"Mercedes Lackey - Brightly Burning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

Nelda had kept the splendid figure of her youth, and either through luck or artifice her auburn hair
showed not a strand of gray. She was dressed for a meeting of the NeedleworkersтАЩ Guild, in her fine,
russet-brown lambswool gown trimmed with intricate bobbin lace of her own making and design, the
sash of her office as Guild Representative of five counties so covered with embroidery that there was not
a single thread of the original fabric showing. Lavan had taken very little care with his own clothing, in no
small part as a kind of act of defiance. Trews and tunic claimed from his older and taller brother had once
been black, but had faded to a washed-out gray, and he wouldnтАЩt let his mother redye them. He was
afraid if she got her hands on them, or any of his clothing, sheтАЩd make them . . . cheerful. And cheerful
was very far from the way he felt since the move to Haven.
His mother was clearly torn between what she saw as her duty to her son and her duties to her
Guild. She hesitated, then solved her dilemma by snapping, тАЬWell, find something!тАЭ as she hurried out the
door, the heels of her scarlet leather boots clicking on the wooden floor.
Lan turned back to his contemplation of the garden, but he pulled his thin legs up onto the
window seat and pulled the curtain shut behind him, cutting him off from the rest of the second-best sitting
room.
Find something? She wants me to find something? And what is there for me to do around
here? Since moving to the town house in Haven, there was nothing to occupy LanтАЩs days. Back
home-for no matter what his parents said, this place would never be home to him-heтАЩd had friends,
places to go, things to do. Riding, hunting, and fishing mostly, or shooting at targets. Just hanging about
together and talking was entertaining enough, certainly more entertaining than listening to Sam natter
about the exciting doings in the dye vats. Back when he was younger, that same gang of boys had played
at being Heralds or Guards, at fighting the Karsites or capturing bandits. The last couple of years theyтАЩd
abandoned the games, but not each other. Now there were races to be run, game to chase, rivers to
swim, and that was enough for them.
Then Mother got made Guild Representative, and Father couldnтАЩt get us out of the
country fast enough. LanтАЩs lip curled at the recollection. No matter how his children felt about it. Archer
Chitward had ambition to be more than a simple country cloth merchant. At least in part that was why he
had negotiated the marriage with Nelda Hardcrider, the most skillful needlewoman anyone in their area
had ever seen. With her skill, and his materials, he reckoned she could make herself into a walking
advertisement for his goods.
Lan knew that was what heтАЩd thought, since heтАЩd said so often enough. His mother didnтАЩt seem
to resent being thought of as a sort of commodity, in fact he sometimes wondered if the negotiation and
speculation had been as one-sided as his father thought.
He stared out the glass window at the sorry substitute for a forest-a stand of six dwarf fruit trees,
an arbor covered with brambles and roses, which would later yield fruit and rose hips, and gooseberry
bushes, all neatly confined in wooden boxes with gravel-covered paths between, for a minimum of work.
The rest of the garden was equally utilitarian; vegetables in boxes, herbs in boxes, grapevines trained
against the wall. The only flowers growing there were those that were also edible.
With an intensity that left a dry, bitter edge around his thoughts, Lan longed for his wild,
unconfined woods. In all of Haven he had yet to see a spot of earth that had been left to grow wild; every
garden of every house around here was just the same as this one. The only variations were in whether or
not the gardens were strictly utilitarian or ornamental. The parks around which each тАЬsquareтАЭ of town
houses were built were carefully manicured, with close-cropped lawns, precise ponds or fountains,
pruned trees, and mathematically planned flowerbeds.
He wanted his horse. He wanted to saddle up and ride until he found a tree that wasnтАЩt pruned, a
flower not in a planned planting, even a weed. But that was impossible; his horse had been left back in
the country. There was no stable here, and even if there had been, he would not have been allowed his
horse. The two carriage horses the family had brought with them were kept in a stable common to the
square, and cost (as his father liked to repeat) a small fortune to keep fed and cared for. Only the nobly
born could afford to keep a riding horse in the city.