Ebon was looking at her, and as their eyes met he said, Are you catching it from your dad? I’ve just been getting it from mine. He seems to think it’s my fault that you made a little mistake.
Yes, I—
She was distracted by the arrival of Fthoom. Fthoom was looking at her very solemnly, and she knew at once that the solemnity was to hide the fact that he was very angry.
Fthoom was the head—the unofficial head—of the royal magicians, which meant he was the first magician of the entire country. In theory magicians didn’t have a head, and any group of magicians who decided to act together—the magicians’ guild and the smaller but more consequential Speakers’ Guild most importantly—had to choose their actions democratically. In practise there generally was a head, and no one who spent more than five minutes or one ritual occasion at the king’s court was in any doubt that Fthoom was head magician. She knew that her father wished the royal magicians would elect him chief and get it over with; he had said many times that they wasted more time and energy squabbling for a better place in the unadmitted hierarchy than they spent on court business. But no one squabbled with Fthoom.
Fthoom was chosen for all the most significant roles. He had been the fifth magician for the king’s daughter’s binding with her pegasus; that she was only the fourth child would be less important to him than that it would be a public spectacle involving a number of magicians with a lot of people watching. It was just like him to be the first magician to confront her with her blunder too, since she was pretty sure by the way he was glaring at her that that was his intention—once the ritual was over he could have been expected to lose interest in her.
Her father’s arm tightened round her as he said, mildly, “Fthoom.”
Fthoom heard the tone of the king’s voice and a little ripple of self-restraint went through him. Sylvi could see him standing up straighter and squaring his unpleasantly broad shoulders: she always thought of him in terms of how much light he blocked. She understood with increasing alarm that her tiny mistake was not tiny at all. Surely there could have been some other way she could have learnt Ebon’s name? But she knew there wasn’t.
She didn’t want any part of magicians’ business. Magic was the worst of court affairs, worse even than being polite to people who were rude about your height. One of the reasons she had been able to relax her guard around Ahathin was that while he usually had a little charm-thread in a pocket, he’d never done any magic in her presence, and she’d only once or twice smelled it on him. The charm against nightmares had smelled like fresh air and spring; that had been part of why it worked. Most magicians’ magic made her skin hurt.
She ’d never liked Fthoom, who was a patronising bully to everyone but her parents and her eldest brother, but now, looking at him, with the reek of fresh magic coming off him like the reek of fresh blood, she was very frightened of him indeed—even with her father’s arm around her. She wished she were still young enough to wrap herself up in the long skirts of her father’s ceremonial robe and disappear, as she had occasionally done when she was smaller.
She glanced again at Ebon, who was still watching her. The pegasus standing next to him turned his head and looked at her too. She could guess, by the ears and nostrils, that he was saying something to Ebon, but she couldn’t hear anything with either her ears or her mind; and then Ebon began walking toward her. Lrrianay had materialised at her father’s other elbow, and she began to notice the number of people, both two-legged and four-, who were watching the confrontation. For confrontation was what it was.
Fthoom was apparently still trying to decide how to phrase what he wanted to say when Ebon joined them. He put his nose to Sylvi’s ear and blew—very gently. It tickled, and she smiled involuntarily.
Atta girl, he said, and pawed briefly, gracefully, with one forefoot for emphasis.
This minor exchange infuriated Fthoom past restraint. “How dare you!” he said to Sylvi—who cringed against her father as if Fthoom had tried to strike her. “You know it is forbidden to have any contact between your