Robin McKinley - Pegasus

But there was no getting out of learning her lines for her binding. And so she learnt them. And she bore with being fitted for a new dress for the ceremony, which included the garment-maker having to put the hem up even shorter than he’d already put it up, because Sylvi was even shorter than he’d realised. That’s what measuring sticks are for, thought Sylvi resentfully, but she didn’t say it out loud; and the hem fell to her ankles instead of puddling around her feet on the day.

On the day, her mother came to help her get dressed. Her next-elder and next-elder-after-that brothers had already been in to say “best birthday ever,” which you said anyway but you said it specially emphatically if it was someone’s binding day. Emphatic from Garren or Farley was a bit like being whapped by the master-at-arms with the flat of your wooden practise sword, but they didn’t stay long. When they’d shown an inclination to linger to tell Sylvi stories of all the terrible things that had happened on various binding days over the centuries, the queen had suggested that they might help the housefolk carry the long tables for the banquet into the Outer Court, thus leaving more of the housefolk free to get on with things that needed tact or skill.

Their pegasi had come with them. Poih, Garren’s pegasus, had given her a salute she’d never seen before, with the wings swept forward and the tips of the first few primaries interlinked, and the tiny alula-hands clasped. Even doing it discreetly took up a lot of room: pegasi wings were necessarily enormous. Sylvi was sure it was more than she deserved, and made her new long complicated binding-ritual bow back, because it was the fanciest one she knew.

Oyry, Farley’s pegasus, had just barely, or not quite, brushed the back of each of her hands with a wingtip, which was a salute she knew, and knew to be a great honour: not only did it just or not quite defy the ban on physical contact between pegasus and human, it was a reference to the longing humans had for wings and pegasi for strong human hands. Then he smiled a pegasus smile at her, which involved ears going in different directions and a wrinkled nose which did not expose the teeth. She’d been startled, and startled into wondering if perhaps she’d underestimated her brothers’ pegasi. It was a point of honour as a much-patronised little sister to underestimate her brothers. But it was so hard to guess anything about any pegasus, and she wondered uneasily what Oyry or Poih might know about her pegasus, who was, presumably, their little sister. And then they went after their human princes, leaving Sylvi alone with her mother and her mother’s pegasus, Hirishy.

Hirishy was small even for a pegasus, and timid, without any of the usual pegasus grand manner; she was not the pegasus queen but only her half sister. Sylvi’s father hadn’t been expected to marry her mother; he was supposed to marry Fandora. Fandora was the eldest child of Baron Sarronay, whose family was one of the oldest, wealthiest and best-connected in Balsinland, and the Sarronays had more than a few royal consorts in their family tree already. The royal council, who determined how far the net of binding should be cast each generation, with an eye to history and the volatility of human affections, decided to bind pegasi to as many of the marriageable young female cousins as possible. But the royal pegasus family of that generation was not large enough for all the human cousins, and so two or three of the least-probable queen candidates had been given third cousins or half sisters. Eliona had been considered the least-probable candidate of all: she was known to be married to her regiment.

But there was a scandal too. Sylvi only knew because Farley told her: once King Corone IV had become engaged to Lady Eliona, Fthoom, who even then was the most powerful member of all the magicians’ guilds, had suggested that the future queen be bound to another, more suitable, pegasus—“Which there wasn’t one, of course, and he knew it,” said Farley with relish: Fthoom was not popular with any of Sylvi’s family. “And the king said no, of course not, no one has ever been re-bound, and he would not offer such an insult to our allies. And that’s when”—Farley’s voice sank to a near whisper—“that’s when Fthoom suggested our mother shouldn’t be queen!”

Sylvi listened to this with her mouth a little open. She’d been afraid of Fthoom her entire life and considered her father braver than a soldier facing a taralian with a broken stick for standing up to him. “He said that?”

“Oh, not in so many words—not even Fthoom would dare. But it was pretty clear what he meant. And Dad said that as a way of covering up the total failure of the guild of forecasters to predict who would be queen—because you know the forecasters sweated like anything over who got which pegasus—it was a pretty poor showing.”

Sylvi went cold with fear and then hot with admiration. She had seen Fthoom with her father often, and Fthoom was a big man and her father a small one, but there was never any doubt who was the king, despite the fact that Fthoom invariably came to the palace wearing the magician’s spiral and his grandest, most vivid magician’s robes, and her father was usually dressed in something soft and dark and floppy. “Farley, how do you know this?”

Farley said airily, “Oh, everyone knows that story. And the only people who won’t tell it are Mum and Dad. I bet even Ahathin would tell you.”

Sylvi had not dared ask Ahathin, but she had asked Danacor. Her eldest brother was hopelessly solemn and dutiful and responsible, but he didn’t like Fthoom any better than any of the rest of them did.“Oh, that old story,” he said.“Yes, it’s true enough, but—” He hesitated, and Sylvi held her breath, because Danacor, as the king’s heir, knew all the best stories, and occasionally was still young enough to tell them.“ The real scandal is that Hirishy was bound to Mum in the first place. When it’s just sovereign-heir to sovereign-heir, like Thowara and me, it’s easy. But when it’s half a dozen girls, five of whom will be farmers or soldiers and the sixth will marry the king, you’re supposed to try to make some attempt to match personalities. By the time Mum was twelve she already had her first war-horse, you know? And they bound her to Hirishy ?”

Sylvi was troubled by this story. She liked Hirishy— liked her, not the way she liked Thowara or Lrrianay, but almost as she might like another human. She had once been trying to say something to her, something about the way families behaved and how you loved them even when you wanted to kill them—it had been a day when her brothers had been especially exasperating—which was a lot more complicated than she was used to saying in her own language, let alone to a pegasus. She had no idea why she had been trying to do something so bizarre, and so doomed to failure. But there was something about the way Hirishy seemed to listen. It drew Sylvi on. She’d stumbled to the end of her signing and stopped, feeling a fool... and Hirishy had put her nose to Sylvi’s temple, like a kiss from her mother, and left her.

Sylvi had slowly put her hand to the place Hirishy’s nose had touched. That had been almost as strange as what had gone before: you didn’t touch the pegasi, and they didn’t touch you. She thought it was probably a good rule; if it weren’t positively forbidden, the urge to stroke the shining glossy pegasi would probably be overwhelming. She was sure that a pegasus flank would make the sleekest silkhound feel as rough as straw; but the pegasi were a people , like humans, and must be treated with respect. (And you mustn’t ever, ever ride a pegasus, which was the first thing that every human child, royal or not, on meeting or even seeing its first pegasus, wanted to do.) Sylvi had been very young when she had realised you had to be more careful of the pegasi because the humans were dominant: because the pegasi came to the human king’s court, and the pegasus king stood behind the human king’s shoulder. But Hirishy had touched her.