"David Drake - Lord of the Isles 05 - Goddess of the Ice Realm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

like the folks they grew up with. Then they remember who you really are and they're afraid you'll
have them flayed alive for disrespect to Prince Garric of Haft."

I'd never do that! Garric thought in shock.
"No more would I," Carus agreed, "though I showed a hard enough hand to enemies of the
kingdom. But there's some in your court who'd show less hesitation over executing a commoner
for disrespect than they would over the choice of a wine with their dinner."
"I don't belong here," Garric whispered, but he didn't need the snort from the ghost in his mind to
know that he did indeed belong. The Kingdom of the Isles, wracked by rebellion and wizardry, needed
Prince Garric and his friends more than it needed any number of the courtiers and Ornifal landowners
who'd claimed to be the government of the Isles for most of the thousand years since the Old Kingdom
collapsed in blood and chaos.

Thought of his friends made Garric look toward the bow where his sister Sharina, his boyhood
friend Cashel, and the wizard Tenoctris leaned against the railing. Like Garric they were mostly
concerned with keeping out of the way. This was a particular problem for the women since they'd
dressed for arrival in Carcosa in spreading court robes of silk brocade: cream with a gold stripe for
'Princess Sharina', sea green for the aged wizard. In a manner of speaking, Tenoctris was much older
than the seventy years or so she looked: she'd been flung a thousand years into the future--and onto the
beach at Barca's Hamlet--by the same wizard-born cataclysm which had brought down the Old
Kingdom.

Sharina wore a fillet, but the golden flood of her hair streamed out beneath it. She was tall--taller
than most men in Barca's Hamlet--and blonde unlike anyone else in the community. Her mother Lora had
been a maid in the palace in Carcosa when tall, blond Niard, an Ornifal noble, had been Count of Haft
through his marriage to Countess Tera....
Even a brother could see that Sharina's willowy beauty would be exceptional in any company.
"But I know a prettier woman yet," whispered Garric, and smiled wider to think of Liane bos-Benliman.
She'd be meeting him here in Carcosa for their wedding.
Sharina felt the weight of her brother's glance. She turned and waved, her smile like sunlight.
Tenoctris and Cashel turned with her. The old wizard was cheerful, birdlike, and as doggedly
determined as any soldier in the army. Cashel was almost as tall as Garric, but he was so broad that he
didn't look his height unless you saw him with ordinary men. Mountains would crumble before either
Cashel or his sister Ilna, aboard the two-decked patrol vessel following the Shepherd, ever failed their
duty. Sharina was fortunate to love a man so solid and so much in love with her.

There's never been a man luckier in his friends, Garric thought as he smiled back. Then he
turned and waved to the small woman in the stern of the patrol vessel astern.
"And never a better time than now," Carus said, "for the Kingdom of the Isles to have
friends--and luck!"
 ***
When Ilna saw Garric wave, her first thought was, What does he mean by that?

Then, feeling foolish--feeling more of a fool than she usually did--she waved with her right as her
left held the cords she was plaiting. The movement was polite and a little prim, the way Ilna os-Kenset
did most things.

Garric didn't mean anything by it. He was just making a friendly gesture to a childhood friend
who didn't, after all, mean very much to him.
Near Ilna--and on a deck-and-a-half patrol vessel like the Flying Fish, anyone could be