Windhaven

She seemed suddenly a stranger. Maris spun away from her, turning her back on the older woman to avoid the blind stare of that white and hideous eye. "He drove a friend of mine to suicide," she said in a low, intense voice. "Mocked her grief, took her wings, and all but pushed her off that cliff with his own hands."

"Nonsense," Sena said. "Ari took her own life."

"I knew Ari," Maris said softly, still facing the fire. "She hadn't had her wings very long, but she was a true flyer, one of the best. Everyone liked her. Val could never have defeated her in fair flight."

"Val did defeat her."

"She talked to me at the Eyrie, just after her brother died," Maris said. "She had seen it all. He was out in his boat, the lines out for moonfish, and she was flying above, keeping an eye on him. She saw the scylla coming, but she was too far away, the winds tore the warning from her mouth. She tried to fly closer, but not in time. She saw the boat smashed to splinters, and the scylla's neck came craning up out of the water with her brother's body in its jaws. Then it dove."

"She should not have gone to the competition," Sena said simply.

"It was only a week off," Maris said. "She didn't intend to go, that day she was at the Eyrie, but she was so forlorn. Everyone thought it would help cheer her up. The games, the races, the singing and the drinking. We all urged her to go, never dreaming that anyone would challenge her. Not in her condition."

"She knew the rules the Council set," Sena insisted. " Your Council, Maris. Any flyer who appears at the competition is subject to challenge, and no healthy flyer may absent himself more than two years running."

Maris turned back to face the teacher once again, scowling. "You talk of law. What of humanity? Yes, Ari should have stayed away. But she desperately wanted to go on with her life, and she needed to be among her friends and forget her pain for a while. We watched over her. She was clumsy then, as if she often forgot where she was and what she was doing, but we kept her safe. She was enjoying the competition. No one could believe it when that boy challenged her."

"Boy," Sena repeated. "You used the right word, Maris. He was fifteen."

"He knew what he was doing. The judges tried to explain things to him, but he would not withdraw his challenge. He flew well and Ari flew badly, and that was it. One-Wing had her wings. It was only a month later that she killed herself."

"Val was half an ocean away at the time," Sena said. "The flyers had no cause to blame him, and shun him so. And no cause to do what they did the year after, at the competition on Culhall. Challenge after challenge after challenge, from retired flyers and flyer-children just come of age, and the best and the most talented at that."

"There was no rule against multiple challenges then," Maris said defensively.

"I notice that there is such a rule now, though. Where was the fairness in that?"

"It didn't matter. He lost to the second challenger."

"Yes. A girl who had been practicing with wings since she was seven, whose father was the senior flyer on Little Shotan, was able to defeat him after he had already out-flown one other challenger," Sena said.

She made an angry noise and rose slowly from her chair. "And what incentive did he have to fly well against her? There was another waiting to challenge next, a dozen more after him. And you all told him he was only half a flyer anyway." She moved toward the door.

"Where are you going?" Maris demanded.

"To dinner," Sena said gruffly. "I have news to tell my students."

Val arrived the next morning during breakfast. Sena sat spooning up her eggs in a grim silence while the students glanced at her curiously. Maris was seated well away from the teacher, listening to S'Rella and brawny young Liane try to convince a third student — a plain, quiet woman named Dana, the oldest of the Woodwingers — to remain at the academy. Last night at dinner, Sena had announced the names of the five she would sponsor in challenge. Dana, discouraged, was planning to return home and resume the life she had abandoned. S'Rella and Liane were not doing very well in their attempts to reconvert her. From time to time Maris would add a few words about the importance of desire, but she found it hard to care.

Truth was that Dana had begun much too late and had never had real talent anyway.

All conversation ended when Val entered.

He took off his heavy woolen traveling cape and lowered his bag to the floor. If he took note of the sudden silence or the way the others stared at him, he gave no sign. "I'm hungry," he said. "Have you any extra food?"

That shattered the spell. Everyone began talking at once. Leya fetched him a platter of eggs and a mug of tea, and Sena rose and went to him, smiling, and led him back to her table, to sit and eat at her side.

Maris watched- in silence, staring and feeling uneasy, until S'Rella tugged at the sleeve of her shirt.

"I said, do you think he will win again?" S'Rella asked.