she was. I keep telling you—they aren’t my people. It’s easier for me.
They went with an entourage—just like Fthoom, Sylvi thought without humour. Occasionally, for a very grand one, she wore a frock and rode in a carriage, but usually she and Ahathin and at least one of her attendant guards, plus up to a dozen assorted aides and escorts all travelled on horseback, and Sylvi would pull a princessy tunic over her riding clothes when they arrived. (She also learned to bring a dog-brush on the chance that a hound or two or three would be found to have followed them and could be tidied up to join their company.)
Ebon would meet them there—with at least one pegasus attendant of his own, sometimes two or three; and they would be wearing a few flowers or a few ribbons, or especially vivid examples of the little embroidered bags around their necks that the pegasi often wore. Sylvi’s pony grew very fond of Ebon and would neigh when he saw him, and Ebon would whuffle at him in a way Sylvi found very like the way she would make a conversation out of “Good dog, what a good dog, there’s a good dog, stand still so I can get the knots out, what have you been rolling in?”
Pegasi looked almost more like four-legged birds, standing next to horses. Their necks were longer and their bodies shorter in comparison, their ribs tremendously widesprung for lung space and their shoulders broad for wing muscles, but tapering away behind to almost nothing; their bellies tucked up like sighthounds’, although there were deep lines of muscle on their hindquarters. Their legs seemed as slender as grass stems, and the place where the head met the neck was so delicate a child’s hands could ring it; they moved as if they weighed nothing at all, as if they might float away, even without spreading their wings.
And no human could ever take their eyes off a pegasus’ wings.
Sylvi and Ebon’s entourage stayed watchfully nearby, but the two of them were the centre of attention. All the little children wanted to pet Ebon—Ebon put up with this with unimpaired good humour, while Sylvi tried not to let it show that she felt it was an impertinence, which she did. Not from the children, but from their parents—didn’t they know you weren’t supposed to touch the pegasi? No one ever offered to stroke any pegasus who had come with Ebon—but Ebon was not only the one out in front with the princess Sylviianel, he was also a terrible flirt. He would put his head down till he was eye to eye with a toddler who was smiling and waving at him, and then tap its cheek or its nose with one of his feather-hands. If one too small to walk on its own screamed in excitement and bounced up and down in its parent’s arms he would very likely stamp a foot (gently) and go “eeeeeeeee” back at it. He even gave pony rides to the littlest. The first few times this happened, all the human eyes within range nearly stood out on stalks—the rule about not riding pegasi apparently had filtered comprehensively through the entire population.
Just lift the kid up there and stop fussing, he’d said the first time. Only the tiniest, mind. Nobody big enough to break a feather if they get too thrilled and start kicking, that’s the rule.
After that their invitations came even more often. The most pressing, Sylvi noticed, seemed to be from towns where the mayors and sheriffs and head councillors—and fête organisers—had children or grandchildren old enough to sit up but too young to kick very hard.
But then something else happened. The older children—and far too many adults, who should have been old enough to know better—began to ask her to ask Ebon questions. Maybe it was the petting and the pony rides. The first time it happened Sylvi was so nonplussed she simply did—the question was so harmless (“What is your favourite colour?”), and the young woman who asked it was obviously trying to make some kind of friendly contact with the pegasus who had been kind to her children—twins, about a year old, and they’d each had a pony ride. And the woman looked so tired—too tired to remember explicit royal prohibitions—and so grateful. And perhaps Ebon’s answer (“The colour of the sky at dawn over the mountain called Cuandoia when we’re in the lower meadows. It’s best in autumn