"Tanya Huff - Kigh 1 - Sing the Four Quarters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

"I'd love a lift. Thank you."

"Good, good. And maybe you could convince the kigh to get us there a little faster?"

Annice frowned. "You know we're not permitted to Sing you an advantage."

"An advantage?" The wool merchant's teeth flashed white in the depths of his beard. "Hardly that
when everyone else is already downriver."

"You have a pointтАж"

"And you are allowed to Sing boats out of freeze-up, I saw it done once."

"And you're splitting hairs." She sighed. "Still, if you're determined to go, then the faster you
travel the less likely you'll get caught in freeze-up and have to hire a Song to get you free. So I
suppose it would actually be doing a sort of public service if I helped."

His grin broadened.

you can rationalize anything if you want to do it badly enough. "I'll do what I can, but the kigh
decide."

"Good enough." He held out his fist. "Jonukas i'Evicka. Everyone calls me Jon."

Annice touched his fist lightly with hers. "Annice," she told him. Bards, like priests, used neither
matronym or patronym, and after ten years her name alone was seldom enough to provoke a
reaction.

The riverboat rode low in the water by the inn's dock, the pilot waiting impatiently on the stern


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 Huff, Tanya - Sing the Four Quarters


deck by the sweep oar.

"What did you get hung up on?" she snarled as they approached. "And who's she?'

Jon leaped aboard, timing it expertly between swells. "She's a bard. Name's Annice. She'll be
traveling with us."

The pilot's snort was nonverbal but expressive for all of that. "You payin' her weight?"

Annice swallowed another mouthful of the bread. To her grateful surprise, it seemed to be
settling things. "I've offered to Sing. To help you reach Riverton before freeze-up."

"You a water?" Her tone seemed to indicate she considered it doubtful.

"I Sing all four quarters."