Airs of Night and Sea Read online

  The library was even darker than the corridor, the lamps on the long table extinguished, the only light a faint glow of embers in the big fireplace at one end of the room. Just as he had promised, when he bent over her to speak quickly into her ear at the elaborate dinner the night before, he had left the rolled map, tied with a ribbon of Klee blue, tucked behind a portrait over the mantelpiece. Lark seized it and hurried back the way she had come.

  This time she made no mistakes, but walked directly back to the horsemistresses’ apartment. She let herself in, holding her breath lest someone wake at the click of the door. Luck was with her, and moments later she laid the map on her little packet of belongings and curled up under the comforter once again. She felt wide-awake, charged with nervous energy, and she feared she might lie awake the rest of the night. She forced her eyes to close, hoping for a few hours’ sleep at least.

  She drew one deep, slow breath, and then another. She pictured Tup, safe in a warm stall in the Palace stables, his stomach full, other wingless horses keeping him company. Her heartbeat slowed, and she sighed.

  The next thing she knew, a dull morning sunlight streamed into the room, and someone was knocking on her door. She sat up, her nerves tingling. The map lay where she had left it.

  “Larkyn?” It was Madelyn Storm’s voice. “If you hurry, you can have a bit of breakfast with us before your flight.”

  “Aye, Mistress,” Lark said hastily. “Thank you. I’ll come right out.”

  She threw back the comforter and hurried to wash her face and brush her teeth, to drag a comb through her hair. She pulled on her tabard and divided skirt, and thrust her feet into her boots. She tucked the map beneath the smallclothes in her pack. As she left the room with her things under her arm, she glanced back at the rumpled bed, not knowing if she should make it or leave it.

  Mistress Storm was waiting for her outside the door and caught her glance. “Oh, don’t worry about the bed, Larkyn. A maid will be in to change the sheets.”

  Lark nodded her thanks and followed Mistress Storm back to the sitting room. A table had been rolled in, with a pot of coffee, little glasses of some red fruit juice, rashers of bacon, a dish of boiled eggs, and a basket of yeast rolls that were twice the size of the ones served at the Academy and liberally dusted with sugar. Lark eyed it all in amazement.

  Mistress Storm was watching her and began to laugh. “A feast, isn’t it?” she said. “You might as well eat well for once, Larkyn. One full meal won’t hurt your little stallion.”

  Lark already had a roll in her hand. She turned her eyes up to Mistress Storm, surprised. “Have you seen him?” she said.

  Mistress Storm grinned. She looked young and rather dashing to Lark’s dazzled eyes. “I went out this morning,” she said. She took a plate for herself, and Lark noticed she was circumspect in how much she put on it. “I wanted to see your Black Seraph. What a beauty!”

  Lark smiled, too, despite the nerves that jumped in her throat and her thighs. “Aye,” she said. “I know he’s small, but he’s strong.”

  “Of course,” Mistress Storm said, shelling a boiled egg with her sun-browned fingers. “He’s Ocmarin, like my own Sea Storm. Bred for agility and speed.”

  Lark bit into the crusty roll, dropping her eyes. She didn’t know if Tup had been deliberately bred at all, other than for Duke William’s own reasons. She suspected the Duke cared little for Tup’s agility. He had tried merely to crossbreed a colt he could fly. It was only by Kalla’s grace that Tup had turned out so well, or the filly Diamond, either, for that matter.

  The other horsemistresses came out of their bedrooms, yawning and stretching. They sat around the table in companionable silence until Mistress Rose began outlining the day’s duties. Mistress Storm had courier duty, a flight all the way into Marin. Two of the others were to escort the Prince’s carriage on a ceremonial visit to one of the southern cities. “And I,” Mistress Rose said with an air of resignation, “am assigned the young princesses’ riding lessons for the day.”

  There were groans of sympathy, and Mistress Storm said to Lark, “The princesses are ten and eight. They’re abominable.”

  “Now, now,” said Mistress Smoke, with a pursing of her thin lips. “We mustn’t speak so of the royal family.”

  “Why not?” Mistress Storm said with asperity. “It’s only the truth, by Kalla’s teeth! They’re spoiled beyond belief.”

  Mistress Rose put up a hand. “I can’t argue with you, Madelyn, but it’s best not to say such things where people can hear.”

  “It’s about loyalty,” Mistress Smoke began.

  “Blind loyalty?” Madelyn Storm snapped. “Look where that’s gotten our own Duchy!”

  Mistress Smoke shook her head. “Treasonous,” she said, and pursed her lips.

  “Treason is endangering the bloodlines,” Mistress Storm responded.

  Mistress Rose stood up. “Enough of that. We’re only flyers, and we can’t solve political problems. We just carry on with our duties.”

  “And my duty today,” Mistress Smoke said gratingly, “is to fly all the way to the Academy just because of one snippet of a girl who thinks she knows more than her betters.”

  Mistress Storm gave Lark a look of pure sympathy. Lark tried not to show her relief that it was Marielle Smoke who was to escort her, and not the younger flyer. She would have felt awful about deceiving Mistress Storm.

  LARK followed Mistress Smoke out of the Palace into a sparkling cold morning. The clouds had vanished before the rising sun. Rime glittered on the grasses and shrubs. The air stung her lungs pleasantly with the chill of winter, and the sky was a clear, pale blue. Marielle’s gray Foundation mare stamped in the cold beside Tup. The stable-girl of the Palace stables had both horses tacked and ready. Mistress Smoke stepped to a mounting block and swung into her flying saddle. She moved her mare away from the block so that Lark could use it, but Lark performed a standing mount and tucked her boots into her stirrups with a feeling of relief. The map was secure in her pack behind the cantle, and her stomach was full of the substantial breakfast. She was about to take a great risk. The stakes were high, but so were her spirits.

  She reined Tup, about to follow Maid of Smoke. As he cantered down the flight paddock, he shook his bridle joyously and capered once or twice, buoyant with the energy of a good night’s rest and his own youthful strength.

  Lark touched his neck. “Better save some of that, my lad,” she said. “ ’Tis a long flight we have ahead of us.”

  A moment later he launched, lifting above the parks and paths of the Palace grounds, banking behind Maid of Smoke so quickly he almost overtook her. Lark nudged him with her knee to bring him into position and tightened the rein to slow his speed. At least for the moment she could demonstrate to Marielle Smoke that they knew how to fly in formation.

  Maid of Smoke was a classic Foundation, bigger and heavier than Tup. As with Hester’s Golden Morning, she flew with dignity, but without much speed. Mistress Smoke gave a twirl of her quirt to indicate that Lark should follow on the right and behind, in an Open Columns pattern. Obediently, Lark reined Tup into position. They flew above the river with its arching bridges, skirted the towers and domes of the city, then, with a peremptory glance over her shoulder to see that Lark and Tup were in position, Marielle Smoke turned her mare north, toward Oc.

  It was the moment Lark had been waiting for. She was fortunate, she knew, that Maid of Smoke was not an Ocmarin like Sea Storm. She lifted Tup’s rein, warning him, then pressed her left calf against his shoulder, at the same time laying the rein lightly against the left side of his neck.

  Instantly willing, he banked sharply to the right, back toward the city. His ears flicked back toward her, asking what adventure they were about.

  “Just fly, Tup!” Lark called above the wind. “As fast as you dare!”

  His wings fluttered with energy as he drove toward the spires of Arlton. They flew for a dozen wingbeats before Mistress Smoke realized they had veered
off, and wheeled about to come after them.

  Lark called, “Faster, Tup!” and leaned forward in her saddle to encourage him. The towers and domes rose before them in a thicket of pink and gray and black marble, some squat and round, some tall and thin, all of them jumbled together between the Palace and the sea. Arlton was less spacious than Osham, the buildings closer together, shading the boulevards that ran between them. Lark peered ahead, looking for the tightest, narrowest path. It was the only way they would escape the experienced horsemistress behind them.

  She and Baron Rys had planned this maneuver together the night before. Esmond Rys had expressed misgivings about allowing Lark to take such a chance with Tup, but she had insisted they could handle it. Only now, as the moment presented itself, did her stomach quiver with a pang of fear.

  Maid of Smoke made the turn behind them and came on steadily. Lark glanced over her shoulder and saw Mistress Smoke raise her quirt above her head and circle it, the sign for a return to ground. Lark whispered an apology the older flyer couldn’t possibly hear and turned her face forward again.

  A great spire with a huge clock built into its height loomed before her, and a domed building nestled close behind it. She felt Tup’s indecision in a slight hesitation of his wings. She urged him to the right, then sharply to the left, ascending swiftly beyond the spire to fly in a tight circle around the dome. It was made of glass and iron, laid out in diamond shapes that rose high over an inner atrium. Lark glanced down as they passed and saw faces far below, turned up in surprise at the winged horse flying so close.

  Tup rose higher, banking past chimney pots and poles from which banners snapped in the wind. Lark took advantage of a clear space to glance back again.

  Maid of Smoke still came on. Lark couldn’t see Mistress Smoke’s expression, but she could imagine the hard-jawed fury of it. “Faster, Tup!” Lark called, tightening her calves around his barrel. She felt the heat of his body as his wings drove them toward the sea with swift, powerful strokes.

  But Maid of Smoke, though slower, did not falter. Foundations were known for endurance and power, and this gray mare, with her wide, pale wings, was no exception. And Tup, though faster and more nimble, would tire long before Maid of Smoke’s strength would flag.

  Lark looked ahead. There was a clear way through the city, skirting the highest of the towers, but they would never lose their pursuers if they took that easy route. She lifted the rein, feeling Tup’s awareness, the question in the flick of his ears. With pressure from her right calf and heel, the rein on the right side of his neck, she guided him into the most crowded part of the city, where narrow buildings leaned together over streets so cramped no carriage could ever pass through them.

  For a moment, Lark could see no way for Tup to pass through, either. The buildings tumbled together, so crooked and rickety it seemed they must collapse with the slightest pressure. She searched ahead for a flash of sunlight between them, any sign of a passage they could take. She felt as if she faced a solid wall of gray and brown and white-painted wood.

  Tension gripped Lark’s shoulders and chest so that she could hardly breathe. “Tup!” she cried. “I can’t see a way through!”

  Just as she was about to give in, to rein him back to hover at Quarters, and wait for Maid of Smoke to overtake them, Tup began to tilt.

  His right wing lifted, and his left dropped. Lark, with a whispered prayer to Kalla, adjusted her weight and loosened the rein. She didn’t know what Tup intended, but she had to trust him.

  He waited to tilt farther until he sensed her find her balance. Only at the last moment did she see the opening he had spotted. It was far too narrow to admit Tup’s wings. The only way to make it through would be at a precipitous angle. Lark gripped her pommel with her right hand and steadied her left foot in its stirrup.

  It was the maneuver, the final Grace, that they had had such difficulty with before winning their second-level ribbon. It wasn’t so hard for Tup, but it was for the rider. And Lark had struggled for weeks with her balance in the flying saddle.

  Tup stilled his wings to veer sharply down into the space between two buildings, battered wood on one side, uneven stone on the other. Lark squeezed her thighs against the stirrup leathers with all her strength. She wished she didn’t have to struggle against the encumbrance of leather and wood and iron, but there was nothing to be done about that. She snugged her legs under the thigh rolls, tucked her heels down, and gave all control to Tup.

  He flew at a sharper and sharper angle, until the tilt of his wings was almost perpendicular to the cobbled street below. Lark heard cries of amazement below them as girl and horse soared through the cramped passage, but she didn’t dare look down. She clung to the pommel, and braced her weight far to the right. Tup glided, the momentum of his flight carrying him through, only his pinions quivering to correct his angle against the rush of the wind.

  Lark had to remind herself to breathe. The hardness of the ground, the unforgiving walls that surrounded them, seemed so close she could almost feel the impact if Tup were to falter, or to make the slightest mistake . . .

  But he executed the difficult Grace with perfection. A few seconds later, they were through. The buildings ahead were no more widely spaced, but they were lower, and Tup could fly above them. He lowered his right wing and lifted his left. Lark settled her weight in the center of the saddle, her seat deep against the cantle. When she felt certain they were safe, she looked back the way they had come.

  This must have been the poorest part of the city, with ramshackle buildings built every which way, ancient streets twisting between them in disorderly patterns. They had sliced somehow through a space so constricted it hardly seemed possible they could have made it through.

  Maid of Smoke and her rider were nowhere to be seen.

  “We did it, Tup!” Lark cried. She lifted the rein and squeezed his barrel through her stirrup leathers, urging him straight on toward the sea. “You did it, my lovely, fine boy!”

  It wasn’t until that moment of fleeting relief that she noticed how hot Tup’s neck was, how much lather had built at the jointure of his wings and his chest, how his wingbeats labored. She must get him to ground as soon as possible, somewhere Marielle Smoke wouldn’t see them.

  They flew over the outskirts of the city. Ahead was a narrow strip of farmland, planted now in what looked like some sort of fruit trees. The sea sparkled beyond.

  Tup began to struggle. Flecks of foam from his chest spattered Lark’s cheeks. She urged him lower, toward the fruit orchard, searching for a level spot where they could come to ground. She looked over her shoulder twice. Maid of Smoke had not yet made her way around the city buildings, but Lark had no doubt that Marielle Smoke would not give up so easily. She and Tup needed to get out of sight, and quickly.

  They were apple trees, she saw now, as Tup descended. The fruit glowed red against the green leaves. The trees grew close together, and their branches hung low, weighted with apples that should have been harvested long since. The spaces between the trees were not wide enough for Tup’s wings. For long, heart-stopping moments, Lark saw no place for Tup to land.

  At one end of the orchard was a cart piled high with empty baskets, its tongue resting on the ground, waiting for the ox that would pull it. At the other end, in a clearing, was a little row of beehives, their rounded tops looking like white mushrooms from the air. Beyond that were a house and barn, and she could see the corner of a kitchen garden like her own at Deeping Farm.

  Tup stilled his wings above the apple orchard and began to glide.

  Lark didn’t dare interfere. Whatever he had in mind, she would have to leave it to him. She would have to trust him yet again.

  Tup skimmed the tops of the apple trees, his tucked hooves no more than half a rod above the branches. She felt the trembling of his muscles through her calves, and she put her hand on his neck, wishing she could impart her own remaining strength to him.

  He banked slightly as they passed the last r
ow of trees, tilting toward the little meadow dotted with its plaster beehives. Lark forced the tension from her arms and shoulders, though she feared his hooves might catch on the hives. She had been fortunate never to see a bad landing, but the horsemistresses at the Academy had made all the girls listen to tales of them. They could mean a broken wing, a leg, a neck. It was why first-level flyers never, ever came to ground without a monitor, calling instructions, orders, encouragement.

  Tup dropped lower, and she saw now what he intended. The beehives were laid out in rows of three, and there was just enough space between them for Tup to canter. He would have to hold his wings high as he landed, above the tops of the hives. Lark held her breath as he made his approach.

  She felt him reach with his forefeet, his extended wings trembling with effort. His hind feet touched, and he cantered, still flexing his wings upward. It wasn’t natural for a winged horse to have to hold his wings so high, but Tup had no choice. Lark was painfully aware of the trembling of his pinions as he strained to lift them. They skimmed the tops of the hives with no more than two hand’s breadths of room to spare.

  And then they were through the rows of beehives, and Tup, with a shiver of relief, relaxed his wings, letting the pinions trail to the grass. He slowed to the trot and came to a stop just short of the barn. His sides heaved, and his head sagged as he struggled for breath.

  Lark leaped from the saddle, careful of his drooping wings, and went to hold his head, to caress him, then to encourage him to fold his wings and walk a little until he was cooler.