"Sara Douglass - The Troy Game 1 - Hades' Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Sara)

But as Meriam leaned down to push Ariadne to her back, the better to expose
her huge belly to the knife, Ariadne screamed, and there was a rush of
bloodstained fluid between her legs, and then the baby, hitherto unshiftable,
slithered free.
Meriam stopped dead, her mouth hanging open.
Ariadne had sunk to her haunches, and now she looked up from her daughter
kicking feebly between her legs to the gaggle of midwives.
'You may be sure that I will repay you well for your aid," she said.
ARIADNE RESTED DURING THAT DAY, AND WHEN THE sun settled below
the horizon, she dismissed the woman who sat with her, saying that she wished
to be alone during the night with her daughter.
 Once the woman had gone, Ariadne put her daughter to her breast and fed
her, and then rocked her gently and sung to her softly, so that she would sleep
through the coming hours.
As soon as the infant slept soundly, Ariadne placed her in a small oval wicker
basket, covered her well with blankets, then placed the basket in a dark corner
of the room.
She did not want Asterion to notice the child and perhaps to maim or murder
her in his ill humor.
Once her daughter was attended to, Ariadne washed herself carefully,
wincing at the deep hurt that still assailed her body, then reached into the chest
of her clothes that Theseus had caused to be tossed onto the beach. She drew
forth a deep red flounced skirt that she bound as tightly as she could about her
still-thickened and soft belly, then slipped her arms into a golden jacket that she
tied loosely about her waist, leaving it unbuttoned so that her full breasts
remained exposed.
Having attended her body, Ariadne now carefully painted her face. She
powdered her face to a smooth, rich cream mask, then lined her eyes with black
and her mouth with a vivid red that matched her skirt. When that was done,
Ariadne dressed her hair. For the finest effect she needed a maid to do it for her,
but there was no one to help, and so she did the best she could, finally
managing to bind and braid her glossy black tresses into an elaborate design
that cascaded from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck.
She was still studying her face and hair in her handheld mirror when she felt
the shift in the air behind her.
Ariadne put down the mirror with deliberate slowness, calmly rose from her
stool, and turned to face her murdered half brother Asterion.
For an instant she thought him more shadow than substance, but then he
took a single step forward, and she saw that his flesh was solid and realтАж as was
his anger.
'You betrayed me," he said in his thick, guttural, familiar voice. "See." He
waved a hand down his body. "See what your lover did to me."
She looked, for she owed him this at least.
Theseus' sword had cut into Asterion's body in eight or nine places: across
his thickly muscled black throat, his shoulder, his chest, both his flanks, laying
open his belly. The wounds were now bloodless lips of flesh, opening and closing
as Asterion's chest rose and fell in breath (and why did he need to breathe at all,
thought Ariadne, now that he is dead?), revealing a rope of bowel here, a lung
there, the yellowed cord of a tendon elsewhere.
Ariadne swallowed, then very slowly lifted her eyes back to Asterion's