"McKenna,.Juliet.E.-.Aldabreshin.2.-.Northern.Storm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

The wind shifted, bringing a startling stench. 'Saedrin save me!' Dev barely reached the stern before he lost his breakfast noisily over the rail.
Kheda exchanged a rueful grin with the helmsman,
trying to breathe as shallowly as possible. 'You always tell yourself it can't be as bad as you remember.'
And perhaps that's a sign: to concentrate on the here and now rather than indulging in idle speculations about future paths.
'Then you realise it's worse.' The helmsman's weather-beaten brown face grimaced as he hauled on the steering oar in response to a signal from the shipmaster.
The rowers pulled on their oars with a will, even those gagging on their own nausea. The Yellow Serpent accelerated past the bare sandy reef that was the source of the stink. Masked with swathes of cotton cloth, one of the few men ashore waved. Another was more concerned with throwing an old dry shell at a gull darting down from the cloud of birds wheeling above, squawking their outrage as mats of woven palm fronds frustrated their efforts to plunder the vast tubs the men were guarding. Emerald finches and dusky gnatcatchers swooped unopposed, gorging on the red-eyed flies that hung around the tubs in smoky swarms.
As the Yellow Serpent passed the reeking islet and the breeze brought clean, salt-scented air, Kheda dipped a cup of water from a lidded barrel lashed to the light galley's rearmost signal mast. He passed it to Dev, who was still leaning over the stern, pale beneath his coppery tan.
'You people can't just open your oysters with a sharp knife and dig out the pearls?' Dev swilled water around his mouth and spat sourly over the rail.
'Not when we want every pearl, right down to the seed and dust pearls.' Kheda watched the water turning from mysterious green to crystal clarity over the brilliant sands as the shipmaster skilfully guided the vessel into the shallows. 'The only way to get those is to let maggots strip the oysters clean.'
'We're sailing west again after this?' the barbarian growled beneath his breath.
'No, back to the residence. I told you.' Kheda shot the scowling Dev a warning look, his voice low and rapid. 'After all they've suffered in the last year, these people need the reassurance of correct observance of every ritual. As warlord, I have to be there when the new-year stars come into alignment. It's my duty to read the skies for the domain and give judgement on any other portent.'
'What portents do you think they will bring you? Lizards caught in bizarre places?' Dev mocked. 'Or patterns imagined in a pot of beans?'
'Just keep your mouth shut on your ignorance.' Kheda didn't hide his contempt.
'Some new year it'll be, without so much as a sniff of liquor,' Dev muttered, sipping at his water with distaste. 'What then?'
'We'll see.' Kheda smiled thinly. 'In the omens of the heavenly and the earthly compasses.'
He left Dev and went to stand beside the helmsman's chair. The rowers had slowed, listening for the shipmaster's shouts of command and the piper's signals. Some glanced up at the stern platform with discreet curiosity. Kheda kept his face impassive as he made a covert survey of the crew's bearded faces.
They're as curious as everyone else to see what kind of pearl harvest will mark the turn of my first year as unexpected lord of this Chazen domain. And I can see a measure of private anticipation, naturally, in their hopes that serving the warlord in person will win them some share in the bounty.
What can they see in you? Very little, hopefully. 'Show no more emotion than a statue of the finest marble' that's what your father used to say. Because people looking at a statue see in it what they want to see more often than not.
to see my rule sanctioned by the best possible omens?
'I've brought swords and archers to keep your harvest safe,' Kheda called out to the pearl skiffs. 'Carry water to my ships to refill their barrels, if you please.'
Leaving behind a robust chorus of earnest assurances, the rowing boat soon reached the shallows. The boatman shipped his oars and jumped lithely over the side, grabbing for the bow rope to begin hauling the boat up on to the drier sand.
'This will do.' Kheda raised a hand, inclining his head courteously to the boatman as he got out. 'Make yourself known to my slave before we leave.' The cool ruffles of surf around his shins were refreshing after the sun-baked wood of the galley's deck beneath his bare feet. 'Remember that boatman and give him a few pearls,' he said quietly to Dev as they walked up the beach.
'Naturally, my lord,' murmured Dev with a touch of sarcasm. 'A memory for faces is essential in my proper trade.'
Kheda's spine stiffened despite himself. Before he could find a reprimand for the barbarian,, a handful of men advanced down the beach towards them, leaving more waiting in a respectful half-circle where the white coral sands gave way to dusty soil and sparse coils of parched, grey midar stems. Dev had been walking a pace behind Kheda on his open side, one hand resting lightly on the twin hilts thrust through his double-looped sword belt. As the islanders approached, the barbarian moved swiftly to stand between the warlord and these newcomers, stony faced, until Kheda gave him the nod to stand aside, his smile one of nicely calculated superiority.
You can feign this much of a true body slave's duties at least.
The leader of the delegation bowed low. The bold yellow cloth of his simply cut cotton tunic and trousers
was rich with embroidery mimicking turtleshell. He had a darker complexion than his companions and the more tightly curled hair of a hill-dweller, showing that blood from some larger domain had mingled with his more local ancestry. 'My lord Chazen Kheda.'
'Borha.' Kheda smiled widely to conceal how much that new title still grated on his ears.
Get used to it, fool. You're not Daish Kheda, nor ever will be again.
'I see you've brought plenty of strong arms to reap the pearl harvest,' Kheda continued smoothly.
'We left plenty of men to continue our rebuilding.' The man beamed with pleasure at being recognised but fingered a white crab-shell talisman on a cord around his neck, betraying an unconscious anxiety.
'I know - we've just come from Salgaru. Your village is certainly prospering, and all the others besides.' Kheda widened his smile and looked beyond Borha to include all the waiting men in his approval.
One of the others spoke up. 'Will you take some refreshment while we wait for our fishermen to return, my lord?'
'Thank you.' Kheda walked on up the beach and the islanders moved to either side, giving Dev a respectful distance. A few had darker skin and curly hair like Borha. More had the rich brown complexion and straighter hair prevalent in these southerly reaches. All wore crisp new cottons in reds, blues and yellows decorated with skilful embroidery. Some bore vivid butterflies across their shoulders or patterns echoing any one of the myriad bright birds that graced the bigger islands. Other decorations recalled the intricate traceries of thorn coral or the spirals of seashells. A couple wore bracelets of twisted silver wire and one boasted a chain of gold lozenge links around his neck. Most wore more simple talismans Ч a plaited wristband of the silky fibres from a tandra seed pod or a string
of polished ironwood beads. All the men wore daggers at their hips, but Kheda and Dev were the only ones with swords.
They're all so careful to match my pace exactly, with the same diffidence I've seen throughout this voyage around the domain. They bow and simper and answer all my questions, barely asking any of their own. This is obviously how they treated Chazen Saril. But Saril's dead and gone. These people must learn how different a ruler I am.
Kheda headed for a temporary pavilion set up among the palm huts. Polished berale wood supported azure cotton embroidered with fan-shaped midar leaves shading a bank of plump indigo cushions. Hopeful maidens in simple silk dresses of yellow and white that flattered the warm bronze of their bare arms and faces stood holding beaten brass plates laden with dainties. Idling uncon-vincingly among the crude huts, men and women clad in sober unbleached cotton eyed the spectacle.
'Please, join me.' Kheda swept a hand around to include all the spokesmen in his invitation.
Dev was already moving to take a tray of goblets from a girl who had found time to weave crimson striol-vine flowers into her glossy black curls. He surprised her into a giggle with a mischievous wink before offering the salver deftly to Kheda, eyes dutifully downcast.
'Admire if you want but lay a finger on any of them -' Kheda raised the goblet to hide his lips '- and I'll cut it off.'
'Naturally, my lord.' Dev's answering murmur dripped with sarcasm.
Kheda sipped velvety sard-berry juice, its richness quenching his thirst as the heady scent cleansed the lurking memory of the rotting oysters.
'My lord Chazen Kheda.' Another of the islanders' spokesmen addressed him, stumbling over his words.
Kheda searched his memory for the stained yellow talisman the man wore on a leather thong: a tooth from some piebald whale either taken by a valiant ancestor or washed up on these shores as a sign to bemuse anyone other than a seer or a warlord. 'Isei, isn't it?'
Tell me, why is your fist so tight around the stem of that goblet that your knuckles are white?
'You come dressed for war, my lord.' Isei cleared his throat. 'I was wondering how the western isles fare. Are the invaders finally defeated?'
Some of the other spokesmen edged away to dissociate themselves from such boldness and a few closed their eyes, helplessly struggling to hide their expressions of pain.
Do you think I would disapprove of such a question? That I don't have my own unwelcome memories of the destruction that swept across your islands not even a year ago?
'I was taught to always travel armoured.' Kheda shrugged.
Taught by my father, Daish Reik, warlord of the stronger, richer Daish domain to your north, a man to be treated with all due respect lest he make your lives intolerable by closing the seaways to you. Who would ever have foreseen that his son would become your warlord? Not Daish Reik. Not me, that's for sure, when I was Daish Kheda. Not Chazen Saril. But then none of us foresaw the invasion of Chazen by brutal savages from some unknown land beyond the southern horizon.