"Esther M. Friesner - Troll By Jury" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

"Thirteen!" Ethelberthina stamped her foot. "As if you had to ask! I just had my Maiden Morn,
remember? Which is how this whole muddle got started, and it's all her fault." She thrust a finger at her
mother. "Oh. And hers." She pointed again, but no one was at the other end of her finger.



Garth clicked his tongue. "Zoli, my dear," he called into the vast spaces of the duke's great hall. "Come
back, please. We can't settle most of these cases without you."



"Keep your codpiece on, I'm coming." Zoli's voice arose from where she had wandered off to enjoy a
long, satisfying, mother-daughter visit with her Lily, the lass who had outshone so many of her male
counterparts while at Overford Academy and risen to the enviable post of Duke Janifer's senior resident
alchemist. The two ladies were snugged up in a cozy niche below one of the lancet windows, chatting and
sharing the contents of a brimming fruit bowl.



By this time the duke was entirely flustered. "How can one woman be responsible for so much chaos?"



"I say she practices," said Dean Porfirio. Like Garth, he was in the duke's court solely in the capacity of
witness. "But her husband here assures me it's purely a natural talent."
Something whizzed through the air and hit the wizard at the back of the head, knocking his conical cap
off. "My Garth never said any such thing about me," Zoli announced, hefting a second peach. "He knows
better." She sauntered back to the ranks of her accusers while Dean Porfirio recovered his hat and
plucked bits of fruit out of his hair.



"Did you disrupt this girl's Maiden Morn?" Janifer quizzed her.



"Yes," Zoli admitted freely. "You'd've done the same, in the circumstances." She explained the details of
Goodwife Eyebright's plot against Ethelberthina.



The good duke was appalled, but compelled to press on with his examination: "Then you admit to
assaulting Ludlow Pennywhistle with the flung body of Bursar Tailings?"



"Sometimes I don't know my own strength." Zoli giggled. "Sometimes I do."