Read Online His Majesty's Elephant by Judith Tarr - Free Book Online

the grooms who brought her in to work a knot of burrs out of her mane. Rowan was not going to do anything that would jar loose the delicate balance of her ordinariness.
    The longer she went on being so ordinary, the more she felt as if she were a peasant girl with a jar of milk on her head, and if she slipped or stumbled the jar would come crashing down. Her neck was stiff with the effort, and her stomach was knotted tight.
    She went to bed at sundown with the rest of the women, and did not go out to bathe in the moonlight, no matter how tempting it was. She was just Rowan. She was safe, and her father was safe, and the Talisman was in no danger, living on its chain around Gisela’s neck.
    oOo
    â€œHist! Rowan!”
    Rowan started, and yelped. Her needle had jabbed her finger so hard it drew blood.
    â€œRowan,” the whisper came again.
    Curiosity was her besetting flaw. She had to turn. She had to see the head framed in the window of the women’s gallery, tousled and spiky and permanently annoyed.
    She resisted the urge to gape. Either Kerrec had sprouted wings, or he was perched on the fragile support of the grapevine that ran along the top of the portico. Either way, he was standing a good three man-heights above the ground, where he had no business to be. She turned her back on him.
    â€œRowan,” he said in a more normal voice, if still soft—he must have seen that she was alone with her embroidery and her basket of silks and the dapple of sun on the polished wooden floor. “Rowan, do you know where your sister is?”
    A really wise woman would have ignored him completely. Rowan had never been wise. “Which one?” she asked the wall opposite. “I have an army of them.”
    â€œYou know which one,” said Kerrec with his best imitation of patience.
    â€œI suppose she’s out with the others,” Rowan said, “picking berries in the wood.”
    He did not ask why Rowan had not gone with them. She wished he would, so that she could snap his head off properly.
    There was a scuffle and a soft thump. She knew without looking that he was in the room, breathless, cursing softly at a barked shin or a skinned elbow.
    â€œYou’ll get your hide tanned if anyone finds you here,” Rowan said with some pleasure. “Or worse.”
    â€œSometimes,” said Kerrec, “I wonder if all budding girls are like mares out of season, squealing and kicking at any male that happens by. Do you do it because you want to, or because you think you have to?”
    A flush crawled up Rowan’s cheeks. She decided to call it anger. “Why should I answer you?”
    Maybe he shrugged. She refused to look. “You might care where the Princess Gisela is. She’s not in the wood. They all think she’s gone to pray, but she’s not in the chapel, either, or anywhere else that’s holy.”
    Rowan found that her hands were shaking. She set down her embroidery before she drew blood again, sheathed the needle in a bit of cloth, and knotted her fingers in her lap. “Why did you come to me? What can I do that my father’s guards can’t?”
    â€œYou want me to be the one to say it, don’t you?”
    Her eyes came up of their own accord. Kerrec looked much as he always did, like a half-fledged hawk.
    He was quite homely, she thought, beaky and untidy. He smelled, faintly but distinctly, of elephant.
    But none of that mattered with those black eyes on her, challenging her, naming her the coward that she was. The Elephant had not let her run away to Cologne, but she had run away into herself.
    â€œYou don't understand,” she said. “You were brought up to it. I was taught to shrink from it.”
    â€œFrom what? Courage?”
    â€œNow you’re the one who’s playing the fool.”
    â€œSo say it. Say what you’re afraid of.”
    She drew a deep breath. She was not going to. No. Not the word.
    It came out by