are you just a dull stupid human?
They looked at each other. Sylvi’s mouth dropped a little open, and the pegasus’ nostrils flared.
I heard that, they said simultaneously.
You’re a boy, Sylvi said suddenly. There was no reason for her to assume that the pegasus king should have had a daughter for his fourth child because the human king had done so, but she had assumed since she first understood that she would have her own pegasus that it would be a girl, like her.
Yes, and you’re a girl, replied the pegasus. I tried to tell them to have my little sister but they said no, I was next, it had to be me.
Then you knew? said Sylvi, outraged. You’re not supposed to know anything before the ceremony of binding!
The pegasus’ skin rippled, starting with his shoulders and rustling his feathers; she thought it must be a pegasus shrug, and she was fascinated by the inclusiveness of it: it ran down his back and his forelegs like flowing silk. How little she knew of them, she thought, these creatures she had seen every day of her life—by whose leave her people lived in this country; with whom her people had an alliance that had lasted almost a thousand years. How—it seemed to her now—humiliatingly little.
That’s just a human rule. I know a lot about you. You ask too many questions and you can’t sit still, and you’re always showing up in your father’s office at the wrong time, so you know more than you should. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be too bad to have a girl if she was another nosy fidget, like me. You’re shorter than I was expecting though.
Sylvi felt her face grow hot. Her height was a tender subject, and here was this pegasus looming over her.
Pegasi didn’t loom; they were too fine and delicate. Pegasus bones were hollow, like birds’, and their limbs were so slender the sun almost seemed to shine through them, as when you hold your hand up to a strong light and look at the thin webs of skin between your fingers. And pegasi never just galloped, like horses; any gait faster than a jog and they had their wings spread at least a little, perhaps partly for balance but mainly to absorb some of the shock of the pounding hoofs. Pegasus legs broke easily and, because they were hollow, usually broke badly; although pegasus shamans came rarely to the human lands, there was always a pegasus healer-shaman resident at the palace.
But Lrrianay’s fourth son didn’t look delicate. He was broadchested and wide-backed, and his blackness gave him an extra solidity. He gleamed as if he’d been polished all over by many small, light alula-hands, which of course he had been, for the ceremony. The flowers woven through his wings were pale blue and white; through the plaits in his mane, bright blue, white and primrose yellow, and he had a little blue bag around his neck on a golden ribbon. She wasn’t going to tell him he was beautiful—even more beautiful than usual for a pegasus, she thought—which he was, because he was probably vain enough about it already. But she did think it was rather hard that she should have an extra-tall pegasus.
Their silent conversation had taken less than a minute. No one of the humans had noticed anything unusual; pegasus child and human child often stared fixedly at each other on first meeting. The magicians had come up from the rear of the dais, and now one laid his hand on Sylvi’s right shoulder (she tried not to flinch), and another laid his hand on the pegasus king’s son’s right shoulder and turned them, gently, so that Sylvi’s left and her pegasus’ right, as they faced each other, were presented to the watching crowd. The two kings themselves moved to stand behind their offsprings’ left shoulders. Sylvi’s eyes, for a moment, met Lrrianay’s, and she wondered if he knew that his son had been talking to her, and she to him. And—even more briefly—she wondered just how much he and her father could say to each other.
Sylvi felt rather than saw the third and fourth magicians approaching, and she had a sudden clear memory of this part of the ceremony when Garren had gone through it; she had been just old enough to realise not only that what was going on was important, but that it would happen to her in a few years too. The third magician held burning