The Elementals Read Online Free

was looking at him intently, with an unreadable expression.
    He picked up the threads of his thought. “People look up to you, Kesair. The other women follow you. If you were to urge them to, ah …”
    â€œMate,” she said.
    He had not expected her to put it so baldly. “Ah, yes. Mate. Have children, a lot more children …”
    Kesair sat up, clasping her knees with her square, blunt-fingered hands. She locked his eyes with hers. “Fifty women alone on a large island with three men,” she said in an expressionless voice. “Just imagine. Every man’s fantasy.”
    He said huffily, “I’m not proposing an orgy, Kesair! You’re an intelligent woman, you know exactly what I’m saying. You understand that—”
    â€œâ€”that you hope to use my mind to get at my body,” she said flatly. “If you can. If I let you.”
    Stung by the truth in her accusation, Fintan retorted, “You don’t have a very good opinion of men, do you?”
    Kesair did not answer. He could have enjoyed an argument, but he had no coping skills for female silence.
    Fintan tried to recall what he knew about her, seeking some sort of leverage. She was a latecomer to the crafts colony, having arrived with neither man nor child, only her loom and her skill, but she had proved to be an exceptionally creative weaver. Soon her work had been in great demand among the colony’s customers, becoming a
mainstay of their economy. No one had been willing to risk offending her by prying into her private life.
    Very little was known about Kesair, Fintan realized. She was something of a mystery.
    A most intriguing mystery.
    He must get her to trust him. “I don’t much care for the company of men myself,” he told her confidingly. “I really prefer women, always have. I think women are the best of us.” He favored her with his most winning smile, knowing his teeth were white and even and his eyes crinkled boyishly.
    Kesair stared right through him, unimpressed.
    Fintan choked back his annoyance. Did she not understand that men were now at a premium? That he could have his choice of any woman he wanted? He could walk out right now and it would be her loss, not his. He had forty-five others to choose from.
    But he did not walk out. There were forty-five others, but Kesair was the leader. She was not beautiful, like Kerish, but she was special, she had an indefinable something extra. And he was Fintan, whose pride demanded he go for the best.
    Wiping his smile from his face, he replaced it with a studiedly serious expression he thought she might like better. “What we need to do, Kesair, is to divide the women into three groups. Each man will take responsibility for one third of the women, do you see?” He paused. “Well, not Byth, perhaps. He may be a little old. But he can at least take a few and Ladra and I can handle the rest.”
    â€œResponsibility? What sort of responsibility? There is already a leader. Myself.”
    She is pretending to be stupid to irritate me, Fintan thought. She wants to be blunt; very well. I can be blunt. “Responsibility for them sexually. For getting them pregnant,” he elaborated, trying to stare her down.
    To his astonishment, she laughed. “Is that all? Fine. Pick out your—how many would you say, twenty each for you and Ladra, and ten for Byth?—pick out your twenty and get on with it. Just don’t impregnate all the sturdiest ones at the same time, we need to keep an able work force. And wait for the younger girls to grow a few more years before you start with them.”
    Fintan’s jaw sagged with dismay. What had happened to the titillating mating games a woman was supposed to play? He had
imagined a very different sort of afternoon in Kesair’s hut, listening to the rain on the roof, talking first impersonally and then very personally of sexual matters, advancing, holding back,