"Briggs, Patricia - Sianim 2 - Steal the Dragon.text" - читать интересную книгу автора (Briggs Patricia)


back away from his anger; somehow it was harder to resist her conditioning while
wearing the garb of a slave.

"Plague it, Rialla, that's worse than eavesdropping. You violated her privacy!" He
stood up, and she could see his outrage tightening the muscles of his arms. She
could feel her heartbeat pick up as he closed in on her.

She could either fight back or cower. The latter was smarter, but if she cowered
she might as well be the slave whose guise she wore.

"You Darranians and your overdeveloped sense of propriety," she said with a
quiet bitterness that stopped him short. "I know all about the rules by which you live
your lives. Take the aristocratic, immaculate Lord Jarroh, your brother's best friend
and staunchest ally. He frequented the little bar where I danced. He never spilled a
drop of the single glass of white wine he drank. One must never be excessive when
imbibing alcohol. He always tipped the waiterЧjust the proper amount. Then he
went upstairs and beat the little slave girl he kept there. Sometimes he used a whip,
sometimes he used his fist. Crippled as I am, I still felt her pain every time, including
the last timeЧ when he killed her." She smiled at him humorlessly. "His slave had
seen twelve summers when she died."

She could see that the anger had left him, but now that she had started she
couldn't stop. "The slave trainer responsible for my capture took twenty-three other
people from my clan at the same time. Twenty of them he tortured and killed. I felt
each of their deaths too. Thanks to that I can't simply turn my abilities off and on as
I used to: I hear what I hear." She raised her brows and continued with bitter
mockery, "I am sorry if that offends your Darranian sense of decorum."

Laeth's face was curiously blank. He reached out and touched her cheek with
one hand. It wasn't until then that she realized that she was crying or that she'd
backed away from him despite her determination not to do so. The door was solid
against her back.

"Sorry," he said in a soft voice. "I didn't mean to frighten you." He went back to
the bed and lay on it, closing his eyes. In the same soft voice he said, "What was a
guard doing patrolling the corridor when he should be out on the walls?"

She closed her eyes too, and pressed harder against the door. Her voice when
she spoke was quietly controlled. "Sometimes if I have physical contact with a
person, I can pick up a few scattered thoughts. I think someone bribed him to come
here, but I couldn't tell who he was supposed to be watching. It could be you, or
Marri, or any of the fifteen other people in this wing of the keep.

"If it was Marri he was watching," she continued after a moment's pause, "he
probably followed her from her rooms. He'd know that she came inЧbut not that


she came out before you had time to do anything. If he was sent to watch you, he