had looked at her thoughtfully when she suggested, shortly after her twelfth birthday, that she wanted to train properly with Diamon, to a plan and a schedule, but he had let himself be persuaded. “Your mother wouldn’t let me make any other decision, of course,” he said, “but she says this was your idea.”
“I would have asked you years ago, only I’m so short,” Sylvi said. That on the night of her twelfth birthday she had discovered one enormous advantage to being small had not eased frustration with her situation elsewhere; and her twelfth birthday was also when she had been obliged to begin going to council meetings, which produced a different form of frustration. “All my brothers started when they were seven. I think Danny was taller than I am now when he was seven.”
“My disgraceful heritage, I fear,” said her father.“ There is one more hurdle for you: you must ask your unnecessarily tall eldest brother’s permission as well as mine. He will be your king and commander some day and it is his choice where he would have you to command.”
Sylvi opened her mouth and shut it. Opened it again.“He’ll tell me I’m too short.”
The king sighed. “He may. In which case refer him to me, and you will be a lesson for him in allowing his people to make their own decisions, for they will work much harder doing what they feel they themselves have chosen to do.”
Tall Danacor visibly had his mouth open to say “you’re too short” when Sylvi added, “And Dad says that if you tell me I’m too short you’re to talk to him and I’m going to be a lesson in letting your subjects make their own decisions.” Whereupon Danacor stopped looking like a pompous prig and more like a young man who still sometimes found being the king’s heir rather a strain.
“Okay.” He smiled a little. “Diamon is pretty short himself. I think he likes short people best. First time you knock him down I’ll—I’ll give you a sword.”
She had still not attained such a height of glory, although on a good day she could make him take a step backward he hadn’t meant to take. Four years ago it had been a matter of principle that she wanted lessons in combat, and Sylvi, as she crossed swords or staves with Lucretia or Diamon or any of the others, or as she released her arrow or fired her crossbow bolt or rode at the large straw bolster (on wheels, to make hitting it more interesting), told herself it was still only a matter of principle that she should learn the arts of war. There had been skirmishes many times before, since Viktur and Balsin had come through the Dravalu Pass; with humans beyond the borders of her father’s realm, and with taralians and norindours, ladons and wyverns within it. Some of those skirmishes had been fierce enough and lasted long enough to be called wars.
“There is a theory,” Ahathin had once told her, “that we are here in a kind of—nexus, a crossroads, a meeting place of force and power. That there is a reason why we are so plagued not merely by taralians and norindours, but that ladons and wyverns, which should not be natural to our climate and geography, are drawn back here. That it is this convergence that attracts rocs. And . . .”
“And pegasi,” interrupted Sylvi, not wanting to think about rocs or magical convergences. “The only pegasi there are are here, are ours.”
“Yes,” said Ahathin.“So far as we know, the pegasi that are a part of our lives are the only pegasi anywhere.”
“Then we had better keep them alive, hadn’t we?” said Sylvi.
“Yes. Yes, we had indeed.”
That’s what it is like at a crossroads, Sylvi said to herself. They were only having a bad season, an unsettled year—or two years, or three. Nothing to do with a princess and her pegasus, or with Fthoom. The Alliance did live, visibly, in the bond between her and Ebon. Let them exploit that....
Especially if it included seeing the Caves, she told herself honestly, the night before they were due to leave. Her head was still ringing with the good wishes (and the good advice) of all of those who had come to the medium-sized dinner in her and Ebon’s honour that evening—ringing as well, she felt, with all the things that had not been said, mostly by those who had continued to oppose her going, but whom her