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

second blood-theft from the corpse: a Change command is not a Change desired.
Later, by the fireside, he took me into his lap and said, You are my finest treasure,
Puss; my dearest love shall have you. From this day forward, you are his. Guard
him, make his fortune, set him high.
It could not be. By all our laws, I had but one master. He would not see that.
Love blinded one eye, Death the other. One wish, and I will ask no more. He
scratched behind my ears and tickled the fur under my chin. For love of me, breed
him to princes. He made no further request of me until the day he died.
Breed him to princes.
You see, Child? Her voice tugged me gently back into the present. When you
stole that poor dead woman's blood for your master's sake, you bound yourself to
him beyond the grave. Though he is dead, his wish survives and fetters you. You
chose it so. Satisfy it and be free.
My broken prison still entrapped me, but I managed to open and shut my eyes
once, slowly, so that she might understand my submission. Fingers of sweet healing
stroked my fur. Bone knit to bone, raveled skeins of bloodthreads mended. I licked
my whiskers, wildly seeking the precious taste of blood, and rasped my tongue over
nothing. The strand where the shapetide ran melted away beneath me. The stable
walls shook with the anguish of my howls.
Hush, she counseled. Bear this, fulfill the final compact, and your freedom will
follow. Her wings were moonbright, soothing my waking eyes. The stable walls
could not hope to hold them. Timbers splintered and collapsed outward into the
frosty night. She stopped to sweep me up against her breast and carried me off into
the woodland.
She left me standing by a stream, black water dappled with the silver of shattered
stars. The boots still clamped my feet tightly, but her parting gift was the Change that
let me walk upright in them, in the teeth of the pain.
My nose sifted the air for scent. Rime hung on every indrawn breath; I breathed
diamonds. And then his smellтАФa stink to rake me raw. He was near, he must be.
She never would have brought me this far else.
Can you name the look to put on his wide, coarse face when he saw me coming
toward him by moonlight, the little heels of my scarlet boots crunching deep and
surefooted into the snow? Astonishment is a milky name to put to such an
expression, and it turned wholly to vapor in the blast of hot shock when I opened
my mouth and greeted him in human speech.
The satin sash, the velvet cape, the little felt cocked hat with its fluttery plume, he
fetched them all at my bidding. I never asked how he got them. Thievery had a hand
in it, I am sure, and bullying where thievery was too blunt a measure. He obeyed me
utterly, in awe, and his reward was my promise: I will breed you to princes.
So my task began.
There is always a king fool enough to dismiss wisdom in the name of novelty; he
was not too hard to find. To see a cat walk in boots, and talk, and then to hear that it
comes bringing you gifts of gameтАФwell! There's a hard lure to resist. He was fat
faced and ruddy, that old king, his jowls marbled like fine beef. The white wig on his
head was tipsy from the hasty hand he'd used to put it on, showing the mottled
patches of bulge-veined scalp beneath the hairdresser's masterpiece. At that first
interview he wore no crown.
The second time I came calling, he corrected the oversight. I was a wonder, but
after the initial thrill of seeing a creature so unique, he must have noticed that his
court was paying just as much attention to me, and not enough to him. Therefore,