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

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.

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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.

Aaron had saved her from boredom, from loneliness, from lying alone and forgotten in the darkness. She