"Esther M. Friesner - Chicks 03 - Chicks 'N Chained Males" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

as if she were leaning on a wall in the palace courtyard in the sun.

They were, of course, grumbling when they came within earshot. "Should've called yourself Mirabel
LonglegsтАФ" Siobhan Bladehawk said. "Don't you ever sleep at night? We were beginning to think we'd
never catch up."

"And why'd you go off in that snit?" asked Krystal, flipping the beaded fringe on her vest. "See this? I
lost three strings, two of them with real lapis beads, trying to track you through that white-thorn thicket.
You could just as easily have gone around it, rather than making me get my knees all scratchedтАФ"

"Shut up, Krystal," Siobhan said. "Though she has a point, 'Bel. What got into you, anyway?"

Mirabel sniffed, and hated herself for it. "Bella said if I was just investigating, I could go aloneтАФnobody
should botherтАФ"

"Bella's having hot flashes," Siobhan said. "Not herself these days, our Bella, and worried about having
to retire. We unelected her right after you left, and then we came after you. If you had just waited a day,
'stead of storming out like thatтАФ"

"But you're so impetuous," Krystal said, pouting. She pulled the end of her silver-gilt braid around,
frowned at it, and nipped off a split end with her small, white, even teeth.

The third member of the party appeared, along with a shaggy pack pony, its harness hung with a startling
number of brightly polished horse brasses.

"I needed a holiday," Sophora said, her massive frame dwarfing everything but the mountains. "And a
chance for some healthy open-air exercise." The Chancellor of the Exchequer grinned. "Besides, I think
that idiot Balon of Torm is trying to rob the realm, and this will give him a chance, he thinks. The fool."

Mirabel's mood now suited a sunny May morning. Not even the next squall off the mountain could make
her miserable. Krystal, though, turned her back to the blowing rain and pouted again.

"This isruining my fringes."

"Shut up Krystal," said everyone casually. The world was back to normal.
***

Cavernous Dire had subsisted on rockrats, rock squirrels, rock grouse, and the occasional rock (mild
serpentine, with streaks of copper sulfate, eased his draconic fire-vats, he'd found). In midwinter, he
might be lucky enough to flame a mountain goat before it got away, or even a murk ox (once
widespread, now confined to a few foggy mountain valleys) . But autumn meant hunger, unless he
traveled far into the plains, where he could be hunted by man and dragon alike.

Now, as he lay on the cold stone floor of his cave, stirring the meagre pile of his treasure, he scented
something new, something approaching from the high, cold peaks of the Tanglefoots. He sniffed. Not a
mountain goat. Not a murk ox (and besides, it wasn't foggy enough for the murk ox to be abroad). A
sharp, hot smell, rather like the smell of his own fire on rock.

Like many basically unattractive men, Cavernous Dire had been convinced of his own good looks, back
when he was a young lad who coated his hair with woolfat, and had remained convinced that he had