His Majesty's Elephant Read Free Page B

bigger.
    She clambered up to her seat. It was cooler there than it was below, with a bit of a breeze. She opened her bodice to let the breeze in, and tucked her skirts above her knees, and grinned at the pattern of leaves above her. Scandalous, simply scandalous.
    She did not mean to stay long, but the sun was warm through the leaves, and the bees sang of sleep. Her eyelids drooped.
    oOo
    Voices startled her awake. They were not loud, but they were right below her. She caught herself before she could roll off her perch, and peered cautiously down.
    They sat on the grass at the tree’s foot: a woman in a veil confined by a thin fillet only a little more silver than her hair, and a man with hair as blackly curly as a lapdog’s coat. He had a curly beard, too, and a soft wheedling voice.
    Rowan would have known what he was even without his elaborate coat. There was no mistaking the sound of a Byzantine in full slither.
    What was shocking was that he was slithering about sick-sweet saintly Gisela instead of somebody hotter-blooded, like Rothaide. Gisela fended him off, but feebly.
    â€œSuch beauty,” said the Byzantine in accented Latin. “A flower among the Franks. And you say that you wish to wed God and not a man. Surely God never meant you to wither away in a cold cloister.”
    â€œGod is a jealous husband,” said Gisela, “and my father is worse. He says that I may go to the convent—but not now, never now, always later. He loves his daughters, you see. He won’t let any of us go anywhere that isn’t with him. Not to marry, not to serve God, not to do anything but be beautiful for him, and—I shouldn’t say it, but I can’t lie, either, that’s a sin—be perfectly, dreadfully bored.”
    â€œSurely,” said the Byzantine, “one need not pray only in a convent. One can pray anywhere that one is.”
    â€œIt’s not the same,” said Gisela.
    â€œThat may be,” said the Byzantine. “And does he keep you with him even in his wars?”
    â€œOh,” said Gisela. “Oh, no! He’d never do that.”
    The Byzantine laughed. “So maidenly an outrage! And so charming. How did we fail to hear of you even in our fair City? You should be a wonder of the world.”
    That was too much even for Gisela. “Really,” she said in a tone that, in anyone else, would have been waspish. “You don’t need to flatter me to death. You’re very nice to look at. I like the way you sing. Won’t you sing me the song you promised, that you learned only for me?”
    â€œOf course,” he said. His long fingers had, one way and another, got rid of her veil. He started on the pins that held her braids. First one fell to her shoulders, then another. Then he loosened the heavy plaits, working them free of the ribbons that bound them.
    Gisela never moved. Either he had her under a spell, or she had decided that he was not dangerous.
    Gisela had always been an idiot. Rowan thought of arranging to fall out of the tree, but matters had not gone far enough for that. Yet.
    At first Rowan did not realize that the Byzantine was singing. He sang softly, like the humming of bees and the sighing of wind in the leaves.
    The words were in Greek, of which Rowan knew a little. They told her nothing, except that one of them was love.
    Gisela sat as still as the tree, with her hair a silvery shimmer about her. Even from above she was astonishingly beautiful.
    The song slid seamlessly into speech. “As lovely as you are,” he said, “only the most wonderful of jewels is worthy of you. Would that I were a king or a mighty mage, to lay the wealth of the world at your feet.”
    â€œI have all that I need,” Gisela said.
    â€œSo fair a saint!” the Byzantine marveled. “And what if you chose but one jewel of all that are, one that itself is holy?”
    Gisela’s hand went to her breast where lay her golden