"Doranna Durgin - Wolverine's Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Durgin Doranna)

roundhouse, where the oil lamp would offer better light than growing dusk. After a great deal oftsking at
the dry, unmaintained leather, she allowed that it would fix up to be a nice kit, and she would likely get a
good price for it if she decided to butcher the horse for winter. Then, while Kelyn sat in numb fatigue, she
fried sweet root and flour cakes at the fire, slathered butter on them, and handed Kelyn a share any
growing boy would be challenged to put away.

Kelyn did it handily, without pausing. She chased it down with goat milk and sat, glaze-eyed, before
Rika's fire. Rika finished her own meal in a more refined fashion, seated on the rock bench that curved
against the wall of the house, then pulled her short milking stool up next to Kelyn and sat. "Thainn is a
loner; he was always so. He trusted no one, not truly. But he touched Lytha, and she, I think, touched
him, for she was a remarkable woman. I knew so when I first saw her, so far from home, carrying little
more than your staff, a sturdy knife, and a tinder bag with only the remnants of an old mouse nest. And
coins. A handful of gold, tradedтАФ"

"For the ruby Thainn gave her." Kelyn didn't bother to hide her flat disinterest, even in the startling news
that Rika had known her father. Everyone knew how she felt about Thainn.

"Her journey here alone made for a tale as stirring as any of Thainn's," Rika said gently. "You gave her a
proper send-off?"

Kelyn blinked. "Yes," she said. "A huge pyre. Iden and Frykla were there."

"She would have been proud of how you handled yourself this afternoon," Rika said. At Kelyn's sharp
look, she chuckled and said, "No, child, the details are your own. I felt the magic and scryed out the men
just as they reached you. And now I see you here with one of their horses. I can come to my own
conclusions from there."

Kelyn thought there was probably more to it, but her attention was elsewhere, and abruptly so. She
reached for her set-aside cloak and pawed through it, looking for the right pocket. AhтАФthere! She thrust
the newly acquired pouch and its contents at Rika. "What can you tell me of this?"

Rika upended the pouch and shook the bone needle into her hand, heedless of Kelyn's wince. "It can't
hurt me, child," she said. "Nor you." Kelyn gave her a skeptical eye, but Rika ignored that, too. "Here is
the magic I felt. It's a nasty thing, not something I would deal with."

"They rode upon us before anyone else knew of Lytha's death," Kelyn said, and then amended that to,
"Anyone else besides you, I suppose."

"Yes, I felt her pass," Rika murmured. "After working so long together to fight her malaise, we had some
small connection. As I have with you, and every other child I have helped to birth." She held the needle
up, turning it to display the glitter of its cold beauty in the firelight. "Think of it as a kind of vulture, Kelyn.
Something that points to folk who are in mourning and vulnerable, or who live alone and in death have left
their treasures, whatever they might be, unguarded and free for the taking."

Kelyn snorted. "And what would they have found at our home that would be worth even the bother of
riding out there?"

Rika smiled at her. "You alone would be worth twice whatever distance they rode," she said, her
wrinkle-enclosed eyes filled with affection. When Kelyn snorted at that, too, Rika merely said, "Your
cloak, then. Used as the lining for luxuriously fine cloth, it would fetch much more than you imagine at