Still smiling, her father said, “No.” And then a runner was announced, with news of another taralian found and dispatched, and Sylvi had to leave, feeling a rather sick-making mixture of pride and dismay.
Even worse was writing her speech. There was going to be a banquet, of course, for her father. And for her, she supposed, since she was there too. She knew about banquets; she’d sat through a lot of banquet speeches. She was going to have to give one? That was worse than having to look like a princess for three weeks.
“It doesn’t have to be long,” said her father. “Just a few polite sentences. Oh, and—” He paused.
Sylvi’s heart sank. Every regular at the king’s court learnt to dread the king’s “Oh, and—” with the pause. If the rest of the sentence followed immediately, it would be okay. When there was a pause, there was trouble.
“I’d like you to give it in as much of the pegasus language as you can. You can use sign too, if you wish, but I want you to say at least a few words in our hosts’ own language. In what we think we know of our hosts’ own language.” Briskly he added,“You can ask Ebon to help you with your pronunciation.”
Sylvi’s heart continued sinking. It would reach the centre of the earth soon. What the humans understood and could use of the oral and kinetic pegasus language was of the grand and the courtly but mostly meaningless variety—the sort of language that appeared in the treaty. Every court meeting where pegasi were present began with a welcome that included hraasa ho uurha,“esteemed allies,” and if you met one at a banquet and felt the need to say something, one of your choices was niwhi goaraio whanwaidio, which meant something like “I hope you will enjoy your food.” She’d been meaning to ask Ebon for a translation check, but it was one of those things she never thought of when she was with him.
“Are you going to speak in pegasi?” she asked mutinously; but she already knew the answer. Even though she had Ebon and he did not, he wouldn’t ask her to do anything he wouldn’t do.
“I’m going to try,” he said ruefully. “My speech will be longer than yours, and about half of it will be in something resembling pegasi, I hope. Remember we won’t have any Speakers with us—”
“We don’t need them,” Sylvi interrupted. “We’ll have the shamans, and you and Lrrianay nearly—and away from the palace Ebon and I—”
“It’s not the same thing,” said the king.
“Like wearing nice clothes,” said Sylvi, and sighed.
She did ask Ebon to help her. Your ears are going to twist themselves off if you spin them any harder, she said crossly. He stopped grinning, flattened his ears sideways and then, after a second or two, let out a guffaw they could probably hear on the other side of the Wall.
You sound like a donkey, she said.
This is going to be fun, he said.
But he did help her. She’d never given a proper speech at a banquet before, even a short one—even in her own language—but she’d become accustomed to saying a few sentences at opening or closing ceremonies at fairs and name days and occasions when she was ranking royalty.
First there was the confusing business of stopping their silent-speech for the words spoken aloud so she could concentrate on the sounds of the oral language; and then there was the decision to dispense with trying to learn any of the pegasi kinetics—there were a lot of what Sylvi thought of as adjectives that the pegasi did in body language. But there isn’t a good way to, uh, translate the, uh, difference in body parts, said Ebon.
Yes, said Sylvi. Or that I’ve got ears but can’t wiggle them. The signlanguage is dire enough—and anyway I don’t want to be saying “it’s a pretty day but I think it will rain tomorrow.”
But the meanings of even the usual court-speech words seemed to keep slipping away from her, even with Ebon helping. They ran away like mice, or a handful of sand through your fingers.
It’s weird, isn’t it? said Ebon.
Yes, she said grimly. Very weird.
It’s like the binding, said Ebon. When it felt like they were separating us, rather than tying us together.
They had never said this to each other before.
Yes, said Sylvi.
There was an awful little silence, and then Ebon said, Well, it didn’t work. We got bound anyway.