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

"Trickster!" she screeched. "Get gone and leave us to our work! We will have no
new masters!" She banged my mount a hard blow on the rump with the handle of her
hoe. The horse belled and reared. I clung madly to the mane, but kept my seat and
never lost the hold on my dagger.
"I say you will!" My mouth stretched wide in a hiss of fury. A jab of my claws
turned the stallion and sent him barreling down upon her. She shrieked as the hooves
struck her to the dirt. I wrenched the beast's mane, making him wheel and trample
her again and again, until her blood ran brown as the muck where her old man still
groveled.
At last she was dead enough to satisfy even her own doubts. I urged my mount
on, leaving her mate to crawl timorously toward her body, as if afraid he lacked the
right to claim even that. From the next hilltop's rise I called back to him,
"Remember! These are the lands ofтАФ"
And between sob and sob over the mangled corpse I heard him choke out the
name, "тАФthe Marquis of Carrabas!"
The other peasants I encountered were more tractable. Shepherdesses and
cowherds and goose girls will say anything without wasting too much thought over
it. That was good. It freed my mind to think over something the old woman had said
before:
For all I know, you are my lord himself, come in one of his many shapes to test
our loyalty.
How many shapes? The shape of a roan stallion, to bring a young princess a
ghoulish gift? The shape of a cat in boots and courtly finery, to trick his peasant
bondsmen? The shape of something fit to kill such a cat, too? It was not a thought
to bring me comfort. The castle lay open, drawbridge down over a moat clotted
almost solid with silt and tousled weeds. The keep itself was full of the cold,
sour-salty smell of rancid blood. My boots sounded echoes from the great hall's
floor of lapis lazuli and snowy marble slabs, the echoes flying up to roost among the
nests of golden owls who perched on the painted rafters. Torches burned red on the
walls, and there was an underthread of bitter incense burning, too feeble to erase the
ingrained reek of death. I licked my lips with hunger and went on.
He lolled upon the throne in ogre's guise, so warted and tusked and walleyed that
his hideousness reduced itself to caricature. A yearling calf bawled and struggled in
his hairy fist, liquid brown eyes brimming with mortal terror. I dreamed. I scented its
mother's milk still wetting the mottled pink-and-black muzzle. A wrench of the ogre's
free hand tore head from neck. He let the gouting blood gush over his purple gums
as if he were a harvest hand draining a noonday wineskin.
Then he was a man, Change effected in an eyeblink. "Greetings, Cousin." He
jumped from the sword-scarred throne and sauntered toward me, trim and elegant in
blue satin and steel. His narrow waist, his ample chest, his long and supple legs and
arms were all crisscrossed with glimmering chain. He carried its weight light as
spring, and the galley slave's collar and manacles were jeweled to show he wore
them only in submission to himself.
He bowed, black boots pointing elegantly. I doffed my hat and made a poor
imitation of his polished gesture. He laughed. "Why do we stand on ceremony,
Cousin? It has been too long since one of my own kindred came calling. Will you
take some refreshment?" He waved at the drained body of the calf. "There is plenty
more where that came from, and enough for all."
Outlaw. Renegade. Lost. We have them among our number, as do mortals. They
break the laws of blood and binding, pilfer Change and cheapen it past redemption