“No!” she said, horrified. “I am not the pegasi expert! I’m going to learn engineering, and build dams! They are—they are—oh!” She remembered her father sitting down through the long pegasus banquet; she remembered telling her mother about chuur and chuua.“Knowing more—oh—it’s more like knowing less!”
Danny laughed. “Yes, I—er—know. But you’re the expert to the rest of us. Dad would tell you he’s not the expert on running a country, and I would certainly tell you I’m not the expert on making taralians and norindours—and sea monsters—go away and stop bothering us. But we’re all we’ve got. You too. You’d better get used to it.”
She stared at him. He was right, of course. But it hadn’t occurred to her before. She was too busy thinking about herself—and missing Ebon—and worrying about her presentation. She wondered if this was why her father had not asked her any private questions about her journey—that he had guessed what she was feeling. The warrior had blurted it out when the negotiator had chosen to say nothing.
“But you’ll give a brilliant presentation. Just like Dad would. It’s written all over you, as well as on all those papers.” He kissed the top of her head and was gone again.
At the prospect of being the pegasus expert she had been even more careful what she had, and had not, said. Was it all right to describe the crops they cultivate? The fields of llyri grass so tall she could not see over their waving tassels, even in spring? The colonies of spiders they fed and tended, that they might harvest their silk? The spinning, dyeing and weaving, the paper-making? That they had no houses, but that each trade had its small cotes or cabins or cottages? Could she describe the pavilions, the furniture, the ingenious way they harnessed each other to carry loads? The last was done at the palace, but somehow humans rarely saw them doing it; nor would humans ever have seen them carrying their long tables on poles, and fitting the pieces together, and the tray-frames that let them carry full serving-bowls or anything else that must not be jostled, and the various pokers, prodders and hooks that let them shift the things they carried; and the deft way they used their knees, their chests and their teeth—everything based on, and arising from, their weak but clever hands. Why did humans see so little of this creative dexterity? On the rare occasions the pegasi hosted an event, they did it in one of the Courts, and there were human servants to do the fetching and carrying. Was this sense—there were human servants, why not make use of them—or was it the humans barging in where they were not needed because barging was what humans did?
Ahathin had come to see how she was getting on a little after Danacor had left her.
“I’m not,” she said.“Getting on. Danacor was just here and . . . ” But there was nothing she could ask Ahathin when she wasn’t telling her own father the truth. She looked up from her increasing pages of notes. Ahathin was looking at her thoughtfully.
“If you had come back from a month at your cousins’ and been asked to give a report, what would you have said?”
“I was asked,” she said, half laughing and half impatient. “I was always asked. I hated it when I was younger, you know, I felt it spoilt the holiday. It was more interesting lately, when I could talk about rivers and bridges. But the pegasi don’t need bridges.”
“It is the role of teachers,” Ahathin said tranquilly, “to spoil their students’ pleasure. As I recall, when you were younger, you said a good deal about the food and the countryside.”
“But that was just a holiday, like anyone might have,” she said dubiously. “ This was—”
“That you went is as much as anyone needs to know,” he said.“The rest you may treat more or less as a holiday, as you choose.”
The Caves? she thought. Can I treat the Caves as a holiday outing? I must say something about the Caves.
So she (again) praised the pegasi’s hospitality, she described her feather-bed and her hot breakfasts—she described the pavilions, and the harnesses and frames, and the way almost everything the pegasi used came to bits small enough to be made and then fitted together by the tiny pegasi feather-hands. She described the paper and the weaving—and the spiders. She described the countryside, that it was like and unlike their human lands—she had mentioned the lack of bridges, and of dams, and the way the paths all connected within an area, but that there were no roads between discrete areas—and she described the fields of koy and fleiier for drying and weaving, of barley and oats and djee, of pumpkins, maize and zorra; the orchards of apples, pears and plooraia—and the fields and fields and fields of llyri grass.
Of the Caves she said only that she had seen but a fraction of a fraction of them—she allowed it to be implied that she had spent perhaps a single afternoon there—and that the corridors and individual chambers were often very large, and very beautifully decorated, some with great washes and swirls of muted colours, and some with representational scenes of landscapes, and of pegasi galloping or flying.
She did not mention that a shaman must accompany you into the Caves. She did not mention ssshuuwuushuu. She did not mention Redfora and Oraan; she did not mention the Dreaming Sea. To the best of her ability she made her journey sound like a kind of royal progression, as if she had been the king’s ambassador to a barony a little farther away and a little less known than most, as if the strangeness could be contained in a description of the food and the clothing, and possibly a few local peculiarities about the raising of crops. She mentioned ssshasssha as a visitor to the palace might mention seeing the mural of the signing in the Great Hall, and the affecting historical token of the framed treaty.
Part of her training as king’s daughter had included how to give a speech: speak slowly and distinctly, and don’t keep your nose buried in your pages; look up as often as you can, and make eye contact with members of your audience. She had done these things, but the eyes she had met had stared back at her like painted porcelain. When she was done, she shook her pages together again, looked out over the faces looking up at her and smiled a trained princess’ smile. She had been aware of them—senators, blood, courtiers and councillors, about a quarter of them with pegasi present who stood beside their bondmates’ pegasus-tall chairs—listening closely to everything she said; no one had so much as sneezed while she spoke. But she had picked up nothing from them, any more than she had been able to read anything in the porcelain eyes. She permitted herself to glance to her right, where her father sat; he smiled encouragingly at her, and that made her feel a little better. But her eyes drifted to Lrrianay standing behind him, and to Fazuur’s hands falling still as she fell silent—and she wished, again, for Ebon. She wished for Ebon as she wished every time she saw Lrrianay at her father’s shoulder, or any pegasus at any bondmate’s shoulder, or any pegasus. Or any time she took a breath, she wished again for Ebon.
She turned back to her audience.
The first question she was asked was if there were any representations of humans in the Caves. She was ready for this, but she was a little shaken that it was the very first question: shouldn’t her audience be more interested in the zorra and the djee? Or the flying? How could any human not want to hear more about the flying? But she smiled again, and looked levelly at Senator Chorro and said that she did not remember seeing any, no, but that even the little of the Caves she had seen had been rather overwhelming in its size and magnificence—“Imagine spending a day at the palace and then trying to report on what you’d seen.” That, finally, gained her her first laugh of the afternoon, and the atmosphere in the Little Hall eased somewhat; Sylvi was grateful, not least because that should make them less likely to notice that she was lying.