"Edghill,.Rosemary.-.Empty.Crown.Trilogy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Edghill Rosemary)

ring. A regular utility belt.

Still attached to rings were a knife in a metal scabbard and a small
pouch. Reluctantly forsaking the knife-which looked to be lovely with
enamel work and rock crystal-Ruth opened the pouch.

"Were you afraid I couldn't pay for my lodging?" Melior said behind
her.

Ruth jumped back, agonized. "I was just-" "Searching my
possessions."

Melior finished.

Naomi's black kimono came very close to not meeting in front at all.

Wearing it, Melior looked like some perilously exotic Kabuki dancer; a
paragraph from the lost language of cranes.

"Let me help you."

He took the pouch from her nerveless fingers and upended it on the
bed.

"Signet ring-useless-sixteen taels in copper for chummage-useless-a
useless earring, a map of no place I'm ever likely to see again, flint
and steel, tinderbox, perfume, dice-useless.

"All useless. Have it if you like," he said in a deadly tired voice.

Ruth was saved from having to answer by the jingle of keys in the
lock.

"Ruth?" Naomi called.

Naomi Nasmyth was about Ruth's age, but then, Naomi was deep in the
toils of acquiring a Doctorate in Library Science and had been at
Columbia, woman and girl, since the age of eighteen: B.A in English,
Master's in Library Science, Teaching Certificate, and now back to the
erebean regions of the Library School's Doctoral Program.

As was often the case with roommates thrown together by fate, Naomi was
all that Ruth wished to be: tall and vivid and poised and serene and
organized. Black hair and hazel eyes and sangfroid that Emma Peel
would envy-not to mention good at games. Ruth could have easily hated
her, if not for the fact that Naomi had looked her up and down on the
day she moved in and decided Ruth was in need of tidying, thereby
smoothing Ruth's way enormously through the freshman maze. If there
were two kinds of people in the world-Teflon and Velcro-then Naomi was
definitely a Teflon person, the sort to whom trouble never stuck.