“This is more important than my dream or my life,” Maris said. “It’s gone beyond that. You know that. You care too, Val.”
The silence in the little cabin seemed to close around them. Even Coll’s fingers were motionless upon the strings of his guitar.
“Yes,” said Val, the word like a sigh. “But what… what can I do?”
“Revoke this sanction,” Maris said promptly. “Before your enemies use it against you.”
“Will the Landsman revoke Tya’s hanging? No, Maris, this sanction is the only power we have. The other flyers must join us in it, or we must stay split.”
“It’s a useless gesture, you know that,” Maris said. “Thayos will not miss the one-wings. The flyer-born will come and go as always, and the Landsman will have plenty of wings to bear his words. It means nothing.”
“It means we will keep our word; that we do not make idle threats. Besides, the sanction was voted by all of us. I could not revoke it alone if I wanted to. You are wasting your breath.”
Maris smiled scornfully, but inside she felt hopeful. Val was beginning to back down. “Don’t play games with me, Val. You are the one-wings. That’s why I called you here. We both know they will do whatever you suggest.”
“Are you really asking me to forget what the Landsman did? To forget Tya?”
“No one will forget Tya.”
A soft chord sounded. “My song will assure that,” Coll said. “I’ll sing it in Port Thayos in a few days. Other singers will steal it. Soon it will be heard everywhere.”
Val stared at him in disbelief. “You mean to sing that song in Port Thayos? Are you mad? Don’t you know that the very name of Tya raises curses and fights in Port Thayos? Sing that song there, in any tavern, and I’ll wager you’ll be left in a gutter with your throat slit open.”
“Singers are given a certain license,” Coll said. “Especially if they are good. The first mention of Tya’s name may bring jeers, but after they’ve heard my song they’ll feel differently. Before long, Tya will have become a hero, a tragic victim. That will be because of my song, although few will admit or realize it.”
“I’ve never heard such arrogance,” Val said, sounding bemused. He looked at Maris. “Did you put him up to this?”
“We discussed it.”
“Did you discuss the fact that he’s likely to be killed? Some people may be willing to listen to a song that makes Tya sound noble. But some furious, drunken landsguard will try to stop this singer from spreading his lies, and crush his head in. Did you think of that?”
“I can watch out for myself,” Coll said. “Not all my songs are popular, especially at first.”
“It’s your life,” Val said, shaking his head. “If you live long enough, I suppose your singing may make some difference.”
“I want you to send some more flyers here,” Maris said. “One-wings who can sing and play at least passably well.”
“You want Coll to train them for the day when they lose their wings?”
“His song must go beyond Thayos, as quickly as possible,” Maris said. “I want flyers who can learn it well enough to teach it to singers wherever they go, and I want them to go everywhere with that song as a message from us. All of Windhaven will know of Tya, and will sing Coll’s song of what she tried to do.”
Val looked thoughtful. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll send my people here in secret. Away from Thayos, the song may be popular.”
“You will also spread the word that the sanction against Thayos has been revoked.”
“I will not,” he snapped. “Tya must be avenged by more than a song!”
“Did you ever know Tya?” Maris asked. “Don’t you know what she tried to do? She tried to prevent war, and to prove to the Landsmen that they could not control the flyers. But this sanction will give us back into the hands of the Landsmen, because it has split and weakened us. Only by acting together, in unison, do flyers have the strength to defy the Landsmen.”
“Tell that to Dorrel,” Val said coldly. “Don’t blame me. I called the Council to act together and save Tya, not to bow down before the Landsman of Thayos. Dorrel took the Council away from me, and made us weak. Tell him, and see what answer he can give you!”
“I intend to,” Maris said calmly. “S’Rella is on her way to Laus now.”
“You mean to bring him here?”
“Yes. And others. I can’t go to them now. I’m a cripple, as you said.” She smiled grimly.
Val hesitated, obviously trying to put the pieces together in his mind. “You want more than the sanction revoked,” he said finally. “That’s just the first step, to unite one-wing and flyer-born. What do you have planned for us, if you can weld us together?”
Maris felt her heart lift, knowing that she would have Val’s agreement.
“Do you know how Tya died?” Maris asked. “Did you know that the Landsman of Thayos was cruel and stupid enough to kill her while she wore her wings? Afterward they were stripped from her and given to the man she’d won them from two years before. Tya’s body was buried in an unmarked grave in a field just outside the keep, where thieves and murderers and other outlaws are customarily buried. She died with her wings on, but she was not allowed a flyer’s burial. And she has had no mourners.”
“What of it? What has this to do with me? What do you really want of me, Maris?”
She smiled. “I want you to mourn, Val. That’s all. I want you to mourn for Tya.”
Maris and Evan heard the news first from the lips of a wandering storyteller, an elderly, waspish woman from Port Thayos who stopped with them briefly so the healer might remove a thorn that had lodged under the skin of one bare foot. “Our landsguard have taken the mine from Thrane,” the woman said while Evan worked on her. “There is talk of invading Thrane itself.”
“Folly,” Evan muttered. “More death.”
“Is there other news?” Maris asked. Flyers continued to come and go from her secret field, but it had been more than a week since Coll—having passed along his song to a half-dozen one-wings—had taken the road to Port Thayos. The days had been cold, and rainy, and anxious.
“There is the flyer,” the woman said. She winced as Evan’s fine bone knife sliced the thorn from her flesh. “Careful, healer,” she said.
“The flyer?” Maris said.
“A ghost, some say,” the woman said. Evan had removed the thorn and was rubbing salve into the cut he had made. “Perhaps Tya’s ghost. A woman dressed all in black, silent, restless. She appeared from the west two days before I left. The lodge men came out to meet her, to help her land and care for her wings. But she did not land. She flew silently above the mountains and the Landsman’s keep, and on across the countryside to Port Thayos. Nor did she land there. Since she first came, she has flown in a great circle, round and round again, from Port Thayos to the Landsman’s keep and back, never landing, never shouting down a word. Flying, always flying, in sun or storm, day or night. She is there at sunset and still there at dawn. She neither eats nor drinks.”
“Fascinating,” Maris said, suppressing a smile. “You think she is a ghost?”
“Perhaps,” the old woman said. “I have seen her many times myself. Walking down the alleys of Port Thayos, I feel a shadow touch me, and I look up, and she is there. She has caused much talk. The people are afraid, and some of the landsguard say that the Landsman is most afraid of all, though he tries not to show it. He will not come outside to look at her when she passes above his keep. Perhaps he is afraid of seeing Tya’s face.”
Evan had wrapped a bandage soaked in ointment around the storyteller’s injured foot. “There,” he said. “Try standing on that.”
The woman stood up, leaning on Maris for support. “It pains a bit.”
“It was infected,” Evan said. “You are lucky. If you had waited a few days longer to come to a healer, you might have lost the foot. Wear boots. The forest trails are hazardous.”