Windhaven

He shook his head. "And not an end in itself, I'll wager. What's your plan?"

"Will you help me with it? We need you."

" 'We?' You've sided with the one-wings, I suppose?" His tone was not angry, and did not condemn, but Maris was aware that he had withdrawn from her, ever so slightly.

"It's not a matter of sides, Dorr. At least, not among the flyers. It mustn't be — that way is death, the end of everything we both hold dear. Flyers — one-wing or flyer-born — must not be split up, fragmented, at the mercy of Landsmen."

"I agree. But it's too late. It was too late once Tya declared her scorn for all the laws and traditions by telling her first lie."

"Dorr," she said, her voice coaxing and reasonable, "I don't approve of what Tya did, either. She meant well; what she did was wrong, I agree, but—"

"I agree, you agree," he said, interrupting. "But. We always come down to that. Tya is dead now — we can all agree on that. She's dead, but it's not over, it's far from over. Other one-wings call her a hero, a martyr. She died for the cause of lying, for the freedom to lie. How many more lies will be told? How long will it be before the people forget their mistrust of us? Since the one-wings refused to repudiate Tya, and split away from us, there is talk among… among a few… of closing down the academies and ending the challenges, returning to the old way, to the old days when a flyer was a flyer for once and for all."

"You don't want that."

"No. No, I don't." His shoulders slumped for a moment, uncharacteristically, and he sighed. "But, Maris, it goes beyond what I want, or what you want. It's out of our hands now. Val spoke the death warrant for the one-wings when he led them out of Council and called his illegal sanction."

"Sanctions can be revoked," Maris said.

Dorrel stared at her. His eyes narrowed. "Did Val One-Wing tell you that? I don't believe him. He's playing some devious game, trying to use you to trick me."

"Dorrel!" She stood up, indignant. "Give me some credit, please! I'm not one of Val's puppets! He didn't promise to revoke the sanction, and he's not using me. I tried to convince him that it would be in everyone's best interest to act in such a way that both flyer-born and one-wings were united again. Val is stubborn and impulsive, but he's not blind. Although he wouldn't promise to revoke the sanction, I did make him see what a mistake he had made — that his sanction was useless because it was honored only by a small group, and that this division among flyers was to no one's advantage."

Dorrel looked at her thoughtfully. Then he, too, rose, and began to pace around the small, dusty room.

"Quite a feat, to get Val One-Wing to admit he was wrong," he said. "But what good does that do now?

Does he agree that the plan we followed was right?"

"No," Maris said. "I don't think it was right, either. I think you were much too harsh. Oh, I know what you thought — I know you had to repudiate Tya's crime, and you thought the best way to do that was to hand her over to the Landsman for execution."

Dorrel stopped walking and frowned at her. "Maris, you know that was never my intention. I never thought Tya should die. But Val's proposal was absurd — it would have seemed that we condoned her actions."

"The Council should have insisted that Tya be given over for punishment, and then stripped Tya of her wings, forever."

"We did strip her of her wings."

"No," said Maris. "You let the Landsman do that, after he'd hanged her in them. Why do you suppose he did that? To show that he could hang a flyer and go unscathed."

Dorrel looked horrified. He crossed the room and gripped her arm. "Maris, no! He hung her in her wings?"

She nodded.

"I hadn't heard that." He sank down on his chair again as if his legs had been kicked.

"He proved his point," Maris said. "He proved that flyers could be killed as easily as anyone else. And now they will be. Now that you and Val have split flyers and one-wings into two warring camps, the Landsmen will take advantage of it. They'll demand oaths of loyalty, they'll set up rules and regulations to govern their flyers, they'll execute the rebels for treason — in time, perhaps, they'll claim the wings as their own property, to be handed out to followers who please them. Other flyers could be arrested, even executed, tomorrow. All it will take is for one more Landsman to realize he has the power — that the flyers are too fragmented now to offer any opposition." She sat down and gazed at him, almost holding her breath as she hoped for the right response.

Slowly Dorrel nodded. "What you say has a horrible ring of truth to it. But… what can I do? Only Val, and the other one-wings, can decide to rejoin us. You surely don't expect me to try to rally the other flyers in a belated sanction of our own?"

"Of course not. But it's not only up to Val — it can't be. There are two sides, and both of you must make some gesture of reconciliation."

"And what might that gesture be?"