"Dave Duncan - A Man Of His Word 1 - Magic Casement" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

"I'm a very competent horsewoman, Aunt."
"I'm sure you are, but you must certainly not go out riding without suitable
attendants. That would not be ladylike. Or safe. So you will find out who is
available and let me know before you leave?"
Restraining her temper, Inos made noncommittal noises to the porridge.
Kade smiled with relief... and apparently with complete innocence. "You promise,
Inos?"
Trapped! "Of course, Aunt."
Such babying was humiliating! Inos was older than Sila, the cook's daughter, who
was already married and almost a mother.
"I am having a small salon this morning. Nothing formal, just some ladies from
the town... tea and cakes. You would be very welcome to join us."
On a day like this? Tea and cakes and burgesses' fat wives? Inos would rather
muck out stables.
Disaster! There was no one. Even the youngest and most inadequate stableboy
seemed to have been assigned duties of world-shattering importance that could
not be postponed. A frenzy of activity possessed everyone still remaining in the
castle, and there were few of those anyway. The boys had gone to the hills or
the boats. The girls were busy in the fields or the fish sheds. There was no
one.
No one of her rank! That was the real problem. All of Inos's friends were the
children of her father's servants, for Krasnegar possessed no nobility below its
king, and no minor gentry either, unless one counted the merchants and
burgesses. Her father counted them; Aunt Kade did so unwillingly. But servants
and gentry alike, the boys were vanishing into trades, the girls into matrimony.
There was no one around with leisure to escort a princess, and the prospect of
that spirited gallop along the sands began to fade like a mirage.
The stables were almost deserted, by man and beast both. As she went in, Inos
passed Ido bearing a bundle of washing on her head.


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"Looking for Rap?" Ido inquired.
No, Inos was not looking for Rap. Rap had long since gone landward with the
others and would not be back before winter. And why should everyone always
assume that it had to be Rap she wanted?
She spent a wistful while agrooming Lightning, although he did not need it. What
he needed was more exercise. She had inherited Lightning from her mother, and if
her mother had still been alive, then they... well, no point in thinking about
that. As Inos left the stable, she passed old Hononin, the hostler, a gnarled
and weatherbeaten monument whose face seemed to have been upholstered in the
same leather used to make his clothes.
"Morning, miss. Looking for Rap?"
Inos snorted a denial and pranced by him, although snorting was not regal. And
probably that way of departing was what the writers of romances called a
"flounce," and that would not be regal either. She would not be able to go
riding, and Aunt Kade would know she was still around the palace. Would she hunt
down her niece to impose the tea-and-cake torture on her? With some relief, Inos