Windhaven

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