Airs Beneath the Moon Page 11

It was clear that the rider and the horse were at odds. Prince’s neck bowed, and his hooves clawed at the air, threatening to come out of their tuck. His wings fluttered, the membrane rippling. Sunny hesitated in her flight, unwilling to get close to an erratic flyer. “Geraldine!” Philippa shouted above the wind, irritated, and a bit frightened.

  Geraldine, her face white and strained beneath her peaked cap, pulled on Prince’s rein, trying to steady him. Philippa cried, “No! Don’t yank him!” She lifted her arm above her head, and circled her quirt in the air. Elizabeth, the flight leader, signaled back that she understood, though Philippa could see her worry in the tilt of her head. She turned Chaser immediately, and gathered the flight behind her. The horses tilted, parted, dissolving Close Columns. They circled up and back, falling in behind Chaser for the short flight back to the Academy.

  Anxiety dried Philippa’s mouth, and she set her jaw to hide it. She urged Sunny alongside Geraldine and Prince. The girl cast her an anguished glance. Philippa read the awful truth in her eyes, but there was no time to think about it now. She would deal with it later. First, somehow, she had to get this pair safely on the ground.

  She pressed Sunny in as close to Prince as she would go, hoping the older mare’s presence might soothe the young gelding. They circled the Academy grounds, once, twice. For several awful minutes it seemed Prince might fall, his forelegs scrabbling at the air, his wings rippling erratically. Sunny kept a steady wing-beat next to him, and after a time he fell into her rhythm, tilting as she tilted, hooves curling beneath him. His eyes were wild with confusion, and Geraldine clung to her pommel, her back hunched, her chin on her chest, all the grace of her riding gone. Philippa saw her fearful glance at the ground beneath.

  “Geraldine!” Philippa called, above the rush of the wind. “You won’t fall. Give Prince his head, let him follow Sunny. I’m going to do the same—look, loosen the rein. Prince doesn’t want to fall either! Sit deep in your saddle. Let Prince . . . yes, that’s it.”

  Whether Geraldine could hear her, or she simply followed her example, the pair steadied. Sunny circled once more, and then angled toward the landing paddock, her neck long and graceful as she dropped. Prince followed in her wake. They glided in to land, one after the other, and the crisis ended. But it was, Philippa knew, Prince’s last flight.

  Half an hour later, she crossed the courtyard to the Hall again, her shoulders bowed with the weight of the news she must carry to Margareth. Geraldine could not be allowed to fly again.

  Philippa trudged up the steps of the Hall, pulling off her gloves and her cap, tucking them into her belt. She stood a moment in the shadowed coolness of the foyer, gathering her strength. It was not the first time such a thing had happened, but nothing could soften the ghastly event that was to come. Only the death of a rider was worse, and Philippa had seen that, too.

  LARK had seen no one except Petra and Rosellen and Mistress Strong all day, and she was glad when Hester Morning took a seat beside her at dinner. Lark offered her a smile, and Hester nodded in return, but she looked strangely grim.

  Little bowls of consommé were put before them, a pale broth that made Lark long for the thick pottage of her own making. She tried to eat slowly, imitating Hester’s use of the little round soup spoon, but she was so hungry! It seemed the soup disappeared on its own. When the server came to take her empty bowl, she lifted her head. For the first time she noticed the silence in the dining room, and she looked about, wondering what had changed.

  The next course was a tiny, elaborate salad, with baskets of yeast rolls the size of Lark’s thumb. She ate the salad in three bites, and did the same to a slice of poached fish. When a roasted squab was set before her, she picked up her knife and fork with reluctance. She was no stranger to squab, but at home she would have dismembered it with her fingers, the practical utensils she was born with. Here she must use flatware. She watched Hester to see how it might be done.

  Hester picked up her knife, and then laid it down again, shaking her head.

  “Hester,” Lark murmured. “What is it? Why is everyone so quiet?”

  Hester spoke in a low tone. “Didn’t you hear?”

  “Hear what?” She followed Hester’s slight nod to the long table where the third-level girls sat. One of them, at the very end, was eating nothing. She sat with her head low, her shoulders slumped. Lark whispered, “Who is that? What’s wrong with her?”

  Hester picked up her knife again, and gave the squab on her plate a halfhearted stab. “That’s Geraldine. In their flight this morning, Geraldine lost control of Prince . . . Mistress Winter had to help them in. They almost fell.”

  “Fell?” Lark pressed a hand to her throat.

  Hester sat back. “Yes,” she said heavily. “The rest of the flight was terrified.”

  “Is that why everyone’s upset?”

  Hester leaned forward, and picked up her fork again. “Eat, Hamley. I’ll explain later. This isn’t a good time.”

  Lark struggled with the squab, leaving most of its meat shredded among the bones on her plate. She ate two rolls, and plucked a third from the basket just as it was being taken away. The table was cleared again, and an ice served. When the Headmistress rose, signaling the end of the meal, the girls filed out in near-silence. They dispersed, some to the Dormitory, some to the stables, some to the yearlings’ pasture to bring their colts and fillies in for the night.

  Lark paused on the steps. “I have to go to the library,” she told Hester. “Mistress Strong set me to memorize ten generations of the Ocmarin line.”

  Hester didn’t speak for a moment. She stood on the step below Lark, gazing out across the courtyard to the quiet pastures. To the east, the spires of Osham glimmered white. To the west, the sky still glowed with sunset light.

  Lark touched her arm. “Hester. Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

  “Let’s talk in the library.”

  Hester led the way down the steps and around the side of the Hall to the tiny, lamplit library. They found it empty, the books neatly shelved, a small fire crackling in the fireplace. Hester pulled down a book and laid it on the study table. Lark took a chair and pulled the book to her, but she didn’t open it. She looked up at Hester, waiting.

  “Of course you know our horses can’t stand the scent of men,” Hester said. Lark nodded. “If a rider’s scent changes . . . the horses become confused.”

  “Is that what’s happened to Geraldine?”

  Hester gave a great sigh, and sat down opposite her. “There were rumors about Geraldine. She comes from a baron’s family, I think, and I’ve heard she was wild.” Hester’s brow furrowed. “It may all be gossip, but they say her family was relieved to bond her with a winged horse.” She sighed again, gustily. “And now she’s in trouble.”

  “She’s breeding,” Lark said.

  “Yes.”

  Lark rested her chin on one hand. “On Deeping Farm, I always knew when the she-goats or the cows had caught. They smelled different. Richer, somehow. Stronger.”

  “Whatever it is, the horses know it. They know other things, too, like—if a girl uses one of those potions the witchwomen sell, to stop conception, or to abort a pregnancy. And you know, Lark, once a woman has a baby, her body is changed forever. The horses can’t bear it.”

  “Oh,” Lark breathed. “New Prince . . .”

  “Yes. New Prince.” Hester gave a gusty sigh. “I know what Mamá would say. Men can do almost anything, and there are no consequences. Women are the ones who pay the price.”

  “In the Uplands . . . when this happens, we have quick weddings.”

  “In Osham, girls who get pregnant are sent away.”

  “That seems unfair.”

  “So Mamá says. But just because it’s unfair doesn’t change anything.” Hester sat shaking her head, her eyes bleak. “I don’t know how she could do it, knowing what could happen.”

  “What will happen to Geraldine now?”

  Hester shrugged. “She’ll never e
scape the disgrace. She’ll have to leave her family, the Academy . . . I expect they’ll disown her. And no one will want to marry her.”

  “Then what will she do?”

  Hester only shrugged again. “But I can tell you this! I could never, never risk losing Goldie!”

  “Will they really do it? Will they put Prince down?”

  “They have to.” Hester fixed Lark with a hard gaze. “A winged horse goes mad if it loses its bondmate. It’s already started with Prince. He’ll destroy himself, in the end, and he could hurt other horses and even people in the process.”

  “Oh. How terrible.” Lark stroked the book, thinking how precious each winged horse was, trying to grasp how Geraldine could have taken such a risk.

  “And we have to witness it,” Hester said bleakly.

  Lark felt a wave of cold sweep up from her belly. “Watch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you seen this before?”

  Hester shook her head. “No,” she said. “Nor did I ever expect to. But it’s part of the discipline—so that we understand, each of us. So we don’t make the same mistake.”

  Lark thought of Tup, the prick of his ears at her approach, his shining eyes so full of trust. Like Hester, she would never do anything to put her horse at risk. The very thought turned her blood to ice.

  She pushed the book of the Ocmarin line away from her. There was no point in opening it. She would be able to learn nothing this night.

  THE Headmistress spoke to the students at breakfast, her voice dry and even as if she was announcing a change in schedule. The girls stared at their plates as they listened to her explanation. Mistress Morgan finished by saying, “Our work often involves life-and-death matters. In your service, you will see many things, and this one, hard thing you must witness, so that you will remember, and understand.”

  No one made a sound as they left their half-eaten breakfasts and straggled across the courtyard. Hardly knowing she did it, Lark noted the hills to the west beginning to rust in the heat. In Willakeep the peak of the growing season would have passed, the early mornings and late evenings just starting to cool, the farmers beginning preparations for harvest.

  The horses tossed their heads as the girls circled the stables. Several whickered to their mistresses, and Lark heard answering sobs, quickly muffled. She was grateful that Tup, for once, did not cry out for her. With the others, she trudged to the dry paddock, and she and Hester leaned against the pole fence. Hester stared straight ahead, her profile rigid. Lark felt the grief of the students around her, their hearts aching as one, unified for the moment by tragedy. No one whispered, no one giggled, no one spoke at all. Even Petra Sweet was silent.

  Rosellen led New Prince out of the stables, and Lark’s heart turned over. The gelding had already been dosed with some potion. His head hung low, and his wings dragged in the dirt. He was tall and deep-chested, with the muscular legs of a Foundation horse, but his eyes were dull and his ears drooped.

  Rosellen coaxed the drugged horse forward. Geraldine, standing inside the dry paddock, drooped against the fence as if she, too, had been drugged.

  Philippa Winter stood beside her. Mistress Winter put something into Geraldine’s hand, and guided her across the paddock toward her bondmate. Geraldine walked as if in a daze, her face a mask of anguish, her eyelids swollen and red. Mistress Winter’s face was set in hard lines that made her look ten years older. When Geraldine sagged against her, she forced her upright, and propelled her forward with an unyielding arm.

  As they came close, Prince roused from his stupor, pulling back against his lead, his hoofs scrabbling in the dry dirt. Geraldine began to weep, her mouth open, her face blotching. Lark could see a small glass vial in her hand. Geraldine tried to press it back on Mistress Winter. Grimly, Mistress Winter pushed it away, and drew a white cloth from her pocket.

  “Geraldine,” she said, her voice sharp in the painful silence.

  The girl muttered something through her tears.

  “No,” Philippa said evenly. “No one can do this for you. It is your duty.”

  Geraldine dropped the cloth, and tried to cover her eyes with her hand, but Philippa pulled it away from her face. Rosellen, her freckles standing out in her pale face, bent to pick up the cloth. Prince rustled his drooping wings, and shook his head from side to side, all his movements muddy and uncoordinated.

  Lark bit her lip till it stung. There were soft sobs around her, and Mistress Winter raised her head and fixed the students with a hard gaze. Silence settled over the paddock again. The only noise was Prince’s harsh breathing, the scuffing of his hoofs in the dirt as he tried to put distance between him and his bondmate.

  “Swiftly, now,” Mistress Winter said. “For kindness’ sake.”

  Geraldine’s hands shook as she unstoppered the little bottle, and poured its contents onto the cloth. She stepped up to Prince, as Rosellen dug in her heels to hold him in place. Sobbing aloud now, Geraldine held the cloth out to the horse’s nose. He jerked back, lifting Rosellen off her feet. Geraldine cried out, and dropped both cloth and vial. She turned to flee, and Mistress Winter’s strong arms stopped her.

  But Prince had a whiff of the potion now, and he backed across the paddock, energized by some instinctive understanding. The watching students gasped. “Rosellen!” Philippa snapped. “Can you hold him? Geraldine, stop! Hysterics won’t help Prince!”

  But it was clear that Prince, terrified now, would not go easily. He dragged Rosellen backward until his hindquarters struck the pole fence. Geraldine began to struggle in Philippa’s grasp. From a distance, the Headmistress called, “Someone fetch Herbert!” There was a rustle as one of the third-level girls pushed through the crowd into the stables.

  Lark saw how the poor gelding’s eyes rolled, saw the foam that flecked his muzzle, saw the sweat dripping from the jointure of wing and chest. She couldn’t bear it. Rosellen was at the fence with him now, pulling with all her might on the rope. Prince reared, his wings flapping against his wingclips. The near clip popped off, and spun across the paddock. Without thinking, Lark leaped up on the bottom pole of the fence.

  Hester cried her name, but Lark had already pulled herself up to the top pole. She swung her legs over, and jumped lightly down inside the paddock. She was beside Prince in a moment, pressing herself against his near wing, twining her fingers in his mane. His other wing was trapped against the fence. Rosellen gritted her teeth. Perspiration ran down her cheeks as she fought to hold his head.

  Lark said softly, “Prince, Prince. Poor Prince. Settle down, now, lovely boy, settle down. It will all be over soon.”

  He was far taller than Tup, of course, and more than once he pulled her off her feet as she clung to his neck. She kept talking to him, all the while trying not to be stepped on. His near wing battered at her thigh, and he gave a choking neigh. Lark crooned, “Come now, Prince, poor lovely boy. Come now. Poor thing, poor lovely boy.”

  Just when it seemed both she and Rosellen would exhaust their strength, the horse gave one last, halfhearted leap, and subsided. The wing beneath Lark’s thigh went limp. Prince’s brief burst of energy was spent.

  “Them fools gave him half a potion,” Rosellen muttered. “Might as well have me do it right in the first place.”

  Prince began to sag to the ground, unevenly, first one foreleg and then the other crumpling beneath him. He fell to his knees, his pinions spreading in the dirt, his hind legs folding. Rosellen loosened the lead, and Lark stepped around the stable-girl and knelt to cradle the gelding’s head, soothing his forehead with her free hand. A moment later, Philippa Winter crouched beside her. In one swift motion, she covered Prince’s muzzle with the potion-soaked cloth, held it there with a firm hand as his eyes glazed and his breath rattled.

  The smell of the potion stung Lark’s nostrils and made her eyes water, but she held the horse’s head throughout. Even after Philippa withdrew the cloth, and touched Prince’s throat to see that no pulse still beat in it, Lark str
oked his smooth cheek, watching the spark of life fade from his eyes like the flame of a candle guttering and dying.

  After the wildness of the struggle, the tension and drama of the scene, the end seemed unnaturally quiet. It was as if, Lark thought, Prince had given in. Had given up.

  Philippa touched her shoulder. “He’s gone now, Larkyn. Thank you for helping him.”

  “Aye,” Lark whispered. “It had to be done.”

  “Indeed it did.”

  Philippa put out her hand to help Lark to her feet. Lark gently laid Prince’s head on the ground, smoothing his forelock, palming his eyelids closed. Behind her she heard Geraldine’s wild weeping, and someone trying to quiet her. The other girls were silent, and when she straightened, their collective gaze on her seemed weighted, like the breathless summer heat. Lark saw Petra move, and mutter something, but Hester Morning stepped in front of her, blocking her from Lark’s gaze.

  Lark looked back at the beautiful horse lying in the dirt. His right wing was folded beneath him at a bad angle, and his left lay stretched across the ground like a fold of ruined silk. Those wings would never carry him high into the air again. His shining hooves were splayed uselessly, his graceful neck twisted at an impossible angle.

  Bitterly, Lark said, “What a waste.”

  Mistress Winter gave her an odd look. “Indeed it is, Larkyn,” she said in a low voice. “A terrible waste indeed.”

  THIRTEEN

  “HOW useful it will be for Rosellen,” Petra Sweet said, “to have a goat-girl in the stables.” Her tone was just loud enough to carry through the sleeping porch. A few titters followed her remark, quickly hushed as Hester Morning abruptly stood up to glare down the row at Petra.

  “What are you talking about, Sweet?” Hester demanded. Lark hastily pulled her nightshift over her head to hide her burning cheeks.

  “Not that I need to explain to you, Morning,” Petra sneered, “but after all . . . how fortunate that Hamley there doesn’t mind scrabbling about in the dirt to do a stable-girl’s job.”