Windhaven - Страница 66

“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.”