The Strange Maid Read Online Free Page B

across the desk. Cursed evidence of my plotting.
    Gundrun Graycloak, the First Valkyrie, took one long step forward and slapped my face. “Get on your knees, girl,” she coldly said.
    The words shocked me, harsher than the slap burning on my cheek. I remained standing.
    “What were you thinking?” Gundrun demanded. “Your wolf-guard called us, told us where you’d gone.”
    Outrage made me yell, “Their loyalty should be to me!”
    “To the council, foolish child. You are not one of us yet, and may never be after this.”
    The Valkyrie of the East and West threw my letters at me; Myra Quick tore them to pieces, Elisa of the Prairie turned woeful eyes to the ceiling, and Siri of the Ice hissed a line of poetry about Brynhild, who was cursed for disobeying the Alfather.
    “It is not disobedience,” I cried.
    But Myra snapped, “That is what Kara Neverborn thought as well, and look at her punishment!”
    “This is what the Alfather wants,” I said through my teeth. “He can do nothing to bring our power back, but we can. We can bring the old ways back to the Valkyrie.”
    “In the old days we died young,” said the Valkyrie of the West.
    The Valkyrie of the East put a hand on her sister’s shoulder and added, “In the old days, we were feared.”
    “We should be feared!” I said. “We made curses and rune magic and rode with armies. We had power then.”
    Gundrun stroked her feather cape, the mark of her station that she wears at the president’s side. “And we have no power now?”
    “Only what the Covenant allows us. Not what we deserve!” I grasp at air, wanting to find the right words to convince them. “We could transform fear into hope if we tried.”
    “Our power is more subtle now, not of war and fire and death but politics and money,” said the Valkyrie of the Rock. “But it is power.”
    “What of the beauty of death?”
    Siri of the Ice shook her head. “That is poetry, not action.”
    “Our god is the god of poetry! Siri, you are the one who told me to remember that. What is the line of your favorite riddle? The pearls that grace dead flesh. Maggots! I know you can see what I mean, Siri. And Precia and Myra!” My voice was thin, a taut cord. I looked to each one, appalled. “We are the tendon that connects life and death, the choosers of heroes, who can see the worth in a man’s heart. We should embrace the potential of sacrifice—that is what I want, and what Odin wants. Let me bring this back. Let me show you how glorious it can be, I who was born out of sacrifice.” I gripped my hands together and nearly fell to my knees. “It can change all of you, as it changed me.”
    None responded. They regarded me as a unit, eight pairs of eyes hammering me in place, bending my knees with their weight. If only I could have read runes in their eyes! But never had their worth been revealed to me that way.
    I pressed my fist against my chest, where I had when I was a little girl and wanted to shriek and wail my grief. “You are gutless cowards! This is transformation, and action! Odin chose me because I am bold, and you’ll watch from behind me!”
    “You will be rejected by the people if you try to bring back the old ways,” Precia the Valkyrie of the South said calmly, as she was always calm. The youngest of them, barely seven years my elder, she coifed her hair like an elegant old lady and wore chunky antique jewelry. “They want us as we are. Symbols, voices. Protectors. They trust us, and we will not let you jeopardize that trust. Or the Covenant. Without the Covenant, we cannot exist in the modern world.”
    I felt tears in my throat, and I lifted my chin to keep them back. “You should hear his voice when he urges me to this, you should ask him yourselves. Let me show you!”
    “You will not.” Gundrun cut her hand down, and that was the final word. Hers was always the final word.
    Except Myra Quick, the Valkyrie of the Lakes, leaned forward. “Happy birthday, Signy,” she