because it meant she would go.
She looked up from the mattress-hammock and caught her father’s eye. The drai was making it all real. She was going to go—senators or no senators, blood or no blood . . . Fthoom or no Fthoom, since everyone knew who was behind the delegation of magicians. “It’s perfect,” she said firmly, as if in answer to any unspoken doubts. “I shall want to ride in it forever.”
Her gaze shifted to her mother, who was looking worried with that old-general-measuring-up-inexperienced-troops gaze. Hirishy—the least likely soldier’s pegasus—was standing at the queen’s side. As Sylvi glanced at her, she cocked an ear, which usually meant yes, except when it meant no. And then she unfolded one wing just enough for her feather-hand to brush the queen’s cheek. The queen glanced down: Hirishy cocked the other ear and then the first again, a gesture that meant “Well?” or “There, there.” The queen’s face softened, and she stroked a quick, furtive hand down Hirishy’s cheek.
But the discussions among the humans about the princess’ journey still went on and on. After one particularly harrowing one, when Lord Bullen and Senator Gathshem, who had never agreed on anything before in their long lives at court, had been on their feet at the same time, positively shouting that the princess should not be allowed past the Wall, in the present unsettled state of the country, let alone be sent off—flown off—like a parcel or a diplomatic gift into the utter unknown, and the Holder of Concord had had to shout louder to regain control of the meeting, Sylvi said to her father, “They can’t stop me going, can they?”
When he didn’t answer at once she said in a voice a good deal higher and sharper than she meant, “You won’t stop me going, will you?”
The king sighed. “No, my darling, I am determined you should go.”
After another pause she said in a very small voice: “Fthoom. . . .”
“Fthoom,” said her father grimly, “is one of the reasons you must go.”
There was a petition gathering signatures around the senate and the court—asking that Fthoom be reinstated to his old place in the king’s council. Sylvi only knew about it because of Lucretia: “I’m forbidden to tell you, and I don’t know what they’ll do if you let on it was me—cancel my appointment as your lady, I guess. And Glarfin will personally beat me to splinters. But I remember how much you minded that no one told you about your guards—and I’d’ve felt the same. I’d feel the same way now.” Lucretia looked at her, troubled, and tried to smile. “Us short women have to look out for each other.”
“Thank you,” Sylvi had said.“I would much rather know.” She looked at her father now and thought, This is not the moment to remind him he was going to tell me, next time.
The next several weeks were an eon at least. Sylvi wasn’t the slightest bit interested in anything but going; the details threatened to drive her mad. She couldn’t have cared less about what clothing to take with her—that it had to be lightweight, warm and not merely tidy and relatively hole-free which, Sylvi always felt when dressing for a formal occasion was quite enough to ask, but it had to look like, well, like she was a princess. She was going to have to try to look like a princess for three weeks, and it was going to kill her. She did understand about being respectful and so on: “But the pegasi won’t care what I’m wearing!” she wailed to her father.
“Sylvi—” he began.
She put her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear it! You’re going to tell me that I’ll know it! That after you leave I’ll be the sole representative of the entire human race and it’s a huge responsibility and I have to act like I know it and it means something even if I’m the only one knows that’s what I’m doing!”
“I have frequently had the suspicion that Ahathin gets more over to you than we think he does,” said her father, smiling.
“It’s not Ahathin,” she said sadly. “Or it’s not only Ahathin. It’s you and Mum and Danacor and . . . I’d rather wear clothes with holes in so they didn’t take me seriously but . . .” She stopped and then added, “Doesn’t it occur to you that if I did think about being the sole representative of the entire human race