard and laid the blade over his palms, and she put her hands lightly on the blade between his two hands, and her father began speaking.
She heard him pause, and so she knew to say “I swear,” but she