Windhaven

III The Fall

She grew old in less than a minute.

When Maris left the side of the Landsman of Thayos she was still young. She took the underground way from his spare rocky keep to the sea, a damp, gloomy tunnel through the mountain. She walked quickly, with a taper in her hand, her folded wings on her back, surrounded by echoes and the slow drip of water. There were puddles on the floor of the tunnel, and the water soaked through her boots. Maris was anxious to be off.

It was not until she emerged into the twilight on the far side of the mountain that Maris saw the sky. It was a dim threatening purple, a violet so dark it was almost black; the color of a bad bruise, full of blood and pain. The wind was cold and unruly. Maris could taste the fury that was about to break, could see it in the clouds. She stood at the foot of the time-worn stairs that led up the sea cliff, and briefly she considered turning back, resting overnight at the lodge house and postponing her flight until dawn.

The thought of the long walk back through the tunnel dismayed her, however, and Maris took no joy in this place. Thayos seemed to her a dark and bitter land, and its Landsman rude, his brutality barely hidden beneath the civilities required between Landsman and flyer. The message he had given her to fly weighed heavily upon her. The words were angry, greedy, full of the threat of war, and Maris was eager to deliver and forget them, to free herself of the burden as quickly as she could.

So she extinguished her taper and started up the stairs, climbing easily with long, impatient strides. There were lines on her face and gray in her hair, but Maris was still as graceful and vigorous as she had been at twenty.

Where the steps opened onto a broad stone platform above the sea, Maris unfolded her wings. They caught the wind and tugged at her as she snapped the last struts into place. The purple gloom of the storm gave a dark cast to the silver metal, and the rays of the setting sun left red streaks of light upon it, like fresh wounds welling full of blood. Maris hurried. She wanted to get ahead of the storm, to use the front for added speed. She tightened the straps around herself, checked the wings a final time, and wrapped her hands about the familiar grips. With two quick steps she flung herself from the cliff, as she had uncounted times before. The wind was her old and true lover. She folded herself into its embrace and flew.

She saw lightning on the horizon, a lingering three-pronged bolt in the eastern sky. Then the wind slackened and went soft on her, and she fell, and banked, and turned, searching for a stronger current until the storm hit her, sudden as the crack of a whip. The wind gusted out of nowhere with terrible force, and as she struggled to ride with it, it changed direction. Then a second time, then a third. Rain stung her face, lightning blinded her, and there was a pounding in her ears.

The storm pushed her backward, then head over heels, as if she were a toy. She had no more choice, no more chance, than a leaf in a gale. She was buffeted this way and that until she was sick and dizzy and aware that she was falling. And she looked over her shoulder and saw the mountain rushing at her, a sheer wall of slick wet stone. She tried to pull away, and managed only to turn herself in the fierce embrace of the wind. Her left wing brushed the rock, collapsed, and Maris fell sideways, screaming, her left wing limp; though she tried to fly one-winged, she knew that it was useless, and was blinded by the rain; the storm had her in its killing teeth, and with her last clear thought, Maris knew this was her death.

The sea took her, and broke her, and spit her out. They found her late the next day, broken and unconscious, but alive, on a rocky beach three miles from Thayos’ flyers’ cliff.

When Maris woke, days later, she was old.

She was seldom more than semi-conscious during that first week, and afterward she remembered little. Pain, when she moved and when she did not; waking and sleeping. She slept most of the time, and her dreams were as real to her as the constant pain. She walked through long tunnels beneath the earth, walked until her legs ached horribly, but she never found the steps that would lead her out to the sky. She fell through still air endlessly, her strength and skill useless in a windless sky. She stood before hundreds in Council and argued, but her words were slurred and too soft, and the people there would not listen. She was hot, terribly hot, and she could not move. Someone had taken her wings and tied her legs and arms. She struggled to move, to speak. She had to fly somewhere with an urgent message. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak, she didn’t know if there were tears or rain on her cheeks. Someone wiped her face and made her drink a thick, bitter liquid.

At some point Maris knew she was lying in a big bed, a hearth nearby that always had a blazing fire in it, and she was covered with heavy layers of furs and blankets. She was hot, terribly hot, and she struggled to push off the blankets but could not.

There seemed to be people in the room, coming and going. She recognized some of them—they were her friends—but although she asked them to remove the blankets, they never did. They didn’t seem to hear her, but they would often sit at the foot of the bed and talk to her. They spoke of things gone by as if they were present still, which confused her, but everything was confused, and she was glad to have her friends with her.

Coll came, singing his songs, and Barrion was with him, Barrion of the quick grin and the deep, rumbly voice. Old, crippled Sena sat on the edge of the bed and said nothing. Raven appeared once, dressed all in black and looking so bold and beautiful that her heart ached with unspoken love for him all over again. Garth brought her steaming hot kivas, then told her jokes so that she laughed and forgot to drink. Val One-Wing stood in the doorway, watching, cold-faced as ever. S’Rella, her dear friend, came often, speaking of old times. And Dorrel, her first love and still a trusted friend, came again and again, his presence a familiar comfort to her through the pain and confusion. Others came as well: old lovers she had never thought to see again appeared before her to speak, to plead, to accuse, and then vanished, leaving all her questions unanswered. There was chubby blond Timar, bringing her gifts he’d carved from stone, and Halland the singer, strong, black-bearded, looking just as he had when they had lived together on Lesser Amberly. She remembered then that he had been lost at sea, and she wept, her tears blotting out the sight of him.

There was another visitor, a man strange to Maris. And yet he was not a stranger: She knew the touch of his gentle, sure hands, and the sound of his almost musical voice speaking her name. Unlike her other visitors, he came close to her and held up her head and fed her hot milky soups and spice tea and a thick, bitter potion that made her sleep. She could not think how or when she had met him, but she felt glad to see him. He was thin and small but sinewy. Pale skin was stretched taut over the bones and planes of his face, freckled with age. Fine white hair grew well back from a high forehead. His eyes, beneath prominent brows and in a webwork of tiny wrinkles, were brilliantly blue. But although he came so often, and knew her, Maris could not bring his name to mind.

Once, as he stood beside her and watched her, Maris struggled out of her half-sleep and told him how hot it was, and asked him to take away the blankets.

He shook his head. “You’re feverish,” he said. “The room is chilly and you are very sick. You need the warmth of the blankets.”

Startled by this phantom who had finally answered her, Maris struggled to sit up and get a better look at him. Her body responded sluggishly, and a sickening pain seared her left side.

“Easy,” said the man. His cool fingers were on her brow. “Your bones must knit before you can move. Here, drink this.” He lifted her head and pressed the smooth, thick rim of a cup to her lips. She tasted familiar bitterness, swallowed obediently. The tension and pain drained out of her as her head sank back on the pillow.

“Sleep and don’t worry,” said the man.

With difficulty she managed to speak: “Who… ?”

“My name is Evan,” he said. “I’m a healer. You’ve been in my care for weeks now. You are healing, but still very weak. You must sleep now, and conserve your strength.”

“Weeks.” The word frightened her. She must be terribly sick, horribly injured, to spend weeks in the house of a healer. “Wh—where?”

He put his strong, thin fingers against her mouth to hush her. “On Thayos. No more questions now. I’ll tell you everything later, when you are stronger. Now sleep. Let your body heal itself.”

Maris stopped fighting the coming sleep. He had said she was mending and must conserve her strength. She wished only, as she sank into sleep, that she would not dream again about that brief, terrible flight through the storm, and the awful crushing of her body.

Later, when she awoke, the world was dark, with only dim embers alive in the hearth to give shape to the shadows. As soon as she stirred, Evan was there. He prodded the fire into new life, felt her brow, and then sat lightly on the bed.

“The fever has broken,” he said, “but you are not well yet. I know you want to move—it will be hard to keep still. But you must. You are still very weak, and your body will mend better if you do not tax it. If you cannot keep still by yourself I must give you more tesis.”

“Tesis?” Her own voice sounded strange in her ears. She coughed, trying to clear her throat.

“The bitter drink that quiets the body and mind, brings sleep and relaxation to stop the pain. It’s a very helpful drink, full of healing herbs, but too much of it can be a poison. I had to give you more than I liked to, to keep you still. Physical restraints were no good for you—you thrashed and struggled and strained to be free. You wouldn’t let the broken parts of your body rest and heal. When you drank the tesis you fell into the quiet, healing, painless sleep you needed. But I don’t want to give you any more. There will be pain, but I think you can bear it. If you cannot, then I will give you tesis. Do you understand me, Maris?”

She looked into his bright blue eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I understand. I’ll try to be still. Remind me.”

He smiled. It made his face suddenly young. “I’ll remind you,” he said. “You’re accustomed to a life of activity, motion, always going and doing. But you can’t go somewhere to get your strength back—you must wait for it, lying here, as patiently as you can.”

Maris began to nod her head, checking it as she felt a dull, straining pain on her left side. “I’ve never been a patient person,” she said.

“No, but I’ve heard that you are strong. Use that strength to be still, and you may recover.”

“You must tell me the truth,” Maris said. She watched his face, trying to read the answer there. She felt fear like a cold poison moving throughout her body. She longed for the strength to sit up, to check her arms and legs.

“I’ll tell you what I know,” said Evan.

She felt the fear in her throat and could scarcely speak. The words came in a whisper. “How… how badly was I hurt?” She closed her eyes, afraid now to read his face.

“You were terribly battered, but you lived.” He stroked her cheek and she opened her eyes. “Both your legs were broken in the fall, the left one in four places. I set them, and they seem to be mending well—not as quickly as they would if you were younger, but I think you will walk without a limp again. Your left arm was shattered, with bone protruding through the flesh. I thought I would have to amputate. But I did not.” He pressed his fingers against her lips and withdrew them—it was like a kiss. “I cleaned it and used the fireflower essence and other herbs. You’ll have stiffness there a long time, but I don’t think there was any nerve damage, so that with time and exercise I think your left arm will be strong and useful again. You broke two ribs when you fell, and you hit your head on the rock. You were unconscious for three days in my care—I didn’t know if you would ever return.”

“Only three broken limbs,” Maris said. “An easy landing, after all.” Then she frowned. “The message…”

Evan nodded. “You repeated it again and again in your delirium like a chant, determined to deliver it. But you needn’t worry. The Landsman was informed of your accident, and by now he has sent the same message to the Landsman of Thrane by another flyer.”

“Of course,” Maris murmured. She felt a burden she had not even known she carried lifted from her.

“Such an urgent message,” Evan said, his voice bitter. “It couldn’t wait for better flying weather. It sent you out into the storm, to injury. It might have meant your death. The war hasn’t come yet, but already they start, disregarding human lives.”

His bitterness distressed her even more than his talk of war, which merely puzzled her. “Evan,” she said gently, “the flyer chooses when to fly. The Landsmen have no power over us, war or no. It was my eagerness to leave your bleak little island that made me start out despite the weather.”

“And now my bleak little island is your home for a time.”

“How long?” she asked. “How long before I can fly again?”

He looked at her without replying.

Maris suddenly feared the worst. “My wings!” She struggled to rise. “Are they lost?”

Evan was quick, with hands on her shoulders. “Be still!” His blue eyes blazed.

“I forgot,” she whispered. “I’ll be still.” Her whole body throbbed painfully in response to the mild exertion. “Please… my wings?”

“I have them,” he said. He shook his head. “Flyers. I should have known—I’ve healed other flyers. I should have hung them over your bed so they would be the first thing you saw. The Landsman wanted to take them for repair, but I insisted on keeping them. I’ll get them for you.” He vanished into the next room. A few minutes later he returned, carrying her wings in his arms.

They were mangled and broken and did not fold properly. The metallic fabric of the wings themselves was virtually indestructible, but the supporting struts were ordinary metal, and Maris could see that several of them had shattered, while others were bent and twisted grotesquely. The bright silver was crusted with dirt and stained black in places. In Evan’s uncertain grasp they seemed a hopeless ruin.

But Maris knew better. They were not lost to the sea. They could be made whole again. Her heart soared to see them. They meant life to her; she would fly again.

“Thank you,” she said to Evan. She tried not to weep.

Evan hung the wings on the wall beyond the foot of the bed, where Maris could see them. Then he turned to her.

“It will be longer and harder to repair your body than your wings,” he said. “Much longer than you will like. It won’t be a matter of weeks, but of months, many months, and even then I can’t promise you anything. Your bones were shattered, and the muscles torn—you aren’t likely, at your age, to regain all the strength you once had. You’ll walk again, but as for flying—”

“I will fly. My legs and my ribs and my arm will mend,” Maris said quietly.

“Yes, given time, I hope they will mend. But that may not be enough.” He came close, and she saw the concern in his face. “The head injury—it may have affected your vision, or your sense of balance.”

“Stop it,” Maris said. “Please.” Tears leaked from her eyes.

“It’s too soon,” Evan said. “I’m sorry.” He stroked her cheeks, wiping away the tears. “You need rest and hope, not worry. You need time to grow strong again. You’ll put on your wings again, but not before you are really ready—not before I say you are ready.”

“A land-bound healer—telling a flyer when to fly,” Maris muttered with a mock scowl.

Although she might suffer it, a time of forced inactivity was not something Maris could enjoy. As the days passed and she began to spend more time awake, she grew restless. Evan was beside her much of the time, coaxing her to eat, reminding her to lie still, and talking to her, always talking, to give her restless mind something to exercise itself on, even though her body must stay motionless.

And Evan proved to be a gifted storyteller. He considered himself more an observer of life than a participant, and he had a rather detached outlook and a sharp eye for detail. He made Maris laugh, often; he made her think; and he even managed to make her forget, for minutes at a time, that she was trapped in bed with a broken body.

At first Evan told stories of Thayos society, his descriptions so vivid that she could almost see the people. But after a time his talk turned to himself, and he offered her his own life, as if in exchange for the confidences she had made to him during her delirium.

He had been born in the deep woods of Thayos, an island on the northern fringe of Eastern, sixty years before. His parents were foresters.

There had been other families in the forest, other children to play with, but from his earliest years Evan had preferred the time he spent alone. He liked to hide in the brush to watch the shy, brown dirt diggers; to hunt out the places where the most beautifully scented flowers and tastiest roots grew; to sit quietly in a small clearing with a chunk of stale bread, and tame the birds to come to his hand.

When Evan was sixteen, he fell in love with a traveling midwife. Jani, the midwife, was a small, brown woman with a ready wit and a sharp tongue. In order to be near her, Evan appointed himself Jani’s assistant. She seemed amused by his interest at first, but soon accepted him, and Evan, his interest sharpened by love, learned a great deal from her.

On the eve of her departure, he confessed his love for her. She wouldn’t stay, and she wouldn’t take him with her—not as lover, not as friend, not even as assistant, although she admitted he had learned well and had a skillful touch. She traveled alone always, and that was that.

Evan continued to practice his new healing skills when Jani had gone. Since the nearest healer lived in Thossi village, a full day’s walk from the forest, Evan was soon much in demand. Eventually he apprenticed himself to the healer in Thossi. He might have attended a college of healers, but that would have meant a sea-voyage, and the idea of traveling on the dangerous water frightened him as nothing else ever had.

When he had learned all she could teach him, Evan returned to the forest to live and work. Although he never married, he did not always live alone. Women sought him out—wives seeking an undemanding lover, traveling women who paused a few days or months in his company, patients who stayed until their passion for him was cured.

Maris, listening to his soft, mellow voice and gazing at his face for so many hours that she knew it as well as that of any lover in her past, understood the attraction. The bright blue eyes, the skillful, gentle hands, the high cheekbones and imposing beak of a nose. She wondered, though, what he had felt—was he as self-contained as he seemed?

One day Maris interrupted his story of a family of tree-kits he’d recently found to ask, “Didn’t you ever fall in love? After Jani, I mean.”

He looked surprised. “Yes, of course I did. I told you about…”

“But not enough to want to marry someone.”

“Sometimes I did. With S’Rai—she lived here with me for almost a year, and we were very happy together. I loved her very much. I wanted her to stay. But she had her own life elsewhere. She wouldn’t stay in the forest with me; she left.”

“Why didn’t you go away with her? Didn’t she ask you to?”

Evan looked unhappy. “Yes, she did. She wanted me to go with her; somehow it just didn’t seem possible.”

“You’ve never been anywhere else?”

“I’ve traveled all over Thayos, whenever there has been need,” Evan said, rather defensively. “And I lived in Thossi for nearly two years when I was younger.”

“All Thayos is much the same,” Maris said, shrugging her good shoulder. There was a twinge in her left, which she ignored. She was allowed to sit up now, and she was afraid Evan would revoke the privilege if she ever admitted to pain. “Some parts have more trees, some parts have more rocks.”

Evan laughed. “A very superficial view! To you, all parts of the forest would seem identical.”

This was so obvious as to require no comment. Maris persisted. “You’ve never been off Thayos?”

Evan grimaced. “Once,” he said. “There’d been an accident, a boat cracked up against the rocks, and the woman in it had been badly injured. I was taken out in a fishing boat to see to her. I got so sick on the journey out that I could scarcely help her.”

Maris smiled sympathetically, but she shook her head. “How can you know that this is the only place you ever want to live if you’ve never been anywhere else?”

“I don’t claim to know that, Maris. I might have left, I might have had a very different life. But this is what I’ve chosen. I know this life—it’s mine, for better or worse. It’s rather late now to mourn all the opportunities I’ve missed. I’m happy with my life.” He rose then, ending the conversation. “Now it’s time for your nap.”

“May I…”

“You may do whatever you like, as long as you do it lying flat on your back without moving.”

Maris laughed, and let him help her back down on the bed. She wouldn’t admit it, but sitting up had tired her, and it was a welcome relief to rest. The slowness of her body to mend frustrated her. And she didn’t understand why, just because a few bones were broken, she should tire so easily. She closed her eyes, listening to the sounds Evan made as he tended the fire and tidied the room.

She thought about Evan. She was attracted to him, and of course the circumstances had made for an easy intimacy between them. She had imagined that, once she mended, she and Evan might become lovers. She thought better of it now, knowing more of his life. Evan had loved, and been left, too many times. She liked him too well to want to hurt him, and she knew that she would leave Thayos, and Evan, just as soon as she could fly again. It was better, she decided sleepily, that she and Evan remain only friends. She would have to ignore how much she liked that bright sparkle in his blue eyes, and forget her fantasies about his slim, wiry body and skilled hands.

She smiled and yawned and fell asleep, to dream that she was teaching Evan how to fly.

The next day S’Rella arrived.

Maris was drowsy and half asleep, and at first she thought she was dreaming. The stuffy room suddenly became fresher, full of the clean, sharp scent of sea winds, and when Maris looked up S’Rella was standing in the doorway, wings slung over one arm. For an instant she looked like the shy, slight girl she had been more than twenty years ago, when Maris had helped teach her to fly. But she smiled then, a self-assured smile that lit her dark, thin face and emphasized the lines that time had left there. And when she came forward, spraying salt water from her wings and wet clothes, the phantom of S’Rella the Woodwinger dissolved entirely, and she was S’Rella of Veleth, a seasoned flyer and the mother of two grown daughters. The two women embraced, awkwardly because of the huge cast protecting Maris’ left arm, but with fierce emotion.

“I came as soon as I heard, Maris,” S’Rella said. “I’m sorry you had to be here alone for so long, but communication among flyers isn’t what it once was, especially for one-wings. I might not be here now, but I had to fly a message to Big Shotan, and afterward I decided to visit the Eyrie. A strange whim, now that I think about it—it must have been four, five years since the last time. Corina was there, fresh from Amberly, and she told me that an Eastern flyer had just brought word of your accident. I left at once. I was so worried…” And she bent down to hug her friend again, the wings almost slipping from her grasp.

“Let me hang them for you,” Evan said quietly, stepping forward. S’Rella handed them to him with hardly a glance, her attention all for Maris.

“How… how are you?” she asked.

Maris smiled. With her good arm she threw back the blanket, revealing two cast-bound legs. “Broken, as you can see, but mending. Or so Evan assures me. My ribs hardly pain me at all now. And I’m sure the casts on these legs are ready to be removed—they itch abominably!” She scowled and pulled a long straw from a vase of flowers on the bedside table. Frowning with concentration, she poked the straw down between flesh and cast. “This helps sometimes, but other times it just makes it worse, by tickling.”

“And your arm?”

Maris looked to Evan for the answer.

“Don’t put me on the spot, Maris,” he said. “You know as much as I do about it. I think your arm is healing properly, and there hasn’t been any more infection. As for your legs—you’ll be able to scratch them to your heart’s content in a day or two.”

Maris gave a small bounce of joy, then caught her breath. She turned pale and swallowed hard.

Frowning, Evan stepped toward the bed. “What happened? What hurt you?”

“Nothing,” Maris said quickly. “Nothing. I just felt a… a little sick, that’s all. I must have jarred my arm.”

Evan nodded, but he did not look satisfied. “I’ll make tea,” he said, and left the two women alone together.

“Now I want your news,” Maris said. “You know mine. Evan has been wonderful, but healing takes so much time, and I’ve felt so dreadfully cut off here.”

“It is a distant place,” S’Rella agreed. “And cold.” Southerners thought the whole of the world was cold, outside their own archipelago. Maris grinned—it was an old joke between them—and clasped S’Rella’s hand.

“Where shall I begin?” S’Rella asked. “Good news or bad? Gossip or politics? You’re the one who’s bed-bound, Maris. What would you like to know?”

“Everything,” Maris said, “but you can begin by telling me about your daughters.”

S’Rella smiled. “S’Rena has decided to marry Arno, the boy who has the meat-pie concession on the docks of Garr. She has the only fruit-pie stand, of course, and they’ve decided to combine their businesses and corner the waterfront pie market.”

Maris laughed. “It seems a very sensible arrangement.”

S’Rella sighed. “Oh, yes, a marriage of convenience, all very businesslike. There’s not a speck of romance in her soul—sometimes I can hardly believe S’Rena is my daughter.”

“Marissa has enough romanticism for two. How is she?”

“Oh, wandering. In love with a singer. I haven’t heard from her in a month.”

Evan brought in two steaming mugs of tea, his own special brew, fragrant with white blossoms, and then discreetly vanished.

“Any news from the Eyrie?” Maris asked.

“A little, but none of it good. Jamis vanished on a flight from Geer to Little Shotan. The flyers fear him lost at sea.”

“Oh,” Maris said, “I’m sorry. I never knew him well, but he was said to be a good flyer. His father presided over the flyers’ Council, back when we adopted the academy system.”

S’Rella nodded. “Lori of Varon gave birth,” she continued, “but the child was sickly, and died within the week. She’s distraught; Garret too, of course. And T’katin’s brother was killed in a storm. He captained a trading ship, you know. They say the storm took the whole fleet. These are hard times, Maris. I’ve heard they are warring again on Lomarron.”

“They may be warring on Thayos too, before very long,” Maris said gloomily. “Don’t you have any cheerful news ?”

S’Rella shook her head. “The Eyrie was not a cheerful place. I got the feeling I was not terribly welcome. One-wings never go there, but there I was, violating the last sanctuary of the flyer-born. It made them all uneasy, though Corina and a few others tried to be polite.”

Maris nodded. It was an old story. Tensions between the flyers born to wings and the one-wings who had taken theirs in competition had been growing for years. Each year saw more land-bound take to the air, and the old flyer families felt more threatened. “How is Val?” she asked.

“Val is Val,” S’Rella said. “Richer than ever, but otherwise he doesn’t change. The last time I visited Seatooth, he was wearing a belt of linked metal. I can’t imagine what it cost. He works with the Woodwingers a lot. They all look up to him. The rest of the time he spends partying in Stormtown with Athen and Damen and Ro and the rest of his one-wing cronies. I hear he’s taken up with a land-bound woman on Poweet, but I don’t think he’s bothered to tell Cara. I tried to scold him about it, but you know how self-righteous Val can get…”

Maris smiled. “Ah, yes,” she said. She sipped at her tea as S’Rella continued, the talk ranging all over Windhaven. They gossiped about other flyers, spoke of friends and family and places where they both had been, continuing a long-running, far-ranging conversation. Maris felt comfortable, happy and relaxed. Her captivity would not last much longer—she would be walking again in a matter of days, and then she could begin to exercise and work out, to get back in flying trim—and S’Rella, her closest friend, was now beside her to remind her of her real life that waited beyond these thick walls, and to help her back into it.

A few hours later Evan joined them with plates of cheese and fruit, freshly baked herb bread and eggs scrambled with wild onions and peppers. They all sat on the big bed and ate hungrily. Conversation, or new hope, had given Maris a ravenous appetite.

The conversation turned to politics. “Will there really be war here?” S’Rella asked. “What’s the cause?”

“A rock,” Evan grumbled. “A rock barely a half-mile across and two miles long. It doesn’t even have a name. It sits square in the Tharin Strait between Thayos and Thrane, and everyone thought it was worthless. Only now they’ve found iron on it. It was a party from Thrane that found the ore and began working it, and they aren’t about to give up their claim, but the rock is marginally closer to Thayos than it is to Thrane, so our Landsman is trying to grab it. He sent a dozen landsguard to seize the mine, but they were beaten off, and now Thrane is fortifying the rock.”

“Thayos doesn’t seem to have a strong claim,” S’Rella said. “Will your Landsman really go to war over it?”

Evan sighed. “I wish I thought otherwise. But the Landsman of Thayos is a belligerent man, and a greedy one. He beat Thrane once before, in a fishing dispute, and he’s certain he can do it again. He’d rather kill any number of people than compromise.”

“The message I was to fly to Thrane was full of threats,” Maris offered. “I’m surprised war hasn’t broken out already.”

“Both islands are gathering allies, arms, and promises,” Evan said. “I am told flyers come and go from the keep every day. No doubt the Landsman will press a threat or two on you, S’Rella, when you leave. Our own flyers, Tya and Jem, haven’t had a day’s rest for the past month. Jem has carried most of the messages back and forth across the Strait, and Tya has carried offers and promises to dozens of potential allies. Luckily, none of them seem interested. Time after time she has come back with refusals. I think it is only that keeping the war at bay.” He sighed again. “But it is only a matter of time,” he said, his voice weary. “And there will be much killing before it is all over. I’ll be called in to patch up those who can be patched up. It’s a mockery—a healer in wartime treats the symptoms without being allowed to talk about healing the actual cause, the war itself, unless he wants to be locked up as a traitor.”

“I suppose I should be relieved to be out of it,” Maris said. But her voice was reluctant. She didn’t feel as Evan did about war; flyers stayed above such conflicts, just as they skimmed above the treacherous sea. They were neutrals, never to be harmed. Objectively war was a thing to be regretted, but war had never touched Maris or any of those she had loved, and she could not feel the horror of it deeply. “When I was younger, I could learn a message without ever hearing it, really. I seem to have lost the talent. Some of the words I’ve carried have taken the joy out of flight.”

“I know,” S’Rella agreed. “I’ve seen the results of some messages I’ve flown, and sometimes I feel very guilty.”

“Don’t,” Maris said. “You are a flyer. You aren’t responsible.”

“Val disagrees, you know,” S’Rella said. “I argued it with him once. He thinks we are responsible.”

“That’s understandable,” Maris said.

S’Rella frowned at her, uncomprehending. “Why?”

“I’m surprised he never told you,” Maris said. “His father was hanged. A flyer carried the order for the execution from Lomarron to South Arren. Arak, in fact. You remember Arak?”

“Too well,” S’Rella said. “Val always suspected Arak was behind that beating he got. I remember how angry he was when he couldn’t find his assailants to prove anything.” She smiled wryly. “I also remember the party he threw on Seatooth when Arak died, black cake and all.”

Evan was looking at the two women thoughtfully. “Why do you carry messages if you feel guilty about them?” he asked S’Rella.

“Why, because I’m a flyer,” S’Rella said. “It’s my job. It’s what I do. The responsibility comes with the wings.”

“I suppose,” Evan said. He stood and began collecting the empty plates. “I don’t think I could take that attitude, frankly. But I’m a land-bound, not a flyer. I wasn’t born to wings.”

“Nor were we,” Maris started to say, but Evan left the room. She felt a flash of annoyance, but S’Rella began to talk again; Maris was drawn back into the conversation, and it wasn’t very long until she had forgotten what she was annoyed about.

At last it was time for the casts to be cut off. Her legs were to be freed, and Evan promised that it would not be much longer for her arm.

Maris cried out at the sight of her legs. They were so thin and pale, so odd-looking. Evan began to massage them gently, washing them with a warm, herb-scented solution, and gently, skillfully kneading the long-unused muscles. Maris sighed with pleasure and relaxed.

When at last Evan had done, and he rose and put away the bowl and cloth, Maris thought she would burst with impatience. “Can I walk?” she asked.

Evan looked at her, grinning. “Can you?”

Her heart lifted at the challenge, and she sat up and slipped her legs over the edge of the bed. S’Rella offered her support, but Maris shook her head slightly, motioning her friend away.

Then she stood. On her own two feet, without support. But there was something wrong. She felt dizzy and sick. She said nothing but her face gave her away.

Evan and S’Rella moved closer. “What’s wrong?” Evan asked.

“I, I must have stood up too fast.” She was sweating, and afraid to move, afraid she would fall or faint or throw up.

“Take it easy,” Evan said. “There’s no rush.” His voice was warm and soothing, and he took her good arm. S’Rella offered support on her left side. This time Maris did not shake them off or try to move alone.

“One step at a time,” said Evan.

Leaning on them, guided by them, Maris took her first few steps. She felt mildly nauseated still, and strangely disoriented. But she also felt triumphant. Her legs were working again!

“Can I walk by myself now?”

“I don’t know why not.”

Maris took her first unsupported step, and then her second. Her spirits lifted. It was easy! Her legs were as good as ever. Trying to ignore the uneasiness in her stomach, Maris took her third step, and the room tilted sideways.

Her arms flailed and she stumbled, seeking level ground in the suddenly shifting room, and then Evan caught hold of her.

“NO!” she cried. “I can do it—”

He helped her back on her feet and steadied her.

“Let me go, please.” Maris drew a shaky hand across her face and looked around. The room was calm and still, the floor as flat as it had ever been. Her legs held up firmly. She took a deep breath and began to walk again.

The floor suddenly slipped out from under her feet, and would have hit her in the face had not Evan caught her again.

“S’Rella—hand me the basin,” he said.

“I’m fine—I can walk—let me do it—” But then she couldn’t speak, because she had to throw up, and blessedly S’Rella was holding a basin before her face.

Afterward, shaky but feeling better, Maris walked back to the bed with Evan’s guidance.

“What’s wrong?” Maris asked him.

He shook his head, but he looked uneasy. “Maybe just too much exertion too soon,” he said. He turned away. “I have to go now and tend a colicky baby. I’ll be back in an hour or so—don’t try to get up until I return.”

She was elated when Evan removed the cast from her arm; overjoyed that the arm proved whole and strong, with no permanent damage. She knew she would have to work hard at building up the muscles before she could fly again, but the idea of long, hard hours of exercise excited rather than dismayed her after so much time spent doing nothing.

Too soon, S’Rella announced that she had to leave. A runner had come from the Landsman of Thayos. “He has an urgent message for North Arren,” she told Maris and Evan, making a disgusted face, “and his own flyers are off on other missions. But it is time I left anyway. I must get back to Veleth.”

They were gathered around the rough wooden table in Evan’s kitchen, drinking tea and eating bread and butter as a farewell breakfast. Maris reached across the table and took S’Rella by the hand. “I’ll miss you,” she said, “but I’m glad you came.”

“I’ll return as soon as I can,” S’Rella said, “though I expect they’ll keep me busy. Anyway, I’ll spread the word about your recovery. Your friends will be relieved to hear.”

“Maris hasn’t entirely recovered,” Evan said quietly.

“Oh, that’s only a matter of time,” Maris said cheerfully. “By the time everyone hears from S’Rella, I’ll probably be flying again.” She didn’t understand Evan’s gloom; she had expected his spirits to lighten with her own when her arm came out of the cast. “I may meet you in the sky before you get back here!”

Evan looked at S’Rella. “I’ll walk you to the road,” he volunteered.

“You needn’t bother,” she said. “I know my way.”

“I’d like to see you off.”

Maris stiffened at something undefined in his tone. “Say it here,” she said quietly. “Whatever it is, you may as well tell me.”

“I’ve never lied to you, Maris,” Evan said. He sighed, and his shoulders slumped, and Maris suddenly saw him as an old man.

Evan leaned back in his chair, but looked steadily into Maris’ eyes. “Haven’t you wondered about the dizziness you feel when you stand or sit or turn too suddenly?”

“I’m still weak. I have to be careful. That’s all,” Maris said, already defensive. “My limbs are sound.”

“Yes, yes, we need have no worries about your legs, or your arm. But there is something else wrong with you, something that can’t be reset, splinted and allowed to heal. I think something happened when you hit your head on the rock. There was some damage inside, to your brain. It affected your sense of balance, your depth perception, perhaps your vision. I’m not sure what exactly. I know so little—no one knows much…”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Maris said in a reasonable tone of voice. “I was dizzy and weak at first, but I’m getting better. I can walk now—you have to admit that—and I’ll be able to fly again.”

“You are learning to adjust, to compensate, that’s all,” Evan said. “But your sense of balance was affected. You will probably learn to adjust to life on the ground. But in the air—an ability you need in the air may be gone now. I don’t think you can learn to fly without it. So much depends on your sense of balance—”

“What do you know about flying? How can you tell me what I need to fly?” Her voice was as hard and cold as ice.

“Maris,” whispered S’Rella. She tried to catch Maris’ hand, but the injured woman pulled away.

“I don’t believe you,” Maris said. “There’s nothing wrong with me that won’t heal. I will fly again. I am just a little sick, that’s all. Why should you assume the worst? Why should I?”

Evan sat still, thinking. Then he rose and went to the corner by the back door, where the firewood was kept. Separate from the logs and kindling were some long, flat boards, leftover lumber that Evan cut up to use as splints. He selected one about six feet long, seven inches wide, and two inches thick, and laid it down on the bare boards of the kitchen floor.

He straightened up and looked at Maris. “Can you walk along this?”

Maris raised her eyebrows in mocking surprise. Absurdly, her stomach was tight with nerves. Of course she could do it; she couldn’t imagine failing such a test.

She rose from her chair slowly, one hand gripping the table edge. She walked across the floor smoothly, not too slowly. The floor did not slip or buckle beneath her as it had that first day. Absurd to say there was anything wrong with her sense of balance; she wouldn’t fall on level ground, and she wouldn’t fall from a two-inch height.

“Shall I hop on one foot?” she asked Evan.

“Just walk along it normally.”

Maris stepped upon the plank. It wasn’t quite wide enough to stand normally, feet side by side, so she had to take a second step at once, with no time for consideration. She remembered high cliff ledges she had skipped along as a child, some with paths narrower than this board.

The board wobbled and shifted beneath her feet. Despite herself, Maris cried out as she felt herself falling to one side. Evan caught her.

“You made the board move!” she said in sudden fury. But the words sounded petulant and childish in her ears. Evan only looked at her. Maris tried to calm herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. Let me try again.”

Silently, he let go of her and stepped back.

Tense now, Maris stepped up again and walked three steps. She began to waver. One foot went over the side onto the floor. She cursed and pulled it back, and took another step, and felt the board shift again. Again she missed it. She lifted her foot back onto the board and took another step forward, and lurched to one side, falling.

Evan did not catch her that time. She hit the floor on hands and knees and jumped up, her head spinning from the exertion.

“Maris, enough.” Evan’s firm, gentle hands were on her, pulling her away from the treacherous plank. Maris could hear S’Rella weeping softly.

“All right,” Maris said. She tried to keep the anguish out of her voice. “There’s something wrong. All right. I admit it. But I’m still healing. Give me time. I will get well. I will fly again.”

In the morning, Maris began exercising in earnest. Evan brought her a set of stone weights, and she began working out regularly. She was dismayed to find that both her arms, not merely the injured one, were sadly weakened by her time of enforced idleness.

Determined to test the air again as soon as possible, Maris had her wings taken to the keep, to the Landsman’s own metalsmith, for repair. The woman was busy with preparations for the impending war, but a flyer’s request was never to be ignored, and she promised to have the damaged struts straightened and restored within a week. She was true to her word.

Maris checked out her wings carefully on the day they were returned, folding and unfolding each strut in turn, scanning the fabric to make sure it was taut and firmly mounted. Her hands fell to the task as if they had never stopped doing it; they were a flyer’s hands, and there was nothing in all the world they knew how to do better than tend a pair of wings. Almost Maris was tempted to strap on the wings and make the long walk to the flyers’ cliff. Almost, but not quite. Her balance had not yet come to her, she thought, though she was steadier on her feet now. Every night, surreptitiously, she gave herself the plank test. She had not yet passed it, but she was improving. She was not yet ready for wings, but soon, soon.

When she was not working, sometimes she walked with Evan in the forest, when he went abroad to gather herbs or tend to other patients. He taught her the names of the plants he used in his work, and explained what each herb was good for, and when and how to use it. He showed her all manner of animals as well; the beasts of the chilly Eastern forests were not at all like the familiar denizens of Lesser Amberly’s tame woods, and Maris found them fascinating. Evan seemed so at home in the forest that the creatures did not fear him. Strange white crows with scarlet eyes accepted breadcrumbs from his fingers, and he knew the hidden entrances to the tunnel-monkey lairs that honeycombed the wild, and once he caught her arm and pointed out a hooded torturer, gliding sensuously from limb to limb in pursuit of some unseen prey.

Maris told him stories of her adventures in the sky and on other islands. She had been flying for more than forty years, and her head was full of wonders. She told him of life on Lesser Amberly, of Stormtown with its windmills and its wharves, of the vast blue-white glaciers of Artellia and the fire mountains of the Embers. She talked of the loneliness of the Outer Islands, hard up against the Endless Ocean to the east, and the fellowship that had once thrived on the Eyrie before flyers had divided into factions.

Neither ever spoke of what lay between them, dividing them. Evan did not contradict Maris when she spoke of flying, nor did he mention any invisible damage to her head. The subject was like a patch of dangerous ground, no wider than a wooden plank, upon which neither was willing to step. Maris kept her occasional dizzy spells to herself.

One day as they stepped outside Evan’s house, Maris stopped him from turning deeper into the forest. “All those trees make me feel like I’m still inside,” she complained. “I need to see the sky, to smell clean, open air. How far away is the sea?”

Evan gestured to the north. “About two miles that way. You can see where the trees begin to thin.”

Maris grinned at him. “You sound reluctant. Do you feel sad when there aren’t any trees around? You don’t have to come if you can’t bear it—but I don’t understand how you can breathe in that forest. It’s too dim and close. Nothing to smell but dirt and rot and leaf-mold.”

“Wonderful smells,” Evan said, smiling back. They began to walk toward the north. “The sea is too cold and empty and big for my tastes. I feel comfortable and at home in my forest.”

“Ah, Evan, we’re so different, you and I!” She touched his arm and grinned at him, somehow pleased by the contrast. She threw her head back and sniffed the air. “Yes, I can smell the sea already!”

“You could smell it on my doorstep—you can smell the sea all over Thayos,” Evan pointed out.

“The forest disguised it.” Maris felt her heart lightening with the thinning of the forest. All her life had been spent beside the sea, or over it. She had felt the lack every morning waking in Evan’s house, missing the pounding of the waves and the sharp salt smell, but most of all missing the sight of that vast, gray immensity, beneath an equally immense and turbulent sky.

The tree line ended abruptly, and the rocky cliffs began. Maris broke into a run. She stopped on the cliff’s edge, breathing hard, and gazed out over the sea and the sky.

The sky was indigo, filled with rapidly scudding gray clouds. The wind was relatively gentle at this height, but Maris could tell from the patient circling of a pair of scavenger kites that up higher the flying was still good. Not a day for rushing urgent messages, perhaps, but a good day for playing, for swooping and diving and laughing in the cool air.

She heard Evan approaching. “You can’t tell me that’s not beautiful,” she said, without turning. She took an-other step closer to the edge of the cliff and looked down… and felt the world drop beneath her.

She gasped for breath and her arms flailed, seeking some solidity, and she was falling, falling, falling, and even Evan’s arms wrapped tight around her could not draw her back to safety.

It stormed all the next day. Maris spent the day inside, lost in depression, thinking of what had happened on the cliffs. She did not exercise. She ate listlessly, and had to force herself to tend to her wings. Evan watched her in silence, frowning often.

The rain continued the following day, but the worst of the storm was past, and the downpour grew more gentle. Evan announced that he was going out. “There are some things I need from Port Thayos,” he said, “herbs that do not grow here. A trader came in last week, I understand. Perhaps I will be able to replenish my stores.”

“Perhaps,” Maris said evenly. She was tired, though she had done nothing this morning except eat breakfast. She felt old.

“Would you like to walk with me? You have never seen Port Thayos.”

“No,” Maris said. “I don’t feel up to it just now. I’ll spend the day here.”

Evan frowned, but reached for his heavy raincloak nonetheless. “Very well,” he said. “I will be back before dark.”

But it was well after dark when the healer finally returned, carrying a basket full of bottled herbs. The rain had finally stopped. Maris had begun to worry about him when the sun went down. “You’re late,” she said when he entered, and shook the rain from his cloak. “Are you all right?”

He was smiling; Maris had never seen him quite so happy. “News, good news,” he said. “The port is full of it. There will be no war. The Landsmen of Thayos and Thrane have agreed to a personal meeting on that accursed rock, to work out a compromise about mining rights!”

“No war,” Maris said, a little dully. “Good, good. Odd, though. How did it happen?”

Evan started a fire and began to make some tea. “Oh, it was all happenstance,” he said. “Tya returned from another mission, bearing nothing. Our Landsman was rebuffed on all sides. Without allies, he did not feel strong enough to press his claims. He is furious, I’m told, but what can he do? Nothing. So he sent Jem to Thrane to set up a meeting, to haggle out whatever settlement he can. Anything is better than nothing, I would have thought he’d find support on Cheslin or Thrynel, particularly if he offered them a large enough share of the iron. And certainly there is no love lost between Thrane and the Arrens.” Evan laughed. “Ah, what does it matter? The war is off. Port Thayos is giddy with relief, except for a few landsguard who’d hoped to weigh down their pockets with iron. Everyone is celebrating, and we should celebrate too.”

Evan went to his basket and rummaged among the herbs, pulling out a large moonfish. “I thought perhaps seafood would cheer you up,” he said. “I know a way of cooking this with dandyweed and bitternuts that will make your tongue sing.” He found a long bone knife, and began to scale the fish, whistling happily as he worked, and his mood was so infectious that Maris found herself smiling too.

There was a loud knocking at the door.

Evan looked up, scowling. “An emergency, no doubt,” he said, cursing. “Answer it if you would, Maris. My hands are full of fish.”

The girl standing in the door wore a dark green uniform, trimmed with gray fur; a landsguard, and one of the Landsman’s runners. “Maris of Lesser Amberly?” she asked.

“Yes,” Maris said.

The girl nodded. “The Landsman of Thayos sends his greetings, and invites you and the healer Evan to honor him at dinner tomorrow night. If your health permits it.”

“My health permits it,” Maris snapped. “Why are we suddenly so honored, child?”

The runner had a seriousness beyond her years. “The Landsman honors all flyers, and your injury in his service has weighed heavily on him. He wishes to show his gratitude to all the flyers who have flown for Thayos, however briefly, in the emergency just past.”

“Oh,” Maris said. She still was not satisfied. The Landsman of Thayos had not struck her as the type who cared much about expressing gratitude. “Is that all?”

The girl hesitated. Briefly her detachment left her, and Maris saw that she was indeed very young. “It is not part of the message, flyer, but…”

“Yes?” Maris prompted. Evan had stopped his work to stand behind her.

“Late this afternoon, a flyer arrived, with a message for the Landsman’s ears only. He received her in private chambers. She was from Western, I think. She dressed funny, and her hair was too short.”

“Describe her, if you can,” Maris said. She took a copper coin from a pocket and let her fingers play with it.

The girl looked at the coin and smiled. “Oh, she was a Westerner, young—twenty or twenty-five. Her hair was black, cut just like yours. She was very pretty. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as pretty. She had a nice smile, I thought, but the lodge men didn’t like her. They said she didn’t even bother thanking them for their help. Green eyes. She was wearing a choker. Three strands of colored sea-glass. Is that enough?”

“Yes,” Maris said. “You’re very observant.” She gave the girl the coin.

“You know her?” Evan asked. “This flyer?”

Maris nodded. “I’ve known her since the day she was born. I know her parents as well.”

“Who is she?” he demanded, impatiently.

“Corina,” said Maris, “of Lesser Amberly.”

The runner remained at the door. Maris glanced back at her. “Yes?” she asked. “Is there more? We accept the invitation, of course. You may give the Landsman our thanks.”

“There’s more,” the girl blurted. “I forgot. The Landsman said, most respectfully, that you are requested to bring your wings, if that would not put too great a burden on your health.”

“Of course,” Maris said numbly. “Of course.”

She closed the door.

The keep of the Landsman of Thayos was a grim, martial place that lay well away from the island’s towns and villages in a narrow, secluded valley of its own. It was close to the sea, but shielded from it by a solid wall of mountains. By land, only two roads gave approach, and both were fortified by landsguard. A stone watchtower stood atop the tallest peak, a high sentinel for all the paths leading to the keep.

The fortress itself was old and stern, built of great blocks of weathered black stone. Its back was to the mountain, and Maris knew from her last visit that much of it lay underground, in chambers chiseled from solid rock. Its exterior face showed a double set of wide walls—landsguard armed with longbows walked patrol on the parapets—ringing a cluster of wooden buildings and two black towers, the taller of which was almost fifty feet high. Stout wooden bars closed off the tower windows. The valley, so close to the sea, was damp and cold. The only ground cover was a tenacious violet lichen, and a blue-green moss that clung to the underside of boulders and half-covered the walls of the keep.

Coming up the road from Thossi, Maris and Evan were stopped once at the valley checkpoint, passed, stopped again at the outer wall, and finally admitted to the keep. They might have been detained longer, but Maris was carrying her bright silver wings, and lands-guard did not trifle with flyers. The inner courtyard was full of activity—children playing with great shaggy dogs, fierce-looking pigs running everywhere, landsguard drilling with bow and club. A gibbet had been built against one wall, its wood cracked and well-weathered. The children played all about it, and one of them was using a noose as a swing. The other two nooses hung empty, twisting ominously in the chill wind of evening.

“This place oppresses me,” Maris told Evan. “The Landsman of Lesser Amberly lives in a huge wooden manor on a hill overlooking the town. It has twenty guest rooms, and a tremendous banquet hall, and wonderful windows of colored glass, and a beacon tower for summoning flyers—but it has no walls, and no guards, and no gibbets.”

“The Landsman of Lesser Amberly is chosen by the people,” Evan said. “The Landsman of Thayos is from a line that has ruled here since the days of the star sailors. And you forget, Maris, that Eastern is not as gentle a land as Western. Winter lasts longer here. Our storms are colder and fiercer. Our soil has more metal, but it is not so good for growing things as the soil in the West. Famine and war are never very far away on Thayos.”

They passed through a massive gate, down into the interior of the keep, and Maris fell silent.

The Landsman met them in his private reception chamber, seated on a plain wooden throne and flanked by two sour-faced landsguard. But he rose when they entered; Landsmen and flyers were equal. “I’m pleased you could accept my invitation, flyer,” he said. “There was some concern about your health.”

Despite the polite words, Maris did not like him. The Landsman was a tall, well-proportioned man with regular, almost handsome, features, his gray hair worn long and knotted behind his head in the Eastern fashion. But there was something disturbing about his manner, and he had a puffiness around his eyes, and a twitch at the corner of his mouth that his full beard did not quite conceal. His dress was rich and somber; thick blue-gray cloth trimmed with black fur, thigh-high boots, a wide leather belt inlaid with iron and silver and gemstones. And he wore a small metal dagger.

“I appreciate your concern,” Maris replied. “I was badly injured, but I have recovered my health now. You have a great treasure here on Thayos in Evan. I have met many healers, but few as skilled as he.”

The Landsman sank back into his chair. “He will be well rewarded,” he said, as if Evan was not even present. “Good work deserves a good reward, eh?”

“I will pay Evan myself,” Maris said. “I have sufficient iron.”

“No,” the Landsman insisted. “Your near-death in my service gave me great distress. Let me show my gratitude.”

“I pay my own debts,” Maris said.

The Landsman’s face grew cold. “Very well,” he said. “There is another matter we must discuss, then. But let it wait for dinner. Your walk must have left you hungry.” He stood up abruptly. “Come, then. You’ll find I set a good table, flyer. I doubt you’ve ever had better.”

As it turned out, Maris had eaten better on countless occasions. The food was plentiful, but badly prepared. The fish soup was far too salty, the bread was hard and dry, and the meat courses had all been boiled until even the memory of taste had fled. Even the beer tasted sour to her.

They ate in a dim, damp banquet hall, at a long table set for twenty. Evan, looking desperately uncomfortable, was placed well down the table, among several lands-guard officers and the Landsman’s younger children. Maris occupied a position of honor at the Landsman’s side next to his heir, a sharp-faced, sullen woman who did not speak three words during the entire meal. Across from her the other flyers were seated. Closest to the Landsman was a weary gray-faced man with a bulbous nose; Maris recognized him vaguely from past encounters as the flyer Jem. Third down was Corina of Lesser Amberly. She smiled at Maris across the table. Corina was terribly pretty, Maris thought, remembering what the runner had said. But then her father, Corm, had always been handsome.

“You look well, Maris,” Corina said. “I’m glad. We were very worried about you.”

“I am well,” Maris said. “I hope to be flying again soon.”

A shadow passed across Corina’s pretty face. “Maris…” she started. Then she thought better. “I hope so,” she finished weakly. “Everyone asks about you. We’d like you home again.” She looked down and occupied herself with her meal.

Between Jem and Corina sat the third flyer, a young woman strange to Maris. After an abortive attempt to start a conversation with the Landsman’s daughter, Maris fell to studying the stranger over her food. She was the same age as Corina, but the contrast between the two women was marked. Corina was vibrant and beautiful; dark hair, clean healthy skin, green eyes sparkling and alive, and an air of confidence and easy sophistication. A flyer, daughter of two flyers, born and raised to the privileges and traditions that went with the wings.

The woman next to her was thin, though she had a look of stubborn strength about her. Pockmarks covered her hollow cheeks, and her pale blond hair was knotted in an awkward lump behind her head and pulled back in such a way as to make her forehead seem abnormally high. When she smiled, Maris saw that her teeth were crooked and discolored.

“You’re Tya, aren’t you?” she said.

The woman regarded her with shrewd black eyes. “I am.” Her voice was startlingly pleasant; cool and soft, with a faint ironic undertone.

“I don’t think we’ve ever met,” Maris said. “Have you been flying long?”

“I won my wings two years ago, on North Arren.”

Maris nodded. “I missed that one. I think I was on a mission to Artellia. Have you ever flown to Western?”

“Three times,” Tya replied. “Twice to Big Shotan and once to Culhall. Never to the Amberlys. Most of my flying has been in Eastern, especially these days.” She gave her Landsman a quick sharp glance from the corner of her eyes, and smiled a conspiratorial smile at Maris.

Corina, who had been listening, tried to be polite. “What did you think of Stormtown?” she asked. “And the Eyrie? Did you visit the Eyrie?”

Tya smiled tolerantly. “I’m a one-wing,” she said. “I trained at Airhome. We don’t go to your Eyrie, flyer. As to Stormtown, it was impressive. There’s no city like it in Eastern.”

Corina flushed. Maris was briefly annoyed. The friction between flyers born to wings and the upstart one-wings depressed her; the skies of Windhaven were not the friendly place they had once been, and much of that was her doing. “The Eyrie isn’t such a bad place, Tya,” she said. “I’ve made a lot of friends there.”

“You’re not a one-wing,” Tya said.

“Oh? Val One-Wing himself once told me I was the first one-wing, whether I admitted it or not.”

Tya looked at her speculatively. “No,” she said finally. “No, that isn’t right. You’re different, Maris. Not one of the old flyers, but not a one-wing either. I don’t know what you are. It must be lonely, though.”

They finished the meal in a strained, awkward silence.

When the dessert cups had been cleared away, the Landsman dismissed family, counselors, and landsguard, so only the four flyers and Evan remained. He tried to dismiss Evan as well, but the healer would not go. “Maris is still in my care,” he said. “I stay with my patient.” The Landsman gave him an angry stare, but elected not to press the point.

“Very well,” he snapped. “We have business to discuss. Flyer business.” He turned his hot eyes on Maris. “I will be direct. I have received a message from my colleague, the Landsman of Lesser Amberly. He inquires after your health. Your wings are needed. When will you be well enough to return to Amberly?”

“I don’t know,” Maris said. “You can see that I’ve recovered. But the flight from Thayos to Amberly is taxing for any flyer, and I do not have my full strength back yet. I will depart Thayos as soon as I can.”

“A long flight,” the flyer Jem agreed, “especially for one who does not make even short flights.”

“Yes,” the Landsman said. “You and the healer have done a lot of walking. You seem healthy again. Your wings are repaired, I am told. Yet you do not fly. You have never come to the flyers’ cliff. You do not practice. Why?”

“I am not ready,” Maris said.

“Landsman,” said Jem, “it is as I told you. She has not recovered, no matter how it seems. If she were able, she would be flying.” He shifted his gaze to her. “I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he said, “but you know I speak the truth. I am a flyer too. I know. A flyer flies. There is no way to keep a healthy flyer on the ground. And you, you are no ordinary flyer—they used to tell me that you loved flying above all else.”

“I did,” said Maris. “I do.”

“Landsman…” Evan began.

Maris turned her head to look at him. “No, Evan,” she said, “the burden isn’t yours. I will tell them.” She faced the Landsman again. “I am not entirely recovered,” she admitted. “My balance… there is something wrong with my balance. But it is healing. It is not so bad as it once was.”

“I’m sorry,” Tya said quickly. Jem nodded.

“Oh, Maris,” Corina said. She looked grief-stricken, suddenly close to tears. Corina had none of her father’s malice, and she knew what balance meant to a flyer.

“Can you fly?” the Landsman said.

“I don’t know,” Maris admitted. “I need more time.”

“You have had time enough,” he said. He turned to Evan. “Healer, can you tell me that she will recover?”

“No,” Evan said sadly. “I cannot tell you that. I do not know.”

The Landsman scowled. “This affair belongs to the Landsman of Lesser Amberly, but the burden is on me. And I say that a flyer who cannot fly is no flyer at all, and has no need of wings. If your recovery is that uncertain, only a fool would wait for it. I ask you again, Maris—can you fly?”

His eyes were fixed on her, and the corner of his mouth moved in a malicious little twitch, and Maris knew she had run out of time. “I can fly,” she said.

“Good,” the Landsman said. “Tonight is as good as any other time. You say you can fly. Very well. Get your wings. Show us.”

The walk through the damp, dripping tunnel was as long as Maris remembered it, and as lonely, though this time she had company. No one talked. The only sound was the echo of their footsteps. Two landsguard walked ahead of the party with torches. The flyers wore their wings.

It was a cold, starry night on the far side of the mountain. The sea moved restlessly below them, a vast, dark, melancholy presence. Maris climbed the stairs to the flyers’ cliff. She climbed slowly, and when she reached the top her thighs ached and her breathing was labored.

Evan took her hand briefly. “Can I persuade you not to fly?”

“No,” she said.

He nodded. “I thought not. Fly well, then.” He kissed her, and stepped away.

The Landsman stood against the cliff, flanked by his landsguard. Tya and Jem unfolded her wings. Corina hung back until Maris called to her. “I’m not angry,” Maris said. “This is not your doing. A flyer isn’t responsible for the messages she bears.”

“Thank you,” Corina said. Her small, pretty face was pale in the starlight.

“If I fail, you are to bring my wings back to Amberly, yes?”

Corina nodded reluctantly.

“Do you know what the Landsman intends to do with them?”

“He will find a new flyer, perhaps someone who has lost his wings by challenge. Until someone is found… well, Mother is ill, but Father is still fit enough to fly.”

Maris laughed lightly. “There’s a wonderful irony in that. Corm has always wanted my wings—but I’m going to do my best to keep them from him once again.”

Corina smiled.

Her wings were fully extended; Maris could feel the familiar, insistent push of the wind against them. She checked her straps and struts, motioned Corina out of her way, and walked to the brink of the precipice. There she steadied herself and looked down.

The world reeled dizzily, drunkenly. Far below, breakers crashed against black rocks, sea and stone locked in eternal war. She swallowed hard, and tried to keep from lurching off the cliff. Slowly the world grew solid and steady again. No motion. It was just a cliff, like any other cliff, and below the endless ocean. The sky was her friend, her lover.

Maris flexed her arms, and took the wing-grips in hand. Then she took a deep breath and leaped.

Her kick sent her clean away from the cliff, and the wind grabbed her, supporting her. It was a cold, strong wind; a wind that cut through to the bone, but not an angry wind, no, an easy wind to fly. She relaxed and gave herself to it, and she glided down and around in a long graceful curve.

But the current pushed around again toward the mountain, and Maris glimpsed the Landsman and the other flyers waiting there—Jem had unfolded his own wings and was preparing to launch—before she decided to turn away from them. She twisted her body, tried to bank.

The sky lurched and turned fluid on her. She banked too far, stalled, and when she tried to correct by throwing her weight and strength back in the other direction, she tilted wildly. Her breath caught in her throat.

The feel was gone. Maris closed her eyes for an instant, and felt sick. She was falling, her body screamed at her. She was falling, her ears rang, and the feel was gone from her. She had always known: subtle changes in the wind, shifts she had to react to before she was half-aware of them, the taste of a building storm, the omens of still air. Now it was all gone. She flew through an endless empty ocean of air, feeling nothing, dizzy, and this strange savage wind she could not understand had her in its grasp.

Her great silver wings tilted back and forth wildly as her body shook, and Maris opened her eyes again, suddenly desperate. She steadied herself and tried to fly on vision alone. But the rocks moved, and it was too dark, and even the bright cold stars above seemed to dance and shift and mock her.

Vertigo reached up and swallowed her whole, and Maris released her wing-grips—she had never done that before, never—and now she was not flying, but only hanging beneath her wings. She doubled over in the straps, retching, and sent the Landsman’s dinner down into the ocean. She was trembling violently.

Jem and Corina were both airborne and coming after her, Maris saw, but she did not care. She was weak, drained, old. There were boats below her, gliding across the black ocean. She took her wing grips in hand again, tried to pull up, but all she accomplished was a sharp downwind turn that sheered into a plunge. She tried to correct, and couldn’t.

She was crying.

The sea came up at her. Shimmering. Shirting.

Her ears hurt.

She could not fly. She was a flyer, had always been a flyer, windlover, Woodwinger, skychild, alone, home in the sky, flyer, flyer, flyer—and she could not fly.

She closed her eyes again, so the world would stand still.

With a slap and a spray of salt water, the sea took her. It has been waiting, she thought. All those years.

“Leave me alone,” she said that night, when they finally returned to his home. Evan took her at her word.

Maris slept most of the next day.

The following day Maris woke early, when the ruddy light of dawn first broke across the room. She felt terrible, cold and sweaty, and a great weight pressed across her chest. For a moment, she could not think what was wrong. Then she remembered. Her wings were gone. She tried to think about it, and the despair welled up inside her, and the anger, and the self-pity, and soon she curled up under the blankets once again and tried to go back to sleep. When she slept, she did not have to face it.

But sleep would not take her. Finally she rose and dressed. Evan was in the next room, cooking eggs. “Hungry?” he asked her.

“No,” Maris said dully.

Evan nodded, and cracked two more eggs. Maris sat at the table and, when he set a plate of eggs before her, she picked at them listlessly.

It was a wet, windy day, marked by frequent violent storms. When he had finished his breakfast, Evan went about his business. Near noon he left her, and Maris wandered aimlessly through the empty house. Finally she sat by the window and watched the rain.

Well after dark Evan returned, wet and dispirited. Maris was still sitting by the window, in a cold and darkened house. “You might at least have started a fire,” Evan grumbled. His tone was disgusted.

“Oh,” she said. She looked at him blankly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

Evan built the fire. Maris moved to help him, but he snapped at her and chased her out of the way. They ate in silence, but the food seemed to restore Evan’s mood. Afterward he brewed some of his special tea, set a mug down in front of her, and settled into his favorite chair.

Maris tasted the steaming tea, conscious of Evan’s eyes on her. Finally she looked up at him.

“How do you feel?” he asked her.

She thought about it. “I feel dead,” she said, finally.

“Talk about it.”

“I can’t,” she said. She began to weep. “I can’t.”

When the weeping would not stop, Evan fixed her a sleeping draught, and put her to bed.

The next day Maris went out.

She took a road that Evan had shown her, a well-worn path that led not to the cliffs but down to the sea itself, and she spent the day walking alone on a cold pebble beach that seemed endless. When she wearied, she rested at the water’s edge and flung pebbles into the waves, taking a small, melancholy pleasure in the way they skipped, then sank.

Even the sea was different here, she thought. It was gray and cold, without highlights. She missed the flashing blues and greens of the waters around Amberly.

Tears ran down her cheeks and she did not bother to wipe them away. At times she became aware that she was sobbing, without remembering just when or why she had started to cry.

The sea was vast and lonely, the empty beach went on forever, and the wild, cloudy sky was all around, but Maris felt hemmed in, suffocated. She thought of all the places in the world that she would never see again, the memory of each one a fresh pain to her. She thought of the impressive ruins of the Old Fortress on Laus. She remembered Woodwings Academy, vast and dark, carved into the rock of Seatooth. The Temple of the Sky God on Deedi. The drafty castles of the flyer-princes of Artellia. The windmills of Stormtown, and the Old Captain’s House, ancient beyond telling. The tree-towns of Setheen and Alessy, the boneyards and battlegrounds of Lomarron, the vineyards of the Amberlys, and Riesa’s warm, smoky alehouse on Skulny. All lost to her now. And the Eyrie—ships might take her elsewhere, but the Eyrie was a flyer’s place, now closed to her forever.

She thought of her friends, scattered over Windhaven like the many islands. Some of them might visit her, but so many others had been snatched out of her world as if they no longer existed. The last time she had seen him, Timar had been fat and happy in his little stone house on Hethen, teaching his granddaughter to draw the beauty out of a lump of rock. Now he was as dead to her as Halland; a memory, nothing more. She would never see Reid again, nor his beautiful, laughing wife. Never again could she pass the night away drinking Riesa’s ale and sharing memories of Garth. She’d buy no more wooden trinkets from S’mael, nor joke with the cook in that little inn on Poweet.

Never again would she watch the flying at the great annual competitions, or sit, gossiping and singing, among flyers at a party.

The memories cut her like a thousand knives, and Maris cried out her pain, sobbing until she could scarcely breathe. She knew how she must look: a ridiculous old woman, weeping and moaning alone on a beach. But she could not stop.

She could hardly bear to think of flying itself, of that great joy and freedom she had lost forever. The memories came of themselves, though: the world spread out beneath her, the joy of being winged, the thrill of running before a storm, the myriad colors of the sky, the magnificent solitude of the heights. All the things she could never see or feel again, except in memory. Once she had found a riser that took her halfway to infinity, up to the realms where the star sailors had moved, where the sea itself vanished below and nothing flew but the strange, ethereal wind wraiths. She would always remember that day, always.

The world grew dark around her, and the stars began to appear. The sound of the sea was everywhere. She was numb, chilled to the bone, emptied of tears, as she faced the emptiness of her life. Finally she began the long walk back to the cabin, turning her back on the sea and the sky.

The house was warm and filled with the rich aroma of stew. The sight of Evan standing by the fire made her heart beat faster. His blue eyes were infinitely tender when he spoke her name. She ran to him and flung her arms around him, holding tight, holding on for dear life. She closed her eyes against the dizziness.

“Maris,” he said again. “Maris.” He sounded pleased and surprised. His arms came up and held her even more closely, protectively. At last he led her to the table and set her dinner before her.

He spoke as they ate, telling her the events of his day. An adventure chasing the goat. Finding a bush of ripe silverberries. A special dessert he’d made for her.

She nodded, scarcely taking in the sense of what he said, but comforted by the sound of his voice, wanting it to continue. His words, his presence, told her the world had not utterly ended.

At last she interrupted him. “Evan, I have to know. This… injury I have. Is there any chance that it will ever heal? That I will be able… that I will recover?”

He set down his spoon, the animation gone out of his face at once. “Maris, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone could tell you if your condition is a passing thing, or permanent. I can’t be sure.”

“Your guess, then. Your best guess.”

There was pain in his face. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t think you’ll recover fully. I don’t think you can regain what you have lost.”

She nodded, externally calm. “I understand.” She pushed her food aside. “Thank you. I had to ask. Somewhere, I was still hoping.” She stood up.

“Maris…”

She motioned him back. “I’m tired. It’s been a hard day for me and I have to think, Evan. There are decisions I must make now, and I need to be alone. I’m sorry.” She forced a smile. “The stew was fine. I’m sorry to miss the dessert you made, but I’m not hungry.”

The room was black and cold when Maris woke. The fire she had started had gone out. She sat up in bed and stared into the darkness. No more tears, she thought. That’s over.

When she threw back the covers and stood up, the floor shifted under her feet and she lurched dizzily for an instant. She steadied herself, slipped into a short robe, and then walked to the kitchen where she lit a candle from the embers still smoldering in the hearth. The wooden floor was cold beneath her bare feet as she walked down the hall, past the workroom where Evan prepared his brews and ointments, past the empty bedrooms he kept for those who came to him.

When she opened his door Evan stirred, rolled over, and blinked at her.

“Maris?” he said, his voice thick with sleep. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to be dead,” she said.

Maris walked across the room and set the candle on the bedside table. Evan sat up and caught her hand. “I’ve done all I can for you as a healer,” he said. “If you want my love… if you want me…”

She stopped his words with a kiss. “Yes,” she said.

“My dear,” he said, looking at her in the candlelight. The shadows made his face strange, and for a moment she felt awkward and frightened.

But the moment passed. He threw back his blankets, and she shrugged off her robe and climbed into bed with him. His arms went around her, and his hands were gentle, loving, and familiar, and his body was warm and full of life.

“Teach me to heal,” Maris said the next morning. “I’d like to work with you.”

Evan smiled. “Thank you very much,” he said. “It’s not that easy, you know. Why this sudden interest in the healing arts?”

She frowned. “I must do something, Evan. I have only one skill, flying, and that’s lost to me now. I’ve never done anything else. I could take a ship back to Amberly, and live out the rest of my days in the house I inherited from my stepfather, doing nothing. I’d be provided for—even if I had nothing, the people of Amberly don’t let their retired flyers end as paupers.” She moved away from the breakfast table and began to pace.

“Or I could stay here, if there is something for me to do. If I don’t find something to fill my days, something useful, my memories will drive me mad, Evan. I’m past my childbearing years—I decided against motherhood years ago. I can’t sail a ship or carry a tune or build a house. The gardens I began always died, I’m hopeless at mending, and being cooped up in a shop, selling things all day, would drive me to drink.”

“I see you’ve considered all the options,” Evan said, the ghost of a smile about his lips.

“Yes, I have,” Maris said seriously. “I don’t know that I would have any skills as a healer—there is no reason for me to think so. But I’m willing to work hard, and I’ve got a flyer’s memory. I wouldn’t be likely to confuse poisons with healing potions. I can help you gather herbs, mix remedies, hold down your victims while you cut them up, or whatever. I’ve assisted at two births—I would do whatever you told me, whatever you needed another pair of hands for.”

“I’ve worked alone for a long time, Maris. I have no patience with clumsiness, or ignorance, or mistakes.”

Maris smiled at him. “Or opinions that contradict your own.”

He laughed. “Yes. I suppose I could teach you, and I could use your help. But I don’t know if I believe this ‘I’ll do whatever you say’ of yours. You’re starting a bit late in life to be a humble servant.”

She looked at him, trying not to show the sudden panic she felt. If he refused her, what could she do? She felt like begging him to let her stay.

He must have seen something of this in her face, for he caught hold of her hand and held it tightly. “We’ll try it,” he said. “If you are willing to try to learn, I am surely willing to teach. It is time I passed some of my learning on to someone else, so that if I am bitten by a blue tick or seized with liar’s fever, everything will not be lost by my death.”

Maris smiled her relief. “How do we start?”

Evan thought a moment. “There are small villages and encampments in the forest that I haven’t visited in half a year. We’ll travel for a week or two, making the rounds, and you’ll gain some idea of what I do, and we’ll learn if you have the stomach for it.” He released her hand and stood up, walking toward the storeroom. “Come help me pack.”

Maris learned many things during her travels with Evan through the forest, few of them pleasant.

It was hard work. Evan, so patient a healer, was a demanding teacher. But Maris was glad of it. It was good to be pushed to her limits, to work until she could work no longer. She had no time to think of her own loss, and she slept deeply every night.

But while she was pleased to be of use and gladly performed the tasks Evan set her, other requirements of this new life were harder for Maris to fulfill. It was difficult enough to comfort strangers, more difficult still when there was no comfort to be offered. Maris had nightmares about one woman whose child died. It was Evan who told her, of course; but it was to Maris the woman turned in her sorrow and her rage, refusing to believe, demanding a miracle that no one could give. Maris marveled that Evan could give of himself so steadily, and absorb so much pain, fear, and grief, year after year, without breaking. She tried to copy his calm, and his firm, gentle manner, reminding herself that he had called her strong.

Maris wondered if she would gain more skill and inner certainty with time. Evan at times seemed to know what to do by instinct, Maris thought, just as some Wood-wingers took to the air as if born to it, while others struggled hopelessly, lacking that special feel for the air. Evan’s very touch could soothe an ailing person, but Maris had no such gift.

As night began to fall on the nineteenth day of their travels, Maris and Evan did not stop to make camp, but only walked more quickly. Even Maris, to whom all trees looked alike, recognized this part of the forest. Soon Evan’s house came into sight.

Suddenly Evan caught her wrist, stopping her. He was staring ahead, at the house. There was a light shining in the window, and smoke rising from the chimney.

“A friend?” she hazarded. “Someone who needs your help?”

“Perhaps,” Evan said quietly. “But there are others… the homeless, people driven from their villages because of some crime or madness. They attack travelers, or break into houses, and wait…”

They approached the house quietly, Evan in the lead, going for the lighted window rather than the door.

“A man and a child… doesn’t look bad,” murmured Evan. It was a high window. Standing on the tips of her toes, leaning on Evan for support, Maris could just see in.

She saw a large, ruddy, bearded man sitting on a stool before the fire. At his feet sat a child, looking up into his face.

The man turned his head slightly, and the firelight brought out a glint of red in his dark hair. She saw his face in the light.

“Coll!” she cried, joyful. She tottered and nearly fell, but Evan caught her.

“Your brother?”

“Yes!” She ran around the side of the house, and as she laid her hand on the doorpull, it opened from within, and Coll caught her up in a big bear-hug.

Maris was always surprised by the size of her stepbrother. She saw him usually at intervals of years, and in between thought of him as young Coll, her little brother, thin, awkward and undeveloped, at ease only with a guitar in his hand when he could transcend himself by singing.

But her little brother had filled out, and grown into his height. Years of travel, earning passage to other islands by working as a sailor and laboring at whatever task came to hand when his audience was too poor to pay for his songs, had strengthened him. His hair, once red-gold, had darkened mostly to brown—the red showed only in his beard now, and in fire-lit glints.

“You are Evan, the healer?” Coll asked, turning to Evan. He held Maris in the crook of one arm. At Evan’s nod, he went on, “I’m sorry to seem so rude, but we were told in Port Thayos that Maris was living here with you. We’ve been waiting these past four days for you. I broke a shutter to get in, but I’ve repaired it—I think you’ll find it even better now.” He looked down at Maris and hugged her again. “I was afraid we’d missed you—that you had flown away again!”

Maris stiffened. She saw the quick concern on Evan’s face and shook her head at him very slightly.

“We’ll talk,” she said. “Let’s sit by the fire—my legs are nearly worn off from walking. Evan, will you make your wonderful tea?”

“I’ve brought kivas,” Coll said quickly. “Three bottles, traded for a song. Shall I heat one?”

“That would be lovely,” Maris said. As she moved toward the cupboard where the heavy pottery mugs were kept, she caught sight of the child again, half-hiding in the shadows, and stopped short.

“Bari?” she asked, wonderingly.

The little girl came forward shyly, head hanging, looking up with a sideways glance.

“Bari,” Maris said again, warmth in her tone. “It is you! I’m your Aunt Maris!” She bent to hug the child, then drew back again to take a better look. “You couldn’t remember me, of course. You were no bigger than a burrow bird when I last saw you.”

“My father sings about you,” Bari said. Her voice rang clearly, bell-like.

“And do you sing, too?” Maris asked.

Bari shrugged awkwardly and looked at the floor. “Sometimes,” she muttered.

Bari was a thin, fine-boned child of about eight years. Her light brown hair was cropped short, lying like a sleek cap on her head, framing a freckled, heart-shaped face with wide gray eyes. She was dressed like a smaller version of her father in a belted woolen tunic over leather pants. A piece of hardened resin, a clear, golden color, hung on a thong around her neck.

“Why don’t you bring some cushions and blankets near the fire so we can all be comfortable,” Maris suggested. “They’re kept in that wooden chest in the far corner.”

She got the mugs and returned to the fireside. Coll caught her hand and pulled her down beside him.

“It’s so good to see you walking, healed,” he said in his deep, warm voice. “When I heard of your fall, I was afraid you’d be crippled, like Father. All the long journey here from Poweet I kept hoping for more news, better news, and hearing none. They said that it was a terrible fall, onto rock; that both your legs and arms were broken. But now, better than any report, I see you’re whole. How long before you fly back to Amberly?”

Maris looked into the eyes of the man who, although not blood-kin, she had loved as a brother for more than forty years.

“I’ll never go back to Amberly, Coll,” she said. Her voice was even. “I’ll never fly again. I was hurt more badly than I knew in that fall. My arm and my legs mended, but something else stayed broken. When I hit my head… My sense of balance has gone wrong. I can’t fly.”

He stared at her, the happiness draining out of his face. He shook his head. “Maris… no…”

“There’s no use saying no anymore,” she said. “I’ve had to accept it.”

“Isn’t there something…”

To Maris’ relief, Evan interrupted. “There’s nothing. We’ve done all we can, Maris and I. Injuries to the head are mysterious. We don’t even know what exactly happened, and there’s no healer anywhere on Windhaven, I’d wager, who would know what to do to fix it.”

Coll nodded, looking dazed. “I didn’t mean to imply… It’s just so hard for me to accept. Maris, I can’t imagine you grounded!”

He meant well, Maris knew, but his grief and incomprehension grated against her, tore her wounds open again.

“You don’t have to imagine it,” she said rather sharply. “This is my life now, for anyone to see. The wings have already been taken back to Amberly.”

Coll said nothing. Maris didn’t want to see the pain on his face, so she stared into the fire, and let the silence grow. She heard the sound of a stone bottle being unstoppered, and then Evan was pouring the steaming kivas into three mugs.

“Can I taste?” Bari crouched beside her father, looking up, hopeful. Coll smiled down at her and shook his head teasingly.

Watching the father and daughter together, Maris felt the tension suddenly dissolve. She met Evan’s eyes as he put a mug filled with the hot, spiced wine into her hands, and smiled.

She turned back to Coll and was about to speak to him when her eyes fell on his guitar, which lay as always close to hand. The sight of it released a torrent of memories, and suddenly Maris felt that Barrion, dead now for many years, was again in the room with them. The guitar had been his, and he had claimed it had been in his family for generations, passed down from the days of the star sailors. She had never known whether or not to believe him—exaggerations and beautiful lies came from him as easily as breathing—but certainly the instrument was very old. He had entrusted it to Coll, who had been his protege and the son he’d never had. Maris reached out to feel the smooth wood, dark with many varnishings and constant handling.

“Sing for us, Coll,” she suggested. “Sing us something new.”

The guitar was in his arms, cradled against his chest, almost before the words were out of her mouth. The soft chords sounded.

“I call this ‘The Singer’s Lament,’” he said, a wry smile on his face. And he began to sing a song, melancholy and ironic in turns, about a singer whose wife leaves him because he loves his music too well. Maris suspected it was his own marriage he was singing of, although he had never told her why it had ended, and she had not been around to see much of it first-hand.

The recurring refrain of the song was: “A singer should not marry/A singer should not wed/Just kiss the music as she flies/And take a song to bed.”

Next he sang a song about the turbulent love affair between a proud Landsman and an even prouder one-wing—Maris recognized one of the names, but had not heard the story.

“Is that true?” she asked when the song had ended.

Coll laughed. “I remember you used to ask that same question of Barrion! I’ll give you his answer: I can’t tell you when or where or if it happened, but it’s a true story all the same!”

“Now sing my song,” Bari said.

Coll dropped a kiss on his daughter’s nose and sang a tuneful fantasy about a little girl named Bari who makes friends with a scylla who takes her to find treasure in a cave beneath the sea.

Later, he sang older songs: the ballad of Aron and Jeni, the song about the ghost flyers, the one about the mad Landsman of Kennehut, his own version of the Woodwings song.

Later still, when Bari had been put to bed and the three adults were working on the third bottle of kivas, they spoke about their lives. More calmly now, Maris could talk to Coll about her decision to stay with Evan.

The first shock past, Coll knew better than to express pity for her, but he let her know he did not understand the choice she had made.

“But why stay here, in Eastern, far from all your friends?” Then with drunken courtesy he added, “I don’t mean to slight you, Evan.”

“Anywhere I chose to live would be far from someone.” Maris said. “You know how widely my friends are scattered.” She sipped the hot, intoxicating drink, feeling detached.

“Come with me back to Amberly,” he coaxed. “Live in the house we grew up in. We might wait awhile, for spring when the sea is calmer, but the voyage is not so bad between here and there, truly.”

“You can have the house,” she said. “You and Bari can live there. Or sell it if you like. I can’t go live there again—there are too many memories there. Here on Thayos I can start a new life. It will be hard, but Evan helps me.” She took his hand. “I can’t stand idleness; it’s good to be useful.”

“But as a healer?” Coll shook his head. “It’s odd, to think of you doing that.” He looked to Evan. “Is she any good? Truthfully.”

Evan held Maris’ hand between his own, stroking it.

“She learns quickly,” he said after a few moments’ thought. “She has a strong desire to help, and does not balk at dull or difficult tasks. I don’t know yet whether she has it in her to be a healer—if she will ever be truly skilled.

“But I must admit, quite selfishly, I am glad she is here. I hope she’ll never want to leave me.”

A flush rose to her cheeks, and Maris bent her head and drank. She was startled, yet gratified, by his last words. There had been very little in the way of love-talk between her and Evan—no romantic promises or extravagant claims or compliments. And, although she had tried to put it out of her mind, somewhere within she feared that she had given Evan no choice in their relationship—that she had installed herself in his life before he could have any second thoughts. But there had been love in his voice.

There was a silence. To fill it, Maris asked Coll about Bari. “When did she start traveling with you?”

“It’s been about six months,” he said. He set his mug down, drained, and picked up his guitar. He stroked the strings, producing faint chords as he spoke. “Her mother’s new husband is a violent man—he beat Bari once. Her mother wouldn’t say no to him, but she had no objections to my taking her away. She told me he might be jealous of Bari—he’s been trying to get a child of his own.”

“How does Bari feel?”

“She’s glad to be with me, I think. She’s a quiet little thing. She misses her mother, I know, but she’s glad to be out of that household, where nothing she did was right.”

“Are you making a singer of her, then?” Evan asked.

“If she wants to be. I knew when I was younger than she, but Bari doesn’t know yet what she wants to do with her life. She sings like a little chime-bird, but there’s more to being a singer than singing other people’s songs, and she’s shown no talent yet for making up her own.”

“She’s very young,” said Maris.

Coll shrugged and set his guitar aside again. “Yes. There’s time. I don’t press her.” He blinked and yawned hugely. “It must be past my bedtime.”

“I’ll show you to a room,” Evan said.

Coll laughed and shook his head. “No need,” he said. “After four days, I feel quite at home here.”

He stood, and Maris also rose, gathering up the empty mugs. She kissed Coll goodnight and then lingered as Evan banked the fire and straightened the furniture, waiting to walk hand in hand with him to the bed they shared.

For the next few days Coll kept Maris’ spirits high. They were together constantly and he told her stories of his adventures and sang to her. In all the years since Coll had first gone wandering with Barrion, and Maris had become a full-fledged flyer, they had not spent much time together. Now, as the days passed and Coll and Bari lingered, they grew closer than they had been since Coll’s boyhood. He spoke for the first time of his failed marriage and his feeling that it was his fault for being so much away from home. Maris did not speak of her accident, or her unhappiness, but there was no need. Coll knew all too well what the wings had meant to her.

As the days merged almost imperceptibly into weeks, Coll and Bari stayed on. Coll traveled abroad to sing at the inns in Thossi and Port Thayos, while Bari began trailing after Evan. She was quiet, unobtrusive, and attentive, and Evan was pleased by her interest. The four of them lived comfortably together, taking turns with the chores and gathering together in the evenings for stories or games before the fire. Maris told Evan, told Coll, told herself, that she was contented. She thought of no other life.

Then, one day, S’Rella arrived.

Maris was alone in the house that afternoon, and she answered the knocking on the door. Her first response was one of pleasure at the sight of her old friend, but even as she opened her arms to embrace, Maris felt her eyes drawn to the wings S’Rella carried slung over one arm, and her heart lurched painfully. As she led S’Rella to a chair near the fire, and put the kettle on for tea, she was thinking dully, soon she’ll fly away again and leave me.

It required a great effort for her to seat herself beside S’Rella and ask, with a show of interest, for news.

S’Rella’s face was shining with barely repressed excitement. “I’ve come here on business,” she said. “I’ve come with a message for you. I’ve come to ask you, to invite you, to make the voyage to Seatooth, and live there as the new head of the Academy. They need a strong, permanent teacher at Woodwings, not like the ones who have come and gone over the past six years. Someone committed, someone knowledgeable. A leader. You, Maris. Everyone looks up to you—there could be no one better than you for the job. We all want you there.”

Maris thought of Sena, dead nearly fifteen years now, as she had been in the last years of her very long life. The fallen, crippled flyer, standing on the cliff at Woodwings, shouting herself hoarse as she tried to convey her knowledge of flight to the young Woodwingers circling in the air above her. Never to fly again herself, permanently grounded with one almost useless leg and one blind, milkwhite eye. Forever standing below, staring fiercely into the storm-winds, watching the Woodwingers fly away from her, year after year. All those years until she finally died. How had she borne it?

A deep shudder went through Maris, and she shook her head wildly.

“Maris?” S’Rella sounded bewildered. “You’ve always been the staunchest supporter of Woodwings—of the whole system. There’s still so much you could do… What’s wrong?”

Maris stared at her, goaded, wanting to scream. She said, very softly, “How can you ask that?”

“But…” S’Rella spread her hands. “What can you do here? Maris, I know how you feel—believe me. But your life isn’t over. I remember that once you told me that we, we flyers, were your family. We still are. It’s foolish to exile yourself like this. Come back. You need us now, and we still need you. Woodwings is your place—without you, it could never have existed. Don’t turn your back on it now.”

“You don’t understand,” Maris said. “How could you? You can still fly.”

S’Rella reached out and took Maris’ hand, and held it even though it remained limp, not answering her pressure.

“I’m trying to understand,” she said. “I know how you must be suffering. Believe me, ever since I heard the news I’ve thought about what my life would be if I were injured. I have been grounded for a year at times, you know, so I have some idea, even though I’ve never had to come to terms with the idea of its being permanent. Everyone has to think about it. The end comes for all flyers, you know. Sometimes it comes in competition, sometimes in injury, often just in age.”

“I always thought I would die,” Maris said quietly. “I never thought about going on living and being unable to fly.”

S’Rella nodded. “I know,” she said. “But now it has happened, and you have to adjust to it.”

“I am,” Maris said. “I was.” She pulled her hand away. “I’ve made a new life for myself here. If you hadn’t come—if I could just forget—” She saw by the quick flash of pain in S’Rella’s face that she had wounded her friend.

But S’Rella shook her head and looked determined. “You can’t forget,” she said. “That’s hopeless. You have to go on, to do the things you can do. Come and teach at Woodwings. Stay close to your friends. Hiding here—you’re just pretending…”

“All right, it’s pretense,” Maris said harshly. She stood up and walked to the window where she looked blindly out at the wet blur of brown and green that was the forest. “It’s a pretense I need, in order to go on living. I can’t bear the constant reminder of what I’ve lost. When I saw you standing in the doorway all I could think of was your wings, and how I wished I could strap them on and fly away from here. I thought I’d stopped thinking about that. I thought I had settled down here. I love Evan, and I’m learning a lot as his assistant. I’m doing something useful. I’ve been enjoying having Coll around, and getting to know his daughter. And the sight of one pair of wings sweeps it all away, turns my life to dust.”

Silence filled the cabin. Finally Maris turned away from the window to look at S’Rella. She saw the tears on her friend’s face, but also the look of stubborn disapproval.

“All right,” Maris said, sighing. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me what you think.”

“I think,” said S’Rella, “that what you are doing is wrong. I think you are making things harder for yourself in the long run. You can’t wipe out your life as if it never was; you don’t live in a world without flyers. You may hide here and pretend to be an assistant healer, but you can never really forget that you were, that you are a flyer. We still need you—there’s still a life for you. You haven’t come to terms with your life yet—you’re still avoiding it. Come to Woodwings, Maris.”

“No. No. No. S’Rella—I couldn’t bear it. You may be right, and what I am doing may be wrong, but I’ve thought about it, and it’s the only thing I can do. I can’t bear the pain. I have to go on living, and to do that I must forget what I’ve lost, or I’ll go mad. You don’t know—I couldn’t bear to see them all flying around me, rejoicing in the air, and to know that I could never again join them. Forever to be reminded of what I’ve lost. I can’t. Woodwings will survive without me. I can’t go back there.” She stopped, shaking with intensity, with fear, with the renewed reminder of her loss.

S’Rella rose and held her until the shaking passed.

“All right,” S’Rella said softly. “I won’t press you. I have no right to tell you what you should do. But… if you should change your mind, if you think about it again when more time has passed, I know the position would always be open to you. It’s your decision. I won’t mention it again.”

The next day she and Evan rose early, and spent the morning humoring a sick, querulous old man in his lonely forest hut. Bari, who had been up and playing at first light, tagged along after them, since her father was still asleep. She had better luck than either of them in bringing a smile to the old man’s thin lips. Maris was glad. She herself was depressed and out of sorts, and the ancient’s whining complaints only made her more irritable. She had to suppress the urge to snap at him.

“You’d think he was dying, the way he carried on,” Maris said as they started the walk back home.

Little Bari looked at her strangely. “He is,” she said in a small voice. She looked at Evan for support.

The healer nodded. “The child’s right,” he said grumpily. “The signs are clear enough, Maris. Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve taught you? Bari is more attentive than you’ve been of late. I doubt that he’ll last three months. Why do you think I made him the tesis?”

“Signs?” Maris felt confused and embarrassed. She could memorize the things Evan told her easily enough, but applying the knowledge was so much harder. “He was complaining about aches in his bones,” she said. “I thought—he was old, after all, and old people often—”

Evan made an impatient noise. “Bari,” he said, “how did you know he was dying?”

“I felt in his elbows and knees, like you showed me.” she said eagerly, proud of the things she learned from Evan. “They were lumpy, getting hard. Under his chin, too. Behind the whiskers. And his skin felt cold. Did he have the puff?”

“The puff,” Evan said, pleased. “Children often recover from it, but not adults, never.”

“I—I didn’t notice,” Maris said.

“No,” Evan said. “You didn’t.”

They walked on in silence, Bari skipping along happily, Maris feeling inordinately tired.

There was the faintest breath of spring in the air.

Maris felt her spirits lift as she walked through the clean dawn air with Evan. The Landsman’s grim keep waited at the end of the journey, but the sun was out, the air was fresh, and the breeze felt almost caressing through the cloak she wore. Red, blue, and yellow flowers gleamed like jewels amid the gray-green moss and dark humus alongside the road. Birds, like quick glimpses of flame or sky, flew through the trees and sang. It was a day when being alive and moving was a pleasure in itself.

Beside her, Evan was silent. Maris knew he was puzzling over the message that had brought them out. They had been awakened before it was light by a pounding at the door. One of the Landsman’s runners, out of breath, had blurted out the need for a healer at the keep. He could say no more, knew no more—just that someone was injured and needed aid.

Evan, warm and bemused from bed, his white hair standing up like a bird’s ruffled feathers, was not eager to go anywhere.

“Everyone knows the Landsman keeps his own healer by him for his family and servants,” he objected. “Why can’t he deal with this emergency?”

The runner, who obviously knew no more than he had been told, looked confused. “The healer, Reni, has lately been confined for treason, suspected treason,” he said in his soft, breathless voice.

Evan swore. “Treason! That’s madness. Rent would not—oh, very well, stop chewing your lip, boy. We’ll come, my assistant and I, and see about this injury.”

All too soon they reached the narrow valley and saw the Landsman’s massive stone keep looming ahead of them. Maris pulled her cloak, which she had worn loosely open, more tightly around her. The air was colder here: spring had not ventured past the mountain wall. There were no flowers or bright tendrils of ivy to relieve the dull-colored rock and lichen, and the only birds that sounded were the harsh-voiced scavenger gulls.

An elderly, scar-faced landsguard with a knife in her belt and a bow strapped to her back met them before they had advanced more than a few feet into the valley. She questioned them closely, searched them, and took charge of Evan’s surgical kit, before escorting them past two checkpoints and through the gate into the keep. Maris noticed that there were even more landsguard patrolling the high, wide walls than on her last visit, and saw a new fierceness, a repressed excitement, in the drilling troops within the courtyard.

The Landsman met them in an outer hall, alone except for his omnipresent guards five steps behind him. His face darkened when he saw Maris, and he addressed Evan harshly.

“I sent for you, healer, and not for this wingless flyer.”

“Maris is my assistant now,” Evan said calmly. “As you yourself should know very well, she is not a flyer.”

“Once a flyer, always a flyer,” growled the Landsman. “She has flyer friends, and we do not need her here. The security—”

“She is a healer’s apprentice,” Evan said, interrupting. “I vouch for her. The code that binds me will also bind her. We will not gossip of anything we learn here.”

The Landsman still frowned. Maris was rigid with fury—how could he speak of her like that, ignoring her as if she were not even present?

Finally the Landsman said, grudgingly, “I do not trust this ‘apprenticeship,’ but I will take your word on her behalf, healer. But bear in mind, if she should carry tales of what she sees here today, both of you will hang.”

“We made haste to get here,” Evan said coldly. “But I judge by your manner that there is no cause for hurry.”

The Landsman turned aside without replying and sent for another brace of landsguard. Then, without a backward glance, he left them.

The landsguard, both young and heavily armed, escorted Evan and Maris down steep stone steps into a tunnel carved out of the solid rock of the mountain, far below the living quarters of the fortress. Tapers burned smokily on the walls at wide intervals, providing a shifting, uncertain light. The air in the narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel smelled of mold and of acrid smoke. Maris felt a sudden wave of claustrophobia and clutched Evan’s hand.

At last they came to a branching corridor, set with heavy wooden doors. At one of these doors they stopped, and the guards removed the heavy bars that locked it. Inside was a small stone cell with a rough pallet on the floor and one high, round window. Leaning against the wall was a young woman with long, pale blond hair. Her lips were swollen, one eye blackened, and there were bloodstains on her clothes. It took Maris a few moments to recognize her.

“Tya,” she said, wondering.

The landsguard left them, bolting the door behind them, with the assurance they would be right outside if anything was needed.

While Maris still stared, uncomprehending, Evan went to Tya’s side. “What happened?” he asked.

“The Landsman’s bullies were none too gentle about arresting me,” Tya said in her cool, ironic voice. She might have been speaking about someone else. “Or maybe it was my mistake to fight them.”

“Where are you hurt?” Evan asked.

Tya grimaced. “From the feel of it, they broke my collarbone. And chipped a tooth. That’s all—just bruises, otherwise. All that blood came from my lips.”

“Maris, my kit,” said Evan.

Maris carried it to his side. She looked at Tya. “How could he arrest a flyer? Why?”

“The charge is treason,” Tya said. Then she gasped as Evan’s fingers probed around her neck.

“Sit,” said Evan, helping her down. “It will be better.”

“He must be mad,” Maris said. The word called up the ghost of the Mad Landsman of Kennehut. In grief, hearing of his son’s death in a far-off land, he had murdered the messenger who flew the unwelcome news. The flyers had shunned him afterward, until proud, rich Kennehut became a desolation, ruined and empty, its very name a synonym for madness and despair. No Landsman since would dream of harming a flyer. Until now.

Maris shook her head, gazing at Tya but not really seeing her. “Has he lost his reason so far as to imagine that the messages you carry from his enemies come from your own heart? To call it treason is wrong in itself. The man must be mad. You aren’t subject to him—he knows that flyers are above petty local laws. As his equal, how could you do anything treasonous? What does he say you did?”

“Oh, he knows what I did,” Tya said. “I don’t claim I was arrested on false pretenses. I simply didn’t expect him to find out. I’m still not sure how he knew, when I thought I’d been so careful.” She winced. “But now it’s all for nothing. There will be war, just as fierce and bloody as if I’d stayed out of it.”

“I don’t understand.”

Tya grinned at her. Her black eyes were still sharp and aware despite her bruises and her obvious pain. “No? I’ve heard that some old-time flyers could carry messages without knowing what they said. But I always knew—each belligerent threat, each tempting promise, each potential alliance for war. I learned things I had no intention of saying. I changed the messages. Slightly, at first, making them a little more diplomatic. And returned with responses that would delay or sidestep the war he was after. It was working—until he found out about my deception.”

“All right, Tya,” Evan said. “No more talking just now. I’m going to set your collarbone, and it will hurt. Can you hold still, or do you want Maris to help hold you down?”

“I’ll be good, healer,” Tya said. She took a deep breath.

Maris stared blankly at Tya, hardly believing what she had just heard. Tya had done the unthinkable—she had altered a message entrusted to her. She had meddled in land-bound politics, instead of staying above them as a flyer always did. The mad act of jailing a flyer no longer seemed so mad—what else could the Landsman have done? No wonder he had been so disturbed by Maris’ presence. When word reached other flyers…

“What does the Landsman plan to do with you?” Maris asked.

For the first time, Tya looked somber. “The usual punishment for treason is death.”

“He wouldn’t dare!”

“I wonder. I was afraid that he planned to bury me here, kill me secretly and silence the landsguard who had arrested me. Then I would simply vanish, and be presumed lost at sea. But now that you have been here, Maris, I don’t think he can. You would denounce him.”

“And then we would both hang, as treasonous liars,” said Evan. His tone was light. More seriously, he added, “No, I think you are right, Tya. The Landsman would not have sent for me if he meant to kill you in secret. Much easier just to let you die. The more people who know of your arrest, the greater the danger to himself.”

“There’s flyer’s law—the Landsman has no right to judge a flyer,” Maris said. “He’ll simply have to turn you over to the flyers. A court will be called, and you’ll be stripped of your wings. Oh, Tya. I never heard of a flyer doing such a thing.”

“I’ve shocked you, Maris, haven’t I?” Tya smiled. “You can’t see beyond the horror of breaking tradition—not even you? I told you you were no one-wing.”

“Do you think it makes a difference?” Maris asked quietly. “Do you expect that the one-wings will flock to your side, and applaud this crime? That somehow you’ll be allowed to keep your wings? What Landsman would have you?”

“The Landsmen won’t like it,” Tya said, “but perhaps it is time for them to learn they can’t control us. I have friends among the one-wings who agree with me. The Landsmen have too much power, particularly here in Eastern. And by what right? By birth? Birth used to determine who wore wings, but your Council changed that. Why should it determine who rules?

“You don’t realize the things a Landsman can do, Maris. It’s different in Western. And you were above it all, like all the old flyers. But it is different for a one-wing.

“We grow up like all the other land-bound, nothing special about us. And after we win our wings, the Landsmen still see us as subjects. The wings we bear command their respect for us as their equals, but it’s a fragile thing, that respect. At any competition we might lose the wings and again be weak, lowly citizens.

“In Eastern, in the Embers, in most of Southern and even a few islands in Western—wherever the Landsmen inherit their power—they look with respect upon the flyers who were born to wings. They may disguise it, but they feel a sort of contempt for those of us who had to work and struggle to win a pair of wings. They treat us only superficially as their equals. All the time they are trying to control us, trying to buy and sell us, commanding us, feeding us messages to fly as if we were no more than a flock of trained birds. Well, what I’ve done will shake them, make them look again. We’re not their servants, and we won’t submit anymore to flying messages we despise, carrying death-warrants and ultimatums to ignite wars that might destroy our families, friends, and other innocents!”

“You can’t pick and choose like that,” Maris interrupted. “You can’t—the messenger isn’t responsible for the content of the message.”

“That’s what the flyers told themselves for centuries,” Tya said. Her eyes glittered with anger. “But of course the messenger is responsible! I have brains, a heart, a conscience—I won’t pretend I don’t.”

Abruptly, like a sluice of cold water, the thought “This has nothing to do with me” doused Maris’ passion. She was left feeling angry and bitter. What was she doing arguing flyer business? She was no flyer. She looked at Evan. “If you are through here, we had better leave,” she said dully.

He rested a hand on her shoulder and nodded to her, then looked to Tya. “It’s only a minor fracture,” he said. “There should be no problem with its healing. Just rest—don’t do anything violent that might dislodge the brace.”

Tya grinned crookedly, showing her discolored teeth. “Like trying to escape? I have no activities planned. But you’d better tell the Landsman, so his guards don’t forget themselves and massage me with their clubs.”

Evan knocked on the door for the guards, and almost immediately came the noise of the heavy bolts being drawn back.

“Goodbye, Maris,” Tya called.

Maris hesitated, about to walk through the door. Then she turned back. “I don’t think the Landsman will dare to try you himself,” she said earnestly. “He will have to let your peers judge you. But I don’t think they will be kind, Tya. What you have done is too dangerous. It affects too many people—it affects everyone.”

Tya stared at her. “So was what you did, Maris. But the world is ready for another change, I think. I know what I did was right, even if I failed.”

“Maybe the world is ready for another change,” Maris said steadily. “But is this the way we should change it? You’ve only replaced threats with lies. Do you really think flyers as a whole are wiser and more noble than Landsmen? That they should bear the whole responsibility for choosing what messages to fly, and which to alter, and which to refuse?”

Tya looked back at her, unmoved. “I’d do it again,” she said.

The trip through the tunnels seemed shorter on their return. The Landsman was again waiting for them in the drafty outer hall, and he looked at them both sharply, as if seeking signs of anger or fear. “A most unfortunate accident,” he said.

Evan said, “She suffered only a fractured collarbone and a few bruises. She should recover quickly if she is given good food and allowed to rest.”

“She will have the best of care during her detention here,” said the Landsman. He looked at Maris, although he directed his words to Evan. “I’ve sent Jem to spread word of her arrest. A thankless task—the flyers have no leaders, no rational organization—that would make things too easy. Instead word must be spread among as many of them as possible, and that takes time. But it will be done. Jem has flown for me for many years, and his mother flew for my father. He at least I can count on.”

“Then you intend to hand Tya over to the flyers for trial?” said Maris.

The Landsman’s mouth twitched spasmodically. He looked at Evan, making an elaborate charade of ignoring Maris. “It occurred to me that the flyers might wish to send someone to represent their viewpoint. To formally condemn Tya’s actions, to plead for mercy, to present any mitigating factors. But the crime was committed against me—against Thayos—and only the Landsman of Thayos can hold trial and mete out punishment in such a case. You agree?”

“I know nothing of the law, nor of what Landsmen must do,” Evan said quietly. “The ways of healing are what I know.”

Maris felt the warning pressure of Evan’s hand on her arm, and said nothing. It was a hard silence. For years, she had always said what she thought.

The Landsman smiled at Evan. It was a gloating, unpleasant expression. “Perhaps you would like to learn? You and your assistant are welcome to stay and sup with me, and afterward I can promise you a most edifying entertainment. A traitor, Reni the healer, is to be hanged at sunset.”

“For what crime?”

“Treason, as I said. This Reni had family on Thrane. And he was often seen in the company of the traitorous flyer—was known, in fact, to cohabit with her. He was her accomplice. Won’t you stay and observe the fate of those who betray me?”

Maris felt sick.

“I think not,” said Evan. “Now, if you will excuse us, we must be on our way.”

Evan and Maris did not speak again until the lands-guard had left them at the mouth of the valley and they were on the road toward home, presumably safely away from unfriendly ears.

“Poor Reni,” Evan said then.

“Poor Tya,” said Maris. “He means to hang her, too. Oh, what she did was wrong, no doubt, but what a fate! I don’t know what the flyers will do, but they can’t tolerate this. A flyer can’t be tried and executed by a Landsman!”

“It may not happen,” Evan said. “Poor Reni will die, no doubt, but that may be enough to appease the Landsman. He’s a man who must have blood, but he is not totally mad. He surely realizes that he will have to give Tya over to the flyers, eventually; that her punishment must come from them.”

“Whatever happens to Tya is none of my business anyway,” Maris said with a sigh. “It’s a hard habit to break, after more than forty years of thinking of myself as a flyer. But I’m a land-bound now, like any other, and what happens to Tya shouldn’t mean anything to me.”

Evan put his arm around her and hugged her close as they walked. “Maris, no one expects you to forget your life as a flyer, or to stop feeling those ties.”

“I know,” said Maris. “No one except me. But it’s no good, Evan. I have to. I don’t know how else to go on. When I was younger I thought the story of Woodwings was romantic. I thought that dreams were the most important things of all, and that if you wanted something strongly and surely enough, you would eventually have it, even if it meant dying to attain it. It never occurred to me to wonder what might have happened to Woodwings if he had been rescued from the ocean, if his legendary fall had not killed him. If he’d been picked up floating on those ridiculous wooden wings of his, and given back to his land-bound friends. How he would have lived with the failure, with his dreams shattered. What compromises he would have made.” She sighed and rested her head on Evan’s shoulder. “I’ve had a long life as a flyer—longer than many. I should be content. I wish I could be. In some ways I’m still a child, Evan. I never learned how to deal with disappointment—I thought there was always a way to get what I wanted, without giving up or compromising. It’s hard, Evan.”

“Growth can be painful,” Evan said. “And healing takes time. Give it time, Maris.”

Coll and Bari were gone. They planned to tour Thayos one last time before taking ship to other Eastern islands. They would come back before very long, Coll assured Maris and Evan, but Maris suspected that one thing would lead to another, and that it would be a matter of years, rather than months, before she saw either Coll or his daughter again.

In fact, it was only a matter of days.

Coll was raging. “Permission of the Landsman is required to leave this godforsaken rock,” he said in response to Maris’ surprised greeting. He was almost shouting. “A time of crisis, when singers might be spies!”

Bari peeked shyly around her father’s bulk, then rushed forward to hug first Maris and then Evan.

“I’m glad we came back,” she murmured.

“Has war with Thrane been declared, then?” asked Evan. Despite the quick flash of a smile for Bari, his face was grim.

Coll threw himself into the large chair near the fireplace. “I don’t know if it is called war yet or not,” he said. “But the story abroad in the streets was that the Landsman had just sent three warships crammed with landsguard to wrest control of that iron mine.” He fiddled with his guitar as he spoke, his restless fingers striking soft discords. “And while we wait for the outcome of this little venture, no one is to land on or leave Thayos without the Landsman’s express, personal permission. The traders are furious, but afraid to protest.” Coll scowled. “Wait until I’m decently away from here! I’ll make a lyric that will blister the Landsman’s ears when it gets back to him. And it will, it will.”

Maris laughed. “Now you sound like Barrion. He always said you singers were the ones who really ruled.”

That finally drew a smile from Coll, but Evan remained grim. “No song will heal the wounded, or bring the dead back to life,” he said. “If war is at hand, we must leave the forest for Port Thayos. That is where they will bring the wounded, those that survive the crossing. I’ll be needed there.”

“The streets are mad just now,” said Coll. “Rumors and wild stories of all sorts. The town has an ugly feel to it. The Landsman has hanged his healer, and people are afraid to go to the keep. There will be trouble soon, and not just with Thrane.” His eyes found Maris. “Something is going on with the flyers as well. I must have counted a dozen pair of wings coming and going over the Strait. War messages, I assumed, but I drank with a tanner in the Scylla’s Head who said more. She has a sister in the landsguard, she told me, and she said her sister bragged of arresting a flyer not long ago. The Landsman has taken it upon himself to try a flyer for treason! Can you believe that?”

“Yes,” Maris said. “It’s true.”

“Ah,” said Coll. He looked surprised, and distracted from his speech. “Well. Could I have some tea?”

“I’ll get it,” said Evan.

“Go on,” said Maris. “What other rumors?”

“You may know more than I. What of this arrest? I hardly believed it. How much do you know?”

Maris hesitated. “We were warned not to speak of it.”

Coll made an impatient thrumming noise with his guitar. “I’m your brother, damn it. Singer or no, I can keep silent. Out with it!”

So Maris told him about their summons to the keep, and what they had learned there. “That would explain a lot,” he said when she had finished. “Oh, I’d heard of it anyway—people talk, even landsguard, and the Landsman’s secrets aren’t as well kept as he imagines. But I never dreamed it was true. No wonder so many flyers have been about. Let the Landsman try to keep flyers in or out!” He grinned.

“The other rumors,” Maris prompted.

“Yes,” Coll said. “Well, did you know that Val One-Wing has been on Thayos?”

“Val? Here?”

“He has left again now. They told me he arrived only a few days ago, looking very worn, as from a long flight. He wasn’t alone, either. Five or six others were with him. Flyers, all of them.”

“Did you hear any names?”

“Only Val’s. He’s notorious. But some of the others were described to me. A stocky Southern woman with white hair. A huge man with a black beard and a scylla-tooth necklace. Several Westerners, including two enough alike to be brothers.”

“Damen and Athen,” Maris said. “I’m not sure of the others.”

Evan returned with cups of steaming tea and a platter of thick sliced bread. “I am,” he said. “Of one, at least. The man with the necklace is Katinn of Lomarron. He comes to Thayos frequently.”

“Of course,” Maris said. “Katinn. A leader among Eastern one-wings.”

“Was there more?” Evan asked.

Coll set aside his guitar and blew on his tea to cool it. “I was told that Val came representing the flyers, to try to talk the Landsman into releasing this woman he’s imprisoned, this Tya.”

“A bluff,” Maris said. “Val doesn’t represent the flyers. All those you named are one-wings. The old families, the traditionalists, still hate Val. They’d never let him speak for them.”

“Yes, I heard that too,” Coll said. “Anyway, it was claimed that Val offered to summon a flyer’s court to judge Tya. He was willing enough to let the Landsman keep Tya imprisoned until—”

Maris nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes. But what did the Landsman say?”

Coll shrugged. “Some say he was very cool, some say he and Val One-Wing quarreled loudly. In any case, he insisted that the flyer would be tried in the Landsman’s own court, and that he would do the judging and sentencing himself. The word on the streets is that the verdict has already been reached.”

“So poor Reni wasn’t enough for him,” Evan murmured. “The Landsman must have another death to avenge his pride.”

“What did Val say to that?” Maris asked.

Coll sipped his tea. “I gather Val left after his meeting with the Landsman. Some say the one-wings are going to raid the keep and rescue Tya. There’s talk of a flyer’s Council too, summoned by Val. To invoke a sanction against Thayos, and shun it.”

“No wonder the people are frightened,” Evan said.

“Flyers should be frightened, too,” Coll said. “Feeling among the locals is running against them. In a tavern near the northside cliffs I overheard a conversation about how the flyers have always secretly ruled Windhaven, deciding the fate of islands and of individuals by the messages they bear and the lies they tell.”

“That’s absurd!” Maris said, shocked. “How can they believe that?”

“The point is that they do,” Coll replied. “I am a flyer’s son. Never a flyer, although I was raised to be. I understand the traditions of the flyers, the bonds that link them, the feeling they have of being a society apart from all others. But I also know the people the flyers call ‘land-bound,’ as if they were all the same, joined together in one large family like the flyers are.”

He set down his mug of tea and again picked up his guitar, as if holding it gave him some special eloquence.

“You know how scornful the flyers can be of land-bound, Maris,” he said. “I don’t think you realize how resentful the land-bound can be of the flyers.”

“I have land-bound friends,” Maris said. “And the one-wings all began as land-bound.”

Coll sighed. “Yes, there are those who worship the flyers. Lodge men who devote their lives to caring for them, children who want to touch a flyer’s wings, hangers-on who get a special thrill and a special status from coaxing a flyer into bed. But there are others as well. The land-bound who resent flyers seldom seek them out as friends, Maris.”

“I know there are problems. I haven’t forgotten the hostility we faced when Val got his wings, the threats, the beating, the coolness. But surely things are changing, now that the society of flyers is no longer limited by birth.”

Coll shook his head. “It’s grown worse,” he said. “In the old days, when it was a matter of birth, a lot of people felt flyers were special. In many of the Southern islands the flyers are priests, a special caste blessed by their Sky God. In Artellia they are princes. Just as the Landsmen of Eastern inherited their offices from their parents, so did the flyers inherit their wings.

“But no one now could make the mistake of thinking flyers divinely chosen. Suddenly there are new questions. How did this grubby farm-child I grew up with suddenly become so high and mighty? What sets this former neighbor apart, and gives him the freedom, power, and wealth of a flyer? These one-wings aren’t as aloof as the traditional flyers—they lord over their old companions sometimes, or meddle in local affairs. They don’t withdraw entirely from island politics—they still have local interests. It makes for bad feelings.”

“Twenty years ago no Landsman would have dared seize a flyer,” said Evan thoughtfully. “But twenty years ago, would any flyer have dared to misrepresent a message?”

“Of course not,” said Maris.

“I wonder, though, how many will believe that?” Coll added. “Now that it’s happened, it’s clear that it might have happened before. Those farmers I overheard were convinced that the flyers have been manipulating messages all along. From what I heard, the Landsman of Thayos is becoming rather a hero for being the one to flush out the truth.”

“A hero?” Evan was disgusted.

“It can’t all change because of one well-meaning lie,” Maris said stubbornly.

“No,” said Coll. “It’s been changing all along. And it’s all your fault.”

“Me? I’ve nothing to do with this.”

“No?” Coll grinned at her. “Think again. Barrion used to tell me a story, big sister. About how he and you floated in a boat together, waiting to steal back your wings from Corm, so that you could call your Council. Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember!”

“Well, he said you floated there quite a while, waiting for Corm to leave his house, and all that waiting gave Barrion a chance to think over what you and he were doing. At one point, he said, he sat cleaning his nails with his dagger, and it occurred to him that maybe the best thing he could do was to use that dagger on you. It would have saved Windhaven a lot of chaos, he said. Because if you won, there were going to be more changes than you imagined, and several generations worth of pain. Barrion thought the world of you, Maris, but he also thought you were naive. You can’t change one note in the middle of a song, he told me. Once you make the first change, others have to follow, until you’ve redone the whole song. Everything relates, you see.”

“So why did he help me?”

“Barrion was always a troublemaker,” Coll said. “I guess he wanted to redo the whole song, make something better out of it.” Her stepbrother grinned wickedly. “Besides,” he added, “he never liked Corm.”

After a week without news, Coll decided to return to Port Thayos, to hear what he could. The docks and taverns where he plied his trade were always a rich source of news. “Maybe I’ll even visit the Landsman’s keep,” he said jauntily. “I’ve been making up a song about our Landsman here, and I’d love to see his face when he hears it!”

“Don’t you dare, Coll,” Maris said.

He grinned. “I’m not mad yet, big sister. But if the Landsman likes good singing, a visit might be worthwhile. I might learn something. Just keep Bari safe for me.”

Two days later a wineseller brought Evan a patient: a huge, shaggy black dog, one of two such monstrous hounds that pulled his wooden cart from village to village. A hooded torturer had mauled the animal and now it lay among the wineskins, crusted with blood and filth.

Evan could do nothing to save the beast, but for his efforts he was offered a skin of sour red wine. “They tried that traitor flyer,” the wineseller reported as they drank together by the fire. “She’s to hang.”

“When?” Maris asked.

“Who’s to say? Flyers are everywhere, and the Landsman’s afraid of them, I think. She’s locked up now in his keep. Think he’s waiting to see what those flyers do. If it was me, I’d kill her and have done with it. But I wasn’t born Landsman.”

Maris stood in the doorway when he departed, watching the man and the surviving dog straining together in the traces. Evan came up behind her and put his arms around her. “How do you feel?”

“Confused,” Maris said, without turning. “And afraid. Your Landsman has challenged the flyers directly. Do you realize how serious that is, Evan? They have to do something—they can’t let this pass.” She touched his hand. “I wonder what they’re saying on the Eyrie tonight? I know I can’t let myself be drawn into flyer affairs, but it’s hard…”

“They are your friends,” Evan said. “Your concern is natural.”

“My concern will bring me more pain,” Maris said. “Still…” She shook her head and turned to face him, still within the circle of his arms. “It makes me realize how small my own problems are,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to trade places with Tya tonight, though she’s still a flyer and I’m not.”

“Good,” Evan said. He kissed her lightly. “For it’s you I want here by my side, not Tya.”

Maris smiled at him, and together they went inside.

They came in the middle of the night, four strangers dressed as fisherfolk, in heavy boots and sweaters and dark caps trimmed with seacat fur, and they brought the strong, salt smell of the sea with them. Three of them wore long bone knives, and had eyes the color of ice on a winter lake. The fourth one spoke. “You don’t remember me,” he said, “but we’ve met before, Maris. I’m Arrilan, of the Broken Ring.”

Maris studied him, remembering a pretty youth she had met once or twice. Beneath three days’ growth of blond beard, his face was unrecognizable, but his piercing blue eyes seemed familiar. “I believe you are,” she said. “You’re a long way from home, flyer. Where are your wings? And your manners?”

Arrilan smiled a humorless smile. “My manners? Forgive my rudeness, but I come in haste, and at considerable risk. We made the crossing from Thrynel to see you, and the seas were choppy and dangerous for a boat as small as ours. When this old man tried to send us away, I ran out of patience.”

“If you call Evan an old man again, I’m going to run out of patience,” Maris said coldly. “Why are you here? Why didn’t you fly in?”

“My wings are safe on Thrynel. It was thought best to send someone to you in secret, someone whose face is not known on Thayos. Being from the Embers, and new among the flyers, I was chosen. My parents were fisher-folk, and I was raised to the life.” He removed his cap, shook out his fine blond hair. “May we sit?” he asked. “We have important business to discuss.”

“Evan?” Maris asked.

“Sit,” Evan said. “I will make tea.”

“Ah.” Arrilan smiled. “That would be most welcome. The seas are cold. I’m sorry if I spoke too harshly. These are hard times.”

“Yes,” Evan agreed. He went outside to draw water for the kettle.

“Why are you here?” Maris asked when Arrilan and his three silent companions were seated. “What’s all this about?”

“I was sent to bring you out of here. You can hardly take ship from Port Thayos, you know. You’d not be permitted to leave. We have a small fishing boat hidden not far from here. It will be safe. If the landsguard seize us, we are simple fisherfolk from Thrynel blown northeast by a storm.”

“My escape seems well-planned,” Maris said. “A pity no one thought to consult me about it.” She gazed at the disguised flyer, frowning. “Whose idea was this? Who sent you?”

“Val One-Wing.”

Maris smiled. “Of course. Who else? But why does Val want me taken from Thayos?”

“For your own safety,” Arrilan said. “As an ex-flyer living here, helpless, your life might be in danger.”

“I’m no threat to the Landsman,” Maris said. “He’d have no cause to—”

The young flyer shook his head vehemently. “Not the Landsman. The people. Don’t you know what’s going on?”

“It seems I don’t,” Maris said. “Perhaps you should tell me.”

“News of Tya’s arrest has spread all over Windhaven, even to Artellia and the Embers. Many of the land-bound have begun muttering their distrust of flyers. Even the Landsmen.” He flushed. “The Landsman of the Broken Ring summoned me as soon as she heard, and demanded to know if I had ever lied or twisted a message. I was forced to swear my loyalty to her. Even as she questioned me, it was obvious she doubted my word. And she threatened me! She threatened me with imprisonment, as if she could, as if she had the right—” He broke off, and seemed physically to swallow his anger.

“I am a one-wing, of course,” he resumed. “All of us are suspect now, but it is worst for the one-wings. S’wena of Deeth was set upon by thugs and beaten after speaking in Tya’s defense in a tavern argument. Others have been called names, shunned, even spat upon in Eastern towns. Jem, who is as traditional as can be, was hit with a rock yesterday on Thrane. And Katinn’s house on Lomarron was fired while he was away.”

“I had no idea it was so bad,” said Maris.

“Yes,” said Arrilan. “And growing worse. The fever burns hottest of all here on Thayos. Val thinks the mob will come for you soon, so we were sent to bring you to safety.”

Evan had returned and was preparing the tea. “Maybe you should go,” he said to Maris, concern in his voice. “I hate to think of you in danger. In time, this will blow over, and you can return, or I could come to you.”

Maris shook her head. “I don’t think I’m in any danger. Perhaps, if I paraded up and down the streets of Port Thayos, crying out my concern for Tya… but here in the woods I’m a harmless old ex-flyer, who has done nothing to rouse anyone’s anger.”

“Mobs aren’t reasonable,” Arrilan said. “You don’t understand—you must come with us, for your safety.”

“How kind of Val, to be so concerned with my safety,” Maris said, staring at Arrilan. “And how unusual. At a time like this, Val must have a lot on his mind. I really can’t imagine him taking the time and effort to devise an elaborate scheme to rescue poor old Maris, who hardly needs rescuing. If Val truly sent you to rescue me, it must be because he’s thought of some way I can be of use to him.”

Arrilan was plainly startled. “He—you’re mistaken. He’s very much concerned for your safety. He—”

“And what else is he concerned with? You might as well tell me what you really want with me.”

Arrilan smiled ruefully. “Val said you’d see through the story,” he said. He sounded admiring. “I would have told you anyway, once we had you safely away from here. Val has called a flyers’ Council.”

Maris nodded. “Where?”

“On South Arren. It’s close, but removed from the immediate hostilities, and Val has friends there. It will take a month or more for the flyers to assemble, but we have time. The Landsman is afraid, and he’ll be too cautious to move until he sees what comes of the Council.”

“What does Val intend?”

“What else? He will ask for a sanction against Thayos, to be in effect until Tya is freed. No flyer will land here, or on any other island that trades with Thayos. This rock will be isolated from the world. The Landsman will give in or be destroyed.”

“If Val has his way. The one-wings are still a minority, and Tya is no innocent victim,” Maris pointed out.

“Tya is a flyer,” Arrilan said, gratefully taking the mug of tea Evan handed him. “Val is counting on flyer loyalty. One-wing or no, she is a flyer, and we can’t abandon her.”

“I wonder,” said Maris.

“Oh, there will be a fight, of course. We suspect Corm and some others may try to use this incident to discredit all one-wings and close the academies.” He smiled over the rim of his mug. “You haven’t helped, you know. Val said you picked the worst possible time to fall.”

“I wasn’t given any choice,” Maris said. “But you still haven’t said why you came for me.”

“Val wants you to preside.”

“What?”

“It’s traditional to have a retired flyer conduct the Council, you know that. Val thinks that you would be the best choice. You’re widely known and widely respected, among one-wings and flyer-born both, and we’d have no trouble getting you accepted. Any other one-wing will be rejected. And we need someone we can count on, not some crusty old relic who wants everything like it used to be. Val thinks it can make a big difference.”

“It can,” said Maris, remembering the pivotal role that Jamis the Senior had played in the Council that Corm had called. “But Val will have to find someone else. I’m through with flying and with flyers’ Councils. I want to be left in peace.”

“There can be no peace until we have won.”

“I’m not a stone on Val’s geechi board, and the sooner he learns that the better! Val knows what it would cost me to do as he asks. How dare he ask? He sent you to trick me, to lie to me with talk of safety, because he knew I would refuse. I can’t bear to see one flyer—do you think I want to be with a thousand of them, watching them play in the sky and listening to them trade stories and finally stand alone, an old cripple, and watch them fly away and leave me? Do you think I’d like that?” Maris realized she had been shouting at him. Her pain was a knot in her stomach.

Arrilan’s voice was sullen. “I scarcely know you—how could you expect me to know how you felt? I’m sorry. I’m sure Val is sorry, too. But it can’t be helped. This is more important than your feelings. Everything depends on this Council, and Val wants you there.”

“Tell Val that I am sorry,” Maris said quietly. “Tell him I wish him luck, but I will not go. I’m old and tired and I want to be left alone.”

Arrilan stood up. His eyes were very cold. “I told Val I would not fail him,” he said. “There are four of us against you.” He made a small gesture, and the woman on his right slid her knife from its sheath. She grinned, and Maris saw that her teeth were made of wood. The man behind her rose, and he, too, held a knife in his hand.

“Get out,” said Evan. He was standing near the door to his workroom, and in his hands was the bow he used for hunting, an arrow notched and ready.

“You could take only one of us with that,” said the woman with the wooden teeth. “If you were lucky. And you wouldn’t have time to reach for another arrow, old man.”

“True,” said Evan. “But the point of this arrow is smeared with blue tick venom, so one of you will die.”

“Put your knives away,” Arrilan said. “Please, put that down. No one need die.” He looked at Maris.

Maris said, “Did you really think you could force me into presiding over the Council?” She made a disgusted sound. “You might tell Val that if his strategy is as good as yours, the one-wings are finished.”

Arrilan glanced at his companions. “Leave us,” he said. “Wait outside.” Reluctantly the three shambled to the door. “No more threats,” Arrilan said. “I’m sorry, Maris. Maybe you can understand how desperate I feel. We need you.”

“You need the flyer I was, perhaps, but she died in a fall. Leave me alone. I’m just an old woman, a healer’s apprentice, and that’s all I aspire to be. Don’t hurt me any more by dragging me into the world.”

Contempt was plain on Arrilan’s face. “To think that they still sing of a coward like you,” he said.

When he had gone, Maris turned to Evan. She was trembling, and her head felt light and dizzy.

The healer lowered the great bow he held and set it aside. He was frowning. “Dead?” he asked bitterly. “All this time, have you been dead? I thought you were learning how to live again, but all this time you’ve seen my bed as your grave.”

“Oh, Evan, no,” she said, dismayed, wanting comfort and not still more reproach.

“It was your own word,” he said. “Do you still believe that your life ended with your fall?” His face twisted with pain and anger. “I won’t love a corpse.”

“Oh, Evan.” She sat down abruptly, feeling that her legs could no longer hold her up. “I didn’t mean—I meant only that I am dead to the flyers, or they are dead to me. That part of my life is finished.”

“I don’t think it’s that easy,” Evan said. “If you try to kill a part of yourself, you risk killing everything. It’s like what your brother said—rather, what Barrion said—about trying to change just one note in a song.”

“I value our life together, Evan,” Maris said. “Please believe me. It’s just that Arrilan—this damn Council of Val’s—brought it all back to mind. I was reminded of everything I’ve lost. It made the pain come back.”

“It made you feel sorry for yourself,” Evan said.

Maris felt a flash of annoyance. Couldn’t he understand? Could a land-bound ever understand what she had lost? “Yes,” she said, her voice cold. “It made me feel sorry for myself. Don’t I have that right?”

“The time for self-pity is long past. You have to come to terms with what you are, Maris.”

“I will. I am. I was learning to forget. But to be drawn into this thing, this flyers’ dispute, would ruin everything; it would drive me mad. Can’t you see that?”

“I see a woman denying everything she has been,” Evan said. He might have said more, but a sound made them both look around, and they saw Bari standing in the doorway, looking a little frightened.

Evan’s face softened, and he went to her and lifted her in a great bear hug. “We had some visitors,” he said. He kissed her.

“Since we’re all up, shall I make breakfast?” Maris asked.

Bari grinned and nodded. Evan’s face was unreadable. Maris turned away and set to work, determined to forget.

In the weeks that followed, they seldom spoke of Tya or the flyers’ Council, but news came to them regularly, without being sought. A crier in the Thossi village square; gossip from shopkeepers; travelers who sought out Evan for healing or advice—they all spoke of war and flyers and the belligerent Landsman.

On South Arren, Maris knew, the flyers of Windhaven were gathering. The land-bound of that small island would never forget these days, any more than the people of Greater and Lesser Amberly had ever forgotten the last Council. By now the streets of Southport and Arrenton—small, dusty towns she remembered well—would have a festive air to them. Winesellers and bakers and sausage-makers and merchants would converge from a half-dozen nearby islands, crossing treacherous seas in unsteady boats in hopes of making a few irons from the flyers. The inns and taverns would be full, and flyers would be everywhere, throngs of them, swelling the little towns to bursting. Maris could see them in her mind’s eye: flyers from Big Shotan in their dark red uniforms, cool pale Artellians with silver crowns about their brows, priests of the Sky God from Southern, Outer Islanders and Emberites whom no one had seen in years. Old friends would hug each other and talk away the nights; old lovers would trade uncertain smiles and find other ways to pass the dark hours. Singers and storytellers would tell the old tales and compose new ones to suit the occasion. The air would be full of gossip and boasting and song, fragrant with the scents of spiced kivas and roasted meat.

All of her friends would be there, Maris thought. In her dreams she saw them: young flyers and old ones, one-wings and flyer-born, the proud and the timid, the troublemakers and the compliant; all of them would assemble, and the sheen of their wings and the sound of their laughter would fill South Arren.

And they would fly.

Maris tried not to think of that, but the thought came unbidden, and in her dreams she flew with them. She could feel the wind as she slept, touching her with knowing, gentle fingers, carrying her to ecstasy. Around her she could see their wings, hundreds of them bright against the deep blue sky, turning and banking in graceful, languid circles. Her own wing caught the light of the sun and flashed briefly, brilliantly: a soundless cry of joy. She saw the wings at sunset, blood-red against an orange—and-purple sky, fading slowly to indigo, then turning silver-white again, when the last light vanished and there were only stars to fly by.

She remembered the taste of rain, and the throb of distant thunder, and the way the sea looked at dawn, just before the sun came up. She remembered the way it felt to run and cast herself from a flyers’ cliff, trusting wind and wings and her own skill to keep her in the air.

Sometimes she trembled and cried out in the night, and Evan wrapped his arms around her and whispered soothing promises, but Maris did not tell him of her dreams. He had never been a flyer, or seen a flyers’ Council, and he would not understand.

Time passed. The sick came to Evan, or he to them, and died or grew well. Maris and Bari worked at his side, doing what they could. But Maris found that her mind was not always in the work she did. Once Evan sent her into the forest to gather sweetsong, an herb he used to make tesis, but Maris found herself thinking of the Council as she wandered in the cool, damp woods. It has started by now, she thought, and in her head she heard the speeches they must be making, Val and Corm and the rest, and she weighed their arguments and set others up against them, and wondered where it would all go, and whom they had chosen to preside. When she finally returned, beneath her arm was a basket of liar’s weed, which looks almost like sweetsong but has no healing properties. Evan took the basket and sighed loudly, shaking his head. “Maris, Maris,” he muttered, “what am I to do with you?” He turned to Bari. “Girl,” he said, “go fetch me some sweetsong before it grows too dark. Your aunt is not feeling well.”

Maris could only agree with him.

Then one day Coll returned, trudging up the road with his guitar across his back, some six weeks after he had left them. He was not alone. S’Rella walked by his side, still wearing her wings, and stumbling like one half-asleep. Their faces were gray and drawn.

When Bari saw them coming, she gave a loud cry and ran to embrace her father. Maris turned to S’Rella. “S’Rella—are you all right? How did the Council go?”

S’Rella began to weep.

Maris went to her and took her old friend in her arms, feeling her shake. Twice she tried to speak, but only gasped and choked.

“It’s all right, S’Rella,” Maris said helplessly. “There, there, it’s all right, I’m here.” Her eyes found Coll’s.

“Bari,” Coll said in a shaky voice. “Go find Evan and bring him out to us.”

Bari, with a worried glance at S’Rella, ran to obey.

“I was at the Landsman’s keep,” Coll said when his daughter had gone. “He learned that I was your brother, and decided to detain me until the Council was over. S’Rella flew in after the Council. The landsguard took her and brought her to the keep as well. He had other flyers there, too. Jem, Ligar of Thrane, Katinn of Lomarron, some poor child from Western. Besides the flyers and myself, there were four other singers, a couple of storytellers, and of course all the Landsman’s own criers and runners. He wants the word to spread, you see. He wants everyone to know what he did. We were his witnesses. The landsguard marched us out into the courtyard and forced us to watch.”

“No,” Maris said, pressing S’Rella closer. “No, Coll, he didn’t dare! He couldn’t.”

“Tya of Thayos was hanged yesterday at sunset,” Coll said bluntly, “and denying it won’t change it. I saw it. She tried to make a speech, but the Landsman would not allow it. The noose wasn’t tied properly. Her neck didn’t break in the fall, and it was a long time before she strangled to death.”

S’Rella pulled away from her embrace. “You were lucky,” she said with difficulty. “He might—could have sent for you. Oh, Maris. I couldn’t look away—I—it was awful. They wouldn’t even let her—have—last words. And the worst—” Her voice caught again.

Evan and Bari were coming, but Maris barely heard their footsteps, or Evan’s cry of greeting. A great coldness had settled on her; the same numb sickness she had felt when Russ had died, when Halland had been lost at sea. “How could he dare,” she said slowly. “Didn’t anyone do anything? Was there no one to stop him?”

“Several landsguard officers cautioned him against it, one high officer in particular—I believe she commands his bodyguard. He would not listen. The landsguard who marched us out were clearly frightened. Several averted their eyes when the trap was opened. In the end, though, they obeyed. They are landsguard, after all, and he is their Landsman.”

“But the Council,” said Maris. “Why didn’t the Council—what about Val, the flyers?”

“The Council,” said S’Rella bitterly, “the Council named her outlaw and stripped her wings from her.” Anger had pushed her tears aside. “The Council gave him leave to do it!”

“And so everyone would know that he was hanging a flyer,” Coll said wearily, “the Landsman put her wings on her. Folded, of course, but still unmistakable. He joked about it. He told her to use her wings to break this fall, and fly away.”

Later, over cups of Evan’s special tea and plates of bread and sausage, S’Rella regained her composure and told Maris and Evan the whole story of the disastrous Council while Coll went outside to talk with his daughter.

It was a simple story. Val One-Wing, who had called the fifth flyers’ Council in the history of Windhaven, had lost control of it. He had never had control, in fact. His one-wings and allies made up barely a fourth of those assembled, and the three who sat in the positions of honor—the Landsmen of North and South Arren and the retired flyer Kolmi of Thar Kril, who presided—were unsympathetic. No sooner had the meeting begun than angry voices were raised to denounce Tya and her crime, including that of Kolmi himself. “This land-bound girl never understood what it means to be a flyer,” S’Rella quoted Kolmi as saying. Others joined the chorus. She should never have been given wings, said one. She had committed a crime not only against her Landsman, but against her fellow flyers as well, said another. She has betrayed her sacred trust, has made all flyers suspect, added a third.

“Katinn of Lomarron tried to speak for her,” S’Rella told them, “but he was hooted down. Katinn grew furious and cursed them all. Like Tya, he has seen a lot of war. Some of Tya’s friends tried to defend her, at least explain why she did the thing she did, but others refused to listen. When Val himself rose, and tried to put forward his proposal, I thought briefly that we had a chance. He was very good. Calm and reasonable, unlike his usual self. He placated them by admitting that Tya had committed a great crime, but went on to say that the flyers had to defend her nonetheless, that we could not afford to let the Landsman have his way with her, that our fates were linked with Tya’s. It was a very good speech. If it had come from anyone else it might have swayed them, but it came from Val, and the arena was full of his enemies. So many of the older flyers still hate him.

“Val suggested that the Council strip Tya of her wings for five years, after which she would have to win them back in competition. He also said that we had to insist that only flyers could judge flyers, which meant freeing her from Thayos by threat of a sanction.

“He had people ready to second his proposal and speak in its behalf, but it did no good. Kolmi never recognized us. We were never given a chance to speak. The Council went on most of a day, and I’d say barely a dozen one-wings ever got to speak. Kolmi just wouldn’t let us be heard.

“After Val, he recognized a woman from Lomarron, who talked about how Val’s father had been hanged as a murderer, and how Val himself had driven Ari to suicide by taking her wings. ‘No wonder he wants us to defend this criminal,’ she said. Others like her followed; there was much talk of crime, of one-wings who only half understood what it meant to be a flyer, and Val’s proposal got lost in the chaos.

“Then some older flyers put forth a proposal to close the academies. That wasn’t popular. Corm spoke in favor of it, but his own daughter rose against him. It was quite a sight. The Artellians were for it too, and some of the retired flyers, and they managed to force a vote, but less than a fifth of the Council voted with them. The academies are safe.”

“We can be thankful for that much,” Maris said.

S’Rella nodded. “Then Dorrel spoke. You know how highly he’s regarded. He gave a fine speech—much too fine. He spoke first of Tya’s idealistic motivations, and how much sympathy he had for what she had tried to do. But then he said we couldn’t let sympathy or other emotions decide our course. Tya’s crime struck right at the soul of flyer society, Dorrel said. If the Landsman could not count on flyers to bear their messages truthfully and dispassionately, to act as their voices in distant lands, then what was the use of us? And if they had no use for us, how long until they took our wings by force and replaced us with their own men? We could not fight the landsguard, he said. We had to regain the trust that had been lost, and the only way to do that was to name Tya outlaw, despite her good intentions. To leave her to her fate, no matter how much we sympathized with her. If we defended Tya in any way, Dorrel said, the land-bound would misunderstand, would think we approved of her crime. We had to make our censure clear.”

Maris nodded. “Much of that is true,” she said, “no matter how grim the consequences. I can see how it might be persuasive.”

“Others of like mind followed Dorrel. Tera-kul of Yethien, old Arris of Artellia, a woman from the Outer Islands, Jon of Culhall, Talbot of Big Shotan—leaders, each of them, and highly respected. All of them supported Dorrel. Val seethed, and Katinn and Athen were screaming for the floor, but Kolmi looked right past them. The talk went on for hours, and finally—in less than a minute—Val’s proposal was brought up and voted down, and the Council went on to name Tya outlaw and give her up to the tender mercies of Thayos. We did not tell the Landsman to hang her. At the suggestion of Jirel of Skulny, we went so far as to ask him not to. But it was only a request.”

“Our Landsman seldom heeds requests,” Evan said quietly.

“That was the end of it for me,” S’Rella continued. “That was when the one-wings left.”

“Left?!”

S’Rella nodded. “When the vote was done, Val rose from his place, and his look—I’m glad he had no weapon, or he might have killed someone. Instead he spoke; he called them all fools, and cowards, and worse. There were shouts, curses back at him, some scuffles. Val called on all his friends to leave. Damen and I had to push through to the door, the flyers—some of them I recognized, people I’ve known for years, but they were jeering, saying things to us—it was horrible, Maris. The anger there…”

“You got out, though.”

“Yes. And we flew to North Arren, almost all of the one-wings. Val led us to a large field, an old battlefield, and he stood on top of a ruined fortification and spoke to us. We had our own Council. A fourth of all the flyers of Windhaven were there. We voted to impose a sanction on Thayos, even if the others would not. That was why Katinn flew here with me; we were to tell the Landsman together. He had already been sent word of the other decision, but Katinn and I were going to confront him with the one-wings’ threat.” She laughed bitterly. “He listened to us coldly, and when we were finished, he said that we and all of our kind were unfit to be flyers, and that nothing would please him more than never to have a one-wing fly to Thayos again. He promised to show us exactly what he thought of us, and Val, and all one-wings.

“And he showed us. At sunset his landsguard came, and we were marched into the courtyard with the rest, and he showed us.” Her face was gray; the recounting of the tale had opened her wounds again.

“Oh, S’Rella,” Maris said sorrowfully. She reached out and took her friend’s hand, but when they touched S’Rella gave a sudden startled shudder and then, again, began to weep.

Sleep did not come easily for Maris. She twisted and turned restlessly. Her dreams were dark and shapeless, nightmares of flights that ended at the end of a rope.

She woke hours before dawn, in darkness, to the faint sound of distant music.

Evan was asleep beside her, snoring softly into his feather pillow. Maris rose and dressed, and wandered from the bedroom. Bari was resting comfortably, a child’s innocent sleep, free of the burdens that weighed on the rest of them. S’Rella slept too, hunched beneath blankets.

Coll’s room was empty.

Maris followed the sound of the soft, fading music. She found him outside, sitting up against the side of the house in the starlight, filling the cool predawn air with the quiet melancholy of his guitar.

Maris sat on the damp ground beside him. “Are you making a song?”

“Yes,” Coll said. His fingers moved with slow deliberation. “How did you know?”

“I remembered,” Maris said. “When we were young together, you used to rise in the middle of the night and go outside, to work on some new tune you wanted to keep secret.”

Coll struck a final plaintive chord before he set the guitar aside. “I’m still a creature of habit, then,” he said. “Well, I have no choice. When the words scurry about in my head, they do not let me sleep.”

“Is it finished?”

“No. I have a mind to call it ‘Tya’s Fall,’ and the words have mostly come to me, but not the tune. I can almost hear it, but I hear it differently at different times. Sometimes it is dark and tragic, a slow, sad song like the ballad of Aron and Jeni. But later it seems to me it should be faster, that it should pulse like the blood of a man choking on his own rage, that it should burn and hurt and throb. What do you think, big sister? How should I do it? What does Tya’s fall make you feel, sorrow or anger?”

“Both,” said Maris. “That’s no help, but it’s all the answer I can give. Both, and more. I feel guilty, Coll.”

She told him of Arrilan and his companions, and the offer they’d come bearing. Coll listened sympathetically, and when she had finished he took her hand in his own. His fingers were covered with calluses, but gentle and warm. “I did not know,” he said. “S’Rella said nothing.”

“I doubt S’Rella knows,” Maris said. “Val probably told Arrilan not to speak of my refusal. He has a good heart, Val One-Wing, whatever they might say of him.”

“Your guilt is foolish,” Coll told her. “Even if you had gone I doubt it would have mattered. One person more or less changes little. The Council would have broken with or without you, and Tya would have been hanged. You shouldn’t torture yourself with remorse for something you couldn’t have changed.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Maris said, “but I should have tried, Coll. They might have listened to me—Dorrel and his friends, the Stormtown group, Corina, even Corm. They know me, all of them. Val could never reach them. But I might have managed to keep the flyers together, if I’d gone and presided as Val asked me to.”

“Speculation,” said Coll. “You’re giving yourself needless pain.”

“Perhaps it’s time I gave myself pain,” Maris said. “I was afraid of hurting again—that was why I didn’t go with Arrilan when he came for me. I was a coward.”

“You can’t be responsible for all the flyers of Windhaven, Maris. You have to think of yourself first, of your own needs.”

Maris smiled. “A long time ago I thought only of myself, and I changed the whole world around to suit me. Oh, I told myself it was for everybody, but you and I know it was really for me. Barrion was right, Coll. I was naive. I had no idea where it would all lead. I knew only that I wanted to fly.

“I should have gone, Coll. It was my responsibility. But all I cared about was my pain, my life, when I should have been thinking of larger things. Tya’s blood is on my hands.” She held one up.

Coll took it and squeezed it hard. “Nonsense. All I see is my sister tearing herself apart for nothing. Tya is gone, there is nothing you could have done, and even if there had been, there is certainly nothing you can do now. It is over. Never anguish about the past, Barrion once told me. Make your pain into a song, and give it to the world.”

“I can’t make songs,” Maris said. “I can’t fly. I said I wanted to be of use, but I turned my back on the people who needed me, and played at being a healer. I’m not a healer. I’m not a flyer. So what am I? Who am I?”

“Maris…”

“Just so,” she said. “Maris of Lesser Amberly, the girl who once changed the world. If I did it once, perhaps I can do it again. At least I can try.” She stood up abruptly, her face serious in the wan, pale light of dawn, whose faint glow had tinted the eastern horizon.

“Tya is dead,” Coll said. He took his guitar and rose to stand face-to-face with his stepsister. “The Council is broken. It’s over, Maris.”

“No,” she said. “I won’t accept that. It’s not over. It’s not too late to change the end of Tya’s song.”

Evan woke quickly to her light touch, sitting up in bed and ready for any emergency.

“Evan,” Maris said, sitting beside him. “I know what I must do. I had to tell you first.”

He ran one hand over his head, smoothing down the ruffled white hair, frowning. “What?”

“I… I am alive, Evan. I cannot fly, but I am still who I am.”

“It’s good to hear you say that, and know you mean it.”

“And I’m not a healer. I’ll never be a healer.”

“You have been making discoveries, haven’t you? All this while I slept? Yes… I’ve known, although I couldn’t quite tell you. You didn’t seem to want to know.”

“Of course I didn’t want to know. I thought it was the only choice I had. What else was there for me? Pain, only memories of pain and uselessness. Well, the pain is still there, and the memories, but I need not be useless. I must learn to live with the pain, accept it or ignore it, because there are things I must do. Tya is dead and the flyers are broken, and there are things that only I can do, to set things right. So you see…” She bit her lip and couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “I love you, Evan. But I must leave you.”

“Wait.” He touched her cheek, and she met his eyes. She thought of the first time she had looked into their deep blue depths, and she felt, unexpectedly strong, a pang of loss. “Tell me now,” he said, “why you must leave me.”

She moved her hands helplessly. “Because I… I’m useless here. I don’t belong here.”

He caught his breath—it might have been a sob or a laugh that he swallowed, she couldn’t tell.

“Did you think I loved you as an apprentice, as a healer, Maris? For how much you could help me? As a healer, quite frankly, you tried my patience. I love you as a woman, for yourself, for who you are. And now that you’ve realized who you are, who you have always been, you think you must leave me?”

“There are things I must do,” she said. “I don’t know what my fate will be. I may fail. It might be dangerous for you to be associated with me. You might share Reni’s fate… I don’t want to risk you.”

“You can’t risk me,” he said firmly. “I risk myself.” He took her hand and held it tightly. “There may be things I can do to help—let me do them. I’ll share your burden, share the danger, and make it less. I can do more than just make tea for your friends, you know.”

“But you don’t have to,” Maris said. “You shouldn’t risk your life for nothing. This isn’t your fight.”

“Not my fight?” He sounded mildly indignant. “Isn’t Thayos my home? What the Landsman of Thayos decrees affects me, my friends, my patients. My blood is in these mountains and in this forest. You are the stranger here. Whatever you accomplish for your people, the flyers, will also affect my people. And I know them, as you cannot. They know me, and they trust me here. Many owe me debts, debts that cannot be paid in iron coin. They will help me, and I will help you. I think you need my help.”

Maris felt as if strength was pouring through her, traveling from the firm clasp of his hand up her arm. She smiled, glad that she was not alone, feeling more certain of her way now. “Yes, Evan, I do need you.”

“You have me. How do we begin?”

Maris leaned back against the wooden headboard, fitting into the curve of Evan’s arm. “We need a hidden place, a landing field; a place safe for flyers to come and go without the Landsman or his spies knowing they are on Thayos.”

She felt his nod as soon as she had finished speaking. “Done,” he said. “There is an abandoned farm, not far from here. The farmer died only last winter, so the forest has not reclaimed the place, although it will shelter it from spying eyes.”

“Good. Perhaps we should all move there, for a time, in case the landsguard come looking for us.”

“I must stay here,” Evan said. “If the landsguard cannot find me, neither can the sick. I must be available to them.”

“It might not be safe for you.”

“I know a family in Thossi, a family with thirteen children. I helped the mother through a difficult birthing, and saved her children from death half a dozen times—they would eagerly do the same for me. Their house is on the main road, and there is always a child to spare. If the landsguard come for us, they must pass by there, and one of the children could run ahead to warn us.”

Maris smiled. “Perfect.”

“What else?”

“First, we must wake S’Rella.” Maris sat up, moving out of his light embrace, and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “I need her to be my wings, to fly messages for me, many messages. But one first, the crucial one. To Val One-Wing.”

Val came to her, of course.

She waited for him in the doorway of a cramped two-room plank cabin, badly weathered, its furnishings covered with mold. He circled three times above the weed-choked field, silver wings dark against a threatening sky, before he decided that it was safe to land.

When he came down, she helped him with his wings, although something clutched and trembled within her when her hands touched the soft metal fabric. Val embraced her, and smiled. “You’re looking well, for an old cripple,” he said.

“You’re very glib, for an idiot,” Maris said back at him. “Come inside.”

Coll was within the cabin, tuning his guitar. “Val,” he said, nodding.

“Sit,” Maris said to Val. “I have something I want you to hear.”

He glanced at her, puzzled. But he sat.

Coll sang “Tya’s Fall.” At his sister’s urging, he had composed two versions. He gave Val the sad one.

Val listened politely, with only a hint of restlessness. “Very pretty,” he said when Coll was done. “Very sad.” He looked sharply at Maris. “Is this why you sent S’Rella to me, and had me fly here at risk of my life, in spite of my pledge never to come to Thayos? For this? To listen to a song?” He frowned. “How badly did that fall injure your head?”

Coll laughed. “Give her half a chance,” he said.

“It’s all right,” Maris said. “Val and I are used to each other, aren’t we?”

Val smiled thinly. “You have half a chance,” he said. “Tell me what this is all about.”

“Tya,” Maris said. “In a word. And how to mend what was broken in Council.”

Val frowned. “It’s too late. Tya is dead. We responded, and now we wait to see what will happen.”

“If we wait then it will be too late. We can’t afford to wait for the flyers to close the academies, or limit challenges to those who promise to ignore your sanction. You’ve given a weapon to Corm and his kind by walking out, by acting without the support of the Council.”

Val shook his head. “I did what had to be done. And there are more one-wings every year. The Landsman of Thayos may laugh now, but he will not laugh forever.”

“You don’t have forever,” Maris said. She was silent a moment, her thoughts tumbling so fast that she was afraid to speak. She couldn’t afford to alienate Val. They did understand each other, as she had told Coll, but Val was still prickly and temperamental, as his actions in Council had proved. And it would be hard for him to admit that he had been wrong.

“I should have come when you sent for me,” she said after a moment. “But I was afraid, and selfish. Perhaps I could have kept this split from taking place.”

Val said flatly, “That’s useless. What happened, happened.”

“That doesn’t mean it can’t be changed. I understand you felt you had to do something—but what you did may turn out to be a lot worse than doing nothing could have been. What if the flyers decide to strip you of your wings, to ground all the one-wings?”

“Let them try.”

“What could you do? Fight them individually, hand to hand? No. If the flyers should decide to take away the wings from all those who participate in your sanction, there would be nothing you could do. Nothing except, perhaps, to kill a few flyers and see a lot more one-wings die like Tya. The Landsmen would support the flyers with all the power of the landsguard.”

“If that happens…” Val stared at Maris, his face dangerously still. “If that happens, you’ll live to see your dream die. Does that mean so much to you? Still? When you know that you can never fly again yourself?”

“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.”

“I do not care for boots,” the woman said. “I like the feel of the earth and grass and rock beneath my feet.”

“Do you like the feel of thorns beneath your skin?” Evan said. They argued back and forth for a time, and finally the woman agreed to wear a soft cloth boot, but only on her injured foot, and only until it was healed.

When she was gone, Evan turned to Maris with a smile. “So it begins,” he said. “How is it that the ghost neither eats nor drinks?”

“She carries a bag of nuts and dried fruit, and a skin of water,” Maris said. “Flyers often do that on long flights. How do you suppose we could fly to Artellia or the Embers otherwise?”

“I had never given the matter much thought.”

Maris nodded, preoccupied. “I suspect they substitute a second flyer by night, secretly, to let their ghost rest. Clever of Val to send someone who looks like Tya. I should have thought of that.”

“You have thought of quite enough,” Evan said. “Don’t reproach yourself. Why do you look so serious?”

“I wish,” Maris said, “that the flyer could be me.”

Two days later, a little girl arrived panting at their door. She was one of that family so indebted to Evan, and for a brief, fearful moment Maris wondered if the landsguard had come for her already. But it was only news; Evan had asked to be sent word of anything heard in Thossi.

“A merchant came through,” said the little girl. “He talked ’bout the flyers.”

“What of them?” Maris asked.

“He said, he told old Mullish at the inn, that the Landsman is scared. There are three of them, he said. Three black flyers, going round and round and round.” She stood up and spun in a circle, her small arms outstretched, to show them what she meant. Maris looked at Evan, and smiled.

“Seven black flyers now,” a huge fat man told them. He’d come to their door battered and bleeding, a deserter from the landsguard dressed in rags. “Tried to send me to Thrane,” he said by way of explanation, “but damned if I’d go there.” When he wasn’t speaking, he coughed, and often he coughed up blood.

“Seven?”

“A bad number,” the man said, coughing. “All dressed in black too, a bad color. They mean us no good.” His coughing suddenly grew so bad he could not talk.

“Easy,” Evan said, “easy.” He gave the man wine, mixed with herbs, and he and Maris led him to a bed.

The fat man would not rest, though. As soon as his coughing fit had ended, he began to talk again. “If I was Landsman, I’d march out my archers, and shoot ’em down when they flew overhead. Yes, I would. There’s some that says the arrows would just pass through ’em, but not me. I think they’re flesh just like me.” He slapped his ample gut. “Can’t just let ’em fly. They’re bringing bad luck to us all. Weather’s been bad lately, and the fish haven’t been running, and I heard tell of people taking sick and dying in Port Thayos when the shadow of those wings touched ’em. Something terrible is going to happen on Thrane, I know it, that’s why I wouldn’t go. Not with seven black flyers in the sky. No, not me. This is an evil thing, I tell you, and it won’t bring us good.”

It brought the fat man no good, at any rate, Maris thought. The next morning, when she brought his breakfast in to him, his huge body was stiff and cold. Evan buried him in the forest, among the graves of a dozen other travelers.

“Thenya went to Port Thayos to try to sell her tapestries,” reported another of the horde of children Evan had delivered, a boy this time. “When she came back to Thossi, she said there are more than a dozen black flyers now, flying in a great circle from the port to the Landsman’s keep. And more are arriving every day.”

“Twenty flyers, all in black, silent, grim,” said the young singer. She had golden hair and blue eyes, a sweet voice and an easy manner. “They’ll make a marvelous song! I’d be working on it now, if only I knew how it was all going to end…”

“Why are they here, do you think?” Evan asked.

“For Tya, of course,” the young woman said, startled that anyone would ask. “She lied to stop the war, and the Landsman killed her for it. They wear black for her, I’d wager. Many people are grieving for her.”

“Ah, yes,” Evan said. “Tya. Her story might make a song itself. Have you thought of making one?”

The singer grinned. “There already is one,” she said. “I heard it in Port Thayos. Here, I’ll sing it for you.”

Maris met Katinn of Lomarron in the abandoned field, where slender green ruffians and misshapen dirt-dragons were fast crowding out the wild wheat. The big man with the scylla’s-tooth necklace came down gracefully on silvered wings, dressed all in black.

She led him inside and gave him water. “Well?” He wiped away the moisture from his lips and grinned at her roughly. “I flew in very high, and saw the circle far beneath me. Ah, you should have seen it! Forty wings by now, I’d guess. The Landsman must be drooling at the mouth. Word has gone out, too. More one-wings are coming from all over Eastern, and Val himself flew the word back to Western, so it won’t be too long before others join us, too. By now there are so many that it’s easy to break away for a rest or a meal without anyone being the wiser. I don’t envy poor Alain starting it all. She’s a strong flyer, no doubt of that. I’ve never known her to tire. They’ve got her resting in secret on Thrynel now, but she’ll be back to rejoin us soon. As for me, I’m on my way to join the circle now.” Maris nodded. “What about Coll’s song?”

“They’re singing it on Lomarron, and South Arren, and Kite’s Landing. I’ve heard it myself, several times. And it’s gone to Southern and the Outer Islands as well, and to Western of course—to your Amberly, and Culhall, and Poweet. Heard that it’s spreading among the singers in Stormtown.”

“Good,” said Maris. “Good.”

“The Landsman sent Jem up to question the black flyers,” said Evan’s friend, repeating the news from Thossi, “and it’s said that he recognized them and called on them by name, but they would not speak to him. You ought to come to the city and see them, Evan. Whenever you look up, the sky is full of flyers.”

“The Landsman has ordered the flyers out of his sky, but they will not go. And why should they? As the singers say, the sky belongs to flyers!”

“I heard that a flyer arrived from Thrane, with a message from their Landsman to ours, but when he met her in the audience chamber to hear it, he turned pale with fear, for the flyer was dressed in black from head to foot. She delivered the message to him as he trembled, but before she could go, the Landsman stopped her and demanded to know why she was dressed all in black. ‘I go to join the circle,’ she told him calmly, ‘and grieve for Tya.’ And so she did, so she did.”

“They say the singers in Port Thayos all dress in black these days, and some other people as well. The streets are full of merchants selling black cloth, and the dyers are very busy.”

“Jem has joined the black flyers!”

“The Landsman has ordered the landsguard back from Thrane. He’s afraid of what the black flyers might do, I heard, and he wants his best archers around him. The keep is full to overcrowding. It’s said that the Landsman will not go outside, lest the shadow of their wings fall upon him as they fly overhead.”

S’Rella arrived with the welcome news that Dorrel was less than a day behind her. Maris kept watch on the cliffs herself all that afternoon, too impatient even to wait at home with S’Rella, and at last she was rewarded by the sight of a dark figure gliding inland. She hurried into the forest to meet him.

It was a hot, still day, bad weather for flying. Maris swiped at attacking insects as she trudged through the tall grass that almost concealed the cabin. Her heart was racing with excitement as she pushed open the heavy wooden door, hanging on its hinges.

She blinked, almost blind in the dark interior after the brilliant sunshine, and then she felt his hand on her shoulder, and heard his familiar voice say her name.

“You… you came,” she said. She was suddenly short of breath. “Dorrel.”

“Did you doubt I would come?”

She could see now. The familiar smile, his well-remembered way of standing.

“Do you mind if we sit down?” he asked. “I’m awfully tired. It was a long flight from Western, and it did me no good to try to catch up to S’Rella.”

They sat close together, on two matching chairs that must once have been very fine. But the cushions were impregnated with dust now, greenish and slightly damp with mold.

“How are you, Maris?”

“I’m… living. Ask me again in a month or so and I may have a better answer for you.” She looked into his dark, concerned eyes, and then away again. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Dorr?”

He nodded. “When you weren’t at the Council, I understood… I hoped that you were doing what was best for you. I was more pleased than I can say when S’Rella came, bearing your message, your request that I come to you.” He sat a little straighter in his chair. “But surely you didn’t send for me just for the pleasure of seeing an old friend.”

Maris drew a deep breath. “I need your help. You know about the circle? The black flyers?”

He nodded. “Rumors have already spread. And I saw them as I flew in. An impressive sight. Your doing?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “And not an end in itself, I’ll wager. What’s your plan?”

“Will you help me with it? We need you.”

“‘We?’ You’ve sided with the one-wings, I suppose?” His tone was not angry, and did not condemn, but Maris was aware that he had withdrawn from her, ever so slightly.

“It’s not a matter of sides, Dorr. At least, not among the flyers. It mustn’t be—that way is death, the end of everything we both hold dear. Flyers—one-wing or flyer-born—must not be split up, fragmented, at the mercy of Landsmen.”

“I agree. But it’s too late. It was too late once Tya declared her scorn for all the laws and traditions by telling her first lie.”

“Dorr,” she said, her voice coaxing and reasonable, “I don’t approve of what Tya did, either. She meant well; what she did was wrong, I agree, but—”

“I agree, you agree,” he said, interrupting. “But. We always come down to that. Tya is dead now—we can all agree on that. She’s dead, but it’s not over, it’s far from over. Other one-wings call her a hero, a martyr. She died for the cause of lying, for the freedom to lie. How many more lies will be told? How long will it be before the people forget their mistrust of us? Since the one-wings refused to repudiate Tya, and split away from us, there is talk among… among a few… of closing down the academies and ending the challenges, returning to the old way, to the old days when a flyer was a flyer for once and for all.”

“You don’t want that.”

“No. No, I don’t.” His shoulders slumped for a moment, uncharacteristically, and he sighed. “But, Maris, it goes beyond what I want, or what you want. It’s out of our hands now. Val spoke the death warrant for the one-wings when he led them out of Council and called his illegal sanction.”

“Sanctions can be revoked,” Maris said.

Dorrel stared at her. His eyes narrowed. “Did Val One-Wing tell you that? I don’t believe him. He’s playing some devious game, trying to use you to trick me.”

“Dorrel!” She stood up, indignant. “Give me some credit, please! I’m not one of Val’s puppets! He didn’t promise to revoke the sanction, and he’s not using me. I tried to convince him that it would be in everyone’s best interest to act in such a way that both flyer-born and one-wings were united again. Val is stubborn and impulsive, but he’s not blind. Although he wouldn’t promise to revoke the sanction, I did make him see what a mistake he had made—that his sanction was useless because it was honored only by a small group, and that this division among flyers was to no one’s advantage.”

Dorrel looked at her thoughtfully. Then he, too, rose, and began to pace around the small, dusty room. “Quite a feat, to get Val One-Wing to admit he was wrong,” he said. “But what good does that do now? Does he agree that the plan we followed was right?”

“No,” Maris said. “I don’t think it was right, either. I think you were much too harsh. Oh, I know what you thought—I know you had to repudiate Tya’s crime, and you thought the best way to do that was to hand her over to the Landsman for execution.”

Dorrel stopped walking and frowned at her. “Maris, you know that was never my intention. I never thought Tya should die. But Val’s proposal was absurd—it would have seemed that we condoned her actions.”

“The Council should have insisted that Tya be given over for punishment, and then stripped Tya of her wings, forever.”

“We did strip her of her wings.”

“No,” said Maris. “You let the Landsman do that, after he’d hanged her in them. Why do you suppose he did that? To show that he could hang a flyer and go unscathed.”

Dorrel looked horrified. He crossed the room and gripped her arm. “Maris, no! He hung her in her wings?”

She nodded.

“I hadn’t heard that.” He sank down on his chair again as if his legs had been kicked.

“He proved his point,” Maris said. “He proved that flyers could be killed as easily as anyone else. And now they will be. Now that you and Val have split flyers and one-wings into two warring camps, the Landsmen will take advantage of it. They’ll demand oaths of loyalty, they’ll set up rules and regulations to govern their flyers, they’ll execute the rebels for treason—in time, perhaps, they’ll claim the wings as their own property, to be handed out to followers who please them. Other flyers could be arrested, even executed, tomorrow. All it will take is for one more Landsman to realize he has the power—that the flyers are too fragmented now to offer any opposition.” She sat down and gazed at him, almost holding her breath as she hoped for the right response.

Slowly Dorrel nodded. “What you say has a horrible ring of truth to it. But… what can I do? Only Val, and the other one-wings, can decide to rejoin us. You surely don’t expect me to try to rally the other flyers in a belated sanction of our own?”

“Of course not. But it’s not only up to Val—it can’t be. There are two sides, and both of you must make some gesture of reconciliation.”

“And what might that gesture be?”

Maris leaned forward. “Join the black flyers,” she said. “Mourn Tya. Join the others. When word goes out that Dorrel of Laus has joined the one-wings in mourning, others will follow.”

“Mourn?” He frowned. “You want me to dress in black and fly in a circle?” His voice was suspicious. “And what else? What else am I to join your black flyers in? Is it your plan to enforce the sanction against Thayos by keeping all the flyers in formation above it?”

“No. Not a sanction. They don’t stop any flyers who bring a message to or from Thayos, and if you, or any of your followers, had to leave the circle, no one would stop you. Just make the gesture.”

“This is more than a gesture, and more than mourning. I’m certain of it,” Dorrel said. “Maris, be honest with me. We have known each other for a very long time. For the love I still bear for you I would do much. But I can’t go against what I believe, and I won’t be tricked. Please don’t play one of Val One-Wing’s games and try to use me. I think you owe me honesty.”

Maris looked steadily back into his eyes, but she felt a pang of guilt. She was trying to use him—he was an important part of her plan, and because of what they had once meant to each other she had felt certain he would not let her down. But she did not mean to deceive him.

She said quietly, “I’ve always thought of you as my friend, Dorr, even when we were opposed. But I’m not asking you to do this for me just out of friendship. It’s more important than that. I think it is equally important to you that this rift between the one-wings and the flyer-born be healed.”

“Tell me the whole truth, then. Tell me what you want me to do, and why.”

“I want you to join the black flyers, to prove that the one-wings do not fly alone. I want to bring flyers and one-wings together again, to show the world that they can still act as one.”

“You think that if Val One-Wing and I fly together we will forget all our differences?”

Maris smiled ruefully. “Perhaps once, long ago, I was that naive. No more. I hope that the one-wings and the flyer-born will act together.”

“How? In what way beyond this odd mourning ceremony?”

“The black flyers carry no weapons, make no threats, and do not even land on Thayos,” she said. “They are mourners, nothing more. But their presence makes the Landsman of Thayos very nervous. He does not understand. Already he is so frightened he has called his landsguard from Thrane—and therefore the black flyers have succeeded where Tya failed, and ended the war.”

“But surely the Landsman will get over his fear. And the black flyers cannot circle Thayos forever.”

“The Landsman here is an impetuous, bloody-minded, and fearful man,” Maris said. “The violent always suspect others of violence. And it is not his way to wait for someone else to act. I think he will do something before long. I think he will give the flyers cause to act.”

Dorrel frowned. “By doing what? Shooting a flight of arrows to knock us from the sky?”

“‘Us’?”

Dorrel shook his head, but he was smiling. “It could be dangerous, Maris. Trying to provoke him to action…”

His smiled heartened her. “The black flyers do nothing but fly. If Port Thayos grows agitated in their shadows, that is the work of the Landsman and his subjects.”

“Especially the singers and the healers—we know what troublemakers they can be! I’ll do as you ask, Maris. It will make a good story to tell my grandchildren, when they come along. I won’t have my wings much longer now anyway, with Jan getting to be such a good flyer.”

“Oh, Dorr!”

He held up one hand. “I will wear black as a sign of grief for Tya,” he said carefully. “And I will join the great circle that flies to mourn her. But I will do nothing that might be seen as condoning her crime, or expressing a sanction against Thayos for her death.” He stood up and stretched. “Of course, if anything should happen, if the Landsman should presume to exceed his powers and threaten the flyers, why then, we should all, one-wings and flyer-born, have to act together.”

Maris also stood. She was smiling. “I knew you would see it that way,” she said.

She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him to her in an affectionate hug. Then Dorrel lifted her face and kissed her, perhaps just for old times’ sake, but for a moment it was as if all the years that lay between them had never been, and they were youths again, and lovers, and the sky was theirs from horizon to horizon, and all that lay beneath it.

But the kiss ended, and they stood apart again: old friends linked by memories and faint regrets.

“Go safely, Dorr,” said Maris. “Come back soon.”

Returning from the sea cliffs, where she had seen Dorrel launch himself for Laus, Maris felt full of hope. There was sadness, too, beneath it—the old familiar longing had swept over her again as she helped Dorrel unfold his wings, and watched him mount the warm blue sky.

But the pain was a little less this time. Although she would have given anything to fly with Dorrel again, she had other things to think about now, and it was not so difficult to pull her hopeless thoughts away from the sky and think of more practical matters. Dorrel had promised to return soon, with more followers, and Maris enjoyed the vision of an even vaster circle of black flyers.

She was shocked out of her reverie as she approached Evan’s house, by the sound of a shriek from within.

She ran the last few steps and threw the door open. She saw at once that Bari was crying, Evan trying in vain to comfort her. Standing a little apart was S’Rella with a boy from Thossi.

“What’s wrong?” Maris cried, suspecting the worst.

At her voice, Bari turned and ran to her aunt, weeping. “My father, they took my father, make them, please make them…”

Maris embraced the weeping child and stroked her hair absently. “What’s happened to Coll?”

“Coll has been arrested and taken to the keep,” Evan said. “The Landsman has seized a half-dozen other singers as well—everyone known to have performed Coll’s song about Tya. He means to try them for treason.”

Maris continued to hold Bari tightly. “There, there,” she said. “Shh, shh, Bari.”

“There was a riot in Port Thayos,” said the boy from Thossi. “When they came to the Moonfish Inn to take Lanya the singer, the landsguard met with customers who tried to defend her. They beat the defenders off with clubs. No one was killed.”

Maris listened numbly, trying to absorb it, trying to think.

“I’ll fly to Val,” S’Rella said. “I’ll spread the word among the black flyers—they’ll all come. The Landsman will have to release Coll!”

“No,” said Maris. She still hugged Bari, and the child’s sobbing had ceased. “No, Coll is a land-bound, a singer. He has no claim upon the flyers—they would not rally together to defend him.”

“But he’s your brother!”

“That makes no difference.”

“We have to do something,” S’Rella insisted.

“We will. We had hoped to provoke the Landsman, but to make him strike at the flyers, not the land-bound. But now that it has happened… Coll and I discussed this possibility.” She raised Bari’s face gently with a finger beneath her chin, and wiped away her tears. “Bari, you have to go away now.”

“No! I want my father! I won’t leave without him!”

“Bari, listen to me. You must leave before the Landsman catches you. Your father wouldn’t want that.”

“I don’t care,” Bari said stubbornly. “I don’t care if the Landsman catches me! I want to be with my father!”

“Don’t you want to fly?” Maris asked.

“To fly?” Bari’s face suddenly lit up with wonder.

“S’Rella here will let you fly with her over the ocean,” Maris said, “if you’re big enough not to be afraid.” She looked up at S’Rella. “You can take her, can’t you?”

S’Rella nodded. “She’s light enough. Val has people on Thrynel. It’ll be an easy flight.”

“Are you big enough?” Maris asked. “Or would you be afraid?”

“I’m not scared,” Bari said fiercely, her pride wounded. “My father used to fly, you know.”

“I know,” Maris said, smiling. She remembered Coll’s terror of flight, and hoped that Bari hadn’t inherited that particular trait.

“And you’ll save my father?” Bari asked.

“Yes,” Maris said.

“And after I take her to Thrynel?” S’Rella said. “What then?”

“Then,” said Maris, standing and taking Bari by the hand, “I want you to fly to the keep with a message for the Landsman. Tell him that it was all my doing, that I put Coll and the other singers up to it. If he wants me, and he will, tell him I will turn myself over to him, just as soon as he releases Coll and the others.”

“Maris,” warned Evan, “he will hang you.”

“Perhaps,” said Maris. “That’s a chance I have to take.”

“He agrees,” S’Rella reported on her return. “As a sign of his good faith, he has released all the singers except Coll. They were taken away by boat to Thrynel, with orders never to return to Thayos. I witnessed their departure myself.”

“And Coll?”

“I was allowed to speak to him. He seemed unharmed, although he was worried that something might have happened to his guitar—they wouldn’t let him keep it. The Landsman has said he will hold Coll for three days. If you do not appear at his keep by then, Coll will hang.”

“Then I must go at once,” Maris said.

S’Rella caught her hand. “Coll told me to warn you away. He said you were not to come under any circumstances. That it was too dangerous for you.”

Maris shrugged. “Dangerous for him as well. Of course I will go.”

“It may be a trap,” Evan said. “The Landsman is not to be trusted. He may mean to hang you both.”

“That’s a risk I’ll have to take. If I don’t go, Coll is sure to hang. I can’t have that on my conscience—I got him into this.”

“I don’t like it,” Evan said.

Maris sighed. “The Landsman will have me sooner or later, unless I flee Thayos at once. By giving myself up to him, I have the chance to save Coll. And, perhaps, to do more.”

“What more can you do?” S’Rella demanded. “He’ll hang you, and probably your brother too, and that will be that.”

“If he hangs me,” said Maris calmly, “we will have our incident. My death would unite the flyers as nothing else could.”

The color drained out of S’Rella’s face. “Maris, no,” she whispered.

“I thought that might be it,” said Evan in a voice that was unnaturally calm. “So this was the unspoken twist in all your plans. You decided to live just long enough to be a martyr.”

Maris frowned. “I was afraid to tell you, Evan. I thought this might happen—I had to consider it when I made my plans. Are you angry?”

“Angry? No. Disappointed. Hurt. And very sad. I believed you when you told me you had decided to live. You seemed happier, and stronger, and I thought that you did love me, and that I could help you.” He sighed. “I didn’t realize that, instead of life, you had simply chosen what you thought would be a nobler death. I can’t deny you what you want. Death and I wrestle daily, and I have never found him noble, but perhaps I look too closely. You will have what you want, and after you are gone the singers will make it all sound very beautiful, no doubt.”

“I don’t want to die,” she said, very quietly.

She went to Evan and took him by the shoulders. “Look at me, and listen to me,” she said. His blue eyes met hers, and she saw the sorrow in them, and hated herself for putting it there.

“My love, you must believe me,” she said. “I go to the Landsman’s keep because it is all I can do. I must try to save my brother, and myself, and convince the Landsman that flyers are not to be trifled with.

“My plan is to push the Landsman until he breaks and does something foolish—I admit that. And I know that this is a dangerous game. I have known that I might die, or that one of my friends might die. But this is not, not an elaborate plan to make a noble death for myself.

“Evan, I want to live. And I love you. Please don’t doubt that.” She drew a deep breath, “I need your faith in me. I’ve needed your help and your love all along.

“I know the Landsman may kill me, but I have to go there, risk that, in order to live. It’s the only way. I have to do this, for Coll and for Bari, for Tya, for the flyers—and for myself. Because I have to know, really know, that I’m still good for something. That I was left alive for some purpose. Do you understand?”

Evan looked at her, searching her face. Finally he nodded. “Yes. I understand. I believe you.”

Maris turned. “S’Rella?”

There were tears in the other woman’s eyes, but she was smiling tremulously. “I’m afraid for you, Maris. But you’re right. You have to go. And I pray you’ll succeed, for your own sake and for all of us. I don’t want us to win if it means your death.”

“One more thing,” said Evan.

“Yes?”

“I’m going with you.”

They both wore black.

They had been on the road less than ten minutes when they encountered one of Evan’s friends, a little girl rushing breathlessly up the road from Thossi to warn them that a half-dozen landsguard were on their way.

They met the landsguard a half-hour later. They were a weary group, armed with spiked clubs and bows, and dressed in soiled uniforms stained with the sweat of their long forced march. But they treated Maris and Evan almost deferentially, and did not seem in the least surprised to meet them on the road. “We are to escort you back to the Landsman’s keep,” said the young woman in charge.

“Fine,” said Maris. She set them a brisk pace.

An hour before they entered the Landsman’s isolated valley, Maris finally saw the black flyers for the first time.

From a distance, they seemed like so many insects, dark specks creeping across the sky, although they moved with a sensuous slowness no insect could ever match. They were never out of sight from the first moment Maris noticed motion low on the horizon; no sooner would one vanish behind a tree or a rocky outcrop than another would appear where the first had been. On and on they came, a never-ending procession, and Maris knew that the aerial column trailed miles behind to Port Thayos, and extended on ahead to the Landsman’s keep and the sea, before curving around in a great circle to meet itself above the waves.

“Look,” she said to Evan, pointing. He looked, and smiled at her, and they held hands. Somehow the mere sight of the flyers made Maris feel better, gave her strength and reassurance. As she walked on, the moving specks in the afternoon sky took on shape and form, growing until she could see the silver sheen of sunlight on their wings, and the way they banked and tacked to find the right wind.

Where the road from Thossi joined the broad thoroughfare up from Port Thayos, the flyers passed directly overhead, and for the rest of the journey the walkers moved beneath them. Maris could make out the flyers quite well by then; a few kept high, up where the wind was stronger, but most skimmed along barely above tree-top level, and the silver of their wings and the black of their clothing were equally conspicuous. Every few moments another flyer caught and passed Maris and Evan and their escort, so the shadow of wings washed over them as regularly as silent breakers crashing against a beach.

The landsguard never looked up at the flyers, Maris noticed. In fact, the procession in the sky seemed to make them surly and irritable, and at least one of the party—a whey-faced youth with pockmarks—trembled visibly whenever the shadows swept over him.

Near sunset the road climbed over the last hills to the first checkpoint. Their escort marched through without stopping. A few yards beyond, the path dropped off abruptly, and there was a high vantage point from which the entire valley was visible beneath them.

Maris drew in her breath sharply, and felt Evan’s hand tighten in her own.

In the shimmering red haze of sunset, colors faded and vanished while shadows etched themselves starkly on the valley floor. Beneath them the world seemed drenched in blood, and the keep hunched like some great crippled animal made of shadow, impossibly black. The fires within it sent up heat ripples that made the dark stone itself seem to writhe and tremble, so it looked like a beast shivering in terror.

Above it, waiting, were the flyers.

The valley was full of them; Maris counted ten before losing track. Heat beating against stone sent up great updrafts, and the flyers soared on them, climbing halfway up the sky before spinning free to descend in wide graceful spirals. Around and around they moved, circling, waiting; dark scavenger kites impatient for the shadow beast to die. It was a somber, silent scene.

“No wonder he is so afraid,” Maris said.

“We are not supposed to stop,” the young officer leading their escort said to them.

With a final glance, Maris proceeded down into the valley, where Tya’s silent mourners flew ominous circles above the shadowed fortress, and the Landsman of Thayos waited inside his cold stone halls, afraid of open sky.

“I have a mind to hang the three of you,” the Landsman said.

He was seated on the wooden throne in his receiving chamber, fingering a heavy bronze knife that lay across his knees. Against a white silk shirt, his silver chain of office gleamed softly in the light of the oil lamps, but his face was at odds with his clothing: pale and drawn and twitching.

The room was full of landsguard; they stood along the walls, silent, impassive. There were no windows in the chamber. Perhaps that was why the Landsman had chosen it. Outside, the black flyers would be wheeling against the scattered evening stars.

“Coll goes free,” Maris said, trying to keep the tension from her voice.

The Landsman frowned and gestured with his knife. “Bring up the singer,” he ordered. A landsguard officer hurried off. “Your brother has caused me great trouble,” the Landsman continued. “His songs are treason. I see no reason to release him.”

“We have an agreement,” Maris said quickly. “I came. Now you must give Coll his freedom.”

The Landsman’s mouth twitched. “Do not presume to tell me what to do. By what conceit do you imagine that you can dictate terms to me? There can be no bargaining between us. I am Landsman here. I am Thayos. You and your brother are my prisoners.”

“S’Rella carried your promise to me,” Maris replied. “She will know if you break it, and soon flyers and Landsmen will know all over Windhaven. Your pledge will be worthless. How will you rule then, or bargain?”

His eyes narrowed. “Oh? Perhaps so.” He smiled. “I made no promise to release him whole, however. How well will your brother sing of Tya, I wonder, when I have had his tongue yanked from his mouth, and the fingers of his right hand cut off?”

A wave of vertigo washed over Maris suddenly, as if she stood on the edge of a great precipice, wingless and about to fall. Then she felt Evan take her hand again, and when his fingers twined within her own, somehow she found the threat she needed. “You wouldn’t dare,” she said. “Even your landsguard might balk at such an atrocity, and flyers would carry word of your crime as far as the wind would take them. All your knives could not long protect you then.”

“I intend to let your brother go,” the Landsman said loudly, “not because I fear his friends and your empty threats, but because I am merciful. But neither he nor any other singer will ever sing of Tya again on my island. He will be sent from Thayos never to return.”

“And us?”

The Landsman smiled and ran his thumb along the blade of the bronze knife. “The healer is nothing. Less than nothing. He can go as well.” He leaned forward on his throne and pointed the knife at Maris. “As to you, wingless flyer, I will even extend my mercy to you. You too shall go free.”

“You have a price,” Maris said with certainty.

“I want the black flyers out of my sky,” the Landsman said.

“No,” said Maris.

“NO?” He shrieked the word, and his hand plunged the point of the knife into the arm of his chair. “Where do you think you are? I’ve had enough of your arrogance. How dare you refuse! I’ll have you hanging at first light, if I so choose.”

“You won’t hang us,” Maris said.

His mouth trembled. “Oh?” he said. “Go on, then. Tell me what I will and will not do. I am anxious to hear.” His voice was thick with barely suppressed rage.

“You might like to hang us,” Maris said, “but you don’t dare. Because of the black flyers you are so anxious to have us remove.”

“I dared hang one flyer,” he said. “I can hang others. Your black flyers do not frighten me.”

“No? Why is it then that you do not go outside your halls these days, even to hunt or walk in your own courtyard?”

“Flyers are pledged not to carry weapons,” the Landsman said. “What harm can they do? Let them float up there forever.”

“For ages no flyer has carried a blade into the sky,” Maris agreed, choosing her words carefully. “It is flyer law, tradition. But it was flyer law to stay out of land-bound politics as well, to deliver all messages without a second thought as to what they meant. Tya did what she did nonetheless. And you killed her for it, in spite of centuries of tradition that said no Landsman might judge a flyer.”

“She was a traitor,” the Landsman said. “Traitors deserve no other fate, whether they wear wings or not.”

Maris shrugged. “My point,” she said, “is only that traditions are poor protection in these troubled days. You think yourself safe because flyers carry no weapons?” She stared at him coldly. “Well, every flyer who brings you a message will wear black, and some of them will carry the grief in their hearts as well. As you hear them out, you will always wonder. Will this be the one? Will this be a new Tya, a new Maris, a new Val One-Wing? Will the ancient tradition end here and now, in blood?”

“It will never happen,” the Landsman said, too shrilly.

“It’s unthinkable,” Maris said. “As unthinkable as what you did to Tya. Hang me, and it will happen all the sooner.”

“I hang who I please. My guards protect me.”

“Can they stop an arrow loosed from above? Will you bar all your windows? Refuse to see flyers?”

“You are threatening me!” the Landsman said in sudden fury.

“I am warning you,” Maris said. “Perhaps no harm will come to you at all, but you will never be sure. The black flyers will see to that. For the rest of your life they will follow you, haunting you as sure as Tya’s ghost. Whenever you look up at the stars, you will see wings. Whenever a shadow brushes you, you will wonder. You’ll never be able to look out a window or walk in the sun. The flyers will circle your keep forever, like flies around a corpse. You will see them on your deathbed. Your own home will be your prison, and even there you will never really be certain. Flyers can pass any wall, and once they have slipped off their wings, they look like anyone else.”

The Landsman sat very still as Maris spoke, and she watched him carefully, hoping she was pushing him the right way. There was a wildness about his puffy eyes, an unpredictability that terrified her. Her voice was calm, but her brow was beaded by sweat, and her hands felt damp and clammy.

The Landsman’s eyes flicked back and forth as if hunting for escape from the specter of the black flyers, until they settled on one of his guards. “Bring me my flyer!” he snapped. “At once, at once!”

The man must have been waiting just outside the chamber; he entered at once. Maris recognized him; a thin, balding, stoop-shouldered flyer she had never really known. “Sahn,” she said aloud, when his name came to her.

He did not acknowledge her greeting. “My Landsman,” he said deferentially, in a reedy voice.

“She threatens me,” the Landsman said angrily. “Black flyers, she says. They will hound me to my death, she says.”

“She lies,” Sahn said quickly, and with a start Maris remembered who he was. Sahn of Thayos, flyer-born, conservative; Sahn who two years ago had lost his wings to an upstart one-wing. Now he had them back, by virtue of her death. “The black flyers are no threat. They are nothing, nothing.”

“She says they will never leave me,” the Landsman said.

“Wrong,” said Sahn in his thin, ingratiating voice. “You have nothing to fear. They will soon be gone. They have duties, Landsmen of their own, lives to live, families, messages to fly. They cannot stay indefinitely.”

“Others will take their place,” Maris said. “Windhaven has many flyers. You will never be out from under the shadow of their wings.”

“Pay her no mind, sir,” Sahn said. “The flyers are not behind her. Only a few one-wings. Trash of the sky. When they leave, no one will take their place. You need only wait, my Landsman.” Something in his tone, beyond his words, shocked and sickened her, and all at once Maris knew why; Sahn spoke as a lesser to a superior, not as equal to equal. He feared the Landsman, and was beholden to him for his very wings, and his voice made it clear that he knew it. For the first time, a flyer had become his Landsman’s creature, through and through.

The Landsman turned to face her again, his eyes cold. “As I thought,” he said. “Tya lied to me, and I found her out. Val One-Wing tried to frighten me with empty threats. And now you. All of you are liars, but I am cleverer than you think me. Your black flyers will do nothing, nothing. One-wings, all of you. The real flyers, they care nothing for Tya. The Council proved that.”

“Yes,” Sahn agreed, head nodding.

For an instant Maris was consumed by rage. She wanted to storm across the chamber and seize the frail flyer, shake him until he hurt. But Evan squeezed her hand hard, and when she glanced at him he shook his head.

“Sahn,” she said, gently.

Reluctantly he turned his eyes to meet hers. He was shaking, she saw, perhaps in shame at what he had become. As she looked at him, Maris thought she saw a bit of all the flyers she had ever known. The things we will do to fly, she thought… “Sahn,” she said. “Jem has joined the black flyers. He is no one-wing.”

“No,” Sahn admitted, “but he knew Tya well.”

“If you advise your Landsman,” she said, “tell him who Dorrel of Laus is.”

Sahn hesitated.

“Who?” the Landsman snapped, eyes flicking from Maris to Sahn. “Well?”

“Dorrel of Laus,” Sahn said reluctantly. “A Western flyer, my Landsman. He’s from a very old family. A good flyer. He is about my age.”

“What of him? What do I care?” The Landsman was impatient.

“Sahn,” said Maris, “what do you think would happen if Dorrel joined the black flyers?”

“No,” Sahn said quickly. “He’s no one-wing. He wouldn’t.”

“If he did?”

“He’s popular. A leader. There would be others.” Clearly Sahn did not like what he was saying.

“Dorrel of Laus is bringing a hundred Western flyers to join the circle,” Maris said forcefully. An exaggeration, probably, but they had no way of knowing.

The Landsman’s mouth twitched. “Is this true?” he demanded of his pet flyer.

Sahn coughed nervously. “Dorrel, I—well, it’s hard to say, sir. He’s influential, but, but…”

“Silence,” the Landsman said, “or I’ll find someone else for those wings of yours.”

“Ignore him,” Maris said sharply. “Sahn, a Landsman has no right to bestow or take away wings. The flyers have united to prove the truth of that.”

“Tya died wearing these wings,” Sahn said. “He gave them to me.”

“The wings are yours. No one blames you,” Maris said. “But your Landsman should not have done as he did. If you care, if you agree that Tya’s death was wrong, join us. Do you have any black clothing?”

“Black? I—well, yes.”

“Are you mad?” the Landsman said. He pointed at Sahn with his knife. “Seize that fool.”

Hesitantly, two of the landsguard started forward.

“Stay away from me!” Sahn said loudly. “I’m a flyer, damn you!”

And they stopped, looking back at the Landsman.

He pointed again, his mouth twitching. He seemed to be having difficulty finding words. “You will—you will take Sahn, and—”

He never finished. The doors to the chamber burst open then, and Coll was dragged bodily into the room by a brace of guards. They shoved him forward toward the Landsman; he stumbled to his hands and knees, then rose unsteadily. The right side of his face was a massive purplish bruise, and his eyes were as black as his clothing.

“Coll!” Maris said, horrified.

Coll managed a feeble smile. “My fault, big sister. But I’m all right.” Evan went to him and examined his face.

“I did not order this,” the Landsman said.

“You said he shouldn’t sing,” a landsguard replied. “He wouldn’t stop singing.”

“He’s all right,” Evan said. “The bruise will heal.”

Maris sighed in relief. Despite all their talk of death, it had been a shock to see Coll’s face. “I’m tired of this,” she said to the Landsman. “Listen, if you want to hear my terms.”

“Terms?” His tone was incredulous. “I am Landsman of Thayos, and you are nothing, no one. You cannot give me terms.”

“I can and will. You’d do well to listen. If you don’t, you won’t be the only one to suffer. I don’t think you realize the position you and Thayos are in. All over this island, your people are singing Coll’s song, and the singers are moving from island to island, spreading it through the world. Soon everyone will know how you had Tya killed.”

“She was a liar, a traitor.”

“A flyer is not a subject, and cannot be a traitor,” Maris said, “and she lied to stop a senseless war. Oh, she’ll always be controversial. But you’d be a fool to underestimate the power of the singers. You’re becoming a widely hated man.”

“Silence,” the Landsman said.

“Your people have never loved you,” Maris continued. “They’re frightened, too. The black flyers scare them, singers are being arrested, flyers are hanged, trade has been suspended, the war you started turned sour, even your landsguard are deserting. And you are the cause of it all. Sooner or later, they will think of getting rid of you. Already they know that nothing else will cause the black flyers to leave.

“The stories are everywhere,” Maris went on. “Thayos is cursed, Thayos is unlucky, Tya haunts the keep, the Landsman is mad. You will be shunned, like the first mad Landsman, like Kennehut. But your people will only endure it for a short time. They know the solution. They will rise against you. The singers will light the spark. The black flyers will fan the flames. You will be consumed.”

The Landsman smiled a sly, frightening smile. “No,” he said. “I will kill you all, and have an end to it.”

She smiled back at him. “Evan is a healer who has given his life to Thayos, and hundreds owe him their very lives. Coll is among the greatest singers of Windhaven, known and loved on a hundred islands. And I am Maris of Lesser Amberly, the girl in the songs, the one who changed the world. I’m a hero to people who have never met me. You’ll kill the three of us? Fine. The black flyers will watch and spread the news, the singers will make the songs. How long do you think you will rule then? The next flyers’ Council will not be divided—Thayos will become like Kennehut, a dead land.”

“Liar,” the Landsman said. He fingered his knife.

“We mean no harm to your people,” Maris said. “Tya is dead, and nothing will bring her back. But you will accept my terms, or everything I’ve warned you of will happen. First, you will give over Tya’s body so she can be flown out to sea, and cast from a height, as flyers are always buried. Second, you will make peace, as she wished. You will renounce all claim to the mine that started your war with Thrane. Third, you will send a poor child to Airhome academy every year, to train for wings. Tya would like that, I think. And finally, finally”—Maris paused briefly, watching the storm behind his eyes, and plunged on regardless—“you will renounce your office and retire, and your family will be taken from Thayos, to some island where you are not known, and can live out your days in peace.”

The Landsman was running his thumb along the edge of the knife. He had cut himself, but he did not seem to notice. A tiny drop of blood spotted the white silk of his fine shirt. His mouth twitched. In the sudden stillness that followed her words, Maris felt faint and tired. She had done all she could. She had said all that she could say. She waited.

Evan’s arm went around her, and in the corner of her eye she saw Coll’s bruised lips twist into a slight smile, and abruptly Maris felt almost good again. Whatever happened, she had done her best. She felt as if she had just returned from a long, long flight; her limbs ached and trembled, and she was damp and chilled through to the bone, but she remembered the sky and the lift of her wings, and that was enough. She was satisfied.

“Terms,” the Landsman said. His tone was poisonous.

He rose from his throne, the blood-smeared knife in his hand. “I will give you terms,” he said. He pointed the knife at Evan. “Take the old man and cut off his hands,” he ordered. “Then cast him out and let him heal himself. That ought to be a sight to see.” He laughed, and his hand moved sideways, so the knife was pointing at Coll. “The singer loses one hand and a tongue.” The knife shifted again. “As to you,” he said, when the blade pointed at Maris, “since you like the color black, I will give you your fill of it. I will put you in a cell without a window or a light, where it is black day and night, and you will stay there until you have forgotten what sunlight was. Do you like those terms, flyer? Do you?”

Maris felt the tears in her eyes, but she would not let them fall. “I am sorry for your people,” she said softly. “They did nothing to deserve you.”

“Take them,” the Landsman said, “and do as I have ordered!”

The landsguard looked at each other. One took a hesitant step forward, and stopped when he saw he was alone.

“What are you waiting for?” the Landsman shrieked. “Seize them!”

“Sir,” said a tall, dignified woman in the uniform of a high officer, “I beg you to reconsider. We cannot maim a singer, or imprison Maris of Lesser Amberly. It would be the end of us. The flyers would destroy us all.”

The Landsman stared at her, then pointed with his knife. “You are under arrest as well, traitor. You will have the cell next to hers, if you like her so well.” To the other landsguard, he said, “Take them.”

No one moved.

“Traitors,” he muttered, “I am surrounded by traitors. You will all die, all of you.” His eyes found Maris. “And you, you will be the first. I will do it myself.”

Maris was achingly aware of the knife in his hand, the dull bronze length of it, the smear of blood along the blade. She felt Evan tense beside her. The Landsman smiled and walked toward them.

“Stop him,” said the tall woman he had tried to arrest. Her voice was weary but firm. At once the Landsman was surrounded. A burly bear of a man held his arms, and a slim young woman took the knife from his grasp as easily and fluidly as if she had pulled it from a sheath. “I’m sorry,” said the woman who had taken charge.

“Let me go!” he demanded. “I am Landsman here!”

“No,” she answered, “no. Sir, I fear you are very sick.”

The grim, ancient keep had never seen such festivity.

The gray walls were decked with bright banners and colored lanterns, and smells of food and wine, wood smoke and fireworks permeated the air. The gates had been opened wide to all. Landsguard still roamed the keep, but few were in uniform, and weapons were forgotten.

The gibbets had been torn down, the scaffolding altered to make a stage where jugglers, magicians, clowns, and singers performed for the passing crowds.

Within, doors were open and halls filled with merrymakers. Prisoners from the dungeons had been set free, and even the lowest riff-raff from the alleys of Port Thayos had been admitted to the party. In the great hall tables had been set up and covered with huge wheels of cheese, baskets of bread, and smoked, pickled, and fried fish of all kinds. The hearths still smelled of roasting pig and seacat, and puddles of beer and wine glistened on the flagstones.

Music and laughter were in the air; it was a celebration of a richness and size unknown on Thayos in living memory. And among the crowds of the people of Thayos moved figures dressed in black—not, by their faces, mourners: the flyers. These flyers, one-wing and flyer-born alike, along with the previously exiled singers, were the guests of honor, feted and toasted by all.

Maris wandered through the boisterous crowds, ready to cringe at any more recognition. The party had gone on too long. She was tired and feeling a little sick from too much food and drink, all tributes forced on her by admirers. She wanted only to find Evan and go home.

Someone spoke her name and, reluctantly, Maris turned. She saw the new Landsman of Thayos, dressed in a long, embroidered gown that did not suit her. She looked uncomfortable out of uniform.

Maris summoned a smile. “Yes, Landsman?”

The former landsguard officer grimaced. “I suppose I will get used to that title, but it still brings to mind someone very different. I haven’t seen much of you today—could I have a few minutes with you?”

“Yes, of course. As many as you wish. You saved my life.”

“That wasn’t so noble. Your actions took more courage than mine, and they weren’t self-serving. The story they will tell about me is that I carefully plotted and planned to depose the Landsman and take his job. That is not the truth, but what do singers care for truth?” Her voice was bitter. Maris looked at her in surprise.

They walked together through rooms filled with gamblers, drunks, and lovers until they found an empty chamber where they could sit and talk together.

Because the Landsman still was silent, Maris said, “Surely no one misses the old Landsman? I don’t think he was well-loved.”

The new Landsman frowned. “No, he will not be missed, and neither will I, when I am gone. But he was a good leader for many years until he became too frightened and began to think foolishly. I was sorry to have to do what I did, but I saw no other choice. This party, here, is my attempt to make the transition joyful, instead of fearful. To go into debt to make my people feel prosperous.”

“I think they appreciate the gesture,” Maris said. “Everyone seems very happy.”

“Yes, now, but their memories are short.” The Landsman moved slightly in her seat, as if to shake off the thought. The line between her eyes smoothed out, and her features took on a kindlier cast. “I didn’t mean to bore you with my personal worries. I drew you aside to tell you how respected you are in Thayos, and to tell you that I honor your attempts to keep peace between the flyers and the people of Thayos.”

Maris wondered if she was blushing. “Please,” she said. “Don’t. I… had the flyers in mind, and not the people of Thayos, to be honest.”

“That doesn’t matter. What you accomplished is what matters. You risked your life for it.”

“I did what I could,” Maris said. “But I didn’t achieve very much, after all. A truce, a temporary peace. The real problem, the conflicts between the flyer-born and the one-wings, and between the Landsmen and the flyers who work with them, is still there, and it will flare up again—” She broke off, realizing that the Landsman didn’t care, and didn’t want to know, that this happy ending was no true ending at all.

“There will be no more trouble for the flyers on Thayos,” the Landsman said. Maris realized that the woman had the useful ability to make a simple sentence sound like a proclamation of law. “We respect flyers here—and singers, too.”

“A wise choice,” Maris said. She grinned. “It never hurts to have the singers on your side.”

The Landsman went on as if she had not been interrupted. “And you, Maris, will always be welcome on Thayos, if ever you choose to return to visit us.”

“Visit?” Maris frowned, puzzled.

“I realize that, since you no longer fly, the journey by ship may be…”

“What are you talking about?”

The Landsman looked annoyed at all the interruptions. “I know that you are leaving Thayos for Seatooth soon, to make your home at the Woodwings Academy.”

“Who told you that?”

“The singer, Coll, I believe. Was it a secret?”

“Not a secret. Not a fact, either.” Maris sighed. “I was offered the job at Woodwings, but I have not accepted it.”

“If you stay on Thayos, of course we would all be pleased, and the hospitality of this… my… keep will always be extended to you.” The Landsman rose, obviously concluding her formal recognition of Maris, and Maris, too, stood, and they spoke a few moments longer of inconsequential things. Maris hardly paid attention. Her thoughts were in turmoil again about a subject she had determined was resolved. Did Coll think he could make something come true by speaking of it as fact? She would have to talk to him.

But when she found him a few minutes later in the outer yard, near the gate, he was not alone. Bari was with him, and S’Rella—and S’Rella was carrying her wings.

Maris hurried to join them. “S’Rella—you’re not leaving?”

S’Rella grasped her hands. “I must. The Landsman wants a message flown to Deeth. I offered to take it—I have to get home, and I would have to fly south in another day or two anyway. There was no need for Jem or Sahn to go so far when I can take it just as well. I just sent Evan to look for you, to tell you I was leaving. But it needn’t be a sad farewell, you know—we’ll see each other soon at Woodwings.”

Maris glared at Coll, but he looked oblivious. She said to S’Rella, “I told you I would live out my life on Thayos.”

S’Rella looked puzzled. “But surely you’ve changed your mind? After all that has happened? And you know they still want you at Woodwings—now more than ever. You’ve become a hero all over again!”

Maris scowled. “I wish everyone would stop saying that! Why am I a hero? What have I done? Just patched things over for a bit longer. Nothing has been settled. You, at least, should realize that, S’Rella!”

S’Rella shook her head impatiently. “Don’t change the subject. What about that fine speech you gave us about needing a purpose in life—how can you turn your back now on the work you’re meant to do? You’ve admitted you’re no good as a healer—what will you do on Thayos? What will you do with your life?”

Maris had asked herself that same question, and had lain awake most of the night arguing it with herself. Now she said quietly, “I will find something I can do here. The Landsman may have something for me.”

“But that’s such a waste! Maris, you’re needed at Woodwings. You belong there. Even without your wings you’re a flyer—you always were, and you always will be. I thought you recognized that!”

There were tears in S’Rella’s eyes. Maris felt resentful and trapped—she didn’t want to be having this argument. She said, trying to keep her voice level and calm, “I belong with Evan. I can’t leave him.”

“And they say eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves.”

Maris turned to see Evan, and there was such tenderness in his eyes that she forgot her lingering doubts. She had made the right decision. She couldn’t leave him.

“But no one is asking you to leave me, you know,” he said. “I’ve just been talking with a young healer who is eager to move into my house and take over my patients. I can be ready to leave within a week.”

Maris stared at him. “Leave? Leave your house? But why?”

He smiled. “To go with you to Seatooth. It may not be a pleasant voyage, but at least we can comfort each other in our sickness.”

“But… I don’t understand. Evan, you can’t mean it—this is your home!”

“I mean to go with you, wherever you go,” he said, “I can’t ask you to stay on Thayos, just to keep you beside me. I can’t be that selfish, knowing you are needed at Woodwings, and that you belong there.”

“But how can you leave? How will you live? You’ve never been away from Thayos.”

He laughed, but it sounded forced. “You make it sound as if I proposed to go live in the sea! I can leave Thayos like anyone else, on a ship. My life hasn’t ended yet, and until it has, there is no reason why I shouldn’t change. Surely an old healer can find some work to do on Seatooth.”

“Evan…”

He put his arms around her. “I know. Believe me, I’ve thought this through. Surely you didn’t think I was sleeping last night while you were tossing and turning and wondering what to do? I decided that I can’t let you walk out of my life. For once in my life, I must be bold, and dare something different. I am going with you.”

Maris couldn’t hold the tears back then, although she couldn’t have said just why she was crying. Evan pulled her close and held her tightly until she recovered.

As they drew apart, Maris could hear Coll assuring Bari that her aunt was happy, that she was crying with joy; and she saw S’Rella, standing a little apart, her face alight with joy and affection.

“I give up,” Maris said. Her voice was somewhat shaky. She wiped her face with her hands. “I have no more excuses. I will go to Seatooth—we will go to Seatooth—as soon as we can get a ship out.”

What began as a few friends walking with S’Rella to the flyers’ cliff became a procession, an extension of the celebration within the keep. Maris, Evan, and Coll were the popular heroes, and many wanted to be close to them, to see at first hand what was so special about the flyer, the healer, and the singer who had deposed a tyrannical Landsman, stopped a war, and ended the eerie threat posed by the silent black flyers. If anyone still dared think Tya had done wrong and deserved her fate, it was thought silently, privately, held as an unpopular opinion.

And yet even in this happy, admiring crowd, Maris knew, the old resentments were still buried. She had not banished them forever, neither those between land-bound and flyer, nor the conflicts separating the one-wings and the flyer-born. Sooner or later this battle would have to be fought again.

The journey through the mountain tunnel was not a lonely one this time. Voices echoed loudly off stone walls, and a dozen torches blazed and smoked, making the damp, dark corridor a different place.

They emerged to a dark, windy night, the stars obscured by clouds. Maris saw S’Rella standing near the cliff’s edge, talking with another flyer, a one-wing still wearing black. At the sight of S’Rella standing on that too-familiar cliff, Maris felt her stomach clench, and her head reel with dizziness. But for Evan’s support she felt she would have fallen. She knew she didn’t want to see S’Rella leap from the cliff from which she had fallen, not once, but twice. She was suddenly afraid.

Several youths darted forward now, loudly vying for the privilege of helping S’Rella ready herself for flight. S’Rella half-turned, seeking Maris, and their eyes met. Maris drew a deep breath, steadying herself, trying to empty herself of fear, released Evan’s hand and stepped forward. “Let me help,” she said.

She knew it so well. The texture of the cloth-of-metal, the heft of the wings in her hands, the firm snap of struts locking into place. Even though she could no longer wear the wings herself, still her hands loved this task they knew so well, and there was a pleasure, even if rimmed about by sadness, in preparing S’Rella for flight.

When the wings were fully extended, the final struts snapped into place, Maris felt the return of her fear. It was irrational, she knew, and she could say nothing of it to S’Rella, but she felt that if S’Rella stepped off that dangerous cliff it would be to fall, just as Maris had done.

Finally, forcing herself, Maris managed to say, “Go well.” Her voice was very low.

S’Rella looked at her searchingly. “Ah, Maris,” she said. “You won’t be sorry—you’ve made the right choice. I’ll see you soon.” Then, despairing of words, S’Rella leaned forward and kissed her friend.

“Go well,” S’Rella said, one flyer to another, and then she turned toward the cliff edge, toward the sea and the open sky, and leaped into the wind.

There was applause from the onlookers as S’Rella caught a rising current and wheeled above the cliff, wings glinting darkly. Then, rising higher and heading out to sea, she was lost to sight almost at once, seeming to merge into the night sky.

Maris continued to gaze into the sky long after S’Rella had vanished. Her heart was full, but there was a steadfast certainty there, as well as pain, and even a small spark of the old joy. She would survive. Even without her wings, she was a flyer still.