dogs and hawks and sweetmeats too), and that being king chiefly meant that her father looked tired all the time and was always either talking to or reading something from someone who wanted something from him.
Her cousins’ fathers weren’t quite so always reading and talking. Her favourite uncle—the one who had more in common with his boots than his pegasus—was a farmer, and while, he said, he mostly told other people what to do, sometimes he harnessed up a pair of his own horses and ploughed one of his own fields.“So I’ll remember what I’m asking,” he said. He and his wife, one of the queen’s sisters, had each a bound pegasus, but they usually only saw them on trips to the palace: “Can you imagine a Speakers’ Guild magician living on a farm?” But both pegasi occasionally visited. “It’s a funny thing, the animals like ’em,” said her uncle, whose name was Rulf. “ They always insist on sleeping outside—we’ve got a perfectly good room at the end of the house with doors that open out under that big old oak tree. But they sleep outdoors. In bad weather they may sleep in the barn. And wherever they are, the animals drift that way. The cows and the horses are all at whatever end of their pasture to be nearer the pegasi, and the outside dogs are usually curled up with them, like the house dogs sleep on our bed.”
He told all that part of the story easily and often; but once, when he and his family were visiting the palace, and he and Sylvi had been riding through the park together by themselves, a flight of pegasi came over them. The palace horses were all very accustomed to this, and Sylvi’s pony only raised his head and looked—longingly, Sylvi always thought, as she longingly looked as well—and the king’s hounds accompanying her stopped chasing rabbit smells and sat down, and Sylvi was sure she heard a tiny whine as they too stared up. But Rulf ’s horse reared and bounced and neighed and it was a moment before Rulf managed to quiet him again.
“It’s a mixed blessing, though, seeing ’em flying, isn’t it?” he said to his niece. “First time Hon”—his eldest son—“saw ours coming in at home, the sunset was behind ’em, the sky purple and blue and red and gold, and their wings going on forever, the way they do, gold and red like the sky, and their necks arched and their legs all held up fancy as a dancer’s and their manes and tails finer than the lace your dad had for his coronation robe—Hon was just on a year old, and he burst into tears, cried and cried and cried, and wouldn’t stop. Never cried, Hon. Never afraid of anything. Never cried. Cried, seeing pegasi flying for the first time.” Rulf ’s horse gave a last forlorn little whicker.
At the palace the pegasi had their own private annex in their own private grove of trees—and with their own private and exclusive latrine ; pegasus dung was much prized by the royal gardeners. The annex was merely one long narrow room with three walls and a bit of framing on the fourth; trees served to screen the fact that the long fourth wall of the annex was almost entirely absent. The trees also served as a windbreak, although the annex was in the lee of the palace. Sylvi had never seen the annex—humans did not trespass there without a good reason—but she had said to her father, “Don’t they get cold?”
Her father smiled. “Feathers are very warm. You sleep in a feather-bed : imagine you could wrap it around you like giving yourself a hug.”
The king rarely had time to ride out with his dogs and his hawks, and he rarely ate sweetmeats. He had told his daughter (she had asked) that he didn’t much care for them, though he remembered he’d liked them when he was younger. Sylvi was glad she’d never be king and lose her taste for sweetmeats. The king admitted that he would ride out oftener with his dogs, his hawks and his daughter, if he were able to, but he was not. Here he looked at the pile of paper on his desk, and sighed; as if the sigh were a signal, a dog or three materialised from in or behind or under some piece of furniture, and laid their heads on his knees.
The queen had given Sylvi her first