A Mankind Witch Read Online Free PDF

possible. "Princess, I am not of your faith, but if a god cannot recognize and reward such love and loyalty, how can he be a god? If there are no dogs in heaven, let me rather go to wherever they are."

    He took the knife from her hand and cleaned it on one of his rags, and gave it back to her. Signy sniffed. "I don't know what to do with her now," she said in a small voice. "She just hurt so. I had to do it."

    Cair touched her, awkwardly, on the shoulder. He hadn't lived here for this long without coming to realize that to do so held possibly fatal consequences. "I will deal with it, Princess. I will bury her down at the edge of the paddocks. The dogs all love that spot. Let her always be there."

    She nodded, blindly. Sniffed. Bent over and kissed the dog's gray head once more and stood up. "Thank you," she said guiding herself along the stalls with an outstretched hand, eyes obviously too blurred to see.

    Cair knew then that he was, against all the trammels of logic and common sense, her man. It fought with his rational desire to get out of here, and back to his ships and his palace in Algiers. Admittedly, the chances for escape hadn't been good so far. But he knew, in his heart of hearts, that he could have contrived something soon. He stayed on, as the weeks became months, knowing that he was stupid to stay. He was unused to dealing with such feelings about anyone, and not sure how one did cope with them.

    To have acquired such a devoted slave seemed to have made no difference to Signy. He was not really sure she even noticed.

    By harvest, he had unofficially promoted himself to head of her household servants. He was undisputed lord of all the yard servants. But the house-thralls, mostly women, were a different matter. Still, they would learn. The thought amused him. Cair Aidin, slave-thrall, faker of magics, lord of the backstairs. How the mighty had fallen!

    He had quite a neat repertory of tricks by then. If he could gain access to some more chemical substances he'd have a few more surprises ready. But it was amazing what you could get away with in a bad light, with a few threads of gray horsehair, if you had a gullible enough audience.

    One thing Cair found passing strange, and not a little unpleasant. He'd been a popular man among the damsels of Carthage and Algiers. Women had swooned at his feet. Naturally, he hadn't expected them all to swoon at his feet here. But they'd left him entire. He'd even wondered at first if he was supposed to service the princess. You heard stories. Well, perhaps beautiful Amazons enslaving men for certain explicit purposes was always a daydream of scruffy sailors that no woman would look at twice, without their price in hand. But he'd never thought of himself in that category. Here—although as a balewerker he had increasing cachet, although it also lent fear—women regarded him as odd looking and a little undersized. Even Thjalfi got more attention than he did. Humph. If he'd thought about it, he'd have been less keen on making the moonling-midden wash. And as for Princess Signy, well, he was pretty sure he was regarded as yet another one of her horses. She treated him like one of them, these days. And unless you were very odd indeed, you did not consider a horse as a mate. He was a thrall. And she was a princess of the royal house. He was pretty sure that she was unaware that Cair was actually a man. He was just a thrall. A slave.

     

CHAPTER 3

Skåne, Sweden, 1538

    Prince Manfred of Brittany stared out at the steel-gray sky. His oxlike frame blocked nearly all of the weak sunlight from the narrow window. Still, the sunlight wasn't making it any warmer inside the chapter house. The place was at least relatively warm and dry, even without sunlight. There wasn't much else you could say for it. Still—the bleak view outside was scarcely more inspiring than the Spartan interior of this place.

    He turned back to face his companion, who was busy having his armor straps