Free A Mankind Witch by Dave Freer Page B

that rigidity. She bowed her head meekly and said, "Yes, Queen Mama."

    The queen mother liked to be thus addressed, at least publicly, and gave her a thin smile. "So, change out of that disreputable garment and come down to my chambers. We ladies will all proceed to the temple together."

    Signy noticed that one of the women accompanying Queen Albruna was looking distinctly green herself. Rumor had it that several of the coastal jarls had become Christians in secret. Her father would never have tolerated it, but Vortenbras didn't seem to care. He was keen on the observance of blood rites, which had largely fallen into disuse during her father's rule. But he didn't swear by the Wanderer the way most of the nobility did. It was odd. But then, you didn't question her half-brother Vortenbras. Even as a growing and brutal boy he'd always had the strength of two men. Now that he was full grown, Signy had to admit that he was the image of a true Viking lord. Father had always been proud of his size and strength. Of course, as a girl-child she'd been barely noticed, except when shooting or riding. Then King Olaf had been happy to acknowledge her as his daughter, even if she was a poor scrap of girl. She could ride, really ride, which Vortenbras could not. He always looked like a sack of meal on a horse. And he would turn the most placid mare into a restive thing. Signy had always desperately wished that she could change herself into a boy, and one with Vortenbras's thews. If the queen mother had had her way, the princess would only have ridden when strictly supervised, on the kind of horses Albruna preferred: one step above a fat donkey. But King Olaf had given in to the queen on everything but this. "She's my daughter, dear. She has the right to ride anything that she can, in my stables." If he'd said it once, he'd said it a hundred times. And she could still remember how he'd always gone on, with his characteristic baying laugh. "And that means every horse I have. They follow the little thing around like dogs." So she still got to ride, to hawk, and to shoot. It had become taken for granted that she would, and although Albruna had done her best to restrict it since the king's death, Signy still did. On horseback she did not feel useless.

    But today, in an ill-fitting green dress of heavy brocade that she needed a thrall to get herself laced and buttoned into, she would sit through the chanting and drinking of blood oaths, and desperately wish herself elsewhere.

    There was a polite knock on the door. Only the thrall Cair ever knocked like that. The other servants tended to be through the door by the time they'd finished knocking. Mind you, he was making headway there, too. At least they knocked now. She had decided it was probably best not to ask too closely about what her newest slave was doing to the lackwits, slackers, and her stepmother's spies who had been given to her as servitors. He was something of an enigma, this thrall.

    Cair bowed, polite as always. "I have brought something for you, Princess." He took a neat cloth package out of his ragged pouch.

    That pouch amused Signy. He was her thrall, and she'd given him permission to carry it. It was as grubby and ragged as any item a thrall might own. Yet she'd caught a glimpse of gold in it. And that certainly wasn't all it held. Signy had decided that the man was a magpie. He had anything from birds' eggs to bundles of old cloth containing gods alone knew what. He didn't need the pretense of a ragged pouch to keep the thralls' fingers from exploring it while he slept. They were all terrified of him, and especially that pouch. The house-thralls avoided him, pulling their skirts aside when he walked past, but he'd made her part of the stables shine. If he was a seid -witch, the more power to him. Cair was possibly the only person that Signy felt she didn't have to watch her tongue with. Since the snake incident, he'd had a few more whippings at Albruna's order. The queen