Deerskin by Robin McKinley Read Free Book Online Page A

insignificant of them either. She preferred speaking to servants; the effects of asserting herself were developing a little too quickly. But she kept her face smooth, and nodded to the man as if she were accustomed to such visits at the top of the flight of uncarpeted stairs.
    He had come to look her over. He wanted a closer look at her after her appearance in the receiving-hall. “By the locks on the treasury door,” he thought, “she is going to grow up to be a beauty. All she needs now is a little more countenance—and some finer clothing.” Mentally he rubbed his hands together at the prospect of this exciting new pawn venturing onto the gameboard, for he was a mighty player; and it suited him that she should have made the first move, that it should not be quite so conspicuous that he thought of the princess now that the queen was dead and the king showed no sign of recovering his former vitality.
    He smiled, showing all of his teeth. “Of course, princess. Your rooms shall be seen to today. You are growing up, and your new status should be honored.” He cast a quick glance around the shabby nursery and gloated: the girl was young and naive, and would be marvelously grateful to him for the glamorous new chambers he would provide her with—careful that she should understand that his was the hand that provided. Some token from his own house, he thought, something that he could point to that had conspicuously not been produced from her father’s coffers, should have a prominent place. He congratulated himself on his foresight in bribing the upper footman to bring him any news of interesting goings-on in the king’s household; for it was by this means that he stood here now.
    He was very slightly discomfited by the faint smile the princess was wearing when he looked at her again after his perusal of her room; she should, he thought, be looking timid and embarrassed, tucked away here like a poor relation, like a distant cousin-by-marriage taken in out of charity. He did not know that she was thinking, Because I am growing up! I want rooms on the ground floor because I don’t want to run up and down four flights of stairs every time Ash must go out; how can I ever train her about outdoors , if she has forgotten, by the time we get there, what she was scolded about when we began trying to leave indoors ?
    Again the minister demonstrated all of his teeth, and then bowing low, he backed through the door he had entered by, and left her.
    Ash was in her lap, eating one of the black ribbons on her dress. Ash did not fit in her lap very well, for already her length of leg spoke of the dog she would become; but she did not care about that, and neither did the princess. As one or another dangling leg began to drag the rest of the puppy floorward after it, the princess scooped it back into her lap, whereupon some other dog-end inevitably spilled off in some other direction. “Did you see him?” Lissar murmured. “He backed out of my presence—just as if I were …” She stopped. She had been going to say “as if I were my father,” but she found that she did not want to align herself with her father about this or any other thing.
    To distract herself, she concentrated on the silky fur along Ash’s back. The ribbon on her dress was beginning to look rather the worse for wear. Lissar thought she should probably remove it from the puppy’s joyful attentions. But she didn’t. She didn’t care about mourning or about mourning clothes; all she cared about was Ash.
    The chambers that the important minister arranged for her were very grand indeed. There were seven individual rooms opening off a great central room like a smaller version of the royal receiving-hall; and not, to her startled eyes, enough smaller. Squarely in the center of the big room was a sculpture, that of a woman festooned with a great deal of tumultuous drapery, which appeared to be trying to strangle her. Lissar stopped dead in front of it, momentarily