Maris listened in disbelief and rising anger, infuriated by the smug self-righteousness of his tone… and then she saw with horror that other flyers, including some of the younger ones, were bobbing their heads complacently in time with his words. Yes, they were better because they were born of flyers, yes, they were superior and did not wish to mix, yes, yes. Suddenly it did not matter that in times past, she had felt much the same way about the land-bound. Suddenly all she could think of was her father, her blood-father, the dead fisherman she scarcely remembered. Memories she had thought gone came back: sensory impressions, chiefly—stiff clothes that reeked of salt and fish; warm hands, rough but gentle, that smoothed her hair and wiped tears off her cheeks after her mother had scolded her—and stories he had told, in his low voice, tales of things he had seen that day in his little skiff—what the birds had looked like, racing away from a sudden storm, how the moonfish leaped toward the night sky, how the wind felt and the waves sounded against the boat. Her father had been an observant man and a brave one, daring the ocean every day in his frail boat, and Maris knew in her hot rage that he was the inferior of no one here, of no one on Windhaven.
“You snobs,” she said sharply, not caring anymore whether it would help or hurt the vote. “All of you. Thinking how superior you are, just because you were born of a flyer and inherited wings through no goodness of your own. You think you inherited your parents’ skill? Well, how about the other half of your heritage? Or were all of you born of flyer marriages?” She jabbed an accusing finger at a familiar face on the third tier. “You, Sar, you were nodding just then. Your father was a flyer, yes, but your mother was a trader, and born of fisherfolk. Do you look down on them? What if your mother confessed that her husband was not your real father—what if she told you that you could blame your birth on a trader she met in the East? What then? Would you feel obliged to give up your wings and seek some other life?”
Moon-faced Sar only gaped at her; never a quick man, he couldn’t understand why she had singled him out. Maris withdrew her finger and launched her anger against them all.
“My true father was a fisherman, a fine, brave, honest man who never wore wings and never wanted them. But if, if he had been chosen to be a flyer, he would have been the best of all! Songs would be sung of him, celebrating him! If we inherit our talent from our parents, look at me. My mother can spin and gather oysters. I cannot. My father could not fly. I can. And some of you know how good I am—better than some who were born to it.” She turned and glanced down the length of the table. “Better than you, Corm,” she said in a voice that carried all through the great hall. “Or have you forgotten?”
Corm glared up at her, his face flushed with anger, a thick vein bulging in his neck. He said nothing. Maris turned back to the hall. Her voice softened, and she looked out on them with false solicitude. “Are you afraid?” she asked them. “Have you hung onto your wings only on the strength of a pretense? Are you afraid that all the grubby little fisherchildren will come and snatch them away from you, prove themselves better flyers than you and make you all look fools?”
Then all her words were gone, and her anger. And Maris sat back in her chair, and silence hung heavy in the great stone hall. Finally a hand went up, and then another, but Jamis only stared blankly ahead, his face thoughtful. No one moved until at last he stirred himself, as if from sleep, and gestured at someone in the crowd.
High up against the wall, an old man with one dead arm stood alone in the flickering yellow torchlight. The assembly turned to watch him.
“Russ, of Lesser Amberly,” he began. His tone was gentle. “My friends, Maris is right. We have been fools. And none of us has been so big a fool as I.
“Not long ago, I stood on a beach and said I had no daughter. Tonight, I wish I could have back those words, I wish I still had the right to call Maris my daughter. She has made me very proud. But she isn’t mine. No, as she said, she was born of a fisherman, a better man than I. All I did was love her for a bit, and teach her how to fly. It didn’t take much teaching, you know. She was always so eager. My little Woodwings. There was nothing could stop her, nothing. Not even me, when like a fool I tried to, after Coll was born.
“Maris is the finest flyer on Amberly, and my blood has nothing to do with it. Only her desire matters, only her dream. And if you, my flyer brothers, if you have such disdain for the children of the land-bound, then it is a shaming thing for you to fear them. Have you so little faith in your own children? Are you so certain that they could not keep their wings, against a fisherchild’s hungry challenge?”
Russ shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m an old man, and things have been confused lately. But I know this much: If I still had use of my arm, no one would take my wings from me, not even if his father was a nighthawk. And no one will ever take Maris’ wings until she is ready to set them down. No. If you truly teach your children to fly well, they will keep the sky. If you have the pride you boast of, you’ll live up to it, and prove it, by letting the wings be worn only by those who have earned them, only by those who have proven themselves in the air.”
Russ sat down again, and the darkness at the top of the hall swallowed him up. Corm began to say something, but Jamis the Senior silenced him. “We have had enough from you,” he said. Corm blinked in surprise.
“I think I will say something,” Jamis said. “And then we will vote. Russ has spoken wisdom for all of us, but one thought I must add. Are we not, each of us, descended from the star sailors? All of Windhaven is family, really. And there is none among us who cannot find a flyer in his or her family tree, if we go back far enough. Think of that, my friends. And remember that while your eldest child may wear your wings and fly, his younger brother and sisters and all their children for generations after will be land-bound. Should we really deny them the wind forever, simply because their ancestors were second-born, instead of first?” Jamis smiled. “Perhaps I should add that I was my mother’s second son. My elder brother died in a storm six months before he was to take his wings. A small thing, that. Don’t you think?”
He looked around, at the two Landsmen who flanked him, who had sat silently through all the proceedings, quieted by flyers’ law. He whispered first to one, then to the other, and nodded.
“We find that Corm’s proposal, to name Maris of Lesser Amberly an outlaw, is out of order,” Jamis said. “We will now vote on Maris’ proposal, to establish a flyers’ academy open to all. I vote in favor.”
After that, there was no more doubt.
Afterward, Maris felt slightly in shock, giddy with victory, yet somehow not able to believe that it was really over, that she did not have to fight anymore. The air outside the hall was clean and wet, the wind blowing steadily from the east. She stood on the steps and savored it, while friends and strangers crowded about her, wanting to talk. Dorrel kept his arm around her, and did not ask questions nor express amazement; he was restful to lean against. What now? she wondered. Home again? Where was Coll? Perhaps he’d gone to fetch Barrion and bring the boat.
The crowd around her parted. Russ stood there, Jamis at his side. Her stepfather was holding a pair of wings. “Maris,” he said.