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 tightl
y 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.
Epilogue
THE OLD WOMAN WOKE when the door opened, in a room that smelled of sickness. There were other odors as well: salt water, smoke, sea mold, the lingering scent of the spice tea that had gone cold by her bedside. But over them all was the smell of sickness, overpowering, cloying, making the room seem thick and close.
In the doorway a woman was holding a smoking taper. The old woman could see its light, a shifting yellowish blur, and she could make out the figure holding it, and another figure beside her, although their faces were lost to her. Her vision was not what it once was. Her head throbbed terribly, as it often did when she woke. It had been like that for years. She raised a soft, blue-veined hand to her forehead, and squinted. “Who is it?” she asked.
“Odera,” said the woman with the taper, in a voice the old woman recognized as the healer's. “He's here, the one you asked for. Are you strong enough to see him?”
“Yes,” the old woman said. “Yes.” She struggled to sit up in her bed. “Come closer,” she said. “I want to see you.”
“Shall I stay?” Odera asked uncertainly. “Do you need me?”
“No,” said the old woman. “No, I'm past healing. Just him.”
Odera nodded—the old woman could make out the gesture, though the face was a blur to her—lit the oil lamps carefully with the taper, and shut the door when she left.
The other visitor pulled a straight-back wooden chair across the room, and sat down close to the bedside, where she could see him quite well. He was young. A boy, really, not even twenty, beardless, with a few pale wisps of blond hair trying to pass as a mustache on his upper lip. His hair was very pale and very curly, his eyebrows almost invisible. But he carried an instrument—a kind of rude guitar, square and with only four strings—and he began to tune it as soon as he was seated. “Would you like me to play something for you?” he asked. “Some special song?” His voice was pleasant, lilting, with just the hint of an accent.
“You are a long way from home,” the old woman said.
He smiled. “How did you know?”
“Your voice,” she said. “It's been years and years since I've heard a voice like that. You're from the Outer Islands, aren't you?”
“Yes,” he said. “My home is a little place right at the edge of the world. You've probably never heard of it. It's called Stormhammer-the-Outermost.”
“Ah,” she said. “I remember it well. Eastwatch Tower, and the ruins of the one that preceded it. That bitter drink you people brew from roots. Your Landsman insisted I try some, and laughed at the expression on my face when I swallowed. He was a dwarf. I never met an uglier man, or a cleverer one.”
The singer looked briefly startled. “He's been dead some thirty years,” he said, “but you're right, I've heard the stories. Then you've been there?”
“Three or four times,” she said, savoring his reaction. “It was many years ago, before you were born. I used to be a flyer.”
“Oh,” he said, “of course. I should have guessed. Seatooth is full of flyers, is it not?”
“Not really,” she replied. “This is Woodwings Academy, and those here are mostly dreamers who have yet to win their wings, or teachers who have long since set theirs down. Like me. I was a teacher, until I got sick. Now I lie here and remember, mostly.”
The singer touched his strings, bringing forth a bright burst of sound that faded quickly into silence. “What would you like to hear?” he asked. “There's a new song that's the rage of Stormtown.” His face fell. “It's a bit bawdy, though. Maybe you wouldn't like it.”
The old woman laughed. “Oh, I might, I might. You might be surprised at the things I remember. I didn't call you here to sing for me, though.”
He stared at her from wide green eyes. “What?” he said, puzzled. “But they told me—I was in an inn in Stormtown, just arrived in fact, the ship from Eastern put in the day before yesterday, and suddenly this boy came up and told me a singer was needed on Seatooth.”
“And you came. Left the inn. Weren't you doing well enough there?”
“Well enough,” he said. “I'd never been to the Shotans before, after all, and the customers weren't deaf or miserly. But—” He stopped abruptly, panic writ large on his face.
“But you came anyway,” the old woman said, “because they told you that a dyi
ng woman had asked for a singer.”
He said nothing.
“Don't feel guilty,” she said. “You aren't revealing any secrets. I know I'm dying. Odera and I are frank with each other. I probably should have died several years ago. My head hurts constantly, and I fear I'm going blind, and I already seem to have outlived half the world. Oh, don't misunderstand me. I don't want to die. But I don't especially want to go on like this either. I don't like the pain, or my own helplessness. Death frightens me, but at least it will free me from the smell in this room.” She saw his expression and smiled gently. “You don't have to pretend you can't smell it. I know it's there. The sick smell.” She sighed. “I prefer cleaner scents. Spices and salt water, even sweat. Wind. Storm. I still remember the smell that lightning leaves in its wake.”
“There are songs I could sing,” the youth said carefully. “Glad songs to lighten your mood. Funny songs, or sad ones if you prefer. It might make the pain less.”
“Kivas makes the pain less,” the old woman replied. “Odera makes it strong, and sometimes laces it with sweetsong or other herbs. She gives me tesis to make me sleep. I don't need your voice for my hurts.”
“I know I'm young,” the singer said, “but I am good. Let me show you.”
“No.” She smiled. “I'm sure you're good, really I am. Though I probably wouldn't appreciate your talents. Maybe my ears are going too, or perhaps it's just a trick of old age, but no singer I've heard in the last ten years has seemed as good to me as the ones I remember from years ago. I've listened to the best. I heard S'Lassa and T'rhennian sing duets on Veleth a long time back. Jared of Geer has entertained me, and homeless Gerri One-Eye, and Coll. I once knew a singer named Halland who sang me songs a good deal bawdier than the one you were about to perform, I'd wager. When I was young, I even heard Barrion sing, not once but many times.”
“I'm as good as any of them,” the singer said stubbornly.
The old woman sighed. “Don't pout,” she said sharply. “I'm sure you sing splendidly. But you'll never get someone as old as me to admit it.”