"Tanya Huff - The Fire's Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

the granddaughter wonder. He wiped away the barely perceptible
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Tanya Huff

THE FIRE'S STONE

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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,

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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