father had thought it was politic to invite to the dinner to send her off.
She was not going to be able to sleep. If her ears were ringing with other people’s words, her mind was ringing with her own. She paced her bedroom restlessly; she had packed and repacked and re-re-repacked what she was taking with her; changed her mind dozens if not hundreds of times about the individual gifts she was bringing. She had had the various choices laid out on a shelf in her wardrobe, where she could be indecisive without troubling any of her attendants. Would the pegasus queen like the gold chain, or the silver and gold one better? Was the little mother-of-pearl bowl—light enough for pegasus hands—really grand enough for Lrrianay, even with the sparkle of tiny diamonds in a ring below its rim? Grand—oh, grand was another of those cumbersome, confusing human things, like choosing the clothes to take with her to make her look like a princess. What did you give people who didn’t want anything?
Since she was at that end of the room, she opened her wardrobe and stared at the things she wasn’t taking. I am not changing my mind again, she thought, as she stared at the embroidered ribbons she wasn’t taking for Ebon’s little sister. They were extremely pretty, but Sylvi thought bringing human embroidery to a pegasus was probably like giving farm boots to a dancer. She thought of her farmer uncle Rulf telling her how his eldest son, who had never cried about anything, cried the first time he saw pegasi, flying with the sunset gilding their wings. Sylvi couldn’t remember the first time she’d seen pegasi; for her at the palace they’d always been there. But she was going to be alone with them for almost three weeks; alone with creatures so beautiful and strange that they made a little boy cry for their beauty and strangeness.
Her eyes drifted to a glint from farther inside the wardrobe. Until a few weeks ago her practise gear had all hung on a peg in the armoury, but a few days after Diamon had told her that pound for pound she was tougher than her brothers, he had come up behind her at the end of their session together, as she was shrugging out of her extremely beat-up leather breastplate. Her sword was already rubbed clean of dust and dirt and hanging up, but he lifted it down again and once she was free of her armour, handed it to her. Puzzled, she grasped the familiar hilt and accepted the scabbard with the other hand. She’d graduated to a real sword a few months ago, even if it wouldn’t have been much more than a dagger in Danacor’s hand; Diamon said that he’d known the young woman who’d last carried it, and that it had been responsible for the deaths of at least two taralians. Lucretia liked to tease her that it was the sword that young Razolon had run his first Speaker through with; it was probably almost old enough, although very plain for a sovereign’s heir, even a twelve-year-old one.
“Take it back to the palace with you,” said Diamon. “Time you started learning to live with it. The sword is your weapon, clearly, just like it’s your mum’s, and a soldier or a princess should be ready. You don’t want to have to come pelting out to the armoury when the battalion of rocs is sighted.” He smiled, but his eyes were serious.
No sword practise for three weeks, she thought. No thumping and being thumped, and getting dust up your nose and in your eyes; her pony would be baffled but pleased by an unexpected three weeks’ holiday; her father’s dogs would be less pleased that she didn’t appear to take them for walks.... At least no council meetings, she thought. She would miss Nanthir’s next report from the Kishes—but she’d also miss the Chaugh ambassador’s daughter’s birthday. She was going to be all alone....
I’m going to see the Caves, she thought, before her courage failed her. The Linwhialinwhia Caves. The Caves that I’ve been longing to see for years—that I’ve known—known—that I never would see. I’ll probably even get to taste fwhfwhfwha.
Eventually she climbed into her bed and lay stiffly down. Last night in a bed for three weeks, she thought. Last night indoors. I hope it doesn’t rain all the time.
There would be hundreds of people to watch them set out tomorrow—far more than at