"Esther M. Friesner - Puss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

lord isтАж dead?"
"He will not trouble us more. Only bring His Majesty and his honest daughter to
my lord's castle tomorrow noon, and you shall see for yourself how truly things have
changed within the realm of my lord the Marquis of Carrabas."
That night, I crept up by arrow slit and ivy and unplastered crack between stone
and stone into the princess' chamber and stole the dagger from its olivewood coffin.
I had no sword, you see, and my old master's son would never let awe of me make
that great a fool of him. He still remembered all he'd done to me. Put a blade in my
paw, he? Oh, certainly! But I must have a sword.
The stableboy drowsed, and the horse was wild enough to recognize my lordship
and come silently. I leaped onto his bare rump, straddled his neck, hooked claws
through his mane, and turned him down the right road.
All that night we galloped through plowland and woodland until in the hours
before dawn we came into plowland again. How simple, to terrorize the peasants as
they went stoop-shouldered to their chores! They had never seen my like, and a
gambol of my dagger before their faces was enough to convince them that worse
than their current master's wrath awaited them if they disobeyed me.
"Carr-Carrabas?" The old man stumbled over the alien name. "We are to say that
these lands belong to the Marquis of CarrтАФCabraтАФ?" He rubbed his gnarled hands
up and down the handle of his mattock as he forced the words into memory.
His wife screwed her leathery, toothless face into a grimace that could have been
anger or fear or evenтАФ miracle!тАФdefiance. "Creature, if our true lord hears of this,
he will kill us."
"If, old woman," I said. "But the dead hear nothing."
Her muddy eyes, the whites yellowed as old parchment, slid sideways toward the
turret. She never looked in that direction willingly. "He is not dead."
"Much changes, Mother." I flipped the dagger from paw to paw. What I lacked in
the dexterity of human fingers, I made up for in adaptive skills gathered through
many centuries and many skins. Thumbs or no thumbs, my grip was sure. "You
never thought to see his death, did you? Well, neither did you think to see a being
like myself, yet here I am! Get used to wonders."
She shook her head. "I will not believe in anything unless I see it with these eyes.
Until I see him dead, my lord lives, and while he lives, I know the power of his rage.
I know nothing about you, Cat. For all I know, you are my lord himself, come in one
of his many shapes to test our loyalty."
"What? Could it beтАФ?" Her words struck ice into the old man's heart. He
dropped his mattock and clutched his throat with both hands as he fell to his knees
beside my steed. "Mercy, my lord!" he shrilled, hunched into a rocking ball of terror
nearly under my horse's hooves. "I knew it was youтАФin truth, I did! And if you
would have your slave tell these strangers that these lands belong to the Marquis of
Carrabas, shall I disobey your command? Oh, have mercy!" He grabbed for my
boots, making the horse shy.
"Enough!" I spat. "I bring you a new master, know it! The old, bad days are
done. A lighter hand will lie over your lives if you are loyal to him. Easier tribute,
more left behind to fill your own bellies, an end to fear, all these for the ones wise
enough to stand for my lord the Marquis of Carrabas. But as for those too foolish to
see the good of this exchange of masters, the exile's road, the landless man's death."
 The old man was past confusion now. I could almost hear the flapping of a
thousand wings inside his hollow skull. The old woman, though, had hard-soled feet
planted deep and certain in the earth. She would not yield.