Read Online The Sea Thy Mistress by Elizabeth Bear - Free Book Online Page A

first and only second an angel.
    Selene’s ears pricked in pleasure. She began keying her reply, but her typing was interrupted by the swing of the garden door and a lean dark-clad shape silhouetted against the morning.
    Adapted to the dim room, Selene’s pupils narrowed to pinpricks before she could see without pain. But she knew by scent and the sound of his breathing who came, and so she stood to greet him. And folded the ’screen closed over her unsent message so he would not see, and be distressed.
    “Mingan.” She crossed the room to him on padded footsteps, and paused at arm’s length. “Were you lurking in the garden all this time?”
    He shut the door behind him. “I came from the shadows,” he said, as if she would not have been able to tell by the dank cold rising from his cloak and the smell of ashes that complicated the everyday animal musk of him. But what he said next made her ears and whiskers twitch: “I followed thee. It is well thou didst touch not the woman with the necklace; she is not what she seems.”
    “Cryptic,” Selene said. “But that’s what I’ve come to expect. Are you cold? Would you like tea?”
    “I swelter,” Mingan snarled. One-handed, he grasped his cloak by the collar, flicked the catch, and cast the heavy fabric aside. It was his fourth or fifth since she’d known him. This one had a collar lined in squirrel fur, silver-gray against the char-gray of the wool where it puddled on the floor. “That woman—”
    “Something seemed off about her,” Selene admitted, giving way before him so he could advance into the room. She touched the handle of her whip, reflexively, and the hilt of her sword as well. “You followed me?”
    He shrugged. “Or her. She is an old and dangerous enemy. Forgive me if I say not too much more on the topic: it is a painful one. But best if thou avoidst her in future, for she would not scruple to use thee against me, if ever she knew our association. Now, thou art her target for thou art waelcyrge, which is a small and idle thing. If she knew more, though, her interest might be … personal. And I do not know that I could protect thee from that.”
    He glanced aside, at her closed ’screen, and neither asked nor made a gesture toward it. Nevertheless, Selene felt a chill raise her hackles. Mingan was not a fearful creature, but his caution carried more behind it than the words implied. He was frightened, and Selene was not sure she’d ever seen him frightened before.
    He continued, “Best also if thou should not speak my name or offer word of my existence for a time. To anyone.”
    “You could,” she offered gently, “just tell me what’s going on.”
    He cocked his head at her. “Thee before any other,” he said. “But no. Not yet.”

44 A.R.
Autumn
    Ten-year-old Cathmar sprawled on the blue and red rug beside the fire, idly scratching at his slate with a stylus. He tapped the butt of the implement against his color pad, changing it to burgundy, and started sketching rows of little roundheaded stick people holding hands.
    He didn’t feel the cold any more than other einherjar, which his father found reassuring, but both of them enjoyed playing with fire. Cahey watched Cathmar idly over the top rod of the book the einherjar was supposed to be studying. Teaching his son to read had given Cahey the excuse to learn as well.
    He set his book aside.
    The boy looked away from his slate, staring into the fire pensively. Flickers of light reflected in his dark gray eyes, painted his mahogany skin with traces of orange and gold. The boy reached into the granite fireplace and poked his fingers into the flames, playing at pinching bits off and then putting them back.
    He’s a beautiful boy, Cahey thought. He takes after his mother.
    She would have seen it differently, of course.
    Cathmar turned his head to regard his father. “Dad?” The edge of a frown crossed the boy’s face, a world shadow eclipsing the moon.
    Cahey nodded, rolling his