The Sea Thy Mistress by Elizabeth Bear Read Free Book Online

in the house, and he knew the only words that would hold the key. He said, “Cahey does.”
    Her nod was curt, her stare assessing. He felt her considering the scars, the walking stick, the creak of his exoskeleton when he shifted his weight back onto his feet. “Can you work?”
    “I can chop wood and haul water.”
    “You’d have to sleep on the floor.”
    Aethelred patted his pack. “I have blankets,” he said. “I’ll sleep in the yard.”

38 A.R.
Early Summer
    Borje the chapel-keeper knew he loomed. He thought of himself as capable, and not nearly as dumb as he looked, but he also knew his size and strength led others to mis-estimate him. Hauling a load of rags and polish up to the chapel was his idea of a pleasant afternoon, and the wind tickling the salt grass, the sunlight glittering off the ocean far below, consoled and energized him.
    He didn’t run across pilgrims often, and most of the ones he did meet shied from his massive, scarred shoulders. His shaggy minotaur’s head and spreading horns tended to give others pause. If that was not enough to intimidate, there were the stone-hard cloven pincers that formed what passed for his hands.
    Borje was moreau, a warrior servant created by the Technomancer from the body of a beast in the days when Eiledon was falling. But Borje had been kissed by an angel in a back stairwell forty years before, and so he was also a Believer, and free.
    On a half-sunny day just before summer truly began, he met the pilgrim who did not seem afraid. She led her star-faced, evenly colored mare up the back side of the bluff as Borje crested the hill.
    He stopped so that he would not startle the animal. She was the first horse that he had seen since he really was a bull, the four-legged sort, and his nostrils flared to collect her scent. The woman’s hair was pale and shining and her skin was as fair as that of the angel whose kiss had freed him from servitude so many years ago.
    The mare smelled of barn and hay and fresh-turned earth. The woman smelled of herbs hung to dry. She led her snorting mount up the path toward Borje, stopping a few meters away. The mare tested her reins, scuffing the ground with her left forehoof, eyeing the bull uncertainly.
    Borje tilted his horns at the woman cautiously. “Welcome to the chapel,” he said. “Have you come to pray?”
    She ran her left hand through her long, smooth locks. Her cloak and trousers seemed gray to Borje, and her knotted blouse might have been white at the beginning of her road. She carried no weapons that he could see, although there might have been a pistol in her pocket.
    “I’ve come to meditate,” she said. “What is the name of this place? I saw it from the Eiledon road.”
    “It hasn’t a name,” Borje answered, stepping off the path so that she and her horse could continue. He fell into step on her right, watching the mare out of the corner of one wide-set eye to make sure she didn’t try anything foolish. “But some call it the Chapel of the Books.”
    “Books?” She glanced over at him, looking interested. Her eyes sparkled. He thought she might be pretty, as human women went. His heavy ears flickered to scoop up more of her soothing tone.
    “Many books. They belonged to the Angel-who-went-into-the-Sea. Have you heard the story?”
    She nodded. “Several times.” She stroked the nose of her mare as they came up to the little chapel. “I’ve heard rumors another angel dwells here still. Is that so?”
    Borje angled his head to regard her directly with his left eye. Just because you knew things didn’t mean you had to share them with every passing stranger.
    “Oh,” he said, “there are a lot of little cottages and villages hereabouts. Hermits and fishers and farmers and other resettlers. But angels? I couldn’t tell you anything about that.”
    She dropped the reins on the damp sandy ground. “Stay here, Elder,” she said, patting the horse on the shoulder. The mare whickered and lipped the