Windhaven

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