Read Tale of Elske for Free Online Page B

when by snapping their necks they die quickly?” Elske asked.
    No one had an answer for her, and when Karleen reported Elske’s heartlessness to her father, at their meal, Tavyan told his family, “We’ve determined today what to do about Elske, at least until the Longest Night. Elske? Tomorrow, Taddus and Nido will take you to the house of Var Kenric, who is Idelle’s father. You will serve Idelle, until she marries.”
    Nido was holding his hands in front of him and twisting them, saying, “Snap! Snap!” until Sussi wept again and Dagma said, “That’s not funny, Nido,” and his father told him to behave himself, when he was at table.
    Elske asked, “And after she marries?”
    Taddus explained it. “I will be the husband. You can’t be my servant when we have traveled as equals.”
    Elske didn’t argue although she didn’t understand. After all, the Trastaders had their own ways as much as the Volkaric, and like the Volkaric, the Trastaders preferred their own ways. Who a servant was, for what work and uses, that she could guess at; and it was no more than who and what every woman of the Volkaric was.
    â€œBy Longest Night we’ll have found you another place, for many houses take on extra servants in a Courting Winter. That’s my decision,” Tavyan told her, as if Elske had argued. But Elske had no such wish.
    Then the men told the gossip and news they had brought home from the city. Two ships had come into harbor, both with sails ripped out and one half-masted, reporting what they knew about the wrecks of the storm. It had not been as bad as it might have been, and none of the Adeliers had been lost. “Which is a piece of luck,” Taddus said, “although—” and then his shorn face lit up with laughter.
    There was one Princess, he reported, laughing with Tavyan at the story, one Adelinne who had refused to be sent belowdecks with the rest of her kind during the storm. The waves were tossing the ship about, as if it were no more than a leaf falling, and all the other Adeliers on board were weeping and vomiting below, making a great moan. This was trouble enough for the captain, who cared only about keeping his ship afloat, but here was this girl—no more than a girl, young for an Adelinne—stamping her foot at him, while the gale grabbed at her cloak. No, she would not go below, she told him. She didn’t have to obey him, or anyone, because she was a Queen and obeyed none but herself.
    Tavyan took up the tale. She was a brat, the captain had told her bluntly, a misbehaved and misguided brat, and if she was his own daughter she’d have the flat of his hand across her backside. But if she wouldn’t be sent below, he couldn’t waste the time worrying about the waves washing her overboard, so he turned his back on her.
    When the captain next thought of her, Taddus continued, there she was hauling down a sail, a sailor at work on either side of her, her hair hanging down wet, and her cloak soaked and dragging. She wasn’t afraid, not of waves, wind, water or drowning. She’d been as good as a sailor in the storm, the captain admitted, even though he’d have liked to throw her overboard with a stone tied to her ankles, for the trouble she’d have caused him had harm come to her.
    â€œWell, it’s a good profit we make from the Adeliers, so let them be a trouble,” Bertilde said, but nobody answered her because Dagma was exclaiming, “Who would want to marry such a girl?” and Nido said he wouldn’t, and Tavyan said he hoped this Princess had a rich dowry, because she would need it to overcome the reputation this story would earn her, growing fatter as it was told throughout the city until they would say she was sailing the boat alone, the captain clouted across the ears and sent about his business. Taddus wondered how she could have not been afraid, for the one storm