"Huff, Tanya - Fire's Stone V1.1 Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

smudges his fingers had left on the ebony, then went and sat on the wide marble window ledge, gazing out over the tiny garden at the city beyond.

"You got sunburned," Faharra said at last. "Good thing you usually work at night."

Pale fingers touched a high cheekbone. He winced and his eyes rose to the red-gold light just barely visible over the rooftops of the upper city.

"Don't worry, lad." The old woman's voice was almost kind. "You'll get your flogging. They only drop those who try for The Stone."

Aaron's gaze snapped down from the mountain. Although his night vision was very good, the shifting shadows of dusk defeated him and he could barely see the ruin of the gem cutter amidst her shawls and blankets and pillows. His voice when it came was hardly his own. "What?"

"You think I don't know why you settled here, boy, after all your years of wandering?" Faharra rolled the rich summer taste of the wine around her mouth and decided. She was too old to continue dancing around Aaron's pain; her time was fast running out and unless he listened to her, she feared Aaron's was as well. She could see him very clearly, outlined against the evening sky. But then, she had always been able to see him clearly. "We flog our thieves to death. Flog them to death in the market square." Her mind wandered briefly back to the days in the market when her hands had been steady, her eye true, and her skill sought by kings. "Flog our thieves to death," she repeated, sliding back to the present. "But we have to catch them first."

The thief at the window might have been carved in stone, so still he sat.

"You're too good a thief, Aaron my lad. If you truly want your cousin's death, you're not going about it very well."

Faharra watched his face tighten and his jaw set and knew what ran through his mind. Only the memory of his cousin's death closed him up that tightly, shut him even further within himself than he usually was-and that was far indeed. She wanted ... oh, she wanted many things: her youth, her skill, her patience, time. She saw Aaron as the last jewel she would ever cut. No, recut, for he was already a diamond, hard and brilliant but with a flaw deep in the many faceted heart of him.

Soon, someone or something would strike that flaw and

the young thief would shatter into a million tiny shards. Faharra intended to prevent that and she thanked the Nine Above and the One Below every day for the accident that had brought Aaron into her life; had brought meaning into her life just when she thought meaning had degenerated to bowel movements and watered wine.
The thief, who had slipped shadow silent over her window ledge, had no way of knowing she had fallen from her couch and rather than call her granddaughter-the patronizing bitch-had decided to spend the night on the floor. As comfortable a place as any, old bones ached on down as much as on tile.
Sidling along the couch, reaching for the tiny gold hourglass that stood on the table beside it, the thief had stepped on her.
"Watch where you step, you clumsy ox, " she'd snapped. I didn't live this long to be a carpet for such as you. Remembering, she smiled. Aaron's jaw had dropped and those wondrous eyebrows had risen, the perfect picture of surprise. And when she had refused to call the watch, surprise became, just for an instant, something else entirely- another emotion that passed too quickly for Faharra to define.
"I get few enough visitors as it is, boy. I'm not of a mind to have those I do get arrested."
He had lifted her back into bed, then sat on the window ledge while she talked at him-she in the darkness, he silhouetted against the night sky.
That first night, she recalled suddenly, was the first of the many times she had told him of the emerald. Well, nothing wrong with pride in a job well done.
As he finally readied to leave, she'd tossed him the hourglass.
"Take it, boy. I've no need to watch the sands of time run out. "
He'd smiled then-a real smile, not the twisted expression that usually served-and as he disappeared she'd called out, "Come back!" She'd just realized the emotion that had followed surprise. Disappointment.
A thief disappointed that she hadn't called the watch?
That was the first question.
He came back. Not that night, but a week later she had
12

Tanya Huff

THE FIRE'S STONE

13

roused in the darkness to find him sitting on the window ledge.

Why had he returned?

That was the second question.

Faharra had soon found that her midnight visitor was more questions than answers. He clung to their developing friendship with an intensity that astonished her. He was young. He was passably attractive, in a sharp, outland sort of way. Why was he so desperate for companionship? Even thieves had friends. What made her safe when the rest of the world was kept at a distance.