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

"He said his name was Melior, he said he'd been mugged, he said they'd
taken his sword." And he asked where he was, just as if he didn't
know, and his ears are pointed, and his eyes glow in the dark. "So I
brought him back here," Ruth said, beginning to feel that this course
of action was hardly defensible. "And he asked if he could take a
shower. He really was mugged, Nai-he's all over bruises."

"And he's got genuine Mr. Spock ears that don't come off with water,"
Naomi said flatly. She took a double handful of chicken gobbets and
dropped them into the wok, then scooped the remaining debris into a
plastic bag and knotted it shut before dropping it into the trash
can.

Plopwhick-thump-bang. "And you're usually more careful than that. So
what do you think is going on, Ruth?" Naomi turned back to the
refrigerator and began divesting it of scallions, garlic, bok choy.

She pulled out a bottle of peanut oil and sprinkled it generously over
the chicken, and then lit the gas stove.

"Ready for the ginger in a minute," Naomi warned.

Ruth continued her careful cutting. "I don't know what's going on,"
she finally said. "If I said I thought he was a Tolkien elf, you'd say
I was crazy. There isn't any such thing as an elf," Ruth added,
carefully grammatical.

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio-as the actress said
to the bishop," Naomi said cheerfully. She swiped the pile of ginger
from beneath Ruth's knife and dumped it on top of the chicken.

"Watch that for a minute, will you? I'm going to go call Michael."

Michael Harrison Peacock-to give him his full name, rank, and title-was
not the sort of person who would be called "Mike," even if you knew him
very well. He sometimes reminded Ruth of an enormous friendly dog-a
black-haired, green-eyed, friendly dog with eyelashes much longer than
hers, far too ebullient to be contained by anything less than a full
two-syllable "Michael" (or, as was often the case, "Oh, Michael,
HONestly").

Michael was somewhere around Ruth's age, which was oldish for a
Master's program, and stood out by being one of the few men in her Lib
Sci classes, but Michael would have stood out in any lineup-except,
perhaps, a Chippendale's revue. Michael was six feet, two inches tall,
had a body purchased by extended work at the gym several nights a week
(and in fact Michael worked there four mornings a week as one of the
instructors), and a face so flawlessly gorgeous that it was always a
surprise that he could speak intelligible English. He was far too