message himself.'
Just for a moment she was suspicious. The problem with Ukarres, Vak Vonimor said, was that he did not know a bowstring from a knot; but her mother would not engage in trickery, and she could think of no motive for the old man to make up such a story.
'When?' she demanded.
He looked surprised at the question. 'After two bells, when everyone is asleep...and the meeting with the prince will be more private while most of his party are asleep also. Nobody else knows this, of course, my dear. The preparations are going ahead, but tomorrow there will be word of some crisis in Ramo which demands the prince's return.'
'Why are you telling me this?' she demanded.
'Because I know how disappointed you will be,' he said. 'I thought a day to prepare yourself...' His wrinkles deepened in an understanding smile; somehow the lopsidedness made his smiles irresistible. 'I know it must be a blow for you, my dear. I am sure that the prince will send for you to come to court, afterward.'
She was about to say that she would go to Vinok with her father, and then stopped in time. Her father would refuse. 'Peddling my wares?' he would ask, and she could hear his scornful tone quite clearly. No, she had a much better idea.
'Thank you, Uncle,' she said, rising.
He struggled to his feet. 'My sorrow, to be the bearer of bad tidings. And now it is almost three bells. I shall be prompt for breakfast, for the first time in memory.'
'I must go and see about the flowers,' the duchess said.
'And I must get dressed,' Elosa said.
She hurried toward her room, worried that her face might reveal her excitement. As the door closed behind her, Ukarres and the duchess glanced at each other and exchanged nods.
Elosa scrambled into her flying suit without even summoning Jassina to assist her. She, not her father, would warn the prince! Her father had rescued the queen; she would warn the queen's son! Poetic! Ironic! And she knew she looked best in a flying suit--first impressions were important.
She would soar in over the hills, lonely, heroic. She would kneel to him, her raven hair falling loose as she pulled off her helmet. If he was any sort of man at all, that would stun him.
How to stop her father, though? She could leave a note for Ukarres, but that might be discovered too soon, in time for pursuit. No, she would lay a false trail.
She headed for the aerie. Three bells had not yet rung, and she met no one; all were asleep, she assumed, until she neared the top of the stairs and heard the noise.
Normally the aerie was a peaceful place, four walls of stout bars supporting a high pyramid roof. A man could step between those bars; an eagle could not. Around the central stairwell, within the caged area, was the piled litter of generations--tables and bins and bales and discarded harnesses and helpful clutter which would always yield up a useful scrap or gadget when required.
Beyond the bars on all four sides lay the terrace, flanked by a low wall whose top provided perching for the birds. Always fifty or so of them stood there, still and silent giants, their backs to the room, staring out over the world like enormous silhouetted gargoyles. The wind blew gently from darkward, even and constant, stirring small motions in the birds' feathers, swirling tiny ripples in the mute dust which coated the floor and gave the aerie its distinctive musty, bitter smell.
Silent giants, the birds preened themselves, and they preened their neighbors' heads, but mostly they just stood. Once in a while a bird would shift from one foot to the other, clanking the rungs of its leash, or bend its head to snatch a pebble from the range pot, or feak its beak against the parapet; but mostly they just stood, staring out into the world as though thinking grave thoughts. Their eyes glared fixedly, but sometimes their heads turned to try another view. Much of the time they showed no movement except the eternal restless ripplings of their scarlet combs. As a child she had wondered greatly what they thought and what they watched. The castle and town were spread below them, so they could know everything that happened in the world of men--if they cared. Certainly no one moved within the aerie but the birds knew; nothing could creep up on an eagle. At times all the heads would line up, and it was likely then that goats or sheep were moving on the distant hills. A bird could see a smile farther than a man could see a man, so it was said.
Once in a while a mutebat would swoop down from the rafters to snatch up a pellet and whir back again. Once in a long while a bat would fly too close to a great waiting beak and then
There were browns and bronzes and silvers. The browns wore the livery of their country cousins, the wilds, the original stock. Bronzes were common, and she had heard tell of some that verged on gold. Silvers were very rare, and Ninar Foan had worked for generations on its silvers; her own IceFire was almost pure, the best silver in Rantorra, her father said. Only a few dark pinions marred her blue-white splendor, and the scarlet comb shone above it like a ruby. IceFire had been Elosa's sixth kiloday present. Breeding birds was a long-term task; they were likely to outlive their owners and their owners' grandchildren.
Her happiest childhood memories were of this aerie, playing in the litter, watching the birds. How excited she had been when one arrived, a vast spread of wings obscuring the sky! And even more excited when one departed, its gallant rider aboard, leaping off into space and suddenly not there. One of the first things she had been taught was that the bars were the limit; step through the bars onto the terrace and the birds would eat you. She had not really believed that then, although she did now, but within the cage she had played until that day when her father had first taken her into the sky. She had been barely past her second kilo, and yet she remembered every moment. That day the eagles had stolen her heart.
The aerie was not peaceful now. Elosa stopped at the top of the long stairs in astonishment. The place was total bedlam, men and boys running around with loads and getting in one another's way. A line of boys was sweeping up the dust, raising hideous, choking clouds of it, turning everything gray. The familiar junk pile had almost vanished, being systematically dragged over to darkside and hurled. Vak Vonimor, the eagler, was loud in argument with several helpers, apparently rehashing yet again the best method of ridding the aerie of mutebats, and tempers were rising. Men were tidying and stacking equipment: saddles and harnesses and hoods. As fast as one group formed a neat pile, it seemed, another would move it. The birds were twisting their heads back and forth, disturbed and fretting.
The prince was coming, and Ninar Foan's aerie was getting its first real reorganization in a megaday. Typical of men, she thought, to leave it until almost too late.
She surveyed the chaos for a few moments in silence and then took the bird by the beak. She marched over to Vak himself.
'Master Vonimor!'
He glanced around, rolled his eyes, and muttered something which Elosa decided not to have heard.
'My lady?'
'Be so kind as to have IceFire dressed at once,' Elosa said firmly.
'My lady...' Vak Vonimor was not a patient man, and it was said that he feared only the keeper himself-- and his daughter. Today perhaps only the keeper. 'His Grace instructed us to move the birds, my lady. And to make the place ready. He assured us that no birds would be flown today.' His round face was picket-fenced with dust and sweat; it did not, however, look too convinced of victory.
'I have decided--he has agreed that I may fly,' Elosa replied.
'IceFire is not due for a kill today,' Vonimor muttered, yielding to the inevitable.
'I was not planning to hunt her, merely to get away from all this...this mayhem.'
He rolled his eyes again. 'Very well, my lady. Cover?' He glanced around. 'Tuy! Dress IceFire and take...take ThunderClaw.'
The youth addressed broke into a wide grin and dashed away before Vonimor could change his mind. Elosa scowled, but it had no effect. Vonimor knew very well what she thought about Tuy Rorin. He had been a young hellion when she was a young hellion, only slightly older than she and more hellionish, given to pulling hair and jumping out at girls from dark corners. Now he was more inclined to pull girls into the dark corners, scything a promiscuous swath through the chamber and scullery maids. His mother was a cook, his official father the gateman, but even as a child he had obviously belonged elsewhere, and he had announced his arrival at puberty by developing the charm, the great hooked nose, and the bushy black brows that were unmistakably of the House of Foan. Her
