Windhaven

"A half-flyer," she agreed. "Both of us. But which half? Val, you can make the Landsmen bid for your services. The flyers will despise you for it, most of them, and maybe some of the younger and greedier will imitate you, and I'd hate to see that. And you can wear that knife your father gave you when you fly, even though you break one of the oldest and wisest flyer laws by doing so. It is a small point, a tradition, and the flyers again will despise you, but no one will do anything. But I tell you now, if you find who ordered you beaten, and kill them with that same knife, you'll be One-Wing no longer. The flyers will name you outlaw and strip your wings away, and not a Landsman on Windhaven will take your side or give you landing, no matter how much they need flyers."

"You want me to forget," Val said. "Forget this?"

"No," said Maris. "Find them, and take them to a Landsman, or call a flyer court. Let your enemy be the one who loses wings and home and life, and not you. Is that such a bad alternative?"

Val smiled crookedly, and Maris saw he had lost some teeth as well. "No," he said. "I almost like it."

"It's your choice," Maris said. "You won't be flying for a good while, so you'll have time to think about it.

I think you're intelligent enough to use that time." She looked to S'Rella. "I must return to Lesser Amberly. It's on your way, if you're going back to Southern. Will you fly with me, and spend a day in my home?"

S'Rella nodded eagerly. "Yes, I'd love — that is, if Val will be all right."

"Flyers have unlimited credit," Val said. "If I promise Raggin enough iron, he'll nurse me better than my own parent."

"I'll go, then," S'Rella said. "But I'll see you again, Val, won't I? We both have wings now."

"Yes," Val said. "Go fly with yours. I'll look at mine."

S'Rella kissed him and crossed the room to where Maris stood. They started out the door.

" Maris!" Val called sharply.

She turned at the sound of his voice, in time to see his left hand reach awkwardly behind his head, under the pillow, and come whipping out with frightening speed. The long blade sliced through the air and struck the doorframe not a foot from Maris' head. But the knife was ornamental obsidian, bright and black and sharp, but not resilient, and it shattered when it struck.

Maris must have looked terrified; Val was smiling. "It was never my father's," he said. "My father never owned anything. I stole it from Arak." Across the room their eyes met, and Val laughed painfully. "Get rid of it for me, will you, One-Wing?"

Maris smiled and bent to pick up the pieces.

PART THREE The Fall

SHE GREW OLD in less than a minute.

When Maris left the side of the Landsman of Thayos she was still young. She took the underground way from his spare rocky keep to the sea, a damp, gloomy tunnel through the mountain. She walked quickly, with a taper in her hand, her folded wings on her back, surrounded by echoes and the slow drip of water.

There were puddles on the floor of the tunnel, and the water soaked through her boots. Maris was anxious to be off.

It was not until she emerged into the twilight on the far side of the mountain that Maris saw the sky. It was a dim threatening purple, a violet so dark it was almost black; the color of a bad bruise, full of blood and pain. The wind was cold and unruly. Maris could taste the fury that was about to break, could see it in the clouds. She stood at the foot of the time-worn stairs that led up the sea cliff, and briefly she considered turning back, resting overnight at the lodge house and postponing her flight until dawn.

The thought of the long walk back through the tunnel dismayed her, however, and Maris took no joy in this place. Thayos seemed to her a dark and bitter land, and its Landsman rude, his brutality barely hidden beneath the civilities required between Landsman and flyer. The message he had given her to fly weighed heavily upon her. The words were angry, greedy, full of the threat of war, and Maris was eager to deliver and forget them, to free herself of the burden as quickly as she could.

So she extinguished her taper and started up the stairs, climbing easily with long, impatient strides. There were lines on her face and gray in her hair, but Maris was still as graceful and vigorous as she had been at twenty.