"Robin Hobb - Assassin 1 - Assassin' s Apprentice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)

Nosebleed, and me on a rocky shore beyond the net menders' racks, with Nosebleed
teaching me to scour the rocks for tight-clinging sheel. These she levered off
expertly with a sharpened stick. She was showing me how to use a nail to pry the
chewy inmates out of their shells when another girl hailed us with a shout.
The neat blue cloak that blew around her and the leather shoes on her feet
set her apart from my companions. Nor did she come to join our harvesting, but
only came close enough to call, "Molly, Molly, he's looking for you, high and
low. He waked up near sober an hour ago, and took to calling you names as soon
as he found you gone and the fire out."
A look mixed of defiance and fear passed over Nosebleed's face. "Run away,
Kittne, but take my thanks with you. I'll remember you next time the tides bare
the kelpcrab beds."
Kittne ducked her head in a brief acknowledgment and immediately turned and


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hastened back the way she had come.
"Are you in trouble?" I asked Nosebleed when she did not go back to turning
over stones for sheels.
"Trouble?" She gave a snort of disdain. "That depends. If my father can stay
sober long enough to find me, I might be in for a bit of it. More than likely
he'll be drunk enough tonight that not a one of whatever he hurls at me will
hit. More than likely!" she repeated firmly when Kerry opened his mouth to
object to this. And with that she turned back to the rocky beach and our search
for sheel.
We were crouched over a many-legged gray creature that we found stranded in a
tide pool when the crunch of a heavy boot on the barnacled rocks brought all our
heads up. With a shout Kerry fled down the beach, never pausing to look back.
Nosy and I sprang back, Nosy crowding against me, teeth bared bravely as his
tail tickled his cowardly little belly. Molly Nosebleed was either not so fast
to react or resigned to what was to come. A gangly man caught her a smack on the
side of the head. He was a skinny man, red nosed and rawboned, so that his fist
was like a knot at the end of his bony arm, but the blow was still enough to
send Molly sprawling. Barnacles cut into her wind-reddened knees, and when she
crabbed aside to avoid the clumsy kick he aimed at her, I winced at the salty
sand that packed the new cuts.
"Faithless little musk cat! Didn't I tell you to stay and tend to the
dipping! And here I find you mucking about on the beach, with the tallow gone
hard in the pot. They'll be wanting more tapers up at the keep this night, and
what am I to sell them?"
"The three dozen I set this morning. That was all you left me wicking for,
you drunken old sot!" Molly got to her feet and stood bravely despite her
brimming eyes. "What was I to do? Burn up all the fuel to keep the tallow soft
so that when you finally gave me wicking, we'd have no way to heat the kettle?"
The wind gusted and the man swayed shallowly against it. It brought us a
whiff of him. Sweat and beer, Nosy informed me sagely. For a moment the man
looked regretful, but then the pain of his sour belly and aching head hardened
him. He stooped suddenly and seized a whitened branch of driftwood. "You won't