His Majesty's Elephant Read Online Free PDF Page B

asked hopefully. “Blast them when they touch it?”
    â€œIf it were that easy,” said Kerrec, “do you think we’d have to do anything about it?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said Rowan. “It’s all impossible. You’re making it up. I’m making it up. It’s just a splinter in a crystal, and that’s just an elephant, and you’re just a stableboy. And I—I’m just Rowan. I don’t want to be anything else.”
    â€œDo you think God cares what you want?”
    â€œI think,” said Rowan, “that you are appalling.” She scrambled up, shaking hay from her skirt. There was hay in her hair, too. She brushed at it. Her hands shook. “You’ll hold your tongue, or I’ll have it cut out.”
    That anyone could look as if he had drawn himself to a full and impressive height while lying flat in a pile of hay, Rowan would not have believed until she saw it. He got up with more grace than she had, and bowed so perfectly that it was like a slap. “As her highness wishes,” said the Elephant’s boy.

Five
    It was too late to stop Gisela.
    She must have waylaid the Emperor when he came from the baths. He was always expansive then, flushed with warm water and good exercise, smelling of sweet herbs and clean wool, and ready for a long evening’s feasting and talking. All his daughters knew that that was the best time to wheedle a favor out of him, when he knew perfectly well what they were doing, but was too delighted with himself and his world to refuse.
    By the time Rowan found him, he was in the women’s hall surrounded by his daughters and their ladies, and Gisela was leaning on his shoulder. She had always been his favorite, his white lily. He had his arm around her, and he was smiling while she murmured in his ear.
    The rest went about what they were doing. Most of them were working on embroidery. Bertha was reading from a book—something Latin and sonorous. Rowan wanted to scream at them all, wake them up, set them on their traitorous, innocent sister.
    She could not even pass the doorway. Sunlight through a high window cast a ray of light on the two in the room’s center, turned the Emperor’s hair to ruddy gold and Gisela’s to shining silver.
    They looked like painted saints. Even his voice did not break the moment. It was as high as always, but sweet to listen to, warm and indulgent. “Of course you may have it. It’s too pretty for me, but you’ll look a right beauty in it.”
    â€œThen,” Gisela said, cooing soft like a dove, “may I have it now, do you think—if it’s not asking too much—?”
    He laughed. “Of course you may have it now. I’ll send Odo with it; then you can wear it at dinner. Wear your best dress, too, the blue silk that suits you so well, and we’ll show the princes of the East what beauty we have here in the barbarous West.”
    Gisela blushed and simpered. Rowan ground her teeth.
    She had not lost yet. The Emperor had to walk by her as he went out.
    First he kissed each of his daughters and said polite things to their ladies, and made a great show of reluctance to leave them. Not that it was false; he did love his daughters’ company. But he was not a man to sit still for long.
    He did not start when he saw Rowan, or object when she fell in beside him, trotting to keep up with his long strides. “Get thrown in a hayrick, did you?” he said.
    Rowan’s cheeks were hot. He kept his face stern, but his eyes glinted. He reached out, plucked a stem from above her ear, inspected it as he strode on. “New crop,” he observed.
    They rounded a corner. One more passage and they would be in his own rooms amid crowds of people.
    Here there was no one. The servants would be in the hall, getting it ready for dinner. The guests were all out hunting or prowling or keeping one another company.
    Rowan caught hold of her