"Cook, Glen - The Tower of Fear" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

Aaron didn't think he would like it, either, but it turned out to be good. The boys did right by their portions, too.

Laella had filled the partially baked squash halves with a mix of chopped and sliced vegetables, and slivers of mutton, in a heavy, spicy brown sauce. There were mushrooms and nut meats in there, too. And dates promised for afterward for boys who ate their supper.

Old Raheb worked on her meal without speaking. Hers had been cooked longer so meat and vegetables would be easier prey for toothless gums. Tonight she worked every mouthful twice as long as usual. Aaron pretended not to notice. Nobody could get quite as fixated as Laella's mother. If one of her fixations won an audience it could turn into years of high drama.

Look at Taidiki. She had been mourning Taidiki since Dak-es-Souetta. He might not have broken had she not been there wailing all the time.

Aaron needed distracting himself. "What do you think of it, Mish?"

Tamisa, Laella's fourteen-year-old sister, completed the household. For a time after Dak-es-Souetta there had been other sisters. They had gotten married one by one. The latest had gone just before Taidiki's mad gesture.

Maybe that had contributed to Taidiki's despair. All those sisters to dowry and no other relatives to soften the blows to his patrimony.

Raheb did not mourn her husband, did she? He had fallen at Dak-es-Souetta, hadn't he? But she hadn't so much as mentioned his name since moving in here.

Tamisa said, "It's all right." Howling praise. About as definite a statement as anyone could get out of her these days. She had changed over the eight years Aaron had known her. Sometimes he felt vaguely guilty about that, though he did not see how he could be responsible. Too much time spent close to her mother, he thought.

He worried endlessly that Arif and Stafa would drift down the same pathway to a life of quiet despair. He worried about his sons too much, he knew. Children survived childhood. He had. It was being grown-up that was lethal.

Laella said, "When we're done I want to go see if I can do anything for Reyha."

"I thought you might."

"Mish can clean up."

"Of course."

"We've known each other a long time. We went through labor together. There was still fighting in the streets."

"I know."

"We lay there holding hands and listening to people killing each other outside, not sure that somebody wouldn't break in and do something to us."

"I know." There was a part of Laella that could not forgive him for having been a prisoner of the Herodians on that critical day, unreasonable as she knew that to be.

"Zouki came only a minute after Arif. It was the last day of the war. The day Ala-eh-din Beyh broke the barrier and killed Nakar the Abomination."

"I know." He knew the preamble was all because he would have to take her if she was to go see Reyha. And he loathed Reyha's husband, Naszif.

Naszif was an ironwright and prosperous. The Herodians had plenty of work for metalworkers and gave Naszif all he could handle. Aaron and Naszif had been in the same artillery engineers troop. Aaron was convinced that Naszif had betrayed them during the siege of the Seven Towers in Harak Pass.

Three of the towers had been reduced already. There was never a doubt that the Herodians would break through. The defenders were supposed to buy time until the defeated of Dak-es-Souetta, the new levies, and the allies could gather on the Plain of Chordan. The lords of Marek, Tuhn, and Caldera were sending seventy thousand men.

But someone heeded either cowardice or the Herodian offer of rewards and unsealed the tower's postern. The treachery advanced the Herodian cause sufficiently that they were able to reach the Plain of Chordan in time to keep it all from coming together.

"When we heard, we both had the same crazy idea. Name our sons Peace," Laella said.

"I know."