"Cross CHILDREN Walk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

The wizard was rueful. "I'm dean, but I have no power over school finances. Our bursar's a trollЧliterally. Trolls only understand the bottom line."

"Oh, don't worry about me," Etherlberthina said cheerfully. "I'll be earning my own money, soon enough."

"Indeed? How?"

"By bottling and selling as much Iron River water as I can before you clean it up," she replied.

"Who would want to buy that swill?" Zoli asked.

Rather than answer, Ethelberthina inquired, "Would either of you have some dragon skin to hand? Besides this, I mean." She waggled the patch of hide.

Zoli looked dubious, but rummaged through her storage chests. "I'm not supposed to have this," she said handing the girl a limp remnant. "The king knows that armor made from these scales is flexible, light, and virtually impenetrable, so he reserves it for his soldiers. He also knows that it's the only edge those clods have over the swordsisters, which is why royal law forbids a freelance female from owning even a scrap of it. But I had to keep this, law or no. It's a souvenir of my first dragon slaying."

"Well, you'll always have your memories," said Ethelberthina, and dropped it in the scrying basin. Zoli said a highly improper word and fished it out with the tip of her sword, only to have the girl smoothly swat the blade upward, sending the soaked bit of hide flying. The scales hit the floor and shattered like thin ice.

Zoli gaped. "The river water does that to dragon scales?"

"And dragonscale armor too," Ethelberthina said. "Now can you guess who'll buy it from us? Of course we'll get better prices once the river's cleaned up, and we're the only ones with a supply of the old water put by."

" 'We'?"

"Well, I'll need help with packaging, advertising, distribution . . . You'd have to quit your job as a crossing guard, Zoli, but you're our ideal sales rep to the Swordsisters' Union. What do you think they'd pay for the Elixir of Equality?"

"Nothing they couldn't recoup once the king's enemies start hiring them wholesale," Master Porifiro muttered.

Zoli of the Brazen Shield laid one hand on the little girl's shoulder. "Ethelberthina," she said, "has anyone ever told you that you're a very exceptional girl?"

"Yes," she replied. "But for once it's nice to hear it as a compliment."