"Denning, Troy - Forgotten Realms - MoonShae 3 - Darkwell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Denning Troy)

"You never were a recreation," she said. "You were my sanctuary. The place I could go, the ear that would listen."
"Gods help me, my other wives always knew who I was waiting for. Who I was always waiting for. They took it out on Tahy and Kara. I tried to stop that. Py, I spent thirty-odd years buying my other wives off our kids' backs and it didn't work."
It was like a light going on, illuminating shadow-spots. Corners of the old house at Mahn she had never seen. The reason of so many things, so evident, and so elusive. "You never told me, rot it."
"The times you were home-were too good. And you couldn't stay. I knew that. I did what I could."
Gods, I poisoned the whole house. All the other marriages. Ruined my kids-hurt Chanur in the long run, when my daughter turned on Khym and took our staunchest ally out. My doing. All of it mine.
He sighed, a motion of his huge frame against her. "I didn't mean to say that. Gods blast, Py, I just fouled it up, is all."
That was his life. That was why he walked on eggshells round those women, lost the kids. O gods. Lost Mahn alone, finally. And came back to Chanur like a beggar when I finally came home. Alienated his sisters. Everything. His sisters-for an outsider. They couldn't forgive that. And the wives' clans too. All for one wife. That's crazy.
But, gods, what I've done-for a husband. I think I love this great fool. Isn't that something? Love him like he was clan and kin. Like he was some part of me. It's gotten all too close. He needs someone else for balance. Some sense of perspective. So do I. And I'm not interested. Handsomest man on Anuurn could walk in stark naked, I'd rather Khym. Always would. And he'd rather me. I never saw that part of it. I never saw that that was always what was wrong with us, and look what it did. We did so much damage, never meaning to; I did so much to him. Gods, I wish I could turn him over to the others.
They wouldn't know how to treat him but they'd try. Even Tirun.
He wants so much to be one of them. That's what he really wants. And they'd forget that. They'd forget because I can't tell them any way I could make them understand what goes on in him.
Haral would. Haral might make a dent in Tirun, the old reprobate: gods, Khym, if you knew what good behavior Tirun's been on-not laid a hand on you, has she? Because you're mine. She'd go off and get drunk with you and take you home nice as milk, she would, because she's onship and you're offlimits and gods know she likes you, thinks you're something special. I don't know. She might be the real lady with you, you're so much the gentleman. Funny what a crooked line we walk.
No, if you knew either side of Tirun, really knew her, you'd like her.
Geran and Chur-Gods. I wish you'd known them before this mess. So pretty. But deep water, both of them. And dark. You don't ever pick a fight with either. But they've got a godsrotted broad sense of humor . . . never told you those stories. Not planetside. They don't go down so much. Not comfortable around groundlings. That's the awful thing: sometimes you want the land under your feet and the sun on your back, and then you've got to deal with the people that live there.
And Hilfy-you see what's going on, her and Tully? My poor, conservative, ex-groundling man-not a flicker. We're too well-bred. We don't see. We don't know what to do about it, so we don't see; and we wish them by the gods well, because you and I, Khym, we're on the downside of our years and we've got enough to do just to do for ourselves, in the mess we're in.
You couldn't sleep with Hilfy; never her. She's the odd one out. Species she can get across. But the generations she can't bridge. Can't figure me out; gods, she can't figure herself out. You'd confuse everything. And you're uncle to her, you always will be, even if you haven't a corpuscle in common. You're her substitute for Kohan. She loves her father so much. That's why she fusses over you like a little grandmother.
Bring her out here, never give her a stopover at home, and her in the growing years-She takes what she can. It was all so pat for us. And we wasted so much time. Good for her, I think. Good for Hilfy.
Thank the gods you're here.

2342 and The Pride was stretching muscles, electronic impulses sending tests down to systems aft and bringing internal support up full, while lights on the bridge flickered and instruments blipped, routine departure-prep.
Given a kifish ship still stationary over station axis, bow-down so that its guns were constantly in line with every ship on the rotating station, but most notably the ones whose systems were now live, the ones full of non-kif who thought non-kifish and unpredictable thoughts.
But they kept com flowing naturally between The Pride and station central, which was partly Harukk personnel. And com operations went on likewise between The Pride and Aja Jin and Tahar's Moon Rising, nothing compromising in any fashion, just the necessary coordination of three ships which planned to put out close together. There was still the coder they might have used. There were languages the kif might not understand.
There was also that ship over their heads, and mindful of that and of the firepower here gathered, they refrained from all such options.
"Hilfy," Pyanfar said, "take message on your three: first thing at Meetpoint, auto that escape course out to both our partners."
"Aye," Hilfy said. "Understood."
Hilfy and Haral and Tully were all settled in, Khym was settling. Haral was still running Geran's station from the co-pilot's board, but that was all perfunctory: there was not
one gods-be thing scan could tell them at this point. If the kif decided to fire, they fired. That was all. And lost part of their station doing it.
"Geran come," Tully said, doing- gods witness, the service Hilfy had drilled him on at that board: he had a pick to use where his poor clawless fingers had not a chance, he stuck it into the right holes in the right sequence, and he was at least adequate to keep an ear to internal operations. Even trusting him with that was taking a chance: Tirun was downside with Skkukuk and Jik was loose, but Pyanfar got a firm grip on her nerves and figured that (gods save them from such insanity) Tirun and Skkukuk between them could handle Jik if he had something inventive in mind.
While Tully, in a good moment and with the gods' own luck on his side, might handle an emergency call down there: The Pride's autorecognition was set on the word Priority, which no one let past their teeth during ops if it was not precisely that: Priority got flashed to Hilfy's board and Haral's simultaneously, and Tully would have to make an unlikely sequence of mistakes to take the lower corridors off wide open monitor.
Geran arrived, she saw that in the conveniently reflective monitor, a shadow arriving from the main topside corridor, larger and larger until the bridge lights picked out Geran's red-brown coloring and the glint of the gold in her ear-rims. "H'lo," Geran said. After putting Chur to bed, and walking out of that room. With all the chance of finality. H'lo, to Hilfy, when Geran normally said nothing at all when she walked on-shift. I'm all right, that meant. Don't doubt I'm on.
"We're routine right now," Hilfy said quietly. Which was the right tack to take with Geran. No fuss. No emotional load. Pyanfar kept an ear to it all and keyed an acknowledgment to dockside's advisement they were about to withdraw power.
"Tirun," Tully said.
"I've got it," Khym said, second-com, picking that up; and: "Right. I'll tell him. Na Jik, you'll come topside now; Tirun's on her way."
"Geran," Pyanfar said on bridge-com, "Jik's in your charge. Best I can do." There was the matter of Jik's hands, which would heal of injuries in the several day subjective transit before systemfall; but recuperation and jump was not a matter she wanted to open up with Geran at the moment. "I don't much want him on your elbow, but I haven't got a place else to put him."
"I'll watch him."
Enough said, then. If Geran buckled there was still Tirun on Jik's other side. And that left Tully down at that end of the boards with Skkukuk. She might have put Khym in that seat. But Khym was getting used to the com board; he was actually worth something with it in a pinch. Putting Khym at Tirun's confusing second-switcher post handed him a system that had a completely different set of access commands, Tully could learn a sequence from scratch; Khym, jump-muzzy and in emergency, might touch a control he thought he knew. Disastrously.
"Yes, Harukk-com," Hilfy said. "That data is current. Captain, they're inquiring again on departure time and routing."
"It stands as instructed."
Uncoupling began, a series of crashes as The Pride disengaged itself from dock under Haral's signal to the other side of that station wall, and Haral's touch at the controls of her board. There was the low drone of Khym's voice, making routine advisements to the dockers and station com, and Hilfy's voice talking quietly to Aja Jin and Moon Rising. "Captain," Tully said, "Tirun come."
"Got that," Pyanfar murmured.
If Tirun was on her way, that was the last and they were going to make schedule easily. So much the better with nervous kif all about. Pyanfar flicked her ears and settled her nerves, while The Pride's operating systems made noise enough to mask the lift and rob them of other cues to movement in the ship. There were the telltales on the board-if she chose to key the matrix over to access-monitor. Her nose twitched at the mere thought of Skkukuk in proximity. She dared not take the allergy pills. She needed her reflexes. She rubbed her itching nose fiercely with the back of her hand, curled her lip, and looked up at the convenient reflection in a dead monitor as the gleam of the lift's internal light reflected a motley assortment of silhouettes in the distance down the corridor at her back.
Her eyes flicked to the chrono.
2304.
"Moon Rising reports all ready," Hilfy said.
"Got that," Haral said.
Tahar was showing off. Flouting the schedule on the short side. Which took work.
Tahar clan was Tahar clan, even when it owed Chanur its mortgaged hide.
The lift door had closed back there. The shadows in the reflective glass had come closer. Pyanfar slowly rotated her chair to face the last-comers. Courtesy. Tirun walked beside Jik, Jik beside Skkukuk's dark-robed shape. They had washed Jik's clothes for him, had not even dared have clean ones couriered over from Aja Jin, for fear of rousing kifish suspicions. And someone of the crew must have lent him the bracelet on his arm. The kif had robbed him of the gaudy lot of chain he usually wore.
"This person," Skkukuk said the moment he got through the door, "this person refuses your order, hakt'."
"He means the gun," Tirun said.
"We don't carry firearms up here," Pyanfar said patiently. With spectacular patience, she thought. "Nor do we change captains under fire." With an internal shudder and a thought toward Jik: / hope. "Tirun will give you instructions. If you're that good, prove it.''