"Naomi Kritzer - Dead Rivers 3 - Freedom's Sisters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kritzer Naomi)

It was difficult to believe that in less than a day we had traveled a distance that should have taken weeks.

Kyros had his feet kicked up on a bolster. I glanced at him again, wondering if he was going to ask me questions,
but he appeared to be deep in thought. I looked out the window again.

I thought I could see farms now, below us. There were houses, surrounded by fields. The dark ribbon that ran
alongside the farms was not, I realized, a river, but a wide, well-kept road; there were people traveling along it,
with horses, wagons, camel trains. I had been studying the ground for so long, trying to pick out details, that I
was startled to see movement out of the corner of my eye, in the air; I looked, expecting a bird, and saw
something that looked like a flying barn, or a very large flying box. An aeriko caravan, I realized, shipping apples
one direction and grapes the other. It was painted to look like a bright yellow bird, with eyes and feathers
outlined in black.

тАЬYour mother would be shocked by your hair,тАЭ Kyros said.

I touched the cropped ends. тАЬItтАЩs grown out a lot.тАЭ I scratched an itch. тАЬI think if my mother saw me now, sheтАЩd
want me scrubbed raw and picked free of lice before sheтАЩd let me kiss her.тАЭ IтАЩll certainly look the part of a bandit
if I get taken before the magia like this. I glanced covertly at Kyros. IтАЩd found out near the end of my summer
with the Alashi that Kyros was my father. Had he always spoken of my mother so casually? I couldnтАЩt remember.

Kyros chuckled a little and fell silent again. I sat back against the cushions and tried to practice, in my mind,
what I would say to the magia, but my thoughts kept skipping ahead to when she didnтАЩt believe me. Would she
have me executed? Or tortured like a captured spy? Like the captured spy I am?

What did I know? The camp locations of the Alashi camps, last year. But even a djinn could find that out; they
didnтАЩt need me for that. How to infiltrate the AlashiтАФthe tests IтАЩd had to pass. The beads. I grimaced inwardly at
the memory, but I was almost certain that the precise tests varied depending on what the leader of the sword
sisterhood or brotherhood thought you needed to learn. Or the clan elder or eldress, if you joined the Alashi in the
winter, or were too young or too old to go fight.

I knew that the Alashi had karenite, but the Sisterhood of Weavers knew that already. I knew something about
the karenite trade in DaphniaтАФthe names of the two sorceresses who bought, or tried to buy, my karenite. I could
turn them over, I suppose. I knew about the Servant Sisterhood and the Younger Sisters, but little beyond the bare
fact of their existence. There was Zivar, of course. Zivar, whoтАЩd been born a slave and then managed to pass
herself off as a WeaverтАЩs apprentice. The green mouse, she had called herself, because there was no one else like
her in the worldтАФwell, other than me. I flinched at the thought of having information about Zivar wrung from
me, but I doubted that the Weavers particularly cared where Zivar came from. She made spell-chains for them on
command, at least for now, so she was useful. Her origins were unimportant.


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 FreedomтАЩsSisters


I could tell them about Lycurgus. Lycurgus, KyrosтАЩs cousin, was supposedly the steward of a farm owned by the
Sisterhood. Tamar and I had taken Uljas there, looking for Burkut. Lycurgus had been drunk most of the time,
and IтАЩd realized while there that heтАЩd been skimming farm profits to help the Younger Sisters. ThatтАЩs the sort of
information I could give Kyros to convince him that I really was on his side all along. I didnтАЩt really care whether
I condemned Lycurgus or not; I had no fondness for the man. Solon had been kind, and far more competent. And